Going Bovine (34 page)

The scientists shift uncomfortably.

“He was once,” Dr. O says quietly.

My heart sinks. I’d hoped we’d finally found him. “Well, do you know where he went? Please, it’s superimportant that I find him.”

“No one’s seen or heard from him since …” Dr. A trails off.

“Since?” I prompt.

The scientists exchange glances. Dr. T pulls a worn photo out from a bookshelf—Dr. X beside a smiling, freckle-faced woman. It’s the photo I saw on his desk when I did the Internet search for the fire giants and accidentally found Dr. X instead.

“Dr. X’s wife, Mrs. X,” Dr. T explains. “He loved her very much. She inspired his work. He used to say, ‘There is no meaning but what we assign to life, and she is my meaning.’” Dr. T puts her picture back on the shelf. “Lovely woman.”

The scientists all bow their heads.

“So … what happened?”

“Every year for Christmas, she gifted Dr. X with a new snow globe for his collection. He loved snow globes, said they were like little worlds unto themselves. Anyway, it was the week just before Christmas, the first snow of the season. She’d gone downtown to the shop to make her final payment and collect his gift. But …” Dr. T shakes his head sadly.

Dr. O continues. “A bomb exploded. They never found out who did it or why. A random attack. Meaningless. Mrs. X was killed in the explosion. When they found her body, she was still clutching her husband’s Christmas snow globe in one hand.”

Balder removes his helmet. “That is a sad tale indeed.”

“After his wife’s death, Dr. X was a changed man,” Dr. M says with a heavy sigh. “He said what did it matter if we could find the Theory of Everything Plus a Little Bit More, measure gravitrons, or prove evidence of other worlds if we could not stop such suffering in our own—the plague of the unpredictable, the terrible, the futile.”

“He wanted to use the Infinity Collider not to ask questions, but to search for an answer,” Dr. O says softly. “He wanted to search time and space so that he might find a way to stop death.”

“So.” I swallow hard. “What happened to him?”

“Dr. X had a theory that certain musical frequencies could open up portals in the fabric of time and space. Something about the vibrations. He believed that music was in fact its own dimension,” Dr. T explains in that teacher voice of his.

“My friend Eubie would probably agree,” I say.

“One night, he made a few secret tweaks to the Infinity Collider. Only Ed was with him.” He glances at Ed, who’s watching a bag of microwave popcorn expand in the microwave like it’s every bit as fascinating as the Infinity Collider. “According to Ed, Dr. X reconfigured the Calabi Yau into a sort of superspeaker, which he then attached to his radio to amplify the music—”

“It was the Copenhagen Interpretation!” Ed yells from the kitchen where he’s pouring the freshly popped corn into a bowl.

“—and push those musical vibrations into the universe in order to puncture a hole in the fabric of space-time and gain passage. It worked. Within minutes, he was gone. So was the Infinity Collider. We had to build this one from scratch.”

Dr. M sighs. “We haven’t seen or heard from Dr. X since. For all we know, he’s trapped in an alternate universe.”

“When was that?” I ask.

“Eleven years ago,” Dr. A says. “I remember because it was the same night the Copenhagen Interpretation played their Big Benefit Concert for Peace but Against Non-Peace and People Generally Being Not Nice. Great show. I think there was an aurora borealis. That’s what my girlfriend told me.”

“That was also the night they disappeared,” I say.

On TV, Dr. X’s somber face fills the screen. “Why must we die when everything within us was born to live?” He shakes the snow globe of the angel and it blurs with fake snow.

Connections. Dulcie said everything was connected. Maybe if I can duplicate Dr. X’s experiment, I can find that connection.

“Can you send me through to wherever Dr. X went?”

“Depends on whether you’re deterministic or probabilistic.” Dr. O laughs, but no one else does. “That’s a joke,” she says, rolling her eyes. “Anyway, it’s possible. A record of his trip might still be imprinted there, like an echo.”

“We don’t know that for certain,” Dr. A says. “We’ve never been able to duplicate Dr. X’s experiment. There’s the possibility we could create a small black hole. Or you could enter another world and not come back. You could cycle through worlds indefinitely, like the Flying Dutchman.”

“But if he leaves an XL-gravitron—a sort of ‘parallel-world footprint’—we’d have proof,” Dr. M says, pacing. He lowers his voice. “It could mean funding.”

“Hmmm,” the scientists all say at once.

Gonzo whispers in my ear. “What if that thing pushes you into another reality where you’re a Grade-A wanker with no girlfriend. Oh wait. That would be this reality. Never mind.”

“Fuck off,” I whisper, and Gonzo’s smile widens.

“What’s that?” Dr. A asks.

“Nothing,” I say.

Grinning, Dr. T holds up a finger. “There’s no such thing as nothing. In every nothing, there’s a something. In fact, there could be everything!”

“New sales slogan,” Dr. O explains. “Our research is also being funded by the Pursuit of Happiness Corp. Pursue happiness at all costs.”

“Been there,” Gonzo mutters. “Extreme happiness, not all it’s cut out to be.”

I stare at the picture of Dr. X and his wife.

“Where do I sign up?”

CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE

Of What Happens When I Take a Little Trip Through Time and Space. Calabi Yau!

Gonzo and I sit on the porch watching the turbines spin against a night sky polka-dotted with stars. Balder’s off hunting. He insisted I couldn’t go into the Infinity Collider without a proper Viking feast worthy of Valhalla. For the past hour, while we wait for Gonzo’s phone to charge, he’s been arguing against going into the Infinity Collider.

“I’m just saying, dude, that thing doesn’t look promising.”

“You got a better idea?”

“Yeah,” he starts. “No. Not really. But parallel universes? Dude, I’m the biggest Star Fighter fan on this or any other planet, but it’s a movie, you know? That shit’s all science fiction.”

“But what if it’s not? What if there are parallel universes where you’re you, only different. You know, maybe you’re a doctor or a gravedigger or a ninja. Maybe here, in this universe, your—your mom died when you were five”—I choke on the word “died”—“but in another world, she’s alive, helping you make sand castles on the beach.”

“Or maybe there’s another world where you bop in from an Infinity Collider and get eaten by carnivorous house-plants.”

“Don’t start.”

“I’m just saying it’s not all sand castles and ninjas.”

The turbines catch a new breeze and reverse their spin. “But all those other roads, those other choices you don’t make? They must get to live somewhere. I mean, maybe …” I stop because it’s too much to hope for and too stupid to say out loud.

“Maybe what?”

“Maybe there’s a universe where I don’t get this disease at all. Where none of this happens.” As soon as I say it, I think of Dulcie. Of Gonzo and Balder and this whole nutty trip, how I wouldn’t trade parts of it for anything.

Gonzo unwraps a piece of Juicy Chew and pops it in his mouth. “So, what, like, all of time is elastic?”

“Sure. I mean, why not?” I say, getting excited. “Maybe, right now, Junior Webster is still fighting in the war that changed him even as we’re sitting on this porch watching the grass grow. The Copenhagen Interpretation is giving its forty-second comeback show and you’re a kid burying toy cars in the backyard. Or you’re giving a forty-second comeback concert and the Copenhagen Interpretation is hanging with your cars. It’s all a big soup and it never stops cooking.”

Gonzo rubs his head. “Dude, this is a stoner conversation, and we are not even high.”

“I’m just saying that it’s totally possible that things don’t happen until you connect with an event, then the other choices you didn’t make unfold in other worlds.”

“Whatever, dude,” Gonzo says, hands up. “I’m fine with this reality. In fact, it’s already more reality than I can handle. I’m not ready to take on another one.”

“Gonz, if, um—you know,” I say softly. “Make sure Balder gets to the sea and Ringhorn lifts the curse, okay?”

“There is no Ringhorn, man.”

“Just promise me.”

“Yeah. Okay.” Gonzo bends and folds his gum wrapper into new shapes. “So, you think maybe in another world, I’m … you know. Not a dwarf?”

It’s hard for me to think of Gonzo as anything but Gonzo. “Or you’re the Littlest PI—the Dwarf of Destiny.”

Gonzo makes a gun out of his forefinger and thumb. “The dame wanted advice, but I was coming up short,” he says in a hard-boiled detective voice. He sets the gum wrapper on the table. It’s now a tiny silver swan. “I’d want a fedora in that other world. Can’t be the Dwarf of Destiny without a sick topper.”

“Indeed.” The wind’s died down. It’s still, like the world’s holding its breath. “I’m sorry,” I say after a while.

“For what?”

“Dulcie told me there was something for you on this ride, but I guess it’s been kind of a bust so far.”

“Yeah, well.” Gonzo hugs his knees. “Beats high school.”

Gonzo’s phone has a green light.

“You’re fully charged,” I say. “You wanna call your mom?”

Gonzo lets the phone lie. “Maybe later.”

I find Ed in the living room in his Star Fighter pajamas. He’s playing with the Calabi Yau model. The TV’s on. Parker Day struts across the studio soundstage. “Just want to remind everybody back home that we are counting down to the YA! Party House—only one more day—and we’re gonna … what?” Parker asks.

He puts his hand to his ear as the audience chants his catchphrase back to him.

“Smoke it!” he joins in, and the place goes nuts.

I flip over to ConstaToons. It’s the same roadrunner and coyote with all the doors.

“That one’s a train,” Ed says, just before coyote opens it and gets run over.

“Yeah, I know. You’d think he’d learn.”

“He can’t learn. He’s a cartoon.”

“Good point.” I offer him a Corny Doodle.

He shakes his head. “I already brushed my teeth for bed.”

“Gotcha.” I pop it in my mouth. “So, you’ve lived here since you were little?”

He nods.

“That’s rough, man. Sorry, you know, that your parents died.”

“My parents didn’t die. They left me here on the doorstep when I was three.”

“Wow,” I say before I can stop myself. For all my dad’s assholian tendencies and my mom’s spaciness, they would never do that.

Ed keeps playing with the Calabi Yau toy, arranging and rearranging the macaroni-like dimensions to make whole new shapes. Every time he does, the thing lights up like a pinball machine.

“Hey, Ed? Do you know what happened to Dr. X?” I ask. “It’s really important.”

“He went in the Infinity Collider,” he says, not taking his eyes off the cartoon.

“Yeah, but is he lost or, like, caught in some other world? Do you know where he is right now?”

“He’s gone to tomorrow. Anvil!” he warns the coyote.

I sigh. This is getting me nowhere. On the TV, the road-runner runs through the painted backdrop. Confused, coyote tries to follow and whams his whole body against a brick wall.

“You ever think about going into the Infinity Collider yourself?” I ask.

“We are infinity,” Ed says, as if that settles it.

The door bangs open. Balder stands on the threshold, eyes blazing. He’s dragging a stag by one hoof. “Tomorrow, we may die. But tonight we dine as heroes!”

Later, after we’ve polished off some deer meat and Rad soda, Balder has a blast letting the scientists test their various lasers and protoplasm pelters and even a potato gun on him. With each hit, he shouts out, “Who’s your daddy?” in Norse, until, frankly, it starts to get kind of annoying. The scientists seem like they’re having a little too much fun trying to obliterate my pal, but Balder’s digging the chance to show off what a rocking immortal he is, so who am I to stop his fun?

The next morning, at half-past eleven, Dr. T comes in, his smile gone and his eyes anything but twinkly.

“Is it true you’re terrorists?” He holds out the day’s paper, and my heart nearly stops. On page four is the flyer pic of Gonz and me along with a story about the CESSNAB revolution and the supposed bombing of the Konstant Kettle, the bounty offered by United Snow Globe Wholesalers, and the number to call. “This is the sort of thing Dr. X stood against.”

“No! No, I … just let me explain. …”

Gonzo ducks under my arm, starts reading. “Dude, we only made page four? That sucks! What kind of terrorists do you have to be to make page one?”

“But we are not terrorists!” I insist.

“Oh. Right. Totally not, dudes. And Dr. O.”

“To quote the great Silas Fenton, ‘We give our word to you: We are for honor and good, sworn to protect the galaxy until our atoms are spread among the stars,’” Balder assures them.

The professors stare at us blankly.

“Star Fighter,” Gonzo prompts. “You know, Star Fighter? The movie?”

“Never seen it,” Dr. A says with a sniff.

Gonzo takes a step back. “How can you be science nerds and not have seen Star Fighter? That’s just wrong.”

“Look, there’s something I need to tell you. …” I explain to them about the dark energy that Dr. X accidentally set free from another universe and how it’s endangering our own. All the while, they’re exchanging glances and I can hear them whispering to each other: “… could have traveled through the Higgs Field … given mass to something new … something dangerous … never tried it, only a kid … nachos … had nachos yesterday, how about pasta … could be our breakthrough …”

Finally, they break from their huddle. “We will help you,” Dr. A says. “In the interest of science.”

Thirty minutes later, I’m standing at the entrance to the crazy-daisy door of the Infinity Collider wearing a roller derby helmet, white plastic safety goggles, and an orange padded jumpsuit with the words SCHRÖDINGER’S CAT IS ASPLIT PERSONALITY on it.

Gonzo makes a whistling sound. “Wow. Physicist humor. Who knew?”

The scientists have traded their lab coats for jumpsuits. Across the back of Dr. M’s is a slogan in big white letters: EVERYONE’S A TOURIST HERE! He offers an apologetic smile. “These days, most of our research is funded by the Council of Greater Tourism. If we succeed, they want to partner with us on tours to parallel universes.” He motions with his arm like he’s spelling out an imaginary billboard. “Take your brain to Braneworld!”