The Broken Universe (16 page)

“Well, we’ve done as much as we can here,” Grace said as they walked down the bank steps. “Let’s get back to the warehouse. I think I need to have our lawyer there tomorrow. That’s going to cost.” She stopped herself.

“What?”

“The cost of a lawyer’s day doesn’t really matter to us anymore.”

“True.”

*   *   *

This time, Gesalex’s board members made no attempt to converse with the Pinball Wizards. At 11
A.M.
, they marched into the meeting room at the Hyatt and sat down.

“Meeting called to order,” Gesalex stated.

Immediately, the Alarian on his left said in a heavy accent, “Motion to dissolve the company via liquidation.”

“Second,” cried the Alarian on the right.

Grace said before Gesalex could call a vote, “Point of order! The board members have not identified themselves.”

“Is this necessary?” Gesalex said.

“Of course,” Grace said. Her call that morning to the bank had said that they were processing the loan check, but had no idea when it would be ready.

John glanced at Fred Ultrech, the junior lawyer that their firm had sent over on short notice. Ultrech had scratched his head at Grace’s request, but had come up with at least a dozen stalling techniques that they could use according to corporate procedure to delay the end of the meeting.

“We can’t do any
more
than delay it, I’m afraid,” he said. “But we can delay it for a bit.”

“All in favor of the motion on the floor,” Gesalex said.

Ultrech stood up. “Sir, no vote can proceed until the point of order is addressed.”

“It’s ridiculous!”

“But required by law. Otherwise, the vote will not be binding.”

“Fine. I am Reccared Gesalex, chairman of this board.”

He looked to his left.

“I am Suintila Theusenand.”

Gesalex pointed to his right.

“I am Sesedoric Agila.”

“I am Wamba Liugica.”

Gesalex pointed at Henry.

Henry stood slowly.

“I am Henry Philip,” he said, pausing. Gesalex looked to John, but Henry cleared his throat and raised a piece of paper to read from. “I am chief engineer of the company, and have constructed or assisted in construction of over three hundred pinball machines. I was born—”

“This is just a stalling tactic,” said Gesalex.

“He may speak for five minutes for his identification,” Ultrech said.

Henry smiled and continued, tracing his roots to his hometown in Xenia, his years in high school, time as the captain of the chess team, and his interest in physics.

“It’s been five minutes,” Gesalex cried.

“Four minutes and thirty seconds,” Ultrech said.

Gesalex threw up his hands.

There was a knock at the door of the conference room.

A man in bicycle pants and a hat that read
HERMES DELIVERY
entered and spied Grace. He handed her a thick envelope, for which Grace signed.

“Get on with it,” Gesalex cried.

John glanced over Grace’s shoulder and saw a check with a lot of zeros. Grace and John shared a smile.

She stood and said, “I have a privileged motion.”

CHAPTER
12

Two weeks later, on a Saturday in the empty warehouse, the first meeting of Pinball Wizards, Transdimensional, was called to order. Present were John Prime, John Rayburn, and John Rayburn of the Civil War gold, or in John’s suggested nomenclature John-7423, John-7533, and John-7458. Also in attendance were Grace-7651, Grace-7650, Henry-7651, Henry-7650, and Casey.

“I feel all alone here,” Casey said with a laugh.

“Don’t worry,” Prime said. “There are other Caseys out there.”

“Oh, really? How many have you known?” Casey said, sharply.

Prime actually blushed.

“I should be used to Casey’s barbed tongue,” he said. “I married a Casey.”

“I still think this naming convention is ridiculous,” Grace-7650 said. “I’m never going to remember all these numbers.”

“Do you have a better idea?” Prime asked.

“I’m working on it,” she said.

John stood up. He unstrapped the device from his chest and laid it on the table. All the banter stopped and the eight of them looked at the thing.

“For months we’ve been running helter-skelter,” he said. “First from Visgrath, then from Gesalex. We’ve needed money and allies, and now we have both of those things.” He paused. “It’s time to figure out what we’re going to do.”

Henry-7650 spoke up. “Well, this auction thing isn’t bringing in the money we need.” He was right. The dream of four hundred million dollars had faded away when the auctioneer they had hired explained that a deluge of the nearly identical coins on the numismatic market would drop the price of each coin to its value in gold.

“The first one may be worth forty thousand dollars,” Elmer Prescott had explained, “but the next ten won’t be worth that, maybe ten thousand. And the next ten only five thousand. By then you’ve saturated the market for Civil War coins. Maybe there’s a few museums and institutions that will buy a coin. But the equilibrium price of the coins is going to be two thousand dollars at most. Probably closer to fifteen hundred. And I bet we’ll sell no more than five hundred.”

“I know how we can sell the coins, at near full value,” Grace-7651 said.

“How?” Henry asked.

“Sell a hundred in a hundred different universes,” she said. “That way we don’t saturate any one market for the coins.”

“Of course,” Henry said. “We’d buy the plot near the forest preserve in each universe and pretend to discover the coins! Then we can convert the coins to commodities in that universe and ship them anywhere!”

“Then we could pay off the bank loan, and get down to business,” Grace-7650 said.

John raised his hands. “I know our immediate problems are solvable. That’s not what I’m talking about. We can accumulate money in any universe we want. There’s no doubt of that. My question is, do we want to?”

“Well, of course, we do—” Henry-7651 said.

“I see what John is saying,” Grace-7651 said. “We’ve got this amazing device. What should our
purpose
be?”

“Making money seems reasonable,” Prime said.

“You want to help people,” Grace-7650 said to John.

“Yeah, yeah, I do.”

Casey leaned close to him and squeezed him. “I like that idea,” Casey said.

“You can help more people with more money,” Prime said.

“I will grant that money is a means to many ends,” John said. “But it shouldn’t be our end all.”

Henry-7651 said, “We should map out all the nearby universes. Find out why they’re different. Document it all!”

“I do like science for science’s sake,” John said.

“I know what I want,” Grace-7650 said. “I want to find the Alarians.” Her voice was grim. “We have some unfinished business.”

“I don’t know if revenge is a good plan,” John said gently.

“When you disassembled the transfer gate in the barn,” Grace asked John, “did you write down the universe it was set to transfer to?”

John looked at her for a long moment. He had noted it. It had been set to Universe 2219. “I know what it was,” he said.

Grace didn’t ask, but she held his gaze.

“I’ve got one,” Civil War John said, after a moment. Everyone turned toward their newest member. “You ever hear of the I-75 Ripper?”

“Yeah,” John said. “That serial killer who was targeting girls between Toledo and Cincinnati.”

“I wonder if there’s a universe where he was caught,” Civil War John said.

There was silence for a moment. Then John nodded. “That’s worth finding out, my friends,” he said.

“As long as we’re sure the guy is the same in all universes,” Prime said.

Civil War John added, “We’d have to do our due diligence, sure.”

“I’ve got one,” Prime said.

“More money-making ideas?” Henry-7650 asked.

“No, not this time,” Prime said. “I want to find the first John.”

“The what?”

“The first John. The John who gave him the device,” John said. “No revenge.”

“That’s not what I meant,” Prime said. “I want to find the John who first found the device. Maybe it was the John I met—John Superprime—but maybe Superprime got it from a prior John and that John got it from a prior John, et cetera and so forth.”

“Where did this all start?” John said.

“Yeah, exactly.”

John nodded. “I think we’ve touched on everything I want to do, at least in some small way. First, I’m giving up the device. It’s not mine to use, except if we all agree to it. It needs to be taken care of and babied and learned from. We can’t let the Alarians get anywhere near it.

“Second, I want to do
good.
I want to do things with this technology that will better people’s lives. I can’t even get my mind around the human suffering in any one universe, let alone an infinite number of them. Yet, we have to do something to ease the pain we know of.

“Third, we have to figure things out. I want to understand not just the technology, but the science behind our multiverse. The two gates we’ve built, they’re just bad imitations of that.” He pointed to the device on the table in front of them. “I have no idea of how it actually works. I want to understand how.

“And lastly, I want to understand why. Why aren’t we overrun with cross-dimensional travelers? Why isn’t there some huge multidimensional empire that controls our lives? Where did the device come from? Who put the Alarians here?”

John sat down. “Those are the things I want to do. And I hope you all will help me.”

There was a moment of silence, as the rest of the group all looked at John.

Grace-7650 was the first to speak. “I’m in.”

Grace-7651 nodded. “We’re in.” She tilted her head at Henry-7651.

Civil War John and John Prime shared a look. “There’s no doubt I’m in,” Civil War John said. “My life was a little bland before two weeks ago. I doubt I’ll get an opportunity like this again.”

John looked at Prime.

“As if you could get rid of me,” Prime said.

Casey squeezed John tightly. “Wherever you’re going, I’m going too, honey.”

“I’ve got it figured out,” Grace-7650 said.

“What?” John asked. “How to stop the Alarians?”

“Nope. This stupid numeric naming convention you came up with.”

“Uh…”

“He’s John Prime,” she said. “He’s never going to be John-7423, because he’s living in Universe 7533 now. But you’re John-7533, though you’re living in 7650, which is the company’s home office.”

“So how do we keep track of ourselves?”

“Nicknames. He’s John Prime. His Casey is Casey Prime. We’re John, Casey, Henry, and Grace Home. He’s John Gold. Everyone from 7651 is Top since that universe is the goalpost until we add more transfer gates beyond it.”

“But the numbers are so simple,” John Home said.

“I don’t like the numbers,” Casey Home said.

“I don’t either,” Henry Top and Henry Home said at the same time.

John Home shared a look with John Prime and John Gold. They each shrugged.

“Fine. I guess that’s our first order of business,” he said. “All in favor of shucking the numbers, say aye.”

“Aye!”

*   *   *

They spent the evening hashing out the details. John wanted to run things as a company, with a charter that outlined the points he had made. Grace agreed, but refused to allow him to specify a pure democracy.

“We’d never get things done,” Grace Top argued. “We need a CEO, a president to run things on a day-to-day basis.”

“I call head of engineering,” Henry Home and Henry Top cried in unison.

“Maybe they should fight for it,” Prime said.

“Oooo, Henry fight,” Grace Top said. “I like it.”

“What we need,” Casey said, “is a mission statement and bylaws that we all can agree to. Something loose yet binding. Flexible to deal with all sorts of strange things.”

“What’s the difference between a mission statement and the bylaws?” Grace Top asked.

“The mission statement is what we plan on doing. The bylaws is how we go about doing it,” Casey explained. “I guess I did pay attention in Corporate Organization class,” she added with a smile.

“What John said earlier,” Grace Top said. “To help other people, to understand the technology, and to understand the multiverse. That’s our mission statement.”

“That’s pretty good,” John Gold said.

“Let me write that down,” Grace Home said. She scribbled quickly on a pad of paper.

They started to throw around ideas for bylaws.

“I say we make it a law we can’t tell anyone about the device or the technology,” Henry Home said. “Keep it all a secret.”

“Why?” Grace Top asked.

Henry shrugged.

“I think we should differentiate between settled and unsettled universes,” Grace Home said. “Settled are those that we have operatives in: 7458, 7533, 7650, and 7651. In Gold, Prime, Home, and Top. Unsettled are those we don’t.”

“And have different rules in each type of universe?” Prime asked. “Why?”

“We want to be more careful in unsettled universes, don’t we?”

“We need rules on how we recruit new universes and new … uh … associates,” Grace Top said. “Who gets to be an associate? What universes do we settle? How many do we settle?”

“I think that’s important,” John Gold said.

They threw out ideas for an hour, with Grace scribbling notes on her pad.

“This is a lot of ideas,” she said when the suggestions finally petered out. “I don’t know how to make sense of it all. Some of these ideas are contradictory.”

“Maybe you and I should type them all out,” Grace Top said. “Categorize them, and see which ones make sense and which ones don’t.”

“And the rest of us—” Henry Home asked.

“—can play some pinball,” Henry Top finished.

“Why don’t we ever do that?” John Gold asked John and Prime.

“I hate when they do that,” Prime said.

“I kinda like when they do that,” Grace Top and Grace Home said at the same time.

*   *   *

Grace caught John in the hall.

“I think you should be the CEO, the president,” she said.

“Why?” John asked. “You’re doing pretty well with Pinball Wizards in 7650.”