The Broken Universe (19 page)

“Splat! I fall a meter or two on my ass. No car in that universe. But this one was closer to ours, right? America at least. Not some crazy French place.”

“So what did you do then?” John asked.

“I tried to tell people,” he said. “I tried to walk home first, but my house wasn’t there. It looked the same, same roads and all, but no house. I was sure I was insane. Then I walked to the police station, and told them I couldn’t find my house. They took everything down, tried to find my parents. No Rayburns of any kind in the area.

“They began to think I was crazy too. But I wasn’t some bum. I had clothes and I was well fed. They put me up for the night at the precinct. But then they had some psychiatrist look at me. The house address I was repeating just wasn’t there.

“I gave him the device.”

“You what?” Prime cried.

“I didn’t know then!” he cried. “I had no idea what it was!”

“What did he do?” John asked.

“He looked at it, touched it, but didn’t press any buttons. Then he handed it back to me and asked me to tell him how it worked. I said I didn’t want to, that everything would disappear. He told me in a calm voice that, no, it wouldn’t. I argued until I was in tears. He insisted. Finally he put it in my lap, turned the dial, and put my finger on the trigger.”

“No,” John said in horror at what he knew would come next.

“I had no idea, you gotta believe me,” Superprime said. “I didn’t know.”

“He made you press the button.”

“He seemed so sure, and I wanted to believe him. He said it was all in my mind, that the device was just a toy. That if I pressed it, nothing would happen. I so wanted to believe that. So I let him push the lever.”

“Jesus,” Prime said.

“No,” John said.

He hung his head, nodding it. “So much goddamn blood.”

“How much of him—” Prime stopped his question halfway through.

“His arms, some of his chest.” Superprime turned away, and his stomach heaved. He wiped his mouth with his sleeve. “I was in a field. With cows, and two goddamn arms.

“I panicked. I tried everything on the device to get back to my universe. But it wouldn’t work.”

They paid and left the restaurant, driving back to the apartment building.

“Did you guys break it when you took it out of the cave?” Prime asked.

“You’ve seen it. There’s nothing to break.”

“How old was that skeleton?” John asked.

“It was a fossil. It could have been decades, centuries old.”

Prime glanced at John. “We need to see it,” Prime said.

“Yeah,” John replied. “What did you do then?”

“I started jumping universes, looking for some answer,” he said. “I hoped there was some advanced civilization in the next universe over that could get me back. But none of the universes had technology any more advanced than mine. Some of them were backwards. Steam engines, horses and wagons. I tried—tried talking to myself once. But what good was that? I scared the hell out of my—our parents there. The John there thought it was cool.

“I stayed there for a few months. I was hungry and tired. I should have stayed, but…” He paused.

“What?” Prime said.

“We were only kids. I was jealous, okay? I was jealous of the other me!

“So I left one day. Didn’t even tell them. Just left,” he said. “I guess I had the idea then of … you know.”

“Yeah,” Prime said.

“So I started looking for a place that looked like home,” Superprime said. “Some place where I could fit in. I found you.” He nodded at Prime.

“Yeah,” Prime said. “I know.”

“How’d you do it?” John said. “I never knew.”

“It doesn’t matter,” Prime said.

“I knocked him out with a shovel,” Superprime said. “I tried to get him to try it, but he wouldn’t. He was too suspicious. So I pretended like it didn’t matter and then whacked him on the head. I dialed the device ahead one universe and triggered it with the handle of a shovel.”

“Wow,” John said. It was almost his exact plan when he was going to do the same to one-armed John.

“So, you can take me back, can’t you?” Superprime said. “If you’re here, then you figured the thing out, right? You gotta take me back.”

He stood up, then, and put his arms on John’s shoulders. He smelled of vomit and beer, plus a sweet pungent odor.

“No!” John shook him off.

“Why?” he said, shrugging at Prime. “Doesn’t he want his life back? Here it is for him to have. I don’t want it.”

“You can rot in it for all I care,” Prime said.

“Screw you both!” He turned away. “I did what I had to do. You both did it too.”

John didn’t reply. He hadn’t done it, but he almost had. He wasn’t any better than either of the two.

“We’re not going to do anything for you in your current state,” John said. “You’re drunk, stoned out. What good is giving you back your old life if you’d just screw it up again?”

“Screw you,” Superprime said.

“Fine,” John said. “Let’s go.”

He and Prime turned away and started walking toward the street.

“Cathartic enough for you?” John asked Prime quietly.

“No. Not at all.”

“It doesn’t make it any better looking the person in the eye. Not at all.”

“He killed my mother,” Prime said.

“It was an accident. And you can take cold comfort in her being still alive in your home universe,” John said.

“Cold comfort,” Prime repeated.

“Hey! What are you going to do?” Superprime cried. “Why did you find me? Just to torment me?”

John turned on him. “We wanted to know where it came from. Now we do. Now we’re going to go look for ourselves.”

“You could take me back. Please! Take me back.”

“Not today, John,” he said. “Get your life back together and maybe we will.”

CHAPTER
14

John ruminated on his last comment as they walked back to the quarry. What right did he have to deny Superprime his desire to return home? Why did he judge him unworthy?

“I guess we can’t settle this universe,” Prime said. “Otherwise he gets to be on the board.”

John looked at him. He shouldn’t have been surprised that they were thinking about the same things at the same time.

“Yeah, I was just thinking that,” John said.

“I know.”

They found the spot on the rock where they had come through, a blank piece of floor in the warehouse in 7651—Universe Top. Henry Top had taken to painting out circles as drop zones for travel between any universe and Top. That way there was no problem with someone materializing into an object. John and Prime transferred through to 7651.

Grace Top looked up.

“Gentlemen,” she said. “How was your trip?”

“Angsty,” Prime said. “Frustrating.”

“But we know where we’re going next,” John said. “7312 is where Superprime found the device.”

“He found it? He didn’t get tricked by some Superduperprime?”

“No, he found it.”

“Interesting.” She checked her watch. “Hey, can you wait a few minutes? We’re testing out the mail system.”

“Cool,” John said.

“Mail system?” Prime said.

“Watch and see.”

Grace rolled a platform into the transfer zone for the fixed gate. She placed a small satchel on the top of the transfer platform.

“Mail!” she said.

“What do you need to send?” John asked.

“That James Bond film that was made here but never in 7650, a letter for Grace, a letter for Henry, a silly limerick I wrote.”

“Is that VHS tape going to work?”

“Yep. We checked!”

“A transdimensional movie rental system,” Prime said. “Now, that’s entrepreneurship.”

Grace counted down on her watch. She set the gate controls.

“Oh, almost forgot!” She took a second watch, made sure it showed the same time, and slipped it into the satchel. “We need to stay synced!” She paused, waiting. “Three … two … one!”

The lights dimmed. The machine hummed. Suddenly Henry was standing on the platform.

“Henry!” Grace cried. “I thought we weren’t going to practice with people yet!”

“I know!” Henry said. He hopped down from the platform. “Hi, John. Hi, John. But we had successful transfers five times in a row. I figured we could do a real person on six.” He grinned. “It worked.” He gave Grace Top a kiss on the lips.

“They found Superprime,” Grace said. “Now they’re heading to 7312.”

Henry said, “Oh, yeah? How’d he get the device?”

“Found it,” John said. “In a cave, not too far from here.”

“Mark it down,” Grace Top said.

“Right,” Henry replied, and marked a note in his notebook.

“What is he marking down?” Prime asked.

John shrugged.

“Universe 7312 is Universe Cave,” Henry said.

“Universe 7423 is Universe Superprime,” Grace Top said.

“Oh, right.”

“We’re building our corporate culture,” she said with a smile.

“Okay,” Prime said. “I still like plain numbers,” he added to John quietly.

John said, “Grace, set the gate to 7312. We have some exploration to do.”

“You got it.”

John and Prime climbed atop the platform. Prime crouched a little, as if he was unsure that the radius would include his head.

“Three … two … one! Transfer!” Grace cried.

John’s ears popped. He looked around at the bare landscape.

“I hope we never find a universe where they decided to dig the quarry here,” he said.

“They’re usually water-filled,” John said.

“Usually.”

It was late afternoon, and the sun was reflecting off the white scraped stone. Prime walked to the edge of the quarry pit, some fifty meters away. He peered down into the gaping hole.

“I don’t see anything,” he said.

John followed the edge of the quarry with his eyes, about three meters down, all the way around. Much of the quarry was covered in shadow, and he had no clear view of it.

“Kids,” Prime said.

“What?”

“Kids are coming.” A car pulled into the driveway of the quarry, skirting the old rusted rail that blocked the way. John watched them for a few moments, and then shrugged. They were just kids, looking for fun and probably a place to make out.

“I’m going to walk around the edge and see if I can spot the opening,” John said.

“If it’s still there,” Prime said. “There are a lot of gravel spill-ins that could have covered it again.”

“We’ll find it, even if we have to drag Superprime out here to show us where it is.”

“He can rot in my old universe for all I care.”

John shielded his eyes from the sun as he walked the east side. Prime was walking the other way. Halfway around, he thought he saw something, a half-covered hole in the wall of the quarry, darker than the surrounding stone. He noted where it was, taking a bearing by a boulder farther back in the quarry and a distinctive streak of dark gray in the granite.

The kids had eyed the two of them for a few minutes, and then gone about their business. John heard a whoop as one of the boys—there were two boys and two girls, maybe in their early twenties—jumped from the cliffside into the water below.

The splash sent ripples across the blue water.

“Ahhh!” he cried.

“Is it cold?” one of the girls called.

He replied with chattering teeth, “No!”

They watched John as he passed, giving him a measured look. The girls were dressed in bikini tops and cut-off shorts. The boy just had shorts.

“Whatcha doing, man?” the boy said.

“Just looking for fossils.”

“Sure, lots around here.”

They turned back to watch their fourth make his way up from the water, via a zigzagging path of stone near their jumping point.

“What did you see?” Prime asked, meeting him as he came around.

“I think a hole in the wall. Hard to tell,” John said.

“Did you ask those kids?”

“Naw.”

John found the colored streak of granite that he’d spied from across the quarry.

“Here,” he said. “About three meters down.”

Prime grinned at him. “You going?”

“Sure.” John lay on the edge of the quarry and slipped over the side until his feet found the ledge. “Here I go.” Fingers gripping the edge, he lowered one foot until he found the next ledge. Then the other foot, and then once more.

“Well?” Prime asked.

“Yep, there’s a cave opening here. A little to the left of where I am. I can reach it.” He scooted along the ledge until his foot could reach the floor of the cave. He swung in and landed awkwardly on the cave floor.

The cave was chilly, and, by the weak light through the opening, covered in milky white stone ceiling to floor. Stalactites and stalagmites reached up and down. He had a flashlight and pulled it from his pocket. The cave disappeared into the dark, its walls opening wider than the beam played.

John stepped carefully over the rocky floor. Light from the cave opening flickered and he turned to see Prime dropping in from above. He was glad for the company suddenly.

“Anything?”

“Not yet.”

Prime and he walked farther in. The cave floor dipped and suddenly there it was, the petrified universe traveler.

He was half embedded in the rock of the wall. It was no skeleton, but rather a desiccated corpse. The face was in rictus, the skin shrunken across the well-preserved muscles. He looked as if he had died in agony.

His clothes clung to him in shreds, bits of gray fabric, that John expected should have decayed away years before.

“He transferred right into the wall,” Prime said. “The poor bastard died unable to reach the device.”

It was true. The man’s hands were both trapped in the rock. It appeared he had transferred in from another universe partially embedded in the rock and unable to move his hands to reach the device. One arm, his right, was reaching across the chest, but was encased in rock at the elbow.

“But why would he have transferred into rock?” John asked. “Transferring underground would have been a death sentence.”

“Unless he had no choice,” Prime said.

“Or he didn’t think he would have a problem,” John said. “Remember, the device is broken. Maybe going just one direction isn’t the only way it’s broken.”

“Sabotage?” Prime asked. “Murder?”