Paul Melko: The Walls of the Universe

“Did you call them?”

“Yes.”

“We’ll need their insurance information.”

John stood wincing and peered out the door until she disappeared. Then he limped the other way until he found an emergency exit door. He pushed it open and hobbled off into the parking lot, the bleating of the siren behind him.

John shivered in the morning cold. His knee was the size of a melon, throbbing from the night spent on the library steps. The bell tower struck eight; Prime would be on his way to school right now. He’d be heading for English class. John hoped the bastard had done the essay on Gerard Manley Hopkins.

John had slept little, his knee throbbing, his heart aching. He’d lost the seventeen hundred dollars Prime had given him, save eighty dollars in his wallet. He’d lost his backpack. His clothes were ripped and tattered. He’d skipped out on his doctor’s bill. He was as far from home as he’d ever been.

He needed help.

He couldn’t stay here; the hospital probably called the police on his unpaid bill. He needed a fresh universe to work in.

Limping, he walked across to the Ben Franklin, buying new dungarees and a backpack.

Then he stood in the center of the town square and waited for a moment when no one was around. He toggled the universe counter upward and pressed the lever.

John climbed the steps to the library. This universe looked just like his own. He didn’t really care how it was different. All he wanted was to figure out how to get home. He’d tried the device a dozen times in the square, but the device would not allow him to go backward, not even to universes before his own.

He needed help; he needed professional help. He needed to understand about parallel universes.

As he browsed the card catalog, it soon became apparent the Findlay library was not the place to do a scientific search on hypothetical physics. All he could find were a dozen science fiction novels that were no help at all.

He was going to have to go to Toledo. U of T was his second choice after Case. It was a state school and close. Half his friends would be going there. It had a decent, if not stellar, physics department.

He took the Silver Mongoose to Toledo, dozing along the way. A local brought him to the campus.

The Physics Library was a single room with three tables. Stacks lined all the walls and extended into the middle of the room, making it seem cramped and tiny. It smelled of dust, just like the Findlay Public Library.

“Student ID?”

John turned to the bespectacled student sitting at the front desk. For a moment, he froze, then patted his front pockets. “I left it at the dorm.”

The student looked peeved, then said, “Well, bring it next time, frosh.” He waved John in.

“I will.”

John brought the catalog up on a terminal and searched for “Parallel Universe.” There wasn’t much. In fact, there was nothing at all in the Physics Library. He was searching for the wrong subject. Physicists didn’t call them parallel universes of course. TV and movies called them parallel universes.

He couldn’t think what else to search for. Perhaps there was a more formal term for what he was looking for, but he had no idea what it was. He’d have to ask his dumb questions directly of a professor.

John left the library and walked down the second-floor hall, looking at nameplates above doors. Billboards lined the walls, stapled and tacked with colloquia notices, assistantship postings, apartments to share. A lot of the offices were empty. At the end of the hall was the small office of Dr. Frank Wilson, Associate Professor of Physics, lit and occupied.

John knew associate professors were low on the totem pole, which was probably why Wilson was the only one in his office. And maybe a younger professor would be more willing to listen to what John had to say.

He knocked on the door.

“Come on in.”

He entered the office, found it cluttered on all sides with bookshelves stacked to bursting with papers and tomes but neat at the center, where a man sat at an empty desk reading a journal.

“You’re the first person to show for office hours today,” he said. Professor Wilson was in his late twenties, with black glasses, a sandy beard, and hair that seemed in need of a cut. He wore a gray jacket over a blue oxford.

“Yeah,” John said. “I have some questions, and I don’t know how to ask them.”

“On the homework set?”

“No. On another topic.” John was suddenly uncertain. “Parallel universes.”

Professor Wilson nodded. “Hmmm.” He took a drink of his coffee, then said, “Are you one of my students? Freshman physics?”

“No,” John said.

“Then what’s your interest in this? Are you from the creative writing department?”

“No, I…”

“Your question, while it seems simple to you, is extremely complex. Have you taken calculus?”

“Just half a semester…”

“Then you’ll never understand the math behind it. The authorities here are Hawking, Wheeler, Everett.” He ticked them off on his fingers. “You’re talking about quantum cosmology. Graduate-level stuff.”

John said quickly before Wilson could cut him off again, “But my question is more practical. Not theoretical.”

“Practical parallel worlds? Nonsense. Quantum cosmology states that there may be multiple universes out there, but the most likely one is ours, via the weak anthropic principle. Which means since we’re here, we can take it as a given that we exist. Well, it’s more complex than that.”

“But what about other universes, other people just like us?”

The man laughed. “Highly unlikely. Occam’s razor divests us of that idea.”

“How would I travel between universes?” John said, grasping at straws against the man’s brisk manner.

“You can’t; you won’t, not even remotely possible.”

“But what if I said it was? What if I knew for sure it was possible?”

“I’d say your observations were manipulated or you saw something that you interpreted incorrectly.”

John touched the wound in his calf where the cat-dog had bitten him. No, he’d seen what he’d seen. He’d felt what he’d felt. There was no doubt about that.

“I know what I saw.”

Wilson waved his hands. “I won’t debate your observations. It’s a waste of my time. Tell me what you think you saw.”

John paused, not sure where to start and what to tell, and Professor Wilson jumped in. “See? You aren’t sure what you saw, are you?” He leaned forward. “A physicist must have a discerning eye. It must be nurtured, tested, used to separate the chaff from the wheat.” He leaned back again, glanced out his window onto the quad below. “My guess is that you’ve seen too many Schwarzenegger movies or read too many books. You may have seen something peculiar, but before you start applying complex physical theories to explain it, you should eliminate the obvious. Now, I have another student of mine waiting, one I know is in my class, so I think you should run along and think about what you really saw.”

John turned and saw a female student standing behind him, waiting. His rage surged inside him. The man was patronizing him, making assumptions based on his questions and demeanor. Wilson was dismissing him.

“I can prove it,” he said, his jaw clenched.

The professor just looked at him, then beckoned the student into his office.

John turned and stalked down the hall. He was asking for help, and he’d been laughed at.

“I’ll show him,” John said. He took the steps two at a time and flung open the door to the quadrangle that McCormick Hall faced.

“Watch it, dude,” a student said, almost hit by the swinging door. John brushed past him.