Paul Melko - The Walls of the Universe

“Shut up, Howie,” the man said.

Howie nodded at John. “They make underwater breathing things,” he said. “It’s no secret.”

“Howie! You know we all signed contracts not to talk about it!”

“I didn’t sign no contract, Tom,” the bartender said.

“Well, who else would you get the information from?”

“Underwater breathing devices?” John said. “You mean scuba gear?”

“How’d you know that name?”

“Everyone has heard of scuba,” John said.

“How could you?” Tom cried. “We only started producing them a couple years ago. Our only client is the military.” He slapped his hand over his mouth. “Oh, shit!”

“I’ve heard of scuba before,” John said. “It’s no big deal.”

“You’re probably working for security,” Tom said. He stood and moved off, giving John a dark look.

“You’ve heard of scuba, haven’t you?” John asked the bartender.

“Just from these folks.”

“Don’t people go diving around here?”

“Snorkeling, you mean? Not in Pennsylvania!” he said with a laugh.

“No, I guess not,” he said. “Do you know of any other Grauptham House factories?”

“Sure, there’s one in Trafford and one in Plum.”

“What do they make there?”

“Hell if I know.”

John paid and left.

By midnight he had visited bars near four more Grauptham House factories. The one in McKeesport manufactured scuba gear. The one in Trafford made defibrillators. The one in Plum made Velcro. The one in Latrobe published music. It had a storefront and was the only Grauptham House location open to the public. John parked outside the store; a dozen people entered and exited the shop in the half hour he watched the Latrobe Music Shoppe.

He entered the store. A blond man stood at the register. Racks of tapes and LPs lined the walls, all of it classical music. A woman fingered through the selection of records. Beethoven’s 9th played on the tiny speakers overhead. She hummed along.

“I love this part,” she said. “This new symphony is just splendid.”

“New?” John said. “You mean, new recording?”

“Oh, no,” she said brightly. “This is Witt Chindasuinth’s brand-new symphony.”

“This is Beethoven’s Ninth,” John said.

The woman looked at him for a moment blankly; then she laughed. “Beethoven’s Ninth! How funny. He only wrote six! What happened to the other two if this is the ninth?” She turned away to make her purchase, but the cashier was looking at him.

“What did you say?” the cashier asked in an accented voice.

“What?”

“You’ve heard this before?”

John shrugged his shoulders at the ceiling. “Uh, I thought I had.”

“Maybe you did hear it,” the cashier said. He stepped around the register toward John. “Somewhere else.”

John shook his head. “No, my mistake.” As he ran out the door, the bell chimed frantically. From his car, he watched the cashier pick up a phone and call someone.

John sat in the parking lot of an Eat ’n Park. It was nearly midnight. He was exhausted and frightened. It was clear that Grauptham House was doing the same thing John Prime had wanted to do, the same thing he had done inadvertently with the pinball machine. They had set up shop in a new universe and were using gadgets from other universes to make money.

They probably had hundreds of patents and inventions, and pinball happened to be one of them. But if they knew about pinball, then they knew that John, Grace, and Henry hadn’t invented it here; they must suspect that John pilfered it from somewhere else. What was their game?

He broke out into a sweat. He’d brought himself to the attention of others: people who knew about other universes. But was that bad? Maybe he could ask for help in getting home. Only why did they lock everything away? Why were they so security conscious? Because they didn’t want anyone to know, like the U.S. government.

But now Pinball Wizards was elbowing in on their racket. They were fighting back. Or were they nervous that someone else was mining this universe? Would they ask him to leave? Would they force him to leave? Would they just kill him?

John had a device. Why didn’t he just move on?

“Damn it!” he said.

He’d done what he’d told himself not to do, get involved with the locals. He couldn’t leave Grace and Henry to fend for themselves. He couldn’t leave Casey, though he hadn’t talked to her in months.

He couldn’t leave. As tempting as it was, he couldn’t leave his friends in a lurch. Not when there were nefarious forces against them. And what of his goal to understand the device? He’d have to start from scratch if he moved universes. He’d have to reestablish his identity. He’d have to start back in school. The money from the pinball company was nice; he’d never have been able to buy the scientific equipment he had without the cash flow from Pinball Wizards, Inc.

No, he had to figure out what was going on. He had to keep his friends safe. And if that meant giving up Pinball Wizards, so be it.

But how could he find out what Grauptham House was up to? How could he find out if they were travelers like him, without tipping his hand?

“John, can I speak with you, please?”

John, solder gun in hand, was wiring a new flipper into a prototype game. He looked up, startled not just by the interruption but by Visgrath being at the factory on a Sunday. Visgrath and Charboric had visited once; the other board members, not at all.

“Sure, hold on,” John said. He’d been spending most weekends in the lab, as they called it. It was the smaller bay behind the factory floor, where they put together the prototypes and demo units that might become new models. He’d slept in on Saturday after his long hours on the road Friday afternoon and Saturday morning to and from Pittsburgh. Now he was there late on Sunday finishing his work, trying to figure out what he was going to do. This surprise visit from Visgrath was unsettling. John stood, leaving the flipper hanging by its wires.

“What do you want to talk about?” John asked.

Visgrath smiled. John didn’t remember ever seeing the man smile.

“So easy to pretend with an outsider, I forget how to speak frankly,” he said.

“What do you mean?”

“We traced your license plate number,” Visgrath said, meeting John’s stare directly.

John felt perspiration break across his back. They had him.

“What do you mean?”

“Please. Give us some credit. Your trip to Pittsburgh,” Visgrath said. “You know what we’re doing. You know why we’re interested in you.”

John realized he was face-to-face with Visgrath’s mass of assumptions; neither of them was what the other thought he was. And John was certain his life hung on how he answered. Denial wouldn’t work.

“Beethoven’s Ninth,” John said with a smile. “Nice touch.”

Visgrath laughed, and John was frightened again at the sight of his bleached white teeth. “Some things make easy money. Beethoven is one of them. It does require a bit of infrastructure to pull off. We need an orchestra. We need certain technologies. Pinball,” he said. “We never would have done that. But it’s ingenious.”

John realized then that Grauptham House and EmVis were in league, if not the same company. “You, I mean Grauptham House, holds a pinball patent.”

“Not really,” Visgrath said.

“Oh, I see. More pressure, just like the city of Toledo thing and the Ray Paquelli suit,” John said. “You use the same tactics over and over again.”

Visgrath nodded. “Apparently we are a race of repetitive minds,” he said with a laugh. “You caught us. I will have Charboric killed if you like, for his lack of original thinking.”