Paul Melko - The Walls of the Universe

“I don’t understand these at all,” John said, staring at the diagram.

“We need an electrical engineer,” Grace said.

“Electrical engineering is not till junior year,” John said. “We can’t wait that long.”

“I’ll buy the textbooks,” she said with a laugh. “They’ll be here next week.”

They finished another thread. While Grace drew it on their huge sheet of drafting paper, she said, “Casey keeps asking about you.”

“What?”

“Casey, remember her? Tall, blond, broke your heart.”

“I remember.”

“She says you two broke up over a big secret,” Grace said. “You wouldn’t share.”

“Yeah.”

“Is it this same secret?”

John sighed. “I guess so.”

“Well, the cat’s out of the bag on that one,” Grace said.

“What do you mean?”

“You can tell her the truth, can’t you?”

“Too many people know already!” John said. “It could put you in danger.”

“What will happen to her if we build a device and leave?”

“Nothing.” John found the next thread within the device. Beside him the Geiger counter clicked a single beat. They kept it nearby in case, but there’d been nothing but background radiation. “Besides, she’s probably with Jack.” He remembered the sight of her and Jack on Thanksgiving Day, kissing and groping in front of her house.

“She hasn’t seen Jack in months! Not since… Thanksgiving. She dumped him on the day before Thanksgiving.”

“She did?”

“Yep. Jack was a total asshole.”

“I agree with that.”

“So go see her,” Grace said.

“She’s probably dating someone else,” John said.

“She’s not.”

“How do you know? You moved out of the dorm.” Grace had moved into an apartment near the factory when she stopped going to class.

“I still keep in touch,” Grace said defensively. “I still go back for lunch at the cafeteria. It’s really good mac and cheese.”

John laughed.

“Call her; see her,” Grace said. “Talk to her. What can it hurt?”

“Everything.”

John said no more, but his mind churned over their last argument, his last view of Casey. Not now, he told himself. It was too complicated, too wrong.

But when he left Henry and Grace to go to Dynamics, he drove past Casey’s dorm and parked in the nearest commuter lot. Instead of stopping and calling her from the lobby, he walked on to class.

On the way back, after a lecture on rigid body torque, John paused again in front of her dorm. It was nearly five in the afternoon. She was likely to be studying or getting dinner. If he had really wanted to talk with her, he should have stopped by before class. Now it was too late.

“I’m an idiot,” he whispered to himself, and headed toward his car.

“John?”

He turned. Casey was standing three meters behind him on the sidewalk with two other female students John didn’t know. They peered at him curiously.

“Hi, Casey.”

“What are…? How are you doing?”

He shrugged. “Busy.”

“I hear. Grace keeps me up-to-date, and I read all the newspaper articles.”

He was full of words and not sure where to start. The two friends, eyeing him as if he were a toad, didn’t help.

“Listen…”

“Yeah.”

“You want to go to dinner?”

“Casey,” one of the women said. “Don’t you have-”

“It’s okay, Sheryl,” she said. To John, she said, “Let’s go.”

It was easier than he expected to tell her the truth. And far easier to wake up next to her the next morning in his apartment.

“I’m not saying I believe it,” she said, propped up on one elbow.

“Then why are you here?” John said.

“Because you clearly believe it and you think keeping it from me is what drove me away.”

“Didn’t it?”

“Yes, but I need to decide if the secret of cross-universe travel is any different from the secret of harboring a paranoid delusion of cross-universe travel,” she said.

John smirked. “Henry and Grace believe me.”

“Yes, smart people can behave irrationally. Insane people can be incredibly smart.”

“We have a device. We’ve taken it apart.”

“Does it work?” she asked.

“Yes!”

“Have Grace and Henry seen it work?”

“Uh, no. I’ve seen it work.”

“So your experience is your only evidence.”

“Charboric and Visgrath know.”

“Who witnessed your conversations with those two?”

“Uh, no one.”

“So you see my dilemma?”

“Not really.”

“Can I still love you if you’re a psychopath?”

“Is paranoia really a psychosis? It’s more of a neurosis. And everyone has neuroses.”

“No, I think dedicating your life to your delusion is a psychosis.”

“It’s brought prosperity.”

“So pinball is part of the psychosis. I assumed it was just a good idea you had that you had to justify due to an inferiority complex.”

“I do not have an inferiority complex. I’m very good at most things I do.”

Casey laughed. “You’re a very attractive psychopath.”

“See? I have no reason to feel inferior. I’m not short like Napoléon. I’m going to college. I own an explosively growing company. I have an above-average… you know.”

“How do you know?” Casey said. “About that last one.”

“I’ve read scientific articles. In scientific magazines.”

“Did they come with color pictures and pullout centerfolds?”

“No. Black-and-white bar charts. Many, many bar charts.”

Casey laughed again and straddled him.

“I appreciate your scientific process,” she said. She slid him inside her. “I’ve decided to give you the benefit of the doubt.”

“You believe I’m not-huh!-lying?”

“No, I don’t believe it matters as long as you’re honest with me.”

“I won’t ever lie to you again.”

“That’s what I wanted to hear.”

They stopped talking after that.

Huge crates of materials-everything that Grace had ordered-arrived at the old warehouse the next morning.

“What are we going to do with this stuff?” John asked.

“Henry is going to model our diagram.”

“I am?” Henry asked.

“Sure.”

“I don’t know anything about electronics,” he said.

“You didn’t know anything about pinball before either,” Grace replied.

“I can’t argue with that.”

They were at the point where they could do a couple hundred threads in an hour. The slowly evolving circuit almost made sense, but then John’d turn his head and it would all dissolve away. It was alien and yet familiar. Like thermodynamics.

John looked up suddenly, his bladder near to bursting. The sun had set.

“Where’s Henry?”

“He went to class,” Grace said.

“It was my turn.”

“You were in the zone, John.”

John stretched, then ran to the bathroom.

“I think we’re halfway,” Grace called.

“Mapping it,” John called back. “We still have to build it.”

“Look at what Henry did.”

John came out of the restroom and stared at the wired-up machine on the workbench. An oscilloscope blipped. Wires extended from component to component. A lab book lay open on the table. John flipped through it; the first fifty pages were covered in tables and equations.

“He did this today?”

“We were all in the zone.”

“You didn’t go into the office today. We barely made it into school. Are we wasting our time here?”

“Listen,” Grace said. “We-not just you-have gotten ourselves into trouble. The source of that trouble is this device. We need to understand it. We need to reverse engineer it. Then we have all the possibilities in the universe. And then some.”