Paul Melko: The Walls of the Universe

John and Grace slid a wood platform into the field area. The platform-half in and half out of the field-would keep their feet firmly in the field radius. Anything outside the radius-arms, feet, legs-wouldn’t be going along for the ride when they transferred to 7650.

“Let’s go,” Grace said.

“Do you really think we’ll need all the ammo?” Henry asked again. “We’ll just be able to call the police, right?”

“Do you want to take that chance?” Grace asked flatly.

John nodded, though he worried at Grace’s willingness to kill. “Until we know for sure what has happened there…”

Henry started the timer-big LED numbers counted down from 30. They hunkered down on the platform with their gear. At 0, John heard a rising buzz that suddenly cut off. Bright daylight, and they dropped a foot as the platform-once a rectangle, now a circle-collapsed. John, ready for the drop, steadied Henry and Grace with a hand.

They stood on the stone cliff above the quarry in 7650. A warm wind blew through the grass that sprouted in clumps. There was no one there.

And when they trotted across the road to Bill and Janet’s farmyard, Janet burst into tears of joy at their appearance.

“Where have you been?” she cried.

“Hiding,” John said. “Have you heard from Casey Nicholson? Do you know if she’s all right?”

“She was here,” Bill said. “They let her out of the hospital a week after you disappeared.”

“Can I use your phone?” John said.

John dialed her dorm room, but there was no answer. He glanced at the wall calendar. It was summer break, of course! He hung up and dialed her home number.

“Hello?”

“Casey!”

“John! Where are you?”

“Are you all right?”

“The police have been looking for you. It’s a kidnapping, they say. And that company that funded you, EmVis, it’s been in the news all month.”

“Are you all right?” John repeated again slowly.

“I’m fine, damn it! But what about you?”

“We’re all fine.”

“Who? Grace and Henry?”

“Yeah, we’re all fine. We had to run, and things got complicated, if you know what I mean.”

“I knew it wasn’t a kidnapping,” Casey said. “I’m just glad that you made it back. Where are you?”

“At Bill and Janet’s. I’ll come see you in a while.”

“Sure you will. Because if you don’t get here by sundown, I will track you down and kill you,” Casey said cheerfully.

“I know you will.”

He hung up, everything suddenly okay in the world.

Henry called from the TV room: “John, you have got to read this.”

“What?”

Henry was reading a copy of the Saturday Evening Post. Grace had a copy of CapNews .

“EmVis has imploded,” Henry said. “All the management and owners have disappeared.”

“They mention us in here,” Grace said. “One line. We disappeared too.”

“Disappeared?” John said. He glanced out the front window but couldn’t see the old barn from there. “What’s happened in the last six weeks around here?”

Janet shook her head and sighed. “What a mess it’s been. With you missing, and someone breaking into the old barn…”

“Someone broke into the old barn?”

“We thought it was kids, but all your things that you’d spent so much time on look busted up,” Bill said.

John, Henry, and Grace shared a look.

“I better go see.”

John pushed open the door of the barn and hit the light switch. Nothing happened. He pulled the door all the way open, fishing for the flashlight in his duffel. He flicked it on.

His first transfer gate had been taken apart and removed. John knew by whom: Charboric and his cohorts.

They’d found out from Grace that John was building a device, and when Visgrath had died and John, Henry, Grace, and Prime had escaped to the next universe Charboric had been free to search until he’d found the device. John appearing with Prime had been proof that John had succeeded in building a gateway.

Once Charboric had found the gate, he’d moved it to one of EmVis’ labs and used it to transfer his entire team back to where they needed to go.

They were gone.

John sighed. It was for the best for Grace and Henry. They were safe here now if Charboric and all of the EmVis bastards were gone. Casey was safe now. John was safe to stay too.

But no, that wasn’t a choice anymore.

The Visigoths had a gateway now. If they’d reversed engineered his device, they knew how to build more. John had released a menace on the universe, and he wasn’t going to let that cancer linger.

He owned the technology now. It was time to make things right.

Ted Carson was certain he was going insane.

His father was dead. He remembered the funeral. Yet here was Dad, big as life and not dead from a heart attack at forty-nine. Ted felt his stomach knot with fright whenever he stared him in the face.

“You all right, Ted? Have a beer.”

“No, I’m not all right,” he said.

He and the man who looked like his dad sat side by side in the living room Ted didn’t remember, watching a TV he didn’t recall, in a chair he’d never sat in before. His “dad” placed a meaty hand on Ted’s thigh. He forced himself not to flinch.

“It’s an effect of the amnesia, the doctors said. A fugue, they called it.”

“Yeah, whatever, but you were dead,” Ted said. “And I live somewhere else.” That wasn’t amnesia. He had memories that didn’t actually seem to have happened. Amnesia was when you didn’t have memories.

He didn’t want the beer, but his mom, ten kilograms lighter than he remembered, brought one in an iced mug anyway.

He sat back in the recliner and held the mug against his head.

None of this was right.

He’d been getting high in his basement apartment on Winslow. There’d been a knock on the door and some guy was there with a taser. After that Ted didn’t remember much, just the claustrophobia from being hog-tied in a coffin. He’d been certain it was those punk dealers who wanted their cash. If only they had given him a chance to pay, to explain! The next thing he remembered was being pulled out of the trunk by Casey Nicholson and led into the police station. Ted’s pants had been wet. He’d vomited on the cops’ floor. They’d taken him to the hospital, and the newspaperman showed up.

And then Ted’s parents, and he’d screamed in terror. The nurses had had to drag his dad out of the room before Ted calmed down.

There’d been tests and questions, and Ted had answered what he could. He remembered the last two months clearly. He had a job at Lawson’s. He worked nights. He had a car. He knew his address. The doctors had written down notes and nodded.

Then they’d taken him to the corner of Hodge and Staley where the Lawson’s should have been. It had been a used-car place. Then they’d taken him to his apartment, but some Mexican family lived there and it looked like they always had. No car, no apartment, no job. But his dad was back. After ten years.

Ted wasn’t sure if it was a fair trade, because he seemed to have traded in his sanity with all the rest of that stuff.

“The doctor’s been through all that, Ted,” his dad said. “It may not come back to you for a while, or it never will. But you’re safe and home now.”

“Yeah.”

“And all this nonsense is behind us.”

“All this nonsense” included Ted appearing in front of a judge and stating his full name for the record. He’d had no driver’s license, no Social Security card, so he’d had to affirm he was Ted Carson, and his dad and mom had affirmed too, and when that was all done there was Casey Nicholson hugging that guy who had tasered him. Only now he was standing with three lawyers and was dressed in a suit.