Secrets of Goth Mountain
Page 68
CHAPTER 30
ELIZABETH DISCOVERED
Across dozens of worlds, Dooley Simples were being sought, along with the particular Mark Goth and Mort Goth that were stranded away from their unique, unicorn inhabited universe.
Some Dooleys were trained to act as a shaman, some weren’t, but all of them began to focus on the Cube and ask it to respond to them. They were all asking it to speed up its cycle time.
“It’s working,” said Johnny. “That last cycle was only twenty minutes, not thirty.”
They had already increased the speed of their search for Elizabeth by fifty percent. The next cycle was ten minutes long, and after a couple more cycles, it had decreased to the target rate of once per five minutes. Johnny sent out a message to stay at that rate. The period further reduced to three minutes, climbed back to five, and finally stabilized.
The Doppelganger Elizabeth and the remains of the Doppelganger Mark Goth remained nearby, ready to do an exchange within the five minute window of opportunity if and when the right world presented itself.
Johnny and Dooley were kept busy communicating with inhabitants of each new world that popped into view every five minutes, while taking care that they weren’t accidentally pulled into another universe themselves.
Humans were seen in about half of the other universes. In those, Elizabeths remained relatively rare, Johnnies and tribal shaman remained common, and Marks and Morts nearly as common.
More and more Dooleys were observed. Dooley and his doppelgangers were always very thrilled to see each other and to exchange hand waving, winks, thumbs-up signals and raspberries. They were a bit disruptive however, as they were very inclined to send messages about fruit pies and practical jokes, instead of about the serious matter at hand.
The interference problem was not confined to Dooleys. Communications become more and more chaotic, as increasingly, messages that had nothing to do with Johnny’s objective of retrieving Elizabeth, Mark, and Mort were received along with requests that they also be forwarded. There were evidently many folks that wanted to get home; Goths and tribe members on most of the unknown thousands of worlds had at least one displaced person to rescue. So many messages were bouncing between the universes they had to be interfering in a negative way, Johnny feared. He put out several extra messages, asking that extraneous messages be stopped temporarily, given the life and death situation in his own universe. This was followed by several cycles of messages that also asked that most messages be postponed.
Johnny was so busy handling messages that Dooley was the first to realize that the frantically waving and grinning Elizabeth in the Cube was the Elizabeth they sought.
“Johnny, Ned, it’s me, your Elizabeth from the only universe that includes unicorns,” her sign said.
Within half a minute she had switched universes with the Doppelganger Elizabeth and was again in her true Johnny’s arms, applauded by several onlookers in both worlds.
“Oops, let’s not do that again,” Dooley commented, as he pulled the happy couple further away from the Cube.
“And let’s not quit now either,” said Johnny. “One down and two to go. Dad and Mort are out there somewhere.”
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