by Aaron Frale
“I’m not getting anything,” Hailey said. “I thought you said you can tune.”
“I don’t even know what that means! I just heard a noise and—” Jon stopped. He thought back to when he first saw Hailey. The noise was louder, much louder than when he tested it out later. He jumped up in the air, and for a brief moment, the sound got quieter. The spot had to be underneath their feet. It was in the basement.
“What are you doing?” Hailey said.
Jon looked towards a service entrance that would probably get them there. There were too many of the thugs. Jon turned to Meathook and asked, “Can you pound a hole in the floor with your hammer?”
“Yeah,” Meathook said. “But it will collapse the whole thing.”
“That’s exactly what I want it to do. Hailey, ready your phone,” Jon said.
Hailey nodded in recognition. “You better hold on tight.”
They all pulled out their phones. Patel held Jon’s father by the hand. Hailey pulled Jon close to her with one arm. Her body was soft and warm. She was even more beautiful than Jon had remembered. It sent flutters in his stomach, and his chest pounded. Somehow, he wasn’t nervous the entire time they were being chased by otherworldly soldier thugs, and now that a girl was wrapping an arm around him, he felt his knees go weak.
Or maybe that was Meathook pounding on the floor. The metal head slammed his hammer down, and the floor cracked. The thugs were closing in on them. There were too many to count. The hammer came down again, and the concrete shifted. The army was at arm’s length. With a third mighty strike and a roar from Meathook, the floor collapsed.
They all fell through the floor, and Jon wrapped another arm around Hailey. The noise exploded in his headphones. They were on a collision course with a boiler room below the food court. Hailey hit a button on her phone, Jon and the group disappeared before they hit the floor.
8
Jon’s vision blurred, and his head spun. He felt nauseous. For a brief moment, Hailey’s body disappeared. He no longer felt it pressed against his. He was in a void, a world between worlds. He began to panic. An instant later, she was back. He was falling through the air holding her.
He hit the ground with a thump. Hailey landed on top of him. For a second time, they were eye to eye in an awkward position.
“We’ve got to stop meeting like this.” Jon grinned.
Hailey rolled her eyes and pushed off of him. “Slow down there, cowboy. It was necessary. You have to be touching a Tuner to travel if you don’t have a tuning device of your own.”
After Hailey was no longer a distraction, Jon noticed his surroundings. He was on a platform in the middle of a large room. There were computers and all sorts of scientific equipment everywhere. Monitors cascaded with data that Jon couldn’t decipher. People wore jumpsuits and hardhats as if they should be extras in an old Japanese monster movie.
The gang was all on the platform, worn and disheveled from the battle. DeAndre and Patel were attending to Jon’s father.
“We need a medical team!” DeAndre yelled.
The henchmen all scrambled into action. Some were running to their stations and checking the equipment. Others came to the platform with handheld scanners. Two men in shimmering white nurse’s uniforms came in with a floating stretcher. One of them hit a button on a handheld device that looked like a phone, and Jon’s dad levitated off the floor and onto the carrier.
A technician shoved a scanning device in Jon’s face.
Jon batted it out of the way and asked, “Where are they taking him?”
The technician shoved the thing back onto his forehead and said, “He’ll be fine. Now hold still. Hey, Hailey, who’s the noob?”
Other technicians scanned the rest of the team. They all seemed to be pretty relaxed about the process, so Jon just went with it.
“Dunno,” Hailey said, “but he can tune.”
“No crap. Imagine that,” the tech said.
“What are you scanning for?” Jon asked.
“Bugs,” the tech said nonchalantly.
“Bugs? You think I’m a spy?”
“More like glitches,” Patel said. “Signs that your tuning days are done.”
“What is this place?”
“We are the Tuners.” A Latino man in his fifties with a loud booming voice and wearing a sharp suit entered the room. He was immaculate. There wasn’t a hair that was out of place on his head. From the way the man walked and the way everyone seemed to get extra busy when he was around, Jon figured that he was in charge.
“Hector Gonzalez.” The man stuck his hand out to Jon. “We have a lot to talk about.”
∆∆∆
Hector dropped Jon off at a conference room that overlooked operations and told him to wait. When Jon pressed about his dad, Hector told him to let the doctors do what was best. The table in the center was oval, smooth, and black. The chairs were office rolling ones. Jon dumped his skateboard on the floor and walked around the room. There was a window overlooking the platform area below.
The room where they had first arrived was divided into sections. One section looked as if it was monitoring vital signs and biometrics. Another was tracking something called quantum fluctuations and other stuff that Jon didn’t quite understand. One station seemed to be focusing on these bubbles where it would zoom in and zoom out of the different spheres. They were all labeled with numbers and letters. He had heard a guy on his way out call it the map. There were other parts of the room too that he couldn’t see from the window.
After Jon got bored watching the people work, he pulled out his phone. It was fried. Without music to keep him occupied, he investigated the room instead. There seemed to be a big monitor built into the wall opposite to the window overlooking operations. On one of the shorter walls were a bunch of pictures. It looked like the corny photos a company would have of their CEOs. At the top was one that read, “Hector Gonzales, Director of Operations, 10-year Tuner of Distinction.” Other pictures on the wall showed faces with the various different positions and marked how many years they were a Tuner. However, none of them were ones of distinction, nor were anywhere near close to ten years. Most were seven; some even less.
While he was looking at the photos, the others filed into the room. The group all took their seats around the table. They no longer had their weapons or any of their gear except their phones and headphones. Hector came in last and sat at the head of the table. He offered Jon a seat between him and Hailey.
“I’m sure you have lots of questions,” Hector said.
“Yeah, like how do I get out of here?” Jon asked.
“Hear what he has to say.” Hailey nudged him. “Then I’ll take you back. I promise.”
“You have a rare gift. Only one in a billion have this talent.”
“If it’s that weird static noise and people trying to kill me, no thanks. You can have your talent back.”
Hector and Hailey exchanged glances. Hector asked, “Was it loud?”
“Loud enough to interrupt my music.”
“Dude! That’s so metal!” Meathook said. “Was it crazy feedback at a killer concert loud or pop your eyeballs from your head loud?”
“Calm down, man,” DeAndre said. “You’re scaring him.”
“I’ll tell you what’s scaring me! Having a bunch of freaks show up at my house trying to kill me! I’ve had enough people trying to kill me for one day. You want to tell me what’s going on here or should I show myself out?”
“It’s much easier if I showed you,” Hector said.
Hector pressed a touch screen on the table. The controls appeared when his hand was close. The monitor on the long wall lit up. The gobbledygook on the screen looked like the stuff that was on the ones downstairs. There were different spheres, and each bubble had a bunch of different specs. Jon didn’t really understand all of it. Despite the Asian stereotypes, Jon was not good at math or science.
“Anyone want to explain what I’m looking at?” Jon asked.
“Patel,�
�� Hector said. “Will you do the honors?”
Patel spoke up, “What you’re seeing is what we call the grid. It tracks the locations of different quantum realities.”
“Different what?” Jon asked.
Patel shrugged and said. “Different universes. We live in a cosmic soup. Think about different realities floating around like bubbles in a soda can.”
For a condition that only affected one in a billion people, it seems like they had done this a lot. Jon felt like a moron. A cute girl had caught his attention, and now he was in deeper than he could imagine. He couldn’t believe that he was that stupid. He would have stood up and left, but Hailey squeezed his hand under the table. He was such an idiot.
“We can tell each universe apart because they each have unique cosmic background radiation,” Patel said as she punched up some buttons on the table. A control panel like the one Hector had used seemed to appear for Patel too. One of the bubbles expanded. It looked like a bunch of fuzz and blotches in the center.
“What?” Jon asked.
Meathook took over. “So bro, you know how the universe started in a big bang?”
“Yeah?”
“BAM!” Meathook mimed an explosion going in every direction. “There’s leftover radiation from that big bang. Like how a campfire can still be warm even if there is nothing left but ash. Turns out space is not so cold after all.”
“You are talking minor temperature variations. It’s still pretty cold—” Patel said.
“All right,” Jon said. “I get it. So you use the cosmic background radiation to tell them apart.”
“That’s right,” Patel said. “Each universe has its own unique signature because they each had their own unique big bang. The static on the radio dial, that’s the sound of the universe, and echoes from that big bang can be heard in the cacophony of noise. It’s like having a way to tell each soda bubble apart from each other by listening to the reverberation of its creation. Except, in this case, each sphere is a universe. Your universe is number 42.”
The bubbles floating around the screen appeared again. Patel selected one of them labeled 42. She expanded the universe and got a picture of the cosmic background radiation. She scrolled in even more, and Jon saw galaxies. Then he saw the Milky Way, then the solar system, and finally, the planet Earth appeared on the screen. It was labeled Earth 42.
The map of the Earth zoomed into Billings, Montana, right into Rimrock Mall, where Jon had narrowly avoided getting killed. There were several red markers with all sorts of data underneath. They all displayed locations in the mall like the Forever 21, the bottom of the staircase where Hailey disappeared, and the spot where they fell through the ceiling. There were a few more markers that Jon recognized like Victoria’s Secret and Hot Topic. It figured that Hot Topic would have a gateway to another universe.
Patel continued, “Each universe has a barrier that prevents yours from mixing with the others. The dots represent points where the barrier is thin. Think of it as a crossing point from one soda pop bubble to the next. When a universe is close and the barrier is weak, you can hear the cosmic background radiation of another universe. You can hone in on that signal, whereas most people hear static. That’s why what you have is considered a gift.”
“We call it tuning,” Hailey said. “One in a billion seems to possess the gift where it’s useful. Some can hear it, but are no good at locating it.”
“So why does it only work when I was listening to music?” Jon asked.
“Music is like lubrication for the ears. It loosens your senses up, allows you to tune into it,” DeAndre said.
“You can learn how to tell the difference between one universe and the next,” Ludie added. “That way, you can know which universe you are going to.”
Jon had about enough of what he could take. They were all talking to him like he wanted to join their club. It was entirely too overwhelming. He never asked for any of this. He wanted to rewind back to the day before he had met Hailey. Maybe if he had never seen her, he could have just gone on about his life, ignorant and happy.
Jon stood up and yelled, “Sure, if I wanted to get killed! You people are nuts.”
Jon walked toward the exit. Everyone stopped talking and watched him go. Even Hailey was a little shocked. Hector spoke up as soon as Jon’s hand was on the door. “I can take you back, but you’re safer here with us.”
Jon didn’t budge.
“Show him,” Hector said.
“But we haven’t even—” Patel began.
“Show him.”
Jon turned and slumped at the empty seat at the end of the table. Patel punched a few more buttons. More dots appeared on the screen. They flooded through the mall like a tidal wave. Jon recognized it right away. It was the people who had been chasing them.
“What happens if there are too many weak points?” Jon asked.
Meathook made an explosion noise and flung his hands out.
“I don’t see what this has to do with me,” Jon said.
“The people you fought,” Hector said. “They weren’t just stepping through where the barrier was thin. They were punching holes in reality regardless of the consequences to the universe they are entering. If the barrier is torn, think of it like pulling a drain large and powerful enough to engulf your entire universe—”
The screen read, “Universe 42. Probability of collapse during the next Tune: 97%.”
“It’ll be a while before you can go back without risk. The damage they caused needs time to heal.”
The full weight of the situation dropped on Jon like an asteroid in a disaster movie. He looked at each of the people around the table. Their eyes were on him, and his eyes fell on Hailey. “I need some time to think,” Jon said at last.
“Normally, I’d say take all the time you need, but as you can tell, there is some urgency to the situation,” Hector said and folded his arms. “Ludie, assign him a room.”
“But he hasn’t gone through processing,” Ludie said.
“Do it.”
9
Hailey offered to show Jon to his room and took him through corridors with curved metal walls. From the curvature of the halls, Jon figured they were in some sort of sphere. There weren’t any windows as far as he could tell. Each passage was marked with lettering. They were currently in U-1-RS1-3-345b. The people in jumpsuits walked past them in the hallways. Hailey nodded and said hello to them.
Jon was quiet for most of the journey. The only words spoken between them was about his father. Hailey explained that Jon could see him as soon as the doctors said it was clear for visitors. For now, there was nothing she or even Hector could do.
After they rounded yet another curved hallway and walked down another flight of stairs, Jon decided to make conversation to prevent himself from being bored.
“So why a mall?” he asked. “Why not a cornfield or something?”
“That would make our lives easier, now, wouldn’t it?” Hailey laughed. “For reasons we haven’t quite figured out, the barrier is thin in places where there are a lot of people. Some people think we build in those places because they are already thin spots. Others say we caused it because we built there. Malls are the easiest public places with plenty of nooks and crannies that go unnoticed. If you tune in to an office building, people are going to ask for a badge. In a mall, most people won’t notice that there is one extra person in the store that day.”
“I did.”
Hailey laughed. “You are observant. Even if you weren’t attacked, Hector would have recruited you anyway. I know this is going to sound corny, but there are bad people out there, Jon. We protect the multiverse from them.”
“Is that what you do? Just hang out in malls trying to convince kids to become interdimensional cops or something?” Jon asked incredulously.
Hailey laughed. “No, but it certainly puts us in the right location to discover the talent. The mall just gets us there. Plus, the added bonus that no one would look twice at a teen l
istening to headphones in a mall.”
“Yeah, but what’s so special about the talent. I mean, don’t you have an instrument that can scan the frequencies and listen for the noise?”
“Better people than you or I have tried. For a machine to understand the differences in sounds that you and I hear naturally, you’d need the computational power of a quantum computer the size of the Pacific Ocean. It’s the sound of the universe, Jon. There are too many hisses and pops to sort through in one universe, much less all of them. They’ve also tried designer babies, genetics, electrochemical brain enhancements, hormone changes, you name it.”
“So, what, it’s magic then?”
“Magic is just science we don’t yet understand.”
“Yeah, but—” Jon didn’t know how to say it, but he felt fate had picked him for a pretty crappy deal. If he knew that he could have beaten one in a billion odds, he would have played the lottery. At least then, he could get something out of his dumb luck. Now it seemed that either he was going to be chased by cloven head goons all his life at worse or live as a shut-in because he heard this crazy noise when he went into town.
Hailey saw the distress on his face and tried to comfort him. “We’ve all been there. Everyone here had a normal life before they heard the static for the first time. When I first discovered it, I was at American Falcon Outfitters. I thought it was something wrong with—”
“Don’t you mean American Eagle Outfitters?”
“I’m from number 38, and you’re from 42. The national bird of my United States is the Falcon.”
“Whoa! Whoa! Wait. You are telling me that you are all from different universes?”
“Yeah, the ability to tune is one in a billion. You think we would be able to assemble the team from just one universe?”
Jon’s head swam. It was a little too much to take in at the moment, much less having to deal with a person who looked and talked like she was an American, but as far as Jon could tell, she could have been from Taured.
“So you’re telling me that the only difference between our universes is the States choosing a different bird?”
