by Ira Nayman
“It’s like the flying vehicle on Thomas the Tank Engine,” Crash said.
“Without the peas and carrots,” Noomi agreed. Crash smiled.
The object – let’s call it a helicopter to save time – smiled at them, revealing perfect teeth (except for one in the bottom left row near the back – which could have been a beauty cavity). The smile slowly faded.
“Hello,” Crash said. Out of habit, his hand started to rise; realizing that the person/object before him had no appendages with which to shake, he consciously let it drop. “We, uhh, come in peace?”
The helicopter perject blinked. It had washed out grey eyes that reminded Noomi of her Tactics and Tumbling teacher at the Alternaut Academy. Nothing he had taught her could have prepared her for this.
“Do you think it understood you?” Noomi asked.
Crash shrugged. “I don’t know. I don’t speak helicopter.”
The perject’s face frowned. They faced each other for five…six…eight…ten seconds. Then, the helicopter closed its eyes.
“Do you think we’re boring it?” Crash mused.
“Wouldn’t that be a shame?” Noomi asked.
Six…eight…ten seconds later, the perject opened its eyes. Frustration beginning to set in on its features, the helicopter squinched its face in concentration.
Noomi winced. “That’s an image that’s gonna haunt my dreams,” she remarked. “After the eyeballs, I mean.”
“Alert and attentive,” Crash reminded her. “To successfully complete a mission, a Transdimensional Authority agent must be alert and attentive at all times, in all places and irregardless of the state of their underwear.” Knowing that Noomi did not appreciate it when he quoted the TA Manual at her, Crash turned towards Noomi and winked. She stuck her tongue out at him.
The perject unsquinched its face. A frown was starting to build around its mouth, but, before it could reach terminal velocity, its eyes became really wide, surprised. Then, it nodded, eyes returning to normal. In the helicopter’s side, a door with a window slid open. Nothing happened for several seconds. Then, the head nodded in the direction of the open door, and waited.
Crash took a deep breath. “It wants us to get in.”
“I’m not going in there!” Noomi responded, perhaps a little louder than the situation really called for.
“Why not?”
“If something wants to eat me,” Noomi huffed, “it has to catch me, first! I’d like to think I’m worth the effort!”
Crash looked into the helicopter. The walls were a chalky grey. Looking closer, he noticed that they had a slight but perceptible undulation. Slight. But, perceptible. “It looks more like a lung than a stomach to me,” he commented.
“Oh, great!” Noomi groused. “You think going from food to sputum is an improvement?”
“I don’t think there’s going to be a problem,” Crash tried to assure her.
“Aren’t you the guy who gets himself killed rushing into things?” Noomi demanded.
Crash was about to argue, but he thought better of it. After all, he had been the one who had described to Noomi how other versions of himself had been killed rushing into things. Many other versions. Rather than enter into a futile argument, he squinched up his own face and jumped into the belly of the helicopter.
After a couple of horrified seconds, Crash opened one eye. Finding himself in the helicopter without incident, he unsquinched his face and said, “See? It’s not dangerous…”
Noomi shook her head in disbelief and joined him in the perject. It immediately floated into the sky.
“Okay,” Noomi admitted, that wasn’t –” The door started to close. “Whoa, whoa whoa!” Noomi shouted, putting a firm hand on the door to stop it. The helicopter person must have gotten the idea, because the door stopped closing.
They spent several minutes flying in silence. Tense, bordering on hostile silence.
“A fifteen foot tall granite head just flew by,” Noomi wearily remarked.
“Were you thinking of hitching a ride?” Crash asked in what he hoped would be taken as a jaunty, devil-may-care tone.
“Hell, no!” Noomi exclaimed. “The mouth was wide open – it was the angriest face I’ve ever seen! Besides, what did I just say about being food?”
“Why bring it up?” Crash asked.
“The granite head winked at me!”
“Well, the next time a fifteen foot tall flying granite head winks at you,” Crash advised, “tell it you’re taken.”
Noomi had to admit, his smile was infectious.
A few more uneventful minutes later (and, when I say ‘uneventful minutes’, I mean that the video game based on them will be an add-on to the main game of their adventure rather than a stand-alone), the helicopter perject landed on a building that was at least twenty stories tall. Before it even touched down, Noomi had jumped out of the door and onto the roof, running several feet away.
After having made a (Noomi Rapier, please take note) dignified exit, Crash turned to face the helicopter person and nodded. The perject gently nodded back and took off.
“You okay?” Crash asked as he walked over to her.
Noomi was reluctant to answer. At the Alternaut Academy, they had spent an afternoon studying the case of Jonah Belladoana, who survived six years in the belly of an Arcadian space hippo by eating the krill that passed through its system and drinking…well, let’s just say that Noomi drank nothing but bottled water for weeks after that class!
“Just happy to be on solid ground,” Noomi raggedly enthused.
“Okay.”
To drive the point home, Noomi stomped her foot on the roof. “Yep,” she said. “There’s nothing like solid ground to really make you happy to have survived an uncomfortable trip through the air!”
“Uhh, Noomi…” Crash, uneasy with where this was going, started.
“Whoa doggies,” said Noomi, even though she had never used the phrase before in her life, had probably never even heard it, “spending time in the belly of a living helicopter can really make you appreciate –”
“Don’t say it,” Crash quietly advised.
“Being on solid –”
The roof of the building shuddered. Noomi and Crash found themselves in the dark hallway of a hotel with tacky wallpaper, faded carpets and the faint smell of yesterday’s news.
“When we get home,” Crash suggested, “you might want to brush up on the chapter in the Alternaut Handbook on not tempting fate.”
“Are you sure that’s really –” Noomi started. Before she could finish, the hallway shuddered, and they found themselves in a similar hallway, the only difference being that the numbers on the doors started with 19 instead of 20. “Yeah,” Noomi, shaken (literally as well as figuratively) said. “That’s probably a good idea.”
The hallway shuddered again. The pair of investigators found themselves in an antiseptic hallway with sufficient lighting done up in whites and greys guaranteed not to offend any potential customers. (Except, perhaps, for Xanthrappian mustard vole traders, but, since the mustard vole trade had collapsed after the relish whippet scandals of ’07, ’08 and ’23, it was no great loss.) Noomi and Crash twirled a little, trying not to completely lose their balance.
After a second, Noomi asked, “Do you think –” Crash had just enough time to hit his forehead with his palm before the hallway shuddered once again. They found themselves in a similar hallway, only the numbers began with 17. Noomi and Crash twirled a little more frantically as keeping their balance got harder.
“Not tempting fate,” Noomi stated. “I believe that was Chapter 13 of the Alternaut Handbook?”
“That chapter’s a quick read,” Crash told her, “but soooo useful.”
The hallway shuddered again, and they were in a brightly lit hallway with beige carpets and card readers on the doors instead of keyholes. Crash fell heavily on his ass while Noomi barely managed to stay on her feet. “Do you want help getting up?” Noomi, concerned, asked.
“Of course,” Noomi replied. “You can’t fall off the –”
They spent the next half dozen shudderings huddled together telling campfire stories. Noomi was in the middle of the one about the couple making out when they hear a message over the radio about an escaped lunatic (you know the one – it ends with the couple finding a hook in the handle of the door of their spaceship) when the shudderings seemed to stop.
Noomi and Crash found themselves in a warmly lit hallway with ornate mirrors, and doors with complex handles and knockers. Noomi popped up and brushed off the butt of her pants. As he rose, Crash asked, “But, how does it end?”
Somebody shouted behind the doorway at the end of the hall. Sprinting towards it, Noomi quickly said, “The couple finds a hook in the handle of the door of their spaceship!”
Noomi threw the door of the apartment open to find a man shouting, “Oot! It’s pronounced oot, you silly cow! As in, oot and aboot! Not owt!” The man was of average height and painfully thin, but his rage seemed to fill the room.
“Well, how was I supposed to know that?” the woman he was angry with yelled. She was short but curvalicious, with long, flowing red hair.
“RESEARCH!” the man roared.
The woman, in tears, rushed past Noomi and Crash and out of the room.
“Who are –” the man started, but, when he looked at the couple, he stopped himself. “What are you doing here?”
“Umm…flew in helicopter stomach,” Noomi started, wilting under the man’s anger.
“Dropped through shuddering hotel floors,” Crash helpfully added.
“No, no, no,” the man said with a wave of his hand. “I know all that – I arranged to have you brought to me. I mean: what are you doing in this universe?”
Crash, as leader of the team, stepped forward and said, “We’re Transdimensional Authority agents – I’m Crash Chumley and this is my partner Noomi Rapier. We believe that there is an unauthorized and likely counterfeit Home Universe GeneratorTM in this universe, and we’ve come to find it and find the person who brought it here.”
The man considered this. Just as the dramatic tension threatened to become unbearable, Noomi asked, “Who are you?”
The man’s expression softened. “You don’t know?”
“Haven’t a clue.”
“You know, you’re the first people I’ve met in over 100 years who didn’t know who I was. Of course, being computational black holes, I suppose that is to be expected.”
“Computational black holes?” Charlemagne asked.
“Please,” the man said, waggling his finger in playful admonishment, “one question at a time.”
“Who are you?” Noomi repeated.
“My name is Antonio Van der Whall,” Antonio Van der Whall answered. “I used to be an object psychologist. That is to say, after all matter in the universe became conscious, it was my job to understand why they behave the way they do. But, that was over 150 years ago. Now, everybody deals directly with the sentient universe, and I’m more of a…curiosity than anything…”
Van der Whall dropped wearily into a comfortable but plain chair. In fact, Crash noted, the apartment was small and not ornately decorated. There was a plain table on which a plain teapot and plain cups rested. There was a plain sofa nearby. There was plain wallpaper. There was a plain train driving through a fireplace at regular intervals. There was a plain doorway through which could be seen a plain kitchen. There was a plain – wait a minute. What was that about…wallpaper? Who used wallpaper nowadays? Okay, maybe that wasn’t so plain.
“So, what exactly is a…Home Universe Generator?” Van der Whall asked.
“TM,” Crash corrected him.
“I’m sorry?”
“TM. Home Universe GeneratorTM. It’s a trademark thing.”
“And, what if you don’t say TM?”
Crash and Noomi looked at each other for a moment, stumped. “Well, nobody…nobody ever dares,” Crash stated.
“And, what does this machine do?”
“It allows people to see into dimensions other than their own,” Noomi told him.
“Hmm…” Van der Whall thought for a moment. “Why would anybody in this universe need such a machine? As you may have noticed, we have no shortage of ways of amusing ourselves.”
“When we find the person who brought it here,” Crash stated, “we’ll ask him.”
“Computational black holes?” Noomi asked.
“Yes. Matter became conscious thanks to the spread of computation. All matter now communicates directly through the Quantum Entanglement Dimension. Not being native to this universe, your bodies are not computationally conscious and, therefore, are not able to communicate in this way. You’re computational black holes.”
“That’s why that helicopter scrunched up its face,” Noomi said. “It was trying to communicate with us.”
“It was more squinching than scrunching,” Crash corrected her. “Otherwise, I believe you got it right.”
“And, that’s why we’re here, right?” Noomi asked Van der Whall. “Because you’re old enough to remember how to speak out loud, a skill people who communicate through the Quantum Entanglement Dimension have largely lost.”
“Yes, yes,” Van der Whall irritably answered. “But, enough of that – exposition bores me.”
A…person entered the room. The person’s body was smooth and white – not the light pink that passed for white for much of human evolution, but absolute white. The person had no hair on any part of its body, no nails on its fingers or toes and no irises in its eyes. Oh, and it had a flat head. The person wasn’t wearing any clothes, but, since it had no genitals, it did not appear to need them. It was a platonic template of a person, or, if you were less charitable, a child’s doll.
Van der Whall and the platonic template looked at each for a couple of minutes, the expression on their faces becoming increasingly heated. Eventually, the platonic template shouted, “…out loud? Using my mouth? Are you intentionally trying to gross me out? I’m telling you, Tony, if Bob had meant us to speak with our mouths, he wouldn’t have given us the QED!” Then, his eyes widened in horror. “Oh, now what have you done?”
“I copied my ability to speak out loud,” Van der Whall explained, “and implanted it in your brain.”
“What if I accidentally speak out loud in front of my friends?” the person petulantly moaned.
“Perhaps you could start a whole retro fad,” Van der Whall told him. Her. It.
“Laughing at me may be a fad, but it sure ain’t retro!” the person muttered.
Van der Whall turned towards Noomi and Crash and said, “This is my assistant, Jeroshi. He will help you…find your little TM thing.”
“Why not you?” Noomi asked.
Van der Whall dramatically draped the back of his arm over his forehead. “Angst is so draining!’ he intoned.
“Pleased to meet you,” Jeroshi greeted, almost sincere, and hustled them out of the apartment and into the elevator. As the doors closed, she (he? it?) asked, “So, what’s the plan?”
Noomi and Crash thought for a moment. “The Home Universe GeneratorTM came from another universe,” Crash mused. “Like us, it should be a computational black hole. Can you look for it in the…uhh…”
“Quantum Entanglement Dimension? I could do that.”
They travelled in silence for a couple of floors. Then, Noomi started, “What’s the –”
At the same time, Jeroshi said, “Oh, Phillipa asked me to thank you for her.”
“Phillipa?” Crash asked.
“The elevator. People can fly out windows or climb down the sides of buildings – they don’t really need elevators to get up and down inside buildings. I do it sometimes just to make Phillipa feel useful, but it’s not the same thing as people having to use her because they can’t ch
ange their physical form.”
“Oh, well, umm,” Crash fumbled for the right response, “tell her she’s welcome, then.”
“Done.”
“So,” Noomi started again, “what’s the deal with Antonio and the woman?”
“Oh, that’s Frances,” Jeroshi answered. “She’s the love of his life. Only, it’s not really Frances, the love of his life. It’s an intern from Peoria named Brutus who is acting out the part of Frances, the love of his life.”
“Why?” Noomi asked, confused.
“The real Frances –” Jeroshi began just as the elevator hit the lobby. Only, instead of opening its doors, it started back up again.
“Hey! Why didn’t the elevator let us off?” Crash protested.
“Did I mention that Phillipa is awfully grateful to have real passengers?” Jeroshi coyly explained.
“We have business, here,” Crash insisted. “We cannot go up and down in an elevator all day!”
“I’m sure she’ll let us go once the novelty has worn off,” Jeroshi assured him.
“So, what about Antonio and Frances?”
Jeroshi explained that while some people embraced the possibilities for extended lifespans that the Singularity offered, many thought they were unnatural and refused to explore them. Despite all of Van der Whall’s pleadings, Frances was one of them. She lived out her natural lifespan and died. Van der Whall despaired. But, he was venerated for his early work on human-object relationships, so various people, places and things tried to replace Frances in his life. This never ended well. In fact, it was rare for these replacement Frances’s to last more than an hour before being thrown out of his apartment.
“Of course,” Noomi said.
“Of course?” Jeroshi asked.
“They think they’re replacing the love of his life,” Noomi explained, “but all they’re doing is reminding him of what he has lost. I’d be bitter if I was him.”
“Hmm…”
“Why doesn’t he allow himself to age and die?”
“He made a pact with the atoms that make up his body that they would keep him young and fit for 250 years, after which he would find them all good new homes. I’m afraid they’re holding him to it.”
