Parallelogram Omnibus Edition

by Brande, Robin

  “Um, so the reason I’m calling is I read your Above and Beyond book—I mean, the Preface so far, which I really love, but I guess why I’m really calling is . . .”

  Just get it over with. If he thinks I’m a freak, he thinks it.

  So I spat it out really fast. “You know that part of Professor Hawkins’s new book where he talks about the lunch he had with you? I think it’s on page 236 or something. And he said you had a theory about vibrations and how to travel over to another universe.

  “Well, I just wanted to tell you that I did that, and you’re right. I’ve done it four times now, and the other person has come over here once. I just wanted to tell you that. Okay, thanks, bye.

  “Oh, and if you want to call me back, here’s my cell phone.”

  I hung up and caught my breath. I felt all glisteny with sweat. Nice work, Audie, you sounded like a real professional. Physicist to physicist. “Uh, um, hey, and so call me back, bye!” Right. No way he was calling me back.

  But my phone rang about two minutes later.

  I checked the Caller ID. MtnSt.

  “Can you do a video conference?” the voice wanted to know.

  “Um, what? I mean, yes.”

  “Here’s my contact information. I want to see your face.”

  Then he hung up.

  Very abruptly. Rather rude. My heart was beating like a firecracker.

  I signed onto my video chat account, and then searched for Dr. Whitfield. In a minute we were face to face.

  “Audie?”

  “Yes, sir.” I cleared my throat. I felt incredibly nervous. He was a real live physics professor. Who kind of looked like a forest ranger.

  “I wanted to see your face,” Dr. Whitfield said. “I need to know whether you’re lying. Did someone put you up to this?”

  “No, I’m not lying, sir, I swear.” I gulped in some air. “I . . . actually have some video.”

  “Of what?” he asked.

  “Me, last night. When I left here and went to the other universe. You can’t really see much—just me disappearing at one point—”

  “You disappeared.” I watched his face as he said it. He didn’t seem that skeptical.

  “Yes, sir. At first I thought maybe I was bilocating—do you know what that is?”

  “Yes,” he said.

  “So I decided I’d better set up a camera and find out. So last night I did. And I think it means I went over there with my whole body. At least that’s my hypothesis.”

  I was happy I’d thrown in a technical term like that. Made me sound more knowledgeable.

  “Audie, I need you to tell me everything that’s happened. Can you do that?”

  “Yes, sir.” Then I told him everything I knew.

  I thought I’d be more afraid, talking to someone in an official capacity like that, but it ended up just being a conversation. Dr. Whitfield asked me questions as I went along, and it just seemed easy after a while to talk about it—in fact, it was a big relief. I thought it would be like talking to a teacher, but it wasn’t like that at all. It felt more like talking to Halli.

  When I had told him the whole story and brought him up to date, he said, “Can you send me that video?”

  “Sure, you mean now?”

  “Now would be good.”

  I sent him the file and waited while he watched. I could tell when he got to the critical part. He looked up at me, then back at the video. Then back at me.

  “Holy—”

  “Do you believe me?” I asked.

  “I think I do,” Dr. Whitfield said.

  And much to my shock, I burst into tears.

  25

  “What should I do?” I asked Dr. Whitfield.

  “I don’t know.”

  “I mean, this is real, right? I know it is. I’ve been there a bunch of times. It’s real.”

  “Let’s say it’s real,” Dr. Whitfield answered.

  “So what should I do?” I said. “I mean, do I need to tell someone? Besides you?”

  “That’s really up to you.”

  He seemed like a really nice guy. Kind of like Mr. Dobosh, but more, I don’t know—authoritative. Like he knew more. But not pushy. Not arrogant. Just comfortable being smart.

  “Can I ask you something?” I said. Maybe it was impertinent, but I still wanted to know.

  “Go ahead.”

  “What happened between you and Professor Hawkins?”

  Dr. Whitfield laughed. “Ah, the Hawk. An interesting man, don’t you think?”

  “I’ve read every one of his books,” I said.

  “So have I,” Dr. Whitfield told me.

  “I’m trying to get into Columbia. My application is due in 38 days. I was sort of hoping this project would do it.”

  “Do what?”

  “Get me in,” I said. “You know, convince the admissions people I’m worthy.”

  “Believe me, Audie, if anyone is worthy, you are.”

  “I suck at math.”

  “So do I,” Dr. Whitfield said.

  And that completely took me aback.

  “You . . . what?”

  “So did Michael Faraday,” Dr. Whitfield said. “Ever heard of him?”

  “Sure,” I said. “Physicist, inventor, discovered electromagnetic fields—”

  “Also discovered the chemical compound benzene,” Dr. Whitfield added. “Faraday was one of the greatest experimentalists of all time. So we’re in good company. Don’t worry so much about the math.”

  It was like someone saying to a little kid, “Don’t worry that your parents are both four-foot-eight! You can still be an NBA player!”

  “Then you . . . think they’ll let me in?”

  “Oh, hell, no,” Dr. Whitfield said. “Those people are automatons. They’ll look at your test scores and bump you in the first round. It’ll take a personal recommendation.”

  He paused, and I waited. Inside, my heart was this crushed, shriveled up little flower.

  “Is that what you want?” Dr. Whitfield asked me.

  “Want what?” I said.

  “A personal recommendation. Is that why you called me?”

  “No!” And it really wasn’t—it hadn’t even occurred to me. “I called you because it was your theory—I thought you’d want to know that it worked.”

  His tone was softer now. “I did want to know—thank you. But I have to tell you, Audie, I don’t think you should do it anymore.”

  “Do what? You mean go over there? Why?”

  “Because we don’t know if it’s dangerous.”

  “But it’s not!” I said. “Look at me! I’m perfectly fine—I’m better than fine. I haven’t felt one bad thing from going over there. I promise you—I’d tell you if I did.”

  “How old are you?” he asked.

  “Seventeen.”

  Dr. Whitfield muttered something under his breath. “Look, I can’t ask a minor to continue doing this experiment,” Dr. Whitfield said. “There are too many unknowns—it would be unethical of me.”

  “You’re not asking me!” I said. “You have nothing to do with it. You wouldn’t even know about it if I hadn’t called you.” And now I was starting to get mad. Isn’t it always this way? You tell some adult about something you think is cool, and next thing you know, they forbid it.

  “I have to go, Dr. Whitfield.”

  “You’re angry now.”

  “Whatever. I have to go.”

  “Are you going back there?” he asked. “Tonight?”

  “I don’t know.” As if I were going to tell him.

  “Audie? Look at me.”

  I stared straight at the screen.

  “I’m asking you,” Dr. Whitfield said. “I think this might be dangerous. I’m not saying it is, I’m just saying I don’t know.”

  “Wouldn’t you keep doing it if you could?”

  Dr. Whitfield sighed. “Yes, Audie, I would.”

  26

  Two o’clock in the morning. That’s what Halli and I a
greed. I went to bed early, around 10:00 PM, then was up with the first beep of the alarm. I reset it so I wouldn’t oversleep for school again. This whole thing could work.

  I knew Halli wouldn’t be in the Alps yet. She was flying to Munich, Germany, and staying overnight in Ginny’s apartment there—well, technically Halli’s apartment now. Halli wanted to rest up before heading for the mountains. She knew she’d have jet lag.

  Not me, sister. What a great way to travel. No lines at the airport, no trying to figure out what to pack, no trying to sleep while sitting up—just stick on the headphones, fluff up the pillows behind my back, and head across the ocean.

  “Heya.”

  “Heya,” I said back. The dog tackled me before I could catch my breath.

  Ginny’s apartment in Munich was so unlike the house in River Grove it could have been decorated by a completely different person. And maybe it was. Maybe she had people all over the world designing and furnishing houses and apartments for her. I was starting to get the idea that Ginny might have been rich.

  Which sounds stupid—of course she was rich if she could afford six houses and who knows how many apartments around the world. But I mean RICH rich.

  The place was blue and white. Nothing else. White walls, white floor, white furniture. Blue pillows, blue dishes, blue curtains, blue rugs. The only contrasting color was the yellow dog who now lay stretched out on the white couch, head on a bright blue pillow.

  Halli handed me a cup of steaming hot coffee (blue mug). “I’ve already had about ten of these,” she said. “It’s the only thing that works with the time change.”

  Her coffee was so vastly superior to that tub-o-coffee stuff my mom buys at the warehouse store, there was really no comparison. I might want about ten cups of it myself.

  Halli glanced at the clock. “So it’s 2:10 in the morning back home.”

  It had taken me only ten minutes to get there this time. The two of us were getting better—more in sync. That was good. The kind of detail I should make a note of in the research notebook I was starting to keep.

  Because talking to Dr. Whitfield and then reading through his book—forget the rest of my homework, all I wanted to read was that—really inspired me to go at this in a whole new way. Not just be so in awe of everything going on, but really take the time to be detailed and scientific about it. Not act like it was so weird anymore, but treat it just like any other experiment a trained physicist might do.

  Because believe me, Dr. Whitfield has done his share of wacky experiments. A lot of things involving brain studies and parapsychology, as in ESP. Although he didn’t call it that. He just called it “AB”—“Above-Beyond.”

  As in learning how to use our normal five senses in ways we aren’t used to. My favorite example was this:

  Dr. Whitfield worked a lot with a highly-respected neuropsychologist, Dr. Dale, who was very skilled at hypnotizing people. What the two scientists liked to do was just take volunteers off the street—students from the university (that would be Yale), or parents visiting campus for the day, or ordinary groundskeepers trimming the hedges outside the psychology building, and ask those people to come inside and try a little experiment.

  Then Dr. Dale would hypnotize the whole group, and give them all one instruction: when he brought them out of their trance, they would no longer be able to see Dr. Whitfield. From then on, he would be invisible to them.

  Then the hypnotist guy brought them all out of their trance, and the real experiment began.

  Dr. Dale had a lot of little items in his pocket. And one by one, he’d go and stand in front of the research subjects, and pull these items out of his pocket. But the trick was, he’d always have Dr. Whitfield stand between Dr. Dale and the subject, blocking Dr. Dale from view.

  “What am I holding in my hand?” Dr. Dale would ask the person.

  “A keychain.”

  “What does the keychain look like?”

  And the person would describe it—perfectly, accurately.

  But do you understand? They shouldn’t have been able to see anything in Dr. Dale’s hand. Because Dr. Whitfield’s whole body was standing in front of him! But the hypnotized people had been instructed that Dr. Whitfield was invisible, and so their senses just worked around that. They were able somehow to look right through Dr. Whitfield, and describe whatever was in Dr. Dale’s hand.

  Okay, so that’s not amazing enough? Then how about this:

  Again, with just normal people off the street.

  Dr. Whitfield would stay in a closed room with one of the subjects, while Dr. Dale would go off driving in his car. And at a set time—say twenty minutes later—Dr. Dale would stop his car, get out, and go look at something. Maybe a road sign or the front of a restaurant or somebody’s house—wherever he ended up.

  And at that same time, Dr. Whitfield had the person inside the room start drawing a picture of whatever Dr. Dale was seeing at that moment. The person also had to describe it out loud. And over and over again, the people were dead-on with their descriptions—they were actually able to see what Dr. Dale was seeing, even though these people had no special psychic skills whatsoever.

  The book was full of things like that. And then all this stuff about the current research on parallel universes and other stuff physicists were just starting to really study back when Dr. Whitfield wrote the book.

  And his point was this: maybe the human mind has capabilities beyond what any of us think. Maybe we just need to untie ourselves from whatever beliefs we have that hold us back. Because if it’s possible that we can do all these trippy things like seeing through people’s bodies and seeing what they’re doing from afar, then maybe we’re evolving into the kind of species that will one day be able to communicate with entities from more advanced civilizations.

  In other words, it’s up to us to keep developing these skills, like students learning our ABCs. As we use our brains more and learn new ways to extend our senses—above and beyond—maybe there’s hope for us someday being able to see and hear and talk to creatures from other galaxies. It’s a theory, at least.

  And there I was sitting in a blue and white apartment in Munich, Germany, Universe Unknown, having a chat with a creature who looked exactly like me. And she was having the same experience back. Our two civilizations—whether you considered them advanced or not—had made communication with each other. As far as I knew, Halli and I were the first ones from our planets to do it. How cool is that?

  I told Halli all of it—from my conversation with Dr. Whitfield to everything in his book.

  Well, okay, I did leave out one part.

  I decided not to tell her what he’d said—about how I shouldn’t come over there anymore. I didn’t think there was any real danger, and I didn’t want Halli to worry.

  Okay, maybe I thought there could be some danger, but I still didn’t want Halli to worry. Mostly I didn’t want her to agree with Dr. Whitfield and say we shouldn’t try it anymore. The only way to discover more about something is to keep studying it and experimenting with it.

  And I intend to keep studying and experimenting.

  And not just because it’s fun.

  Number of days remaining to come up with some definitive proof of my huge discovery that will convince Columbia and Professor Hawkins to let me in, no matter what Dr. Whitfield says about my chances: 37

  27

  “Hi, sweetie.”

  “Hi, Mom.”

  She gave me a big motherly hug and I took her carry-on from her. She looked whipped.

  Apparently she thought the same about me.

  “Are you okay? You look a little pale.” She reached out and felt my cheek. “Are you sick?”

  “No, I just didn’t sleep very well last night. Lots of homework.”

  Memo to self: four hours of sleep is not enough. I barely stayed awake through any of my classes today. Tried to take a nap at lunch. Did take a nap during Algebra Support. Guess that’s why they call it support.

  �
�Honey, don’t you think you’re pushing yourself too hard? This whole business with Columbia—”

  “I’m fine, Mom. How was your trip?”

  I fell asleep during the drive home, which was okay since I wasn’t driving, but it didn’t help my credibility with my mother.

  “Audie, you obviously need more sleep. How about if I order some takeout and we both put ourselves to bed a little early tonight?”

  “Sounds great.” Boy, did it. If I could get to bed by 8:00 or something, I could catch a full six hours of sleep before I had to meet Halli. I’d love even more sleep than that, but six was a good start.

  I logged on when we got home, and there was a video chat message: call from Dr. Whitfield.

  My mother was in her bedroom unpacking and checking her e-mail. Maybe I could chance a quick call.

  “Hi, Dr. Whitfield.” I kept my voice low. “I can’t talk very long.”

  “Did you go over there last night?”

  I knew he was going to ask. And I’d already decided not to lie.

  “Yes. Everything was fine.”

  “Good. Because I’ve been thinking.”

  He laid out his theory for me:

  “Do you know what psychokinesis is?” he asked.

  “No . . . I don’t think so.”

  “It’s the ability of consciousness to affect physical matter—mind over matter. Have you heard of that?”

  “I guess so.”

  “It has a very special application in quantum physics,” he went on. “You know about the observer problem in physics—”

  “Audie?” my mom called from the other room.

  “Just a second!” I turned back to Dr. Whitfield. “It’s my mom. You have to be quiet. I’ll be back in just a minute—”

  “You haven’t told her what you’re doing, have you?” Dr. Whitfield guessed.

  “Honey?” my mother called.

  “Coming!”

  I raced out of my room, into the kitchen where my mother stood holding a fistful of menus. “Chinese, Vietnamese, or pizza?”

  “Um, Vietnamese.” I turned to race back.

  “Almond milk tea?”

  “Sure,” I said.

  “Tapioca balls?”