The Broken Universe

by Melko, Paul

  * * *

  The next day, John and Casey drove into Detroit where Grace had found a cache of cheap MPU-12s that a distributor was trying to unload. For a change, Casey let him drive. She placed a hand on his thigh as they drove.

  “I was thinking about what Henry said yesterday,” Casey said.

  “About what?”

  “About an army to help manage a company across universes,” she said.

  “That was just talk,” John said. “We can’t really do it. We’re too busy here.”

  “What about the other John, this Prime guy?” Casey said.

  “Prime,” John said. “It’s complicated. He…”

  Prime had arrived on the Rayburn farm in Universe 7533 offering something fantastic to John, the chance to see another universe. He’d flashed money, told him stories, proven that he was who he said he was. But in the end, he’d stolen John’s life. John had been lost among the universes, while Prime slipped right into his life. He’d married the Casey there, the Casey that John had had a crush on.

  John had spent a long time hating Prime for what he had done. But when he had needed help in saving his friends, Prime had come willingly. John couldn’t have done it without him.

  “And doesn’t he have a Casey of his own?” Casey said.

  “And a child too.”

  “The more the merrier,” Casey said.

  John felt a bit of discomfort discussing his old Casey from 7533.

  “Um.”

  “I’d like to meet her,” Casey said.

  “I don’t want him involved in this,” John said.

  “Why? Isn’t it clear after what he did that he’s a good guy? He’s you, and you’re a good guy.”

  Was he? John wondered. Prime and he were identical and Prime was immoral. He lied, cheated, and had even killed. But John could never say with any certainty that he wouldn’t have done the same thing in the same situation.

  “I don’t know if he is,” John said.

  “He risked everything for you,” Casey said.

  “Everything he stole from me in the first place.”

  “Including the other Casey?”

  “Um. I hadn’t even asked her out yet. Or even talked to her.”

  “She clearly had a thing for you,” Casey said, “or she wouldn’t have fallen for Prime.”

  “I guess so.”

  “So you regret that you never talked to her?”

  “I— No.”

  “No?”

  “No, she’s a whole other person. I don’t even know her. Never did. You’re the Casey I love.”

  “Really?”

  “Of course.”

  “That’s rather sweet of you,” Casey said. “But what if I had died when I was shot? Would you have gone to find another Casey?”

  “No! Never!”

  “Why never?” Casey asked. “I’m probably a really nice person everywhere.”

  “Yeah, but…”

  “You’re uncomfortable with this conversation, I see that.”

  “No, I’m not. Well, yes, I am,” John said. “Visgrath mocked me and my friends for not being singletons. He proclaimed that these versions of myself, Henry, and Grace were intrinsically less valuable than he was because there were no parallel selves of his.”

  “How can he have no doppelgangers, if there are an infinite number of universes?”

  “Because, first, maybe there aren’t an infinite number of universes and, second, once you start traveling between universes—me—or interacting with someone who does—you—you can no longer be parallel with any other versions of yourself.”

  “What?”

  “Travel between parallel universes pollutes the synchronicity of the universes. No other John Rayburn is experiencing anything of what I’ve experienced once Prime showed up with the device. My life took a radical divergence, because there can’t be any other universe where other versions of me traveled the same sequence of universes that I did. Once you start moving beyond your current universe, you become a meta-person, a meta-event, beyond what normal versions of me experience.”

  “So you think travel is discouraged to maintain the synchronicity between the universes?” Casey asked.

  “Hmmm. Maybe. I hadn’t thought of that, but that would be a good explanation. Maybe it isn’t about control. Maybe there is some value in maintaining lots of synchronized universes that we don’t see.”

  “Too bad there isn’t someone we can ask,” Casey said. “Maybe the people in Universe One will tell us.”

  “You mean Universe Zero. The device starts counting at zero.”

  “Uh-huh. Whatever,” Casey said with a smile. “In any case, wouldn’t they know more? We’re in the boondocks out here in the seven thousands.”

  “That’s certainly true.”

  “No, I’m serious. We should go to Universe One or Zero, whatever the first one is, and ask.”

  John nodded his head. “We will, once we know more.”

  “You’re the cautious sort, aren’t you.”

  “I just like to know what questions to ask before I get there.”

  “Yes, cautious,” Casey said with a laugh. “I’m more of let’s-jump-right-in kinda gal.”

  “Yeah, I know. I like that about you.”

  “Really? I figured you’d rather have a calmer girlfriend around.”

  “Nope.”

  “Good,” she said. After a few moments, she added, “If something does happen to me, you can go find another Casey somewhere. I won’t mind.”

  * * *

  By hook and by crook, the team shipped the machines to Las Vegas quickly enough to avoid peeving the customer. Grace managed to procure a line of credit with the bank to meet payroll. Henry, Casey, and John called all the sales reps and upped the commission by five percent. They used freelance salespeople in all the locales they were interested in selling; it was cheaper than keeping a dedicated sales force on their own payroll. They paid more in commission, but less in overhead. Some of them, like the one in Las Vegas, hadn’t even noticed the home office was empty.

  “Tells you what they think of our product,” Henry said. “If they didn’t even know we were gone.”

  “Another five percent commission will get their interest,” Casey said.

  Grace nodded. “If we can get the volume back to where it was before we left, we should be okay.”

  Henry peeked out the office window at the floor below. “Viv says the new team of assemblers is coming together,” he said. “Though a few of them are out sick.”

  “A summer flu bug is going around,” Casey said. “I heard it on the radio.”

  “That flu sucks,” Henry said.

  “Maybe Viv should get a raise,” John said.

  “Maybe,” Grace said. “If we make our quota.” She had set a quota that was the same for the new quarter as the old. It was aggressive with all that they had to make up.

  “I’d like to give the sales thing a shot,” Casey said suddenly.

  “What?” John said. He hadn’t ever thought of her as anything but back-office support, someone to handle odd jobs.

  “Yeah, remember that arcade and restaurant we passed on our way to Detroit?”

  “Yeah, at the Ohio border after Toledo,” John said. “It was called Old Gus’s.” As they’d flown by on the highway, they’d seen that its parking lot had been full. The sign said that the arcade had offered miniature bowling, minigolf, and games of skill. “But—”

  “But what?”

  “I was thinking you’d just help out … here,” John said.

  “Running errands?” Casey asked sweetly.

  “Yeah,” John said.

  “Getting coffee? Sweeping up maybe? Being ready to make out whenever you need a break?”

  John realized he’d made an error and stared blankly at her.

  “Um…”

  “I think it’s a great idea,” Grace said. “Regardless of what John thinks.”

  “No, I just never thought—�
��

  “Yes, John,” Casey said, “for all the thinking you do, you don’t think so much.”

  “Yeah, you’re right. I think you’d do a good job at sales,” John said.

  “Thanks,” Casey said. “Me too.”

  “Hey, boss!”

  Grace stood and peered out the window. The voice belonged to Viv. They’d yet to find a receptionist to replace their last one, and so anyone who was brave enough to venture past the outer foyer usually ended up face-to-face with Viv.

  “Yeah?” Grace replied after sliding one of the office windows open.

  “Lawyer here to see you.”

  “Lawyer?” John wondered. “Was our lawyer coming over?”

  “No,” Grace said darkly.

  The four climbed down the stairs, their eyes on the well-dressed man holding a sealed envelope.

  The man handed the envelope to Grace. “Official notice from your stockholders. Sign here.”

  Grace snatched the pen from the lawyer and signed. The man gave the factory a once-over, then spun on his heel and left.

  “Sorry, boss,” Viv said. “I guess I should have kept him out.”

  “It doesn’t matter, Viv,” Grace said. “He would have gotten the papers to us some other way. It would only have delayed the inevitable.”

  “What is it?” Henry asked.

  Grace tore open the manila envelope. Inside were several stapled sheaves of paper.

  “Notice of stockholder meeting,” she read. “Notice of stock transfer. Notice of option to recover investment.” She glanced through the first. “We’ll have to run this by our lawyer, but it looks like we have a new board of directors, they want a meeting in one week, and they intend to get their capital back.”

  CHAPTER 5

  “How are we going to raise fifteen million dollars?” Henry asked, not for the first time.

  Grace, somewhat exasperated, said, “We’ve been over this. We get additional capital, either through other investors, a bank, or revenue.” John, Henry, and Grace sat at a table at their favorite Chinese place not far from John’s apartment. Casey was on her way, and John kept glancing at the door.

  “Revenue? If we continue to sell on the current projections for five years, then maybe we’ll break fifteen million in revenue that year,” Henry said. “Maybe.”

  “We’re not going to do it with revenue alone,” Grace said. “We’ll get additional financing based on those sales projections. We did it once, we can do it again.”

  “By next week?”

  “Calm down, Henry,” Grace said coldly, sharply enough that John felt a pang of concern for Henry’s feelings. He paused in his rant.

  “I’m just worried they’ve outmaneuvered us,” Henry said. He squeezed the edge of the table until his fingers turned white. “I’d hate for that to happen.”

  “What’s the worst that could happen?” Grace said. “We bolt to 7651? We’ve done that once. We can do it again.”

  “The worst is that they get the device again,” John said. “It’s what they want.”

  “Is it safe in the new warehouse?” Grace asked.

  “I think so,” John said. “Our lawyer rented it for us. It can’t be traced to me easily.” John had rebuilt the transfer gate in a warehouse on the outskirts of Findlay.

  “It’s good we have two transfer gates,” Grace said.

  “Yeah, it gives us more possible solutions,” Henry said.

  “What’s the optimal solution?” John asked suddenly. “What are we trying to do?”

  Grace looked off into space for a second. “I want to know why,” she said. “Then I want revenge. Then I want to help people.”

  Henry looked stricken. “You can’t—”

  “Stop it, Henry. I can want revenge. I can want to kill every last one of those bastards. And don’t tell me it’s not healthy. Because it certainly feels healthy to me.”

  “John and I—” Henry started. “We were thinking if you saw a psychiatrist…”

  Rage clouded Grace’s face. John wanted to backpedal and say he’d said no such thing. Maybe Henry had interpreted what he had said poorly. But if she was hurting, perhaps she did need a guiding hand.

  “Really?” Grace said scathingly. “You think I should hire a psychiatrist, let her know I was tortured by a universe-hopping band of madmen, and that I have trouble now touching another person? That’ll go really well for me, I bet.”

  “Grace, your voice,” Henry said.

  She stared at him and was on the verge of saying more when Casey appeared at the entryway into the dining area.

  She waved at John, and then paused when she saw the tension in Grace and Henry.

  “Hi, guys,” she said softly. “Sorry I’m late.”

  “Hey, Casey,” John said. “We waited to order.”

  “Good.”

  “I need the powder room,” Casey said. “Grace?”

  “What? Oh.” Grace swatted the back of her hand at her cheek, wiping away tears that had slowly trickled there. “Yeah.”

  “Order me some chicken lo mein,” Casey said. “And a spring roll!”

  Henry watched their backs, and then let out a long sigh once the two women had disappeared into the restroom.

  “Sorry,” he said. “I thought she would consider it … if she thought you…”

  “Sure, it’s okay,” John said. “Maybe you need to let things go for a while. Grace is a smart woman. She’s trying to work things out.”

  Henry shrugged. “I don’t know what else to do.”

  “She’s not a problem to solve, Henry. She’s a person.”

  “I know that! It’s just that—”

  The waiter appeared, and they ordered. By the time the waiter ran off to the kitchen, Grace and Casey had returned to the table. They were actually smiling.

  “Tell them,” Grace said.

  “What?” John asked.

  “I may have sold a hundred machines!” Casey said.

  “What? How?”

  “Old Gus’s is a franchise,” she said. “I had lunch with the manager there two days ago, and he’d seen one of our units. Had no idea who sold them or how much they cost. But he had dinner yesterday with the company president. They stopped off on Gross Ile on the way home.”

  “At the casino where one of our machines is?” Henry asked.

  “Exactly,” Casey said. “The president loved it. They have fifty Old Gus’s across the country, and they want two per location.”

  “Wow.”

  “Yeah, I rock,” Casey said.

  “I agree.”

  Grace sat back down next to Henry while Casey sat next to John. There was no trace of the anger in Grace’s demeanor, and John wondered what Casey had said to calm her.

  “Not even close to fifteen million,” Henry said, but he was smiling too. John calculated the profit in one hundred machines, about seventy thousand dollars.

  “No, but it’s a good thing to have in our accounts receivable ledger when we go for that loan,” Grace said.

  John put his arm around Casey. He couldn’t believe he’d ever doubted her. He felt a bit foolish, but he was glad she was as good as she was.

  “Of course,” she added, “we’re in the same boat we were before for raw materials. To build this many machines we need a bigger supply chain.”

  “Start now,” John said.

  “When we sign the deal,” Grace said. “But I think we should look at getting items from 7651.”

  John sighed.

  “Hear me out!” she said over his objections. “That transfer device represents a huge amount of our collective capital. All of your profits from a year of work, plus six weeks of our time, just when the company was taking off. To leave it unused is irresponsible.”

  “Using it is dangerous,” John said.

  “How so? More dangerous than leaving it active, sitting there in that makeshift barn we built at the quarry? We haven’t been back in days to see if it’s still there and safe. What’s dangerous is
if someone gets ahold of it instead of us. The Alarians were exploiting it for weeks before we got here. Who knows what havoc they’ve unleashed upon the multiverse.”

  “We should check on it,” John agreed. “But that doesn’t mean we should exploit—”

  “There it is,” Grace said. “That word ‘exploit.’ Exploiting something is a perfectly valid course of action. I’m not sure why you want to take the hard way on everything, John.”

  “It’s not the hard way,” John said. “It’s the conservative, ethical way.”

  “Ethical? What possible ethical concern is at issue here?” Grace said.

  “Theft of ideas is wrong. Using someone else’s hard work as your own is wrong,” John said. “If we don’t do the work, we shouldn’t take the benefit.”

  “I’m not suggesting we don’t do the work,” Grace said. “But maybe we should work smarter. Guidance counselors and teachers say that the whole universe of possibilities is open to you. But to us, two whole universes of possibilities are open.”

  “And more, if we make more devices,” Henry added.

  “We definitely don’t have funds for that,” John said.

  “That’s true,” Casey said. “Yet. For now, we should just use the ones we have.”

  “You’ve clearly thought about this,” John said. “How?”

  “7650 and 7651 are pretty similar, right?” Grace said.

  “Yeah.”

  “We’ve talked of using 7651 for supplies, but what about as a sales territory?”

  “How?” John asked.

  “Casey just made a deal with the CEO of Old Gus’s, right? What if that same CEO is in 7651, looking for the next big thing?”

  “And if he isn’t?” John said. “Universes vary on the small details.”

  “If not him, then someone like him,” Grace said. “It’s like virgin territory. Undisturbed.”

  “Unless pinball already exists there,” John said.

  “You’ve already said, our head-to-head models are totally different than anything you’ve seen. We’ve made something unique based on the original idea.”

  “True.”

  “Virgin territory.”

  “But who lives over there to sell,” John said. “That takes away from the people working here. If I move to 7651 and handle logistics and sales there, that’s one less person here to help build.”