The Broken Universe

by Melko, Paul

  Prime’s face was dark, and John realized he was about to cry. John felt uncomfortable, but he didn’t look away.

  “I suck,” Prime said. “I don’t just do the wrong thing, I do the evil thing. You know what was in that trunk, don’t you?”

  “I … think I know.”

  “It was an accident,” Prime said. “I didn’t mean to do it, but he was menacing us, menacing Casey and the baby. I don’t know if he meant to attack or he was just moving his arm up. But I killed him. I swear I saw a knife.” Prime let out a single sob.

  “So you kidnapped another Ted Carson to replace the one you killed.”

  “The police were looking at me! I had to. For Abby’s and Casey’s sake!”

  “Or for your sake.”

  “He deserved it! You know what he is! In half the universes, he’s an animal killer, a serial killer wannabe! I did a service to that universe!”

  John was silent for a moment. “You’ve built up a lot of justifications for what you did. I don’t know what happened, I wasn’t there. But I can see situations where I could have killed him for what he might have done to me.”

  “Might have? Could have?” Prime said.

  “I wasn’t there,” John repeated.

  “No, just me, and then Casey.”

  “You’re carrying a lot of guilt around, trying to justify what you did,” John said.

  “I know,” Prime whispered.

  “I can’t absolve you.”

  “But you’re me,” Prime said. “If I can’t forgive myself who can?”

  “Often the last to forgive us is ourselves,” John said.

  Prime dipped his head, shaking it from side to side. John looked at his doppelganger. He feared sometimes that he was becoming more like Prime, that his moral sense was eroded away by the huge power the transfer technology gave him. Any universe was his to visit, to plunder, to exploit. But, he was not John Prime. He was his own person, and his decisions would be the right ones.

  John stood, offering his hand to Prime to help him up. “Let’s get back to it.”

  “Thanks.”

  “I don’t know how you gain absolution, John,” John said. “At least not with the dead.”

  “Me neither.”

  CHAPTER 8

  The next day in 7650, John arrived at the factory to find Grace ranting about the summons to the new board meeting. John had left Prime to his fortune hunting, taking the last ferry across to Marblehead, and then boarding the bus back to Findlay. He decided he’d have to see about a car if he was going to make that trip often.

  “Friday!” Grace cried when he entered the office. “Three days from now!”

  “Friday what?”

  “Gesalex and his board meeting,” she said. “He must have found a board member who’ll do whatever he says.” They had hoped that the delay of a few days without a certified letter from Gesalex indicated that he had given up on his plan to destroy the company.

  “We knew it would happen sooner or later,” John said. “Any news on a loan or angel investors?”

  “Some nibbles,” Grace said. “No one wants to move quickly. And no one wants to piss off EmVis or Grauptham House. You know, I grew up knowing that Grauptham House existed, like Westinghouse and GE, but I never really thought about it. It was just some huge conglomerate. Now we know what they truly are, and they’re trying to squash us.”

  “Not that they don’t have problems of their own,” John said. “The stock is still in the basement.” He had gotten a financial update from Henry. The stock had reached an all-time low. Stockholder confidence was low. Profits were down. “But only a small portion of the company is actually owned by the public. Through a limited IPO back in the 1980s. I guess they needed some cash.”

  Grace-7651 walked in, and John did a double take. She walked over to Grace-7650 and gave her doppelganger a kiss on the lips.

  “Hey,” he said. “I’m still not used to you being around. Why’d you come over?”

  Grace-7651 flopped on a couch.

  “I came over last night with a shipment of comic books.”

  “Comic books?”

  “Yeah, any discrepancy we find in the encyclopedias seems to lead back to Grauptham House,” Grace-7651 said. “Everything else is identical! So we started looking for smaller differences. We’re reading The Wall Street Journal and The Findlay Bee. Anyway, we see this story about a lady in Findlay who finds a cache of old comic books in her attic, worth a hundred grand altogether.”

  “More treasure hunting,” John said, seeing where this was going.

  “We sent the packet over, with that article circled,” Grace-7651 said.

  Grace-7650 picked up the story. “Henry goes over to the lady. She hadn’t even looked in her attic yet, here. Offered her one hundred dollars for the box in her attic.”

  “The Opal Owl number one,” Grace-7651 cried. “All-American Comics number sixteen. A complete run of Candy Apple Blue. Bling Comics number three, where they introduce Father Eel for the first time. A hundred titles. We sold them for thirty thousand dollars at the shop up in Toledo.”

  “You took that woman’s comic books that were worth thirty thou?” John asked.

  “We gave her a hundred dollars!” Henry protested.

  “And in 7651, she sold the box at a garage sale for ten dollars,” Grace-7651 added.

  “She’s ten times better off in this universe!” Henry said.

  “She’d be three thousand times better off if she’d sold them herself,” John pointed out.

  “She didn’t care!” Henry cried. “She was more than happy to have someone to talk to for ten minutes.”

  John stared at them. “Why am I always the conscience of this group? Why do I have to point out the moral flaws in what we do? What we should have done was told her about the comic books and offered her a good fraction of the money. Now we’re no better than Gesalex and Visgrath!”

  He turned away, angry that his friends were taking glee in cheating a poor woman out of her money.

  “John,” Grace-7650 said. “We don’t have the luxury to be so kindhearted. We’re in a fight for this company.”

  “When was doing the right thing a luxury?”

  “We need the money,” she said. “We’re running out of cash, even with the inflow of money from Casey’s sales. The lawyer fees are killing us.”

  “I won’t let us do the wrong thing,” John said. “I’ll take the transfer gates apart and throw mine away if that’s how it’s going to be.”

  “John, we’re not raping and pillaging the multiverse,” Grace-7650 said. “We can’t do good if we don’t have the funds to operate. Now, I agree that we should always strive to do the right thing, but when our fundamental capability is hampered by others and a lack of money, then we should do what we can to achieve our ends. That woman is no worse off than when we took the comic books off her hands. She’ll never know! Ever.”

  “Grauptham House conspired in secrecy too,” John said. “So do these Vig people, policing the multiverse. I don’t want us to be like that. I want…” He stopped. What did he want? “I want us to do something better than that. I want to help people. I want to use this technology to do good.”

  He met Grace’s eyes, and she looked away.

  “Okay, we’ll give the lady the money back,” she said.

  “Wait,” John said. “How bad do we need the cash?”

  “It doesn’t matter, John. Friday they take it all away from us,” she said.

  “Then we’ll build a new company,” John said. “And we start again.”

  Grace-7650 shook her head. “I’m too tired to start over. We don’t have your bushy-eyed attitude and hellish optimism.”

  Grace-7651 chimed in. “I think John is right. We need to take the higher road, but we need the money right now. What can we do?”

  Henry asked, “Will Prime find the treasure trove?”

  “If it’s there,” John said.

  “Then maybe we treat thi
s like a loan,” Henry said. “Until we find our fortune.”

  “And if he doesn’t?” John asked.

  “We’ll pay her off with our scholarship money,” Grace-7651 said.

  “That’s 7651 money,” John said with a laugh. “Won’t work here.”

  “Close enough.”

  John thought for a moment. She’d get her money for the comic books, he thought. Sooner or later.

  “Okay,” he said. “It’s a loan for now.”

  “Thank you, John,” Grace-7650 said.

  “But we better make it up to her, with interest!”

  “We’ll be more careful from now on,” Grace-7651 said.

  “It looks like we need to find that gold, more than ever,” John said. “I better go help Prime finish the searching.”

  “Not before you spend some time with Casey,” Grace-7650 said. “She’d be mad if you passed through without seeing her.”

  “Right.”

  * * *

  Casey had been staying at his apartment most nights now, unless she was on the road to Chicago or Cincinnati or Pittsburgh. She was the star salesperson now, and claimed as much territory as she could, calling on riverboat casinos, game rooms, restaurants, and truck stops. Two weeks on the job and she was earning enough commission for Grace to rethink the sales plan.

  But the apartment was dark when he unlocked the door.

  “Casey?” he called.

  No answer. He flicked the light switch. Nothing.

  He froze.

  A normal person would think a bulb had blown. John’s mind went to worse things.

  He turned and pulled the door shut in front of him. A hand in a black glove reached to halt its swing. Someone had been waiting in the apartment. John pulled with all his might. The door slammed on fingers. There was a howl of pain.

  John turned and ran for the stairs. He reached into his shirt for the device trigger. It was always set for 7651 in case he needed to make an escape.

  But he couldn’t throw the switch! He had no idea what was on the other side in 7651.

  He cursed himself for not planning his escape. He had told himself since he returned to see if the apartment building in 7651 was the same as in 7650. He didn’t know. If he jumped from the second story here into nothing in 7651, he would fall ten meters and break his legs. If it was a giant hole or an intersection, he’d be worse off. He just didn’t know what was on the other side.

  Ground level was his best bet. He ran for the stairwell. A man in a dark leather jacket appeared in front of him and he stopped fast. He turned for the back flight of stairs. He’d have to toggle the device now, ten-meter fall or not.

  Something slammed against his head, and he tumbled to the orange hall carpet. His stomach churned at the pain in his temple. His breath came in gasps.

  Hands turned him over.

  Words in a foreign language. Alarian.

  Two thugs looked down at him, laughing.

  One pointed at this chest and said something.

  The other ripped open his shirt.

  The two ogled at him, then pawed at him frantically to get the device off his chest.

  The pulsing of his heart sent sheets of red across his vision.

  He tried to grab the device as they tore it away from his chest, but he couldn’t move fast enough. His back screamed as the buckles tore loose and ripped across his skin. A thug pushed him back to the carpet with a booted foot.

  They were arguing over the device.

  In English, the one thug said, “Ask him!”

  “Gesalex said you had this,” the other said to John. “No one believed him. Where did you get this?”

  “Bite … me,” John spat. He tried to squirm out from under the boot, but the thug was too big, too strong. He reached down, grabbed him by the shoulders. He lifted John up and slammed him down, this time with a forearm across John’s windpipe.

  “Your last minutes can be easy and pain-free,” the man said. “Or … not.”

  “Police are on the way,” John bluffed.

  The thug grinned. “Just in time to find a corpse.”

  “This is a damn Prime artifact,” the other one said. “No one has seen one of these in millennia.”

  “You a Prime?” the first asked.

  “Doesn’t look like a Prime.”

  “Primes don’t die under my boot.” The first pulled a pistol from somewhere and aimed it at John’s head. “You got a Prime cache you dug up, dup?”

  For a moment, John was confused by the word Prime, because it was the same nickname he’d assigned John Prime.

  “Who are the … the Primes?” he asked, struggling for air. “The Vig?” He was grasping for some logic to what he thought he knew.

  The thug on top of him leaned back. John gasped for breath.

  “The Vig? Hell, no! The Vig just found the biggest cache of artifacts. They think they’re in charge, but they’re nothing.”

  “How come he doesn’t know that?” the second thug asked.

  The first stared down at him. “Who the hell are you, kid?” The gun came back and aimed right at John’s face. “Who doesn’t know all that already?”

  “Someone who just found a device,” John said. “I never knew about anything but my own universe until two years ago.”

  “You are just a dup,” the first one said.

  “But we sure took care of Visgrath,” John said. He felt no fear looking down the barrel of the gun. What did it matter at this point?

  The two thugs shared a glance, and then laughed. “It was time that bastard went! You did us a big favor.”

  “Too bad you didn’t deal with Charboric too.”

  “Is that why he left you behind?” John asked.

  “They didn’t take us,” the first said, “because we’re half-bloods. Doesn’t matter to Gesalex that we’re singletons.”

  “My mum’s from Pittsburgh,” the second said. “The bitch.”

  “Mine’s from New York,” the first said. “Just breeding stock for the singletons.”

  The gun was pressed against John’s cheek. “But that’s about all you get to know for this lifetime.”

  BAM!

  John expected nothingness, but instead the first thug was flung around wildly. His gun skittered away, and he fell to the floor.

  John pushed himself against the wall, away from the two. He turned. Casey stood in a marksman’s pose, her purse at her feet, dressed in a business suit, holding a gun that seemed longer than her forearm.

  She pointed it at the second thug. The man turned and ran, carrying the device.

  John lunged for it, catching a strap.

  The second thug yanked, trying to get the device away. Then another shot slammed into the ceiling next to him. He winced, dropped his grip on the device, and ran, grabbing his slouched-over partner and half carried, half dragged his companion down the stairs and out the door.

  John stood, his ears ringing. The hallway smelled of gunpowder.

  “When did you get the gun, Tex?” he asked.

  “I figured they’d try strong-arm techniques again,” she said. “It was just a matter of time. I wasn’t getting shot again. Neither were you.”

  “The gun?”

  “Oh, right after I got out of the hospital,” she said. “I had to take a class, and they were very nice at the shooting range. I guess a lot of people who get shot at come by afterwards for a gun.”

  “How come you didn’t tell me?” John sputtered.

  “I do a lot of things that I don’t tell you about, John,” Casey said. “Come on inside. I’ll get you an ice pack, and we better call the police.”

  * * *

  Two officers arrived first and, while one looked around the parking lot as if the two Alarians might still be there, the other took possession of Casey’s gun and began asking questions about time and location. Then a man arrived and introduced himself as Detective Duderstadt.

  The officer said, “Attempted burglary, two suspects, both white
males, about two meters tall. They were in the process of robbing this male here, when the female arrived home to the apartment and shot the first suspect. A second shot was fired and the two fled.”

  “Did she miss twice with this thing?” Duderstadt asked, hefting Casey’s gun in his palm. “Very big gun for a little thing like you.”

  “I missed once, on purpose,” Casey said with a tight smile.

  “Oh, you missed once?”

  “Yes, the first shot winged the first guy,” she said. “The second shot was so they kept running.”

  “You could have hurt someone with that second shot, honey,” he said.

  “Really? You think there’s some moonbathers on the roof, Detective?”

  “So you think you winged one of them?”

  “She did,” John said.

  “I’m asking her,” Duderstadt said sharply.

  John bit his tongue to hold back the quick remark, and then smiled. “Whatever you want,” he said, then leaned back and repositioned the ice pack on his head.

  “Yes, one I got in the upper arm,” Casey said.

  “Because you were aiming there?”

  “No, but I must have pulled away subconsciously, since he was close to John.”

  “So you winged one, and he got up and walked off.”

  “Apparently.”

  The first officer, the one who had looked outside, said, “There were blood drops all the way to the parking lot. They just stopped like he got … into … a … car.…” The officer trailed off when he saw the look on the detective’s face.

  “Thank you, Officer,” Duderstadt said. He turned back toward Casey. “I remember your face. You were involved with a shooting a few weeks ago.”

  “Yes, I was shot.”

  “Ah, yes. You couldn’t identify the assailant then?”

  “Correct.”

  “Maybe you’ve since identified them, and they were here tonight for some reason?”

  John expected Casey to erupt, but she remained calm. “No, these weren’t the two who shot me.”

  “And maybe you’re one of the three who disappeared at the same time?” Duderstadt asked John. “All very perplexing that was. Three local young businesspeople all disappearing at the time of a shooting.”

  “We were away on business,” John said.

  “And you couldn’t come back when your best girl was in the hospital?”