by E. C. Myers
Nathaniel pulled away and stared at Zoe. “You're packing?” he asked.
She rolled her eyes. “Not you, too. I know how to handle a gun.”
“That isn't the point. You don't need a weapon here.” Nathaniel held his hand out, palm up.
“Really?” Zoe asked.
“Come on, Z,” Nathaniel said. “If you're armed, you can't come in.”
Zoe sighed, but she reached under her hoodie and pulled out the compact pistol. She handed it to Nathaniel.
He examined the gun carefully. It looked much smaller in his hands. Ephraim felt a shiver run down his spine.
“Safety's on,” Zoe said.
Nathaniel pressed a button, and the magazine dropped out of the short handle. He pocketed it and squinted at the gun.
“Smith and Wesson Bodyguard 380,” Nathaniel murmured. “The gun that shot me. I'm surprised at you, Zoe. I'll hold this in my office until after school.”
He put the gun in his pocket and shook his head. “But that reminds me. How's M.S. doing?”
“She's finishing her senior year in Spain. But she won't be back any time soon. Her parents didn't want her getting drafted,” Zoe said. “Their family has a house in the country. I considered going with her, but…I didn't want to leave Summerside, in case you needed me.” She glanced at Ephraim.
Ephraim cut in. “Speaking of Mary Shelley, we've seen some really screwed up things tonight. It's great to catch up and all, but we were hoping you and Dr. Kim could explain what the hell is going on.”
“It felt strange shifting here this time,” Zoe said. “And we couldn't get through at all before, like there was some kind of resistance.”
“Doc set up a quantum barrier around our universe. Like a firewall on a computer network.” Nathaniel slapped his forehead. “And I almost forgot to turn it back on. I'll be right back. You guys stand far away from the LCD.”
“LCD?” Jena asked.
“The Large Coheron Drive.” He pointed at the mechanism in the center of the courtyard and hurried back to the room he'd appeared from. He pressed his hand to the security panel and ducked inside, leaving the door open. The squeal of machinery filled the atrium, and the Large Coheron Drive shuddered into motion.
The central disc, like a giant version of Ephraim's coin, slowly tilted to a horizontal position and remained level, while the two rings around it began spinning—one of them horizontally, the other vertically. They picked up speed until it looked like the disc was surrounded by a shimmering transparent orb, generating a strong air current that pulled at their hair and clothes.
The air around it rippled like heat waves, and in fact, the air was definitely warmer.
Nathaniel emerged from the room and slapped the panel on his way back to them, closing the door behind him. “Now nothing gets in or out of this universe,” he shouted over the roar of the machinery.
Ephraim placed a hand over his breast pocket, feeling the coin inside. It was useless until they switched off its larger counterpart. He was basically trapped in this universe, and he didn't like it.
“Come on,” Nathaniel said. “The Doc will meet us up in the lab.”
Nathaniel opened the door and ushered them inside. Zoe hurried along beside him, telling him about everything that had happened that day. Ephraim noticed she omitted any mention of their kiss.
Ephraim glanced behind him. He glimpsed Atlas straining under the weight of the spinning gyroscope before the door slammed shut, cutting off the light from the courtyard.
Jena slipped her hand in his and squeezed lightly as they followed Nathaniel and Zoe down the long, dark corridor.
So far, the interior of the Everett Institute resembled Summerside High School, with speckled gray floor tiles, pale-yellow walls, and a long corridor with unmarked doors that could have led to classrooms, for all Ephraim knew. This was supposed to be the future, but it was fairly indistinguishable from his time, let alone the previous century.
“This place is huge,” Zoe said.
“Ten years ago, we had more than a hundred physicists and nearly a thousand engineers, data analysts, mathematicians, materials scientists, machinists, chefs—you name it. You never had to leave the place because it had everything you needed.” Nathaniel sighed. “Today we have barely, maybe, five percent of the staff.” He glanced at her. “But we're actively recruiting.”
“What happened to everyone?” Jena asked.
“We couldn't afford to keep them on after we lost our government grants,” Nathaniel said. “Fortunately for them, most of them were already being offered jobs elsewhere.”
The hall ended at a pair of large elevator doors, and Nathaniel pressed the button. The doors dinged open, and the group piled into the expansive elevator. It easily could have fit twenty people. Nathaniel jabbed the top button.
The doors slid shut. If the green numbers above the door hadn't been increasing, Ephraim wouldn't have known they were rising at all.
“Was it because you disappeared?” Zoe asked.
“I'm flattered you think I'm that important.” Nathaniel scratched the back of his neck. “But that was related. The big issue was that we promised results that we could no longer deliver without the coin and controller. And the government was only interested in funding us when they thought we were building a weapon. A small private investor is keeping us operational, but they could back out any day if we don't show them we're making progress. And this is the worst possible time for us to be shut down.”
“Is it really bad?” Zoe said.
“Let me put it this way. If we'd had the coin and someone to use it, I would have seriously considered robbing banks in other universes. And it may still come to that.” He glanced at Ephraim.
“Why didn't the Institute just make another Charon device?” Ephraim asked. “Or at least try to retrieve you?”
Nathaniel looked down at his feet. “Dr. Kim worked on it. But the situation is complicated. You'll understand soon. But that isn't our main concern right now.”
Ephraim felt a gentle bump under his feet, and the doors opened.
“Sorry, I've been meaning to fix that.” Nathaniel pulled a tablet from his back pocket and made a note on it with a plastic stylus.
“Welcome to the main research and development lab,” Nathaniel said. “Uh, the only research and development lab anymore.” He strode out.
“Hello?” he called. “Dr. Kim? Anyone?” His voice echoed back at them. “I guess she's still on her way over from the manor. While we wait, I'll give you the fifty-cent tour. Follow me.”
Ephraim, Jena, and Zoe stepped out of the elevator and stopped to stare.
The floor wrapped around four enclosed walls in the center. The wall opposite the elevator was dominated by a hundred-inch video screen.
Nathaniel turned to face them and walked backward toward the wall, leading them like a tour guide.
“The building was constructed around the LCD,” Nathaniel said. He knelt and rapped his knuckles against the wall under the video monitor. There was no sound. “These interior walls are reinforced with five feet of solid steel.”
“What for?” Jena asked.
“To shield us if the machine blows up,” Nathaniel said. “The atrium is designed to channel the force of the explosion up and out of the skylight, so this building doesn't come apart with it.”
“I'm both impressed and concerned that you factored the potential for that kind of damage into this building's design,” Jena said.
“Don't worry, we're safe up here. Probably. If you believe the math.” Nathaniel tapped the screen behind him. “Since windows would compromise the integrity of the blast shielding, we've mounted a viewscreen on each of these internal walls, with video from cameras on the other side. This is cool…” He gestured for them to join him.
As Ephraim drew closer to the screen, he realized it was displaying a three-dimensional image of the courtyard they'd shifted to. The effect was like looking through the wall—a virtual window. Slowl
y the LCD below came into view, still spinning at high speed. He told himself he was just imagining that the frame around the central disc was trembling.
“I need to get a TV like this,” Jena said.
“The price has dropped a lot since we installed them. You could probably get one on sale for around six hundred and twenty-five thousand dollars,” Nathaniel said.
Zoe whistled.
Nathaniel moved slowly to their right, still walking backward.
“We're a LEED gold-certified green building, which is pretty good considering how much energy you need to punch holes through the universe,” he said. “The building is almost entirely self-sustaining. There are solar panels and wind generators just above our heads, and a roof garden to grow our own food. We couldn't afford to keep the gardener though, so it isn't producing much anymore. I hope you like beets.”
“So this is the place to be during a zombie apocalypse,” Ephraim said.
“Yeah.” Nathaniel laughed.
He spread his arms out. “This is the south end of the floor, what we call ‘downtown.’ It's mostly cubicles with computer workstations and swing space for nontechnical work. You wouldn't believe the amount of paperwork there is for a business that doesn't make any money. We used to have an entire floor dedicated to administrative personnel, but after cutbacks, we were forced to consolidate almost everyone up here. We closed the other floors except for the dormitories, gym, and mess hall one level down, and the forge and machine shops on the first floor.”
“You have your own forge?” Ephraim asked.
“We design, mold, and cast every one of the LCD's components in-house. It's all custom. It's also more secure to manufacture the parts on our own.”
Nathaniel pointed to a window—a real window—to the left of the elevator, which had gone down to the basement. “If you look out there, you'll see something you ought to recognize,” Nathaniel said.
Ephraim, Jena, and Zoe bunched around the glass and saw the park sprawling below, wilder and more overgrown than in Ephraim's universe.
“The Institute bought this land from the city in the 1970s, and assembled its first laboratory in Greystone Manor. It now holds a private library and small apartments for senior staff. Your rooms are already set up,” Nathaniel said.
Ephraim was more interested in the skyline rising above the park. The lighted windows of the towering buildings in the distance looked like stars in the night. This world's Summerside had grown into a mini-Manhattan in the last quarter century.
“This is incredible,” Ephraim said.
Nathaniel led them around the corner to the east side of the floor, which featured clusters of lab tables and offices with sliding glass doors. The office in the center was the only one with frosted glass that afforded some privacy. A black nameplate outside read “N. Mackenzie, Chief Engineer.” Below it was one of the Institute's ubiquitous hand panels. Ephraim looked at every office door they passed, but he didn't see his own name on any of them.
They reached the north end of the building. The wall was entirely made of glass, affording a view of the streets. Jena and Zoe looked at the library across from the Institute. The two-story building was identical to the one Ephraim had grown up visiting, but it was dwarfed by larger buildings on either side of it.
“It looks the same,” Jena and Zoe said.
“They do that a lot?” Nathaniel asked Ephraim.
Ephraim nodded.
Nathaniel smiled. “Dr. Kim renovated the Library when the Institute opened. It's still a lending library for the public, but now it also has one of the best scientific research collections in the world. Of course, it's all online too.”
Judging from the storefronts Ephraim saw, the boulevard around the library had grown into a main street. There were even elevated train tracks on the far end of the block, stretching off into the distance. There'd often been discussions of extending the New York City subway system to downtown Summerside; it looked like they'd finally done it here.
The group passed through equipment racks loaded with servers, their lights blinking like Christmas trees, and long lab benches covered with mechanical parts. The air hummed with overworked air-conditioning and a cacophony of beeping and whirring machinery. Ephraim glimpsed what looked like a half-assembled controller on one table, wires spilling out of it, but he couldn't stop to examine it more closely.
They followed Nathaniel around the last corner. The west end of the floor held more offices; a kitchenette with a cooking range, microwave, refrigerator, coffeemaker; and cafeteria-style seating for about fifty people. The door next to a glass-walled conference room was labeled “J. Kim.”
Nathaniel stopped on the far end of the corridor, near the corner of the south and west walls. They had completed a counterclockwise circuit and were back where they'd started, in front of the elevator.
Nathaniel pointed out a glowing exit sign to the left of the elevator. “There are stairs here and on the opposite corner of the building. But you would need security clearance to access this floor from the other side, even if the power were out. The doors are on the same emergency generators as the servers.”
“Of course,” Jena said.
He grinned. “So that's pretty much it. Home sweet home.”
The elevator dinged.
“Excellent timing,” Nathaniel said.
The elevator doors opened, and a woman emerged. She stopped short when she saw them all staring at her.
“Oh,” Dr. Kim said.
Even though Ephraim had known who she was, had been expecting it, he was still unprepared to see her.
She was twenty-five years older, but it was undeniably Jena Kim. Ephraim got a chill looking at her. Jena and Zoe simultaneously took a small step forward, as if pulled toward her against their will.
Dr. Kim's black hair was streaked with gray and bound up in a loose bun, with strands drifting free and floating around her head. Under a disheveled white lab coat she wore a plain blouse and gray slacks. Though she was slightly heavier than her young counterparts, her face was gaunt and lined with worry.
She looked Jena and Zoe over critically, and her mouth stretched into a thin smile.
“I forgot how damned pretty I was,” she said. “I wish I'd flaunted it like that while I could have.”
Her voice was huskier than Jena's. It was kind of…sexy.
“You're still pretty,” Ephraim blurted out.
All three Kim analogs looked at him. Nathaniel covered his smile with a hand.
Dr. Kim's expression softened.
“Doc, this is Ephraim Scott,” Nathaniel said.
“I know who he is,” she snapped. “How could I forget?”
She stepped close enough to Ephraim for him to see the delicate creases in her forehead, around her eyes, in the corners of her mouth. Jena's overwhelming cuteness had matured into something else. He hadn't just been trying to be polite—the doctor was pretty. Maybe not conventionally hot like her eighteen-year-old self, but still attractive.
God, she was the same age as his mother. He couldn't berate Nathan anymore for his comments about Madeline Scott.
“Ephraim, it's good to see you—” She bit off her sentence. Was she about to say “again”?
“It's nice to meet you,” Ephraim said.
She blinked. “I feel like I know you already.” She laughed, but there wasn't any joy in it. “You didn't have to dress up, but a woman always appreciates when a man puts in some effort. A real tie, too,” she said.
“Their prom was tonight,” Nathaniel said.
“I wish we hadn't had to interrupt it,” she said. “It was a very special night for us.”
Ephraim wondered if she and her Ephraim had slept together for the first time after their prom, like he and Jena had planned. Why did the thought of that squick him so much?
Dr. Kim regarded her analogs.
“And what are your names?” she asked slowly, like she was speaking to five-year-olds.
“Jena Kim,”
Jena said.
Her older self nodded.
“And I'm Zoe,” Zoe said.
The doctor's eyes lit up.
“Nathaniel's friend,” she said. “Thank you for coming so promptly. Thank you, all.”
“We would've been here sooner, but we had some trouble—” Zoe started.
“We should have warned you, but we weren't at all sure it was working until you confirmed it for us.”
“So what do we call you?” Jena asked.
The woman gave her a cool look. “Dr. Kim.”
“Right,” Jena said.
Ephraim cleared his throat. “Well, we've traveled a long way…” he began.
“What's going on and what can we do about it?” Zoe asked.
“Direct and to the point. I suppose you get away with a lot looking like that.” Dr. Kim patted her hair bun. “Before I explain, I need you to return the Charon device.”
Ephraim and Zoe exchanged worried looks.
“It's okay,” Nathaniel said. “We just need to run some diagnostics and sync the equipment to our database. Routine maintenance every three hundred thousand universes. You'll get them back. Right, Doc?”
“They are the property of the Everett Institute, Nathaniel,” Dr. Kim said. “You know we need them.”
Ephraim felt uneasy letting it go, but she was right. It didn't belong to him. It was a part of this universe. She had a claim to it, especially if it had belonged to the Ephraim she knew.
He dipped his hand into his breast pocket and pulled the coin out between his index and middle fingers.
He knew it wasn't magic, but it still represented freedom to him. Possibilities. Without it, he, Jena, and Zoe were all stuck here. Then again, even with it, they wouldn't be able to leave unless the LCD downstairs was switched off, which made him even more apprehensive.
Dr. Kim smiled encouragingly. Something about her expression sent a shiver down his spine. He carefully placed the coin in her open left hand, feeling her cool skin brush against his as she closed her fingers.
