by E. C. Myers
“Looks like we're just in time for the party,” Dr. Kim said. Her eyes fell on Nathan. “Terrific. Just what we needed. Another Nathaniel.”
“Hi, Dr. Kim,” Ephraim said.
“If you're here to beg for a place in my universe, it's too late,” Dr. Kim said. She tucked her hands into her lab coat pockets.
Ephraim looked at his analog standing beside her. “This isn't the Ephraim you want. I know you were out looking for his replacement.”
The analog fumbled the coin. He recovered it and turned to her. “That's not what you—”
“Shut up,” she said. “Both of you. All of you. I won't listen to any more of this.”
“I figured as much,” Ephraim said. “But I know someone you will listen to.”
“Oh?” Dr. Kim's eyebrows shot up.
“Your Ephraim's still alive, Dr. Kim.”
Her expression was unreadable. “That isn't possible.”
“Nothing's impossible in a multiverse.” Ephraim nudged Nathan with his elbow.
Nathan pulled a small remote control from his pocket and pointed it behind him.
Scott's face appeared on every monitor in the lab. His voice came from hidden speakers all around the room, like the voice of God: “Jena, I love you. I know I tell you that every day, but I want it on the official record.”
This time, the expression of shock remained on Dr. Kim's face. But they had her attention.
“Who wants popcorn?” Nathan asked.
“I've made a terrible mistake. I haven't told Jena or Nathan what I'm planning to do. If you two are listening to this, then I'm sorry. I don't know if I'll be able to get back to you, but I'm going to do whatever I can to fix this. I hope you can forgive me.”
Ephraim frowned. Nathan had taken some creative liberties with Scott's recording. But Ephraim had to give his friend credit: He'd edited hours of footage into a “Best of Seattle Below” highlights reel in record time on the terminal in Nathaniel's office. It was a bit too heavy on what Nathan called “money shots” of the transhumans' Coherence Engine and Scott's console, but the narration got the point across.
“Most parallel universes are meant to be fleeting. They come into existence when individual actions diverge at a quantum decision point, but they often disappear or merge back into each other, according to the decisions with the greater probability,” Scott said onscreen.
“We aren't supposed to have this technology. It's risky to try to save too many. Some universes will probably stick around anyway, once there's enough room in the buffer. When we erase the information we've been saving and remove the coheron drives from the multiverse, it'll all be up to chance—as it should be. The universes may simply disappear, or they could merge in unpredictable ways. But that's better than wiping the slate completely clean and pushing all of us to the Omega Point.”
Scott had carefully outlined the plan for Ephraim and Nathan back in the transhumans' universe, and now for everyone else in the video recording. Nathaniel had a hard expression on his face as he watched, but Dr. Kim looked pale and a little lost.
“As soon as you get back to Crossroads, here's what you have to do. Choose the universe you're going to keep and queue the rest for deletion in the LCD mainframe. Wipe all the backups. Destroy the other Charon device.
“Use the remaining controller to set the coordinates to the universe you already selected, then erase the controller's memory; the coin will hold the coordinates until you touch it.” Scott handed Ephraim the token onscreen.
“He had another coin?” Dr. Kim said. Her eyes were riveted on Scott's face. She slowly walked toward the screen on the wall opposite the elevator.
“Exactly an hour after you get back there, wipe the LCD and disable it.”
Ephraim checked his watch. “Thirty-nine minutes.”
“Destroy it if you can. Take the coin and whoever's coming with you and get the hell out of there. When you get to your destination universe, destroy the controller and the coin. That's very important, Ephraim, if you want that universe to branch and rebuild a multiverse from that template.”
“Wouldn't it be easier to stay in the same universe as Crossroads?” Ephraim asked.
“No. You should go to a universe where parallel universes are only a theory,” Scott said. “Or someone else will come up with their own coherence drive one day and this will just start all over again.”
“How do we choose who gets saved?” Nathaniel asked, a beat before Nathan asked the same question onscreen. They glanced at each other.
“That'll be the hard part, especially for you, Ephraim. The universe you go to can't have more than one analog of each of you in it. That universe could never make a stable multiverse. I can't predict what might happen if it branches with multiple versions of you or anyone else, but it won't be good. We might end up with other problems down the road.”
“That's what I was afraid of,” Jena said, looking at Zoe. They both looked at Ephraim.
“But if this works, and I think it will, it will put the last universe and its offshoots back on track, buying the human race millennia to become whatever it wants. That's all we're buying ourselves: a chance.”
Scott's face faded to a shot of Ephraim's face. Nathan zoomed out and aimed the camera from low to show Ephraim standing on the Coherence Engine platform with electricity crackling dramatically above his head. It was the only flattering image of him that Nathan had ever captured.
The camera moved as Nathan climbed the steps to the platform and took his position beside Ephraim, just before they were zapped back to Crossroads. The shaky camera frame focused on Scott at the control panel in the distance, a tiny, lonely figure.
“Energize, Mr. Scott,” Nathan said on-camera, in his best Shatner impression.
The sound fizzed and popped. The image exploded into colorful static and broken pixels as Seattle Below disappeared with Scott. The screen faded to black.
Ephraim saw the thoughtful look on Dr. Kim's face reflected in the dark screen.
She reached into her pocket for her silver cigarette case and lighter. She put a cigarette into her mouth but didn't light it.
“He left me,” Dr. Kim said.
Nathan pressed the power button on his camera's remote. The 3D video feed of the atrium reappeared on the screen. Dr. Kim leaned closer to it, but she wasn't looking down at the LCD. She was looking up, at the blue balloon floating by the skylight just above her head.
Doug slipped his hand out of Ephraim's and toddled toward her. Ephraim grabbed for him, but the little boy was too fast.
“Doug!” he whispered loudly. “No!”
Doug stopped next to Dr. Kim and stared at the balloon with her. He reached up and tugged on her white coat. She looked down at him.
“Why are you so sad?” he asked. “You lose a balloon, too?”
She knelt next to Doug and took his hands in hers.
“Sort of,” she said. She hugged Doug.
“I know you're not my mommy,” he said. “You're mean.”
Ephraim winced.
“I was upset because I don't have a little boy like you,” she said. “I was too jealous of what other people have.”
“Mommy gave me that balloon. You can have it,” Doug said.
“Thanks, sweetie.” Dr. Kim looked at the screen. “But I can't get to it either. It's too far away.”
She straightened and put her hand on Doug's head. “Eph can be such an idiot sometimes,” she said.
The boy ducked away from her and stared at the screen on his own.
“Jena, we have to let it all go,” Nathaniel said. “It's time.”
Her shoulders slumped in defeat. “I won't try to control the outcome. Realities can merge or disappear as they will. The way they were always meant to.”
Ephraim cleared his throat. “We need your access codes, Dr. Kim,” he said.
“No.” She turned around and looked Ephraim in the eyes. “I'll take care of the Large Coheron Drive myself.”
“All right,” Ephraim said.
“Eph?” Zoe said.
“We have to trust each other if we're going to get through this,” he said. “You heard Scott's plan. There's still a lot to do. We have to work together to meet his deadline.”
Dr. Kim handed Nathaniel the controller from her pocket. “I'm going down to the control room now,” she said. “How much time do we have?”
Ephraim checked his watch. “Half an hour.”
“I'll disable the LCD. You do whatever you have to. Whatever you want.” She waved a hand dismissively and headed toward the elevator.
“What about me?” Ephraim's analog asked.
“What about you?” Dr. Kim brushed past him into the open elevator. The doors closed and whisked her down to ground level. The analog grimaced.
Nathaniel looked at the controller in his hands. “Okay, I'll dismantle this. Jena, Zoe, can you two work on deleting the backup files? Hugh and Ephraim will queue up the universes for deletion.”
“Ahem,” Ephraim's analog said.
“What is it, Two?” Ephraim asked.
The analog shot Ephraim an annoyed look. “I'm not a number,” he said. “I have a name.”
“No, but you do need a nickname,” Nathan said. “Ephraim and Scott are both taken. How about…Dick?”
“No,” Dick said.
“I think it suits you,” Ephraim said.
“You don't mind, do you, Dick?” Jena asked.
“I do mind. Stop calling me that.”
“Oh, this makes it so much easier to talk. Dick is a lovely nickname,” Jena said.
“It isn't even remotely related to Ephraim,” Dick said.
Hugh clapped a hand on Dick's shoulder. “My condolences. I know what it's like to get stuck with a poor nickname. You'll get used to it.”
“I hate all of you right now,” Dick said. “I just wanted to help.”
Nathaniel nodded toward Doug. “Take care of the kid.”
Dick rolled his eyes, but he wandered over to stand next to Doug at the monitor.
“Ow!” Dick said. “The brat pinched me.”
Hugh typed in some commands on the terminal. A list of coordinates scrolled down the screen, organized by date. There were thousands of entries. Hugh highlighted them all.
“We're supposed to leave one universe,” Ephraim said.
“Which?” Hugh asked.
“That's the question,” Ephraim said.
“Shall I pick one at random?”
“Scott said it should be one that doesn't know about parallel universes. The only ones we know for sure where the multiverse is only a theory is my universe and Zoe's,” Ephraim said.
“And mine,” Hugh said. “It isn't even a theory there. If I never publish my paper, maybe it won't even be that much.”
“Good point. Pull it up.”
Hugh scrolled through the list, looking for the coordinates to his universe.
Jena and Zoe arrived. Zoe joined Ephraim, and Jena leaned over Hugh, looking at his screen.
“We erased the backups,” Zoe said. “And reformatted the servers, just to be sure.”
“Time?” Jena asked.
“Fifteen minutes,” Ephraim said.
“Guys!” Dick called from one of the monitors displaying the atrium. “Ephraim!”
“Does it ever not feel weird to hear yourself?” Ephraim asked.
“No,” Jena and Zoe said. They sighed.
They went over to see what was going on. Nathaniel was already at the monitor, looking down at the LCD alongside Dick. Doug was jumping up and down excitedly.
“Dr. Kim's up to something,” Dick said.
Ephraim pressed his forehead to the glass and watched as the LCD began rotating and electricity crackled along its frame. A faint, transparent image shimmered into view in the center of the ring, with the disc spinning so quickly it looked like a solid ball. He saw Scott standing on the other side of the portal. Dr. Kim walked under the statue of Atlas. She vanished.
“Where'd she go?” Jena asked.
“To Scott,” Nathan said.
“Wow, that's romantic,” Zoe said.
“What a waste,” Dick said. “Isn't the transhumans' universe done for? She's too hot to die.”
“See? Your nickname's perfect for you,” Jena said. “Dick.”
“That was sweet and all, but Dr. Kim said she would destroy the LCD,” Ephraim said. “Now one of us has to get down there to—”
“It isn't over.” Dick pointed down at the atrium.
The group watched as the rotating disc of the LCD picked up speed. It was sparking now, the disc glowing white-hot at its center.
“Uh. We're safe in here, right?” Nathan asked.
“This place is practically an impenetrable fortress,” Nathaniel said. “I designed the shielding myself.”
Nathan glanced at his analog skeptically, then took a few steps away from the wall separating them from the runaway machine below.
They heard a horrendous tearing sound, an agony of rent metal, and the frame of the LCD started to buckle.
“It's melting,” Jena said.
One of the metal rings broke away from the machine. It careened at high velocity and ricocheted off the walls, rising five stories before clattering back down to the ground and wobbling to a stop. They felt dull thuds in the floor from each impact, and the wall-mounted monitor shook from the force.
The second ring shot out horizontally and slammed into the steelplated wall on the opposite wall, which crumpled inward. It stuck there for a moment, quivering, before it tumbled down to the cobblestones, bent into a rough crescent.
“Huh,” Nathaniel said.
Doug clapped his hands and laughed.
The disc suddenly catapulted straight up into the air, turning over and over itself, still glowing white-hot. It flipped past them before hitting the skylight and breaking out of the atrium. Glass rained down, glinting in the noon sun like a shower of diamonds. Bricks and chunks of metal crumbled down from the shattered edges of the skylight. Something hit the camera, and the image cut off.
Nathaniel glanced up nervously. “I didn't reinforce the roof. I didn't expect the LCD to drop on us.”
Ephraim ran to the monitor around the right corner and saw Zoe head for the one around the left.
The monitor facing Dr. Kim's office blinked the gray message “Signal Lost” over and over. He kept going around the next corner just as Zoe arrived from the opposite direction. The monitor facing the elevator still worked. The camera was tilted at a forty-five-degree angle, and snow dotted the picture, but he could see what was happening on the other side of the shielded wall.
“Over here!” they said.
The disc shot back down through the hole above the atrium, still turning over and over.
It hit the ground on its edge, a few feet in front of Atlas, and embedded itself three feet into the ground with a deafening crack that reverberated through the atrium and made the building tremble around them.
“What are the odds of that?” Nathaniel asked.
Hugh pulled a pad from his breast pocket and started scribbling calculations.
Jena poked him in the side with her elbow. “Rhetorical question,” she said.
The frame of the LCD was twisted and warped, like the ribs of a mighty beast. But Atlas himself amazingly still stood, his burden gone at last. His arms were raised not to carry a heavy weight but in triumph. Blue electricity arced between his outstretched hands and flickered along his bronze biceps before fading in the bright sunlight.
“She really did it,” Zoe said. “I didn't think she would.”
“Too bad she destroyed it ten minutes too early,” Ephraim said. “With the LCD gone, we'd better get a move on and hope that other universes don't merge with this one before we can purge them. One working Charon device isn't going to protect all of us.”
The group studied the list of universes Hugh had called up on his screen.
“These two are
ours,” Zoe said, pointing out two coordinates that differed only by a couple of digits. “There's Hugh's. This is the one we're in, and this is where Dr. Kim went to be with Scott.” She glanced at Dick. “We don't know where Dick came from, though.”
“That can't be helped now,” Ephraim said.
“Nice,” Dick said.
“Which one do we keep?” Zoe said.
“I have a better question,” Dick said. “Which of us are going there?”
“Oh, yeah. Only one of each of us can go,” Jena said.
“What if one of our analogs is already in that universe?” Zoe asked.
They all looked at each other awkwardly.
Nathaniel broke the silence. “Hugh and Doug are a given, because there's only one of them. But there's a pair of each of us. Two Scotts, two Kims, and two Mackenzies.”
“Nathan and Nathaniel are different enough that they might be okay in the same universe,” Zoe said.
“I wouldn't risk it. He's younger, so he gets to go,” Nathaniel said.
“This sucks,” Ephraim said.
“Rock, Paper, Scissors?” Dick asked.
“That won't work,” Ephraim said.
“Why not?” Dick asked.
Ephraim held up his fist. Dick copied his motion, and together they counted it out. “One, two, three!” On three, Ephraim flattened his hand—and so did Dick.
“Paper,” Dick said.
“Again.”
This time, on three they both shaped scissors with their fingers. Then paper again. Rock. Rock. Scissors.
“I see how it is,” Dick said. “I know! Why don't we try ‘Rock, Paper, Scissors, Gun’?”
“Rock, Paper, Scissors, Gun?” Nathan asked. “I guess gun would—”
Dick drew a small gun from his pocket.
“Oh…” Nathan looked at Ephraim. “That's why I couldn't find the gun you said was in Nathaniel's office.”
Nathaniel glared at Zoe. “This is why you don't bring firearms to Crossroads. When has a gun solved anything?”
“There's a first time for everything,” Dick said. “If I kill Ephraim, there'll only be one of us. Problem solved.”
Ephraim grabbed Doug and pulled him behind him.
