A Problematic Paradox

by Eliot Sappingfield

  “Okay, I’ll blame you, then,” Hypatia said.

  There was a moment of faint panic until I noted that Hypatia’s eyes had gone a humorous-looking shade of violet.

  A few minutes later, Hypatia and I were sitting at the kitchen table with two mugs of Hypatia’s extra-instant tea, waiting for the Chaperone to respond to our message.

  “But how could she have connected to your bracelet? Nothing gets in or out.”

  “I don’t understand, either,” I said. “But you were here. You know, too, don’t you?”

  Hypatia shuddered. “That smell . . . People talk about it, but . . . ugh! It feels like it’s still in my nose. I kind of want to snort some hand sanitizer.”

  “What did it feel like when she was making you do things? Do you remember?”

  She took on a kind of philosophical expression. “I was already going to get the knife before I stopped to think about why I was getting it. I do remember thinking that I didn’t want to get cut, so I’d cut my hair, because that was allowed.”

  I wanted to ask more about the experience, but there was a faint buzz, and the Chaperone coughed politely to announce her presence.

  Hypatia told her what had happened, and then I had to explain the whole thing from my point of view, answering some rather pointed questions and retrieving the corpse of the Happybear Bracelet for her to examine. After that, the Chaperone established a voice link to Dr. Plaskington, who was not happy to be woken but still wanted to know everything that had happened, first from the Chaperone, then from me, and finally from Hypatia.

  This was the point, incidentally, that I decided to write everything down, from the beginning. Telling a story over and over again gets tiresome.

  Dr. Plaskington was lecturing us on the impossibility of our communicating to an Old One through the gap when I figured out what had happened.

  “I understand that it might seem like you spoke to an Old One, but the simple fact is that to have done so is a physical impossibility,” Dr. Plaskington’s disembodied voice was saying. “So we must restrict ourselves to—”

  “She’s here,” I said. “Tabbabitha is here at the School somewhere. That’s why she wanted to know my address or coordinates. She’s close enough to find us. Maybe she was counting on causing an emergency with Hypatia and seeing where the ambulance went.”

  “Patently absurd!” Dr. Plaskington said.

  The Chaperone clicked dismissively. “A very low probability exists that . . .”

  Hypatia shook her head. “I don’t think that’s possible.”

  “Why?” I shouted. “How can you all be so certain?”

  “Because they have a hive mind,” Hypatia said. “Remember? It means they are constantly connected, but it also means they have to be constantly connected. An Old One couldn’t connect to the rest of her species while inside a gap like ours, so she would either die or fall into hibernation before long.”

  “Okay,” I said. “So that just means she doesn’t have much time before she does something. I know it’s crazy to think she got in somehow, but you felt her yourself, didn’t you, Hypatia?”

  She nodded reluctantly. I could tell she didn’t like disagreeing with the principal. “I did. And I can’t really explain why, but it felt like she was close by when it was happening.”

  Dr. Plaskington was unhappy. “Bah! Now I wish I could dock your grades. The gap has been in place uninterrupted for almost fifty years. During that time, not so much as a single molecule has passed into or out of this town without our knowing it. Wormholes can’t bypass it, basic teleportation can’t get around it, and interdimensional creatures can’t cheat it. Full stop. It’s time both of you went to bed and quit indulging each other’s paranoid fantasies.”

  “What do you think happened, then?” I asked.

  Dr. Plaskington thought it over. “I do not know. If I had to come up with an explanation on short notice, I’d go with the simplest: that you, Nikola, attacked your roommate with a knife for reasons we don’t understand and either convinced her it didn’t happen or that she should pretend it didn’t happen.”

  Hypatia shot to her feet in anger. “That’s ridiculous! Nikola would never—”

  “I agree!” Dr. Plaskington interrupted. “It is ridiculous. I think the real truth is probably much more complicated than that. But . . . if a bunch of parents start calling my office tomorrow asking about an Old One attack, I’m going to have to use the only explanation I have at the moment. Do you understand?”

  We understood, all right.

  13

  BRADLEY AND MONICA PAY A VISIT TO HER MAJESTY’S SUMMER COTTAGE

  The next day was to be my first full day at the School. To make the occasion extra special, I also got to worry about an Old One who was out to get me and who was possibly hiding somewhere in town and the fact that I’d nearly gotten my only friend murdered the night before. The way I looked at it, I had two options: I could hide out at home and skip class, which would probably get me suspended for truancy, or I could suck it up and go to class, and at least I’d have a ton of witnesses who would swear I wasn’t crazy if Tabbabitha made a move. Besides, even if I was right about Tabbabitha wandering the School Town, there were other countermeasures that could stop her if she got any ideas. Maybe Dr. Plaskington was right, and I was slightly crazy. I’d hate that, but it would be better than an Old One standing over my shoulder.

  Because I’d had so many problems and it was basically my first day, I wanted everything to go off without a hitch. This was a bad idea. One of the most important things I learned that year was that irony is a scientifically predictable force. I did a whole independent study on it for Advanced Chaos Probability class. The rule works like this: the more important it is that something not get messed up, the higher the odds that it will be. A good example of this in action is how often space missions end in disaster, despite everything being checked dozens of times by the most capable people on the planet. A simple four-dollar bolt breaking and destroying a fifty-million-dollar rocket is so ironic it’s almost guaranteed to happen every so often.

  The only way to make a space mission even more dangerous would be to brag in public that the rocket could not possibly fail. Probability scientists call that the Titanic Hubris Principle—bragging about how nothing could go wrong almost guarantees that something will. A good example of that would be how Dr. Plaskington talked about the gap.

  Hypatia did me the favor of waking me up at 5:15, even though we had been up until almost 2:00 AM and didn’t have to be in math class until 8:30. I informed her that if she ever woke me up at 5:15 again that I’d happily put flowers on her grave as soon as they let me out of jail. For some reason, Hypatia did not see the humor in my murder joke. She did, however, agree to let me sleep in and didn’t wake me until 5:30, 5:45, 6:00, and finally 6:30.

  After I’d given up, I asked, “What is so gosh-darned important that we need to get to school an hour early?”

  She hemmed and hawed, something about getting a jump on the day. In my book, getting a jump on the day means getting up five minutes before class. That will get your adrenaline pumping. I showered and accidentally discovered that my genetically tailored shampoo tasted as good as it smelled.

  I had been concerned about my new clothes but was pleasantly surprised by what I found in my closet. The choices were actually not bad. Apart from a large gray sweatshirt emblazoned with a kitten and a ball of yarn, everything in there was something I’d wear voluntarily. The kitten shirt might even be acceptable if I wanted to get out of attending some sort of social function. (Nobody complains when someone in a kitten sweatshirt goes home early.)

  That day’s wardrobe consisted of a black T-shirt that said THIS IS MY BLACK T-SHIRT in white letters, a long shiny green skirt, and—just to see how they went over, my own personal illuminated socks: they had miniature hydrogen cells so they were able to stay lit for a
month at a time. Once I was ready, I grabbed my bag and the books I’d need and met a very impatient Hypatia in the kitchen.

  I have to confess: I was pretty dang excited about using wormhole travel for the first time. I mean, it’s a portal between two places in space that have been folded so they’re basically adjacent. How cool is that? A week before, I hadn’t even known whether they were possible or just something dreamed up by scientists who didn’t think black holes were weird enough. I promised myself that I wouldn’t geek out about it too obviously.

  I threw open the door. There before me was the cool morning air, the smell of baking bread, and the same row of downtown shops I’d seen the night before.

  “Now, don’t be nervous. There are just a few rules to keep you safe,” Hypatia said. “First of all . . .”

  I appreciated her concern but also wanted her to know I didn’t need comforting. I put on a casual, unimpressed expression and said, “Don’t worry, honey, I got this.”

  With that, I stepped confidently through the portal. There was a certain weirdness about going through. You know that moment when an elevator starts moving up and it feels like you’re being pulled toward the floor? It was like that, but from all directions at the same time. It wasn’t unpleasant, just . . . a bit unsettling. There was a bit of a step down, so I carefully found the pavement with one foot, got a stable hold, pulled the other decisively through, and planted it just apart from the other.

  “Ha!” I said, turning around to grin at Hypatia. “That’s how it’s done. Not a scratch on—”

  I would have finished that sentence if I had not been plowed into by a bicycle at that moment. It was nobody’s fault, really. The thing I should have known about wormhole doors (if Hypatia had bothered to warn me) is that they’re only visible from the side you come out of. From one side, an observer could see the inside of our kitchen back home, but from the other side an observer would have seen nothing but an empty sidewalk. So the bike rider, who was coming from the opposite direction, had no idea they would be running into a perfectly solid and existing girl up until a fraction of a second before it happened. It also didn’t help that they were traveling at roughly one-third the speed of light, by my estimation.

  I was pretty upset—here I’d spent almost three minutes picking out the perfect outfit and now I was wearing a bike as an accessory. It didn’t even match my socks. “Why don’t you watch where you’re going?” I shouted at whoever had been riding it.

  The rider had been a boy who was sprawled on the curb not far from his bike and me. He didn’t look hurt at all—the jerk. “How am I supposed to watch out for someone coming out of a wormhole? You literally came out of nowhere!”

  I recognized that voice. I straightened up, removed my foot from a bike wheel, and turned to give Warner a glare.

  “I should have known it would be you. Well, that’s what you get when you ride your bike so fast down the”—I looked at the markings on the pavement—“down the bike lane. Look, whose lane this is doesn’t matter. The point is that you’re clearly drunk, you almost killed me, and you probably owe me a lot of money. I’ll settle out of court right now for five dollars.”

  A silvery parahuman girl who had been with him laughed in a way I did not care for, as if I were telling a joke.

  “I don’t have five bucks on me. Sorry,” he said, not sounding sorry at all. “But I’m not drunk.”

  “Listen up, buster,” I said. “This is America. And in America, when something happens, it means you owe me money. Pay up or prepare to hear from my lawyer.”

  He smiled, no longer taking me seriously, which upset me even more.

  The girl tapped his shoulder with a long, delicate finger and mumbled something.

  Warner’s eyes lit up. “How about this?” he said, and handed me a brilliant golden coin. It shone in the morning sunlight and felt unusually heavy and warm to the touch.

  “Is this the money you use here? It feels like real gold,” I said.

  He looked at me like I was an alien. “Don’t be so normal. Walking around with actual gold coins would make no economic sense. What kind of exchange rate would we use? It’s one of those gold dollar coins with George Washington on it. But if you look closely, you’ll see I’ve replaced the eagle on the back with a dog going to the bathroom.”

  I flipped it over, and sure enough, there was a little schnauzer sitting on a toilet flipping pensively through a copy of the New York Post. “I find this payment sufficient,” I said. “You’re off the hook.”

  “Thank goodness,” he said.

  The girl sighed with mock relief and wiped her brow, which made me want to press charges again. Both of them were trying not to laugh. “What’s so funny?” I demanded as I finally managed to detach my left sock from the bike’s chain.

  She only grinned and started picking up the things that had spilled out of my bag while Warner saw to his own things.

  “And who are you?” I asked.

  She smiled prettily at me and held out a hand. “Majorana Fermion.”

  She must have been Dirac’s sister, I realized. The resemblance was uncanny. Their faces were practically identical, and her hair was the same reflective silver, but where Dirac’s was spiky and disordered, hers was utterly straight. If she stood still, you could probably use it as a mirror. I took her hand and tried to smile back. “Nikola Kross. I’m new here.”

  “You don’t say,” she said sarcastically as she lifted me to my feet as if I were no heavier than a paper bag.

  “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  She shook her head. “Well, there is the fact that you thought we used actual gold coins and you don’t know how to come out of a wormhole. You’ve probably been here all your life, and I just haven’t noticed.”

  “That’s possible,” I said, seeing Warner was attempting to pedal his bike without the chain attached. “You two aren’t very observant.”

  I would have started wondering where Hypatia was had she not chosen that moment to come tearing through the wormhole, bearing a cellophane bag stuffed with first aid supplies. She made a point of shouting “WORMHOLE!” before she hopped out.

  “That’s how you do it,” said Majorana. “It’s like shouting ‘fore’ in golf.”

  Hypatia was on the verge of some kind of mental collapse, it seemed. “I used up all my first aid supplies yesterday, so I got everything I could find that might help. Where are you hurt? Can you walk? I can call an ambulance if we need one,” she said without taking a breath.

  I held my hands up. “It’s okay! I got better!”

  “Oh, okay,” Hypatia said, sounding a little crestfallen. “Hey, Majorana.”

  “Hey, Hype,” she said.

  To me, Hypatia said, “We need to run if you want to have time to eat and go over today’s schedule. You only have two classes with me and then you’re on your own till dinner.”

  “You can join us. We’re meeting Bob and some others at the Event Horizon now,” Majorana said.

  We agreed, and I offered to help Warner with his bike chain, but Majorana insisted she do it. “I brought tools,” she said, wiggling those long fingers at me.

  “If you want, I could . . . ,” I began, but Majorana merely flipped her hand dismissively in my direction without even looking. Like the way a rich person dismisses a butler. In my head, I put Majorana in my Not Sure list. She carried herself in that airy I don’t care about anything way of girls who act like they’re better than everyone to hide their insecurities. Either that or she really was that confident and freewheeling, in which case, I probably didn’t like her anyway. I didn’t care for her calling Hypatia “Hype,” either.

  The group of students we were joining had commandeered most of the tables on the patio and had lined them up into one long table. In addition to Tom and Ultraviolet, I spotted Rubidia, Bob, and a two-year-old Fluorine. As we approached,
their conversation died almost completely—a sure sign that one of us had been the subject.

  “Hi, everyone,” I said, waving in a manner that was corny at best. My normal rule for school social interaction was to make myself aloof and distant so people would leave me alone. I decided to use a different approach. For once, I wasn’t the only freak, so I was determined to try being friendly at some point. It was already proving difficult—I was still a bit sore at Rubidia for shunning me after Quantum Mechanics.

  “A spy?” said Bob. He was speaking to Ultraviolet, who was letting young Fluorine sit on her shoulders—apparently, she and baby Fluorine got along just fine. “I think that’s unlikely. Sure, she’s been exposed to one of the Old Ones, but I’m sure she’s okay. Dr. Plaskington has ways of detecting brainmelt, you know.”

  “I’m not a spy,” I said to him. “Do you welcome all new students that way?” Then I smiled, because spies don’t smile.

  Bob looked at Ultraviolet a little longer, then peered over her shoulder at the path Hypatia and I had come from just a minute before. “She’s coming. Don’t let her hear you talk like that, Ultra. She’s had a bad enough time.”

  I’d forgotten Bob was the boy who could see a little way forward and backward in time all at once. I could understand a little more clearly why Hypatia had described it as a disability. He was still having the conversation the rest of them had dropped once we were in earshot. Close-up, I could see that apart from the blueness, he looked relatively human. Sure, his nostrils were a little large, and his ears were slightly pointed, and his red hair was a little too red, but all in all, it seemed that low-budget science-fiction TV shows had gotten the look of at least one kind of alien dead-on. All the students stared in a very uncomfortable silence as Bob, who was running about thirty seconds slow, “watched” me walk across the street. Thirty-seconds-ago Nikola was about halfway across the street when he leaned over toward Tom and mumbled, “She’s kinda cute. I like the glasses.”