The Walls of the Universe

by Paul Melko

  Instead, John said, “I’d like to think about it over the weekend if that’s okay.”

  Mr. Gushman’s smile told John that he was sure he’d bent John to his will. John went along with it, smiling back. “Yes. You may. But I need a decision on Monday.”

  John left for his next class.

  The city library was just a couple of blocks from the school. John wandered through the stacks until he found Prime at the center study desk in a row of three on the third floor. He had a dozen Findlay Heralds spread out, as well as a couple books. His backpack was open, and John saw that it was jammed with paper and folders.

  To hide his features, Prime wore a Toledo Meerkats baseball hat and sunglasses. He pulled off his glasses when he saw John, and said, “You look like crap. What happened to you?”

  “Nothing. Now what are you doing? I have to get back to the school by five. There’s a game tonight.”

  “Yeah, yeah, yeah.” Prime picked up the history book. “In every universe I’ve been in, it’s always something simple. Here George Bush raised taxes and he never got elected to a second term. Clinton beat him in ’91.” He opened the history book and pointed to the color panel of American presidents. “In my world, Bush never backed down on the taxes thing and the economy took off and he got elected to his second term. He was riding even higher when Hussein was assassinated in the middle of his second term. His son was elected in 1996.”

  John laughed. “That joker?”

  Prime scowled. “Dubya worked the national debt down to nothing. Unemployment was below three percent.”

  “It’s low here too. Clinton did a good job.”

  Prime pointed to a newspaper article he had copied. “Whitewater? Drug use? Vince Foster?” He handed the articles to John, then shook his head. “Never mind. It’s all pretty much irrelevant anyway. At least we didn’t grow up in a world where Nixon was never caught.”

  “What happened there?”

  “The Second Depression usually. Russia and the U.S. never coming to an arms agreement. Those are some totalitarian places.” He took the articles back from John. “Are there Post-it notes in this world?”

  “Yes. Of course.”

  Prime shrugged. “Sometimes there aren’t. It’s worth a fortune. And so simple.” He pulled out his notebook. “I have a hundred of them.” He opened his notebook to a picture of the MTV astronaut. “MTV?”

  “Yep.”

  “The World Wide Web?”

  “I think so.”

  “Rubik’s Cube?”

  “Never heard of it.”

  Prime checked the top of the figure with a multicolored cube. “Ah ha. That’s a big moneymaker.”

  “It is?”

  He turned the page. “Dungeons and Dragons?”

  “You mean that game where you pretend to be a wizard?”

  “That’s the one. How about Lozenos? You got that here?”

  “Never heard of it. What is it?”

  “Candy. South African diamond mines?”

  They worked through a long list of things, about three-quarters of which John had heard of, fads, toys, or inventions.

  “This is a good list to work from. Some good moneymakers on this.”

  “What are you going to do?” John asked. This was his world, and he didn’t like what he suspected Prime had in mind.

  Prime smiled. “There’s money to be made in interdimensional trade.”

  “Interdimensional trade?”

  “Not in actual goods. There’s no way I can transport enough stuff to make a profit. Too complicated. But ideas are easy to transport, and what’s in the public domain in the last universe is unheard of in the next. Rubik sold one hundred million Cubes. At ten dollars a cube, that’s a billion dollars.” He lifted up the notebook. “There are two dozen ideas in here that made hundreds of millions of dollars in other worlds.”

  “So what are you going to do?”

  Prime smiled his arrogant smile. “Not me. We. I need an agent in this world to work the deals. Who better than myself? The saying goes that you can’t be in more than one place at a time. But I can.”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “And we split it fifty-fifty.”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “Listen. It’s not stealing. These ideas have never been thought of here. The people who invented these things might not even be alive here.”

  “I never said it was stealing,” John said. “I’m just not so sure I believe you still.”

  Prime sighed. “So what’s got you so down today?”

  John said, “I may get suspended from school and kicked off the basketball and track teams.”

  “What? Why?” Prime looked genuinely concerned.

  “I beat up a kid, Ted Carson. His mother told my mother and the principal. They want me to apologize.”

  Prime was angry. “You’re not gonna, are you? I know Ted Carson. He’s a little shit. In every universe.”

  “I don’t have a choice.”

  “There’s always a choice.” Prime pulled a notebook out of his bag. “Ted Carson, huh? I have something on him.”

  John looked over Prime’s shoulder at the notebook. Each page had a newspaper clipping, words highlighted and notes at the bottom referencing other pages. One title read: “Mayor and Council Members Indicted.” The picture showed Mayor Thiessen yelling. Another article was a list of divorces granted. Prime turned the page and pointed. “Here it is. ‘Ted Carson Picked Up for Torturing a Neighbor’s Cat.’ Apparently the boy killed a dozen neighborhood animals before getting caught.” He glanced at John.

  “I’ve never heard anything about that.”

  “Then maybe he never got caught here.”

  “What are we going to do with that?” John asked. He read the article, shaking his head.

  “Grease the gears, my brother.” Prime handed John the newspaper listing of recent divorces. “Photocopy this.”

  “Why?”

  “It’s the best place to figure out who’s sleeping with who. That usually doesn’t change from one universe to the next. Speaking of which, how does Casey Nicholson look in this universe?”

  “What?”

  “Yeah. Is she a dog or a hottie? Half the time she’s pregnant in her junior year and living in a trailer park.”

  “She’s a cheerleader,” John said.

  Prime glanced at him and smiled. “You like her, don’t you? Are we dating her?”

  “No!”

  “Does she like us?”

  “Me! Not us,” John said. “And I think so. She smiles at me in class.”

  “What’s not to love about us?” Prime glanced at his watch. “Time for you to head over to the school, isn’t it?”

  “Yeah.”

  “I’ll meet you at home tonight. See ya.”

  “Don’t talk to anyone,” John said. “They’ll think it was me. Don’t get me in trouble.”

  “Don’t worry. The last thing I want to do is screw up your life here.”

  After the game John left a copy of the stats with Coach Jessick and then met his father in the parking lot.

  “Not a good game for the home team,” his father said. He wore his overalls and a John Deere hat. John realized he’d sat in the stands like that, with manure on his shoes. Soft country and western whispered tinnily from the speakers. For a moment John was embarrassed; then he remembered why he’d had to fight Ted Carson.

  “Thanks for picking me up, Dad.”

  “No problem.” He dropped the truck into gear and pulled it out of the lot. “Odd thing. I thought I saw you in the stands.”

  John glanced at his father, forced himself to be calm. “I was down keeping stats.”

  “I know; I saw. Must be my old eyes, playing tricks.”

  Had Prime not gone back to the barn? What was that bastard doing to him?

  “Gushman called.”

  John nodded in the dark of the cab. “I figured.”

  “Said you were gonna write an apology.”

&nbs
p; “I don’t want to,” John said. “But…”

  “I know. A stain on your permanent record and all.” His father turned the radio off. “I was at the U in Toledo for a semester or two. Me and college didn’t get along much. But you, Son. You can learn and do something interesting with it. Which is really what me and your mother want.”

  “Dad-”

  “Hold on a second. I’m not saying what you did to the Carson boy was wrong, but you did get caught at it. And if you get caught at something, you usually have to pay for it. Writing a letter saying something isn’t the same as believing it.”

  John nodded. “I think I’m gonna write the letter, Dad.”

  His father grunted, satisfied. “You helping with the apples tomorrow? We wait any longer and we won’t get any good ones.”

  “Yeah, I’ll help until lunch. Then I have basketball practice.”

  “Okay.”

  They sat in silence for the remainder of the trip. John was glad his father was so pragmatic.

  As they drove up to the farmhouse, John considered what he was going to do about Prime. He’d gone out in public; John was sure of it. That was too far.

  His dad pulled the truck into its spot next to the house, and John slid out of the front seat.

  “Where you going?” his dad called.

  “Check on stuff in the barn,” John replied over his shoulder. He slammed open the door. The barn was dark, except for a bulb above the center post. Prime was nowhere to be seen.

  “Where are you?” John called.

  “Up here,” he heard. There was a faint glow from the loft.

  “You went to the football game,” John said as he climbed the ladder. He expected Prime to deny it.

  “Just for a bit,” he said. “It was no big deal.”

  “My dad saw you.”

  “But he didn’t realize it was me, did he?”

  John’s anger faded just a notch. “No, no. He thought he was seeing things.”

  “See? No one will believe it even if they see us together.”

  “But…”

  “Nothing was harmed, John. Nothing,” Prime said. “And I have something else. This Ted Carson thing is about to go away.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “A bunch of cats have gone missing over there.”

  “You went out in public and talked to people?” It was worse than John thought. “Who saw-”

  “Just kids. And it was dark. No one even saw my face. Three cats this month, by the way. Ted is an animal serial killer. We can pin this on him and his mom will have to back off.”

  “I’m writing the letter of apology,” John said.

  “What? No!”

  “It’s better this way. I don’t want to screw up my future.”

  “Listen. It’ll never get any better than this. The kid is a psychopath and we can shove it in his parents’ faces!”

  “No. And listen. You have got to lay low. I don’t want you wandering around town messing up things,” John said. “Going to the library today was too much.”

  Prime smiled. “Don’t want me hitting on Casey Nicholson, huh?”

  “Stop it!” John raised his hand. “That’s it. Why don’t you just move on? Hit the next town or the next universe or whatever. Just get out of my life!”

  Prime frowned. He paused for a moment, as if considering something important. Finally, he lifted up his shirt. Under his gray sweatshirt was a shoulder harness with a thin disk the diameter of a softball attached at the center. It had a digital readout that said “7533,” three blue buttons on the front, and dials and levers on the sides.

  Prime began unstrapping the harness and said, “John, maybe it’s time you saw for yourself.”

  CHAPTER 3

  John looked at the device. It was tiny for what it was supposed to do.

  “How does it work?” he asked. John envisioned golden wires entwining black vortices of primal energy, X-ray claws tearing at the walls of the universe as if they were tissue.

  “I don’t know how it works,” John Prime said, irritated. “I just know how to work it.” He pointed to the digital readout. “This is your universe number.”

  “Seven-five-three-three?”

  “My universe is 7433.” He pointed to the first blue button. “This increments the universe counter. See?” He pressed the button once and the number changed to 7534. “This one decrements the counter.” He pressed the second blue button and the counter flipped back to 7533. He pointed to a metal lever on the side of the disk. “Once you’ve dialed in your universe, you pull the lever and-pow!-you’re in the next universe.”

  “It looks like a slot machine,” John said.

  Prime pursed his lips. “It’s the product of a powerful civilization.”

  “Does it hurt?” John asked.

  “I don’t feel a thing. Sometimes my ears pop because the weather’s a little different. Sometimes I drop a few centimeters or my feet are stuck in the dirt.”

  “What’s this other button for?”

  Prime shook his head. “I don’t know. I’ve pressed it, but it doesn’t seem to do anything. There’s no owner’s manual, you know?” He grinned. “Wanna try it out?”

  More than anything, John wanted to try it. Not only would he know for sure if Prime was full of crap, but he would get to see another universe. The idea was astounding. To travel, to be free of all this… detritus in his life. Ten more months in Findlay was a lifetime. Here in front of him was adventure.

  “Show me.”

  Prime frowned. “I can’t. It takes twelve hours to recharge the device after it’s used. If I left now, I’d be in some other universe for a day before I could come back.”

  “I don’t want to be gone a day! I have chores. I have to write a letter.”

  “It’s okay. I’ll cover for you here.”

  “No way!”

  “I can do it. No one would know. I’ve been you for as long as you have.”

  “No. There’s no way I’m leaving for twelve hours with you in control of my life.”

  Prime shook his head. “How about a test run? Tomorrow you’re doing what?”

  “Picking apples with my dad.”

  “I’ll do it instead. If your dad doesn’t notice a thing, then you take the trip and I’ll cover for you. If you leave tomorrow afternoon, you can be back on Sunday and not miss a day of school.” Prime opened his backpack wider. “And to make the whole trip a lot more fun, here’s some spending money.” He pulled out a stack of twenty-dollar bills.

  “Where did you get that?” John had never seen so much money. His bank account had no more than three hundred dollars in it.

  Prime handed him the stack of cash. The twenties were crisp, the paper smooth-sticky. “There’s got to be two thousand dollars here.”

  “Yep.”

  “It’s from another universe, isn’t it? This is counterfeit.”

  “It’s real money. And no one in this podunk town will be able to tell me that it’s not.” Prime pulled a twenty out of his own pocket. “This is from your universe. See any differences?”

  John took the first twenty off the stack and compared it to the crumpled bill. They looked identical to him.

  “How’d you get it?”

  “Investments.” Prime’s smile was ambiguous.

  “Did you steal it?”

  Prime shook his head. “Even if I did steal it, the police looking for it are in another universe.”

  John forced aside a wave of panic. Prime had his fingerprints, his looks, his voice. He knew everything there was to know about John. Prime could rob a bank or kill someone and then escape to another universe, leaving John holding the bag. All the evidence of such a crime would point to him, and there was no way he could prove that he was innocent.

  Would Prime do such a thing? He had called John his brother. In a sense they were identical brothers. And Prime was letting John use his device, in effect stranding him in this universe. That took trust.

  “T
wenty-four hours,” Prime said. “Think of it as a vacation. A break from all this shit with Ted Carson.”

  The lure of seeing another universe was too strong. “You pick apples with my father tomorrow. If he doesn’t suspect anything, then maybe I’ll take the trip.”

  “You won’t regret it, John.”

  “But you have got to promise not to mess anything up!”

  Prime nodded. “That’s the last thing I’d want to do, John.”

  Prime was sprawled in the loft. A hay straw clung to the side of his face.

  John nudged him in the thigh.

  He jerked awake clutching at his chest as if he were having a heart attack. No, John realized, Prime was reaching for the device, still strapped to his chest under his clothes.

  “Damn, it’s early,” Prime said, brushing at his hair.

  “Don’t let my dad hear you cursing,” John said.

  “Right, no cursing.” Prime stood, stretching. “Apple picking? I haven’t done that… in a while.”

  “It couldn’t have been that long ago,” John said. “A year? You’ll remember soon enough.”

  “Yeah.”

  Prime peered out a small window. John could hear his father puttering out to the orchard on the tractor.

  “What’s up between you and your dad? Anything heavy?” Prime asked.

  John took off his coat and handed it to Prime, taking his in return. John shook his head. “We talked last night about the Carson thing. He wanted me to write the letter.”

  “So that’s it. What about your mother?”

  “She was pissed with me before. She still may be. We haven’t talked since Thursday.”

  “Anything happening this afternoon?” Prime took a pencil out and started jotting things down.

  “Nothing until tomorrow. Church, then chores. Muck the stalls. Homework. But I’ll do that.”

  “What’s due for Monday?”

  “Reading for physics. Essay for English on Gerard Manley Hopkins. Problem set in calculus. That’s it.”

  “What’s your class schedule like?”

  John began to tell him, then shook his head. “Why do you need to know that? I’ll be back.”

  “In case someone asks.”