The Walls of the Universe

by Paul Melko

“Everything.”

  John said no more, but his mind churned over their last argument, his last view of Casey. Not now, he told himself. It was too complicated, too wrong.

  But when he left Henry and Grace to go to Dynamics, he drove past Casey’s dorm and parked in the nearest commuter lot. Instead of stopping and calling her from the lobby, he walked on to class.

  On the way back, after a lecture on rigid body torque, John paused again in front of her dorm. It was nearly five in the afternoon. She was likely to be studying or getting dinner. If he had really wanted to talk with her, he should have stopped by before class. Now it was too late.

  “I’m an idiot,” he whispered to himself, and headed toward his car.

  “John?”

  He turned. Casey was standing three meters behind him on the sidewalk with two other female students John didn’t know. They peered at him curiously.

  “Hi, Casey.”

  “What are…? How are you doing?”

  He shrugged. “Busy.”

  “I hear. Grace keeps me up-to-date, and I read all the newspaper articles.”

  He was full of words and not sure where to start. The two friends, eyeing him as if he were a toad, didn’t help.

  “Listen…”

  “Yeah.”

  “You want to go to dinner?”

  “Casey,” one of the women said. “Don’t you have-”

  “It’s okay, Sheryl,” she said. To John, she said, “Let’s go.”

  It was easier than he expected to tell her the truth. And far easier to wake up next to her the next morning in his apartment.

  “I’m not saying I believe it,” she said, propped up on one elbow.

  “Then why are you here?” John said.

  “Because you clearly believe it and you think keeping it from me is what drove me away.”

  “Didn’t it?”

  “Yes, but I need to decide if the secret of cross-universe travel is any different from the secret of harboring a paranoid delusion of cross-universe travel,” she said.

  John smirked. “Henry and Grace believe me.”

  “Yes, smart people can behave irrationally. Insane people can be incredibly smart.”

  “We have a device. We’ve taken it apart.”

  “Does it work?” she asked.

  “Yes!”

  “Have Grace and Henry seen it work?”

  “Uh, no. I’ve seen it work.”

  “So your experience is your only evidence.”

  “Charboric and Visgrath know.”

  “Who witnessed your conversations with those two?”

  “Uh, no one.”

  “So you see my dilemma?”

  “Not really.”

  “Can I still love you if you’re a psychopath?”

  “Is paranoia really a psychosis? It’s more of a neurosis. And everyone has neuroses.”

  “No, I think dedicating your life to your delusion is a psychosis.”

  “It’s brought prosperity.”

  “So pinball is part of the psychosis. I assumed it was just a good idea you had that you had to justify due to an inferiority complex.”

  “I do not have an inferiority complex. I’m very good at most things I do.”

  Casey laughed. “You’re a very attractive psychopath.”

  “See? I have no reason to feel inferior. I’m not short like Napoléon. I’m going to college. I own an explosively growing company. I have an above-average… you know.”

  “How do you know?” Casey said. “About that last one.”

  “I’ve read scientific articles. In scientific magazines.”

  “Did they come with color pictures and pullout centerfolds?”

  “No. Black-and-white bar charts. Many, many bar charts.”

  Casey laughed again and straddled him.

  “I appreciate your scientific process,” she said. She slid him inside her. “I’ve decided to give you the benefit of the doubt.”

  “You believe I’m not-huh!-lying?”

  “No, I don’t believe it matters as long as you’re honest with me.”

  “I won’t ever lie to you again.”

  “That’s what I wanted to hear.”

  They stopped talking after that.

  Huge crates of materials-everything that Grace had ordered-arrived at the old warehouse the next morning.

  “What are we going to do with this stuff?” John asked.

  “Henry is going to model our diagram.”

  “I am?” Henry asked.

  “Sure.”

  “I don’t know anything about electronics,” he said.

  “You didn’t know anything about pinball before either,” Grace replied.

  “I can’t argue with that.”

  They were at the point where they could do a couple hundred threads in an hour. The slowly evolving circuit almost made sense, but then John’d turn his head and it would all dissolve away. It was alien and yet familiar. Like thermodynamics.

  John looked up suddenly, his bladder near to bursting. The sun had set.

  “Where’s Henry?”

  “He went to class,” Grace said.

  “It was my turn.”

  “You were in the zone, John.”

  John stretched, then ran to the bathroom.

  “I think we’re halfway,” Grace called.

  “Mapping it,” John called back. “We still have to build it.”

  “Look at what Henry did.”

  John came out of the restroom and stared at the wired-up machine on the workbench. An oscilloscope blipped. Wires extended from component to component. A lab book lay open on the table. John flipped through it; the first fifty pages were covered in tables and equations.

  “He did this today?”

  “We were all in the zone.”

  “You didn’t go into the office today. We barely made it into school. Are we wasting our time here?”

  “Listen,” Grace said. “We-not just you-have gotten ourselves into trouble. The source of that trouble is this device. We need to understand it. We need to reverse engineer it. Then we have all the possibilities in the universe. And then some.”

  “I hope you’re right.”

  “I’m always right,” she said. “I’ll go into the factory tonight. In fact, I’ve got to run.”

  Grace gave him a quick hug. She said slyly, “So, you saw Casey yesterday… and this morning.”

  “How do you know these things?”

  “If you don’t come home to the dorm, the girls know!”

  “But you don’t even live there anymore!”

  “Everyone knows where everyone sleeps every night,” Grace said. “It’s a rule of the women’s dorm. Or else there’d be nothing to talk about at breakfast. See you tomorrow.”

  John pulled a sandwich and a soda from the fridge, then sat down with Henry’s notebook. He had to keep referring to the textbooks. Luckily, physics lab had exposed him to Henry’s cryptic handwriting. Henry had started with the thread, the lab report on it, and the test bench. With as much data on the thread’s characteristics as possible he had tried to reproduce its physical parameters. The mess on the lab bench was his first attempt.

  They’d estimated there were one hundred thousand strands in the device. Henry’s prototype would require about ten million dollars in parts.

  “It would bankrupt us,” John whispered. Unless there was a simpler way to model the threads with this universe’s components. Could they design a circuit that modeled the thread and then custom-order one hundred thousand of them?

  He started rearranging Henry’s circuits.

  John looked up when the door to the warehouse opened. He expected to see Grace or Henry. Instead it was Casey.

  “Oh, crap!” he said. “Did we have a date?”

  “Not for another forty-five minutes, but you didn’t answer your phone, and Grace said you’d be here,” she said.

  “So I didn’t miss it.”

  “No, but I’m not saying you
wouldn’t have,” Casey said. “I just didn’t want to give you the chance to blow our relationship again so soon after we’ve decided to give it another shot.”

  “So you’re here as a precaution for our relationship,” John said.

  “Yep, and I brought Chinese.”

  John looked at the cold sandwich he had half-eaten and swiped it into the trash can. “Excellent.”

  “So this is the device, huh?” Casey peered into the innards, squinting. “Looks like a toy.”

  “It’s an intensely powerful device, capable of ripping holes in the universe,” John said.

  “Or you just think it is.”

  “Entirely possible, from your point of view, but wrong.”

  “You would say that.”

  John sighed. “If you are going to assume that there’s no difference between me believing what it can do and it actually being able to do it, can we drop the argument until definitive proof is available?”

  “Sure,” Casey said. “You got any plates around here? Napkins are probably out of the question.” She glanced around. “Good thing they included plastic sporks.”

  “It’s an old warehouse. There’s paper towels in the bathroom. I’ll clear off a spot on the table.”

  Casey came back with a handful of towels. “So this is where you guys moved to after you relocated from campus.”

  “Just for a few weeks. Then we got better facilities.”

  “Grace is giving me a tour tomorrow.” Casey looked into one of the pinball frames that stood in the corner.

  “We have sporks there,” John said. “Don’t worry.”

  “And napkins?”

  “We have waiters ready to wipe your lips as needed.”

  “Oh, posh.”

  “Mmm, good food,” John said around a mouthful of noodles. “Where’re we going tonight?”

  “Your place.”

  “All right.”

  John pushed his worries away. He had a meeting with Charboric in a couple days. He had the device open on a workbench, possibly ruined. Visgrath had threatened him with harm if he didn’t comply. But Casey was back in his life, and that was all that mattered.

  CHAPTER 36

  “I think so, if the current doesn’t exceed half an amp,” Henry said.

  “We can’t guarantee that,” John said.

  “Not until we test,” Henry said.

  John paged through the circuit board catalog. “These IMCAL 212 boards seem to be what we need-”

  The phone rang, and they looked up from the workbench filled with circuitry. They had spent the morning trying to simplify Henry’s model of the thread. Grace was at the factory, giving Casey a tour.

  “Hello?”

  “John, this is Grace. Visgrath is here. He’s angry.”

  “What? Why?”

  “The circuits and equipment showed up on my corporate bill. He’s suspicious.”

  “Stall him. We’re coming.”

  “What is it?” Henry said.

  “Visgrath. He’s suspicious because Grace bought all this on her corporate card.”

  “Oh, shit.”

  “Yeah.”

  Henry ran for the door. John looked at the device, sitting there in the open.

  “I need to lock this in the safe,” John called.

  “I’ll meet you there,” Henry said.

  John placed the device gently in the huge safe in the warehouse office. No one was getting in there.

  When he reached his car, Henry was long gone. John sped toward the new factory, zipping past the noonday traffic on the highway. The factory was only ten minutes away.

  The undercarriage of the Trans Am smashed against the speed bump as John came into the office complex. He slammed on his brakes as he came around the corner. An ambulance was in front of the building. Henry’s car was parked in the fire lane, with its door open. There was Grace’s car.

  Paramedics were working on a body in the middle of the road.

  John threw open the door of the car.

  He ran.

  As he neared the fallen body, he made out a woman’s shoe. He came to a halt, his heart thumping.

  Lying on the street, blood flowing from a wound in her abdomen, was Casey.

  “Casey!” John cried. He tried to get closer, but a paramedic blocked him.

  “Let us work, buddy,” she growled.

  John stumbled back, tripping over the curb. What had happened? Where was Grace? Where was Henry?

  He saw Viv, the shop foreman, coming out of the door of the Pinball Wizards factory.

  “Viv!” he shouted. “Where’s Henry and Grace?”

  She looked confused, shrugging her shoulders. “Not here.”

  “Where?” John cried.

  “They left just a few minutes ago,” Viv said, confused. “They left with Casey and the gruesome twosome.”

  “Who?”

  “You know, Visgrath and Charboric. They were all locked up in the office for a while, then Henry came, and then they all left.” She peered around John’s shoulder. “What’s happening?”

  “Casey,” John said numbly. “She’s been…”

  “Is that blood? Jesus, that’s Casey,” Viv said.

  John felt his knees buckle. Viv, with legs thick enough to be mistaken for tree trunks, lifted him to his feet. “Hold on there, John. Let’s get you inside.”

  John shook her off. His vision seemed to crystallize. They’d shot Casey. Visgrath and Charboric were on to him. They had to be. Something had forced their hand. Realization struck. They wanted the device. If they didn’t know about it, they soon would. And John didn’t have it. It was at the old factory.

  He brushed past Viv, ignoring her squawk of outrage. His car was still idling, with its door open. He drove between the ambulance and the row of parked cars. His heart twisted as he saw Casey lying there. He hated himself for leaving. What else could he do?

  There was a dark SUV outside the warehouse when he got there. He pulled the Trans Am around the corner of another alley and sat there shaking. He should have taken the device with him. Then he could have… What? Run? Not this time.

  He popped his trunk, rooted around inside, and pulled out the tire iron. It felt cold in his palm. Useless and limp.

  He snuck down the alley, taking the back way to the warehouse. He peered down the cross street and saw no one in the front seat of the SUV. He felt foolish. Lots of people parked in the alley. He’d probably seen that same SUV a dozen times.

  He came to the padlocked rear door of the warehouse. He of course didn’t have the key; it was in his dresser at home. He could see nothing inside. The window was crusted over with dirt and grime. John would have to go in the front door.

  A Dumpster, half-rusted and smelling of foul water, blocked most of the alley. Beyond it were piles of pallets. Technically he owned all of this, but he hadn’t bothered to clean it up.

  He made his way along the wall of the warehouse. The sun blazed down on him-it was hot for an early May day-and he cast no suspicious shadows over the windows.

  At the corner, he glanced around quickly. The SUV was still empty, and the door to the warehouse was open. Someone was in his warehouse.

  The device was in there.

  Peering around the corner of the warehouse, he tried to get a good look inside. He heard voices.

  “Get the torch.”

  He dodged back.

  A man exited the building, tall and blond, one of Visgrath’s men undoubtedly. He opened the back of the SUV and pulled out a blowtorch and canister. Grunting as he lugged it over the door sill, he called, “Help me with this.”

  John heard the canister being dragged across the cement floor. They were definitely heading for the office where the safe was.

  “I don’t know why we can’t wait for a combination,” the man who had fetched the torch said.

  “You know why.”

  “We’ll find him sooner or later.”

  The second man said something in a language Joh
n didn’t recognize.

  The tire iron suddenly slipped in John’s sweaty palm. He snatched at it and barely caught it before it clanged on the ground. His heart thudded. What was he doing?

  He had to stop these men. Call the police? How long would that take? Grace and Henry were in danger. Casey had been shot. John didn’t have time to wait around. Everything they were working on was in that warehouse. And these two goons were breaking open the safe that held the device.

  John waited five seconds, then ducked down and crawled toward the door. If the two men were in the office with the safe, they had no direct line of sight of the door. He slipped inside.

  The office was ten meters from the warehouse door, past the workbench where the electronics sat.

  He carefully and swiftly ran to the wall next to the office door, plastering himself there. The two men were muttering to themselves. John heard the clicking of the ignitor but no burst of flame from the torch. Good.

  Then there was a whoosh as the torch caught. The two men laughed.

  John counted to five again, determined to rush in on five. When he got to ten, he almost laughed aloud.

  “Come on, John. Now.”

  He dodged into the room.

  The two men, goggled, were bent over the safe.

  John slammed the tire iron into the shoulder of the closer man, the man who wasn’t wielding the torch.

  He grunted, collapsing to one knee.

  John raised the iron over the second man.

  He cursed in that odd language and tossed the torch aside.

  John brought the iron down, but the man blocked it with a forearm. The arm bent at an odd angle. The man grunted, pulling it to his chest. John had broken it.

  The other man wasn’t down. He swung at John, his fist connecting with John’s jaw.

  Staggering, John saw blotches of light. The tire iron fell from his hands, and he reached to pick it up. The first man landed a punch to the side of John’s head, a glancing blow.

  John kicked with his foot, catching the first man in the knee. He went down hard. John found the handle of the tire iron and swung it madly at the first man. It connected with his skull. A dull, sickening thud knocked the rising man flat. He didn’t move.

  John swung the iron backhanded at the second man, the one with the broken arm. He jumped back, but that brought him to the wall. John swung again and caught the man’s shoulder. He grunted, twisting, trying to get past John. John slammed the iron into his thigh. He fell like clothes off a hanger.