The Walls of the Universe

by Paul Melko

  John crept to the back door and pushed it open slowly. There was no sign of Ernst Walder in his fields. All was quiet. John ran toward the road, pausing at the berm. There was his house. The lights were on. Steam rose from the kitchen vent. Mom was up, cooking breakfast for Dad.

  John ached to go inside.

  Dare he?

  He needed transportation. He needed to know where John Prime was. Perhaps he was in that house right now. Prime had stolen John’s life after all.

  John walked across the road and up the drive toward the house. His nose caught the familiar smells: fresh hotcakes, sizzling bacon, coffee. Even the chicken coop smelled good to him: It was home.

  He walked around to the back of the house.

  The screen door swung open suddenly. His mom had a dustpan of dirt and was about to toss it into the trash can just outside the back door.

  “Johnny! You scared the heck out of me.”

  “Hi… Mom.”

  “What are you doing down here? Where’s Casey? Where’s Abby?”

  “Uh.” Casey? Had Prime gotten together with his Casey? Who was Abby? “At… home.”

  “You should have brought them,” his mom said. She leaned the broom against the door frame and with her other hand still holding the dustpan hugged him awkwardly. “We hardly get to see you these days. With that Carson business and all.”

  “Uh, right.” John felt he had to write everything down to make sense of it. He was disquieted to realize this wasn’t his life after all. Eighteen months had passed.

  “Why are you dressed like that? What is that under your shirt? Have you been camping?”

  John just shrugged and followed her inside the kitchen. He sat heavily in his seat. Home.

  “Bill!” his mom called. “John’s here.” She turned to him. “You just caught him. He’s on his way to the fields to plow.” She poured John a coffee. “You take it black now, don’t you.”

  “No, cream is fine,” he said automatically.

  “I thought you liked it black.” She set the cup and saucer in front of him and he smelled the aroma. It should have been like any other cup of coffee, but it wasn’t.

  “John, where’s your car parked?” his father said. “It’s not in the driveway.”

  “Um, well,” John said. “I need to borrow your car.”

  “Did that damn Japanese thing break down?” his father said. “A good solid pickup truck is a status symbol too.”

  “Yeah, it broke down. Tow truck dropped me off.”

  “You should have called,” his mom said. “We would have picked you up.”

  “No, I didn’t want to wake you.”

  “You know we’d be up,” his father said. He took the car keys off the hook and tossed them at John. “Your mom and I can come up to Toledo tomorrow to get it.” Toledo! That’s where Prime lived.

  “Thanks.”

  “How are Casey and our cutest granddaughter?” he said. Granddaughter! So that was Abby. Casey and Prime were married here and had a daughter.

  “Fine.”

  “We hardly ever see them these days.”

  “That’s what Mom said,” John replied.

  “This Carson business.” His father shook his head. “The way people talk about it. You’d think the trial was over already.”

  John kept his face straight. Carson? Trial? What the hell had happened while he was gone?

  “The papers say the trial has been postponed again,” his father said. “Probably because they don’t have evidence.”

  He nodded, but he felt his face flush. He had to find Prime.

  John finished his coffee in one gulp that burned his throat. Holding the key tightly, he said, “Thanks. When you come get the car, stay for dinner.”

  “Oh, that’d be nice,” his mom said.

  John hugged his mother and shook his father’s hand. Then he stiffly walked to the old Ford pickup and started north toward Toledo.

  The neighborhood was nice. Prime had done well for himself. At the same time, he’d jeopardized it all, somehow. What trial had John’s parents been talking about?

  John had stopped at a gas station on I-75, dialed information for Toledo, and found the home address. He passed the house once, caught the digits on the mailbox, and turned around in the next driveway. Someone opened a curtain in the neighbor’s house, a balding man. He waved at John, as if he saw him every day. The man probably did. John waved back.

  He parked in the driveway. There was no sense of familiarity. No sense of home. But the house was exactly what he would have chosen. How odd.

  He rang the doorbell, and he felt silly for doing so. If anyone in the neighborhood saw him doing it, he’d look like an idiot. Forgot his keys, he’d say.

  The door opened, and he caught his breath.

  “Why did you ring the doorbell?” she said. A dozing baby slept on her shoulder. She wore a gray sweatshirt with the sleeves cut off.

  John stepped in.

  “I-”

  Casey handed him the baby.

  “Hold her,” Casey said, turning away.

  The baby’s eyes fluttered as he held her in front of him. What was he supposed to do with her? She was beginning to wake, so he put her up on his shoulder.

  Casey was halfway down the front hall when she stopped. She turned, her eyes sharp.

  She ran toward him and took Abby off his shoulder. John backed away, feeling her tension.

  “Which one are you?” she said. “Which one?”

  “You know?”

  “He told me everything,” she said, her voice angry. The baby began to squirm.

  John held his hands up. “I’m the one that was here,” John said. “I’m the… original from this universe.”

  Casey’s face contorted, and then she burst out crying. She jumped forward and cast her arms around John’s neck, squeezing the baby between them. Now, Abby did wake, crying out at the sudden motion.

  “You’re different,” Casey said, her voice muffled in his shoulder. “You smell different. A little, but enough.”

  “I’m sorry for…” He didn’t know what he was sorry for.

  “It’s okay,” she said. She kissed him a peck on the lips and John was startled at the sudden arousal he felt. This wasn’t his Casey.

  “Why are you here?” she said. “John said the device doesn’t work.”

  John grinned, stepping back to put distance between them, a little bit at least. “The original is still broken. But I took it apart and built a new one.”

  “You built a new one.”

  “With the money we made from pinball.”

  “Pinball.”

  “We invented pinball in the next universe,” John said with a shrug. It sounded rather silly saying it. “Not really invented, I guess. Made something called pinball and based on pinball but really different.”

  “Like John’s Cube.”

  “John’s Cube,” he said. “Oh, yeah. Rubert’s Cube. Is that what got you all this?”

  “Yeah, all this,” she said. John felt a lack of emotion in Casey, or rather a shutting down of emotion.

  “You’ve done well with this John,” he said. “Better than I could have done for you.”

  Casey frowned, then smiled slightly. “I know when it happened. The day before the church potluck. Before that you never talked to me.”

  “I was very… nervous around you.”

  “But you finally got up the nerve with the Casey next door?”

  “She-,” John said, remembering. “She asked me out, to a dance. Remember Sock Hop, the play we did two years ago?”

  “I remember.”

  “That’s how they dance in my-The universe I ended up in,” John said.

  “Women love a man who can dance,” Casey said.

  “I love Casey,” John said. “It’s why I’m here. I need help.”

  “You’re not here to-”

  The sound of the garage door opening stopped her.

  John felt his pulse race. He was
finally about to come face-to-face with Prime. His fists balled involuntarily.

  “What are you going to do?” Casey said hastily, stepping back from him to stand in front of the garage door. “You’re not going to-”

  “No, I told you I need him.” He stepped toward her.

  The door opened, and Prime said, “What’s Dad’s truck-”

  He stopped dead in the doorway, his eyes on John.

  John found he couldn’t speak. All the emotion he’d built up around him was gone. Instead he just felt a moment’s kindred spirit. There was a heaviness in Prime’s face, a wariness and a resignation. Perhaps even desperation.

  “This has been one crazy year,” Prime said with John’s voice. “I didn’t think it could be any crazier.”

  “Guess what?”

  John found himself laughing, and with him Prime joined in.

  Casey shook her head. “You both are nuts,” she said.

  “You fixed it?” Prime asked after he had caught his breath. “You figured out how to work it?”

  “Nope, still broken, you fucker.”

  “Okay, I deserved that.”

  “I built a new one. I reverse engineered it.”

  Prime walked past John into the living room, where he sat heavily in a chair. “I knew we could figure it out.”

  “We?”

  “Yes, we,” he said. “You gotta remember I was a year younger than you. I hadn’t had physics yet. I couldn’t have done it. But you did. I had faith.”

  John held his tongue.

  “Now, why are you here, if not to punch my lights out?” Prime asked.

  “I’m here for that too.” John sat across from him on the couch. Casey disappeared into the kitchen. John smelled coffee brewing after a moment. “But I’m really here because I’ve run afoul of some renegades. They know I have a device, and they want it.”

  Prime nodded. “I know the type,” he said. “The devices are rare or controlled. Some worlds, maybe all worlds, are used to dump exiles. Here too.”

  “Did you-”

  “No, I don’t think they’ve even noticed me. Yet.”

  “You’re in danger, then.”

  “Less in danger than in a legal mess,” Prime said.

  “Carson.”

  Prime looked at him sharply. “How’d you know? What do you know?”

  “Dad let it slip. Not what, just that something had happened,” John said. “What’s the story?”

  “Carson’s missing,” Prime said. “They think I had something to do with it. They’ve charged me with murder.”

  “Did you?”

  “What do you think?”

  John studied Prime’s face and saw nothing there that he didn’t see in the mirror every day. Murder? “You had the chance to murder me and keep the device. You chose… the lesser evil. But you still chose evil.”

  “Carson deserved whatever he got,” Casey said from the doorway. She handed John a cup of coffee. “Wherever he is.”

  “I’m sure,” John said. “I knew him too, remember? Know him, I guess. He’s in the universe I’m in too. I saw him once.”

  Prime and Casey shared a look that John couldn’t decipher. This John and Casey had been together longer than he’d been with his Casey.

  “Why are you here, John?” Casey asked. “What do you need?”

  “I need help. I have to save my friends,” he said simply.

  Prime and Casey shared another look. Finally, Casey nodded.

  “Anything,” Prime said. “It’s the least I can do.”

  “Wait here,” Prime said. He’d parked the truck in John’s parents’ driveway while John parked Prime’s car behind his. They were dropping the car off, ostensibly. John was nervous, but the windows of the Unic XK were tinted; he doubted his parents would look out the windows, and if they did, they couldn’t see him in the driver’s seat. Still he didn’t want to have to explain to them what was happening.

  “What are you going to tell them?” John asked again.

  “Camping trip, I said.”

  “Right. Is that going to work?”

  “I’ve borrowed his rifle before. Why won’t he give me the handgun too?”

  John nodded and Prime headed for the house. He waited, turning the dial on the radio. None of the songs were familiar, but the call signs and radio voices were what he remembered. This universe had rock and roll. He found that he missed the twanging songs of 7650, and he flipped the radio off in disgust.

  They had hammered out a plan in Prime’s living room. Casey had figured out John’s idea the quickest.

  “Surprise attack,” she said. “They don’t exist in every universe. Anything that comes from another universe or is built by someone from another universe is probably unique.”

  “That’s what I think,” John said. “I don’t think their facility will be there in this universe. I checked the phone directory. There’s no mention of EmVis or Grauptham House here.”

  “Oh, I get it,” Prime said. “We have the device.” He chuckled. “I don’t know how I feel about using it.”

  “We’ll do it carefully,” John said.

  “You sure it won’t… cut my head off?”

  “I understand it better than you do,” John replied. “At least I know what some of the knobs do.”

  “We come in the back door,” Prime said. “And the back door in this case is this universe.”

  “Yeah.”

  “We’ll need firepower,” Prime said.

  “Why? We can just sneak in,” John replied. He had no interest in killing anyone, not even Charboric.

  “Sure, sneak in, and what happens when the plan goes off the rails? You wanna call a time-out, while we regroup?”

  “No.”

  “Luck favors the prepared, brother,” he said. “Let’s be prepared.”

  “Fine.”

  “And speaking of prepared,” Prime said. “I need to call my insurance agent.”

  “Now?” Casey said.

  “Yeah.” He picked up the phone and dialed a number.

  “Nancy? John Rayburn here. We have a policy with you on our cars.” He paused. “Yeah, that’s our number. Bit of an embarrassment really. My car got dinged in the parking lot. I saw it happen. But the guy drove off.” He paused again. “I have the license plate… Yeah, CDDA-92… Yeah, Ohio plate… Great… No, just the rear panel is dented. All cosmetic… Great… Yeah, that’s it.” John seemed poised to set down the phone. “Oh, one more thing. The police want the guy’s name for their report. Can you run that plate through the DMV for me? Great, thanks.”

  “What are you doing?” John asked.

  “Social engineering,” Casey said.

  “Kent Corriander? And the address? In Columbus? That’s awesome. Thanks, Nancy.”

  “Why would the police need the insurance company to run a plate?” John asked. “She’s going to be suspicious.”

  “She’s going to remember that she was incredibly helpful,” Prime said. “She won’t remember anything else. People just want to be helpful.”

  Prime came out of his parents’ house carrying a rifle in its padded wrap. He headed toward the barn then and came out a few minutes later, rifle slung over his shoulder, carrying a bundle in both hands.

  “Pop the trunk.”

  He piled the gun and the bundle into the trunk. John saw him remove a pistol from his pocket, as well as two boxes of ammo. He felt misgivings about using weapons. It could only end badly for someone.

  “What was in the bundle?” John asked as Prime slid into the passenger seat.

  “Let’s just say that you’ll want to avoid any rear-end collisions,” Prime said.

  “Dynamite?” John cried. His father always kept a few sticks for tree stumps.

  “Yep.”

  “I don’t-”

  “We’re going into battle, John,” Prime said, his smile gone. “Don’t forget it. You asked for my help, and this is how it works.”

  John nodded, but he wasn’t
convinced. “Now what? Columbus?”

  “One stop.”

  They drove the eighty miles to Columbus, but instead of the office park where EmVis existed in 7650, they drove to the south side of town, to a run-down apartment complex downwind from the trash-burning power plant.

  “Pull in here,” Prime said.

  It was a first-floor apartment.

  “Here’s what you do,” Prime said. “Give me two minutes, then knock on the door.”

  “That’s it?”

  “Yeah, that’s it.”

  “What do I say?”

  “ ‘Hello,’ ‘How are you?’ ‘Remember me?’ ”

  “Fine.”

  Prime slipped out of the car and around the side of the building. John counted to 120 and then trotted up to the door. He pounded on it, ignoring the doorbell.

  He heard sounds within and ducked his head away from the peephole.

  “What is it?” came a voice through the door.

  John pounded again.

  The door came open fast. “Goddamn it! What-”

  The man was shorter than John by a foot. He looked up into John’s face, went white, then turned and ran, slamming the door.

  John caught it with his foot, pushed it inward, and watched as the man scrambled over his couch to get into the kitchen and through the sliding door there. It must have led to a back patio, but the man stopped short there.

  As the sliding door opened and the aluminum blinds clanked against the glass, he came face-to-face with Prime.

  “Corrundrum,” Prime said. “We have some questions.”

  “Christ, you two are so screwed! Doppelgangers? The vig are going to fall on you like bricks.”

  Prime motioned John in, grabbed Corrundrum, and steered him toward the couch.

  “We need some information,” Prime said. “You were wrong about me. I don’t know what’s going on.”

  “Then how’d he get here?” Corrundrum cried, pointing at John.

  “We have a device,” Prime said. “We have more than one. We built more.”

  Corrundrum choked on a laugh. “Build them? You’re punching unauthorized holes?”

  “Holes?” John said.

  “You built a device?” Corrundrum said, staring at him. “Your own device?”

  “Yeah. I modeled it on the broken one.”

  “They don’t break! You two are talking crap!”