by J Boyd Long
“Nothing is ever that easy,” Bob said. “Except when you try the complicated stuff first, then it’s always the simple answer that you didn’t bother trying.”
He set the control panel to 31.
“Same rules as before,” Tocho instructed. “Especially now, since we really don’t know what to expect when we open the door.”
They all nodded, and Tocho opened the door. After glancing around, he stuck his head through the door and looked around. He took a cautious step through, and then another. Quentin edged closer to the door, trying to see what was on the other side. There were a few trees beyond Tocho, with bushes to his left and a brilliant blue sky, but little else that he could see. Tocho walked on a bit, looking around.
Suddenly, he spun around and came racing back towards the door, waving Quentin out of the way. He bounced off the door frame, yanking the door closed behind him as Bob hit the kill switch, and then leaned back against it with his hand on his chest.
“Oh, this isn’t good,” he said, his chest heaving. “My heart’s beating too hard. Dizzy.”
“Take it easy,” Bob said. “Deep breaths, hands on the knees. I don’t need you to have a heart attack out here.”
Tocho bent over and took a few deep breaths. “Put this one on the no-go list,” he said after a moment. “They still have dinosaurs. Big ones.”
Chapter 11
Quentin was locked down in a state of inner turmoil. The DimGate wasn’t working right, and that was a disaster. The closer they got to getting home, the harder it got to get there. On the other side of that, though, was this freak occurrence, the rarest of rare opportunities. Dinosaurs? Living, breathing dinosaurs? Curiosity and excitement overrode the stress and fear that had been driving him.
“Are you kidding me?” Eissa asked, glaring at Tocho. “At this point, I assume you’re just fucking with us when you say things like that.”
“Nope, dead serious,” Tocho said, holding up three fingers and tucking his pinkie under his thumb. “Scout’s honor.”
“Shit,” Bob said. His dark eyes were wide open, making his bushy eyebrows poke out like horns. “That’s a new one on me.”
Quentin was momentarily distracted from the idea of dinosaurs. “Wait, you were a Boy Scout? How is that even possible?”
Tocho laughed as he stood up. “I’m a man of mystery and intrigue. I’ve been a lot of places and seen a lot of things. Also, Bob told me that’s how they swore the truth when he was a kid.”
Quentin couldn’t help but smile. Moments after seeing a dinosaur, Tocho still had his wits about him. He had to admire that, along with Tocho’s flawless delivery. Quentin had been a Scout, but it didn’t prepare him for any of the things he had experienced in the last few days. His thoughts were drawn back to the dinosaurs.
“I know this probably sounds really crazy, but I would love to poke my head through the door and take a look.” Quentin looked around the group. He tried to be earnest, but he couldn’t keep the boyish grin off his face. “I mean, I’ll never have another chance like this in my whole life to see an actual dinosaur in situ, and I’d regret it forever if I didn’t take it.”
Silence fell over the group as they looked at one another. Quentin wished that he had worked harder at pleading his case, as no one was jumping on board with him. At last, Bob cleared his throat, and winked at Quentin.
“I’ll tell you what,” Bob said. “I kind of want to see it, too. What’s the proximity to the door, Tocho? If you cover the kill switch, is it far enough away for us to take a step through and back, without being in direct danger?”
“Yeah, they aren’t the meat-eater kind. There’s several of them about three hundred yards to the left of the door. Just remember the butterfly effect. We don’t want to alter the course of history on that side. Rule number one.”
Quentin pumped his fist in victory. He was glad that Eissa was here, because no one would ever believe this story.
“I know,” Bob said. “We’ll limit ourselves to three seconds. We step through, look at them, step back and close the door forever. I really want to know what the panel says on that side, though. That’s still a problem.”
“We’ll figure that part out in a different dimension,” Tocho said. “Somewhere safer. Eissa, do you want to see the dinosaurs?”
“No thanks,” she said. “I’d probably be traumatized, and I’d never convince my therapist that my nightmares are based on something I saw in real life.”
Bob and Quentin stepped up to the door, and Tocho took his place at the control panel.
“Eissa, you be the lookout,” he said. “Stand where you can see them, but don’t block the door.”
Bob opened the door and poked his head through. When he was sure that nothing had wandered up next to the door since Tocho had been over there, he stepped through, with Quentin right behind him. They walked past the bushes, turned to the left, and simultaneously sucked in their breath.
Scattered across the meadow in front of them were half a dozen massive dinosaurs, the kind that Quentin assumed were in the brontosaurus family. They were eating leaves from the live oak and sycamore trees. They varied in size, with some who were obviously young eating from the lower branches, and the more mature ones eating from the middle and upper branches.
Quentin estimated the big ones to be twenty feet tall at the shoulder, with long necks that could probably reach thirty-five or forty feet in the air. A young dinosaur looked over at them and bounded across the grass to its mother. It was no surprise that Tocho hadn’t seen them right away. Even though he was looking right at them, Quentin’s brain denied what he was seeing.
“Alright, back through,” Bob said softly. “Do no harm.”
Eissa was in the doorway, leaning through so that she could see the dinosaurs through a gap in the bush. She stepped back out of the way, but the wide-eyed look of wonder stayed on her face. Quentin closed his gaping mouth and stepped back through the door. Bob followed, closing the door firmly behind him.
“Changed your mind, huh?” Bob said.
Eissa nodded mutely.
“That was absolutely incredible,” Quentin said, sitting down abruptly. “I mean, I’m just stunned. It was like watching a herd of cows grazing, except that they were massive dinosaurs. Unbelievable.” He giggled as he went over the image in his mind again and again. The malfunctioning DimGate was forgotten, as was their dilemma at home. If dinosaurs could exist in that dimension, what else was there? Giant sloths? Were there people there, too, living with dinosaurs like it was no big deal?
“This is the trap,” Tocho said, and the sober quality of his voice caused Quentin to look up. “The more of that kind of stuff you see, the more you want to use the DimGate to go see more things. It’s just as addicting as any drug. It’s also just as dangerous for us to do it as it is for the guys that want to go rape resources from a place like that, even though we’re not as destructive as they are. You just never know what’s going to impact a world, and what isn’t.”
“I can see how you would want to just go from dimension to dimension,” Quentin agreed. “I already want to do another one. Or that one again. I could spend a year or two there, just looking around.”
Evolution had obviously taken a different direction there. It might even be possible that human evolution was different, too. Cro-Magnon might still be there, and maybe even the Neanderthals, living alongside each other. Now that would be something to see. The possibilities were endless.
“What do you think the event was that made that dimension split?” Eissa asked. “The asteroid that hit the Yucatan peninsula getting diverted somewhere in space and not hitting it after all?”
“That’s probably a fair guess,” Quentin said. The asteroid was thought to have wiped out 75% of the plant and animal life on Earth. If that didn’t happen, what were the ramifications? Would primates and other mammals have even evolved if the extinction event hadn’t occurred? A three-second glance just didn’t provide enough information,
and knowing they weren’t going back made the puzzle maddening.
“Alright,” Bob said. “Let’s take another look at the panel and see if we can figure out what’s sending us to the wrong place.”
Quentin stood up and went over to watch as Bob and Tocho examined the panel. They traced wires, checked connections, wiggled bits, and muttered about the condition of the panel in general. Try as they might, they couldn’t find anything that was hooked up wrong. After an hour, Bob walked over and sat down near Eissa, and leaned back against the tree.
“I don’t know what’s wrong,” he said. “The only thing I can think of is that there’s something plugged in wrong on the main board at DimGate headquarters.”
“How does this door communicate with the headquarters computer?” Quentin asked. “I mean, even if there was some kind of wireless internet connection that spanned the globe, how could it go across dimensions?”
“That’s the part I was warning you about earlier,” Tocho said. “Those are the questions that will tie your brain in a knot and make you go cross-eyed. It’s best to not even think about such things.”
Quentin smiled. Sometimes he envied people like Tocho, people who could just use a tool without needing to know how it worked. Life was probably a lot less complicated for them, though in his opinion, it was probably pretty boring, too.
“That’s like telling him not to be a dork,” Eissa said. “It just ain’t going to happen, and telling him not to think about it will make him obsess twice as much. Especially if you tell him there’s no answer. He’s like a dog with a bone.”
“There’s an answer,” Bob said, “but the people that have that answer are on the other side of the issue, somewhere in the upper echelons of DimCorp. I really don’t want to get to know them well enough to ask about these kinds of things.”
The mention of DimCorp brought reality slamming back into Quentin. He rubbed his temples, trying to come up with some sort of idea to contribute. The DimGate was working, at least in the sense that it was bridging between dimensions. The problem seemed to lie in the selection of the dimensions.
“How about this,” Quentin said. “Since we’re having trouble getting to our dimension, let’s try going to another one that you guys are familiar with. That way, we can see if it’s a general problem, or if it seems to be more specifically associated with our dimension.”
There was a moment of silence as Bob and Tocho examined the idea. They glanced at one another for a moment and shrugged.
“It’s actually a pretty decent idea,” Tocho said. “At least if it doesn’t work, we can rule out a dimension problem, and keep working on a solution with the main program.”
Bob nodded. “We’re going to run out of daylight soon, so I guess we need to do something, one way or the other.”
He got up slowly, stretching as he tried to get his joints moving in all the right directions. After a moment, he walked over to the panel and examined the list taped inside the door.
“Well, we can probably give 107 a shot,” Bob said. He scratched his head, pulling a few leaves out of his flowing hair as he thought about it. “We know that’s a friendly location.”
“What’s at 107?” Quentin asked.
“It’s basically our safe house,” Bob said. “Or one of them, anyway.”
“It’s on a deserted island in the South Pacific,” Tocho added. “We built a cabin there and stocked it with supplies, in case we needed to hide out back when we were still causing havoc.”
Relief washed across Quentin, and he realized just how stressed out he had become about going home. Now that they were pausing their efforts to get there, they had a second chance to think the whole thing over, and maybe change their minds. At the very least, it would give him a chance to figure out how to approach the situation when they did get there.
“Wow, you’ve got an island in Fiji, and you chose to live here, instead?” Eissa asked. “I’m going to challenge your judgment on that one.”
“Have you lived on an island in the South Pacific?” Tocho asked. “Have you ever tried to ride out a typhoon in a shack that’s shaking itself to pieces all around you? For that matter, have you ever had a school of sharks come crashing through your palm frond roof after a waterspout sucked them out of the ocean, and tried not to lose a hand or a foot while you attempt to escape the house of death?”
“Sounds like you had a bad experience,” Eissa said. “Still, what are the odds of it happening twice?”
“Careful,” Tocho said. “I’ll take you back to the dinosaur dim, and let you gain some perspective on things.”
Bob grinned, and punched in the code. He motioned them over to the door.
“Alright, same as before,” Tocho said. “Safety first.”
He eased the door open. On the other side, green foliage filled the visible area. He stepped through and peered around, and took a few steps forward, immediately disappearing through the palm fronds and tall grass. Quentin watched closely for any sign of distress or danger. After a few long moments, Tocho reappeared, and poked his head in the door.
“Looks like it’s okay,” he said. “It’s really grown up around the door, but it clears up pretty quick. The cabin is still there, so I’m pretty sure we’re in the right dimension. We’ll have to go take a look to confirm that, of course.”
“Alright, let’s go,” Bob said. “First thing we’ll do is check the panel on the other side and see what dim number it’s showing.”
They marched through the door and huddled around the side panel as Bob released the catch. Quentin watched his face as he looked inside, trying to gage his reaction to what the screen said.
“107,” Bob said with a grunt. “We’re right where we wanted to be. That certainly complicates things, huh?”
“Yeah, a bit,” Tocho agreed. “Let’s go check out the cabin, and try to confirm our location before we start drawing conclusions.”
“I agree,” Bob said, closing the panel on the door.
“If the cabin’s there, and you built the cabin, then what is it that we’re confirming?” Quentin asked.
Bob gave him a hard stare for a moment, but then his gaze softened. “I keep forgetting that you’re new to this.” He let out a sigh. “I guess the easiest way to explain it would be to say that we can’t discount the possibility that we, meaning Tocho and I, might exist in multiple dimensions. That means we might have built this safe house, but then again, a different version of us might have built the same house in the same spot, but in a different dimension. It’s also possible that a version of us from another dimension might be hiding out here. We just don’t know.”
“Whoa,” Quentin said, backing up a step. He rubbed his temples, as if that might help him understand what Bob was saying. “You mean there might be two or three sets of Bobs and Tochos running around, trying to save the world?”
“It’s possible. We’ve done some things that might have spawned new dimensions. We weren’t always as careful as we try to be now.”
Quentin shook his head. “You’re right, I’m way too new to have considered that.” How weird would it be to run into another Bob and Tocho? How would they interact with themselves? He almost hoped it would happen, just so he could watch it. Then again, that might be the straw that broke the camel’s back and sent him over the edge. His next thought stopped him cold: what if he ran into another version of himself? It was funny to think about two Bobs staring at each other, but the idea of two Quentins paralyzed him. He shivered, despite the tropical heat, and hurried to catch up with the others.
Tocho led them through the hanging palm fronds, which opened out after about twenty feet into a clearing. The grass and bushes were overgrown and unkempt, and obscured the lower half of a rickety-looking shack. It was made out of an odd assortment of scrap lumber, and no two pieces of it appeared to match. Even the roof was a hodgepodge collection of different kinds and colors of corrugated tin and fiberglass panels.
“I like what you’ve done wi
th the place,” Eissa said, sweeping her arm across the clearing like Vanna White. “It really has an earthy, home-made feel to it, kind of like a tree house made out of old pallets and cardboard.”
Quentin chuckled. She might have been unnecessarily blunt and cruel in her description of the cabin, but she wasn’t wrong about it. It was hard to say whether or not it was aging well, because it was the kind of place that probably looked dilapidated the day they built it.
“It keeps the construction costs down when you locally source the materials,” Bob said. “Most of this either came from my shed or a trash dump in another dimension. I think it cost us around twenty dollars to build this place, and that was mostly for the deck screws to hold it all together.”
Quentin walked up the steps to the porch and opened the door. They followed him inside, where scores of dead bugs covered the floor. The windows were filthy, but still let in enough light to show the dust that covered everything. The fiberglass roof panels cast green and orange rectangles of colored light across the interior, which struck Quentin as being very appropriate for a shack on an equatorial island. There was no sign of another Bob and Tocho, and clearly no one had been here for a long time.
