by Stucky, Pam
“He’ll be okay now, don’t worry,” said Eve. “What happened?”
But Emma was overcome and couldn’t answer. She looked at her blond alien friend and suddenly the emotions all rushed in. She collapsed on the couch, crying.
Eve sat next to her, stroking Emma’s hair. “You’re safe now,” she said. “It’s okay. These doctors will get Dr. Waldo all back to normal, don’t worry.”
Wiping her tears, Emma sat up and looked at Eve. “I know he’ll be fine. It’s just everything at once. It’s a lot.”
“I know it is,” said Eve. “It takes some getting used to. But it’s not always dangerous, believe me. Sometimes it’s fun.” She smiled encouragingly at Emma. “Right? Sometimes you have fun?”
In their distress, neither Emma nor Eve had seen Rupert softly galumph right into the lounge. Feeling her hair being lifted rather clumsily, Emma looked up to see the elephant peering down on her with what she was certain was concern.
“Rupert!” she said, almost in awe. The Hub’s “elephant in the room” had been there as long as she’d known about the Hub, but somehow, she’d never been so close to the enormous, flat creature. She stared into his eye—as he was two-dimensional, there was no way to look at both eyes at once—and was sure she saw recognition there. “You know me, don’t you?” she said softly.
In reply, Rupert stroked her face with his trunk.
“Ouch!” laughed Emma. “Rupert, you have to be careful or you’ll give me a paper cut!” She gently stroked the side of Rupert’s trunk, then stood and reached high to scritch behind his ear. “Yes, sometimes it’s fabulous,” she said to Eve, answering her earlier question.
Having left Dr. Waldo in the care of the doctors and the Charlies (who were not “helping” in Dr. Waldo’s care so much as they were clowning around and trying to lift his spirits), Ben rejoined the young women in the lounge.
“This one is a lot more social than the first Rupert,” he said, watching with a mix of awe and fondness as Rupert continued to carefully stroke Emma’s hair. Emma winced occasionally; Rupert’s edges were surprisingly sharp. But she would not stop him.
The first Rupert, of course, was the one Emma had met that summer, when she and Charlie initially discovered the Hub. That Rupert had been destroyed—killed—along with everything else in the Hub. Dr Waldo, Ben, and the other scientists had worked hard to rebuild the space after the annihilation. Many things were the same, but they’d taken the opportunity to improve on some objects where they could see a way.
“I guess it’s not really the same Rupert,” said Emma, frowning as she rubbed Rupert’s side. “Should he have his own name? Rupert 2.0? Is it wrong to call him Rupert?”
“Nah,” said Ben, rubbing Rupert at the top side of his trunk. Rupert delighted in the attention, wagging his tail and trunk and flapping his ears with joy. “He’s like the Dalai Lama or a vampire slayer. When one dies, another rises. He’s Rupert. It’s not just a name, it’s a title. ‘Rupert, the Elephant in the Room.’”
Emma smiled and leaned into the elephant, cuddling him as best a person can cuddle with a two-dimensional object. Yes, she thought, travel through space and time is not so bad after all.
With the magical efficiency of the Hub and the expert skills of its scientists and doctors, Dr. Waldo was feeling better in no time. He wasn’t immediately back to his former self, but he felt well enough to sit with the teens in the lounge. Everyone who had not gone to the ghost planet was filled in on what happened. There was an unspoken agreement to leave alone Dr. Waldo’s motives for visiting the planet, for him to sort out in his own time.
“My goodness,” said Dr. Waldo, resting in a recliner chair with an IV drip topping off his fluids, and a tank of oxygen by his side to be used if needed. “Look at you all. Just look at you! Emma, Charlie, Charlie, so good to have you back. We’ve been having great fun exploring the mysteries of the universes while you’ve been gone, haven’t we, Ben and Eve? So much fun. I tell you, that Ben, he’s got scientist blood. Science in his genes. It was he who suggested some of the ideas to improve the Dark MATTER globe, did he tell you? Such a humble young man, he probably didn’t tell you, but you see, you see, it worked, so much better than before!”
“Almost anything—” Emma started to say that almost anything would be “better than before,” but stopped herself in time. She didn’t want to hurt Dr. Waldo’s feelings.
“Yes,” said Charlie with an amused smile, “Ben, your targeting was amazing! Landed you all literally right in our laps! Maybe next time aim for a few feet away?” He and Parallel Charlie had cleaned up all the spilled snacks, and Eve had brought forth from the air some new treats for everyone: more tea and scones, but also some chocolate, which everyone knew was full of healing powers.
“We wanted a soft landing,” said Ben, with a laugh. “How was I to know you lazy bums would still be on the couch?”
“Are you sure you’re feeling up to being up?” Emma asked Dr. Waldo. She looked him over carefully, studying him for signs of weakness. “I know the medical treatments here are advanced, but …”
“To be sure, to be sure,” said Dr. Waldo, “Not a problem at all, I am well, blood and water and oxygen and a bit of a pumpkin scone and some tea, that’s all I needed, fit as a fiddle again, fit as a fiddle!”
“Is a fiddle fit?” asked Eve, raising an eyebrow and popping a small piece of chocolate into her mouth. “Isn’t a fiddle a string instrument? That doesn’t make sense to me.”
“Ah, all the idioms make sense if you just trace them back to their roots,” said Charlie.
“Like, ‘keep your eyes peeled,’” said Parallel Charlie. “Makes no sense, right? But if you trace it back, it has to do with peeling potatoes. You know, peeling the eyes of the potatoes.”
Eve looked skeptically from the Charlies to Emma, who was rolling her eyes. “Is that true?”
Emma shook her head. “I have no idea, but somehow I doubt it.”
Charlie and Parallel Charlie fist-bumped at their collective cleverness.
“Well, don’t keep me in suspense, now, young intelligent life forms, what have you been up to whilst I was … away?” said Dr. Waldo. “Charlie said something about a note you deciphered?” He looked at Ben.
“I mean, we all worked on it,” said Ben humbly.
“No, it was you,” said Emma. “You figured it out. We might not have unraveled that riddle without you.”
A blush creeped up Ben’s neck. “Group effort. Anyway, we figured out that the notes Kata left for Eve and Milo had clues in them. Long story short, the clues spell out ‘dark galaxy,’ ‘water,’ and ‘magnet.’”
Eve looked at Dr. Waldo with hope in her eyes. “Do those mean anything to you? Dad believes the ‘dark galaxy’ is reference to a stone he found a long time ago on Lero. Emma thinks it’s what they call a ‘black opal’ on her Earth, from the country of Australia. But we don’t know what ‘water’ and ‘magnet’ mean. They’re so vague. They could mean anything. Originally we thought there was a missing note, since the other two notes said ‘read this second’ and ‘read this third,’ but now we know that was just a clue to deciphering the message.”
Stroking his chin—he had not yet taken time to shave since he returned, and a grizzly gray fuzz covered the lower half of his face—Dr. Waldo nodded, humming softly. “Yes, yes. Kata did like Australia,” he said, half to himself. “Kangaroos and quokkas and pademelons and echidnas, all the animal life, and the dry red earth, the ancient monoliths, the endless Outback, yes, she talked about it enthusiastically every time she returned. Yes, yes, she did like Australia.”
“She did?” asked Eve. “How come she didn’t tell me?”
Dr. Waldo looked at the girl with a mix of sympathy and sadness. “You and your father were gone a lot, you know.”
Heat rose up Eve’s face. “Are you saying it was my fault?” she sputtered.
“Oh, no, no, my dear! No, no, not at all. I’m just saying, adults, we aren’t perfect.
We may want you kids to think we have it all figured out, but we don’t. At any rate, it’s not for me to debate. The fact remains, your mother loved Australia. Do you know where you might find the black opal rocks? Australia is a big country.”
Hoping to diffuse the tension, Emma spoke up brightly. “Lightning Ridge!” she said with forced enthusiasm. “The black opals are mostly found in Lightning Ridge.”
“Aha!” said Dr. Waldo, pointing his finger to the air. “Then that is where you should start!” He coughed lightly.
Parallel Charlie, who had been watching with delight and fascination, jumped in. “Hey, I have a cool idea. I should come, too. Can I come, too?” He looked at Emma. “Last time was amazing. Except for all the parts where we were nearly killed, but other than that, off the hook.”
Emma laughed and rolled her eyes. “Dork,” she said to Parallel Charlie, with a wink to her own Charlie.
“Do we even know where we’re going?” said Ben. “I mean, Lightning Ridge, sure, but … beyond that?”
“We’ve had less to go on before,” said Emma, warming to the idea of another adventure. After all, Ben and Eve had had their share of travel the last few months, but she and Charlie had been stuck in school, dreaming of life back in the Hub. “We figured out the clues, even if we still don’t know what they mean. We can’t just give up. It’s Eve’s mom. We have to at least try.”
Ben nodded. “Of course.” He reached over and gave Eve a hug. “For Eve, and her mom, anything.”
Tears filled Eve’s eyes and she looked away, but the cascade of hair that hid her face couldn’t fully cover her smile. “Thanks, guys,” she said.
When Ben released her from his hug, the Charlies looked at each other and, without a word, quickly ran to surround Eve in their collective arms. “Charlie sandwich!” said Charlie.
Eve squealed and laughed, half squirming to escape and half reveling in the love. “You guys!” she said with delight. “Okay, okay! Enough!” She tucked her hair behind her ear and wiped away her tears. “Okay. We need a plan.”
“Well, first,” said Emma to Parallel Charlie, “if you’re going with us, we need to call you something other than ‘Charlie.’ It gets too confusing.”
“Can’t we both be Charlie?” asked Charlie, looking at Parallel Charlie. He knew instinctively that Parallel Charlie would not want to give up his name any more than he would himself.
“No,” said Emma. “This is all weird enough. Other Charlie, what do you want to be called?”
“Why do I have to be the one to change my name?” asked Parallel Charlie, pouting.
“Because you’re tagging along with us, not the other way around.”
“So does that mean I get to come?” Parallel Charlie hopped with joy. Charlie joined him, and the two do-si-doed around the rest of the group.
“Oh stop!” said Emma, tired and alternating between crankiness and laughter. “Other Charlie. Can we call you Chuck?”
“Hmmmm,” said Parallel Charlie. “Not quite sure on that one.”
“We could call you by your middle name,” said Charlie. “Rainier? Is that it?”
“Rainier!” beamed Parallel Charlie. “That’s it! Named after the mountain?”
“Named after the mountain!” Charlie high-fived his parallel Earth twin.
“But I think I’d rather be called Chuck,” said Parallel Charlie. “For now. Until I change my mind.”
“Chuck for now it is,” said Emma. “Now. On to the important things. Dr. Waldo, the elevator won’t take us to Australia. And that is a really long flight. Do you have another method we could try?” Emma realized she was starting to get spoiled by time and space travel. Six months prior she wouldn’t have imagined it possible to travel to another universe, and here she was, trying to shave off a few hours of travel time on Earth.
“Ah, yes, my dear! Yes! Your Ben, didn’t he tell you? That was one of the projects we had him helping us with, working on the Dark MATTER sphere to enable more precise travel.”
“Thus the landing targeted straight in the middle of the lounge,” grinned Ben.
“So we can just use the Dark MATTER to get from here to Lightning Ridge?” asked Eve, her enthusiasm bubbling over.
“Well …” said Ben.
“We’ve not perfected it just yet,” said Dr. Waldo. “The fact we got back here in one piece from the ghost planet, was, well … let’s just say if it hadn’t been an emergency I’m not sure I would have recommended it.” He coughed.
Emma rolled her eyes. “Dr. Waldo! Are you kidding me?”
But Dr. Waldo was laughing. “I’m joking, my dear! Joking indeed! Would I let you use something dangerous?”
At this, everyone laughed. “Other than everything we’ve ever used to travel?” said Emma. “The pigeons? The first time we used the Dark MATTER?”
Dr. Waldo shook his head. “Well, well, my dear! Those were special circumstances, special indeed, would not have sent you off with an untested sphere if it weren’t for Vik being here to destroy the multiverse. I think, in retrospect, it was not the worst idea I ever had?”
Emma responded by shaking her head and laughing.
“It’s true, though,” said Ben. “We did work on the Dark MATTER, and it’s pretty precise. Still, though … well, if we’re just traveling just from one point on Earth to another point on the same Earth … I’m just going to suggest we start outside, on Earth.”
“Why?” asked Charlie.
“Uh …” said Ben, “… you know, no reason. Not that it’s relevant to this conversation or anything, but I just want to say that if I ever killed anything—accidentally, of course—it was a robot. No living creatures have been harmed in my experiments.”
“…Yet,” said Parallel Charlie, now known as Chuck, to Charlie, though his spirits and enthusiasm were not dimmed at all.
“You don’t have to tell me twice! Let’s go!” said Charlie, racing Chuck to the elevator. “Australia, here we come!”
chapter seven
Having been convinced that rushing off to Australia with no preparation at all might not be the best idea, the Charlies were lured back into the Hub long enough for everyone to pack and plan. With great delight, a much-improved Dr. Waldo danced a quick jig as he distributed to everyone some newly fabricated, extremely lightweight jackets, shirts, pants, and shoes, the molecules of which would self-adjust to compensate for heat or cold.
“I call it WaldoWear,” he said. “The clothes … well, one might say they rather melted in early tests, leaving our mannequins naked, but I am fairly sure we have fixed that.”
“Fairly sure?” asked Chuck, holding up his WaldoWear pants and looking skeptically at Ben.
Ben laughed. “They fixed it. Don’t worry. I wouldn’t wear these if they didn’t!” he said. He pointed at the shirt he was wearing. “This is WaldoWear. I’ve had it for weeks. I have a whole Waldrobe full of WaldoWear. Nothing has melted yet!”
Concerned about running out of water again, Emma packed plenty of extra water, as well as a powerful filter and several water purification tablets. She made everyone else do the same.
They then used Dr. Waldo’s sophisticated computers to get an aerial view of Lightning Ridge, and Ben plotted a point for them to land—not directly in town, in hopes no one else would be around when they landed, but not too far out of town, so they wouldn’t have to walk too far. Australia, being in the southern hemisphere, was at the peak of its summer.
Charlie brought up a weather report for Lightning Ridge. “It’s ninety-three degrees there?” he said, flabbergasted. “Maybe we don’t even need clothes.”
“Actually,” said Eve, “it’s not ninety-three degrees there right now. That’ll be the middle of the day. Lightning Ridge time is seventeen hours ahead of Balky Point time. So it’s about … 10:00 tomorrow morning there. But it’ll heat up soon, I’m sure, don’t worry.” She filled another bottle with water, just in case, and swallowed a swig of the liquid for good measure. The water added ex
tra weight to her bag, but she didn’t want to take any risks. “Dr. Waldo, weren’t you working on something that could capture water from the air?”
“Good memory, young lady, good memory!” said Dr. Waldo. “Yes, yes, that is in the works, should be quite helpful to you all when you travel, assuming you travel to places with hydrogen and oxygen molecules in the air. Hmm. It’s a conundrum! But we are working on it! We are very, very close, you will see, one day and one day very soon, perhaps before you get back, one never knows, you will not worry about water at all! Yes, we are working on it!”
Indeed, Dr. Waldo and his fellow scientists at the Hub had been working on many projects. Earlier that year, they’d figured out how to create a phone that would make interuniversal calls—from any place in any universe to any other place in any universe, any and all hubs included. Once they had that figured out, a special team worked on perfecting it, adding in specialized technologies and instruments used for interuniversal travel and within the Hub itself. With much glee, Dr. Waldo had dubbed these units “iPerts.”
“iPert?” Charlie asked. “Why iPert?”
Near bursting with self-satisfaction over the name, Dr. Waldo explained. “The ‘i,’ of course, is for interuniversal, intelligent, interconnected, imagination, infinity, you have it. And the ‘Pert’ is in part for expert, because this device will make you an expert in all things! But also it is for Rupert, who as we all know is the heart and soul of the Hub. And without our hearts and souls, what would we have?” He handed them each an iPert, sleek and compact and made of a material that, with the push of a button, could camouflage the device, making it essentially invisible.
“Okay,” said Emma, zipping up her backpack. “I think I’m ready. We all have pigeons and Dark MATTER spheres, water, ghost vaccines, iPerts, travel bracelets, change of clothes ….” She sighed. “Packing for vacation is hard enough! Packing for an infinity of possibilities, I don’t know. If we just knew where to find more hubs, we could always go there and create what we need … maybe? Ben, do you know how to make anything we need, if we find a hub?”
