by Aaron Frale
It was frustrating being the most valuable member of the family and the least appreciated. She did everything for them, and there was never a word of thanks. That’s why when Alex had left the fight yesterday, she had hunted her twin down to have words. The pair had pulled into a rest stop in U-42 and were gassing up when Anya finally found them.
“How could you leave like that?” Anya had yelled.
Alex had shrugged and said, “It’s easy. You should try it sometime. The Tuners’ fight isn’t our fight.”
“It’s everyone’s fight,” Anya had said. “The cultists won’t stop until every world burns.”
“There’s a lot of worlds out there.”
Azerius had attempted to step out of the car. “Maybe I should just—”
“Get back in the car!” Alex had yelled.
“I know you don’t pretend to care,” Anya had said, “but I think you do. Sure, the world dealt us a crap hand, but that’s no excuse to give up on your friends.”
“They are not my friends.”
“That’s because you love that damn car over any person.”
“You don’t know me.”
“I know you better than you know yourself, Alex. You just don’t want people to abandon you, so you do it first. You do it so you don’t have to feel the same hurt you felt from mother—and from father.”
Alex had punched her. Her eye was still swollen from the whack.
Anya rechecked her medical supplies and had enough of everything. There was even a triage clinic set up next door. She was ready for anything that would come back on the platform. It wasn’t the job of treating the wounded that made her nervous. She was worried about Meathook. For the first time in her life, she had met someone who took care of her. Her life was given to others, and now there was one person who wanted to give his to her. Instead of losing their mutual virginity last night like they had planned, he held her while she cried after her confrontation with Alex.
For the first time, she didn’t have to be the strong one, and now she couldn’t help but pace until he returned. There weren’t even wounded to occupy her thoughts. She was about to check the setup next door for the fourth time when the platform powered up. Patel and Azerius appeared with a couple of people they had freed.
Anya ran to the base of the platform and examined the people coming down. She ordered one of the techs assigned to help her to guide a few who could walk to the clinic. Two more techs had to carry someone out on a stretcher. Azerius disappeared to gather more people. Patel removed a collar from one of the survivors.
Anya noticed Patel’s TF3 was busted. She handed her own TF3 to Patel and said, “Use mine. Go. Get the others.”
Patel nodded and slapped the collar around her own neck, then followed Azerius for his third trip.
Azerius returned, followed by Patel a few moments later. More people arrived. Anya had to make quick decisions on all of them. Meathook wasn’t among them, nor did she have time to ask. At least she had an outlet for her nervous energy.
Once everyone was through, she turned to help the clinic next door. She heard the platform fire up and spun around.
It was Meathook. He held the limp form of Magdalena. She ignored protocol, ran to him, and wrapped her arms around him. After the all too brief reconnection, she helped take Magdalena.
Anya said, “The patch job is sloppy but enough to save her life. She’ll need a transfusion and antibiotics.”
“No thank you for saving her life,” Meathook said.
Anya squeezed his arm. “You stick with the clobbering. Leave the medical stuff to me.”
Before Meathook could report, they heard an explosion from across campus, and their building shook. The power went down, and before anyone had time to react, the platform burst and sent shrapnel in every direction.
Meathook shielded Anya from the blast. His body went limp and fell to the floor.
“No!” Anya yelled and crawled to where he laid. He was shredded by pieces of metal. A large chunk protruded from the back of his skull. “No, please,” she said again and scrambled to stop the bleeding. It was a futile effort because he was brain dead.
There was a burst of fire from the platform, and a technician screamed as he was engulfed in flames and ran from the room. Carrie limped her way toward Anya. A shard of steel protruded from her eye, and her hand was curled to her chest, bloody and broken. She pulled Anya to her feet.
“Come on!” Carrie yelled.
Anya’s survival instinct kicked in. She left Meathook’s body and dragged Magdalena to the exit. There was an explosion in the room, and it flung them out into the hallway. Anya rolled over and saw Carrie had been impaled by a metal beam.
Patel emerged from the dust cloud that had formed in the corridor. She helped Anya to her feet and said, “We need to get everyone out of the building. The structural integrity is failing.”
Patel scooped Magdalena up and went down the hall. Anya heard the sound of metal groans and creaks. She could even feel the building sway. She ran with Patel and helped clear the people from the clinic. A few fled. Others stayed to help. A girl who they had saved was wandering the halls in shock. It was chaos.
Patel and a few others helped gather the ones who couldn’t walk on their own. Anya picked up a girl who was near catatonic from her round on the machine and slung her over her shoulder. The twin from 78f was in a haze. She was too in shock to think for herself and followed Patel out with the wounded.
They rounded the first set of stairs when the ground shifted, and they were knocked from their feet. Anya stood and picked up her patient. Her mind was in a tunnel, empty and blank. She was on automatic pilot. They circled to the ground floor, and the shriek of metal increased. There was another explosion in the building, and the place trembled.
They reached the window and filed out one-by-one, lowering people down the stairs. Anya dragged the girl out, and the building collapsed behind her crushing, the few left inside. She fell down the stairs they had built for the window, and her charge fell on top of her.
Patel helped Anya to her feet for the second time. Ernest and another took the person Anya was holding from her. Now that Anya had both hands free, she took a moment to take it all in. A quick surveillance of the campus displayed that their building wasn’t the only one. Others were piles of rubble too. The main physics building was an inferno, and the fire was spreading throughout the area.
The dorm room that had the portal back to her world was untouched, and they were lucky it was the right time of day. Patel ordered them to head for the dorm. The group of survivors ran. The fire hopped from building to building, eating everything in its path.
When they were almost there, they met with the survivors of the physics department. Samira held a tech while the guy hopped on one foot. A fireball burst from a building in the background. The fire swiftly jumped from structure to structure following them through the campus.
The two groups burst into the vegetable patch courtyard. There was a loud concussive thump, and the building next door toppled into the side of the dorm, raining fiery chunks of debris. A few more of the survivors lost their lives when they were crushed under the falling concrete. A boy panicked and dropped one of the wounded he was carrying and sprinted for the staircase. Anya picked up the fallen kid just as the one who ran was crushed under a collapsed wall.
They flooded the stairwell and dashed to the top. Smoke and flame chased them the entire way. By the time Anya got to the room, Patel and Azerius were making as many trips as they could to tune people out. In the meantime, the fire closed in around them.
Anya unloaded her charge and turned to the last of the crowd shoving their way down the hall. There was another explosion and everyone fell to their knees. The ledge gave way, and it crumbled, sending a few plummeting to their deaths.
There was a group of three stuck on the other side of the gap. Anya didn’t think. She raced to the hole and leaped. She was a little short and grabbed what was left of the con
crete, her legs dangling over the inferno below. The three helped her up.
She took the collar off of two of the survivors and collected the cords they used to tie the robes the cultists had issued to them. Once she had all three ropes tied to each other with the collars making the end pieces, she swung it around and flung it to a piece of rebar sticking out on the other side.
She missed. There was another blast, and the building swayed.
Patel poked her head out from the room, and Azerius followed. She told him to go, and he disappeared. Anya tried it again and missed. She took a deep breath, thought of Meathook, and did it again.
The collar landed on the rebar. She told one of the others to swing over to the other side. He threw the robe back, and the next person swung.
The building shook again. Patel ducked into the room with the survivors. The third went across and ran. Anya swung as the building fell apart around her. She landed on a crumbling walkway and ran. She burst into the room and saw that they had waited for her. She grabbed Patel’s shoulder, and they tuned away while the building crumbled around them.
18
Jon, Hailey, and Alex appeared in a fitting room together at a Hot Topic. They had tuned to 42 and were back at Rimrock Mall in Jon’s hometown. It was an appropriate place to end up. A store clerk with several facial piercings and green hair watched the three of them walk out and muttered, “Sweet.”
Once they were out of the store, Alex slumped on a bench. Hailey sat next to them and attempted to console them. Alex said, “Don’t.”
“You know what I really want?” Jon asked. “Chili and cinnamon rolls.”
“Chili and cinnamon rolls?” Hailey said, taken aback. “Is that a 42 thing?”
“That’s a regional thing.”
Hailey backed away. Before Jon was able to dial the other Tuners to see if they had made it out, they heard someone yell, “Hailey?”
A woman ran towards them. She was wearing a collar and dressed in the slave robes the cultists provided. It took a moment for Jon to recognize who it was. Then he realized it was Hailey’s sister. Patel and DeAndre must have saved her.
“Sarah!” Hailey yelled and ran toward her. They embraced and had a tearful reunion. Jon noticed more survivors were sitting at the food court tables up ahead. DeAndre trotted up to them and said, “We had to tell the mall cops that we’re a theater troop doing Jesus Christ Superstar when things got out of hand. They are getting the wounded to the hospital, and maybe we can get Rashaun to get the others.”
Jon laughed. He could only imagine what his buddy’s parents would say when he asked if cult survivors could stay with them while the Tuners sorted out getting them back to their home universes.
“Where’s Patel?” Jon asked.
“We got separated. I couldn’t get back to the entry point, so I had to find another tuning spot,” DeAndre said.
“Same one we did, apparently.”
“Yeah,” DeAndre said. “I was lucky. I found a tunnel that went straight to the surface.”
Before they could say another word. Patel called DeAndre’s TF3. He pulled up the video feed, and Jon leaned to view the frame. They knew something was wrong the moment they saw her face. She told them about what happened in Universe One.
“The whole place?” Jon asked when she had finished.
“Yeah, what’s left of Universe One is an inferno, but that’s not all,” Patel said, and handed her TF3 to Samira.
“Carrie noticed something weird on the platform software,” Samira said. “She sent me a message, saying somebody was attempting to access it remotely. She didn’t want to panic anyone, so she asked me to see if there was anything in the physics building that might be causing the issue. That’s when I noticed the terminal tied to the generator also had an active connection from a Research Station One.”
“RS1,” Jon said. “The corridors at Tuners HQ are all labeled RS1 after the U-1.”
“We know, Jon. Then what happened?” DeAndre quieted him down.
Samira continued, “That’s it. The reactor blew, and the platform did closely after. Same with a couple of other places on campus that were networked with HQ.”
“Ludie,” Jon said and told them about what had happened in the throne room, and how Ludie had disappeared.
“He was using us,” Patel said.
“Yeah,” DeAndre added, “to get rid of his only real competition.”
“Not for long,” Jon said and pulled out his headphones.
“Wait,” Hailey said, who had caught the tail end of the conversation. “What are you doing?”
“I’m going to find my way into HQ,” Jon said. “I’ll put an end to this once and for all.”
“Jon,” Hailey said. “The atmosphere might not be on.”
“That’s a risk I’m willing to take,” Jon said and put on his headphones. He turned and walked away. After a few steps, he realized that he was doing it again. He was shutting her down rather than hearing her out. He popped his earbuds out and turned back toward Hailey. He started with an apology.
19
Dr. Ray finished overloading the circuits of all the networked hardware back at U-1. It was easy after the people who had invaded the small square patch of land that was left of his homeworld had turned on the prototype. The security protocols hadn’t even been installed yet. All he needed to do was reroute the power, and it would go up in smoke. As a bonus, he was able to send a pulse through the power grid and blow up that infernal fusion reactor that Dr. Ben had created to kill his people long ago.
The buildings of the university campus were old and fire risks, but it was worth burning down what was left of his home to ensure no one would prevent him from hitting the reset switch on humanity. His birth land wasn’t worth saving anyway.
With the gift of traveling to any universe, all humanity did was figure out how to make money and exploit it. The prototype he had destroyed was a prime example of it. The design was to improve the weight loads coming through so they could increase the number of raw materials passing from one universe to another. A colleague of his had invented cars that could travel between worlds in the hope of one day scaling the technology up to a truck, but it was too unstable and never ended up where he wanted it. Another was on the quest for a stealth probe that would scan for resources in a new universe.
While Dr. Ray had no problem with the pursuit of wealth, he knew that there was much more wealth to gain in the pursuit of science for science sake. All the most profitable endeavors were initially birthed in projects that had no immediate financial plans. Dr. Ray became the wealthiest person in the multiverse, not because he narrowed his focus to pure profit but because he opened his eyes to what would benefit in the long term. Research and development, science grants, and funding the pursuit of knowledge were the most significant line items on his budget.
Whereas his contemporary who had invented the multiverse traversing car had abandoned the project when one of them got stuck in the mud in a less than civilized universe. The endeavor became too expensive to retrieve, and improvements in the platforms would negate a need for a vehicle in a few years anyway. However, had the man been less profit sighted, he would have discovered a new technology to keep the car going in universes without roads that would have brought him profits beyond the intended use.
Dr. Ray was at the top because he had monetized where the research happened to go rather than fund research to make money. The money would come. He had to be patient. That was why humans needed to go. They could not wait for something better down the line.
He punched a few more keys on the keyboard. The blue sphere in the center of the room slowed and reversed. In a few hours, the multiverse would have nothing but time to wait for the next intelligent species to evolve. Whatever single-celled organisms that were left would grow and divide, turn into multicellular life, then complex life, and finally, a fluke of genetics would favor intelligence, then societies, and then there would be something to take humanity’s pl
ace. The multiverse would wait for something better down the line.
He sat back and realized the numbers were gone. The complex equations that had followed him in his waking life and haunted his dreams were a fleeting memory. His mind was utterly blank. He had fulfilled his life purpose.
Dr. Ray looked at his hand. There were wrinkles and creases he had never seen before. His skin also had age spots. He ran his hands along his chin. He had jowls. In a panic, Dr. Ray charged out of the lab until he found a bathroom. In the mirror was an old man. He was closer to the age of Dr. Ben than the twenty-year-old version of himself that had traveled with him through time. It was happening.
He cursed and punched the mirror. It cracked, and his hand bled. He almost gave up. Maybe Dr. Ben was right. There was nothing left to do but off himself. Then a transmission came through a terminal on the wall.
It was the voice of a kid. He was attempting to get a hold of a Ludie. The name sounded familiar. Then it struck him. Dr. Ray recalled misinforming Ludie about the self-destruct option built into the lab and letting him know about a girl the cult had captured. It was hard to sort out reality from theoretical models when the math got too intense.
As if he had summoned it from the void, the math triggered in his head. He wasn’t finished yet. The end of his existence was not yet an option. He needed to take care of this newcomer. He needed to see his plan to fruition. The multiverse depended on him.
20
Jon walked through the mall of Universe 8d. It looked like any other mall in any other universe: stores and kiosks. Teenagers, groups of mothers, elderly people, and folks from all walks of life strolled through the mall. A lot of the stores had different names, but the concept was the same as anywhere. There was a sports cap place, one with shoes, one for urban professionals, and even a shop bursting with tiny earrings for teenage girls. Hailey had elected to stay behind and help with the wounded. She had acquiesced to him leaving when he had listened to her feelings about it. She hadn’t wanted him to harm Ludie. She had seen an ability to change within him and wanted Jon to bring him back alive.
