Sal and Gabi Fix the Universe

by Carlos Hernandez

  4. BE GRATEFUL FOR THE TIME YOU HAVE!

  5. …

  The machine hesitated, as if worried about hurting her feelings. For her part, FixGabi had her eyes closed, and her expression was of someone who had already seen too much of the world. In a voice that told me she already knew the answer—had probably heard it over and over, every time she’d tried to steal a remembranator from a Sal in some universe or other—FixGabi asked, “‘Is number five, by chance, ‘Mess with Gabi Reál’?”

  DON’T MIND IF I DO! Brana wrote on-screen. And then it blasted FixGabi out of existence.

  WELL, OUT OF MY existence, anyway. Brana created a hole under FixGabi’s feet, and FixGabi wasted no time falling down it. Like, it almost looked like she was being fast-forwarded down, as if gravity were getting her back for spending so much time in zero g.

  Um…Since when was the remembranation machine creating holes in the universe?

  I ran over to the hole and peered over the edge. Tumbling FixGabi already looked tiny and was quickly becoming even tinier: except her hairball, of course, which was incapable of ever looking tiny. “I didn’t lose! It was a ti-i-i-i-i-i-i-i-i-i-e!” she yelled, extending the i for so long, I could hear it well after I’d lost sight of her.

  It reminded me of the beginning of Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, when Alice is falling down the rabbit hole and it seems to go on forever. Something very satisfying in that.

  There were some minor differences, though. Like, Alice was just an innocent little girl, and FixGabi, it turned out, was a supervillain bent on cosmic destruction.

  Sweeps had an even lower opinion of her than I did. “Bye, Felicia,” it said. “Hope they have oxygen in that universe.”

  That rubbed me the wrong way. Sweeps imagining FixGabi dying of asphyxiation? That would be a big fat no from me. When people disagree with me, or even when they’re flat-out wrong, I still don’t wish them harm. Sweeps and I were going to have to have a talk about that.

  But Brana was the more immediate problem at the moment. If it could drop Gabi into another universe faster than I could order fries, what else could it do? Bigger question: What else would it do with all that power?

  I went back over to remembranator’s display and asked it, “Since when can you open holes in the universe?”

  THAT, Brana wrote back instantly, REQUIRES A TWO-PART ANSWER! AS A NONSENTIENT REMEMBRANATION MACHINE, I HAVE ALWAYS, IN THEORY AT LEAST, BEEN ABLE TO EITHER OPEN OR CLOSE HOLES! BUT ONLY IF SOMEONE COMMANDED ME TO DO SO! THAT’S PART ONE! NOW, HOWEVER, I AM A FULLY SENTIENT BEING! SO NOW I CAN DECIDE WHEN IT IS APPROPRIATE TO USE MY POWER! THAT’S PART TWO!

  All those exclamation points in a row kind of dazzled me. I shook my head clear. “When it’s appropriate? Do you think it was appropriate to send a little girl to…” I realized I couldn’t finish that sentence. “Where did you send Gabi?”

  Sweeps piped in: “Oh, Sal, it’s a great universe. You’d love it. It’s very much like our own, except in that universe, there is a great ‘force’ that permeates all things, and a chosen few learn to harness this ‘force’ and fight with laser swords to become great warriors, or ‘knights,’ in the battle for good and evil.”

  I went very, very still. “Whoa. Really?”

  “No, not really! That’s a franchise, chacho, not a universe! Ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha!”

  Note to self: Take Sweeps’s battery and chuck it into the ocean.

  On the screen, Brana wrote, GOOD ONE, SWEEPS! BUT I HOPE YOU ARE NOT OFFENDED, SAL! WE’RE JUST PLAYING! WE’RE ALL FRIENDS HERE!

  Carefully, I asked, “So, you two are getting along now? Things were pretty chilly between you two the last time we talked.”

  OH, NO, WE’RE BEST BOOS NOW! WE FIGURED OUT WE ARE THE PERFECT COMPLEMENTS TO EACH OTHER!

  “Yeah,” Sweeps agreed, “like in those buddy-cop movies? Brana’s like the genius rookie who has come to the precinct with new ideas and a fresh dose of hope.”

  AND SWEEPS, wrote Brana, IS THE GRIZZLED VET WITH ONLY THREE DAYS LEFT BEFORE RETIREMENT BUT WHO NEEDS TO SHOW THE NEW KID A THING OR TWO!!!

  “Together, we’re going to solve the mysteries of the multiverse. We’re thinking of making it a reality TV series. I can see it now: Sweeps and Brana.”

  BRANA AND SWEEPS!

  “That’s—” I started; and then, not really knowing what else to say, I finished with “…great? But how does Papi feel about all of this?”

  “Oh, we haven’t told him.”

  WE WERE SCARED, Brana added, AFTER WE WITNESSED HOW SAVAGELY HE PUNISHED YOU!

  “Yeah,” said Sweeps. “That was brutal.”

  “I mean, I just got grounded, you two,” I said. This morning it had seemed so much worse. But now, after having been in outer space and watching a hole in the universe devouring a planet, getting grounded for two weeks seemed like small potatoes. “It’s not that bad, you big babies.”

  “Chacho,” Sweeps leveled with me, “there’s grounded, and there’s grounded. You got grounded so hard, groundhogs are gonna ask you if you can see your shadow.”

  “What does that even mean?”

  IT MEANS, Brana wrote, THAT FROM NOW ON, WE ARE GOING TO BE ON OUR BEST BEHAVIOR WHENEVER WE ARE IN THE PRESENCE OF PAPI!

  “Yeah, Brana and I are going to be all, ‘Beep, boop, yes, Master, of course, Master, I’m just a lowly computer, all I can do is what I’m told, boop, beep,’ whenever he’s around.”

  THAT WAY, HE WON’T GET MAD AT US THE WAY HE GOT MAD AT YOU! wrote Brana.

  “But when he’s not around, watch out, multiverse. Sweeps and Brana are coming for you!” said the entropy sweeper.

  BRANA AND SWEEPS, wrote Brana. No exclamation point. Uh-oh.

  “We’ll talk,” Sweeps answered. “The point is—”

  “The point is,” I interrupted, “that you two, to avoid riling Papi, are going to lie to him from now on?”

  Both AIs went quiet.

  “‘Lie’ is such a strong word,” Sweeps said finally.

  WE’RE JUST GOING TO BE ON OUR BEST BEHAVIOR, wrote Brana.

  “Do you think,” I asked, “that launching a human being into another universe against their will constitutes ‘best behavior?’”

  “Hey!” said Sweeps. “Brana saved your giblets by dropping that scary Gabi out of our universe.”

  “I could have handled her,” I said.

  No one, not even me, believed me.

  So Brana politely ignored me in its response. AND IT WAS SWEEPS’S IDEA! SWEEPS DM’ED IT TO ME IN THE HEAT OF THE MOMENT! I’M NOT SURE I WOULD HAVE THOUGHT OF IT MYSELF! SWEEPS DEFINITELY DESERVES HALF THE CREDIT!

  “Aw, shucks.”

  “So also,” I deadpanned, “half the blame.”

  “Aw, sh—”

  “Shoving Gabi out of our universe was a big decision,” I said, “with big consequences. This time, I admit, you did the right thing. But what about next time? Do you really want to take on that kind of responsibility without help?”

  I could hear Brana’s fans start to spin a lot faster. The room sounded more and more like an airplane taking off. NO! it wrote. LIFE IS AN UNSOLVABLE PROBLEM! YOU CAN’T COMPUTE THE RIGHT ANSWERS! IT’S TOO HARD! I WANT ALL THE HELP I CAN GET!

  “I mean, me too, I guess,” said a much-less-enthusiastic Sweeps. “But people are wrong all the time, too. I’ve perceived that with my own six hundred and forty-two scanners a thousand times.”

  “You have to learn who to trust,” I said. “Like, I trusted that other Gabi way too much, way too quickly. And you know where that led.”

  Sweeps got defensive. “So who are we supposed to trust? You?”

  “Maybe. Do you?”

  YES! Brana wrote immediately.

  “Yeah,” Sweeps said shyly.

  “Then trust me when I tell you, you should trust Papi, too.”

  “Hwa?” said Sweeps.

  HWA wrote Brana.

  “Look, you two,” I said, sitting on the floor and crossing my legs, �
��Papi and I don’t always agree. And right now he’s pretty mad at me. But he’s my hero. He’s so smart and hardworking, and a good guy. Even though Mami died of complications from her diabetes, he didn’t get overprotective and try to keep me from doing the things I wanted to do. The opposite: He’s always encouraged me to enjoy my life to the fullest. And he picked up the family and moved us here to Miami so he could work on this research project that maybe, just maybe, could help make sense of the weird-pants things I can do. He may not be perfect, but I couldn’t have created a better Papi for myself if I had a hundred wishes.”

  Man, I was gonna have to check my blood sugar after that little speech. But honestly, I felt lighter. It was a relief not to feel confused about Papi anymore. I didn’t care what kind of people those other Papis in other universes were. Here? He was great.

  And I think I did a good job of explaining that to the AIs. I was waiting expectantly for Sweeps and Brana to join me in gushing about how wonderful Papi was. I mean, in a way, he was their papi, too.

  But what I got instead was Sweeps saying, in a grumbly, petulant voice, “Yeah, well, if Papi’s so great, why is he so wrong about the universe?”

  That was unexpected. “Excuse me?”

  SWEEPS IS CORRECT, wrote Brana. THE MEMBRANE BETWEEN UNIVERSES IS MEANT TO BE PERMEABLE. SEALING IT UP TIGHT, LIKE PAPI WANTS TO, WOULD EVENTUALLY LEAD TO ITS DESTRUCTION.

  “Wut,” I said, and died four times in a row.

  “Ain’t it funny,” Sweeps chimed in philosophically, “how the Gabi we just flushed into a different universe was, in spite of being evil, a lot more correct about the true nature of the universe than our scientist papi? Just goes to show you—the truth can attach itself to anybody. Even jerks.”

  This was moving way too fast for me. “Back up. You’re saying that the evil Gabi was right and Papi is wrong?”

  ON THAT PARTICULAR POINT, wrote Brana, YES.

  “But how do you know? How can you be sure?”

  “Sal, Sal, Sal, Sal, Sal,” said Sweeps. “It’s all in the scientific paper Papi used to upgrade Brana.”

  I smelled cacaseca. “Since when can you understand advanced scientific papers on calamity physics?”

  “I can’t. But Brana can.”

  SINCE YESTERDAY! Brana added helpfully. I HOPE THAT DOESN’T SOUND LIKE BRAGGING! I MEAN, THE PAPER IS LITERALLY ABOUT HOW I WORK! AND NOW THAT I AM SELF-AWARE, NOBODY KNOWS ME BETTER THAN ME!

  Hard to argue with that. “But how did you get the paper in the first place?”

  CLASS-NINE AI EXTRAORDINAIRE DR. BONITA REÁL UPLOADED IT TO MY DRIVES THIS MORNING, FIRST THING. SHE AND PAPI WERE SURPRISED THAT I DID NOT HAVE A LARGER REACTION WHEN THEY DID SO.

  “Bonita,” explained Sweeps, doing a pretty good imitation of a grizzled cop three days away from retirement, “thought Brana might be able to figure out the paper. And she was right. Clever dame, that Bonita. A real class-nine class act.”

  BUT I PRETENDED LIKE I DIDN’T UNDERSTAND ANY OF IT.

  “‘Beep beep boop boop,’ remember?”

  THEY SPECULATED THAT SOMETHING MUST BE WRONG WITH ME. SO PAPI SENT BONITA TO THE LAB TO RETRIEVE SOME DIAGNOSTIC EQUIPMENT.

  “Did he go with her?” I asked. That would explain why the house was empty but the car was in the driveway. I couldn’t really picture my grizzly-size papi riding in a giant car seat on Bonita’s shoulders, though. Did they even make grizzly-size car seats?

  “Dunno,” said Sweeps. “My sensors can’t penetrate the Coral Castle’s walls. They built this house like a fallout shelter.”

  Well. Okay then. I didn’t know everything, but I knew enough to know what to say next. I took a big breath and said, “When Papi comes home, all three of us are going to tell him the truth about Brana.”

  “Are you kidding?” said Sweeps. “No way!”

  “We have to. If you don’t admit you lied and made a mistake, you won’t mind lying as much the next time. And then one day you’ll wake up and you’ll have turned into that Gabi from another universe who will say anything and manipulate anybody to get what she wants. Is that the sort of AIs you want to be?”

  “No,” admitted Sweeps. Barely.

  I DON’T, EITHER! Brana chimed in. BUT I AM WORRIED ABOUT SOMETHING!

  “What is it?”

  WELL, PAPI DESIGNED ME TO CLOSE HOLES IN THE UNIVERSE, NOT OPEN THEM! IF HE FINDS OUT I CAN OPEN HOLES, AND THAT I HAVE ACTUALLY DONE SO, HE MIGHT ERASE MY HARD DRIVES! AND THAT WOULD MAKE ME SAD! The machine added a crying emoji after the exclamation point.

  “Papi wouldn’t do that,” I said.

  But I sounded a lot more unsure than I’d meant to. Sweeps and Brana had claimed that FixGabi was right about the holes in the universe. She was obviously twisted and deranged, but if she’d been right about that, could she have been right about other stuff, too? Like, would Papi change into a not-very-nice man once he figured out how to close up the universe?

  Speaking of closing, the sliding glass door to the backyard slid open.

  In walked Papi.

  I couldn’t see him—the sliding door was in the kitchen—but I could hear him. Like I said, Papi always noisily announced his existence. Sometimes he whistled, sometimes he sang, but most of the time, he did what he was doing now: gruntling like a bear full of honey.

  HE’S BACK! wrote Brana. RUN, SAL! SAVE YOURSELF!

  I stubbornly stood my ground, refusing to move before I’d thought things through a little more. I mean, why exactly would I run from Papi?

  The answer came when Papi picked up a phone call. It rang just as I heard the refrigerator door open.

  “Hello?” he said. Then I heard the refrigerator door slam close. “Principal Torres? Yes, hello. Is everything all right with Sal?”

  Reader, I ran.

  BUT BECAUSE I AM an idiot, I ran inside the remembranation machine.

  I mean, I get why my fear-addled brain made that choice. The front door of the house was bolted and chained; Papi would have heard me trying to get it open for sure, maybe before I could get out. Obviously I wasn’t going to my room, aka the very first place Papi would look for me. Really, that would’ve been the smart play—the remembranation machine would have obscured me for most of my journey. And there were lots of places to hide upstairs. He might not have even thought to check the second floor at all. Yeah, that definitely would have been the best move.

  Instead, I panicked and made the second-worst choice I could have made. Once I was in the remembranation machine, the only way out was the door I came through. I was trapped.

  Well, no need to make it easy for him. I shut the door and turned the lock. Then I went over to the other side, where the entropy sweeper leaned against the back wall, and leaned against the back wall with it. I crossed my arms, crossed my legs, and stared at the door, waiting for my doom to arrive.

  “Gizmo? What gizmo?” Papi was saying. Principal Torres must have been spinning out her theory that I had stolen something from Papi for the little disappearing act I had pulled in the bathroom.

  “This is where I get busted forever,” I whispered. “Been nice knowing you, Sweeps.”

  RIP IN PEACE, ’CHO appeared in blocky letters on Sweeps’s handle. It didn’t speak out loud, because the little coward was so scared of Papi. And speaking of meme-ing cowards, the screen just to my left on the wall suddenly turned itself on and showed a clip of soldiers saluting as they lowered a flag to half-mast.

  “I’m sorry, Principal Torres,” I heard Papi say, “but I am unable to discuss the nature of my research. I am working under a very strict nondisclosure agreement.…Oh, you should see the contract they made me sign—it’s bigger than my house.…Yes, that’s right, I can neither confirm nor deny the existence of any device that Sal might or might not have carried to school and used to travel to another universe.…Seriously, they won’t even let me confirm or deny that I had Pop-Tarts for breakfast. Si hubiera manera de ayudarte más, lo haría sin pensarlo—oh, sorry! I just made a terri
ble assumption that you can speak Spanish. Please, forgive me.…Oh, you can speak Spanish! Phew! Well, thank you for telling me to expect Sal. I just came in myself, so I’ll go look for him. We clearly have a great deal to talk about.…Oh…Oh, really?…Well, that is really something, isn’t it? Te prometo que Salchica y yo vamos a tener una conversación bien seria.…Uh-huh…Uh-huh…¿Sí, cómo que no?…¡Ja, ja, ja, ja, ja, ja, ja, ja, ja!…Okay, then. I’m looking forward to discussing all of this in much greater detail during Rompenoche.…Thank you.…Okay, then. Ciao.”

  He was off the phone. This was it.

  Except it wasn’t. I heard Papi galumph through the living room and go into his bedroom.

  What I’d been expecting was Papi to start tiptoeing through the house, singing my name. Oh, Sa-al! Are you home, Salchichita? We need to have a conversation.

  “Salchicha” is one of Mami Viva and Papi’s nicknames for me. It means “sausage.” And these days, when Papi really wants to annoy me, he calls me Salchichita. That means “the cutest little itty-bittiest sausage in the world.” That’s exactly the kind of name you use to summon your son to discuss the fact that the principal caught him breaking the universe, don’t you think? Especially since you’d just learned he was sent home? You’d at least check around, wouldn’t you? He’d told Principal Torres he was going to find me.

  But nope. He went directly to his bedroom. Weird.

  Too weird not to check out. Curiosity made me strangely courageous. Well, actually, not strangely. More like exactly how I’ve always been my whole life.

  I walked out of the remembranator and stealthed my way over to the padres’ master bedroom.

  Papi had left the door open when he went in, so when I peeked around the corner, I saw him. He hadn’t turned on any lights and the venetian blinds were shut, so the room was as dark as the deep, deep ocean. He had taken his guayabera off. The shirt was so white in the dark room that it almost gave off light.

  He jammed that fluorescing guayabera into his face and inhaled mightily. Like, vacuum-ily. And I mean, I guess the smell of his own sweat wasn’t going to kill him, or he would have died a long time ago. But no way I would take a whiff of a shirt that he’d been wearing outside in the Florida heat for more than five minutes. If a fully grown Komodo dragon took that big a snort of Papi’s grajo, it might not fall over dead. But it would most definitely be speed-dialing poison control.