Sal and Gabi Fix the Universe

by Carlos Hernandez

  “But,” said Sweeps, doleful and dire, “she might, someday. She is a scientist working to solve a problem. But me? I’m like the scientist’s pet poodle. It doesn’t matter how many times you try to explain science to a poodle, they ain’t gonna get it. They’ll just sit there with their tongue hanging out of their mouth, dreaming of the next time they can sniff their own butt.”

  “Listen to me, Sweeps,” said Gabi. “You’re no butt-sniffing poodle.”

  Sweeps snuffled and sniffled. “I’m not?”

  We arrived at the school’s front door, but instead of using her key right away to let us in, Gabi held up Sweeps so they were looking at each other, eye to handle. “It doesn’t matter if you are a class-eight or a class-nine or a class–nine thousand AI. Your class doesn’t determine your worth. You’re kind and funny and helpful, and you make my life more interesting. You’re already unique. You’re already special.”

  Sweeps went dark. Then shy, cautious yellow lights began to brighten all over its body. “Really?”

  “Really. I’m quite fond of you, you big lug.”

  Sweeps sighed, and the sigh made every color its LEDs could produce dance all over its body. “Thanks, Gabi. You always know just what to say.” And then, because it’s Sweeps, it added, “Why can’t you be more like Gabi, Sal?”

  “One Gabi per universe,” I said, remembering my last two days, “is more than enough.”

  “You may want to hold that thought a minute,” said Gabi, focusing all her attention on unlocking Culeco’s front door with her super-special student council president key.

  Unlocking a door doesn’t require much attention. “Gabi, is there something you want to tell—”

  “Oh!” said Sweeps. “Brana just messaged me. That evil Gabi just tried to get into our universe again. But Brana brane-blocked her. Crisis averted!”

  “Good work, Brana,” I said. Gabi held open one of the double doors; I went through. “How many times has FixGabi tried to get back here now?”

  “Thirty-four and counting,” Sweeps said as Gabi carried it inside and shut the door behind them. Then it added, “Persistent little snot robber, isn’t she?”

  “FixGabi is a Gabi,” Gabi said with a sigh. “I would expect no less.”

  “But,” I added, “I bet she gives up soon. This isn’t her first time trying to steal a remembranation machine. I’m just one in a long line of Sals who’s defeated her. She’ll move on, find a new Sal to try to fool.”

  “That’s exactly what I’m afraid of,” said Gabi. She walked forward and a little to the right, which put her in front of the door to the student council room. “That Gabi is a threat to the entire multiverse. If no one stops her, she’ll succeed eventually. So we can’t let her move on. We have to stop her.”

  She wasn’t wrong. “That won’t be easy,” I said.

  Gabi opened the door and held it open for me. “I have a plan. Have you ever been here before?”

  I shook my head.

  “Then you, my friend, are in for a treat.” She invited me inside with a goblin-y wave of her hand.

  The room was pitch dark. I walked in slowly. The lights came on automagically.

  “Woahdude,” I said.

  “Welcome,” said Gabi, coming up behind me, “to the seat of student power at the Culeco Academy of the Arts. Welcome to the Ovum Throne.”

  If my elementary school back in Connecticut had a student council room, I never saw it. My middle school in Connecticut did. It was also a storage room. When it was time for a meeting, they’d tape a paper STUDENT COUNCIL IN SESSION sign to the door that gave a closet a sudden, if temporary, promotion.

  But I’m pretty sure more rats attended those meetings than kids. No one gave a raunch about the student council at my old school: not kids, not teachers, not principals, not anyone.

  I was learning quickly that, at Culeco, everyone cared about everything. “Oh, you want a student council room? I know—let’s make it a student council throne room.”

  First, it was immense: as big as our multipurpose room, where we had gym class. There were ten rows of ten seats each—high-backed mahogany chairs with plush brown seat cushions and gold plates screwed into them that told you which family had donated each one. Below the plate the school motto, FIAT FETOR, had been carved in calligraphy into each chairback.

  A center aisle split the chairs into two groups of fifty. I let my eyes move up the aisle to the front of the room. There, on a dais of black-and-white-checkerboard tile, sat five thrones in a line.

  Well, five eggs. Five egg thrones.

  The thrones looked like they’d been made out of eggs Godzilla had laid. Each had a hollowed-out window for people to sit in and was stuffed with comfy-looking cushions. Each rested atop a circular pedestal of chrome.

  Above the opening in the middle egg, the word “president” gleamed, since it had been written in all-caps with golden glitter paint. Royal-purple pillows were piled high inside it, and in front of it was a footrest in the shape of an egg with gloved cartoon hands and oversize bare feet. Dressed like the purplest little egg squire in the entire kingdom, it knelt in front of the throne, holding a purple pillow above it as if there were no greater honor in the world than to be the footrest of the president of Culeco’s student council.

  There were four other egg thrones in the room: two to the left of the president’s throne, and two to the right. They were labeled, on the right, VICE PRESIDENT (red pillows) and SECRETARY (gold pillows), and on the left, TREASURER (green pillows) and PARLIAMENTARIAN (blue pillows).

  Off to the left, a podium and microphone were set up next to a smartboard, for speeches and presentations and whatnot. And next to the podium was the lie detector Gabi had once used as part of a performance in Intermediate Theater Workshop. It was the whole setup: the computer, the gurney, the mind-reading helmet—everything. Above it was a campaign poster she had used to get elected: a picture of her pointing at the camera with a speech bubble over her head that said: I GUARANTEE I’LL BE AN HONEST POLITICIAN: WITH SCIENCE!

  That lie detector brought back a few memories. But my brain didn’t have the processing power to deal with them at that moment; it was already overclocking, just trying to take in this place. “This is the weirdest room I have ever seen in any school, ever,” I said. “I love it.”

  Gabi laughed. “I really like that about you, Sal.” She sashayed up the center aisle, ascended the dais with one big step, and then plopped herself into the egg throne labeled PRESIDENT, laying Sweeps on her lap. Smiling, thoroughly above it all, with her feet on the footrest, she added, “Not everybody gets the awesomeness of the Ovum Throne. It’s evidence of a sophisticated mind, not being afraid of weird things.”

  “With the life I’ve had, it was either hate myself or love my weirdness.” I followed her up the center aisle and stopped in front of the dais, hands on hips. “So, this has to be the Humpty Dumpty room for Rompenoche, obviously.”

  “Sure. But that’s not why I brought you here. I have something important to show you.”

  All the lightness and fun in Gabi’s voice had vanished. She’d gone judge-and-jury serious in a second. Even Sweeps caught how grave she’d become; it turned off all its lights so as not to be a distraction.

  I took a seat in the front row, put my hands on my knees, and gave Gabi my full attention. “Okay. Shoot.”

  She walked off the dais and over to the lie detector’s gurney, where she gently laid Sweeps. Once she had set its handle comfortably on the pillow, she leaned over and whispered something to it.

  Sweeps lit up as it giggled. “Oh! Oh yeah. We can totally do that. It’s gonna be awesome!”

  “Thank you,” said Gabi, petting it. Then she jumped on the dais again and started turning all the egg thrones around. Down the line she went, rotating them one after the other until I was looking at their eggy backs. When she finished, she walked over to the lip of the dais and said, “I’ve been thinking about how to defeat FixGabi since the moment you
told me about her. If she’s as good at branesurfing as you say, she’s going to be extremely tough to beat.”

  I shrugged. “That’s what I said. I mean, where do we even start?”

  “We start,” said Gabi, stepping backward, “by finding allies. Forging alliances. Building a coalition of like-minded partners to help us in our cause.”

  I didn’t follow her, so I said, “I don’t follow you.”

  Gabi turned the president’s egg throne around again and sat down in it. As she put her feet up on the footstool, she asked me, “Remember how FixGabi zapped my Fey Spy?”

  “Yeah. I’m sorry that happened. I didn’t see it coming. It’s gone for good, isn’t it?”

  Gabi laughed. Then she held up her hands and clapped twice.

  The Fey Spy came zooming out from behind the far left egg throne. It hovered in the air for a few seconds, then zipped into Gabi’s hairball, rustling all her moon-and-werewolf barrettes.

  “It’s back!” I shot out of my chair with excitement. “But it could have been anywhere in the multiverse. How’d you find it?”

  “With a little help from my friends,” said Gabi. Then she clapped twice more and said, “Okay, ladies! Reveal yourselves!”

  The four other thrones all turned around at the same speed. Sitting in them were four other Gabis.

  “Salvador Alberto Dorado Vidón,” said the Gabi in the president throne, “please allow me to introduce you to the greatest force for good ever assembled. We call ourselves the Sisterverse. Sisterverse, please meet my universe’s version of Sal Vidón.”

  “Hi, Sal,” said four Gabis at once.

  Chacho, if that doesn’t blow your mind, you don’t have a mind to blow. Let’s all take a second to put our brains back in our heads, shall we?

  “DON’T LOOK SO SHOCKED, Sal,” said my Gabi, crossing her ankles on the presidential footrest. Despite her words, she was clearly enjoying my shock. “You were in contact with FixGabi, weren’t you?”

  “She contacted me,” I said, my voice thick and dull. Brain still restarting.

  “And we contacted Gabi,” said the Gabi in the vice president’s egg throne. Her barrettes were women with bouffant hairdos, wearing poodle skirts, and zooming around in jet packs. Her T-shirt sported the message “YOUR PERSONALITY IS YOUR PAST, NOT YOUR FUTURE”—CARLOS HERNANDEZ. Her sneakers had wings and jet engines on them; they looked like they might just be able to let her fly.

  “After FixGabi made the Fey Spy disappear,” said my Gabi, “to find it, I came here directly from Principal Torres’s office and ‘rode the taco.’”

  “And that’s how we found each other!” said the Gabi in the treasurer’s egg throne. She was darker-skinned than the other Gabis, and taller—I mean, she was legit tall—and her hairball was lighter, as if she spent a lot of time in the sun. Her barrettes were hurricanes. Her shirt read “END CONFLICT QUICKLY. HURRY TO PEACE.”—REINA REÁL.

  “We’ve been looking for Gabis like us,” said the Gabi in the secretary’s egg throne, who didn’t have barrettes but had gelled her hair into a thousand curly spikes sticking out of her skull in every direction, like she’d just stuck her finger in a light socket. Her T-shirt said “DON’T UNFRIEND—UNENEMY.”—SOME INTERNET RANDO. “Any Gabi who has figured out how to transcend the confines of their universe is invited to join the Sisterverse.”

  The Gabi in the parliamentarian’s egg throne stood and opened her arms wide. She wore barrettes that were little radars. They actually seemed to be working; they were rotating busily all over her head and making wuh-wuh-wuh sounds. Her T-shirt said “WHOOPS! MY BAD.”—PANDORA. “We shall usher in a multiverse-wide age of peace and prosperity,” she said.

  I swear, cacaseca is better at shaking me out of a stupor than a slap in the face. And these five Gabis were giving me five times the normal dose than my single Gabi could give by herself. “A multiverse-wide age of peace and prosperity,” I repeated, loud, raising my eyebrow like a Mario springboard.

  “Well,” said Jet-Shoes Gabi, sounding defensive, “that’s the goal. It’s good to have lofty goals.”

  “Right now we’re starting small,” said Radar-Head Gabi, sitting down again. “The Sisterverse is a work in progress.”

  I asked, “How many ‘sisters’ have you recruited so far?”

  “Five,” said Hurricane Gabi.

  “Six,” said Electrocuted-Hair Gabi.

  “We’re not counting her,” Hurricane said, twisting in her throne to face Electro-Hair. “That girl is canceled.”

  Electro-Hair pointed at her own shirt. “We have to forgive people and help them become better, or else there’s no hope for society.”

  “Who we talking about here?” I asked. Though I had a pretty good guess.

  My Gabi shook her head sadly. “FixGabi.” Then, remembering that was a private name, she told the four other Gabis, “That’s what Sal’s been calling her.”

  “Of course,” I said. “Of all the rotten luck.”

  “It wasn’t bad luck,” said Jet-Shoes. “FixGabi founded the Sisterverse.”

  “She was one of us,” said Radar. “Our first president.”

  “But she became convinced,” said Electro-Hair, “that we needed to destroy the membrane that separates all the universes from each other.”

  “Madness,” said Hurricane.

  “So,” said my Gabi, “FixGabi was impeached, declared unfit to be president, and removed.”

  “She wasn’t happy about that,” said Electro-Hair, playing with one of her hair spikes.

  “There was a fight,” said Radar.

  I sat down again, tucked a foot under me. “Like, an argument?”

  Hurricane thought about that, then said, “More like a battle to see who could throw whom into some forgotten corner of the multiverse, never to be heard from again.”

  “Okay,” I drawled. “But you’re all here, which means she didn’t defeat you. And she’s still running around the multiverse, so you didn’t defeat her. So what happened?”

  Jet-Shoes hung her head. “We almost won.”

  Electro-Hair hung her head. “We had her on the ropes!”

  Hurricane hung her head. “We were on the cusp of victory!”

  “And then,” said Radar, hanging her head, “she gave us the slip.”

  “They’ve been looking for her ever since,” said my Gabi.

  “We’ve almost caught her a dozen times since then,” Jet-Shoes added.

  “I saw you in the space station, Sal,” Electro-Hair said to me. “I got so close that time! When she disappeared on me again, I went back to see if you needed help, but you were gone by then, too.”

  Lightbulb. “The forces of evil!” I said, pointing at them. “That’s you!”

  And then, when I got five dirty Gabi looks from five different faces, I added, “No, I don’t think you’re evil. That’s what she calls you.”

  “Good,” said Hurricane. “That means she’s afraid of us.”

  “She doesn’t fight like she’s afraid of us,” Radar said woefully.

  “We will teach her to fear the Sisterverse!” said Jet-Shoes, standing and punching her palm.

  “I don’t want her to fear us,” said Electro-Hair. “I want her to see reason. I want her to be one of us again.”

  “That would be the best outcome,” agreed Radar.

  “But is it possible?” I asked. “Or an even better question: Can we risk finding out? I mean, while we’re all trying to rehabilitate her and be her friend, she’s going to be trying to chuck us into the pantsing Phantom Universe.”

  “We can risk it,” said my Gabi, with all the authority the president egg throne could imbue. “We must risk it. And even if we fail, we will succeed! I have a plan.”

  All the other Gabis rotated their egg thrones to look at my Gabi. I got up and walked closer to the dais. “We’re all listening,” I said. “Let’s hear it.”

  She leaned forward, placing her elbows on her knees, then resting her chin atop
her folded fingers. More to the Sisterverse than to me, she said, “Sal and I just heard from Sweeps the entropy sweeper that, just, like, a few minutes ago, FixGabi made another attempt to get into our universe. Right, Sal?”

  “Right. Attempt number…What was it again, Sweeps?”

  In response, Sweeps snored. Chacho must have been really tired from studying to become a class-nine AI all day.

  “Attempt thirty-four,” said Gabi. “And it failed, correct?”

  “Yes. Brana kept FixGabi out.” And then, for the benefit of the visitors from other universes, “Brana is the name of our universe’s remembranation machine.”

  “Ours, too,” they replied. That backed up what FixGabi had told me earlier: Names transcend universes. But why? The multiverse was so weird.

  “So here’s my question for you, Sal,” said Gabi, standing up and strolling around the dais. “If Brana is so good at keeping FixGabi out, how did all these other Gabis get in?”

  That…was a very good question. They must have…but they couldn’t…or maybe they…OH. “You talked to Sweeps, Gabi. And then Sweeps must have talked to Brana. You got Brana to let them in!”

  Gabi touched her nose. “Brana knows FixGabi’s personal cosmic signature, so it can keep her from making holes in our universe. So imagine this: Brana ‘breaks down.’ It has a major malfunction. Suddenly, our universe is vulnerable again. This is FixGabi’s big chance!”

  “Only,” said Hurricane, rubbing her hands together, “Brana isn’t really broken. Brana is a fully operational remembranation machine when FixGabi comes a-knockin’. Bwa-ha-ha!”

  “But okay,” said Jet-Shoes. “We lure Gabi here. Then what?”

  “Then,” said Electro-Hair, catching on, “we don’t let her out.”

  Radar understood Gabi’s plan next. “Brana can seal up any hole before FixGabi can go through it. It’s way faster than she is.”

  “We can trap her in this universe,” I said. “Where we can be sure she can’t do any more harm to the multiverse.”

  “And,” said Gabi, “we can try to reform her. She is a Gabi, after all. Sooner or later, I bet we can make her understand the error of her ways.”