by Aaron Frale
“There are other differences. Some big. Some small. It depends on the universe. For example, 38 and 42 are similar, thus close to the same number in the original ordering system. If we find a new one like yours but only minor differences, then it’s 42a, b, c, etc. Others, like universe 212, are so different that you can barely recognize them. Some even have no Earth or don’t obey the same laws of physics. You can end up in space without air, or explode because your atoms can’t keep stable cohesion. Those are the void universes. We don’t bother giving those universes numbers because we can’t explore them anyway.”
“So, how do you know what’s on the other side?” Jon asked.
“When we find a new universe, the equipment here at Tuners HQ can take a snapshot. It doesn’t give us much, but it’s enough to know if we are going to die if we step through. Think of it like opening a door and then backing out before it closes. But don’t go trying it. We’ve lost a lot of Tuners who make a mistake when they tune. We lost Walter last week to a void universe,” Hailey said. “He was a good friend.”
“I’m sorry,” Jon said.
“Don’t. Walter knew the risks. We all knew the risks. But we have to continue going. That’s what we do.”
They walked in silence.
After a while, they ended up in a hallway with lots of different doors. Hailey touched her palm to one of them, and it opened. There was a room on the other side, and Jon stepped inside. The walls were white in contrast to the gray metal walls of the hallway. There was a bed, desk, closet, and dresser. Another door deeper in the room opened to a bathroom. The place was empty and unoccupied. Jon stepped into the room.
“We’ll code it to you in the morning,” Hailey said. “In the meantime, get some rest. And think about it. Not everyone can join the Tuners. There are months of scouting, tests, and all sorts of barriers. But Hector has something special planned for you.”
“What do you mean?”
“You saw how many people they sent to get you. Even the cultists try not to risk a collapse of a universe until they can harvest it.”
“Harvest it? What is so special about me?”
“I’ll see you in the morning, Jon,” Hailey said and closed the door.
“Hey!” Jon said and banged on it. He attempted to touch the side where he thought the control panel might be. It lit up and said: “UNAUTHORIZED ACCESS.” He thumped a few more times with no luck and went back to the bed. He crashed onto the mattress, and it was the most comfortable mattress he had ever been on. His eyes grew heavy, and before he knew it, he was asleep.
10
Jon woke to see Ludie’s smiling face. He gave the kid the finger and turned over in bed.
“Um,” Ludie said. “I’ve been sent to get you.”
“I’m still sleeping,” Jon said and refused to even look Ludie in the eyes.
“Regulation 341 of the Tuners Pact states that waking hours are to be strictly observed during a state of emergency.”
“Well, I’m not a Tuner.”
“I—um—really—think—”
“Okay. Fine. Fine. I’m up. I can’t sleep with you yammering anyway.”
“Here. Some clothes based on your size, style, and preference,” Ludie said as he plopped some garments on the bed. They were definitely skater clothing. Some of the brands were ones he didn’t recognize. He had to assume that they came from another universe. “How do you know my clothing style?”
“We have computers that use advanced algorithms to scan social networks and internet traffic from various universes. It helps us delete videos when people accidentally catch a Tuner on camera. It lets us get to them before they have too many views. It also happens to be a good fashion consultant when it has access to years of social media photos.”
“Forget I asked.” Jon put on the new clothes after he motioned Ludie to turn around. “You could have given me access to the controls of the room. I accidentally closed the bathroom door and couldn’t get it open again. You’re lucky I found an empty water bottle!”
“Oh—oh—” Ludie said. “I was wondering where you got a lemon drink. I’ll get a cleanup crew.”
“And do me a favor. Don’t tell Hailey.”
“Why would I tell her?”
“Never mind,” the social intricacies of dating didn’t seem to be on Ludie’s radar yet. He looked like he was one of the younger Tuners, but when Jon was that age, he couldn’t stop thinking about girls. Of course, he couldn’t stop thinking about girls now, so not much had changed. “Can I see my father yet?”
“He’s still in critical condition. Hector really wants to talk with you,” Ludie stammered.
“Fine, when can I go home?” Jon pried.
“It’s still at 97%. Tears in the fabric of reality don’t heal with a bowl of warm duck soup, you know.”
“Don’t you mean chicken?”
“Chicken? What’s chicken?”
“Forget it.”
Jon knew that Ludie was just the messenger. There was no reason for him to take out his frustrations on the kid. He sighed and said, “Let’s do this. Take me to Hector.”
∆∆∆
Hector’s office was neat, orderly, and very plain. The man had no time for decorations and didn’t have a family. The window overlooked operations. It was opposite the window of the conference room. Jon could see more of the technical stations below. The technicians punched away at their screens.
Jon slouched in the chair across from Hector. Ludie stood in the doorway, not knowing what to do with himself. Hector swiveled around in his chair and said, “I see the others have taken good care of you.”
“Screw you,” Jon said. “You did this to my father!”
“I did nothing of the sort. It was the Order of the Flame.”
“The what?”
“They are a religious extremist group. They think their world is the only one that should exist, so it’s not a significant loss for them if they destabilize a universe when they come crashing through the barrier. If they lose a few followers when a place is ‘cleansed,’ they’ll find another world full of people they can conscript into joining the fight.”
“Seems like a waste of manpower to send all those people after me.”
“Getting ahold of a Tuner before we do seems to be a priority for them.”
“But why?”
“We are not sure. But we’ve seen it before. They will invade a universe, grab all the teenagers they can find, and BANG! No more universe.”
“Why teens?”
“The ability can manifest as early as twelve and fades in the early twenties. The fortunate ones get ten years. Hearing degenerates with age. Normal people don’t notice until much later in life, and Tuners notice it much earlier. The truth is when I first started, recruiting was less disruptive to the candidates’ lives. We’d scout a mall and watch for people who could hear the static. We’d observe for a while then approach the subject. It was all voluntary. A gig to make sure people don’t abuse the privilege of traveling between worlds.”
“What if I don’t want the gig?”
“In the past, I’d send you home and leave my card in case you changed your mind. But now, I can’t do that. It’s all changed. Once the cultists started showing up, it’s become a race.”
“For what?”
“To find Tuners before the cultists get them.”
Jon didn’t have anything to say. He didn’t ask for any of this. As far as he was concerned, his world was too much to deal with, and now it turned out that there were countless others and killer cultists. Jon wanted to go back to the days where he could just talk about girls with Rashaun.
“We do good work here. Some universes aren’t even out of the dark ages. A multiverse traveler can take advantage of that and rule the world. Tuners protect the universes. We let them evolve on their natural path. We don’t interfere and stop others from doing so,” Hector said.
Jon was quiet.
“So, are you going to join us or what?
” Hector said. “I can’t force you. Once your universe heals, we can tune you back. We’ll even give you some money to change your name and start over. I can’t guarantee the cultists won’t find you in your new location, but it’s better than nothing. Regardless of what you decide, you can’t go back to your old life. They will find you.”
Jon looked at the operations room below. There was a monitor that was blinking red. It showed that his world was a risk factor of 95.7%. He thought about everyone he had ever known. They had no idea that the fabric of their reality had come close to tearing open. He thought of his sister. Ying used to pretend that she was a monkey living in a tree. He’d climb up and pretend he was an ape friend to her. She didn’t deserve to die so young. Neither did the people of his universe.
“I have one condition,” Jon said.
“What is it?” Hector asked.
“You keep my father safe. I don’t care what happens to me, but my father has been through enough.”
“You have my word. Report to Hailey tomorrow morning for training. In the meantime, go spend the day with your dad. He’s still in critical, but I can sneak you in.”
Ludie coughed. Both Jon and Hector looked over to him. They both had forgotten that he was standing there.
“Can I go now?” Ludie asked meekly.
Hector rolled his eyes and said, “Yeah, Ludie, you can go.”
11
Jon spent the day with his dad. His father was in a futuristic hospital bed. It wasn’t so much a bed but a cushion of air that suspended him above the ground. Complex machines monitored every vital. There were screens everywhere that tracked every detail down to his cholesterol level. They streamed in real-time.
Tubes were sticking out of every orifice and even his veins. They fed the machines their data, kept him nourished, hydrated, and also cleared the waste his body generated. His dad was unconscious, or else all the tubes looked like they would be pretty uncomfortable.
Jon sat in one of the chairs. He pulled his earbuds from his pocket. After a second thought, he put them back. For the first time in Jon’s life, he didn’t want to listen to music. Instead, he sat there, waiting for something to change. His dad was suspended in air, like a science experiment.
Jon waited in silence.
∆∆∆
Jon had no idea how much time had passed. He often counted the minutes by the number of songs he had heard. Without music, it could have been hours or just a few minutes.
His dad woke up. Jon called for the nurse, but no one came. His father choked on the breathing tube, so Jon took matters into his own hands and tore the thing out. It came out surprisingly easy, like it responded to his touch.
“Jon.” His dad croaked and coughed.
“I’m here,” Jon said and squeezed his hand.
“Did you study calligraphy?”
“Yes.”
“Chinese history?”
“Yes, Dad.”
“Good. We go there, visit Grandma,” he said, then coughed and shook.
A nurse interrupted the moment. “You’re going to have to give him rest.”
Jon turned to protest when he noticed that it wasn’t a nurse at all, but a cultist. The man was wearing the same bone armor that looked as if it was stitched together from fallen enemies. The scar on his forehead was cracked and filled with puss. A jagged blade burst from his hand that looked like it was more for torture than attack.
The cultist stomped forward. His boots cracked on the floor and echoed throughout the room. He snarled and raised the blade. Jon screamed and held his hands up to defend himself. Clomp. Clomp. Clomp. The boots marched forward.
Jon fell back and looked for a weapon. There was nothing he could use. The blade cut through the air. There was a loud swoosh as the weapon came down. Jon braced for impact, but it didn’t happen. Instead, the blade landed on his father’s body. His dad’s eyes bulged in fear and panic. Blood squirted from the wound, showering Jon in a heavy red rain. The blade came down again and again as his father screamed.
∆∆∆
Jon woke up in a cold sweat. He looked toward his father’s bed. Dad was still in a coma. There were no cultists. Jon decided to get some air and took a walk.
The complex felt like an endless maze. Jon’s direction sense went out the window. He wasn’t sure where this place was located, but it must be an underground bunker because there were no windows, just endless metal hallways with incomprehensible numbering to mark their designation.
Jon stumbled across a rec room. There was a kitchen, a couch with a variety of video game consoles, some he recognized, and others that didn’t exist in his world. There was also a table that looked like air hockey but had a demo with holographic 3-dimensional people competing in different types of sports.
DeAndre didn’t have a shirt and was lifting some dumbbells. His muscles glistened with sweat. Ludie sat a table drinking a juice box. Meathook slapped the strings of a bass guitar jamming to something on his headphones. From what little Jon knew of musical instruments, Meathook played a brand that didn’t exist, at least not in Jon’s world. It was going to take some getting used too, seeing the mix of stuff from different worlds.
DeAndre greeted Jon and said, “The weights are variable. They sense your strength level and provide the necessary resistance.”
“How?” Jon asked and realized he didn’t really want to know.
“Let’s just say one of the perks of the job is that there is pretty cool stuff in other universes. But it can’t leave the compound.”
“Doesn’t stealing stuff from other universes ruin the whole ‘non-interference’ policy?”
“We buy it. Got to spend your paycheck on something, considering everything else is taken care of. I don’t see the problem with it. It’s not like I’m going to sell these to The Nike in your universe.”
“It’s Nike,” Jon corrected him.
Ludie spoke up, “The non-interference policy only stops us from giving technologies to universes that aren’t ready for it. Let’s say you give the plans for nanomachines that will cure cancer to one universe. Then suppose a crazy dictator decides to use them to target a genetically similar population. They would have no way of stopping the dictator because they haven’t even conceived of the technology yet. If they discover it on their own, there are people and laws to make sure the world doesn’t destroy itself. What I don’t get is why we can’t just sell technology to the advanced ones. We have more Universe One tech than any—”
“That’s still interfering, bro,” Meathook said while putting his headphones away.
“Universe One?” Jon asked.
“Yeah, the universe that created all this,” DeAndre said. “They built all this stuff, left their tech all over the multiverse, and disappeared. No one knows why.”
“Why not just tune over and ask?”
Ludie scoffed. “There is a barrier that prevents unauthorized tunes. We have one around this station. Universe One has one too. As far as we know, no one has ever come in or out.”
“So if this place isn’t in Universe One, where are we?” Jon asked.
“We are floating in the space between universes.”
“So, some sort of cosmic goo?”
“More like a howling abyss, but yeah, Tuners HQ is nowhere.”
“Bro!” Meathook yelled. “Howling Abyss is the most metal band name ever. Can I use it?”
“Well,” Ludie said. “I could strike up a royalty deal or maybe a business partnership in the band.”
“Dude,” DeAndre said. “He’s joking.”
“So, what can you guys tell me about training?” Jon asked while he had their attention.
Meathook said, “We’re going to teach you to go all metal with your abilities.”
“What do you mean abilities? I thought my only power was to detect tuning spots or whatever.”
“You, my friend, are in for one wild ride tomorrow.”
“Yeah, man, you don’t even know,” DeAndre added.
“What? Can’t you at least tell me?” Jon asked.
“Trust me. You’re going to want to wait till tomorrow on this one.”
12
Jon thought the training would involve learning impressive moves with an ancient and wise martial arts instructor. Instead, it meant sitting in an empty classroom while Patel lectured about multiverses. Jon was bored to tears and practically fell asleep.
“You have to pay attention,” Patel said. “This is important stuff to learn. It may save your life one day.”
“When do I get my own phone?”
“It’s called a Tuning Fork 3.62.83B. Or the TF3 for short.”
“What’s it run, iOS?”
“It was made by Universe One. Because we can’t make any more, you cannot tune until you are ready to go on missions. There is a lot of material to cover.”
Jon didn’t want her to start lecturing again. He didn’t know if he could take it anymore. His brain was overloaded. “So I saw blades bounce off you. Is that like a magic trick? When do I get to learn stuff like that?”
“They aren’t superpowers. I am from a universe where the normal state of matter is much denser than yours. My skin may be as dense as diamonds in this place, but I bleed like anyone else in mine.”
“What’s my superpower?”
“Tuning is a superpower in itself. One in a billion—”
“Yeah, yeah. That’s what you say to the kid who was picked last for the team. There has to be something.”
“I’m afraid you come from an average universe. You may be faster and stronger on others, but equally weaker and slower as well.”
“You’re saying I got nothing?”
“Most people come from an average universe. Most Tuners have no superpowers as you put it,” Patel said.
“Well, shoot,” Jon said. “When do we go on break?”
“There is still much to cover. We haven’t gone over the quantum physical gravity equations yet.”