Tuners

by Aaron Frale

  “See! Why can’t Patel and Ludie explain it like that? You know what I like about you?”

  “What?”

  “You keep it simple.”

  “There’s no reason to complicate things more than necessary.”

  The sky was turning dark. At least the red hues of the sun setting were the same in this world. Jon didn’t know if he could take a blue sun or anything crazy. It was hard enough to get used to all the God Save the Queen posters everywhere. A cool breeze whipped by them. Hailey pulled her jacket tighter. It was the same jacket he had seen in the photo on her TF3.

  “What happened to your sister?” Jon asked.

  “There isn’t much to tell,” Hailey said.

  “I don’t have anywhere better to be.” Jon watched the horizon. The clouds looked as if they had been set on fire by the setting sun. He touched her hand and squeezed.

  She didn’t look back. She squeezed his hand and began to speak. “The cultists came. At first, it was one or two at a time. There were murders. Reports of kidnappings around the malls. Corpses showing up a few days later. Mutilated. Some people went missing entirely.”

  “What do you think the cultists wanted with them?”

  “Don’t know. We’ve never been able to retrieve someone who’s been kidnapped by the cultists. Though from the corpses they leave behind, I imagine the ones they kill on the spot are the lucky ones. So my parents didn’t want me to leave the house. But I did it anyway. I always thought I’d be safe. A few kidnap victims in a city of millions. The chances that I’d be a target were small. Besides, I thought if people tried to mess with me, I’d give them a taser or pepper spray I kept in my purse. I didn’t think anything of it. I just continued on with my life. My little sister, Sarah, wanted to do everything I did. She looked up to me, liked everything I liked; she even dressed like me. I had no idea that she would follow me. She was wearing my jacket! That’s all they found of her.”

  “I’m sorry.” Jon reached out with his other hand. She turned towards him. Their eyes met. His heart pounded in his chest. He didn’t really know what to say to her, so he didn’t say anything at all. She gave him a kiss. He was surprised at first but then returned the affection. They locked lips. A tingling sensation went up his entire body.

  “Whoa! Man!” DeAndre yelled, and they jumped back from one another.

  “That’s hot, bro!” Meathook high-fived DeAndre.

  Jon and Hailey looked up at the two. They were both hanging from the tower below.

  “Hector wanted us to get you,” DeAndre said.

  “We have a breach in progress,” Meathook added.

  “Breach?” Jon asked. “What’s a breach?”

  “It’s what almost destroyed your world, Jon,” she said and jumped off the antenna.

  14

  Back at headquarters, red lights flashed, and technicians scrambled to their stations. The entire place was buzzing with action. Hector barked orders at people. Techs were reading data from their screens and calling out to each other.

  Hailey pulled Jon into a room off to the side. It was full of medieval weaponry. Each of the Tuners strapped themselves with their battle gear. Everyone seemed to have their favorite weapons. DeAndre had nunchucks. Meathook picked up a war hammer. Patel sheathed a katana. Hailey hid daggers in various locations on her body.

  “Got any guns?” Jon asked. “I’ll be the gun guy.”

  “Dude, you’re better off with this.” Meathook laughed and tossed Jon his war hammer. It clattered to the floor as it was too heavy for Jon to catch, much less even lift.

  “Were you paying attention at all in my class?” Patel scolded him. “Universe One created a security protocol around tuning. Items not on the approved list suffer catastrophic failure when passing through the Einstein-Rosen Bridge.”

  “Guns get fried when you tune, along with bombs, some other things,” Hailey said.

  “We think it’s a safeguard to prevent a technologically advanced culture from abusing the technology to target less advanced peoples,” Patel added.

  “Yeah, bro,” Meathook said. “Think if you have a machine gun in the Middle Ages. You’d rule the world.”

  Jon thought for a moment and asked, “So can you approve one for this mission or something. I’ve gone shooting with my friend Rashuan, and I’m a pretty good shot. I mean, we are the good guys, right? We can unapprove them after the mission’s over.”

  “There is tight encryption on the tuning software,” Patel said. “The best hackers in the multiverse have been at it, but no one can crack it. Some Universe One code may as well be a black hole for all we care.”

  “Come on!” Hailey clapped her hands. “We are wasting time. Jon, go get a bow or a crossbow if you are nervous about hand-to-hand.”

  “I didn’t say that—” Jon began, but Hailey was already out the door.

  Jon walked over to the weapons rack and looked over the crossbows and bows. He didn’t really know how to shoot either, so he went for the crossbow. He figured it was the closest to a gun he could find. Rashuan’s dad was a big hunter, and they used to take shots at cans and even do more dangerous stunts like riding on their skateboards and taking potshots at signs. Rashuan’s dad had caught them and flipped out. Both of them were grounded for three months.

  Jon went to the hand-to-hand rack and grabbed a good old fashioned sword. He figured he would need a backup if the fighting got too close. While DeAndre had given him some lessons with just about every hand-to-hand weapon, Jon liked the sword the best. It also reminded him of Excalibur, which was pretty cool, if people from the other universes even called it Excalibur.

  “What?” Jon asked. He must have betrayed his excitement for holding the weapon as everyone was watching him.

  “Nothing,” DeAndre said. “It’s a good blade.”

  “Is it off limits or something?”

  “No, no. If we didn’t want anybody using it, we’d put it in the vault.”

  Hector burst into the room. “Come on, people. We don’t have much time on this one.” Hector said. “Patel, give the noob a TF3.”

  “But he is not trained!” Patel said. “It’s complicated—”

  “Then I suggest you get him up to speed,” Hector said. “We tune in five minutes.”

  ∆∆∆

  Patel dragged Jon over to another prep room. This one was full of electronic equipment. Ludie, who had been absent in the weapons room, was gearing up with various devices. Patel took a TF3 off the wall and shoved it into Jon’s hand. Jon still couldn’t help but think it was an iPhone.

  “Cool,” Jon said. “Hey, so music helps tuning go better. Do you think I could—”

  “You can transfer your music collection later,” she said. “For now, there are preset playlists on the TF3. The music will help you tune.”

  “Right, so how do I use it?” Jon asked.

  “You’ll need headphones. Any preference?” Patel offered a selection of just about every type of headphone imaginable, including some that didn’t exist in his world.

  “Earbuds are fine,” Jon said.

  She tossed him a coiled white cord. It even looked like the ones that came with the iPhone. Jon chuckled. She yanked the TF3 from his hands and pulled up an app on the device. “Tuning is simple. You listen for the right frequency. You can listen to the different ones by spinning this dial. Once you hear the one where you want to go, hit the tune button, and you’ll travel through the Einstein-Rosen Bridge.”

  “What happens if I pick the wrong one?”

  “Try not to end up in a void universe. If you like keeping cohesion in your atomic structure,” Ludie said.

  “Though, if the protons in your body still adhere to your original universe—” Patel said.

  “Then the decay rate of a proton will—” Ludie said, excited.

  “Jeez, guys, get a room,” Jon said. “Why don’t you just program their positions on the dial? Save me the hassle of exploding.”

  “It’s a moving
target,” Patel said, “Some universes whiz right by us, and you can’t hear them very long. Others move at a slower pace, and the points where the barrier brush up against each other and are permeable stay for a longer period. Think of it as a subway map with the stops always changing. You might go from Brooklyn to Manhattan one day. The next, the same train will go from Brooklyn to Queens and skip Manhattan entirely. Some drift so little that they are fixed, some might be here and gone before you know it.”

  “The platform out there amplifies the reach so you can connect to a whole lot of them,” Ludie said. “Plus, it has the benefit of letting the person with significant hearing degradation be able to go through. However, if they leave, they can’t go back without a Tuner. The TF3s don’t have enough power.”

  Hailey popped her head into the room to see what the holdup was. “Come on,” Hailey said. “Before Hector blows a gasket. If you are nervous about tuning, Jon, I’ll listen with you.”

  “I didn’t say I was nervous, but yeah, that might be best.” Jon attempted to play it cool but wasn’t very good at it when he added, “What happens if we get separated?”

  “Don’t,” Hailey said and turned around.

  ∆∆∆

  Hector inspected the Tuners waiting on the platform.

  “Good,” he said. “The breach is happening in 39e. The cultists have already hit one mall. We suspect more to follow. I need you to move quickly and seal their access point before they move any more people through. Sound off!”

  Hector climbed to a command post high above the rest while the various departments around the platform yelled out, “Medical, go.”

  “Communications, go.”

  “Navigation, go.”

  “Quantum Tracking, go.”

  While the departments sounded off, The Tuners put on their headphones and scanned through the various universes. Hailey pulled out one of her earbuds and took one from Jon. She put it in her ear and listened to his tune. Jon pulled up the default music selection. It was the worst music ever created in the history of humans. It was like customer service hold music and elevator music had spawned a hideous child. Jon cringed and listened carefully for the noise.

  He could hear the static in the background. It was just like the one he had heard at the mall. Hailey smiled at him and said, “Remember this noise. This is the frequency of headquarters. You get separated, tune to this noise. Now turn the dial.”

  Hailey nudged him onward. He spun the dial. There were differences in the static. Some were low and guttural. Others were loud and shrill. There was also something else about them. There was a quality between the swells of frenetic energy, a hidden music underneath. He could hear the subtle differences. They were all unique. It was like he was an art gallery with an exhibit where at first glance, each painting looked like a mix chaotic of colors. But when he looked closer, each jumble was a different shade, brushstroke, paint type, canvas, etc. The combination of noise he heard when dialing through the universes was surreal.

  “That one,” Hailey said. “That’s 39e.”

  “Got it.”

  “You ready?”

  “Sure.”

  “Command, go,” Hector said from a station at the top. Jon could hear Hector’s voice through the earbuds. Hailey pointed to a big green tune button at the bottom of the screen. He pressed the button with the rest of the Tuners and disappeared.

  ∆∆∆

  Even though Jon had tuned before, he still wasn’t quite used to it. It was also the first time he didn’t anchor himself to Hailey, so there was a brief moment of panic when he felt like he was nowhere at all. His senses didn’t function, except for his hearing. The static of 39e coursed through his body like he was slammed with an ocean wave. It became a part of his being. Then, he was back in the world again, listening to the monster child of customer service hold music.

  His head swam, and he stumbled forward. A hand caught him and steadied him. It was Hailey’s. She held her hand to her lips. Jon realized they had tuned to the underside of a stage. It was a temporary platform. The kind promotors set up in malls where local DJ’s had silly contests like singing while drinking water or stacking plastic cups into a pyramid. There were no stupid contests or DJ’s. There were cultists on the platform above them. Jon could see the massive bone boot of one of them.

  Jon risked a peek from under the platform. There was a crowd gathered in the center of a giant concourse on the first floor. Cultists surrounded all the people. There were men, women, and children huddling and whimpering in fear. There was a pair of massive escalators. Cultists were dragging people hiding in stores to the holding place down below.

  Blood dripped from the stage. Jon muttered about the stupid gun rule. He would feel better with more than just a sword and a crossbow.

  A pair of boots clomped back and forth on the stage. They were heavy, and each step echoed in the open space. The owner of the footwear addressed the crowd, “My dear, what is your name?”

  A girl’s voice trembled in fear. “Helen. Please, sir, I want to go home.”

  Jon heard a blade swoosh through the air, and the girl squealed in terror.

  “You will go home, child, if you can hear the holy noise,” the cultist leader said.

  “Please, I want my mom,” the girl stammered.

  “How old are you, Helen? Speak true.”

  “Fourteen, sir, I’ll be fifteen in a few months.”

  “Do you hear the noise, child?”

  “Please, I don’t know what you want me to hear.”

  “Do not lie. I will know if you lie. Do you hear the holy noise?”

  “Please, I just hear music. I don’t—”

  There was swooping of a blade, and a loud thump on the stage. The crowd gasped in horror. Helen’s head rolled off the stage and landed in front of Jon. He ducked back further under the stand where the Tuners were gathered in a circle.

  “We need a plan,” Ludie whispered.

  “Really?” DeAndre said, “I thought we were just going to sit back and watch. Maybe make some popcorn.”

  “Bro, I love that pirate popcorn. The one with the cheese,” Meathook said.

  “Stay on task, guys,” Jon heard Hector through his earbuds. “Can anyone see what’s happening on stage?”

  “On it,” Ludie said and tried to find a gap in the planks.

  “Maybe we can distract the guards. Eliminate those nearest to the escalators and let the crowd through,” Patel said.

  “We still have to seal the breach,” Hailey said. “And we don’t know where that is yet.”

  “Once the battle starts, it’s going to be hard to listen for it,” Meathook said.

  “Those people don’t have that kind of time,” Hailey said.

  “What sound are we listening for?” Jon asked DeAndre.

  DeAndre turned to Jon while the others continued planning. “When a universe destabilizes, it’s more like air deflating from a balloon. Sometimes a universe collapses quickly like hours or minutes. Other times it can take days, even weeks. Meanwhile, the cultists harvest as many people as they can before it goes.”

  “What’s that have to do with the sound of a breach?” Jon asked.

  “That noise you hear is stretched while the universe leaks out. It will be subtle if it’s on the days and weeks time scale. It’s much more noticeable if it’s the hours and minutes. Anyway, we use that distortion to locate the breach because it’s stronger the closer you get.”

  “DeAndre,” Hailey said. “You think you could make it to the second floor if we covered you?”

  “Yeah, I’m pretty fast here, but there are a lot of them—”

  Jon didn’t have anything to add to the conversation. He decided to put on his headphones instead and listen for the breach. At first, it was only the crappy music and the sound of 39e. After a while, he heard the distortion. It was a low rumbling, like a volcano groaning from the pressure building in its magma chambers.

  Jon blocked everything from his mind a
nd just concentrated on the noise. He found his superpower. He could pick one very faint sound from the millions assaulting his ears and amplify it, so the sound he wanted to hear drowned out everything else. The music disappeared, the voice of Hector talking to the group was far away, and even the sound of 39e vanished. He tuned into the distortion and zeroed in on it. It was close, very close.

  He crawled to the back of the platform and peeked out from the curtain that covered the underbelly of the stage. Down the concourse of the mall, he could see the breach. It looked like someone had blasted a hole in the universe. A purple event horizon swirled around an abyss beyond. There was rubble, dangling wires, and all sorts of mess being sucked into it. The vortex was growing.

  They were in trouble.

  “Uh, guys,” Jon said while they all still continued to debate over a plan. “Guys?”

  There was still no response. “GUYS!” Jon whisper-yelled.

  Everyone stopped and turned towards Jon. “I think I found the breach, and it seems to be growing bigger,” Jon said and opened the backstage curtain enough for them to see it as it sucked in a kiosk full of pewter statues.

  “This universe is collapsing!” Hailey said. “We have to seal it now!”

  The cultist leader on the stage tore open a floor paneling, and the Tuners scattered as a few of the cultists jumped to the underside of the stage. The crowd erupted in panic and trampled over each other to get out of the mall. The cultists who were guarding the perimeter were overwhelmed by the sheer numbers of panicking people.

  A cultist stabbed at Jon, and DeAndre wrapped his nunchucks around the oncoming blade and snapped it in half. He spun around and knocked another cultist in the head. Patel climbed onto an opponent and slit his throat. Hailey threw one of her daggers, and it stuck in the back of another one who was about to stab Jon. The other Tuners fought their way out from under the stage and were locked in combat with other cultists. Ludie ran between the wounded, attending their needs.

  “There is a glass cylinder in Ludie’s backpack!” Hailey yelled at Jon while fighting off another cultist. A few more came running up to them, and Meathook clobbered them. A cultist stabbed Patel in the back, and the blade crumbled on her tough skin. Jon dodged and sidestepped attacks while trying to get to Ludie, who was fixing the wound of an innocent bystander who was gutted by a stray blade. Jon parried a few attacks but didn’t run anyone through before he got to Ludie.