Sal and Gabi Break the Universe

by Carlos Hernandez

  Especially Papi.

  He stood in the center of the room, where he had been directing all the action. He looked at me, guilt lighting up his eyes, and said, “Hi, son! Um, how was school?”

  The woman in the skirt suit, finally realizing something weird was going on, pulled off the VR headset. There was something very…unblinking about her. She looked at me with bland curiosity. And then she looked at Gabi.

  “Dad?” I asked.

  “Dad?” Gabi asked.

  “Um, Gabi?” I said, pointing my wand at Papi. “That’s my dad.”

  She stopped recording, lowered her phone. “Yeah, the dude in the Hawaiian shirt. Figured. But the woman next to him is my dad. Her name is Dad: The Final Frontier. She’s my scientist dad. The one I was telling you about?”

  “How many dads do you have, Gabi?!”

  She shook her head. “If you only knew.”

  “This is your daughter?” Papi asked the woman. He was coming out of his daze.

  The woman nodded, then ambled up to Gabi. Her legs—well, they looked like legs. She had thighs and knees and ankles and feet in her shoes. But she moved like a toddler who was still learning how to walk. Like, a little too fast, and then almost falling over when she stopped.

  The woman bent down and hugged Gabi. Her smile snapped into place. And then her face snapped into a puzzled expression. She moved between expressions really quickly. “Gabi, honey, what in the world are you doing here?”

  “What in the world are you doing in my house, person I have never met before?” I asked her back.

  She didn’t seem hurt by my tone. She looked like she had never been hurt by anyone’s tone in her entire life. Instead, she tilted her head at me and said, “Hello, Sal. My name is Bonita. I am here because I work for your father. We are installing this remembranation machine in your living room.”

  “Yeah. I noticed.”

  “We’re setting up camp,” said Papi, stepping up next to Bonita. He gave me his classic Quit the cacaseca eyes. “Something happened here last night. Perhaps you remember?”

  I wasn’t going to give him anything for free. “Perhaps.”

  He snorted. “Yeah, well, we’re bringing in the heavy equipment to fix it.”

  “Looks like you had to do a little”—I looked around—“remodeling, too.”

  Papi, peering around the room also, flapped his shirt to cool himself down. “Ah, yes. The machine is a little bigger than I thought. We couldn’t get it up the steps. I was going to put it upstairs, you know, where it wouldn’t be in anybody’s way.”

  “But it didn’t fit. So now it’s in the living room.”

  “That is correct.”

  “American Stepmom is going to kill you.”

  “Yes,” Papi said, inflating his cheeks. “Yes, she is.” And then, resigning himself to his death, he clapped his hands. “So, who wants ice cream?”

  In the kitchen, Papi and I got to work. He pulled two unopened containers of rocky road from the freezer while I set out an assembly line of fifteen bowls. I ran the scoop under hot water, then started dumping snowman-size balls of ice cream into the bowls. Papi, meanwhile, produced three huge boxes of bonbons from behind a tile in the kitchen wall—which he thought was his secret hiding place, and which I totally knew was his secret hiding place—and studded the ice cream with them.

  “Our guests are going to faint when they see these sundaes!” said Papi. He loved throwing parties and serving over-the-top desserts, and he didn’t get to do either very often, poor guy. One, he was always working, and when he wasn’t working, he was trying to grow his brains back, because his job had used them all up. Two, his stupid son was diabetic, and he was too nice a guy to torture his kid by eating Willy Wonka sundaes when his kid couldn’t enjoy them, too. Those quarts of ice cream would have lasted our family a month and a half under normal circumstances.

  But now Papi would get to use them up in one sitting, to entertain guests in his house. He couldn’t have been happier.

  And that meant it was the perfect time to bring up what was bothering me.

  “So,” I said. “Even one calamitron is too much?”

  “Yep-p,” Papi answered, barely paying attention. Most of his thinking was devoted to the exact placement of bonbons.

  The next part was hard to ask. “So does that mean that I’m a danger to the universe?”

  “What?” He dropped a bonbon on the counter.

  “It’s just, I didn’t mean to bring a mami this time. My brain brought her over without me. And if I can’t control this…thing I can do, I might—”

  “Think fast!” said Papi. He had walked to the pantry and pulled out a jar of peanut butter, which he now underhanded to me. I caught it. I knew what he wanted and started spooning peanut butter into a microwave-safe bowl. Microwaved peanut butter is an awesome ice cream topping.

  As I watched the peanut butter melt down to gooey goodness, Papi said, “I miss your mami as much as you do, you know.”

  Um, what? Then I said, “Um, what?”

  He leaned against the counter. “It’s true. Probably even more. I mean, I knew her longer. I married her. I loved her. I love her still.”

  The peanut butter started to boil at the edges. In a few seconds, it would burn. But I let it keep on cooking and spinning and bubbling.

  “Her death is the worst thing that’s ever happened to either of us,” he went on, moving around the kitchen now, bustling, grabbing sprinkles and toppings from cabinets and drawers. “I thought my life was over when she died. Even talking about it now, I can make myself relive some of that pain. I thought it would kill me, you know. Literally stop my heart. Oh, bad days. Those were bad days. You know what kept me going, mijo?”

  “What?”

  “You.”

  I stopped the microwave but left the peanut butter inside to cool. “I know.”

  He put his two huge hands on my shoulders. “When I heard about this job in Miami, your stepmom and I jumped at the chance. You know why, mijo? Because we thought I might be able to help you. Here, I could be on the cutting edge of calamity physics. Work with some of the best minds in the world to figure out what it is, exactly, that you can do. Because what you can do, mijo”—and he gave my shoulders a big squeeze—“science says is impossible.”

  I took out the peanut butter. It wasn’t burned, but a little had crisped on the edges. Perfect, in other words. I put it on the counter, stirred it with a spoon, grabbed the bowl again, turned around, and handed it to Papi. “Science doesn’t know what it’s talking about,” I said.

  Papi made the apology face. “It doesn’t until it does. It’s my job to learn about calamitrons. And once I figure them out, I’ll tell everybody the truth about them, whatever it is. Then I’ll use that knowledge to fix anything that needs fixing.” He took a big whiff of hot peanut butter. “Ah. That’s the good stuff.”

  “And that’s what the machine in the living room’s for?” I asked. “Fixing…‘things’?”

  Papi headed over to the bowls and started spooning peanut butter over the ice cream. “We have to move fast now, mijo. The ice cream will turn to soup!”

  I ran to the fridge and grabbed two cans of whipped cream, then got behind Papi. As he spooned peanut butter over the bonbons, I squirted on mountaintops of whipped cream. We were quick and efficient, like circus performers.

  “Theoretically, yes,” Papi said, finally, as we worked. “But it’s like I said yesterday. We don’t know enough yet. I mean, we don’t even have a full understanding of what a calamitron is.”

  “They’re the particles that destroy the universe, right? What else do you need to know?”

  Papi slowed down. He couldn’t work as fast when he was thinking. “See, that’s the thing, Sal: Calamitrons don’t destroy anything. They’re evidence of destruction. Specifically, they’re the particles that get released when the membrane of the universe is damaged.” Papi stopped moving for a second to look at the ceiling and figure out the
next part. “Imagine a window. Some kid throws a baseball through it. All the pieces of glass that explode out of the windowpane? Those are the calamitrons.”

  I gave the last bowl extra whipped cream. “So when you find a lot of calamitrons, you’re worried, because it means someone broke a window in the universe.”

  “Exactly.”

  “Huh. Skittles?” I asked, pulling out a king-size bag from pretty much nowhere.

  Papi blinked. “Mijo, your sleight of hand is getting good! And, um, yeah, Skittles!”

  I started pouring Skittles onto the whipped cream. They sunk into those white mounds like multicolored meteors. Then Papi got behind me in the assembly line and stuck sparklers in each bowl of ice cream, one by one. Yes, we’re the kind of family that buys enough fireworks during the Fourth of July to last the whole year.

  “I’m scared,” I said, not looking up, working steadily, doing my job.

  “I know,” he said. “But there’s good news, too. You can fix the universe.”

  I faced him, and the next handful of Skittles was for me. Papi gave me a look that meant Should you have done that? What’s your sugar at? And I gave him a look back that meant Don’t change the subject. You just said something super important that I need you to explain, and when I get stressed I like the occasional Skittle, okay?

  “Last night,” he began, “you sent Floramaria away, just as you fainted. She vanished like the Enterprise was beaming her up, just as she was lunging to catch you. And back in Connecticut, when that other Floramaria went berserk, you sent her away, too. That’s twice that you sent someone back to their original universes. Did you do that with your other Mamis, too?”

  This conversation was making me sad. “Yes. When they got too unhappy, I sent them back. They always got unhappy.”

  “¡Exactamente!” he said, a little too boisterously. He urged me to keep dropping Skittles as he explained. “See, Sal, the holes, they can heal in time. Like a cut on your skin. But you can’t pick the scab, right, or else it won’t heal, and it might leave a scar. And sometimes something really terrible happens. Like, someone loses a finger. But you know”—and he started to get pretty excited by his own explanation now—“when someone loses a finger these days, doctors can sew it on again. They just have to put the finger back where it belongs, right? And then they have to give the body time to heal, right? The cosmic membrane can heal if all the pieces—the calamitrons—are back where they belong.”

  As I finished raining Skittles on the last sundae, I thought about relaxing in Principal Torres’s office to get rid of the chicken evidence, even the blood on Yasmany’s shoe. “And you think I can do that, Papi?”

  He speared the last sparklers into the sundae. “You’ve done it before, with your mami. We just have to figure out how you did it. That’s why we can’t lose hope. We have to be guapo! A scientist has to be smart, sure, but at the bottom of it all, scientists need enough courage to explore how weird and wonderful the multiverse really is. It’s scary wandering into the unknown…without…a…”

  Papi was patting his pockets down, searching for his lighter.

  Which I had lifted from him as soon as he broke out the sparklers. It was one of those nice metal lighters with a flip-top lid, which he used to smoke the one cigar a month he allows himself. I lit it with a flourish. “A light to guide you?”

  Papi laughed and rubbed his forehead. “Exactly. Well, go ahead, then. Light the sparklers. Guao, kid, you are a scary-good pickpocket.”

  I did, moving down the line. Every sparkler looked like a new, brilliant idea, and together they made a whole parade of inspiration.

  “So you’re saying I need to be smart,” I said as more and more sparks flew around our kitchen. “And being smart means thinking twice, moving slowly, and being sure before I act, right?”

  “Exactamente.”

  “But you’re also saying I should be brave, which I think means, like, trusting myself, being confident, and not letting fear get in my way.”

  “Sí, señor.”

  The last sparkler lit, I turned to Papi and flipped his fancy lighter shut. “But they’re opposites. How can I do both at the same time?”

  “A good question,” he said, pacing with his hands behind his back. “Let’s use our present situation to think about it. Right now, we could have a big philosophical discussion about when to think and when to act, and the ice cream will turn into rocky road puddles in their bowls, and our guests will be sad. Or we can talk later and serve ice cream now and everybody will be happy. Do you think there’s a clear answer here?”

  “Let’s go make our guests happy,” I said. I moved to gather the bowls onto one of the carrying trays we’d set out.

  Papi patted my back and started filling his own tray with bowls. “Good choice. The key is to make your best move in the moment.”

  Everyone agreed that this was the most spectacular bowl of ice cream they’d ever had.

  But I wouldn’t know. I was eating beef jerky. Diabetes sucks.

  There they sat around the dining room table, shoveling gobs of sundae goodness into their mouths like they’d never tasted food before, too busy eating like No-Face from Spirited Away to carry on a civilized conversation. Gabi, who was sitting across the table from me, had already sucked hers down and was now working on Dad: The Final Frontier’s.

  Dad: The Final Frontier hadn’t eaten even a spoonful. She sat at the table holding a sparkler in each hand, looking at Gabi like nothing made her happier in the world than watching her daughter hork down dessert while she waved fireworks in the air.

  “Bonita,” I said. She snapped her head around and smiled at me. Well, it was more like she lifted her upper lip like a curtain and showed me her top teeth. “Don’t you like ice cream?”

  “I can’t eat it,” she said, without complaining. I recognized the tone. It’s the same one I use whenever I talk about diabetes.

  “Oh. Are you lactose intolerant?”

  I had learned about lactose intolerance over the summer, and now I was kind of eager to meet someone who was.

  I noticed that Bonita was still smiling at me. Like, her face had never stopped smiling. Never moved—until it suddenly did. Suddenly she was looking at the ceiling and touching a finger to her chin. “What an interesting question, Sal. Hm. I suppose I am. I suppose I cannot tolerate lactose at all! Ha-ha-ha!”

  Her weird laugh creeped me out. But even weirder, everyone else at the table laughed, too. I was the only one not in on the joke. I hated that feeling.

  “What’s so funny?” I asked.

  “Sorry, Sal,” said Bonita. “It’s just that I’m a robot, and therefore can’t eat ice cream. Or any food, for that matter.”

  I stopped chawing down on jerky. “Ha-ha. Yeah, whatever.”

  “No, really,” said Gabi. “Dad’s a Robot American.”

  “That’s not accurate,” said Bonita. “I’m not currently an American citizen, though I hope to be one day.”

  “That’s only because we’re behind the times,” Gabi said between spoonfuls of sundae. “Robots can get citizenship in Saudi Arabia.”

  “Several other countries, too,” added Papi. He was smiling at me but watching me carefully, too. Wondering how I was going to react. “South Korea started giving class-nine AIs full citizenship last year.”

  “And France did just last month,” added one of Papi’s physicist flunkies at the other end of the table. But nobody had asked him.

  “You all are full of it,” I said. And I tore off a chunk of dried cow meat, chomping on it defiantly.

  Bonita got up from her seat, wobble-walked around Papi (who was at the head of the table), and stood next to me. “I don’t have a heartbeat,” she said, smiling. She stuck out her wrist. “There’s no pulse. Try to find one.”

  I most certainly did not want to take her pulse. “So? People with artificial hearts don’t have heartbeats. Or maybe you have a prosthetic hand. I grew up in hospitals, Bonita. You can’t fool me tha
t easy.”

  “My skin is artificial. All over. Touch it.”

  “Maybe you needed skin grafts. Were you in a fire?”

  “She wasn’t in a fire, Sal!” yelled Gabi. “She. Is. A. Robot!”

  “Bonita, if you’re a robot, prove it. Take off your head and throw it across the room.”

  Bonita looked at me horrified. “I can’t do that. That would kill me.”

  I folded my arms. “Exactly.”

  “Part of the requirement for class-nine sentience is that the AI has to be mortal,” said one of the computer nerds at the other end of the table. But nobody had asked her.

  Bonita made the exact same look-at-the-ceiling, finger-on-her-chin expression she’d made before. “Okay. Let’s try this, Sal. I can’t move my tongue. It’s just a piece of painted silicon at the bottom of my mouth. I don’t use my tongue and lips to form words. See how my jaw moves, but the lips don’t? Surely that must prove it.”

  “I’ve met, like, six people with artificial voice boxes. They just use a speaker in their throats to talk.”

  “He’s got you there, Bonita,” said Papi. “Maybe you are human after all.”

  That got a big reaction around the table. Gabi stopped pigging out on ice cream long enough to clap. “She is human! She’s a human being robot!”

  “You’re not helping, Dr. Vidón,” Bonita replied. Pretty snappily, too, for a robot.

  “Yeah,” I pressed, “and if you’re a robot, why did Papi bring you a bowl of ice cream? He would have known you couldn’t eat it.”

  “I have no idea. That was strange. Why did you bring me ice cream, Dr. Vidón?”