Parallel U. - Sophomore Year

by Dakota Rusk

  I whirled, and there she was…

  …the splinter Fabia; the other version of myself.

  “Where am I?” she asked, cringing at finding herself suddenly transported into such a cramped little hellhole.

  “I’ll explain later,” I said; “just start hitting—think of this as a big bag we’ve got to punch our way out of.”

  She had one moment where she paused, in a kind of dubious stupor; then she followed my lead—the two of us hammering away at surrounding black mass.

  It was still no good; we were on the verge of being snuffed out. Gerrid was done—exhausted, spent; he could barely rise.

  “How’d you bring me here?” Fabia asked, as she pounded furiously away.

  “Eddie,” I gasped, finding it harder to breathe. “He gave me an app.”

  “Too bad he didn’t give you a hundred,” she said with a bitter laugh.

  I managed a dry chuckle, too; then it died in my throat as I thought—Maybe he did.

  I stopped fighting just long enough to press the F button again.

  Another Fabia appeared; looking even more bewildered than the previous one—because of course, she’d never met any parallel versions of herself.

  I didn’t even have to tell her what to do; by now we were so enclosed by the inky mass that it was just instinctive for her to start hitting it.

  I pressed the F button again; and again.

  Two more Fabias.

  And then three more…seven…

  I kept working the button, as additional versions of myself from splinter Parallel 24s filled up the limited space we had left, joining the fray and fighting for their lives. Soon, I noticed, the new arrivals began to shift from identical doppelgängers to near duplicates; one Fabia had skin much lighter than the rest of us—one was diminutive, fully two heads shorter—one was actually male; a Fabius instead of a Fabia…

  It was like I was peeling an onion from the inside out; and the farther I got from the inner core—myself—the wider the differences became.

  Soon, there was an army of Fabia Terentias battering away at the collapsing walls of the Veil. At one point I caught Gerrid looking on in stupefaction, his jaw almost literally on his chest.

  And—astonishingly—the mass began to move.

  We were actually beating the shell of the Veil back into shape.

  I don’t know how long it took; time seemed to be a relative concept here—everything seemed to be a relative concept here—but eventually the job was done; we’d not only stopped the Veil from caving in on itself, but had sufficiently propped it up to keep it tentatively in place.

  Chests heaving, wheezing for breath, we all looked at each other—bruised and bloodied, barely able to stand—and one Fabia said, “Now someone had better tell me what this is about, or all of you are next.”

  And I laughed; I couldn’t help it.

  That was me—she was me—they all were me—and we were still ready to fight after beating back a literal apocalypse.

  All these months, when I’d felt so scattered, so confused, so uncentered; I could never have imagined I’d find my essential, unique self again, standing here surrounded by hundreds of mirror images.

  But I’d let myself feel the release too soon.

  “Fabia,” Gerrid said; “get over here.”

  I found him crouched over a sputtering, tepid ball of flame; it was all the remained of Vesta.

  The fires of creation were reduced to a flicker.

  “It’s going fast,” he said.

  He was right; I couldn’t even hear her in my mind anymore.

  “Vesta,” I said, trying to raise a response. “Vesta, are you there…?”

  Gerrid raised an eyebrow. “That’s Vesta? Your goddess? I thought this was the Veil.”

  “Vesta is the Veil,” I said. “Though not necessarily vice-versa. It’s hard to explain.”

  “No, I understand,” he said. “It’s one of the things she is; but not all.”

  “Exactly.”

  I called her again; nothing.

  Gerrid scowled. “It can’t help that she’s using what energies she has left to keep all of us alive.” He gestured at the other Fabias, who looked on in silent awe. “Can’t you send these back where you got them?”

  “I—I don’t know how,” I said. And probably Eddie had never even considered it. If I ever saw him again, I’d kiss him, then I’d strangle him.

  “Well, we’re not out of the woods yet,” Gerrid said. “If she goes, then we go; and if we go, then these bombs on our backs detonate—”

  “And this brittle husk will finally give way, and the entire multiverse will come flooding in, in one massive, cataclysmic implosion. I know.” I looked at him; and by the last faint flickering of Vesta’s light I saw the kindness in his face—the pity. He was really so beautiful. I just wished I knew how to save him. “What can I do?”

  “She’s giving you her life essence,” he said with complete confidence. “Return the favor.”

  I blinked. “What?…I don’t understand.”

  He nodded at my raw, butchered hands. “Your blood.”

  I admit it; I recoiled. “You can’t be serious.”

  “I’m dead serious. There’s a reciprocal bond between creator and creation; you’ve got to reestablish it. You made a vow to Vesta, didn’t you? You served her. You worshipped her.”

  “Technically, yes, but that’s just ritual…just metaphor.”

  “We’re in a place where metaphor is tangible,” he said. “And blood is the most powerful metaphor of all. It’s everything, Fabia; it’s the totality of who we are. A single drop contains the complete signature of our individuality; but it also runs hot in our veins, propelling us—fueling us.” He grinned. “Trust me on this; I know from blood. It’s the very stuff of life. And it’s yours to give.”

  The flame coughed, spat a few embers, and diminished even further; another few moments, and it would gutter entirely.

  “And If I were you,” Gerrid said, “I’d do it now.”

  As before, with Eddie’s F button, there seemed no reason not to give it a try; if it failed…well, we were doomed anyway.

  I extended one wounded hand over the flame, and with the other hand I squeezed at an open gash across my knuckles.

  The gash welled up; the gathering blood shimmered and quivered in the waning light; then dipped over the edge of the cut, and dribbled out.

  Several dark, lustrous droplets fell into the flame.

  We waited; and I could feel the other Fabias holding their breath—as of course I was myself.

  The flame seemed to consume my offering; but was dampened by it at the same time.

  And then it went out.

  We were in complete darkness now. Some of the Fabias cried out in alarm.

  “I’m sorry, Gerrid,” I said, groping for him; I wanted to be holding his hand when the end came. “It was worth a try; no one can say we didn—”

  I was thrown back by an eruption of light—and of heat—

  —and then I was hurled up like a rag doll; borne aloft on a rising tide of spirit, and energy, and being—

  —and I kept spiraling higher and higher—merging with all the other Fabias—arms and legs and torsos coming together, then separating and recombining—

  —our voice, our single voice, singing joyfully out of myriad throats—

  —higher, and higher, and wider, and farther—

  —and then—and then

  33

  When I woke up, in the Parallel U. infirmary, my hands were bandaged all the way up to my elbows. They told me I’d been unconscious for three days, during which time a U.N. security team had defused and removed my bomb.

  I asked the about all the other Fabias; they had no idea what I was talking about. They must have concluded I was raving, because they gave me a sedative. Which is the only thing that saved the whole nursing staff from a serious beating—bandages or no.

  In my next lucid moment I asked about Gerrid.
He’d been in the infirmary too, it turned out; but he’d been discharged.

  “Is he all right?” I asked a duty nurse.

  “He will be,” he said. “It’s just—I don’t understand how he managed, in the dead of winter, to come by such a serious sunburn.”

  I couldn’t help it; I laughed.

  “And the others?” I asked, suddenly remembering them. “My friend Ntombi, Rowella Ravencroft…”

  “Both fine,” the duty nurse told me. “Back on campus, safe and sound.”

  “No bombs?”

  “Taken care of, same as yours.”

  When they heard I was speaking again, they all came by—Valery, Darius, Merri. I told them what had happened; they already knew quite a bit, thanks to Gerrid.

  “Jocasta Foxglove has been removed from office and sent back to Parallel 17,” Valery said. “I don’t know what’s awaiting her there, but she was clearly dreading it. Anyway, I’ve stepped in as President Pro Tem, at least until Eddie brings his mother back—which will apparently be very soon.”

  “How did I get here?” I asked, rubbing my eyes, which were still slightly singed by all the light they’d taken in—the full, unfettered incandescence of the Veil.

  “You just showed up on the commons,” Merri said. “You and Gerrid both. Just lying there.” She smirked. “It caused quite a stir.”

  Vesta delivered me, I thought. And I sent her a prayer of thanks.

  Eddie came to see me later, all by himself. He looked terrible.

  “What’s wrong?” I asked. “I can guarantee you, whatever you’ve been through, I can top it.”

  “I’m sure you can. It’s just…I’ve done something I shouldn’t.”

  I barked out a laugh. “So today must be Tuesday!”

  “No,” he said, shaking his head very seriously. “I mean it.” He pulled the chair closer to my bed and said, “Remember when I jumped twenty-four hours into the future?”

  “No,” I said in a tone of voice that implied Of course I do you idiot.

  “Well, I walked around campus and overheard people talking about how a bunch of the lottery winners had been brought back—not from their home parallels, but from Parallel 39.” He nervously fidgeted with the control bar on my bed, so that my feet went up a few inches. “I knew that meant something had gone wrong. And I also knew there was only one person who could’ve helped them.”

  “Eddie,” I said, “you didn’t…”

  “I did,” he replied, looking stricken. “I went back in time and rescued them.”

  “You created a bootstrap paradox!” He waved at me to keep my voice down. “It’s not funny! I have no idea what the repercussions are going to be. I’m really worried. And when boy geniuses worry, the rest of the world should be totally uh-oh.”

  I confronted him about the F button.

  “Oh, you used that?” he asked, suddenly delighted. “How’d it work?”

  “It saved my life. It saved everyone’s life. I called up a whole army of me. But I just don’t see how—”

  He waved the question away as if it was too academic to bother answering. “It’s just a gloss on the original principle,” he said dismissively. “Instead of sending a biomass across the parallels, you summon a biomass.”

  “That’s even possible?”

  “Once you’ve got a distinctive energy signature, sure. All Fabia Terentias have the same one.”

  He didn’t want to talk about it anymore, so I asked him my next burning question—about the jump I’d seen him take without a Hopper. He perked up even more.

  “Oh, that was something that occurred to me freshman year,” he said, “after the first time I met Living Doll. I figured, if it’s possible to construct an entire sentient being out of cellular nanotechnology, you should be able to make a Hopper the same way.”

  I shook my head. “I don’t know what any of that means.”

  “It means I made a Hopper out of nanotech. Darius got me some of the equipment I needed. He also gave me a small vial of his blood, which I used for materials. He said it was okay; the tech is actually self-replicating.”

  I flashed back to what Gerrid had said. He’d been right; blood really was everything.

  “And if I’m completely honest,” Eddie said, “I didn’t entirely figure it all out on my own. Darius was there with me through every calculation.”

  I raised my eyebrows in surprise. “What?—He was not! I was there with you in that bloody basement, watching you work, and you were all by yourself.”

  “No, Darius was there; one of the times he came by for your superhero meetings, he agreed to upload a copy of his consciousness into my laptop. So I’ve got the mind of the Living Doll at my beck and call.” He sighed. “Wish I could say the same about the rest of him.” He looked a bit dreamy for a moment, then snapped back to the moment. “Anyway, the end result is, I no longer need a Hopper.” He made a sweeping, theatrical gesture and added, “Because I am a Hopper.”

  I felt a rush of elation at this breakthrough, and tremendous pride in Eddie as well. But I also felt a glimmer of fear, and I couldn’t quite put my finger on why. I did my best to get over it, figuring the reason would become clear sooner than later.

  In the meantime we all tried to settle back in for the last quarter of sophomore year. Ntombi and Rowella became unlikely best friends, bonded by their mutual sense of loss over Donald; they both spoke at his memorial service, and once again the depths of their grief only made me more ashamed of the shallowness of my own infatuation with him. I had so much to learn.

  And I was learning it, slowly, with Gerrid. After my release from the infirmary, I searched him out in the tunnels and found him with his face and head bandaged; as he was a nocturnal being, the full glory of the Veil had been far harsher on him than on me. We comforted each other—clumsily; my own hands were still heavily bandaged, so that we made a ridiculous looking pair. But affection grew, and then…a very deep love, that seemed to come upon me so naturally, so easily, that it surprised me to think that there was a time when I hadn’t known it.

  It was, of course, contrary to the commitment I’d made as a postulant to the Vestal sisterhood; I’d sworn to have no relations with men, the better to serve the goddess. But I considered that I had provided enough service to Vesta to excuse me from any further obligation for the rest of my days; though of course I kept her close to my heart, and felt always that she was watching over me—watching over all of us, in her many-faceted, much-storied function as the Veil.

  Rowella elected to stay on as a student, and to help the Advisory Board pare down Jocasta Foxglove’s curriculum to a more discreet representation of the so-called “magic arts.” It was a partial victory for reason over superstition; but it was also a step forward for Rowella herself. She’d been lied to and used by Jocasta, and set up as a human sacrifice; for her to reclaim her dignity, it was important that she take part in restoring order after Jocasta’s dismissal.

  Simone the remaining Hyena Girl, was so chastened by her experiences that she was quiet—almost meek—for a few weeks after her return. But unfortunately her old character eventually reasserted itself, and she blamed all of us for her friend Portia’s death. She took over Gunther’s old gang of thugs and swore she’d have her revenge.

  Meanwhile, Valery and Eddie conferred with government agencies and business leaders regarding the Hopper; they had to decide how soon and how widely it could be mass-produced, regulated, and marketed. Until then its use was strictly controlled, and the surviving Hoppers were collected and held by the board of regents. Predictably, this caused demonstrations on campus; but we’d grown almost used to them by now.

  Only I knew Eddie’s secret: that he himself had become a Hopper. He wisely chose to keep this news private for the time being.

  After three weeks my bandages were removed, and I could finally use my hands again. It felt wonderful to be able to flex my fingers, and do things like button a shirt and use a knife and fork.

  But
almost the first thing I noticed was the large red scar over the knuckles of my right hand. It looked strangely familiar. As it continued to heal and the swelling reduced, I recognized it as the same star-shaped scar I’d seen on the hand of my mysterious rescuer from the Wild Hunt…the woman who had told me that what she was doing was “forbidden” and urged me not to speak of it.

  And I began to understand that Eddie might indeed have opened a Pandora’s box of paradoxes, and that he wasn’t the only one who would be caught in the consequences.

  But after all I’d been through, I was content to leave that to another day…another semester…to the still distant days of junior year.

  Epilogue

  It was cooler than was usual for the time of year. Aprilis was turning out to be milder than Martius, which was something to talk about. But Hermione had no one to talk to. There was Brynja, of course, but she didn’t want to be one of those sad older women who became too attached to their housemaids.

  There was an advantage to being alone, of course, and that was, she could open the windows as wide as she liked and let the sweet, humid air roll in and pepper her face with swift, soft kisses. With her daughters away in the capital—having accepted the invitation to live for a time as the guests of their uncle, the newly elected consul—Hermione could even leave the windows open all night long, without the risk of being rebuked for it later.

  She stood enjoying the breeze for as long as it took to convince her that this pleasure was somehow worth the absence of Vipsania and Drusilla. Then she turned and went to her vanity to put on her face, though there was no one to put it on for. Even dear Uriel Sapir seldom called any longer, after Hermione had made it clear she could accept no increase in his attentions while her family was yet burdened by the unresolved loss of its most beloved member.

  She shut her eyes as she lowered herself onto her stool, and recited a small prayer to Isis that when she opened them she would see in the mirror what she had seen there once before: the face of her daughter, looking back at her.

  She opened her eyes; but it was only her own timeworn visage that greeted her.