Gravity Rising (The Parallel Multiverse Book 2)

by Ward Wagher

  As he lay there, he pondered his situation with MIT. He was going to have to find some other way to fund his research. He had wanted to be a physicist since he had learned what the term meant. If he couldn’t get funding from the school, he would have to find it elsewhere. The question was: where?

  He began suggesting solutions to himself and discarding them. He didn’t notice his eyes getting heavy, only that he needed to pull his arms under the blanket to warm up. He drifted off for another long nap.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  Lawrence Berthold spent his two days of confinement productively. Now, sitting in his chilly office, and occasionally looking out the window at the fall snows, he tapped emails to potential benefactors on his computer. After the climate change and the plagues, the population density of the North American continent was sparse. The Global Net had become even more of a community meeting place than it was in the early twenty-first century. This made it easier to find sources of money, though, even those were sparse.

  Larry’s original stipend was unusual in that it came from the municipal council in Montreal. Most patronage of the arts and sciences had reverted to the model practiced in the middle ages, where wealthy benefactors and more enlightened despots supported the artists and scientists. Larry’s targets for potential largess in North America numbered less than a dozen people.

  The balkanization of the United States had followed the plagues as people retreated to their towns and cities. There was no incentive or desire to maintain transcontinental political units. The regional polities were bound by common interests and ease of defense. There had not even been a lot of war. So the national consensus had simply fallen apart when the bureaucrats in the District of Columbia and the suburbs had succumbed to the plagues.

  The only major confrontation was when Kim Jo Lin decided the plagues were the result of a western plot and hurled a dozen ICBMs from his hermit kingdom of North Korea towards the disintegrating United States. The remaining military forces in North America managed to stop a majority of the warheads, however, Chicago and Los Angeles were not so fortunate. The people still alive in South Korea and Japan were mostly relieved that the North Korean problem was finally taken care of. They could deal with the fallout from the strikes that had obliterated the country.

  As Larry searched for support, he also took the time to inquire about other ways of making a living. While most of the northeastern portion of the former United States was eking out a bare subsistence, one of the major problems in the Midwest was the lack of labor. Larry was pretty much guaranteed a job if he was willing to be a farm worker. Saint Louis was becoming a center for manufacturing, and it seemed there might be opportunities there, as well.

  “How’s it going?” Maggie asked.

  Larry turned to see his geeky friend as she stuck her head in the doorway. “I have run out of potential benefactors in North America. I am waiting to see if I get any responses. I have also been looking for other types of work.”

  “Anything pop up?”

  “Nothing around here,” he said. “If I were willing to move to the Midwest there are actually some opportunities… for farmers or factory workers.”

  “You don’t sound very enthusiastic about those possibilities,” Maggie responded.

  Larry drummed his fingers on the desktop. “I’ll do whatever I have to do.”

  “We gotta stay optimistic,” she said. “I’m sure something will turn up. Have you looked in the UK?”

  “Not so far. Getting over there is problematic.”

  “You might try, just to see what happens.”

  “You are right,” he said. “I’m running out of things to do. I might as well research that. Nothing to lose, and all that.”

  “Exactly,” she replied. “Are you meeting me for lunch?”

  He glanced at the clock on the computer display. “I had lost track of time. I can leave any time for lunch.”

  “Then, let’s go.”

  He threw his coat on and walked down the hallway with her. When they got to the door, she stopped him. Button it up, Mister.”

  “Hey, Mags, it’s forty degrees out there.”

  “Right. Button it up.”

  He looked at her and not only was she obviously not going to give in, she looked as though she was spoiling for a fight. He sighed and buttoned the buttons on the heavy woolen jacket.

  “Finally, you get smart,” she said.

  “And he lives to fight another day,” he muttered, mostly to himself.

  She chose to ignore his last comment as she pushed the door open.

  “The dean is confused and frightened,” she said as they walked across the plaza.

  “About the doors?” he asked. “Haven’t they figured out who did it, yet?”

  “That’s just it, Larry. Somebody didn’t lock the door.”

  “They were most certainly locked!” he exclaimed. “I know that.”

  “The mechanisms were fused, not locked. I didn’t know it the other night, but Seb had to break the door to get to you.”

  Larry stopped and looked at her. “I think I can understand why the dean is scared. I didn’t have any trouble with the door mechanism when I left the hall. But when I came back, it was locked solid.”

  He turned and continued walking. They walked along the sidewalk to the front of Maseeh Hall, and Larry continued thinking. He unconsciously held the door for Maggie, so she could walk through first. He walked through the door, himself, and then stopped.

  “Whoever it was, they were after me,” he said.

  “I always thought you were a smart boy,” Maggie said. “I reached the same conclusion this afternoon.”

  “But we don’t want to fall in love with our assumptions,” Larry said.

  “Right,” she said.

  He took a few more steps and stopped again. “But the evidence is compelling.”

  “The dean more or less said the same thing. But, why?”

  “Why, indeed?” he repeated back to her.

  “It gets worse,” she said, as they walked down the hallway to the dining hall. They stopped to look at the day’s menu, posted next to the entry.

  “Currie and rice?” she asked.

  “I wonder where they found the rice,” he commented. “Let’s go up to my flat. I’ve got to have something that’s better than that. The last time I tried to eat that I spent the night clamped to the… well, let’s just say it didn’t agree with me.”

  She laughed in her goofy way. It had always annoyed Larry the way she hooted when she laughed. On the other hand, it was such a defining characteristic of the girl that he couldn’t imagine her being any other way.

  “You don’t have anything to eat in your flat,” she said. “I checked.”

  “I guess I haven’t been to the grocer in a while,” Larry said. “Do you have anything to eat?”

  “Probably. Honestly, Larry, I think you keep your cupboard empty because it’s neater that way.”

  “Hey, I like things orderly.”

  “There is a difference between orderly and having a fetish,” she said.

  They argued about that as they sprinted up the steps to the third floor, and into the uncontrolled chaos that was Maggie’s flat. She walked to the small food cooler and studied its contents.

  “Do you need help?” he asked.

  “Naah. We both know you can scald water. I think I can throw something together here.”

  She slid a cooked chicken breast out of the cooler and set it on the counter. Taking a knife, she expertly diced the meat and tossed it into a frying pan. She pulled out a can opener and took the lid off a can of mixed vegetables. After draining the can, she poured the vegetables into the frying pan and set it on the gas ring.

  “Just sit down and let me take care of this,” she said when she noticed he stood next to her looking helpless.

  “I thought I was supposed to take care of supper for you,” he said.

  “And, you don’t do plaintive well,” she retorted,
shaking the spatula at him.

  He retreated across the one room flat. The only easy chair was stacked with unfolded laundry. He frowned at the mess and then began picking up the individual pieces and folding them.

  “You don’t need to do that,” she called across the room.

  “I do if I want to find a place to sit down.”

  “Yeah, whatever.”

  Larry found it interesting that it didn’t seem to bother her to have him folding her clothes. His mother would have died a thousand deaths before she had let anyone handle her laundry. After achieving a neat stack of folded laundry, began putting it away. Since he had done this before, he knew where everything went. Having completed the task, he collapsed into the easy chair. As he did so, its springs crunched alarmingly. Sooner or later, he fully expected to have a spring break through and impale him.

  He thought for a moment as Maggie stirred her concoction in the frying pan.

  “What was worse?” he asked, picking up the thread of an earlier conversation.

  “While you were flailing around in the snow,” she said. “Sebastian Sylvester got a call on his phone telling him he had a package awaiting him in the lobby.”

  “And when he came to the lobby to retrieve his package, there I was. So what?”

  “There was no package.”

  “Oh.” Larry hesitated a few moments. “I gotta think about that. It changes the picture.”

  “Yes, it does.”

  “How many people in Maseeh Hall have personal phones?” he asked.

  “Exactly,” she said. “What, maybe two or three? Whoever it was knew who to call.”

  “This is getting spooky.”

  They continued discussing the problem while the lunch cooked. She separated the meal on to two plates and set them on the small table. Larry moved over to the table and sat down.

  “I don’t know how you do it. This looks wonderful.”

  “Oh, give over,” she laughed nervously. “It’s just something I threw together.”

  “That’s what I mean. You just throw a few things together and it tastes like it came from a four-star restaurant.”

  She blushed. “And I think your adventure in the snow has addled your brain. I know I’m not that good. Besides, what do you know about four-star restaurants?”

  He raised an eyebrow and grinned at her. “I would choose one of your meals anytime, Mags.”

  “That’s because you don’t want to cook for yourself. After we eat, we are going to the grocer. We need to put food on your shelf.”

  “And I need to buy your groceries,” Larrys said. “I’ve been mooching off of you all week.”

  “The girl won’t complain,” she said.

  The penurious state of doctoral students was common everywhere. The stipends were enough to cover education expenses along with just the essentials. And in the two centuries since the economies had collapsed, the essentials were just that. The remaining population of North America was poor. And those who had wealth were not ostentatious about it.

  The society of this world still carried the collective memory of the triple catastrophes of the plague, the Carrington Event, and the sudden cooling of the climate. Without electrical power, the technology dependent medical industry was unprepared when people began getting sick. A succession of very cold winters sapped peoples’ ability to fight any illness, let alone the viral disease that resembled the flu, but was much more virulent and infective.

  The rapid spread of the illness overwhelmed the limited medical care that was still available, and eventually drove the population decline and further ruined the economies. While mankind had repeatedly proven its ability to claw its way back from the edge of extinction, the shock of these events had reverberated for centuries.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  “What I want to know is if you will be paying your next gas bill?” the old lady demanded.

  Larry Berthold quailed as she stood before him. “I’ve got it covered, Mrs. Willow. I promise.”

  The stocky, white-haired woman seemed to him to be larger than life. While she was actually several inches shorter than Larry, he always felt like she was taller and more massive than he. He almost shrunk within himself whenever she confronted him.

  “I don’t think you have the money, young man. And don’t think you’re going to stay on my sufferance, because I won’t have it.”

  “I told you I was going to pay my bill,” he stammered. “I have the money.”

  “And then what?” she grumped. “You will have next month to worry about.”

  “I’ll play my bill, Mrs. Willow. And then I’ll worry about next month.”

  She harrumphed and returned to the small apartment next to the dining room at Maseeh Hall.

  “I still don’t know where they came up with that old bag,” Maggie said quietly as she stepped up next to Larry.

  “She’s scary, too. Everybody in the hall is scared of her.”

  “She’s right about next month, though,” Maggie continued.

  “Yeah, but I didn’t want to tell her that.”

  “We gotta get busy and find you another stipend.”

  Larry shrugged. “I don’t know what else to do. I’ve sent emails to everyone I could think of.”

  “You made a list of them, I hope,” Maggie said.

  “Yes, of course.”

  “Don’t of course me, Mister,” she said. “I figured you had just sent the notes out as the names occurred to you.”

  “Ha!”

  “All right. We’re going up to your flat and review the list. I may be able to think of some more.”

  “Plus, I have food,” Larry said triumphantly. “Remember, we went to the grocer two days ago.”

  “I believe you owe me a meal or three,” Maggie responded. “Lead on.”

  They trotted up to the fourth floor and into Larry’s flat. Lacking any kind of an easy chair, he flopped down on the bed.

  “So you’re expecting me to do the cooking, too?” she demanded.

  “Hey, I can cook if you want me to.”

  “Never mind,” she laughed as she rummaged through the cupboard. “I’ve never been bested by a cupboard, yet.”

  “Except when mine was empty,” Larry said.

  “Well, a few exceptions,” she said, correcting herself.

  He lay on the mattress for a few minutes, arms behind his head, staring at the ceiling.

  “Where did she come from?” he asked.

  “Who?”

  “Old lady Willow.”

  “I haven’t the slightest,” Maggie said as filled a pot with water and put it on the gas ring.

  “You can get anyone to spill their guts to you. I thought you knew everybody’s life stories.”

  “Not her,” Maggie said. “Not only will she not talk to me much, she’s mean, too.”

  “She doesn’t have a mean streak,” Larry said.

  “Come on. You saw how she treated you downstairs a few minutes ago.”

  “What I meant is that she is mean all the way through. It’s not just a streak.”

  “Okay, I can accept that. And she wouldn’t tell me anything about herself.”

  “I guess that’s neither here nor there.”

  “Right, Lawrence. Now let’s look at your list.”

  Larry bounded up off the bed and grabbed a sheet of paper from the work table. “Here ya go.”

  She quickly scanned Larry’s neat handwriting, and then paused, rubbing her mouth. “Okay, what’s that guy in Mexico City? Also isn’t there somebody in Bogotá?”

  “I don’t speak Hispanic.”

  “Hmmm. That might be a problem.”

  “Of course it’s a problem. The regional dialects of Anglo are bad enough.”

  “Ooookay,” she said.

  She looked back over at the pot, which was beginning to boil. She walked over and poured part of a package of macaroni into the hot water.

  “What about that guy on the west coast? In Portland?”

/>   “I don’t know who you’re talking about,” Larry said.

  “He is just getting things organized and wants to start a university. You’d probably have to teach, in addition to your research.”

  “Purgatory,” he muttered.

  “Naah, it’s just a matter of attitude,” Maggie said. “I don’t really like teaching, either, but sometimes one must do what one must.”

  “What about last year when Fluffy had you teach the Physics tutorial. You were spitting fire every night when you came back over here.”

  “You must be thinking of someone else,” she said. “I, of course, never allow people to upset my equilibrium.”

  “The conventional wisdom says that since the gulf stream shifted, hurricanes cannot make it as far north as Boston. I’d say the conventional wisdom failed in your case.”

  “I could always go back downstairs.”

  “Never mind.”

  “Back to Mrs. Willow,” Maggie said. “Nobody really knows where she came from. She showed up last year a couple of weeks before the fall term and moved into the Residential Supervisor’s apartment. Neither Fluffy nor the dean would admit to having hired her.”

  “So why didn’t the dean pitch her out?” Larry asked.

  “Would you want to do that?”

  “Not in your life,” Larry laughed.

  “Besides, she does a good job of keeping the place in order. Seb Sylvester told me the place used to be full of deadbeats and moochers. You will notice that all we have here are students and staff.”

  “As well as people like us who fit in neither category,” Larry provided helpfully.

  “Right. The dean likes having her here, even if he is terrified of her.”

  “Is everyone here afraid of her?” Larry asked.

  “Pretty much,” Maggie said. “Except for me, of course.”

  She set the cooking pot off to the side and slide another pan onto the burner. She poured in some milk, cooking oil, flour, and butter. She then sliced a piece of cheddar cheese and cut it into smaller pieces, letting it fall into the pan. She then shook some salt and pepper into the mixture.