Bad Grrlz' Guide to Reality: The Complete Novels Wild Angel and Adventures in Time and Space with Max Merriwell

by Pat Murphy

  Some people had brought notebooks; others had not. Cindy bustled around, getting everyone what they needed. She was relieved, Susan thought, to have something to do.

  “First off, I don’t want you to confuse me with your high school English teacher. I didn’t much like my high school English teachers and I certainly never wanted to be one. I’m not here to correct your grammar and put periods in the right places. I have a healthy respect for a well-placed period, but I don’t think the world will end if a period is out of place. I don’t even care much about the words. What I care about is the imagination. That’s what matters.”

  “Now I want you to think about something that matters to you. An object of some sort that you have strong feelings about. Something you love or something you hate—I don’t care which—but something that matters to you. Write down what you are thinking about.”

  In her notebook, Susan scrawled, “My wedding ring.”

  “Write down a couple of lines about that object. Describe it. You don’t have to write in sentences. I don’t care about that. Just write something.”

  Susan wrote: “Solid gold. Heavy. Valuable.” She hesitated for a moment, tapping her pen on the page nervously, then crossed out the word valuable and wrote “Expensive.” Not quite the same thing, she thought. It was worth money, but it wasn’t valuable to her, or she wouldn’t have thrown it away. She caught herself in the act of feeling for the ring with the thumb of her left hand, touching the callus where the ring had once rested. “Familiar,” she wrote. “Gone.”

  “Now write a few words about how that object makes you feel,” Max said.

  She stared at the page, her eyes focusing on the last word she had written. “Gone.” How did she feel? She remembered staring at the horizon as the ship headed across the ocean, far from land. “Adventurous,” she wrote. “Bold.”

  “Don’t worry if some of the feelings are contradictory,” Max said. “That’s just the way it is, sometimes.”

  “Afraid,” Susan wrote. “Lost. Confused.”

  “All right,” Max said. “Now I want you to put all that together into a scene. A very short scene involving the object you have described. A scene that comes out of your feelings about the object.”

  Susan wrote: “A woman stood on the deck of a ship, staring out at the ocean waves. In her hand, she held a golden ring, her wedding ring. Staring out at the waves, she threw the ring overboard, threw it as hard as she could. At the moment it left her hand, she wished that she could snatch it back. Too late. Her hand was empty; the ring was gone. She felt lost. She felt lonely. She felt like anything could happen.”

  Tom stepped into the ship’s library and stood just inside the doorway. The class was ending. Max was saying, “Now, if nobody has any more questions, we’ll wrap it up for today.”

  People stood, stretched, and began talking. As Tom made his way to the front of the room, he overheard a few comments about writing, but most of the people were talking about where they should go for lunch. That didn’t surprise him; in his experience, passengers talked more about food than about anything else.

  Tom saw Susan and Pat standing by the table, gathering their things. Susan looked up, saw Tom, and quickly stepped toward him. “I’m glad you’re here,” she said. “I thought about trying to talk Max into going to see you, but I don’t know if he would have. He got a strange note this morning.”

  “A note? What sort of note?”

  “A note with a hexagram from the I Ching,” she said. Tom frowned, and she explained a little more. “The Book of Changes. It’s a system of Chinese fortune-telling. Max said the note was nothing to worry about, but it seemed kind of threatening to me. Someone slipped it under his door last night.”

  Seems like last night was a busy night, Tom thought. Max was talking to a frowning teenager, who seemed to be complaining about something.

  “Maybe you could rescue poor Max,” Pat said. “He’s talking to a Weldon Merrimax fan.”

  “That’s bad?” Tom asked.

  “That would be my guess.”

  From Max’s pained expression, Tom had to agree. “Better go save him,” Susan said.

  Tom stepped toward the writer. “Max, I need to have a word with you.” He glanced at the teenager. “I hope you’ll excuse us.”

  “Sure,” the kid mumbled. “I was looking for Weldon Merrimax, anyway.” He turned and walked away.

  Max shook his head, looking unhappy.

  Tom frowned. “I thought you were Weldon,” he said.

  “I write as Weldon,” Max said. He was fumbling in his pocket. After a moment, he pulled out a pipe and a lighter.

  “Remember, Mr. Merriwell.” Cindy’s clear voice came from the back of the room. “No smoking in the library!”

  “Perhaps we could step outside,” Max said, glancing at Cindy with the weary expression of a smoker who had been denied too long. Tom followed Max onto the promenade deck.

  Outside, Tom leaned against the rail, waiting for Max to fill his pipe. The sun was warm on his face. Joggers in brightly colored sweat suits pounded past him. Passengers aboard the Odyssey were always jogging. A nearby sign read: “Three times around the promenade deck is one mile.”

  Max tamped down the tobacco in his pipe and took his time lighting it, cupping his hand around the bowl, holding the lighter just so, and puffing diligently until the tobacco caught. It took quite a while. Once it was lit, Max looked up from his pipe and smiled.

  “Just as well the young man didn’t find Weldon,” Max said. “I’m much nicer to my fans than Weldon would be.” Max puffed on his pipe. “Now what was it that you wanted to talk with me about?”

  “I was hoping you could help me out with a bit of a mystery,” Tom said. “Could I take a look at your cruise card?”

  “My cruise card? Why’s that?”

  “Well, it seems that Weldon Merrimax charged a drink on a cruise card last night.”

  Max stopped puffing on his pipe and narrowed his eyes. “Really? Weldon Merrimax?”

  “The charge showed up on a tab at Aphrodite’s. I thought perhaps Gene issued you a cruise card with the wrong name.”

  Max pulled out his cruise card and handed it to Tom. Tom glanced at the cruise card—issued to Max Merriwell. The photo showed Max, staring into the camera, and the embossed name identified it as belonging to Max Merriwell.

  “I assume it’s all in order,” Max said. “In any case, I didn’t go out for a drink last night. I stayed in my cabin. I’m just starting to work on my next book.”

  Tom nodded and returned Max’s card. “It looks just fine. Now tell me about this mysterious note you received.”

  “Did Susan mention that to you? It’s nothing to trouble you about,” Max said. “Just a joke, I’m sure.”

  “Susan seemed to think it was threatening.”

  “Such a sweet girl,” Max said. He fumbled in his pocket again. This time, he pulled out a sheet of ship’s stationery and handed it to Tom.

  “It is a hexagram from the I Ching,” Max said. “You’re familiar with that, of course?”

  “Chinese fortune-telling,” Tom said.

  Max squinted from beneath bushy eyebrows, looking rather like a professor whose student has delivered an incomplete answer. “Not just fortune-telling,” Max said. “The I Ching is an oracle, true, but it is also a book of wisdom. You throw the yarrow sticks to generate a hexagram. That hexagram provides the reader with a set of possibilities—and recommends a course of action.”

  “What course of action does this one recommend?” Tom asked. Max peered at the hexagram. “The lower trigram—that’s the bottom three lines is Tui, the joyous—cheerful but weak. The upper trigram is Ch’ien, the creative, large and strong. This deals with power relationships. The weak treads upon the strong.”

  “And so what does that tell you to do?”

  “It describes a dangerous enterprise. The superior man has the power to carry it through, but this power must be combined with caution. One mus
t be resolute but conscious of danger.”

  Tom shook his head. It sounded like a fortune cookie to him, but he thought it best not to share that opinion with Max. “Are you about to begin a dangerous enterprise?” Tom asked.

  Max nodded thoughtfully. “As I said, I am beginning work on a book.”

  Tom smiled. “That hardly seems hazardous.”

  “There’s always an element of danger there,” Max said, quite seriously. “It’s an unpredictable process. Anything could happen.”

  Tom nodded. “Well, that’s not the sort of danger that usually involves ship’s security.” Tom continued examining the note. The printing was quite distinctive. Tom reached into his pocket and pulled out the copy of the charge slip that Weldon Merrimax had signed. “You know, the printing on your note is very similar to Weldon Merrimax’s signature on the charge slip.” He glanced up at Max as he said that.

  Max bit down on his pipe, looking thoughtful. “How interesting. Perhaps the same person wrote both.”

  “Do you have any idea who might want to leave a note for you?” Tom asked.

  Max shrugged and puffed on his pipe. “As a writer, one gets used to this sort of thing.”

  Tom nodded, studying Max’s face. He had dealt with many liars in his time as a cop and his time as a security officer. He prided himself on his ability to spot a liar. Tom didn’t think Max was lying. No, he seemed like a nice, old guy.

  Tom held up the note. “Do you mind if I hang onto this?”

  “Be my guest,” Max said.

  Tom left Max tranquilly puffing on his pipe as the joggers ran past.

  Pat and Susan had lunch at the poolside bar on the recreation deck. The sun was out and the afternoon promised to be warm.

  Over a burger and fries, Susan told Pat about her breakfast with Max. “He said I was too honest,” Susan told Pat. “He told me I needed to learn how to lie.”

  Pat laughed. “Sounds like great advice. I’ve been telling you for the past year that you’re way too nice.”

  Susan shook her head. Pat thought most people were way too nice. “It’s strange. I just met him, but it feels like I’ve known him for years. I feel like he’s an uncle I never met.”

  “The black sheep of the family,” Pat suggested.

  “Yeah—not because he was bad, but because the rest of the family couldn’t figure him out. He’s a little odd, but in an interesting sort of way. Anyway, he feels like an old friend. Maybe it’s because I’ve read so many of his books. He’s sharper than you might expect, too. He figured out that I had been divorced recently.”

  Pat leaned back in her chair, studying Susan. “I hate to tell you this, Susan, but it’s not all that hard to figure out.”

  Susan shrugged, feeling uncomfortable. “Well, I’m done with that now. I threw the ring overboard, and now it’s fish food.”

  Pat lifted her beer in a toast. “Best thing you ever did,” she said.

  BAD GRRLZ’ GUIDE TO PHYSICS

  INTRODUCING QUANTUM MECHANICS

  My Ph.D. dissertation deals with a mathematical synthesis of the Everett-DeWitt Many Worlds theory and the Wigner Interpretation. My work could revolutionize quantum physics and change our view of the universe. Or it could be dismissed as a totally crackpot scheme. (My advisor, unfortunately, seems inclined toward the second view.)

  Both outcomes are possible—and that’s only appropriate since possibilities are what quantum mechanics is all about.

  Classical Newtonian physics is all about nuts and bolts. It focuses on actualities—something is or it isn’t. In classical Newtonian physics, you look at facts that you can measure and quantify and pin down like butterflies in a collector’s box. Newtonian physics is about actualities—what is.

  Quantum physics, on the other hand, is also about what might be—the potentiality of any situation. In any system—whether it’s an atom about to absorb some light or a bingo game about to begin there’s the actuality and there’s the potentiality—that is, the reality waiting to be born as the system evolves, the range of realities that are lurking in the system. Actuality and potentiality are equally real.

  Consider, for example, an electron that’s orbiting an atom. I’m sure you’ve seen those lovely retro diagrams of electrons whizzing around a lumpy nucleus.

  Now an electron orbiting an atom has a bunch of different orbits to choose from. When a passing light beam of just the right frequency hits an atom, the electron absorbs some energy and moves into a new orbit. But before the electron makes its move, while it’s still deciding which orbit to take, it temporarily moves into all possible orbits at the same time.

  Yes, it really does. That electron really is in several places at once. In fact, it’s smeared all over time and space as it makes trial runs into the future, testing out potentialities.

  You don’t want to think about electrons? OK, try it this way. Suppose you’re a Bad Grrl at a party and you meet three interesting guys—call them Moe, Larry, and Curly. All three guys are hot to date you and they all ask you out for the following Friday night.

  If you were like that electron, you could date them all simultaneously. Hey, you could even set up housekeeping with all three, living in three different houses at the same time, a Bad Grrl’s dream come true.

  You see, quantum entities can experience more than one reality at the same time. In fact, quantum systems are just throwing out possibilities right and left, always making trial runs into the future. Quantum physicists call this ‘superposition,’ where one reality is superposed on another.

  So you’ve got a reality that consists of a bunch of superposed possibilities, smeared all over time and space. Now suppose that an electron decides on a particular orbit—or you decide that Moe is the guy for you. You don’t want to continue your simultaneous existence with Larry and Curly. So you dump those boys and all of a sudden these many possibilities disappear and become one single actuality: the electron is in one orbit and you are with Moe, living happily ever after.

  It’s a bit tough to wrap your head around, but in the quantum world, those potential realities aren’t just possibilities. They interact with one another, evolving and interfering with each other and changing over time. Those potential realities can be described by the Schrodinger Equation, which explores the range of things that might happen, calculating the probability of each.

  Those potentialities are real—and that’s what makes them interesting.

  FIVE

  “You can call me Max,” he said.

  “Is that your name?” she asked. She had learned a thing or two along the way.

  He smiled and shook his head. “No. But it will do for now.”

  —from Here Be Dragons

  by Mary Maxwell

  When Tom left the library, it was still too early to find the bartender who had served Weldon Merrimax the night before. So he stopped by the casino.

  On the Promenade Deck, it was early afternoon, but in the Odyssey’s small casino, it was night. It was always night in the casino.

  The casino had no windows. The room’s mirrored walls made it appear larger than it actually was. If it weren’t for the hum of the engines underfoot and the slow rocking of the ship on the swells, he could have been in Las Vegas.

  The bright screens of the video poker machines shone steadily in the dim light. An elderly woman fed a quarter into a slot machine and pulled the lever. The reels spun and the machine jangled, a chaotic collection of musical notes that Tom suspected was designed to keep the players on edge and a little confused. The woman watched the reels, as if mesmerized. “Come on, cherries,” she said to the slot machine, half joking, half serious. “Make me a winner.” Her husband stood at her elbow, watching her with a tolerant smile.

  Casual gamblers who didn’t expect to win, Tom thought. That was true of most passengers. They’d drop a few dollars in a slot machine, lose a few at poker or craps. Nothing serious. All in good fun.

  He paused near the blackjack table to consid
er the men playing.

  There were two young guys, egging each other on, and two men of the right age for the card shark. One was blond; the other, too tall to match the description.

  Tom stopped by the casino manager’s office. Lisa Hackett, the casino manager, was a blonde in her early forties who had worked her way up from cocktail waitress to blackjack dealer to manager. Tom told her about the illicit poker game and the angry passenger.

  “Nothing illegal,” Tom said. “But the sort of behavior we’d like to discourage.” He advised her to keep her eyes open for the man. “In the bar, he claimed his name was Weldon Merrimax.”

  “Weldon Merrimax? I’ve read his books,” Lisa said. “Great stuff. It figures he’d be a card shark. His books are all about crooks—swindlers, con artists, thieves, and murderers. He seems to know an awful lot about swindles and cons.”

  “Well, actually, Max Merriwell writes those books,” Tom said. “Weldon Merrimax is a pen name.”

  Lisa frowned. “I thought you were looking for Weldon Merrimax,” she said.

  “Yes, I am. But Max Merriwell is the writer who is on board, teaching a workshop. He writes as Weldon Merrimax. Weldon Merrimax doesn’t really exist.”

  “Hang on—you said that’s who you were looking for.”

  “I’m looking for someone who is pretending to be Weldon Merrimax,” Tom said.

  “But that’s what you said Max Merriwell did—pretend to be Weldon Merrimax.”

  “Max Merriwell writes books as Weldon Merrimax, but he doesn’t pretend to be Weldon Merrimax.”

  Lisa shook her head. “That’s a pretty fine line if you ask me,” she said. “All right, then. I’ll ask my staff to keep an eye out for the man who doesn’t exist but somehow manages to win at cards.”

  Shortly after two, Tom reached Aphrodite’s Alehouse, where Frank Robinson, the bartender who had waited on Weldon Merrimax, had just come on shift. The bar had the ambiance of an upscale English pub—dark walls, wooden tables, a fire in the fireplace. If it was al ways night in the casino, it was always late afternoon in the Alehouse. A long lazy afternoon, perfect for a game of darts or hoisting a few pints with a friend.