Clean-David grabbed a rolling office chair and wheeled it over to Dave. He sat in it backward, resting his arms over the headrest. The pistol hung limply in his hand. The man’s eyes, so much like his own—no, exactly like my own—stared into Dave’s. Clean-David smiled. A small chip in his lower left permanent lateral incisor blemished a perfectly good smile. “Let’s talk.”
“We’re not exactly alike,” Dave said. “What happened to your tooth?”
Clean-David ran his tongue over the tops of his front teeth. “Hmm. Yeah. I fell out of a tree on Grandpa’s farm. I was trying to pick an apple off the Fork Branch, and it snapped. I’m lucky I just chipped a tooth.”
The Fork Branch, ten feet off the ground over what was once a rock garden. It had a spray that looked like tines.
“You broke the Fork Branch?” Dave rested his elbows on his knees, lacing his fingers. “Last time I was on the farm, the Fork Branch was still there.”
The pistol in Clean-David’s hand hung so close to Dave he could reach out and take it. He didn’t.
“I wasn’t happy about it either. I was going to build a—”
“Treehouse,” Dave finished for him. “Me, too. Then Grandpa died and my priorities changed.”
A sad smile touched Clean-David. “I was there when Grandpa had the heart attack. Were you?”
Dave nodded. I was almost there twice.
“Now, what are we going to do about—” Clean-David waved the gun around the Bridge. “—all this?”
The exhaustion of the last week lifted for a moment, only a moment. Is it going to be this easy?
“We’re going to turn off the supercollider. Intersecting dimensions and times is madness. Irreparable damage has probably been done to the timelines and cohesion of every world Karl’s bullshit idea touched. We have to stop it before it gets any worse.”
Clean-David frowned, resembling a teacher who’d just gotten the wrong answer to a question he’d asked a dozen times.
“I was afraid you were going to say that.” He stood and grabbed the headrest, spinning the chair as he walked away. He casually examined the room, looking at monitors and control panels like he was bored.
“Karl—not your dimension’s Karl, my dimension’s Karl—explained everything to the team. This is a matter of our survival. The world is in chaos. By equipping the government with as much non-human cannon-fodder as we can drag into our dimensions, we stand a chance of setting things right.” Clean-David talked with his hands, waving them as if he were swatting mosquitos. “Fill a battlefield with orcs, enormous sentient insects, nine-foot-tall non-human primates, fire-breathing radioactive dinosaurs, and whatever else we find out there, and no enemy can face us. It will bring about a peace the world has never known.”
Any hope Dave had melted from him. This man who looked like him wasn’t him. Something had happened to Clean-David long before Karl Miller got his crazy-hooks into him.
“Where did you go to live after Grandpa died?”
Clean-David sat on the table that used to hold the monitors smashed by Karl. “What do you mean? I went home to the Sandersons.”
“The Sandersons?” Oh, shit. “Cecilia and Delbert?”
The man nodded. “Yeah. Who else?”
“Cecilia and Delbert raised you? How long did you live with them?”
The man waved the pistol absentmindedly. “Until I graduated from Stanford. I still have lunch with them after church on most Sundays. Dad and I usually watch the noon football game before I head home.”
Dad? A short bark of a laugh erupted from Dave.
“That explains a lot. Okay, douche nozzle, in a few days you’re going to be eaten by a giant praying mantis from another dimension, and don’t expect that Cheetos-smelling bastard Karl to do anything about it,” he said. “He’s going to watch it happen and enjoy every second. Let that sink in while you’re getting all high and mighty about this plan to give peace a chance through radioactive dinosaurs. Oh, and the praying mantis is named Chet. He’ll be wearing a lab coat.”
“The Sandersons are great—” Clean-David cut the sentence short. “Wait. What did you say?”
13
Brick was right, the prairie was thick with ragweed. The pollen stuck to their clothes like stripper glitter. As they waded into the weeds, he took a big red handkerchief from his pocket, something like what John Wayne would pull from a saddlebag and use to wipe someone else’s blood from his face. He tied it around his nose and mouth just in case his nasal spray wasn’t cowboy enough.
It was well after noon when they reached the fence, a twelve-foot-high chain-link cage designed to keep out intruders who weren’t driving a vehicle. Waist-high steel posts set in concrete every three feet would dissuade those who were. Motion-sensor security cameras mounted atop the fence every six meters moved with them as they approached.
“Power’s still on,” Brick said through a mouthful of jerky. “I thought this part was going to be easy.”
Skid bit down on her jerky and took Bud Light Dave’s key card from her front pocket. “I gah iss overed.” She spat out the seasoned dried beef. “I got this covered.”
The card slipped into a reader to the left of the gate, level to the height of a car window. A light on the reader went from red to green and a motor churned from somewhere; the gate began to retract.
“Easy peasy.” She ripped off another piece of jerky and chewed, walking onto the lab grounds. “You make this yourself?”
Brick smiled. “Yeah, I did.”
“Better stick to muffins.”
They couldn’t follow the road, because it didn’t exist in this dimension. They dragged their legs through the tall prairie grass and weeds and walked directly toward what looked like the front door, a glass and metal rectangle that resembled the entrance to a grocery store. The ground rippled as they approached it.
“Hold on,” Brick said, reaching out to Skid. She took his hand, which no longer even fazed her. She didn’t like touching people, but Brick and Cord and Dave didn’t seem like people anymore. She knew she’d only met them a week ago, but they already seemed more like family than any member of her own. Maybe Brick and Beverly really do have something.
Skid closed her eyes as the Miller Wave swept through the glass of the front door and pushed through them. She didn’t want to know where they were going. We’re here. We’re here. We’re here, ran through her head, her hand pinching Brick’s in a steel grip. Please, don’t make us go away.
“Skid.” Brick’s voice was soft with relief. She opened her eyes. The building remained unchanged, the sign over the card reader read Lemaître Labs. “We’re still here.”
The weight in her stomach lifted. She swiped the card and the weight dropped again. Nothing happened. She ran it one more time. The machine beeped, but the light stayed red. “Something’s wrong.”
“Maybe not,” Brick said behind her, his big arm moved over her shoulder holding a key card identical to the one she held. He swiped it and the light turned green, the door opened with a ‘woosh.’ “That time I went back to my store, the other David showed up. He gave me this.”
What? “Why didn’t you tell me?” she asked, turning to face him.
“I didn’t think you’d want to hear what he said.”
“Let me guess.” She tossed the remaining bite of beef onto the now neatly trimmed grass. “I’m going to kill everybody.”
“Well—” Brick began.
A cough came from behind him. An intentional cough, the kind of hey, pay attention to me cough people use when they think they’re important. Skid couldn’t see the source because Brick’s giant chest covered her field of vision in filthy, blood-stained plaid. She flicked the last knife into her hand. “I might have to.”
Chapter Thirteen
Sept-Deja-Vu-All-Over-Again-ember 7
1
The graduation party had everything a graduation
party was supposed to have. Seniors counting down sixteen hours until they walked across the stage, chips and dip, a ridiculous amount of mostly empty cheap liquor bottles, a keg, annoying dance music no one danced to because they were all playing Quarters, and a gatecrasher throwing up in the bathroom. Karl stood against the wall of Marty McClure’s rented house feeling incredibly uncomfortable.
“And I’m telling you, Karl,” drunk Marty said, a red Solo cup of cheap light beer in his fist, “there’s no sense staying here. You’re fucking brilliant. You could be the next Bill Gates, and that Microsoft-founding son of a bitch didn’t even graduate college.” He paused only to take a drink. The next words came out in a slight spray. “Or, what’s that other guy? The one that makes the Apple stuff?”
“You mean Steve Jobs?” Karl asked, swirling Diet Coke around his own red plastic cup, the bubbles mostly gone. “Or Hostess Fruit Pie?”
Marty stared at Karl with glassy eyes before he realized his friend was being a smart-ass. “Jobs,” he said, patting Karl’s cheek before grabbing his chin. “He didn’t graduate college either. Both of those guys are making money. Why do you need to go to grad school?”
Karl brushed his friend’s hand from his face and started to lift the cup to his lips, but the diet soda had gone warm as well. He didn’t want it anymore.
“Because computers aren’t my thing. I’m going to get my master’s in quantum physics, maybe even my doctorate. Dr. Sanderson, the man who hired me for my summer internship, said he’s toying with time travel at home. I may one day roam the universe and not even leave my house.”
“Where are you going, Karl?” Marty’s girlfriend Suzie Watters appeared next to them and leaned into Marty.
Marty sneered. “Nowhere, honey. Our good friend Karl is going nowhere.”
Suzie pulled back and shoved her boyfriend’s arm, not hard, not even hard enough to spill his beer, just enough to get her point across. “Leave him alone,” she said, turning to Karl, pointing a finger at him. “Our wedding, you’re a groomsman, two months, be there. Just don’t let this asshole do anything to make you say no.”
Marty ignored her, his drunken attention on Karl. The irony of the Simple Minds’ song “Don’t You Forget About Me” playing in the room was not wasted on Karl.
“I love you, man,” Marty told his friend, “but sometimes you can be such a twat waffle. Why don’t you cut loose for once? You’ll never have this day again.” His gaze dropped to Karl’s wingtip shoes and climbed up past his button-down shirt to his parted-on-the-right haircut. “You’re the same as you were the day we met at freshman orientation. It’s too bad this is our last night instead of our first. It would have been fun to have called you Twat Waffle for the past four years.”
Marty laughed before draining his cup and dropping it on the floor. It landed with a hollow tink. A beery smile leaked over his face, and he gave Karl a hug before draping an arm over Suzie’s shoulders and leaving to join the people having fun.
“You’re wrong, Marty,” Karl said as his friend filled a new Solo cup at the keg across the room. “I might just have this day again.”
Marty flipped him off.
Karl didn’t say good-bye. He just went home because it was almost 10 p.m., and he had to be fresh for graduation. Not that he was going anywhere after graduation. Summer classes started in a week.
The heavy front door of the rental house shut with a thump behind him and cut the blare of some of the music, but not enough. Karl could still hear it and the sound of laughter for the next two blocks before he reached his apartment building and locked himself in tight.
That night was a long time ago, decades before he grabbed the job of chief scientist of Lemaître Labs. From that moment, Karl was the man. He was the boss. He was in control.
That didn’t keep him from peeing just a little when the floor swallowed him. Not enough for anyone to notice if they were around—which they weren’t, since Dave 1 and Dave 2 were still back on the Bridge—as it was just a squirt, but he could feel it in his underpants. There was no shame. His body dropped through the tiled surface of the floor, through the steel-reinforced supports and into the supercollider tunnel to the Miller Ring before a visible violet wind swept him back up through the bedrock, the substratum, the subsoil and topsoil, pushing him onto the ground outside the lab as if it were a growing plant blooming a fully-grown human with no social skills. When the wave passed and Karl stood in the waist-high grass near the back fence, he thought he’d handled everything well considering the fact being dragged ethereally through solid objects wasn’t something he made a habit of. The spot of urine was understandable.
“So,” he said, stretching his arms, wincing at his uncomfortably loud voice in the silent air. “This is what Collison’s fuss is all about?”
A butterfly landed on his forearm. He smiled before slapping it dead and brushing the broken, dusty wings off his sleeve. Karl took in the flowers, the clouds of butterflies, the sharp electric blue sky that stretched to the Kármán line sixty-two miles over his head and 24,901.461 miles across the surface of the earth from his extended right hand to his left. Most people who think about such things would probably say “infinity,” but Karl knew better. Nothing was infinite but space and time, and Karl controlled them both. He was the Dimension King.
He breathed deeply. This air was uncorrupted by human pollution. He didn’t know this world, but he did know he wasn’t outside Peculiar, Missouri; there were too many flowers and too few field crops. Karl had started back toward the lab when an unmistakably human noise broke the pristine silence and nailed his feet to the ground.
“Power’s still on,” a deep male voice said in the distance. “I thought this part was going to be easy.”
Two people stood outside the fence. From this distance, it was either a normal-sized man and a ten-year-old girl, or a normal-sized woman and Bluto from Popeye. “She’s coming,” one, or both, of the Collisons had said. “We have to be ready.” Is this her? he wondered. Is this Skid? She doesn’t look so tough. Bluto, on the other hand, did. He seemed like a hairy house with teeth.
“Easy peasy,” the woman said as the gate rumbled open and they walked through. Karl marveled at how far a voice traveled when there was no other sound but his awkwardly drumming heart to compete with it.
He stood as still as he could. There was nothing that could hide him without creating a sudden movement and giving himself away—no trees, no outbuildings, no cars. Just the weeds, some of which were topped with colorful flowers. Karl was glad he didn’t suffer from hay fever.
The two strangers marched through the prairie grass at an angle away from him. They didn’t seem to notice him, exactly like at college parties. As they approached the lab, the big man strode with his shoulders back, but the woman walked with an air of purpose mixed with not giving a damn, which was tough to pull off. She’s in charge. It was that moment Karl realized that, yes, this had to be the woman the Collisons had warned him about. Skid.
The world began to shake without shaking, more like heat wavering over a highway. A Miller wave—something Karl had named himself, without help, nope, none at all—sprang from the building, washing over these interlopers, and flew toward him in rolling silence. His eyes slammed shut, but if the wave struck him, he felt nothing. When he finally looked, the grass was neat and well-trimmed, cars dotted the parking lot. A few contrails crisscrossed the sky. A smile broke across his face. I’m home. This is my place. And he had a plan. He’d just watch the two go inside the lab, wait long enough for the cockroaches in HR to eat them, assuming they didn’t die from the poison in the stairwells. Then he’d go back inside, his back straight, his shirt tucked in.
The woman tried a key card on the door. It didn’t move.
It didn’t move? “Oh, no,” Karl whispered, shoving a hand inside his right pants pocket. He felt car keys and nail clippers. His left hand slid into his other front pocket only to wrap arou
nd loose change. His own key card, the one that would have let him into the building, the elevator, and the BAB-C control room was gone. “I left it in the Bridge.”
Think, Karl. You have three master’s degrees and a Ph.D. Fricking think. He rushed behind Gillian the receptionist’s Camry and squatted, leaning out to watch the woman. The giant man pulled another key card from his shirt. How do they have two?
Then Dr. Karl Miller Ph.D. knew what he had to do. He slammed his face into the front left quarter panel of Gillian’s car and stifled a scream. He was no Twat Waffle.
2
“A giant sentient praying mantis named Chet,” Dave said, getting some satisfaction from the fact his smug doppelganger looked as if he’d just swallowed a cat. “It seemed nice. I mean, it fixed that festering knife wound in your leg.”
Clean-David’s hands instinctively dropped to his thighs and felt to make sure they were there.
“I thought you said it ate me.” His voice was slightly panicked, but mostly confused.
“Oh, it did, right after it cleaned your leg and sewed up the wound.” Dave absentmindedly picked at a fingernail before looking back up. “I think it did so partly out of loyalty to the Hippocratic Oath, but mostly because oozing puss doesn’t do much for anyone’s appetite.” He pulled off a bit of nail and flicked it onto the floor. “Karl didn’t care. He just wanted my will to break while I watched that monster eat someone who looked exactly like me.”
“Did you?” Clean-David asked. “Did you break?”
“No.” Dave leaned back in the office chair and rested his heels on a nearby table. “I had a couple bags of peanuts and drank six or seven beers. Your slow, anesthesia-numbed death was on a big monitor, so it was like a Saturday night at home watching the Syfy Channel.”
So You Had to Build a Time Machine Page 28