When It's a Jar

by Tom Holt

  As he walked in through the door, they all stood up to greet him. They were singing:

  For he’s a jolly good fellow

  For he’s a jolly good fellow

  For he’s a jolly good fellow…

  He looked at them. They looked at him. He smiled.

  … And so say all of us.

  He laughed. They gave him three cheers. He took off his coat and hung it on the hook behind the door. “That’ll do,” he said loudly. “Now, get on with some work, before I fire the lot of you.”

  Chorus of exaggerated groans and hisses; then the group dissolved. They went back to their desks, phones and photocopiers, and soon the front office was its usual humming, vibrant self. He was still smiling as he stepped into the glass lift and said “Thirty-seven.”

  A thought struck him.

  On the thirty-seventh floor, opposite the lift, was a men’s room. He went inside and looked at himself in the mirror. I’m me, he told himself. The reflection agreed with him. And then he thought, Why am I holding a bagel in my left hand?

  He remembered. No time for breakfast, busy day, early start; so he’d bought a bagel from Max on the street outside the front door. Good old Max. Always a cheery smile, and the bagels freshly baked that morning.

  He pushed through the fire doors into his office, and stood for a moment admiring the view. At the time, he’d been in two minds about using three-quarters of an entire floor as his own personal space, given what they were having to pay per square metre just to be there. It was recklessly extravagant, and, although he could easily afford it, he was uneasy about the conspicuous consumption aspect. It was a bit too Gordon-Gecko-Goldman-Sachs for his taste, and, besides, did he really need it? After all, he’d started the business and grown it into a multi-billion-dollar corporation in his parents’ garage, with his first laptop balanced perilously on cardboard boxes full of books and china they’d brought from the old house and never got around to unpacking. Now his office was longer and wider than their entire street; if his carpet was grass, he could graze a flock of sheep there all winter without having to feed them hay.

  True; but he wasn’t the same man he used to be. Nowadays, he needed room to think in; and although you could argue that the Wiltshire estate and the New Mexico ranch and the private Alp and the forty-thousand hectares of protected Brazilian rainforest served that function pretty well, the fact was that he was still always at his best and brightest when he had his team, his people, around him. They’d probably put up with jumping on a jet and going with him whenever he felt the need to brainstorm, but it wouldn’t be fair on them or their families, not to mention the carbon issues of having three 747s constantly shuttling across the globe. Seen in those terms, the office wasn’t so bad after all. And besides, he liked it like this. He worked best when he was happy. The team worked best when they were happy, and they weren’t happy unless he was happy – happiness, he’d discovered, really was the key to success in business – so, well, there you go. It’s the assets that don’t show up on the balance sheets that really make the difference.

  He wandered across the room to his desk – well, sort of desk. Really it was three planks of wood resting on two substantial tea-chests, with a seat salvaged from a Renault Clio and welded to a frame, the one thing (apart from a certain attitude) he’d brought with him from the old garage days. But he simply couldn’t imagine working anywhere else; and if bank CEOs and heads of state and captains of industry thought he was eccentric – well, yes, they were perfectly right. In fact, it was a pretty fair litmus test. The ones who got the desk were the ones he could do business with. The others… well, perfectly pleasant people in their own way – most people were all right when you got right down to basics – but some people were more on his wavelength than others, simple as that.

  “Maurice,” said a disembodied voice.

  He looked up. “Talk to me, Charlene.”

  “Your nine fifteen’s here.”

  Ah. He smiled. “Get him a coffee and a slice of carrot cake,” he said, “and tell him I’ll be right down.”

  He used the back lift, the one they called the Teleport: a single stainless-steel disc set into the floor, with a tube of his patent invisible glass surrounding it; you stood on the disc and said where you wanted to go, and three seconds later, there you were. The ground-floor exit was just behind the front desk in main Reception, which meant he could suddenly appear out of thin air to greet his guests. Silly, really, but fun; and if there’s no fun, why the hell bother with any of it?

  “George.” He stepped out of the invisible tube, hand outstretched, a huge unforced smile on his face. “How the devil are you?”

  Nothing special, if his appearance was anything to go by. George was thinner than he’d been the last time they’d met, and he’d never been particularly substantial at the best of times. His suit was shiny and too big for him, and the sole of his left shoe was attached to the upper with silver gaffer tape. “Fine, Maurice,” George mumbled, “how are you? Amazing place you’ve got here.”

  As always, Maurice felt mildly embarrassed by the compliment. “I know what you’re thinking,” he said. “Disneyland. I guess I should never have let my inner child approve the drawings. Come on up, and we can talk properly. How long’s it been? Must be eighteen months since Kieran and Shawna’s wedding. Can you believe it, by the way? Eighteen months, they’re still together and nothing worse than minor cuts and bruises.”

  George laughed nervously, and Maurice felt a flood of compassion. Dear old George. Something really would have to be done about him, before his entire life slipped down the back of the sofa of entropy and was lost forever. He stood back to let George go past him into the lift.

  “So,” Maurice said, as cheerfully as he could, “how’s it going? Still living with your mum and dad?”

  George shook his head. “No, I had to move out.”

  Ting. The doors swooshed open, and Maurice led the way. “My office is just through here. Had to move out? They’re all right, aren’t they, your parents?”

  “I wouldn’t know,” George mumbled bitterly. “Haven’t seen them since they moved.”

  “Oh. That doesn’t sound so good.”

  He opened the door. George stood in the doorway, staring, which made Maurice feel ashamed of himself. “Come and sit down,” he said, leading the way to the balcony. George hesitated, then sank into the right-hand milk-white sofa. “I should’ve guessed,” George was saying, “when they paid for me to have a fortnight in the Greek islands. You need a break, they said, take you out of yourself. And when I got back, I found they’d gone. Sold the house – the lawyers wouldn’t give me their new address. All my stuff was in a container at a storage depot.”

  Maurice was appalled. “George, that’s dreadful. What a mean thing to do.”

  George shrugged. “Can’t blame them, I guess. I mean, they’d been dropping hints long enough, and we weren’t exactly getting along. Still—” He looked away. “And now I’ve lost my job, which doesn’t exactly help.”

  Right, Maurice said to himself, enough’s enough. Destiny’s had things her own way for far too long. It’s time I took a hand. “I see,” he said. “And where were you working?”

  “Overthwart and Headlong. They’re a firm of sort of importy-exporty people in—”

  “I know who you mean. Did you like it there?”

  George shrugged. “It was all right, I suppose.”

  “Fine. Charlene.”

  “Yes, Maurice?”

  “Get Paul in here, would you?”

  “Right away, Maurice.”

  Paul came up on the Teleport. “Paul,” Maurice said, “I want you to buy Overthwart and Headlong. You know, the import-export brokers in Breunis Street.”

  Paul frowned. “No disrespect,” he said, “but if your heart’s set on a cowboy outfit, wouldn’t you be better off with Levis and a Stetson hat?”

  “Deal with it, Paul. Oh, and George here is going to be their new CEO. Got tha
t?”

  “I’m on it.”

  Paul vanished with the usual whoosh, and Maurice turned and gave George a friendly smile. “That’s all right with you, is it?”

  George was staring at him as if he was the Second Coming, with lighting effects by Steven Spielberg. “Maurice—”

  “That’s all right,” Maurice said shortly. “Actually, it’s enlightened self-interest: they’re a decent little business at core, it’s just the tossers running it that are dragging it down. You’ll do a much better job, I know you will. I’ve always said you’ve got what it takes, if only someone gave you a break. Now then, how about pancakes?”

  “What?”

  “Pancakes. With maple syrup and cream. I always have pancakes when I buy a company.” He grinned. “Charlene. Pancakes.”

  “What, again?”

  “Pancakes,” Maurice said firmly. “I don’t know, staff nowadays. You wouldn’t believe what I have to put up with, George, really you wouldn’t. I suggest you take a firm line with them at Overthwarts when you’re in charge.”

  The sugar rush was good for George; it helped him pull himself together and stop saying thank you, eventually. To change the subject, Maurice decided to show him the R & D wing. After all, George had always had a bit of a geekish streak. “Oh, by the way,” he said, as they got out of the lift at the fourteenth floor. “Steph sends her regards.”

  “Right.”

  Maurice looked at him out of the corner of his eye. It would always be a ticklish subject, what with George and Steph having had that brief thing while they were all still at school. For Steph it had been one of those things you grow out of, like spots. For George, he suspected, it was rather different; and when it came to carrying a torch, George would have no trouble getting top billing at any Olympic opening ceremony. Another flash of pity; he put it firmly back where it had come from. Someone like George didn’t need pity, the same way the Atlantic doesn’t really need more water. “She’s doing wonders over at Valkyrie Industries,” he went on. “She’s designing a new main battle tank for the Americans.”

  “That’s nice.”

  Quite enough of that. “Here we are,” he said, stopping in front of the big steel door. “Now this is something I’m really quite excited about. I think you will be, too.”

  At that precise moment, in exactly the same place, but at ninety-one degrees to that time and place in the D axis, the dark-haired man in the glass tank in the exact centre of the room was thinking: Hang on.

  Far away – but distance didn’t exist; it was a delusion, like Zeus or Santa Claus, something the terrified mind needed to believe in, to make sense of its context – he could see a human entity, and he perceived that the human entity was looking at him. It wasn’t the female entity; it was a significantly different shape, with short hair and no bumps and wiggles. He concluded that it must be a male entity. I’m a male entity, he thought, so presumably I look like that. Oh well.

  The male entity’s face was arranged in such a way as to express some emotion. The man in the tank studied it for a while, then did his best to reproduce it. Then he asked himself, Wearing this expression, how do I feel? Answer, puzzled. Confused, bewitched, bothered and bewildered. Therefore, the male entity is looking at me and thinking, Uh?

  Curious. The male entity stopped pulling the face, then realised that he’d resumed it automatically, presumably because he too was now confused, bewitched, bothered and bewildered as a blenderful of ferrets. Why, he wondered, does the sight of me cause the male entity such intense perplexity? It’s like he doesn’t know what I am, or why I’m here, or where here is. True, all of these are very good questions, answers to which I haven’t quite figured out yet. Maybe he’s wondering why I’m not partially covered in fabric, like him and the female entities. Perhaps being partially covered in fabric is the norm among human entities, and I’m some sort of aberration. In which case, why am I not partially covered in fabric like everybody else? Was it something I did wrong? If so, when? In the past, presumably. I can’t remember the past. Why can’t I remember the past? What is going on around here?

  The human entity was still staring at him. He thought, Perhaps he recognises me, and he’s wondering what I’m doing in this glass bottle (assuming what I’m in is a glass bottle, though so far that particular hypothesis is holding up pretty well). If so, it can only mean that he encountered me at some stage in the past, which I can’t remember, and that we interacted in some way, which he can remember and I can’t. Oh—

  He hesitated. There really ought, he felt, to be some means of expressing rage and frustration verbally, some word or phrase or words or phrases you could use to signify sheer anger and despair, preferably with overtones of hostility, displeasure with the status quo and general lack of respect for the world as it’s constituted. Ideally, such word, words, phrase or phrases would, in and of themselves, constitute an act of deliberate offence, because that’s how I’m feeling right now and I’m pretty sure, if this is the way things are around here, I’m not the only one. All right, let there be such a word. Let it be—

  He considered. It’d have to start with a suitably projectile labial, followed by a vowel you could really put your heart and soul into, and terminating in a throaty guttural you could practically spit. Also, one syllable would be best. Anything longer would dissipate the effect.

  Oh fulk, he thought.

  The male entity was still standing there, gawping at him, and he felt a powerful urge to apprehend the male entity and subject him to percussive force, presumably using hands and/or feet, since you could bash someone with those real good without hurting yourself in the process. To be precise, he wanted to grab that fulking fulker by the throat and smash his fulking face in. Curious, he thought. Why exactly do I want to do that? Is it because I somehow choose to attribute to him the blame for my current confinement and lack of memory? Does that in itself imply that confinement and lack of memory are bad things, and that I am, consequently, suffering? And if so, if I am suffering, why doesn’t that fulking fulkwit do something, instead of just standing there?

  Maybe there’s nothing he can do. After all, I’m a male entity, and I can’t do anything. Maybe only female entities have the capacity to exercise control over environments and conditions. In which case—

  He was finding it hard to concentrate. Curious. Hitherto (as far as he could remember; grrrr) he’d had no trouble directing the full force of his intellect towards solving the questions that teemed in his mind; because, after all, what could be more important than making sense of the universe? Now, though, ever since fulk-for-brains over there had popped up and started staring at him, he could feel his attention wandering, as if trying to point him in the direction of something even more important than pure empirical enquiry. What could that possibly be? He considered the possibilities. Something, perhaps, directly relevant to me, as opposed to the universe at large or all human entities or all male entities or all male entities not partially covered in fabric. Me. Just me, myself—

  Which brought him back to an earlier question, which he’d shelved for lack of data: how many of us are there? He’d got as far as more than just me, which stood to reason once he’d figured out the workings of genetics and the need for a gene pool rather than just a gene puddle. But how many was still very much unquantified. More than twelve. All right, yes, but how many more than twelve? Fifteen? A hundred and fifty? Fifteen hundred? Fifteen thousand?

  Steady on, he told himself. Fifteen thousand human male entities; getting a bit wild here – whatever would be the point of there being fifteen thousand of us? But more than twelve, definitely, because otherwise the species would die out through interbreeding. So; here’s me and there’s him. Where are the other more-than-ten?

  And quite suddenly he thought, I wish I could remember the past. I wish I could obtain access to further and better extraneous data. I wish, I really really wish I could get out of here—

  “Is he all right?” George asked anxiously.


  Maurice smiled. “Oh, you don’t need to worry about him. He’s just fine.”

  “He looks a bit upset about something.”

  Maurice laughed. “He doesn’t actually exist,” he said. “At least, not yet.”

  George frowned. “You tell him that.”

  “It’s a bit more complicated than that,” Maurice said kindly. “What you’re looking at isn’t a real human being.”

  “Ah.”

  “Well, of course not. You don’t think we’d keep a human being locked up in a glass tank with no clothes on, do you?” He grinned. “I don’t think even old Fisher-King would’ve done that, or at least not for more than an hour. No, he’s a construct.”

  “Ah.”

  “Meaning,” Maurice went on patiently, “he’s artificially generated. We built him. Out of pure logic.”

  There was an awkward pause. “Sorry,” George said. “I think you just lost me.”

  Maurice laughed. “Don’t worry about it,” he said. “This is absolutely the ultimate final-frontier cutting edge of theoretical multiple-state particle physics. All right. You know about multiverse theory?”

  George gave him a helpless look. “Sort of. Bits and bobs.”

  Maurice explained about multiverse theory. “So you see,” he concluded, “the only way you could possibly move from one reality to another is if you could somehow construct a stable multidimensional portal. A door, if you like, between our universe and a different one.”

  George nodded slowly. “Right.”

  “And he,” Maurice went on, “might just be that portal.”

  “Ah.”

  Maurice chuckled. “It’s like that old joke,” he said, “when is a door not a door? Answer, when it’s a paradigm. Or, to use the buzzword that’s going round all the top physics boys these days, a constant object. Something that stays the same, no matter which version of reality you’re in. If you could somehow manage to get your paws on one of them, you’d be away. See?”

  “Well, sort of. But—” George frowned. “I mean, do they even exist?”