Regarding Ducks and Universes

by Neve Maslakovic

  “I wish I’d had the chance to meet him. Professor Singh, I mean. By the time I started graduate school the physics department was gone, replaced by the bihistory department, and Singh was at the work camp where he would stay until the day he died. But Singh’s laboratory is still here, undisturbed, boarded up since the day of his arrest. It’s downstairs,” he added, pointing at the linoleum, which struck me as odd since we were in a basement office.

  “More importantly,” he added, “it still works.”

  “What does?” I said.

  “Singh’s equipment.”

  “You’ve opened a new, unofficial link between A and B?”

  He shook his head. “No, see.”

  “See what?” I asked.

  “Universe C, not A or B. This way.”

  [23]

  THE LACE HEDGEHOG

  “It’s a universe very much like this one,” whispered the professor, seeming quite pleased with himself now that the cat was out of the bag. “Very much like this one,” he repeated, rubbing his hands together like a mad scientist in a cartoon, except that he seemed sane enough. We had stopped at the end of the basement corridor. There was a steel door. “All right, I should tell you that you enter Singh’s lab at your own risk,” the professor said, his voice still low. “Not from the apparatus, of course, but there’s a chance the DIM agents might show up a day early. Unlikely, and in any case, I’m merely showing you around the building, which hardly constitutes unauthorized research. Still—”

  Before I had a chance to reflect on whether this was a good idea, he unlocked the steel door with a surprisingly ordinary key and let us in.

  A set of concrete stairs led down to the subbasement lab. The open door had triggered a switch, causing a row of ceiling lights to come on. Several modern-looking computer stations dominated the large space; next to one wall lay a mound of haphazardly deposited electronic equipment and, on the opposite side, shelves held lab supplies. At the far end of the room, there was an iron railing I couldn’t see over. In the very center of the lab, a small cylinder waited on a circular platform, like a kitchen water boiler someone had placed on a tall stool and forgotten. Several cables of various colors and thickness led from the cylinder to the computers and elsewhere.

  Pak took the stairs down two at a time like he was used to the place and started flicking on the computer monitors one by one. We followed him down, Professor Maximilian going last and locking the door behind him.

  The professor slipped the key into his shirt pocket. “I found the lab key in the back of a desk drawer the day I moved into my office—Professor Z. Z. Singh’s old office. Couldn’t figure out what it opened. Then one morning while walking around the building trying to figure out a particularly knotty research problem, I found myself in the basement and remembered the key.” He headed straight for the cylinder, lifted up the lid, and checked inside. “No notes from Max C. The research problem I was grappling with at the time was how to estimate the mass of the prime mover whose actions had warped space-time enough to bifurcate the universe. Being able to run lab experiments with Singh’s equipment resulted in a breakthrough and we were able to come up with the twenty-four-libra figure.”

  “We?” Bean asked, her voice even.

  “Pak and I,” the professor admitted, replacing the lid. “I didn’t want—well—I didn’t want to involve too many students in this.”

  “It doesn’t work like a modern crossing,” Pak said from a computer station, perhaps to distract Bean. “Only small objects can be transferred to Universe C and back.”

  “Pak and I snuck in new, faster computers during lunchtime one day, and also a power source independent of the main grid. It used to take Zachary Zafar Singh three hours to transfer a note—a simple piece of paper—from one universe to the other. It takes us less than a minute. The equipment still loses a few bits here and there in the transfer because of link skips and interference. I wouldn’t try it on anything animate.” Seeing my expression, Professor Maximilian clarified, “Scrambled eggs. The Singhs discovered that it’s very hard to put an egg back together once you’ve taken it apart.”

  “There was a race between the A and B teams of physicists to see who would be the first to accomplish transfer of animate matter,” Arni said. “The problems were many—stabilizing the link, speeding up processing time, eliminating interference from visible light and other electromagnetic waves straying into the field.”

  “Which side won?” I asked.

  “Neither. The scientists discovered they needed each other’s cooperation.”

  “In any case, we have what we need, a stable connection kept open by the continual exchange of air molecules. To send an object to Universe C, you place it inside the cylinder. Any notes from Universe C arrive there as well. The cylinder is both the Inbox and the Outbox.” The professor beamed at the Inbox/Outbox like a proud parent.

  I wandered over to the railing and peered down. Below, a thin, corkscrew-shaped tube burrowed in both directions into a tunnel, like a giant, never-ending apple (or papple) peel. I turned back to face the room and asked the most obvious question first. “But what is Universe C?”

  “It’s a budding universe,” said the professor. “Just branched off yesterday.”

  “Seventeen hours, eleven minutes, and fifty-three seconds ago, to be precise,” Pak said from his computer. “Fifty-four seconds…fifty-five…”

  “And this?” I pointed down at the apple peel.

  The professor cleared his throat. “That’s an old Singh vortex generator. Luckily Singh and his students could never get it to work.”

  “Why?”

  “They didn’t have enough power to generate so powerful a vortex.”

  “No, I mean why luckily?”

  “An unconstrained vortex of that size would have converted all nearby matter, including this lab and probably the whole side of the building, to information and exchanged it with whatever was in its place in a neighboring universe.”

  I took a step away from the railing. “It’s not going to accidentally beam us somewhere, is it?”

  “No danger of that.”

  I stepped over some cables and went to the Inbox/Outbox and, like the professor had, lifted up the lid and looked inside. It was empty, save for some newspaper shreddings layered on the bottom, ready to be exchanged with whatever arrived from Universe C, presumably. With a start I realized what I was standing in front of—a miniature version of the crossing chamber in which I’d been turned into a number and back. “The link to Universe C is in here?”

  “A link is a two-sided information-swapping mini-vortex that can be enlarged as needed,” said the professor, who clearly thought he was speaking lucidly. He was by the wall shelves, standing on a stool to reach a container with office supplies. He took the container off the shelf and started rummaging in it. “I think we have some notepaper left…Think of it as a puff of air vibrating as it’s continuously being converted to information and exchanged. As a matter of fact, links between universes occur naturally, though mostly in microscopic form, which is why we don’t notice them. I’ve always wondered if that’s how the odd sock disappears from laundry on occasion,” he chuckled without looking up from the container of office supplies.

  “I don’t see anything other than newspaper shreddings.”

  “It drifts around,” Pak said from where he was watching the clock tick off the seconds that moved ours and Universe C apart.

  Just for a moment I thought I saw a shimmer of something in the cylinder, like a bit of warm summer air dancing above hot pavement, but I lost it. I put the lid back on and turned to where Pak was sitting. On the worktable next to his computer sat a plant, a multi-limbed cactus with delicately intertwined white spikes all over it, like dangerous cake frosting; on the top of each limb, barely open purple buds were beginning to droop. Immediately above the cactus a watering can sat on a platform. Attached to it was a small black box, a counter, a switch, and a pulley that looked like it cou
ld change the angle of the platform.

  Pak noticed my interest.

  “The lace hedgehog? My mother’s birthday present,” he explained. “I’m planning on giving it to her next week. One can only link to a fresh universe. The professor and I set up the radioactive decay apparatus and turned it on seventeen-some hours ago after making sure the event radius encompassed this room only. There was an even chance that the hedgehog would get watered.”

  “You linked a watered-cactus-happy-mother-universe to a dead-cactus-irate-mother-universe. Interesting,” Arni said.

  “Did we get the dry one or the watered one?” Bean asked. She reached over and poked the dirt at the base of the lace hedgehog with her finger. One of the wilting flower buds fell off the plant. “Dry.”

  “Wait,” I said. “You’re holding a universe open on the assumption that your mother will get mad at you if she gets a wilted birthday plant? Maybe she’ll just be happy to get a present, Pak, same as if you gave her the watered one.”

  “She won’t.”

  Professor Maximilian, still rummaging around on the supply shelves, waved his student’s parental issues aside. “If Max C and Pak C haven’t found their bookmark yet we can tell them about it. Tomorrow we turn one of the bookmarks over to the DIM officials, who’ll leave happy and won’t bother us for a while. We really need to get more notepaper. We don’t keep research notebooks for obvious reasons, but that has its inconveniences.”

  “Back up a bit,” I said. “One of the Professors Maximilian will have a bookmark and the other nothing?”

  “Correct.”

  “How will you decide which Maximilian gets the bookmark?”

  “It doesn’t matter. Maybe we’ll toss a coin.”

  “And the universes will reconnect once the cactus is watered?”

  They all gave me a strange look.

  “Perhaps I didn’t explain it well.” The professor got off the stool and came over to where I was standing. “Our radioactive decay yabput yielded two universes, watered and dry. We—all of us—exist in both. And whatever universe we’re in, watered or dry, will seem to us to be a continuation of Universe B. The other will seem like C.” He chuckled. “My counterpart is probably at this very moment explaining the plan to his graduate students. Either he or I will get to keep the bookmark, continue the work, and report back to the other. Simple enough.”

  I looked down at the professor. “Won’t you mind if you’re the one unable to continue your research?”

  He folded his arms across his chest. “Mind? Of course I would mind. I’m open to suggestions if anyone has a better idea.”

  “Perhaps the group that ends up without the bookmark can create two new universes,” Bean said after a moment, “and get a bookmark from each—one to keep, one to give to DIM officials—and then each of those universes could create two new ones, and each of those two more, creating a kind of a cosmic geometric progression.”

  “I get it. It’s like the number of ancestors doubling in each generation as you go backward in time,” I said as the professor picked up a taller chair, took it over to the shelves, and climbed on it to check the top shelf. I heard him mumble, “There’s got to be paper somewhere. Max C and I will need to exchange a few notes on this…”

  I was going to say, “Let’s forget the whole thing before it’s too late.” Instead, looking around the disordered room with its computer cables leading everyplace, shelves overflowing with supplies, and old equipment piled in a heap in the corner, I said, “It’s interesting to see where it all began. Singh’s laboratory is so, er—untidy. I was picturing something more sinister, a sterile lab with men in white coats.”

  It had to have taken spunk, I thought, to descend daily into the subbasement to tinker with universes.

  “Professor Singh had graduate students helping him,” Bean said, as if reading my mind.

  “Glad you like it, Felix,” Professor Maximilian chuckled from the shelf without turning around. “Nothing wrong with showing a visitor or two around the building. You”—his remark was addressed to me—“could hardly be accused of performing unauthorized research. I, on the other hand, have waited a long time to be able to get my hands on some experimental equipment…a long time…

  “But you’re right,” he added briskly and got off the chair. “Everyone best leave this room. We have a coin to toss. Sorry, kids.”

  “What?” Bean exclaimed.

  “Except for Pak. I need an assistant. We’ll do it this afternoon. That should give us plenty of time to obtain the extra bookmark and be ready for tomorrow’s surprise visit by the DIM agents. In the worst case”—he shooed us toward the stairs—“if things go badly and DIM finds out about Universe C and revokes my research authorization, well, maybe I’ll try my hand at doing something else after I get out of the work camp.” He unlocked the door and opened it for us.

  “Culinary products?” I asked from the doorway.

  “I was thinking along the lines of a self-cleaning kitchen. Modular, with seven components for a typical household and eighteen for a restaurant. The book, Felix?”

  I handed him Stones, Tombs, and Gourds, which I had been clutching the whole time, the bookmark peeking out of it. Next to me Bean took out a small notepad, similar to Mrs. Noor’s, out of the back pocket of her jeans and ripped off the top few pages and handed the rest to the professor. “You’ll need this. I’ve been using it for note-taking in my belly dancing class. Ask Bean C if she’s figured out what event chain the duck pacifier started.”

  “Ask Professor Maximilian C if he’s figured out why my parents were in San Francisco that day,” I said. “Wait, there should be a Felix C around, shouldn’t there? Ask him instead.”

  Arni chimed in. “Ask Arnold C if he’s finished working with Olivia May and if I can have his notes—”

  Professor Maximilian locked the door behind us.

  [24]

  THE ORGANIC OVEN

  My routine at home each workday morning was to jump from a bicycle to a people mover to a bicycle and again in the reverse direction from my office each afternoon. Missing that daily exercise and feeling my midsection ballooning by the minute, I picked up the pace and so was the first to step into the only intersection we had to cross on our way from the Bihistory Institute to its parking lot. The moment of inattention almost cost me my life, or at least a broken bone or two. A car suddenly appeared out of nowhere and would have splattered me if a hand belonging to Arni hadn’t pulled me out of harm’s way.

  “Universe B,” I gasped, watching the car speed away and noticing that it was as sleekly black as not a thing in a kitchen except perhaps the inside of a nonstick pan, “doesn’t seem to like me very much. That’s the second time that’s happened. Pedestrians have the right of way, don’t they?”

  “One can’t be too careful,” Arni said, releasing my arm.

  After that I pretty much had to invite him to lunch too.

  The Organic Oven was just as Mrs. Noor had described it—the newly renovated dining room held square tables fashioned from rustic, roughly finished red cedar with a touch of elegance provided by the silverware, wine glasses, and the basket of breadsticks which sat waiting on each table. Handcrafted natural stone decorated the walls. A lingering lunch clientele occupied maybe a third of the available tables.

  Whether the head chef was (a) still in Carmel, or (b) back at work in the kitchen, concealed from customers’ eyes by a set of swinging doors, or (c) in his study in the Egret’s Nest Apartment Complex feverishly working on the next novel in his mystery series—or (d) driving around town in a black car with its windows darkened—there was no way of telling.

  Neither Bean nor Arni commented on the fact that I had chosen the Organic Oven as our lunch destination, though I thought I heard Arni murmur, “Doesn’t this really violate the Lunch-Place Rule?” as we sat down at our table.

  Expecting a reception similar to the one I had received at the Coconut Café—mistaken recognition—I cringed when the
waiter appeared, but he simply placed menus into our hands and left.

  Bean cleared her throat and opened her menu. “Let’s see, what looks good?”

  I took my time reading the menu. It was printed on rough—organic?—paper and consisted of a single page with a dozen lunch entrées listed on the front and a dessert and drinks list on the back. A well-known rule of thumb is that it’s the cheapest, not the priciest, item on a menu that reveals how good a restaurant is. My eye stopped midway down the list. There it was. The humble chicken breast sandwich, the first item I usually order at a new restaurant in a quest to find one reminiscent of the crusty-bread-tender-chicken-tangy-pickles combinations I remembered from my early teen years before I lost my sense of smell.

  All the strategy had gotten me so far was a list of ways to ruin a chicken sandwich: overcooking the chicken to a dense slab, slicing it too thick or too thin, smothering it in huge dollops of sauce, under-seasoning it to tofu-ness, wrapping it in bread that was mushy or rock hard, pairing it with a pile of boring, salty potato chips…Let’s see what your staff can do, Felix, I thought.

  “I think I’ll have the duck l’orange,” Arni said. “Just kidding. Enough of ducks and duck pacifiers. Caesar salad with wild caught salmon and natural camel cheese it is,” he said to the waiter.

  “The handmade fettuccini with spinach pesto,” Bean ordered.

  “The free-range chicken breast sandwich,” I said to the waiter, then added after he left, “No, it doesn’t.”

  “What?” Arni said.

  “Violate the Lunch-Place Rule, my being here. I’ve never had lunch at the Organic Oven before. I don’t even know if there is an Organic Oven A.”

  “And what if Felix B is in the kitchen?” Arni asked.

  I recalled him saying that people sooner or later invariably faced their alters to satisfy their own curiosity. He didn’t know, of course, that I had already met Felix. I felt reluctant to mention it.