I drove faster than I ever do, had to park down the street from school because the student lot was already full, and ran until my legs and lungs burned, just to come skidding into third period about a minute after the bell. I heard it go off while I sprinted.
Chest heaving, I took my seat behind Winslow Henry. He half-turned around to look at me.
“You’re sweating,” he said, as if I could do anything about it. Winslow is about half my size and looks like he’d break if you made him run as hard as I just had to.
“I know. What did I miss in Algebra?”
Winslow shrugged. “The usual.”
Winslow’s like me, still trying to make it through Algebra I in his senior year. Neither of us is happy about it.
“Did she start talking about the new chapter yet?” I asked.
“Yep.” And that was all he said.
I could have strangled him. “How far?” I whispered, because Mrs. Arnold was already writing on the board.
He sighed and held up two fingers.
“Two problems or two sections?” I asked.
He shrugged and pretended to listen very hard to our English teacher.
Brat.
While Mrs. Arnold went over some of the symbolism of Dostoyevsky’s The Idiot—which, as far as I’m concerned, is all symbolism because I don’t understand it at all—I let myself worry over how I’m going to handle the sleep problem in the coming two weeks. Because it really can be a problem. Waking up at odd hours, trying to stay awake so I can have as much fun as possible, then waking up again—or staying awake some more—so I can get to school on time—yow. Theoretical quantum physics is hard enough. Actual quantum physics is even harder.
Then there’s the mother factor—my mother. The good part is once she’s home again I can ask her to make sure I’m up in the mornings. The bad part? Oh, where do I begin:
Scenario #1: I am in deep meditation, which allows me to bilocate (if that’s what I’m doing) to Halli’s world. I’m up in the Alps with her and Red somewhere, having an absolutely fabulous time, and my mom remembers she meant to tell me something about whatever, and she knocks and comes into my room. Jolting me out of my meditation, ripping me away from the Alps, maybe right in front of people, or while I’m holding a rope or something that Halli is depending on for her survival. Too bad, that’s how it is when you’ve split yourself between two universes.
Scenario #2: I am actually, fully, physically leaving this universe and traveling to Halli’s. As in, here one minute, gone the next. So let’s say my mother happens to walk into my room at exactly that moment. Sees me disappear, has a heart attack, dies.
Scenario #3: Same as above, without the seeing and dying. Instead she knocks on my door, knows she saw me go in there, but when she comes in, I’m gone. Where did I go? Is the window open? Did I run away? Is my mother losing her mind? Should she call the police?
Scenario #4—
“Audie?” Mrs. Arnold interrupted. “What do you think about the villagers?”
Every teacher knows when a student isn’t paying attention. It’s like their special power.
“Uhh . . .”
Winslow Henry turned halfway in his chair and snickered at me. Thanks, buddy.
“I think maybe they were the true idiots,” I bluffed. “That’s what Dostoyevsky was trying to say. We’re all ignorant in our own ways—we just think it’s the other person who’s stupid.”
That answer seemed to satisfy her—miraculously—because she moved on to some fresh victim.
Winslow whispered, “Skate.”
I kicked the back of his chair.
I wasn’t so lucky in World History, when Ms. Travers called on me and I didn’t have a clue. This is what happens when you go to another universe instead of doing your homework. Nobody talks about that in the science books—how your obsessions keep you from taking care of the mundane aspects of home. I’ll bet physicists all over the world forget to pay their electric bills and end up sitting in the dark.
“What’s wrong with you?” Lydia asked me at lunch. She must have noticed me looking at the clock every two seconds. Could this day go any more slowly? All I kept thinking about was that camcorder sitting back on my desk.
“Nothing,” I said, “just . . . antsy, I guess.” It didn’t help that Gemma was over there at her lunch table laughing her big British laugh, showing off as only Gemma can. Will has a different lunch period, so Gemma always seems perfectly fine flirting with every single guy around her. Makes me want to kick her, accidentally, really hard. Although maybe Will will get sick of that some day and dump her stupid British—
“You should have heard her,” Lydia said.
“Huh? Heard what?”
Lydia must have noticed where I’d been looking.
“Gemma’s ‘lessons’ for how to get a man.” Lydia rolled her eyes. “My brother is an idiot. Or as Gemma would say, an ‘id-jet.’ According to her, all men are.”
I groaned. “What does he see in her?” Then I wished I could suck the words right back into my mouth. Had I said too much? Given myself away?
But Lydia didn’t seem to notice anything. Instead she shrugged. “Maybe all men are id-jets. Davey certainly was.”
“Yeah, so whatever happened with—”
“When’s your mom coming back?” Lydia asked, clearly dodging the subject. She bit into her apple and gave it an extra vigorous chew.
“Oh, um, tomorrow. I’m picking her up at the airport around four.”
“You can come over for dinner tonight if you want,” Lydia said. “I think we’re having leftover spaghetti.”
“No, thanks,” I said. “Too much homework.” Which was true, even though it was only half of the story. I did need to do my homework first this time. I couldn’t have a repeat of today.
Gemma guffawed again. I swear, the sound of her voice could kill birds in flight.
“Come on,” Lydia said, “I’m sure Hairball’s coming over, too. Don’t leave me with her. She thinks we’re friends now.”
I didn’t say it, but it sort of seemed like that to me the other night, too.
“Can’t,” I said. “I’m sorry.”
Gemma’s high-pitched laughter pierced the noise of the lunchroom. I stuck my hands over my ears.
Someone needs to disappear her to another universe.
22
“Excuse me, Mr. Dobosh, do you have a second?”
“Yes, Audie, of course.”
I had waited until everyone else filed out of our physics class before approaching the teacher. Mr. Dobosh is a nice man—he’s always been one of my favorites—and he said he’s writing me a great recommendation for my Columbia application. He’s not exactly cutting-edge when it comes to modern physics—I think he wishes the whole field had stopped with Einstein, and he’d never even heard of Bell’s Theorem or M-theory or any of that—but he’s been a good basic teacher for me, and I really appreciate how encouraging he’s been, despite my horrendous situation with math.
“Have you ever heard of someone named Dr. Whitfield?” I asked. “Skip Whitfield?”
“Skip, Skip . . .” Mr. Dobosh tapped his chin. “Yes, I think maybe so—let me look over here.”
He went to his bookshelf in the corner of the room and started skimming through the titles.
“He’s a professor at someplace called Mountain State,” I said, “in Colorado. If that helps.”
“No, I’m thinking he was someone at Yale . . .”
“Yes, he was at Yale, too,” I said.
Mr. Dobosh kept scanning his shelves. Then he reached in and pulled out a book.
“Here it is,” he said, dusting the top of it before handing it over.
The book was called Above and Beyond: Human Potential and Its Implications for Physics, Space Exploration, and Communication with Other Worlds. By Walter “Skip” Whitfield, Ph.D.
“Have you read it?” I asked, turning it over to look at the back. There was a picture of Dr. Whitfield th
ere—very young, with thick glasses and dark bushy hair.
“I might have gotten a few chapters in,” Mr. Dobosh said. “I think someone gave that to me.” He borrowed it back for a second and looked inside the front cover. “Ah, yes, gift from a student—very nice of him . . .” Mr. Dobosh seemed to drift off for a second, no doubt trying to call up the face of his pupil.
“May I borrow this?” I asked.
“Of course, of course! As you can see, I won’t be needing it right away. Pretty fantastical stuff, if I remember right. But keep it if you’d like. I’m sure whoever that young man was who gave it to me won’t mind. Nice of him, though, hmm?”
“Thank you,” I said. “I really appreciate it.”
And then I raced for my last class.
The good thing about Algebra Support is you can get away with reading or doing homework for another class, so long as you don’t make any noise. That’s all Mr. Kreiner cares about—noise. He even lets people play games on their phones as long as it keeps them quiet. I heard he has one more year until retirement. Apparently he’s already ready.
I flipped to the front of Dr. Whitfield’s book, to read what he wrote in the Preface. I didn’t have to read very far before I got to this:
“Why should a physicist be interested in what the human mind, body, and senses are capable of? Aren’t those really the concern of the surgeon, the medical doctor, the psychologist, the anatomist?
“We should be interested because human potential is the untapped resource in a physicist’s lab, as useful as the microscope, the telescope, the particle accelerator. While some search ‘out there’ for the answers relating to our cosmos, others have begun to search ‘in here’—within the human capability itself—to find out what is possible, and how that can be applied to some of the most compelling questions facing physics today, including whether other worlds and other entities exist, and if so, whether we can communicate with them in ways not involving the possibly useless practice of sending radio signals toward the stars.
“What follows are some of the current discoveries in quantum physics, cosmology, neurophysics, neuropsychology, parapsychology, and other rapidly-evolving fields. Readers are encouraged to approach these materials with an open mind and perhaps a spirit of wonder. We don’t know everything. What you’ll find in these pages is the humbling realization that we may know very little at all.”
I gently closed the book. I knew I’d be reading the rest of it, cover to cover, probably all in one sitting if I could, but for now I just wanted to keep it closed and think.
What did it all mean? Why was a book like this growing dust on a physics teacher’s shelf? Why was Professor Hawkins acting like Dr. Whitfield was a joke? He sounded like a smart, serious scientist to me—one with very exciting ideas.
I turned the book over again and looked at Dr. Whitfield’s picture. He seemed like a pretty normal guy. Nice face. Friendly smile.
And then my eyes caught the edge of a sentence below—down where the publisher had reprinted flattering reviews from people recommending the book.
Underneath the ones from Physics Today and Scientific American was one from a very familiar name: Herbert Hawkins, Ph.D., author of To the Ends of the Universe: A Physicist’s Exploration of Life. Here’s what the famous professor had to say:
“Skip Whitfield is one of the great visionaries of our field. Above and Beyond is one of the most eye-opening, thought-provoking treatises I have ever had the privilege to read. I look forward to great things from Dr. Whitfield.”
Apparently sometime between writing that review and writing his own book about parallel universes—the one where he makes fun of Dr. Whitfield and treats him like a joke—Professor Hawkins changed his mind. What happened in between?
I glanced at the clock again. Finally it was moving the way I wanted—just seven more minutes of school. I stowed the Whitfield book in my backpack and prepared to launch.
There was a video waiting for me at home.
23
I plugged the camcorder into my computer and uploaded the file.
My hand shook as I clicked Play.
And there I was, sitting there in my big coat and jeans and headphones, waiting for the meditation to kick in.
And then, blip, there I wasn’t.
I rewound and replayed the sequence about a dozen more times, because even though the evidence was right there in front of me, I still couldn’t possibly believe it.
Now it wasn’t just my hand shaking, it was my whole body. I felt like any minute the CIA was going to burst through my door and arrest me for violating the laws of nature. I wanted to hide the video, but I also wanted to make copies—a lot of copies—to protect myself. From what, I didn’t know.
What if my mother ever found that? What if she were looking on my computer for something, and she wondered, “Hm, what’s this file?” and she clicked on it and saw me disappear? How was that going to work?
Or what if hackers got into my computer, and that video went viral and everybody found out? What would people do to me? Would I have to go into hiding somehow, and maybe bring my mother? Would we have to go on the run? Would the military try to kidnap me and make me show them how I did it? Would people just think I was some trickster and I’d faked it somehow? Or would they think I was a witch or something?
Or what if I got some computer virus, and lost the whole hard drive, and I’d already erased the cartridge on the camcorder—
I sat there in a semi-stupor for a while, not knowing what to do. My brain was clearly running away with me. Crazy thoughts—crazy—like maybe I’d go live with my Grandma Marion, or I’d have to figure out how to stay in Halli’s universe forever, or I’d destroy the video so no one knew it existed, and I’d never, ever tell anyone about it, ever.
But after a while, I started thinking just the opposite: I have to tell someone. But who? My mother? No—she’d completely freak out. She’d scream if she saw it. She’d think it was incredibly dangerous, what I was doing, and she’d make me promise never, ever to do it again.
Okay, then, Lydia? And say what? “Hi, Lydia, you know how I’m always reading all those physics books? Well guess what? I figured out how to do something no one else knows how to do. It’s so huge, everybody on this planet is going to want to know how I did it. Can I come over for spaghetti after all? I’m a little scared out of my mind right now, and—what’s that? Gemma and Will are there? That’s great. Talk to you later.”
Could I tell Will? “Hi, Will, I love you. You’re the only person in the world I wanted to share this with. Please come over. I want to show you something.”
Yeah, right. And then he’d see me disappear and he’d look at me like I was a mutant from another planet, and he’d run from this place so fast, back into the arms of—blech. No. Forget it.
And finally I got around to a more reasonable answer: I should write to Professor Hawkins.
And say what, exactly?
“Dear Dr. Hawkins: Hi, you don’t know me, but I’m hoping to join your fine institution next year. I’m currently putting together my application so that I can begin living the dream I’ve had for so many years—the dream to study physics with you. I have read every one of your books many, many times, and I admire you more than any other physicist in the world.
“Anyway, Professor Hawkins, I wanted to tell you something. I have this video of me disappearing and going to another universe. Well, you can’t see the other universe on the tape, but I can tell you all about that separately. For now the only thing I have proof of is me leaving. Here it is. I hope you’re interested.
“Sincerely, Audie Masters.”
Yeah, like that’s going to fly. It wasn’t until I started thinking it through that I realized I really don’t have proof of anything. There’s nothing at all to show where I went—nothing at all to prove that I’ve been anywhere but in another room after learning some cool magic trick that makes it look like I disappeared.
I left my computer and dr
opped flat back onto my bed. Hopeless. So amazing, so potentially universe-shaking, but I didn’t have anything to prove it. That tape really meant nothing.
See, here’s the problem:
There’s a fine line between theory and crazy. There are a lot of outlandish theories physicists have come up with over the years, but as long as someone can back it up with math, people will go along.
But if you said you knew something, you saw something, they’d jump all over you. If you said you’d just completed an experiment where you saw that the universe is actually made up of tiny vibrating mice, the other physicists would laugh at you. Some would be really angry. And all of them would demand of you, “Prove it.”
And if you couldn’t prove it—if what you saw was just a one-time thing, or no one else could duplicate the experiment in their lab—then they’d brand you a liar and a lunatic.
And then your career would be over. The most you could ever do is practice physics in the privacy of your home. No university would ever hire you, no publisher would want your books, you’d starve if you tried to make a living at it.
You’d have to teach physics someplace where you’d have to teach backcountry skiing, too.
I sat back up.
No. I couldn’t. Should I?
Not by e-mail—I’d already thought that through, and there was no way to do it properly in print. I’d just end up looking like a crackpot. Spam filter. Delete.
I’d have to call. It was the only way. What time was it? Would he still be in his office?
How late do the professors work at Mountain State College?
24
I got his voice mail.
It came on so fast, I didn’t have time to react. I just started babbling.
“Hi . . . Dr. Whitfield. Um, you don’t know me, but my name is Audie Masters and I’m a high school senior in Tucson, Arizona.” (My mother’s name is . . . my favorite color is . . . get on with it, Audie!)
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