The Broken Universe

by Melko, Paul

  Grace slid around to get a better aim on the new van and filled it with M4 rounds. She had no clear view of the two Alarians inside the barn, however.

  John glanced up. The two Alarians were running for the transfer zone. The leader fired at him wildly.

  The technician clutched a handful of rolled-up engineering prints.

  They squatted in the transfer zone and the leader fired covering slugs at John and Henry. John had no clear shot from his vantage point behind his car.

  They disappeared as the transfer gate triggered.

  “Damn,” Henry said.

  All of the Alarians in the van except the driver were out now and firing at them.

  Grace slid backward on her belly. She reached into the duffel and pulled out one of the hand grenades that they’d purchased from a shady arms dealer in 7651. She pulled the pin and threw it at the van. It skittered and rolled, disappearing under the van’s front axle.

  The driver watched the grenade disappear under his vehicle with a look of disbelief. He dropped the van into reverse and backed down the road. His associates, who had been taking cover behind the van, found themselves in the open. One flopped into the passenger seat. Another dove into the rear. The last ran into the woods for cover.

  John hid behind his car waiting for the explosion.

  “Down!” he yelled at Henry.

  Nothing happened.

  He peeked from over the hood of his car. Grace met his gaze from behind the barn door.

  “I guess that gun dealer was pulling our legs about the hand grenades,” she said.

  “We paid five hundred dollars for that,” Henry squawked.

  “It did its job,” John said. He listened as the tires of the van screeched as it accelerated onto Gurney Road.

  “What do we do now?” Grace said. She nodded at the transfer gate.

  “We take it apart and get it out of here before they come back,” John said.

  CHAPTER 2

  “John!”

  Casey slung her arms around his neck and squeezed.

  “I guess you’re okay,” he said.

  She didn’t let go for a long minute.

  John had dropped Henry and Grace off at their Toledo apartment with a promise to meet at the factory in the morning. He’d phoned Casey, and she’d demanded he come see her immediately.

  Casey started undoing her blouse buttons.

  “Hold on! Not in your parents’ house,” John said. It felt awkward to be this close to her after so long apart. He’d had no idea for six weeks if she was safe or not. She’d been shot by the Alarians during the kidnapping of Grace and Henry.

  “Shut up,” Casey said with a smirk, brushing aside a strand of blond hair. She undid the buttons far enough to slip the blouse over her shoulder. A puckered circle was etched into her skin just below the clavicle.

  “Wow,” John said. “That’s a pretty nice scar.”

  “I’m still wearing a bikini,” she said.

  “No one would knock over your sand castle if they saw a scar like that,” John said. “Are you really okay?”

  “I am, John.”

  “I’m so sorry I left you,” he said. “I had to rescue—”

  “Grace and Henry, I know.”

  “I came back as soon as I could,” he said.

  “I know,” she said, buttoning her blouse back up. “The police were very perplexed. But there were no suspects and no witnesses, and it was just a flesh wound. They stopped looking for you guys after a couple weeks.”

  “They couldn’t have found us anyway,” John said. “We were elsewhere.”

  “I know.”

  “So you believe my paranoid delusions now?”

  “John, I know something’s happened. I know I was shot. I know you had to go somewhere to save Grace and Henry.”

  “I can prove it to you now,” John said. “We have a transfer gate in 7651. And one here too, only it’s in pieces in the trunk of my car.”

  “I have no idea what that all means,” Casey said. “But I am glad you’re back.”

  “Me too.”

  John wrapped his arms around her and kissed her. He couldn’t help thinking of Prime’s Casey as he did so. Would kissing her feel identical to kissing the Casey in this universe? Would she taste the same? He remembered Visgrath’s laughing mockery when he’d found out John wasn’t a singleton, that he was a dup. Was someone with a single instance in all the multiverse, someone unique, living a more special life than someone with a million instances? How could that be? His emotions were just as real no matter how many other John Rayburns were out there.

  What did it matter if there were he and a million other Johns scattered across the universe? Did that make him any less intrinsically valuable as a person? To Visgrath, it had. To be unique made a life more valuable. What twisted logic brought a society to that point? But even as he asked himself, he knew that scarcity implied value. A person who was scarce could be construed to be more valuable than one who wasn’t.

  “Bill and Janet are dead,” he said.

  “What?”

  “The Alarians killed them.”

  “The who?”

  “The people chasing us.”

  “Are you going to the police?” she asked.

  “I expect they’ll come find us,” John said. “And they’ll want answers, no matter what Grace thinks.”

  “Grace doesn’t want to conform?” Casey said. “How odd.”

  “You don’t know,” John said, realizing that Casey hadn’t lived with Grace at the transfer gate build site for six weeks, listened to her nightmares in the tent next to his, saw her normally sweet nature turn inward, even to Henry.

  “Know what?”

  “Grace, she was … tortured.” John’s mind turned to the image of her strapped to a table and covered in cuts. It could have been Casey that Visgrath had kidnapped. That it had been Grace, that it was ultimately his fault, made him queasy.

  “What?”

  “Visgrath thought she might know where my transfer gate was. He needed answers.”

  “My god.”

  “She killed him.”

  “What? Grace?”

  “She shot him through the eye as he held Henry right in front of him. Coldest thing I’ve seen anyone do.”

  “Poor Grace, poor Henry.”

  “I don’t think she can deal with what happened to her, or what she’s done.”

  “And you guys didn’t find her a psychiatrist?”

  “Uh … we didn’t exactly have a health-care ID in that universe,” John said.

  “You could have done something!” Casey pushed him away.

  “We were doing everything we could to get her back here!”

  Casey calmed herself. “I know. But six weeks of suffering over that. The guilt. The pain. She needs help.”

  “She doesn’t talk to anyone now.”

  “Maybe she’ll talk to me.…”

  “If Henry couldn’t get through to her, what makes—”

  “What makes you so smart?” Casey asked.

  “Uh…” John closed his mouth. “I’m sorry. You’re right.”

  “Usually. Apology accepted,” Casey said. “Take me to dinner, and we can discuss what happened in more detail. Now that I’ve taken a bullet for the team, I guess I better start believing you and this parallel universe crap.” She paused on the steps. “I’m so sorry about Bill and Janet. I know how much they meant to you.”

  “Thanks.”

  * * *

  John found himself waiting in the foyer for Casey to do whatever she did to ready herself to go out. Her father emerged from his office, looking startled for a moment.

  “John! You’re back!”

  “Yes, sir, I am.”

  He began to smile, and then frowned. “Where’d you go, John?”

  “Um, I had a trip out of town, Mr. Nicholson.”

  “I see,” he said. “Somewhere where there weren’t phones? Is that it?”

  “Well…”


  “You left my daughter lying in a hospital bed, shot. And you leave for six weeks.”

  John felt his face flushing. “I’m sorry, sir. I would have returned if I could—”

  “It’s not acceptable, John. No man can treat my daughter like that,” he said. “She was shot!”

  “I know, sir! I did everything I could to get back here.”

  “A letter if not a phone call? Something, John.”

  “I—”

  “I don’t know what your intentions with my daughter are, John,” he said, “but I know she fancies you quite a bit. I, however, don’t fancy you. What you did was unconscionable. I doubt any explanation will justify your continued presence in this house.”

  John steeled himself. He could lie. He wouldn’t be believed if he told the truth. “I know it looks bad from your point of view. But the last thing I wanted to do was leave Casey. The only reason I did was because my friends were in danger and needed me more than she did. She was safe, as far as I could tell, and my friends were not.”

  “I see.”

  “I came back as quickly as I could.”

  “If your first priority isn’t my daughter, I don’t want you around her.”

  “It is, sir. It is.”

  “You’re not mixed up with thugs, are you?”

  John nodded. “I didn’t know they were thugs, but yes, our investors turned out to be not very nice people.” Not nice people from another universe, actually.

  “Is it straightened out now?”

  “I don’t know—”

  “Don’t worry, Daddy,” Casey said from the stairs. “He’s not going anywhere without me again.”

  “That’s what I’m afraid of,” Mr. Nicholson sighed.

  “You trust my judgment, don’t you?” Casey asked.

  “More than your brother’s, that’s for sure.”

  “Then you should know I trust John with all my heart,” she said. “And that should be good enough for you.”

  “You’re right, honey.” Casey hopped down the last step, landing next to her father. She reached up on tiptoes and kissed him on the cheek.

  “Yes, all the men in my life properly understand that I am usually right.”

  She led John out the door.

  “Have fun, baby.”

  “Yes, Daddy.”

  As the door closed behind them, John said, “How long did you let me suffer before you cut in?”

  “Long enough,” she said with a smile.

  He sighed. “Let me tell you the whole story.”

  CHAPTER 3

  “As far as I can tell,” Henry was saying as they walked across the parking lot of the pinball factory, “at least ninety percent of the top managers and executives of Grauptham House have disappeared. The stock is in free fall because no one knows where they are.”

  “We know,” Grace said.

  “Nowhere they can be found,” John added. He unlocked the door and ushered them into the reception area that they never used. Grauptham House was the huge conglomerate that had funded Pinball Wizards, Inc., through a venture capital company called EmVis. They owned Pinball Wizards. The company was effectively controlled by the Alarians, who had wanted very much to get out of Universe 7650 where they had been trapped for a long time. Now they’d done it, thanks to John’s transfer gate.

  John pushed open the swinging doors that led into the factory. He hit the light switch and huge overhead fluorescents flickered to life.

  “Oh, crap,” Grace said.

  The floor of the factory was strewn with wreckage. Half-finished pinball machines lay tipped over, their glass covers shattered. Buckets of parts had been dumped on the floor. Kilometers of wire had been unrolled off their spools.

  “They trashed it,” Henry said. “The bastards.”

  “They were looking for the transfer gate,” John said.

  Grace peered at the mess, her face inscrutable. Then she found her way through it to the metal stairs that led to her office. She shut the door behind her without a word.

  Henry stared after her for a moment. “What do we do now?”

  John, unsure if he was referring to the mess or to Grace, said, “Start cleaning up, I guess.”

  * * *

  They started in the back room, sweeping, ordering, sorting, until there was enough space for John to bring in the box of wires, circuits, and metal that was the remains of the transfer gate from the Rayburn barn.

  Henry reached into the box. “I can’t stand to look at another circuit board.”

  “I know,” John said. They had spent weeks trying to reproduce what John had done in one feverish night. They had his plans for a transfer gate, but it had been far from easy to make a new one in Universe 7651.

  As they sorted the pieces, John asked, “Is Grace all right?”

  “Yesterday was the most animated I’ve seen her in a while,” Henry said. “When she was shooting things and throwing grenades.”

  “Oh.”

  “I can’t even touch her,” Henry said softly.

  “What do you mean?”

  “Intimately,” Henry said. John found himself blushing. “She can’t stand to be touched.”

  “Henry. I’m sorry.”

  “Yeah, well…” Henry seemed to shake himself. “Sorry for bringing it up to you.”

  “It’s okay. Maybe we can get her some help now that we’re back in our own universe,” John said.

  “She won’t do that,” Henry said. “I mentioned it last night. She screamed at me.”

  “Maybe if I did.”

  “Don’t.”

  “Okay, but Henry … She can’t go through this alone.”

  “I’m here with her. That should be enough.”

  “Okay,” John said. After a moment, he added, “Hand me that circuit board, will ya?”

  “Yeah. Sure.”

  After an hour, Grace came down and leaned against the table they were working on.

  “All our records are ripped up or gone,” she said. “They took everything of any value from the office. Even my typewriter.”

  “I’m sorry, Grace,” John said. “I—”

  She cut him off. “For what? It’s just some stupid company we built. Some stupid idea we had when we didn’t know there were other more interesting universes out there.”

  “Yeah, I guess it isn’t that important,” John said.

  She glanced at him. “I got ahold of Viv,” she said. “She’s on her way over.” Viv was the floor foreman.

  “No one else?” Henry asked.

  “She was the first one I could get ahold of,” Grace said. “The bank account is overdrawn. I have no idea what orders came in, what shipped, and what’s in build.” She shrugged.

  “We can figure it out,” John said.

  “Or what?” Grace said. “Does it even matter?”

  “Grace—” John started to say, but she walked off before he could add anything more. He had the same feelings—what did it matter? Why didn’t he want Grace to think that way?

  “I’m tired of this,” Henry said. “Let’s see if we can get a pinball machine working.”

  They managed to find two panes of glass that were unbroken, a wonder in the shambles. The pinball machines that Pinball Wizards built weren’t the single-player models John remembered from his universe, though that’s what they were based on. The Wizards had modified the design to be a head-to-head model played by two players at a time. John still preferred the traditional pinball, but the head-to-head version was what sold.

  The door opened again, and there was Viv, the short, compact foreman who’d kept all the assemblers in line.

  She shook her head at them. “Don’t just show up here and expect that we’d all be slaving away for you as if nothing had happened.”

  “Um,” John said.

  “We’re not waiting around when there’s police involvement and shootings,” she said. “We’re not putting ourselves in jeopardy for a job. Right?”

  “We di
dn’t expect that, Viv,” John said.

  “Doesn’t matter what you did or didn’t expect,” Viv said. “It happened, didn’t it. And there was violence … right here. I don’t like violence.”

  John realized how angry Viv was, and how scared she must have been. The guilt he felt for getting Grace and Henry wrapped up in all this was blown bigger by what had happened to Viv and the workers.

  “You’re right, Viv,” John said. “I’m sorry I put you through all that. It wasn’t fair to you and the other workers.”

  “Yeah, there’s no place for violence,” she said, but softer.

  “You’re right.”

  She blinked at John, and then said, “Where have you guys been?”

  “We had to run for our own safety,” John said.

  “Is it safe now?”

  “I don’t know,” John answered honestly. “Safer.”

  Viv nodded. “I see.”

  John waited for her to go on, but her anger had ebbed. “What happened while we were gone? We don’t know, and we’re only back as of yesterday.”

  “Well, after the shooting, the police came,” Viv said, her eyes unfocusing as she remembered. “They asked a lot of stupid questions, but we didn’t know anything. We didn’t know who had taken Grace and Henry or who had shot Casey. We didn’t know anything.” She paused. “I don’t like police much, and this was just like them. Nothing happened at all.

  “So, not much work got done that day, and I didn’t even bother pushing the guys. I just let them jaw. But the next day was payday. So everyone came back. Only, no one is here to cut the checks. Grace, Miss Shisler, she cuts the checks by hand. No payroll company or nothing, and when you all are gone, there’s no one else to ask about pay. So the boys all left. No way they’re staying for another week if last week wasn’t paid for.”

  “We owe them all money,” Grace said. “We’ll get it to them.”

  “Good,” Viv said. “So, we all went home. I told the guys I’d call them if I could get their pay.”

  “Any chance any of them will come back to work?” Henry asked. “You know, in case we need to build some more pinball machines.”

  Viv shook her head. “The ones that you want back have jobs again. The ones that don’t have work, you don’t want back. If we’re back in business, we should just start from scratch. We lose some ramp-up time, but I can train any group of guys to do this.”