by Melko, Paul
“Yes, it’s me!”
He looked sharply at John and Casey.
“Who are they?”
“Friends, Devon,” Melissa said. “We’d like to come in. We have food.”
Devon stared at her as if the words were lies, impossibilities. The glass was fogging up as he held the door open.
“Where’s Kylie?” he asked after a long moment.
“She’s safe,” Melissa said. “Please let us in. We do have food that we can share.”
“Only you! They can wait here.”
Melissa turned and shared a look with John. He nodded. The porch was freezing, but for the most part the wind was blocked.
Melissa entered the house and the door closed, clicking and clanking with thrown bolts.
Casey leaned close to him.
“This is worse than I expected. So much fear,” she said, stamping her feet.
“It’s been two years, and it looks no better,” John said.
They stood there for a long minute, then two, before the door opened.
Melissa motioned them in. “Come on.”
Inside, the room was frigid. John’s breath hung in the air. A fire burned in the fireplace, but it was no roaring blaze. Pieces of finished wood—from furniture, John guessed—were stacked cordlike, ready to be burned next. Devon stood at the far end of the room, near a door that led into a kitchen. He was dressed in an unzipped winter coat. Beside him were a woman and two small girls. All of them were dressed in winter coats. The girls wore mittens that were no longer pink, but rather a dingy gray.
“Devon has agreed to listen to us,” Melissa said.
“We’ve come—” John started to say.
“Food first,” Devon said. “Melissa said you have food.”
“Yeah, sure.” He dropped the backpack on the floor and unzipped it. He pulled out a tin of tuna and handed it to Devon. A look of incredulousness grew upon his face.
“Where did you get that?”
“We have access.”
“They look well fed,” the woman said, speaking for the first time. “They must have a cache.”
Devon turned the can upside down, reading the label. “Conestoga Tuna,” he said. “I’ve never heard of it. And this expiration date is next year. This isn’t from a cache.”
“Like I said, we have access.” John reached into his bag and drew out two candy bars, milk chocolate, which he handed to the children. They looked to their mother.
“No, they’ll be sick,” Devon said. “They can’t have that. It’s too rich for them.”
“Devon!”
“It is, Jane. It is.”
The woman—Jane—took the candy bars. “We’ll save them for later.”
John lifted more cans from the backpack. Fruit cocktail, potatoes, carrots, hominy corn.
“What is all this?” Devon cried.
“Food, and we have plenty of it,” Casey said.
Devon dropped the can of potatoes he had been holding.
“What do you want for it?” he said sharply.
“It’s a gift,” Casey said. “We don’t want anything, except for you to listen.”
“We’ve got enough religion,” he said. “Enough of chances and faith and hopes that don’t work out. So we’d just as well not take your food if that’s the price.” He took the candy from his wife’s hands and gave it back. “You can leave now.”
“But—”
Devon drew a pistol from his coat pocket.
“Devon!” Melissa said.
“You all have to go now,” he said calmly. “Or you die as looters and no one cares.”
“Devon! This is real!”
He raised the pistol. “Go now.”
John had no idea where to go with this. He couldn’t just force Devon to use the device and prove that they had a paradise of bountiful food in the universe next door. How could a person who refused to listen be shown the possibilities? Maybe Casey was right; there was too much fear here. The fear was too ingrained, too severe. He turned to leave. There were others on Melissa’s list of contacts besides this long-ago friend from college.
Casey, however, folded her arms across her chest.
“Don’t be a fool,” she said. “We’re not peddling religion or false hopes. Look at Melissa. Look at her.” Casey turned toward Melissa. “Take off your coat.”
She did so, standing in the cold living room.
“Now you take off your coat,” Casey said to the wife, Jane.
She looked at Devon, who made no expression or motion. She nodded and removed the coat. Her clothes looked two sizes too large and hung on her. By contrast, Melissa looked to be thirty pounds heavier, while Jane seemed an emaciated prisoner.
“Does she look starved?” Casey said, nodding at Melissa. “We have food, we have warmth, we have a community. And you can either pass it up or hear us out.”
Devon looked at Melissa and then away. His pistol wavered, and John saw that his eyes glistened with tears.
“It can’t be for free!” he shouted. “Nothing is for free! You want something from us. And we don’t have anything else to give. Nothing.”
Jane put her arms around Devon’s shoulders. “It’s Melissa, Devon,” she said. “We can trust her. She says it’s okay, then it must be. And one of these chances has to work out, right? One of them does.”
Devon shook himself like a horse, loosening Jane’s grip. Her hands dropped away.
“What’s the deal?” he said. “A boat to Brazil? How? Lake Erie has been frozen for five years! Greenhouses? The sun hasn’t shined in months! Geothermal cities under the earth? Foolishness! We’re all going to die, and there’s nothing anybody can do about it!”
One of the girls started to sob, and Devon’s fierce face showed a gap of sadness, of empathy.
“There is no panacea, no golden hope.” He kicked a can, and it rolled against the wall, where it thunked.
John started to speak, but Casey raised a hand.
“You’re wrong, Devon,” Casey said. “And for the sake of your daughters, you need to listen.”
He sobbed again. Jane squeezed his shoulders so tightly he couldn’t shake her off.
“For the girls, Devon.”
He put the gun in his pocket, and then sat heavily on the couch.
“Speak. Say what you wanna say. I don’t care anymore.”
Casey nodded at John, letting him know he was free to begin his argument. John reached into the backpack and pulled out three newspapers and three news magazines. He handed them to Devon.
“So?”
“Look at the dates,” John said. All the dates on the magazines were that week. All the newspapers were from the day before. On the cover of one magazine was the picture of downtown Toledo, the winter sun high overhead, casting rays down on the skyline.
Devon just looked at the newspaper.
“Open it to the weather.”
He turned it over in his lap and looked at the forecast.
“‘Temperatures in the tens Celsius, an expected heat wave in December,’” he said. “Tricks! Just tricks!”
“I bought those today,” John said. “In a universe not far from here. Where the nuclear exchange never happened. Where winter doesn’t stay year-round.”
“Bullshit!”
“Where do you think Melissa was for two years? Not here!” John said. “She was shot. I found her, took her to a parallel universe, and she lived there with Kylie for two years.”
“Hogwash,” Devon whispered.
“We’ve built a community, one where there’s abundant food, abundant warmth, and good people,” John said. “We’re asking you to join it.”
“Lies!” Devon said. He placed the newspaper on the coffee table.
“Why us, Melissa? Why taunt us?” Jane asked.
“I’m not taunting you. It’s real. I was there two hours ago. In the warmth of the winter sun,” she said. “And you, because I know you’ll be good for the settlement. I know Devon. I know you
. Tough situations have warped you both. But with us, you can reclaim yourselves.”
“It’s … it’s … too much to fathom,” she said. “I can’t understand it.”
“Please, try to hear how true our words are,” Melissa said.
“We’re done,” Devon said. He still sat sideways on the couch. “We’ve listened and now we’re done.”
“But—” Melissa said.
“It’s okay, Melissa,” John said. He stacked the rest of the cans on the table. “You keep these.”
Lastly, he placed a piece of paper on top of the cans.
“Here’s the address,” John said. “Come tonight. Or tomorrow. Or the next day.”
“Get out.”
* * *
“Let’s pack it up,” John said, just before midnight.
“I hate this goddamn universe,” Melissa said.
They had waited the night before for Devon and Jane to arrive, and now tonight, but to no avail. They weren’t coming. They had grown accustomed to their plight. Learned helplessness, ingrained desperation. They were unwilling to move beyond their situation and so indeed were doomed because they thought they were.
“A self-fulfilling prophecy,” Casey said.
“I guess we’ll look at the next people on my list,” Melissa said. “But they would have been perfect. Devon and Jane were so active in college, so interested in the right thing. They’d know so many other people we could help. I just wish…”
“We can’t lead people to happiness, Melissa,” John said.
“You led me,” she said.
“I provided the facts. You made the decision.”
“We should have provided other facts. Helped them to make the decision. Free will be damned.”
“‘For your own good.’”
“Yeah,” she said, and then stopped short. “Yeah, I guess acting like the mother of a toddler with everyone leads to some totalitarian decisions.”
“I guess so.”
Casey said, “Luckily there are millions of other people to save here. I know you want to save everyone, John.”
John startled at the loud bang outside. He was certain it was the wind, but then Melissa said, “The door.”
She dashed across the concrete floor.
“Careful—” John started to say. He reached into his shirt for the device, stepped close to Casey.
Melissa flung open the door. Snow swirled in, but also four bundled forms. They shuffled in, shaking snow from their feet and bodies.
Devon removed his hood.
“We’re here,” he said.
CHAPTER 29
By February, there were over a thousand immigrants in New Toledo, nearly all of them from Universe Winter. Word spread there slowly, from person to person, family member to family member, friend to friend. But not all settlers came from there.
After the first of the year, John traveled to 7423, Universe Superprime.
* * *
Snow crunched under his feet as he climbed the stairs to the porch. He pushed into the apartment building as someone from the downstairs apartment pushed past in the doorway.
“Hey, John,” the college-aged girl said. “New coat?”
“Hey,” John replied to the person he’d never seen before in his life. “Yeah.”
He stamped his feet and climbed the stairs. He hadn’t told Prime he was doing this. But then why should he? Should he feel some guilt for coming here without him?
He knocked on the door. Silence within, no blaring TV, no radio. John knocked again. Nothing.
John looked around. Where would he hide a second key?
He glanced at the doorframe, the doormat. No and no. Too obvious. He clomped back down the stairs. The mail slots were a rack of squares, in a three-by-three grid, some full of mail. John reached in, turning his hand over, and felt the top of the slot. There, taped to the wood, was a key.
He ripped it off and climbed back up to the apartment. The key fit in the lock. He turned the key and entered.
It was neater than he remembered. The drug paraphernalia was gone. The coffee table was clean. The TV had been removed too. No empty cereal boxes lined the counter. The room smelled clean.
John heard a snore from the bedroom. He wondered why he felt so matter-of-fact breaking into his doppelganger’s apartment. Maybe John Superprime’s life was just an extension of his own, a room in a mansion that he choose not to live in. The possibility he did not choose.
He pushed the bedroom door open. John Superprime lay sprawled on the bed, the covers tangled around his torso. He might have been John lying there, except that the body was too thin. Except that this John Rayburn had let drugs violate his body.
“Hey, John Rayburn,” John said.
His eyes fluttered open. He paused, then sat bolt upright in the bed.
He looked at John with no real surprise or alarm.
“Which one are you?”
“John Home,” John said. “The one after the one after you.”
“Ah, yes, the one who cracked the code. What do you want?”
“To ask you what you want.”
Superprime stared at him. “My goddamn life back!” he cried.
“Why? It would be far more foreign than this is by this point. You think you can just drop back into it after so many years?”
“I can try.”
“I can give you something else, if you want it,” John said with a sigh. “In a community we’ve made in an empty universe.”
“Paradise? Eden? No, wait, Rayburn’s Utopia.”
“Yeah, something like that,” John said. He almost turned around and left. But the apartment was clean, no booze, no drugs. “Whatever, John. Be an ass about it. You want your life back? It’s right here in front of you. This is your life. This is it. There’s nothing more. No magic panacea. No place you’ll suddenly be happy. You want a chance at doing something new, something different, then I can give it to you. You want to stay here and molder in your self-pity, do it. And if you really want to go back to 7312, I’ll take you there, but you’ll be no different there than here. Your home is an alien planet by now. No one will know you. Your parents will have grieved and moved on. You’ll be an intruder. But I’ll take you there if you want.”
“I…”
“What?”
“I just don’t want to be by myself anymore,” John Superprime said.
“That I can help with,” John said. “Pack your stuff. You’re probably not coming back.”
* * *
A city of a thousand. John was not a citizen. Oh, he was welcomed. He was lauded, even. He was listened to, but he did not belong. Which he found was fine with him. The responsibility of governing the New Toledoans would have been too much for him. He was happy to have created the place, to have seeded the population and let it go.
But when the first crime occurred, it was he who was asked to carry out the justice. It was he who decided the criminal’s fate.
* * *
It was rape. A man from Winter forced himself on an Alarian. He claimed the advances were encouraged. He claimed it was a game of sexual dominance. She claimed … to remember nothing. The marks claimed otherwise.
The mayor of New Toledo invited John and Grace to her office to discuss the problem. Melissa had been elected to a one-year term in December. One year was as far into the future as the burgeoning community dared plan for.
“We don’t have a judicial system,” Melissa said. Her office was in one of the new buildings spreading down the Ottawa River from the original settlement. It had a view of the brown river from a small rise. “Who thought we’d need one?” She stood by the window looking at the river, a spot where she probably spent too much time. John wondered if she was enjoying her job. Englavira was her vice mayor.
“What have you done with him?” Grace asked.
“Nothing,” Melissa said.
“Nothing?”
“Yes, it’s Amalona’s word against Jason’s,” Melissa said. “He says i
t was consensual. She says it wasn’t. They were both drunk.”
“Drunk?”
“Yes, drunk. Someone has been smuggling hard liquor in,” Melissa said. That was something John had never considered, cross-dimensional smuggling in their daily shipments to New Toledo. Someone was sneaking alcohol across. He wondered if drugs were coming through too. The magnitude of what they had created threatened to overwhelm him.
“I guess the foibles of human society will follow us anywhere,” he said.
“You can’t stop humans from being humans,” she said. “Shit, that came out wrong. If she was raped, he needs to pay.”
“It seems like you’re unable and unwilling to have a trial,” Grace said.
“We can have a trial. No doubt. He has witnesses that say she was coming on to him. She … has remained remarkably quiet once she made her accusation.”
“She’s an Alarian,” Grace said. “She’s been the victim of sexual abuse from puberty. Of course she’s confused.”
“Yes, I know,” Melissa said. “I’m not unsympathetic—”
“You’re sounding like a politician,” Grace said.
“There are more sides to this than the woman’s,” Melissa said. “Shit! I know he probably did it. But what about innocent until proven guilty.”
“We’re not in the United States,” Grace said. “We don’t have a constitution.”
“We don’t have much of anything,” Melissa said. The only rules they’d come up with were practical ones for making sure everyone was working on the things that needed to be done. “The Council meeting notes, but how formal are those? We’ve been using peer pressure to get things done. We don’t have any police. We don’t have any judges. We’ve been pretending at this.”
“So what choices do we have?” John asked.
“It feels like a cop-out having you here, like we can’t do this ourselves. But you two are outsiders. You can have a neutral perspective. And the community looks up to you, John. Heck, most people worship you around here.”
“What?”
“You’re here enough to know it,” Melissa said. “But if you needed a chair, half the settlement would get on their hands and knees so you could sit on their backs.”
“I hope you’re exaggerating,” John said.