At the Edge of the Universe

by Shaun David Hutchinson

  “I haven’t found them,” I said, my voice defeated. “They’re gone. They’re all gone.”

  Lua wrapped his arm around me, and I let him. There wasn’t anything else I could do.

  “Come on, Oz. Let’s go home.”

  I nodded, but I didn’t have a home anymore. Everything I had was being slowly stolen from me, and I didn’t know how to stop it.

  1,491 MI

  MY MOTHER, FATHER, AND BROTHER had all become casualties of the same Great Whatever that had stolen Tommy from me. In the new and not-so-much-improved history of my life, my parents had abandoned me, and Ms. Novak had adopted me. I’d grown up with Lua, whose own history had changed so that she’d been born and raised in Cloud Lake. None of it made a damn bit of sense, but I had to go on about my life like everything was peachy.

  Renny and I used to play this fun-for-him-but-not-for-me game where he hit me in the arm in the same place as many times as he could before I told him to stop. The first couple of punches hurt the worst, but after a while, I stopped feeling the pain. I grew numb to it even though I could see the bruise already beginning to form and knew it’d hurt like a son of a bitch later on. That’s how it was losing my family. I was numb. I’d lost so much that I couldn’t feel it anymore. The universe was going to keep taking and taking and taking everything I cared about from me, and I was powerless to stop it.

  Even with all the theories I’d come up with for why the universe was shrinking, I was no closer to a way to stop it. So I did the only thing I could do.

  I kept moving forward.

  • • •

  Dr. Sayegh smiled from her chair but didn’t rise to greet me. “I didn’t expect to see you again.”

  I didn’t bother sitting, as I wasn’t planning to stay long. “I just wanted to tell you in person that I won’t be returning.”

  “So you kept your appointment to tell me you won’t be coming to any more of your appointments?”

  I nodded. “Something like that.”

  “Have a seat, Ozzie.” Dr. Sayegh motioned at the couch. She slipped her glasses off and let them hang around her neck on a silver chain. I considered leaving, but part of me was curious what she had to say, so I sat. “You’re an interesting young man, Oswald Pinkerton.”

  “Don’t you mean crazy?”

  Sayegh shook her head. “I dislike that word,” she said. “And I don’t think you’re crazy.”

  That surprised me, and I sat up straighter. “You believe me, then? About the universe?”

  Dr. Sayegh paused for a moment. “Do you believe in God, Ozzie?”

  “Maybe,” I said. “I don’t know.”

  “Neither do I.” Dr. Sayegh kept fiddling with her glasses, which was making me nervous, like her anxiety was creeping across the distance between us and seeping into me. “There are things in this world I can’t explain, that I may never be able to explain, but that doesn’t make them less real.”

  I wished I hadn’t come. I wasn’t sure why I had. I hadn’t bothered telling any of the other doctors in person I wasn’t going to see them anymore, and now that I was eighteen, my mom—or Dinah, now that my parents were gone—couldn’t compel me to see any doctor I didn’t want to, but I’d felt like I owed it to Dr. Sayegh to tell her to her face. Which, in hindsight, was stupid.

  “It doesn’t matter whether you believe me or not,” I said. “I can’t fix it. The whole damn universe is going to collapse into nothing, and I can’t do one damn thing to stop it.”

  “Maybe you’re not meant to,” Sayegh said. I started to interrupt her, but she didn’t let me. “Have you ever considered the possibility that you’re not supposed to stop what’s happening?”

  “No,” I said. “Because what’s the point of knowing something’s wrong if I can’t do anything about it?”

  Dr. Sayegh’s eyes lost focus like she wasn’t seeing me anymore. “Maybe the point is to just live your life.”

  I snorted. “Not sure how much of a life I’m really going to have when the whole world is Florida and will probably keep shrinking until there’s nothing left but Cloud Lake.”

  “And what, exactly, did you do with your life that was so wonderful when the world was larger?”

  “I . . .”

  “Exactly,” Dr. Sayegh said. “You claim that the world used to be much bigger than it is, but did you explore it? Did you take advantage of it? How is your life all that different now than it was before?”

  I couldn’t answer, because I hadn’t done much of anything. Even when there’d been a whole universe to explore, Cloud Lake and Tommy had been my everything.

  “So that’s it?” I said. “I’m just supposed to go on living my life no matter how much the universe takes from me or how small it gets?”

  Dr. Sayegh nodded. “It’s what the rest of us do, Ozzie.”

  I stood up but didn’t immediately head for the door. I thought Sayegh would try to stop me, try to convince me I needed to keep seeing her, but she didn’t say a word.

  “See you around, Dr. Sayegh.”

  “Good-bye, Ozzie,” she said. “Please close the door on your way out.”

  1,473 MI

  ON THE DAY OUR ROLLER coasters were due, I didn’t bother calling Calvin to ask him if he’d bring in what we’d completed because I knew he wouldn’t answer his phone. His attendance at school had become sporadic, and I’d heard through the Priya Spy Network that most of his teachers were allowing him to complete his assignments from home and take his final exams early so that he didn’t have to return. Once the news about Coach Reevey had gotten out, seven more boys had come forward with allegations that he’d tried to coerce them into having sex with him. One was still a freshman, though his name was kept confidential, and the other six were previous graduates. I was surprised the school hadn’t given Calvin As for the rest of the semester to keep him from suing.

  As the other students filed into physics class carrying their own projects, including Dustin, whose roller coaster looked amazing, I kept hoping Calvin would walk through the door and slide into his seat, flash me a smile, and that everything could go back to the way it had been before I’d betrayed him. But I doubted that was going to happen.

  I kept thinking about what Dr. Sayegh had said about how I was supposed to keep living my life even though everything was changing. But how could she expect me to care about prom, which was only a couple of days away, or graduation, which was a couple of weeks after prom, when I’d lost my parents, Renny, Tommy, and 99.9999 percent of the universe? How was I supposed to move forward when everything I cared about was gone?

  I couldn’t stand around and wait for the universe to collapse completely. I had to do something, find some way to fix it. It was easy for Sayegh to suggest I might not be meant to stop the universe from shrinking or bring back Tommy and my family, because she couldn’t remember the way things had been. The universe had always looked small to her, but I knew differently. I knew what it could be, and what it would be again.

  Ms. Fuentes talked excitedly about our projects before launching into her review for our final. I hardly heard any of it, and then time seemed to skip forward and the bell rang.

  “Ozzie?” Ms. Fuentes called as I stood to leave. “Would you mind waiting around for a moment?”

  “Sure.”

  Dustin flashed me a what-the-hell-is-going-on look, to which I shrugged even though I knew she probably wanted to ask me where my project was. I figured she’d give Calvin a pass, but she was going to flunk me for sure.

  When the last student had left, Ms. Fuentes sat on the edge of her desk and smiled.

  “About my roller coaster—”

  “That’s what I want to speak to you about.”

  Great, I thought. Here it comes.

  “Remember when I told you I belonged to a group of hobbyists who build model roller coasters and that we meet a couple of times a year to show off our designs?”

  “Sort of,” I said.

  “We’re meeting th
is summer, and I’d like to ask you, and Calvin of course, for permission to take your project with me to show them.”

  “I’m sorry, what?”

  “It’s really quite ambitious,” she said, like she hadn’t heard me. “I know I said you’d have the opportunity to present them in class this week, but I couldn’t wait to see yours and Calvin’s in action. It’s reckless and creative, and it could have failed spectacularly, yet you boys pulled it off. I’m extremely proud.”

  I wasn’t sure I was hearing Fuentes correctly. “You have our project?”

  Ms. Fuentes nodded. “Calvin’s father brought it in this morning.” She walked toward the back of the class, where the other projects were set up and crowded on the tables and shelves and floor. I didn’t spot ours at first, but then I saw it on a shelf in the corner. Completed.

  I walked past Ms. Fuentes to our roller coaster. Calvin had finished everything. The corkscrew, my barrel roll, the extra loops. He’d even added cheesy ancient-Egyptian-inspired decorations to the mounting board and around the track, and had given our coaster the name “The Ozymandias Orbiter.” I watched as Fuentes set the car at the bottom of the first incline. The last time we’d worked on it, we still hadn’t figured out how to propel the car up the track, but Calvin had devised a brilliant solution.

  “How’d you come up with the idea of using an electromagnet to repel the cars up the slope?” she asked.

  “Calvin did that,” I said in awe of him. Even with everything he’d been through, even though I’d betrayed him, Calvin had still finished our project.

  “It’s ingenious.” Fuentes plugged in the magnet and turned it on. The three linked cars shot up the incline and barreled along the track smoothly. For thirty-eight seconds, I held my breath and waited for the cars to detach and fly loose from the track, but they never did. They reached the end—which we’d discussed coating with a spray-adhesive to slow the cars, and which Calvin seemed to have done—slowed, and came to rest.

  “Wow.” The word slipped out, and I cleared my throat because I didn’t want to clue Fuentes in that this was the first time I’d actually seen the roller coaster in action outside of the computer simulation.

  Ms. Fuentes nodded. “Honestly, I was worried this project might be too advanced, but you all, especially you and Calvin and Dustin, proved up to the challenge. Good work.”

  “Thanks.” The thing was, despite what I’d constantly said to Calvin, I didn’t really care about the grade. I was caught up wondering what it meant that Calvin had finished the project on his own and had his father bring it in. Had he completed it as a peace offering? Was this his way of letting me know he’d forgiven me?

  “So you don’t mind if I hold on to it for my group?” Fuentes asked.

  “Sure, yeah.”

  Ms. Fuentes’s face lit up. “Wonderful!”

  “Thanks, Ms. Fuentes.” She probably thought I was thanking her for the praise, but even if Calvin still hated me for betraying him, she was the reason I’d gotten to know him. Regardless of how things turned out—if I found Tommy, if the universe collapsed and swallowed us all—the time I’d spent with Calvin had made the last few months bearable. More than that, Calvin had become part of my life, as real as Tommy.

  Ms. Fuentes continued to beam with pride. “So, have you decided where you’re going to college? I assume you are going.”

  “University of . . .” I stopped myself. The University of Colorado didn’t exist anymore. Colorado didn’t exist anymore. “I haven’t made up my mind yet.”

  “Well, regardless of what school you choose, I suspect you’ll do great things. My college years were some of the best of my life. There’s more to learn than you’ll ever know.”

  “I guess,” I said. “But, and I know this is going to sound weird, I think I’m going to miss high school.”

  “Maybe, but the world is bigger than you can possibly imagine, Ozzie, and you’ve only just begun to explore it.”

  The irony of her statement wasn’t lost on me. “Ms. Fuentes? Remember when you taught us about particle-wave duality?” She nodded. “And you showed us that video on the double-slit experiment?”

  “Fascinating stuff,” Ms. Fuentes said. “Some days I think I would have enjoyed specializing in theoretical physics.”

  “Well, I was wondering: If observing atoms is what causes them to decide how to act, does that mean we shape reality?”

  Fuentes furrowed her brow and took in a long, deep breath. “That’s a somewhat esoteric reading of the theories.”

  “Is it? If the world around us is in a state of flux until we observe it, how do we know that our intentions and thoughts don’t impact what it will become?”

  “Because we don’t actually change anything, Ozzie,” she said. “It’s all about perception.”

  “I don’t follow.”

  Fuentes tapped her lip with her index finger. Then she said, “Let me show you something.” I followed her to her desk and waited while she rolled the overhead projector in front of the whiteboard. She hunted around until she found a sheet of paper. She folded it into three even sections.

  “When I fold the paper like this,” she said, “it forms a triangular prism. Three equal rectangles that connect to form a triangle.”

  “Uh, okay?”

  “Now, when I hold it up to the light, what do you see?” Fuentes positioned the paper on the overhead so that its shadow was projected on the whiteboard.

  “Aside from your hand?” I said. “A rectangle.”

  “Right. And how about now.”

  “A kind of flattened hexagon.”

  “Right again.” Fuentes turned the paper on its end. “And now what?”

  I shrugged. “A triangle. What does this have to do with quantum physics and reality?” Part of me wished I’d never asked, seeing as I wasn’t sure I was going to understand her answer.

  Ms. Fuentes shut off the projector and set the paper aside. “The point is that if you look at the object one way, it’s a rectangle, another and it’s a hexagon or a triangle. But none of that changes the fact that it’s a prism.” I must’ve looked completely baffled, and I was, because she said, “What we observe as some kind of duality—an atom is either a wave or a particle depending on our observation—may not reveal the entire truth. The atom may be neither of those things. It might exist in a completely different state we’re incapable of seeing or comprehending. Someone who only saw the shadows of our prism might deduce that it had changed shape, while we would know it was a prism all along.”

  Her explanation reminded me of the allegory of the cave. “In other words, there might be a truth out there we don’t know yet?”

  “That’s an interesting way to put it, but yes.”

  “So then how does that relate to reality?”

  “I’m not sure I understand,” Fuentes said.

  “I guess I’m asking: Do we create reality by interaction and observation, or does it only appear that way because we’re incapable of seeing the whole prism?”

  Ms. Fuentes sighed. “You’re moving into philosophy here, Ozzie, and I’m not sure I’m the right person to help you. What I can tell you is that it probably doesn’t matter. It doesn’t matter whether we know if an atom is a particle or a wave or something else completely. Not knowing doesn’t change the reality of what an atom is. What matters is that we continue searching for the answers.” She frowned. “Did that help at all?”

  “I think so,” I said. “Thanks. See you tomorrow.”

  1,295 MI

  LUA ADJUSTED MY BOW TIE for the tenth time in an hour. He stepped back and closed one eye, appraising my appearance. “I guess that’s as good as you’re going to get.”

  “Well, no one wears a tux like you, Lu.”

  “Tell me more.”

  While I’d gone with a classic black-and-white tux, Lua wore baby blue with a sequined bow tie and cummerbund that would have looked ridiculous on anyone else, but which Lua wore with style. He’d even dyed his hair
to match.

  “You ready for this?” he asked.

  “The dance?” I shook my head. “I don’t even know why I’m going.”

  “Because it’s a rite of passage. It’s going to be lame, right? But if you stay home and mope, you’ll regret it. Or you won’t. It’s only prom.” Then he shrugged. “Actually, though, I was talking about photos with Dinah.”

  “Oh. I’m definitely not ready for that.”

  “Tough.” Lua grabbed my hand and led me out of my room.

  Before the universe had stolen Renny and my parents, Lua’s house had only consisted of two bedrooms, but in addition to rewriting history, the universe was also adept at home remodeling and had converted the garage into a bedroom for me. Even as it stole parts of my life, the universe gave me other things in return. It had disappeared my family and replaced it with a new one; it had devoured the stars but given me the opportunity to recreate them for someone who’d never seen them; it had robbed me of Tommy but gifted me Calvin.

  I’d managed to lose Calvin all on my own.

  I couldn’t figure out why the universe bothered. Why replace what it had stolen? Why not just take me too and end the whole thing? From the day I narrowly avoided dying on Flight 1184, it’d seemed as if the universe was trying to tell me something, but I hadn’t been able to decipher what. Sometimes I thought it was trying to tell me to get as far from Cloud Lake as possible, other times to never leave. If it were attempting to send me a message, I wished it would be a little less ambiguous. A bright neon sign in the sky would have been far more helpful.