Coin #2 - Quantum Coin

by E. C. Myers

  “I want a new washer and dryer,” Nathaniel said. “But I'd settle for a trip to Disneyland.”

  They walked through the entryway and tried the door into the building. It was unlocked.

  Nathaniel grinned. “Simpler times,” he said.

  They entered the building and walked up to the first-floor room. The building smelled musty, like an old library, with a hint of dried beer and stale cigarette smoke. Perversely, it reminded Ephraim of home.

  “What do we do now?” Ephraim asked. The names of the residents weren't listed anywhere, and he didn't even see any mailboxes in the building.

  “Maybe Jena had the right idea. We just ask.” Nathaniel knocked boldly on the door.

  After a moment, it opened. A man with a thin mustache blinked out at them. A cigarette stuck to his lower lip as he shrugged a black gown on over his gray suit.

  “Yes?” the man asked. His eyes went from Nathaniel to Ephraim curiously.

  “Hi, we're looking for a friend,” Nathaniel said. “But we forgot his room number. Hugh Everett?”

  “The name doesn't ring any bells,” he said. “I think you're in the wrong entry.”

  “Entry?” Ephraim asked.

  “First time on campus? Each of the dorms around this quad are an entryway,” the man said. He zipped up his gown and took the cigarette out of his mouth.

  “How many are there?” Ephraim asked.

  “Twenty-one,” the man said. “Including the North Courtyard.”

  “Phew,” Nathaniel said.

  “What school's your friend in?” the man asked.

  “Physics,” Nathaniel said.

  “Then you might check Fine Hall over on main campus. He's probably studying for finals. I guess he isn't expecting you.”

  “Not even a little,” Nathaniel said. “He should be very surprised to see us.”

  “You could also check at the Porter's Lodge,” the man said. “If Daphne's there, tell her Gerald sent you. But the office will be closed now for dinner.”

  Ephraim's stomach grumbled at the mention of food.

  “Excuse me, I should be getting to dinner myself,” the man said.

  Nathaniel stepped back as the man edged out of his room and closed the door. “Sorry I couldn't be more help.”

  “You've been very helpful,” Nathaniel said.

  Nathaniel and Ephraim followed in the wake of the man's cigarette smoke. He flicked his smoldering cigarette butt off into the grass and headed for the dining hall.

  Ephraim spotted several other students, all in black gowns ballooning in the wind, walking in the same direction.

  “What's with the gowns?” he asked.

  “I imagine they're pretty formal here. Old-world stuffy.” Nathaniel peered around. “Twenty-one dorms,” he said. “Damn.”

  “He could be anywhere, if he's even on campus today.” If they had more time, they'd have a better chance of posting flyers and waiting for Everett to contact them. “Lost Physicist. Answers to Hugh. Contact Universe # 9098771119.”

  Nathaniel walked toward the second entryway. “Someone must know him,” he said. “Even if he isn't famous yet. He must have friends. Everyone has friends.”

  “This could take hours,” Ephraim said. “We'll cover more ground separately.”

  Nathaniel frowned. “It's bad enough that Jena's off somewhere on her own,” he said. “I'm not going to risk losing track of you, too. Damn, I wish we had working phones.”

  “Next time we'll bring walkie-talkies. Look, nothing's going to happen to me on campus, and we already have a meeting place worked out. We'll meet back here in two hours, in front of the bronze dude, and go to FitzRandolph Gate together to collect Jena.”

  “No, Ephraim. I already lost one of you,” Nathaniel said.

  “And you have to stop being afraid that history will repeat itself.”

  “Funny,” Nathaniel said. “Considering where we are.”

  Ephraim squinted at his older friend. “Or are you worried about getting back home without me?”

  “I'm worried about you.”

  Ephraim stared at him.

  “I know that look,” Nathaniel said. “You aren't going to change your mind. Fine. Let me see that map.”

  Ephraim handed over the eReader and Nathaniel studied it. He mimed tearing off a page and slapped it onto his watch. He tilted the watch's small screen toward Ephraim, and he saw a copy of the page of building plans floating above the time display.

  “That's ridiculous,” Ephraim said.

  “I'll take the North Court and work my way from lucky thirteen to entryway twenty-one. You take this courtyard. One's already down, so you have twelve to go.” He circled a block of entryways on the map. “We'll meet back at that statue in two hours.” He handed Ephraim the reader and delivered a stern look. “And stay out of trouble,” he said.

  Ephraim spread his hands in a “Who me?” gesture. Nathaniel grunted and trudged off on his own.

  Each entryway in the quad had one to three apartments on each floor, and some of them had as many as four floors. It was slow going, but Ephraim settled on a methodical system. He knocked on every apartment door and if no one answered, he snuck inside to try to identify the occupants. If someone did answer, he asked for Hugh Everett and saved himself from checking the rest of the rooms in the entryway.

  Finally, he hit the jackpot at entry 5—he found someone who knew Everett.

  “He's in entry 7,” the birdlike man said. He was tall, with a long hooked nose and a shock of gray hair, though he couldn't have been older than twenty-five. He looked like he'd been sleeping off an epic hangover. “I've been over there a few times for sherry.”

  “Do you know the room number?” Ephraim asked eagerly.

  “7C, I think. Top floor.”

  “Thanks,” Ephraim said.

  “How do you know him?” the man asked, looking Ephraim over, the first glimmer of suspicion he'd gotten from anyone so far.

  “We share multiple connections,” Ephraim said.

  Naturally, Hugh Everett wasn't home. Ephraim checked all three rooms in his small apartment and found a letter addressed to Everett in one of the bedrooms, confirming that at last he had the right place.

  He sat down on a threadbare couch, trying to decide what to do. It would be a waste of time to try to find Nathaniel early. Ephraim could wait here for Everett to return, but there was no telling when he'd be back.

  Ephraim pulled up a picture of Everett on the eReader. It was black and white, taken around the time he'd been at Princeton, but he'd recognize the man if he saw him in person: broad forehead, thinning hairline, boyish face with a confident smile bordering on smugness.

  Ephraim searched the bedrooms again. He found what he was looking for in one of the closets: a black dressing gown. It was a little too long for him, but it made Ephraim passable as a very young Princeton graduate student. He slicked his hair back with styling cream from the bathroom to match the fashion of most of the guys on campus. To complete his master disguise, he picked up a thick mathematics textbook and tucked it under his left arm.

  Maybe he could also grab a bite to eat while he looked for Everett in the dining hall—just to avoid suspicion, of course.

  There were around a hundred students in the grand dining hall, but Everett wasn't among them. Ephraim kept an eye out for him in between bites of food. The meal was much better than the microwave pizza he'd had back at Crossroads: succulent roast chicken with buttery mashed potatoes, and chocolate cake for dessert.

  A hand clamped down like a vise on Ephraim's shoulder. He stiffened and carefully put down his fork. The person behind him leaned close and whispered in his ear.

  “Fancy meeting you here,” Nathaniel said. He released Ephraim's shoulder and slid onto the bench across from him.

  Ephraim rotated his shoulder painfully. “You have quite a grip, Spock.” Nathaniel's furious expression shut him up.

  “I thought you'd vanished on me,” Nathaniel said. He p
icked up one of Ephraim's rolls and took a vicious bite from it. “As if it weren't hard enough to find Dr. Everett, I had to look for you too.” His words were muffled as he chewed. He grabbed Ephraim's bottle of Coke and took a swig. He smacked his lips. “Mmm. This stuff was much better in the fifties,” he said.

  “I found Everett's room, but it was empty. I figured if I hurried, I could catch him here,” Ephraim said. “Why are you here?”

  “Looking for irresponsible teenagers and thinking up appropriate punishments makes me hungry.”

  “I was improvising. Hey, where'd you get those threads?”

  Nathaniel had also changed into a black dinner gown. It was two sizes too small for him, so six inches of his sleeves showed and it was tight across his chest.

  “I improvised too. I knocked out a student,” Nathaniel said.

  “Yeah, right.” Ephraim stared at him. Nathaniel's face didn't betray even a hint that he was joking.

  “I didn't hit him very hard, but eggheads go down easy. He might have been pretending.”

  “You've seen too many movies,” Ephraim said.

  “That isn't how you got your disguise?”

  “I borrowed it from a closet in Everett's apartment.”

  Nathaniel's eyes scanned the room as surreptitiously as he could, which wasn't very. “I'm not sure I'd recognize Everett at this age.”

  “I found a picture,” Ephraim said. He showed it to Nathaniel on the eReader screen. “I considered showing it around, but I don't think they're ready for 3-D displays yet.”

  Nathaniel started coughing.

  “You okay?”

  Nathaniel nodded and pointed through the 3-D image toward the entrance.

  Hugh Everett had just walked in with two friends. They moved together toward the stack of food trays.

  “It's really him,” Ephraim said. “My plan worked.”

  “Your plan?” Nathaniel wheezed. He gulped down some more soda and cleared his throat. “We were lucky.”

  They stood up as one.

  “I'll do the talking,” Nathaniel said.

  A wave of vertigo made Ephraim lose his balance. He pitched back onto the bench. Nathaniel braced himself against the table.

  Ephraim tasted roast chicken and potatoes. His chest was restricted, and his stomach turned over like he was on a freefall ride at the amusement park.

  “Not again,” he said through clenched teeth.

  “It's the next window opening,” Nathaniel said. He turned to look at Ephraim. “Eph…you're disappearing.”

  Ephraim held his hand out. It looked as solid as usual to him. But he could see through Nathaniel to the dining room behind him. And through the dining hall to the grass and trees outside.

  The students in the room were similarly fading, but they were oblivious to what was happening, except for the groups seated close to him and Nathaniel, who were glaring at Nathaniel. They didn't look at Ephraim at all.

  “I'm not disappearing. You are!” Ephraim said.

  Ephraim scrambled to his feet. He hastily gathered up the bottom of the gown so he could reach the pocket of his jeans. The coin jumped around in his hand, vibrating like crazy and burning hot, but holding it eased the sensation of his stomach being pulled every which way. He squeezed it tight and reached out to Nathaniel with his left hand.

  “Grab my hand!” Ephraim said. “You're shifting without me.”

  Nathaniel reached for him, but their hands passed through each other. Meanwhile, he and the other people and the building around them continued to vanish.

  “It's too late.” Nathaniel squinted at Ephraim. “You still there, Ephraim?”

  “I'm here,” Ephraim said. He was the only one that was still there, as far as he knew.

  “Good luck, kid. I don't know where I'll end up, but I'll find you,” Nathaniel said.

  His voice echoed hollowly, and Ephraim had to strain to hear him.

  Then Nathaniel was gone.

  A moment later, the coin settled in Ephraim's hand and abruptly cooled until it was practically freezing. The center of his palm throbbed in tandem with the quickened beating of his heart. He examined the coin: It was a plain disc again, its charge drained. Without power, he couldn't shift himself out of this world to whatever universe Nathaniel had ended up in. If he hadn't been erased.

  Ephraim tried to swallow, his mouth suddenly dry.

  He was all alone on a grassy lawn with nothing much around him. A golf course was not far off, but the entire Graduate College had vanished right along with his mentor. Ephraim crumpled to the grass and buried his head in his hands. He was all alone in a strange time, and the friends he'd come with could be…gone. As in, they'd never existed.

  He pulled up a clump of grass. Then another one. A building was standing here a moment ago. It had stood for more than thirty years, but now that it was gone, grass grew undisturbed in its place. The building hadn't moved—it simply had never been.

  Ephraim crawled around on his hands and knees, pulling up more and more wads of grass, turning up loose soil, leaving a scattered trail of broken stalks and sod behind him. He dug in the soft ground with his bare fingers, tossing dirt and rocks aside, not sure what he was looking for but desperate to find something, to do something.

  Finally, he rolled over onto his back and stared at the clear blue sky, breathing heavily. His vision blurred. It wasn't fair that he could somehow lose everything on such a beautiful day.

  Maybe not everything.

  If Jena had been protected by the controller, the way the coin had anchored Ephraim in this universe, she would be waiting for him at the gates.

  He spun around slowly, trying to imagine the campus the way it had been half an hour ago. College Road was missing, too. In this altered reality, there was no need for a street leading to nonexistent residence buildings. If there was no path, he would just have to make his own.

  He ran across the field toward the main campus.

  Ephraim stood on Nassau Street, consulting his map anxiously. He was fairly certain that the car accident had happened right over there, but the gate Jena had pointed out wasn't in sight and neither was she.

  “You look lost.” An elderly man with a pointed gray beard stopped on the sidewalk. “What are you looking for?”

  “Oh.” Ephraim tucked the eReader behind his back. “FitzRandolph Gate?”

  The man frowned. “If you mean FitzRandolph Road, you're on it.”

  “No, I'm looking for a giant metal gate.” Ephraim described the gate as he remembered it, and the man's face lit up.

  “Van Wickle Gateway! That's over on Prospect Avenue.” He pointed across campus and rattled off some directions that Ephraim tried to follow. The campus had been rearranged more than Ephraim had thought. “You're sure you don't want to write this down?”

  “Ephraim!” A familiar voice called from down the street.

  “Never mind,” Ephraim told the man. “Thank you.”

  He turned and saw Jena running toward him. She grabbed him and planted a kiss on his mouth.

  When she let him go, Ephraim grinned. “What was that for?” he asked. That hadn't been like her at all, but he could get used to it.

  “For Cliff,” Jena said in a low, breathless voice. She nudged her eyebrows up and rolled her eyes to the side. Ephraim looked past her and spotted the car accident victim waiting about ten feet away, pretending he wasn't looking at them.

  Cliff? Clifford Marlowe. That's what had been on his driver's license when Nathaniel went through the man's pockets.

  Cliff looked absolutely fine, if somewhat glum. Even his glasses were intact, though one of the lenses had been cracked earlier.

  “I told him I was going steady with someone, but he didn't believe me,” Jena said.

  “Oh. Then how about a kiss for me?” Ephraim asked.

  She punched Ephraim on the shoulder.

  “Ow! Was that for him, too?” He rubbed his arm.

  “Where the hell have you been? I've been wai
ting for twenty minutes,” she said.

  “Where have I been? You told us to meet you here,” he said.

  “We were supposed to meet at the gate,” Jena said. “Do you see a gate?”

  “How was I supposed to know it was going to move? The campus is all turned around. It isn't even called FitzRandolph anymore,” Ephraim said. “We really need to bring walkie-talkies next time.”

  “Where's Nathaniel?” she asked, craning her neck to peer around Ephraim. She looked down the street in the direction of the no-longer-existent Graduate College and frowned.

  “I…I don't know,” Ephraim said. “He vanished in that last quantum hiccup.”

  Jena covered her mouth with a hand. “That's awful.”

  Ephraim told her what he'd seen.

  “The whole campus is gone?” Jena asked. “Hmmm. Do you have my book?”

  Ephraim handed her the eReader and she started paging through it.

  Cliff headed toward them. Ephraim put a hand over the eReader screen to hide it. Jena pulled it away from him.

  “Don't worry,” Jena said. “He knows.” She continued thumbing through the virtual pages.

  “He knows?” Ephraim asked.

  The bespectacled man stood next to Jena and flashed Ephraim a friendly smile.

  “Hello. I'm Cliff.” He extended a hand.

  Ephraim shook it. “Ephraim. Glad you're in better shape than the last time I saw you.”

  Cliff puffed his lips and blew air out through them. “That wasn't me.” He glanced at Jena. “Apparently.”

  “Jena?” Ephraim asked.

  “Cliff was unconscious during the whole ambulance ride to the hospital and in the emergency room,” she said. “They were preparing to operate, but after everything in the world went all blurry, he sat up on the operating table.”

  “That was when the window opened. But how did it fix him?” Ephraim asked.

  “It didn't. He insisted he wasn't hit by a car,” Jena said. Half her attention was still on the eReader screen.

  “I wasn't,” Cliff said. “One minute I was walking down the street, reading a book, the next I was in hospital.”

  “He was displaced by his analog,” Ephraim said. “Jeez.”