by E. C. Myers
“Maybe she'll call them and tell them what happened. Dr. Kim could shut down the LCD—”
“The Doc won't do that. Every time they turn it off, the multiverse breaks down a little more and risks further decoherence. Now that she has what she needs…” Nathaniel bit his lip and fell quiet.
“I thought we were important to the mission,” Ephraim said.
“They have Everett now. He was the mission. And he can use the coin too, so…”
Ephraim's shoulders slumped. “They don't need me anymore.”
Cliff sat on the coffee table to face Ephraim and Nathaniel on the couch. He handed each of them half-full glasses of sherry. Nathaniel took Ephraim's glass from him and gave it back to Cliff.
“I've never seen anything like that,” Cliff said. He lit a cigarette and puffed on it. “But you seem pretty calm for someone who was just abandoned in another universe.”
“It's happened to me before,” Nathaniel said.
“What are we going to do?” Ephraim asked.
He stood and paced around the living room. He felt like a caged animal. If they weren't retrieved, they could be wiped out the next time the multiverse threw one of its tantrums.
“We can't stay here,” Ephraim said.
“It seems I have a room available,” Cliff said.
“Thanks, but we won't be staying,” Nathaniel said. He put down his empty glass and pulled a cell phone from his coat pocket.
“You can't call Crossroads with that,” Ephraim said.
Nathaniel smiled cryptically.
“That isn't a cell phone,” Ephraim said. He hurried over and took the small device from the older man. “It's another controller. You had a backup this whole time?”
“After spending ten years in your universe, did you think I would ever risk being stuck again?”
“You devil,” Cliff said. “I'm impressed.” He held his glass up to toast Nathaniel and took a sip.
“You've been holding out on us, old man. I thought you didn't have the resources to build another one of these.” Ephraim returned it to Nathaniel.
“I didn't. This one was the prototype, I guess. Everett—the first one, I mean—gave it to me to reverse engineer and improve on the LCD years ago. I got it out of the archive and finished reassembling it yesterday, using Zoe's controller as a guide.”
“If you had this on you in the dining hall an hour ago, why didn't it anchor you with me?”
“It was switched off,” Nathaniel said. “I was worried it would interfere with the other controller.”
“So we can use this to get back? Can it lock onto the coin?”
“I hardwired a connection to the LCD so I could always get back there. There's just one small problem. If Jena called the Doc as soon as they arrived, the Doc knows that Hugh is there, and that's all she ever wanted. They aren't going to try to retrieve us. I don't think Dr. Kim is going to open another window for us.”
“Zoe's still there,” Ephraim said. He met Nathaniel's eyes. “She wouldn't leave us here.”
“My thought exactly,” Nathaniel said. “We just need a way to contact her so she knows we're okay and get her to switch the LCD back on.”
“Right.” Ephraim leaned his elbows on his knees and rested his chin on his hands. “It's not fair,” he said.
“I know,” Nathaniel said.
“When Nate had the controller, I would have done anything to stop him,” Ephraim said. “Even if it meant I could never go home again. This is a worse situation, but right now, the only thing I want is to go home.”
Nathaniel rubbed his chin. Cliff took his empty glass and went to the bar on the other end of the living room.
“Where's home for you?” Nathaniel asked.
“What do you mean?” Ephraim asked.
“In Zoe's universe, you still had Zoe. You said it wasn't the place, it was the people that made it home.”
“Sure. My mom, my Nathan, Jim—I miss all of them too.” He looked around the circa 1950s apartment. He'd loved the idea of visiting the past, but could he really be happy living there?
“Wherever or whatever home is, it isn't here,” Ephraim said.
“Maybe it's selfish, but I'm glad for the company this time,” Nathaniel said.
“How did you do it?” Ephraim asked. “You were trapped in the past just like we are, in a different universe. How did you survive that, without any friends, without going crazy?”
“I took it one day at a time,” Nathaniel said. “And maybe I did go a little bit crazy there. But I knew I would see you again one day. I knew there was a way out, if I only waited for it. That counts for a lot.” He tugged on his ear. “We won't always be stuck in 1954. In seven months, we'll be in 1955. Then 1956. We move forward because that's all we can do.”
But there were countless dangers ahead for Americans living in the mid- to late-twentieth century. Ephraim should have paid more attention in history class.
Then again, he could be hit by a bus tomorrow. No history book could prevent that.
“History,” Ephraim said. He sat up straight, struck by a sudden, hopeful thought. Maybe he'd learned something from history after all.
“Ephraim?” Nathaniel asked.
“We have a controller,” Ephraim said. “All we need is a ham radio, and we should be able to contact Zoe. This decade is lousy with ham radios, yeah?”
Nathaniel frowned. “That's good thinking, but it isn't that easy. The reason we were able to make a solid connection on a quantum frequency was because of quantum entanglement.”
“Huh?”
“We need a very specific radio. It has to be identical to the one we're trying to contact—its analog.”
“Oh,” Ephraim said.
They realized the answer at the same moment. “Grumps!” they said.
Nathaniel stood up. “Okay, all we need are wheels. I parked my car eighty-three years away.”
“I can help with that,” Cliff said. “Sorry, I eavesdropped.”
“I don't care about that if you have a car,” Nathaniel said.
“Hugh has one. And he never lets me drive it.” Cliff picked up a key ring from a dish on the bar counter. “Where are we going?”
“Summerside, New York,” Ephraim said.
Ephraim guided Cliff through the lamplit streets of Summerside from the passenger side of Everett's Buick. When they drove past his block, Ephraim was shocked to see that instead of his apartment building, there was an old-fashioned movie theater. Its dark marquee advertised Clifton Webb and Dorothy McGuire in Three Coins in the Fountain.
Ephraim chuckled. Everett had said there were no coincidences in a quantum system, but perhaps there was still room for irony.
He leaned back in the seat and reached again for a nonexistent seat belt. It was the first time he'd ever ridden without one—just another reminder of all the things that were missing from 1954 and how unfamiliar it all was.
Of course his apartment wouldn't be there yet. His father wouldn't even be born for five more years, and his mother for seven.
Ephraim had heard the story many times; when his mom got drunk, she always reminisced. His parents had met in Puerto Rico, just after she graduated from high school. David García Scott was—would be?—taking time off from college, living with his grandmother and working as a lifeguard at Condado Beach in San Juan. Madeline Watt's best friend, Suzie, swam into a bloom of moon jellyfish on their third day of vacation. David rescued her and drove both women to the hospital. While Suzie was passed out from her stings in the backseat, Madeline and David brazenly flirted in the front.
The odds of the two of them meeting like that seemed so astronomical, it was a miracle Ephraim had ever been born, except it had happened in countless universes. If he ended up living out his life in the past, could Ephraim actually witness their first meeting? It wasn't like he'd have to worry about preventing his own birth. He had no idea how different this world might turn out to be without Hugh Everett in it.
You
ng Madeline refused to return to the mainland with Suzie after she got out of the hospital. She spent the rest of her vacation in Puerto Rico with David before returning to Summerside for college, and they visited each other every chance they could.
After David's grandmother died, he followed Madeline to Summerside and got a job as a taxi driver. They married, and they had Ephraim, and they moved into the apartment he'd grown up in. Nine years after that, Madeline had kicked David Scott out of their life, and Ephraim hadn't seen or heard from him again. Not even a birthday card at the holidays, as if he had simply ceased to exist.
Ephraim didn't believe in Fate, but would his parents have met if Suzie hadn't blundered into those jellyfish and happened to be intensely allergic to their stings? It seemed to Ephraim that people got together despite Fate, when the odds of anyone meeting the right person were so remote—if there were just one perfect match for someone in the entire multiverse.
The funny thing about it was, his mother wasn't even friends with Suzie anymore.
Ephraim leaned forward as they approached the Summerside Public Library.
“Slow down,” he said.
Cliff glanced at him. “Is this it?”
“No, but I want to see something.”
“We don't have time to sightsee,” Nathaniel said. But even he craned his head to get a better look at the library.
It looked bright and new, luminous in the lamplight. It was strange to see it without the stone lions that had flanked the stairway for all Ephraim's life; they'd been a gift from a wealthy family to the library in the 1980s. Jena would have loved to see this.
Then he turned to get a glimpse at Greystone Park, but it wasn't there. It was just an overgrown field surrounded by a peeling white picket fence with missing planks. He could see the dark shape of the Manor House against the night sky in the distance.
“Charming,” Cliff said.
“It's going to be a beautiful park one day,” Ephraim said.
“The city won't have the money to develop the land until after the Vietnam War,” Nathaniel said.
There was a dilapidated gazebo where the Memorial Fountain should be.
“Is that what the fountain is?” Ephraim asked. “A war memorial?”
“You'd think there'd be a plaque. A list of names.”
“We looked it up once,” Ephraim said. “Even Jena couldn't find anything. It's strange that someone built a fountain to remember something or someone, and it's still there, but no one remembers why.”
“That's the way of things, Eph. Even if you forget something, that doesn't make it less real.”
“According to Claude Shannon's communication theory, information is everything,” Cliff said. “If you extend that to quantum theory, existence is information.”
Ephraim and Nathaniel stared at him blankly.
“Thanks,” Nathaniel said.
“Cheers,” Cliff said. “So, what was this war you were blathering about?”
From Cliff's expression, he had just realized that he'd been driving time travelers around for the last two hours and hadn't asked them anything about the future.
“Oh, uh…” Ephraim looked away.
“If you're lucky, you won't find out in this universe,” Nathaniel said.
Ephraim pointed down the street at the next corner. “That's our turn! Go right. It's at the end of the street, last house on the right. Number two.”
Cliff pulled up in front of a two-level house that looked a lot like Jena's in 2012, only smaller. They must have added onto the house over the years.
“This is it,” Ephraim said. “Good. Someone's awake.” A light was on in the living room.
“It's only ten thirty,” Nathaniel said.
“Didn't people go to bed earlier in the 1950s?”
“I'll wait,” Cliff said.
“That's okay,” Nathaniel said. “You've done plenty for us.”
Cliff looked at Ephraim and Nathaniel solemnly.
“All right,” he finally said. “But if this doesn't work out, you know where to find me. Here.” He fished in his pocket for a scrap of paper and the nub of a pencil and scribbled something on it. “You can call me.”
Cliff handed the torn paper to Ephraim. He studied Cliff's phone number: “PRinceton 1-3818.” He didn't even know how to dial that. Ephraim stuffed the slip of paper in his pocket.
“Thanks,” Ephraim said. He shook hands with Cliff. “Watch where you're walking, all right? And take it easy on the cigarettes.”
Cliff laughed. “I will. You watch yourself, too.”
Nathaniel reached between the seats to shake Cliff's hand. “Thanks for all your help. It's been good knowing you.”
Ephraim and Nathaniel climbed out of the Buick. Cliff waved and drove off.
Ephraim stretched his legs. The old car had more leg room than he was used to, but the seat had been less comfortable than in modern vehicles. He stretched his back out, looking up at the sky.
“Wow,” he said. He tilted his head up to stare at the night sky, almost dizzy with the number of stars that were visible. For a moment he felt disconnected from his body, this world, this universe.
Nathaniel looked up. “Wow,” he echoed. “I haven't seen stars like that in…ever.”
“You could get lost in stars like that,” Ephraim murmured.
It was strange to think that those lights were always up there, even when he couldn't see them. And it made him feel smaller. There was an infinite number of stars out there. They'd been there long before Ephraim was born and would be around long after he was gone.
Nathaniel nudged him with an elbow. “You ready for this?”
They climbed three steps to the front porch of Jena's house—what would one day be Jena's house, if events played out the same way here. Ephraim reached above the door and felt for the key that Jena's family hid in a crack between the frame and the wall for emergencies. There was no key, nor was there a crack.
“How do you want to handle this?” Ephraim asked.
Nathaniel picked up a flower pot from the floor beside the door.
“You aren't going to hit Zoe's grandfather with that,” Ephraim said.
Nathaniel weighed it carefully in his hand. “No, maybe not.” He put it back.
“How about we try asking him for help first?” Ephraim said.
“You really expect that to work?” Nathaniel asked. “'Hi, can we borrow your ham radio to contact your unborn granddaughter in another universe eighty-three years in the future?'”
“People were friendlier and more trusting in the fifties.”
“You should have paid more attention in history class.” Nathaniel shrugged. “Fine, let's try it your way. But be ready to improvise.”
Ephraim pressed the doorbell. Chimes sounded deep inside the house. At some point in the next fifty years or so, the doorbell would be replaced with a buzzer.
After a minute, Ephraim reached for the doorbell again, just as the porch light blinked on.
The curtain covering the window next to the door rustled, and an eye peeked out. Ephraim jumped.
“Yes?” A man said from the other side of the glass.
“We're, uh, stuck and we need to make a call,” Ephraim said.
“It's very late,” the man said. Ephraim recognized the voice from the radio a couple of days before.
“I know,” Ephraim said. “We're sorry to bother you. We're only trying to get home.”
The eye looked Ephraim up and down, then slid over to scrutinize Nathaniel. The curtain fell back over the glass.
Ephraim and Nathaniel exchanged a glance. Another thirty seconds passed. Nathaniel put his hand on the doorknob.
The door opened halfway. Jena's grandfather wasn't an old man at all, though that's how Ephraim had pictured him. In fact, he looked just like Jena's father, maybe ten years younger than Nathaniel.
He had short-cropped black hair and wore a pair of round gold spectacles that Ephraim had seen Jena in before. Even in the eveni
ng, he wore a shirt and skinny tie, but his sleeves were rolled up to the elbows. He wore gauze bandages on both index fingers.
“Dug Kim?” Ephraim asked.
“Sung Dug Kim.” The man tensed. “How do you know my name? Do you live near here?” Dug asked. His English was excellent, but he had a strong Korean accent.
“Yes, sir. My name is Ephraim Scott. I live over on Runyon Street.” Not technically a lie, but he hoped Dug didn't know there was only a movie theater and shops on the street now. “This is Nathaniel.”
Nathaniel nodded.
“I don't know the Scotts,” Dug said. He glanced behind him. “I'm about to go to bed, but if this won't take long.” He opened the door wider and gestured them in.
“Thank you,” Ephraim said.
Dug nodded. “Please, ah, remove your shoes?” He pointed at the guest slippers lined up inside the door.
Ephraim pulled off his rented dress shoes, glad to get out of them, and slid his feet into cloth slippers that looked about the right size. They were really comfy. Nathaniel grunted and followed suit while Ephraim looked around the foyer.
“You have a beautiful home,” Ephraim said.
The house smelled different—sweet, like pipe smoke—but it didn't look much different from the one Ephraim had visited before. It dated back to the turn of the century, and Jena's grandparents had spent every dime they'd brought from South Korea after the Korean War to buy and renovate it. That would have been only a year ago now.
“The telephone is in the kitchen. Would you like something to drink?” Dug started walking toward the kitchen.
“Actually, we don't need your phone,” Nathaniel said.
Dug took a step back. “You said you had to call someone.” He narrowed his eyes at Ephraim suspiciously and groped behind him as if feeling for a weapon. There was a coat rack with a fedora and a raincoat on it within his reach.
Ephraim put his hands up. “It's long-distance,” he said. “Really long-distance. Can we use your ham shack?”