A clear, young, confident female voice came from the speakers in the ceiling. “There are no mechanical or technical errors indicated, Dr. Vandermark. It is not random. It is the right truck. And I cannot joke.”
Quyron folded her hands in a forced calming technique, but her words still carried an edge. “You saw the same timeline segments we all saw, Dr. Vandermark. Despite your comments, this is no trick. I have no agenda. You can parade around the room and wiggle all you want, but these men reacted before they should have…four indisputable times! Help me explain it.”
Vandermark ignored her challenge, acting as if she hadn’t spoken at all, and turned to Newbauer. “Jonathan, we obviously need to assign someone more…familiar to look into all this.”
Quyron bristled, “I’m sorry, but the truth is, that’s not your choice.”
Vandermark looked harshly at Newbauer and the VP squirmed as he replied. “Quyron and her team were brought in and financed by the President himself.”
“And why wasn’t I informed?”
“But I assumed you were.”
“I see.” Vandermark took a quick breath and let it out slowly. “My apologies, then, Ms. Shur, for my…intemperate remarks.”
Quyron nodded slightly.
Vandermark returned to his seat. “It’s just hard for those of us at the front of the battle to be patient with those who are counting noses from the back – so to speak.”
Quyron briefly locked eyes with him and wondered again why she had chosen a field that tolerated such arrogant asses. “I can see how you’d feel that way. In my work, facts are facts, and you deal with them honestly, wherever they’re found.”
Newbauer noisily cleared his throat. “If we could get back to your…your update, please? Is this, whatever it is, connected in some way to the other problems you were hired to check on?”
Quyron cocked her head. “The transmission issue? I don’t know yet. This event seems different but I’m becoming convinced that something we’re doing may be at the root of both.”
Vandermark reacted, “Something we’re doing? What does that mean? And who’s we?”
“Unknown.”
“I see, another hunch. I’m almost afraid to ask if you have any evidence to back it up?
“Not enough.”
Vandermark took a quick drink from his glass of water. “Ms. Shur, what if I were willing to accept your earlier analyses regarding your…truckers?”
“I wouldn’t believe you.”
Some surprised laughs erupted from the gallery and then quickly choked themselves off in embarrassment. Vandermark took it in stride.
“Of course, I can appreciate that, and I wouldn’t blame you. But for the sake of the moment, and ignoring everything I’ve said to the contrary, how would you explain what they did? What are they?”
Quyron gazed at the attentive faces around the room. Many of the eyes were fixed on the still image of Kendall and Josh. Everyone was definitely caught up in the moment.
“How they do what they do is unclear,” she answered in a steady voice. “But I think they are something we’ve never seen before, never imagined.”
Quyron stepped back from the screen and she too stared at the freeze-frame of the men. “I believe these two are natural-born jumpers. I don’t know how else to explain it. My guess is they are a kind of mutation within the multiverse – a failsafe, if you will. I don’t know how many there may be, or if these are the only ones, but their sudden appearance now is not an accident – it’s a response.”
She nodded toward Echo, and the frozen scene played on. Everyone silently watched as the men re-animated to continue their race for the ridge top. They leaped the guard rail just before flame and debris roared through behind them.
CHAPTER 5:
In the trees outside the brick-faced McCaslin home in suburban Cincinnati, it was after midnight. The fall air was cool and still, and the stars in the black sky were bright. An adult barred owl, with wide facial discs around dark eyes, sat her silent watch in an oak tree near the red Honda. Pale brown body with white mottling above and brown streaking below, the silent killer was nearly invisible on her perch. Her head rotated smoothly through half its impressive arc while her compact body remained motionless. Her large eyes settled on a repetitive movement below.
An anxious mouse was transporting seeds from summer storage to winter larder. His grey back hunched and stilled as he carefully crossed the grass to the rain gutter’s down spout next to the driveway.
Hidden under feathers on either side of the head, an owl has openings, called apertures, in place of ears. Typically, the holes are asymmetrical, which helps to triangulate on the location of very subtle but specific sounds – such as seeds scraping on dirt or fur rubbing against grass blades. Owls have four black talons on each feathered foot – three curve forward and one backwards, creating an exceptionally effective snare.
The barred owl released her talons’ mechanical hold on the branch and fell forward into a deadly silent descent. Her primary flight feathers had leading edges that were fimbriate; that is they had comb-like extensions to muffle the whisper of air passing over them.
The mouse moved unaware, other instinctual business cluttering his mind, until talons closed upon him like a multifaceted trap. A single swallowed “cheep” and the tinny tumblings of seeds upon the metal spout were all that escaped.
And multiple universes tumbled away undetected around the moment. In one, the owl missed. In another, the mouse fought back. In countless other variations, the mouse abandoned his seeds and made it to the gutter; the owl was distracted and looked the other way; the grass was not mowed and so the mouse passed unseen; the owl perched in the elm instead of the oak; the mouse waited for a better night to move his food; a car passed by and spoiled the hunt; and on and on in a myriad of possibilities, all realized and super positioned upon each other, without a whit of trouble or observation.
The owl flared her sound-dampened wings as she reclaimed her perch with the prize, oblivious to the universes that had spiraled off her every wing beat. Pleased with the fat, warm meal ahead, she considered the night with her merciless eyes before turning to her repast in earnest.
* * *
In an upper bedroom of the house, Kendall’s eyes were wide open and troubled. He had a butterfly bandage on his forehead and a nasal attachment in his nose. The nose probes were strapped to his head and connected to a coiled hose, which in turn was coupled to a CPAP (Continuous Positive Airway Pressure) unit sitting on his bedside table. The cumbersome apparatus hissed rhythmically, keeping time with his breathing. Apparently, he snored, which was new information to parts of him when Leah chided his forgetfulness. He minimized the lapse as he relied on his other memories to guide him through the filling of the water reservoir, the positioning of headgear and hose and bed covers, before the lights went out. His newly familiar fingers rediscovered the soft switch that turned it on. The whole experience was reminiscent of the rest of his strange day, a marriage of opposites: death, life; pain, joy; confusion, clarity; and now strange and familiar. He opened his mouth and, surprisingly, air streamed out as long as he left it open. Sealing his lips again, he felt no internal sensation of the elevated air pressure at all. How that prevented snoring, he hadn’t a clue.
He gazed over at Leah – his precious, lost and re-found love – safely asleep beside him, and silently marveled to himself. He shuffled through his memories and wondered again where he was, what he was, and what he knew or didn’t know. He knew, for example, that he didn’t snore but he knew he did now. A moment’s thought took him back to the sleep apnea test and the net of leads they attached to his scalp, his face, his chest, his arms, and his feet. He could see again the friendly face of the matronly technician clucking, “There you go. All wired up and snug as a bug. Your job is to go to sleep now and we’ll all be watching you. Okay?”
And he knew he never took a snoring test.
What had happened on that freeway? His one clea
r notion was that sleep was no longer on his agenda for tonight. He fumbled in his alien memories until he saw again an image of the soft off/on switch behind the heating dial, and then reached out in the dark to deftly shut it off.
* * *
Josh sat at the head of the dining room table wrapped in a blanket and working a laptop. A nearly empty glass of milk and a cell phone crowded his elbow as he typed and moused with an easy efficiency.
The McCaslin dining room was large and carried a cheery but relaxed country feel. The sturdy mission hills style oak table with matching slat back chairs sat on a cream and rose colored rug which Leah claimed made her think of her home. Against the wall, an oak china cabinet displayed off-white pottery, Grandma McCaslin’s Havilland china and a small collection of pale pink Depression glass. Four sets of windows were hidden behind closed wooden shutters and an oak sideboard completed the wall. Above, a curvy wrought iron chandelier cast a soft illumination over the table.
Josh noted the sound of Kendall coming down the stairs and barely looked up. “Couldn’t sleep either, huh?”
“Not a chance. You?”
“Afraid to go to sleep.”
Kendall acknowledged the comment with a grunt and disappeared into the kitchen. Josh heard sets of cabinet doors being opened and shut, one after the other, along with the rattle of china and numerous thumps and mutterings. Josh shook his head. Finally, he heard the refrigerator door open and then milk filling a glass.
Josh moused the computer and talked without turning his head. “So, I found this Dell laptop in my room, okay? And a part of me knew the password, even though it’s one I never thought of before. And another part remembered that I only use Macs.”
Kendall appeared beside the table holding his glass of milk. “Yeah, and since when did Mom move the glasses to the wrong cabinet?”
“Left cabinet? Right cabinet? Try finding chips.” Josh was tense. “Get used to it! Everything’s shifted. Oh, and by the way, I don’t live at home anymore – right?”
Kendall slid into a chair and took a swig of milk. “Right. I know – well, some part of me knows.”
“And yet, here I am.”
“Yeah, here we are.”
“You wanna know somethin’ else? I called Hannah’s number on my weird cell phone, but it’s somebody else’s now.”
“Her phone number?”
“Yeah. Some guy…said it’s always been his number for years.”
“You sure you dialed right?”
“Oh yeah. I talked to the dude twice, and it’s late, okay? So I checked online. Guess what? No facebook.”
“Whaddya mean? She’s not on facebook? You mean her…page?”
“No, not her face page. Not her profile. Not her anything. There’s no facebook.”
Kendall stared at him blankly. “No facebook?”
“Yeah. No facebook. It doesn’t exist. I even Googled Zuckerberg, and he’s nowhere either.”
They sat and stared at each other across the table. Kendall finally said what they both were thinking. “Where in the world are we?”
Josh shrugged. “I checked my e-mail. Nothing from Hannah – ever. I searched all over the place. Her family never adopted her, she never lived at her apartment, she never went to her college, and she never worked at her work. Huh? Where is she?”
Kendall softly set his glass down. “I don’t know, Josh.”
“We got Mom back but I lost Hannah. This is seriously messed up! Is that mom upstairs – really Mom?” Josh was getting louder. “I mean she’s not the one I held hands with when she was dying, is she? So, if she’s not that one, than who is she?” He looked away, trying not to break down. “If I go to sleep here tonight, what am I gonna wake up to tomorrow?”
Kendall was shook up but tried to calm Josh. “Look, I don’t know about Hannah but I know Mom is as real as we are. Okay? All of this is real – it’s just not…our real.”
“How do we get back?”
“Back?” Kendall flared, “Back to where Mom’s dead? Is that where you’d rather be?”
Josh reacted as if he was stung. “No…not that, but…”
“But what? What do you want me to say?”
“Nothin’. It’s not that.” Josh seemed lost for words. “Look, I’ve been down here a long time and I think I may have found an idea about this.”
Kendall looked at the laptop and then at Josh. “What? Don’t tell me you Googled it? I don’t even want to hear it. You know what I think of that stuff.”
“Can I just show you somethin’?”
Kendall shrugged his agreement. He was concerned about Josh but he couldn’t believe anything on the internet would explain what they’d been through.
Josh worked the laptop and it flickered back into its search history, flipping through earlier pages.
“I tried a lot of stuff that went nowhere – things like out-of-body experiences and near death and head trauma.’”
Kendall rolled his eyes. Josh nodded. “I know, I know. I had to start somewhere, okay? For awhile, nothing went anywhere helpful until I stumbled on this link here.”
Kendall leaned forward to see clearer. The display showed a complex search list with a single item highlighted in blue: Many lives in many worlds: Article: Nature. Max Tegmark. In this universe, Max Tegmark is a physicist at MIT, Cambridge, Mass.
Following this entry was a space and a linked address: www.nature.com/nature/journal/v448/n7149/full/448023a.html.
Josh had his finger poised over the Enter key. “Okay? So then I clicked it.”
“Wait. Who’s Max Tegmark?”
“Forget him. He’s not what matters.”
Josh pushed the key and a new image popped up. It was the landing page for a weekly journal. The red banner at the top had prominent white letters across it that read, Nature – International weekly journal of science. A smaller font indicated the date it was first published online, 4 July, 2007. Directly beneath the banner, it read: Access – To read this story in full you will need to login or make a payment (see right).
Kendall shook his head in disgust. “Typical! You gotta pay just to read the damn article? And it’s five years old anyway. What a rip-off!”
“Yeah, so what else is new?” Josh agreed. “But the teaser here down below was all I needed.”
Kendall squinted over his shoulder as Josh read from the screen. “Accepting quantum physics to be universally true, argues Max Tegmark, means that you should also believe in parallel universes.”
Kendall leaned back in his chair, newly uninterested. “Oh great, what are we now, Dr. Who?”
“Just listen to me, will ya? I’m tryin’ to explain how I found this stuff. Gimme a minute and I’m tellin’ you, it’s gonna sound like what happened to us. You’ll see.”
Kendall was completely unimpressed. “Yeah, yeah, I’m listening, but it also occurs to me that I’m gonna need a new truck in the morning.”
Josh gave him a dirty look and then resumed his reading. “Almost all of my colleagues have an opinion about it, but none of them have ever read the original document about it. The first draft of Hugh Everett III’s Ph.D. thesis, which celebrates its 50th birthday this year, is buried in the out-of-print book, The Many-Worlds Interpretation of Quantum Mechanics.”
Kendall finished his milk and waited until he was sure Josh was done. “And? Is this Hugh guy somebody who matters?”
“He does now. He didn’t used to be important but, as far as I can tell, today’s science big wigs are in love with his ideas.”
“What’s that mean?”
“Just what I said. I don’t know what changed. Hugh Everett III was 27 when he wrote his paper. Nobody took him or his theory seriously then, so he walked away, took his PhD with him, said the hell with them, and did somethin’ else.”
“So what? Maybe mathematicians don’t like people with numbers in their names. Where’s that leave us?”
“Well, here we are, all these years later, and suddenly old Hugh’s lous
y theory is the hottest girl at the dance. How about that?” Josh watched his Dad carefully, hoping for a spark of real interest.
Kendall fixed him with a vacant look. “Good for him. How does that help us?”
“I’m not sure yet.” Josh was uncomfortable. “But maybe – and I’m being serious now – maybe we oughta talk to him.”
“What?” Kendall shot up out of his chair. “Are you kiddin’ me? Things aren’t strange enough already, now we’re supposed to go talk to a dead guy?”
“He might not be dead,” Josh shot back, defensively. “You don’t know everything.”
“That’s crazy! He must be what, in his 80’s? And even if we find him alive, what the hell do we ask him? What’s he supposed to know anyhow?”
Josh looked up at Kendall with a cold, sober expression. “All I can say is, I’ve been sitting here readin’ and re-readin’ his paper, and while there’s lots of stuff I don’t get at all, the parts I do understand, scare the hell out of me.”
CHAPTER 6:
The carved wood and glass doors of the Marabou Conference room opened wide as attendees flowed out of the adjourned meeting and into a sun-filled foyer. Running the length of the conference room, a large balcony overlooked a foliage-filled atrium where pairs of whimsical birdcages were suspended above reflecting pools. The open space echoed with the cheerful songs of mockingbirds, finches and wood thrushes.
Neville Vandermark pushed through the talkative crowd. He had his eyes fixed ahead as he rapidly moved toward the executive offices at the other end of the building. Hahn and Nsamba had to rush to keep up with him. Behind them, archive managers and their staffs were gathering into ad-hoc clumps of agitated discussions.
Vandermark glanced darkly in Nsamba’s direction as they kept walking. “Taylor, I want to know everything there is to know about these jumpers – the ones in the presentation and the ones in our own line.”
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