by Jason Segel
“Not exactly,” my mom says. “But I knew he owed your grandfather a favor, so I kept his name in my back pocket all these years.”
“And the nose?” I ask. “If you loved your dad so much, why’d you get rid of it?”
This time my mother actually laughs. “Good God, Simon, it works on you, but I’m a five-foot-six female. I could barely stand up straight with a nose that size on my face.”
I remember the high school yearbook photos I once saw of her, and I know she’s not exaggerating. Irene Diamond, as she was known back then, was hardly today’s beauty queen. Yet somehow I like her old look better.
My mom threads her arm through mine, and together we stroll through the mineral hall, like an ordinary mother and son taking in the exhibit. “A man from the Company came to see your father and me after you disappeared. He claimed you’d stolen some valuable property.”
“What did you tell him?” I ask.
“Not much. I sat back and let your father run the show. He ranted and raved about every crime you’ve ever committed—from hacking robots and stealing my credit card to the time you took twenty dollars out of his wallet when you were ten years old.”
I can only imagine. “Good old Dad,” I say.
“Yes, well, you were a little shit.” She looks up at me with a smile. “Admit it, it’s true. And believe it or not, your father’s tantrum did us all a big favor. He made it perfectly clear that he’d turn you over to the authorities the second we heard from you. I doubt the Company expects there to be much contact between us.”
She pauses in front of a twelve-foot-tall amethyst geode that looks like something from outer space. “Lenny said the guys they had following you were real professionals. It took him hours to lose them. How much trouble are you in?”
“A lot,” I admit. “But if it makes you feel any better, I’m the good guy this time.”
My mother faces me. I can see the concern in her eyes. “It doesn’t make me feel any better at all. You’re still my son. I don’t want you to die saving the world.”
“I’m not going to die,” I assure her, though I’m not confident it’s true. “But I could use your help.”
“Yes, I assumed you must have had a good reason for calling.” She unzips her handbag and pulls out a thick manila envelope that I figure is filled with bills. “It’s my rainy day fund. No one but us even knows it exists. If you need more, just let me know.”
Turns out my mother keeps in touch with gangsters and has a small fortune set aside for emergencies. I lived with this woman for eighteen years, and I never once saw this side of her. I never even suspected it was there. The thought makes me wonder what else I might have been missing.
“Thanks.” I take the envelope. “This will come in handy. There’s something else I was hoping you could help with too.” It’s a long shot, but I figured I’d ask. I’ve learned never to underestimate Irene Diamond. “I need to contact someone. Do you know a man named Grant Farmer?”
My mother’s perfectly groomed eyebrows rise. “The movie director? The one they say nearly killed his lead actress? I don’t usually run in those kinds of circles, but as it happens—” She digs in her purse and pulls out a pen and a notepad. She scribbles something down and rips out the page, which she then hands to me. “That’s the name and phone number of his lawyer. We went to Harvard together. I saw him on the news yesterday reading a statement from Farmer. I wouldn’t have thought this was his kind of case.”
I glance down at the slip of paper. The lawyer’s name is George Reynolds. “You think he’ll talk to me?”
“He might if you mention my name. He owes me one. By the way, does this have something to do with his client’s recent run-in with the law?”
“Yeah,” I say.
“I’ve heard Farmer plans to plead guilty,” she tells me. “Is he?”
“Oh, sure,” I say. “He definitely attacked the actress. But there’s a whole lot more to the story.”
“There always is,” my mother says.
I shove the paper into my pocket and plant a kiss on her cheek. I can’t even remember the last time I did something like that. “Thanks, Mom. You may have just made life a whole lot easier for me. If everything goes as planned, you’ll see me again soon. But right now, I need to go find a public phone.”
“Wait a second, Simon.” My mother puts her hand on my arm before I can leave. I guess there’s still something she needs to say. “Listen, we both know I wasn’t the world’s best mother. When you’re older maybe you’ll find out as I did that being a parent doesn’t come easily to everyone. But I’ve always loved you. And that moment in the hospital when you threatened to doxx me?”
I can’t help but smirk at the memory. “You were pissed as hell.”
“Absolutely. But that was the day I knew for sure you were a Diamond.”
After she gives me a hug, my mother and I head in separate directions. The museum is filling up now, and I’m forced to weave through the tourists on my way to the Central Park West exit. I’m passing through the gallery of African animals when movement inside one of the dioramas catches my eye. It should be an ordinary savannah scene—zebras and antelope gathered around a watering hole. But there’s something else behind the glass. A creature in a loincloth stands on two legs in the center of the diorama, one palm raised as if saying hello. From the neck down, he appears mostly human. But his face, with its amber eyes and flattened nose, is clearly that of a goat. Though a group of German-speaking visitors is staring straight at him, no one seems aware of anything out of the ordinary. They aren’t able to see what I see.
I’m frozen in place. I felt so good this morning that I thought I might be recovering. But if anything, the hallucinations have just gotten much worse. Now that the goat man knows he has my eye, he’s decided to put on a show. He’s knocking over the animals inside the display. As soon as the last one is down, he chooses a zebra and begins ripping off its skin and pulling out its stuffing. It’s as if he wants to show me they’re no realer than he is.
Barreling through the throngs of tourists, I race out of the museum and across Central Park West. It’s a sunny day in late spring and the perimeter of the park is bustling. I dart around hot dog carts and dodge a pair of power-walking octogenarians. The crowd thins out once I reach the woods in the center of the park. My legs are aching and my lungs feel raw. In Otherworld I could run for miles, but in this world, I’m apparently quite out of shape. I stop and double over to catch my breath. When I look back up, I see eyes staring back from the edge of the tree-lined path. There’s a giant hog watching me. Its entire body is covered in thick brown bristles, and tusks protrude from either side of its long, dark snout. I’ve never seen a hog up close before. I have no idea if this is how they’re supposed to look. But I am fairly confident that creatures like this don’t belong in Central Park. When I start to run again, it trots beside me. I’m panting and wheezing, but the hog makes it look effortless. If it wanted to take me down, it certainly could. But I don’t think the beast is out to hurt me. It keeps glancing over at me with its oddly intelligent eyes. It just wants me to know that it’s there.
* * *
—
I’m half dead and drenched in sweat by the time I reach the Waldorf Astoria. The staff is used to seeing me by now, but a lady in a Pepto-Bismol–pink suit sniffs primly when I enter the elevator. I’m clearly unwell, but I disgust her, apparently.
When the elevator stops at my floor, I lean down until my lips are inches from her ear. “I feel the same way about your outfit,” I whisper.
I leave her standing there, jaw on the ground, and stumble down the hall to my room. The television is blaring when I open the door to the suite. “Where have you been?” Busara demands when she sees me. “You weren’t supposed to leave!”
Even if I felt I owed her an explanation, I wouldn’t be able to give one. My attenti
on has been captured by the television. A news helicopter is hovering above San Francisco’s financial district, where something terrible has clearly happened. An entire building has been cordoned off, and military tanks are stationed on all the street corners.
“There was another shooting,” Busara explains impatiently. “Seventy-one people this time. Two more than last week.”
“There was a shooting last week, too?” I ask. I really haven’t been paying attention. “Is this normal?”
“I guess it is now,” Busara says. “You want to tell me where you just were?”
The coverage cuts to a cartoonish man standing behind a podium. He looks like the star of an infomercial. “Who’s that guy?” I ask.
“That’s our dear leader,” Busara says, looking at me weirdly.
“You mean the president?” How could I not recognize the president of the United States?
“Don’t get distracted,” Busara says. “I’m asking you a question.”
A chyron scrolls along the bottom of the screen. ALEXEI SEMENOV DEAD OF NATURAL CAUSES. Then the news ends and a commercial starts. The camera pans across the glorious Manhattan of the future that I saw in OtherEarth. Flying vehicles zip around garishly lit buildings that project enormous three-dimensional ads into the sky.
I drop to my knees and cover my eyes with my hands. Everything is spiraling out of control. My head is spinning. I can’t trust anything anymore.
“Simon. Simon.” Busara is at my side with her arms around me. “Don’t freak out. It’s okay.” She’s speaking in the kind of soft, singsong voice you’d use with a terrified animal. It doesn’t sound anything like her.
I push back a bit to study her face. Even that seems different. She doesn’t look like the robot I’ve come to know. She’s worried about me. She definitely should be. “I’m losing my mind,” I confess. “Remember the goat man from Otherworld? The one who wanted to eat me? I saw him in the natural history museum. And on the way here there was a feral hog in the park. It looked just like one I saw back in Texas.”
Busara takes my face between her hands. “Listen to me, Simon,” she says. “You’re not losing your mind. One day soon all of this will be over.”
“How do you know?” I ask. “How can you tell what’s real and what’s not?”
Then Busara leans in and she says the strangest thing. “None of this is real. And that’s okay.”
“What do you mean?” I ask.
She doesn’t answer. She just wraps me in her arms and holds me until my heartbeat slows and the world stops spinning. When she lets me go, I’m convinced that she’s not the same person. Otherworld changes people, but in my experience, it’s usually for the worse. I don’t know what to make of Busara’s transformation.
“Are you okay now?” she asks. “Can we talk business for a moment?”
The exhaustion hits me all at once, and I nod as I yawn. Going insane takes a ton of energy. I hope the business she has in mind doesn’t take very long.
“What do you want to talk about?”
“You said you were at the museum?” she asks. “Why did you go there?”
“I went to see my mother,” I tell her.
Busara puts her face in her palms and groans. “Simon, you know they’ve got to be watching her. She could have led them right to you. Right to all of us.”
“My mother’s a Diamond,” I tell her. “She knows what she’s doing.”
“Did she give you that?” Busara asks, pointing at the thick manila envelope I have tucked into the top of my jeans.
“That’s just money.” I put the envelope on a side table. “She gave me this, too.” I pull out the slip of paper with the phone number on it. “It belongs to the lawyer of the movie director who was arrested while using OtherEarth. I was going to call him as soon as I got out of the museum, but I was too busy running from goats and feral hogs.”
Busara plucks the slip of paper out from between my fingers. “Why don’t you go lie down,” she says. “I’ll give the guy a call.”
“You sure?” I ask with another yawn. “You know what to say?”
“I’ll tell him I have information regarding his client’s arrest and I’ll set up a meeting.”
“Tell him you got his number from Irene Diamond,” I add. “They know each other from school.”
“No problem.” Busara tucks the slip of paper into the back pocket of her jeans and offers me a hand. “I’ll make sure to name-drop your mother. It’s great she could help us out like this.”
A strange question pops into my head as I rise to my feet. “Busara,” I say. “When Kat and Elvis are back and the headset players are gone, we should be able to rescue your dad. But what about your mother? Why don’t you ever talk about her?” I should have asked a long time ago. I guess I never thought of Busara as a friend before.
Suddenly the warm, caring girl is gone and the robot is back in her place. “Because I’m not worried about my mom.”
“Shouldn’t you be a little bit worried?” I ask. “I’m sure the Company would love to get their hands on her. Where is she, anyway?”
Busara stares at me. “She’s safe.” I can’t believe it. She’s not going to tell me.
“Forget it. I was just trying to be friendly.” I’m actually a bit hurt. For a second there, I thought our relationship might have taken a turn in the right direction.
“We are friends,” Busara says curtly. It’s her way of warning me not to push any farther. “Better friends than you know, Simon.”
I refuse to back down that easily. “Then why are you keeping secrets from me? Why can’t you tell me where your mom is? Or come clean about the fact that you love Elvis?”
Busara shoots me a nasty look. “I do not love Elvis.”
“Liar,” I say. “I saw you kiss him. You know I did.”
She rolls her eyes. “Says the guy who just got chased by a feral hog in Central Park. Go take a nap, Simon.”
“Busara.” I’m completely serious. “What the hell is going on?”
We’re standing face-to-face now. I expect her to tell me to leave her alone, but she doesn’t. “When I go to see my father in Imra, I think you should come with me.” I can’t imagine anything more completely left field.
“You’re changing the subject!” I argue.
“No,” she insists. “I’m not.”
The last thing I remember is falling asleep next to Kat, whose mind was still in Otherworld. I have no idea what time it was. I have no idea what time it is now, but Kat is no longer beside me. I’m still wearing the clothes I lay down in. I didn’t even have the energy to take my shoes off. I sit up and look around the room. Elvis is gone too. There are two Otherworld visors on the bedside table. Kat and Elvis are back from Otherworld.
I follow the smell of coffee into the suite’s living room.
“Simon!” Kat jumps up from one of the sofas. I take her in my arms and breathe her in. I don’t ever want to let her go. Right now, my feelings for her are the only things I know for sure are real.
“Is it over?” I ask her. “Are all the guests gone?”
“We went to every realm,” she tells me. “Places I had no idea existed. It took forever, but we got them all. There’s not a single guest left in Otherworld. The Children are safe.”
“So you don’t have to go back again?” I ask.
“No. I’m staying in the real world. This time for good.” She puts her lips to my ear and a ripple of pleasure runs through me. “Busara says she wants you to go with her to Imra to see her dad. You don’t have to, you know. It’s safe now. She’ll be fine on her own.”
“It’s okay,” I assure her. I’d rather go almost anywhere but Otherworld, but there’s something Busara wants me to see, and after our weird-as-hell conversation yesterday, I’m keen to find out what it is.
; “As long as you’re sure,” Kat says. She lets me go and steps to the side. Busara and Elvis are watching me. Elvis manages a half smile and an awkward wave. Busara just stares. God the girl can be weird when she wants to.
“You doing okay there, bro?” Elvis asks. Busara must have told them what happened at the museum.
“I’m fine,” I tell him. “I think I just let my blood sugar drop too low.”
He knows it’s a total lie, but like a good friend, he plays along. “Gotta keep those energy levels up.”
I nod and focus my attention on Busara. “Thanks for letting me sleep. Now that they’re back, you must be pretty anxious to go see your dad.” And I’d like to see what she wants to show me.
“It can wait awhile,” Busara tells me. “I feel like I haven’t talked to these guys in ages. I’ve been enjoying their company.” I might have imagined it, but I swear her eyes just darted over at Elvis. Maybe it was a confession of sorts. Maybe I’m just insane.
Elvis is twirling the OtherEarth glasses in his hand. He’s trying to get my attention. He wants me to ask.
“What have you been doing with those?”
“Just trying out the equipment Alexei left you. Busara told us about you and Dame Judi,” he says. “But there’s another feature I think you need to see.”
“You know what?” Kat jumps in. “Maybe we should let Simon have breakfast first.” She’s nervous, I can hear it.
“I’m totally fine,” I insist. “What is it?”
“A custom option. It usually costs money to unlock the feature, but after a while, I got around it. Took me a few hours to figure out how the scans are supposed to work. These things didn’t exactly come with an instruction manual.”
“Scans?” I ask.
Elvis holds out the glasses, and I almost recoil. I don’t want to touch them. I don’t want them anywhere near my face.
“You’ll be fine. You don’t have to wear the disk to get the idea,” he says.
I take the glasses and slip them on. There are now two Elvises in the room. One of them is the Elvis I know. The second is identical. He’s standing motionless, as if waiting for his first command. Elvis has copied himself.