Where the Hell is Tesla? A Novel

by Rob Dircks

  “So you guys didn’t go through the door?”

  “Nope. We got as far as the door, but we didn’t go in.”

  They stayed put. Man, these guys are smart. Smarter than us.

  “…because we couldn’t figure out the latch combination.”

  Or maybe not.

  For whatever reason – maybe the wristbands screw with your common sense – these guys couldn’t get 0-0-0-0. Duh. Points off, Alternate Me. But I still love him, so I go into protective-older-brother mode:

  “Well, that’s a good thing, because you can never go in.”

  “Wait. You’re not going to tell us the combination?”

  “Dude. What do you think? Did you not just see how crazy shit got when we visited your dimension?”

  “Right. So you guys get to have all the fun.”

  “You call this fun?”

  Alternate Chip knows I’m right. He’s got that look of true understanding. (Yes, believe it or not I sometimes have the look of true understanding, babe.) So we agree that they’re going to patch up the wall and destroy their copy of the journal, and we say our goodbyes. Then Pete and I step through the ITA (I refuse to type INTERDIMENSIONAL TRANSFER APPARATUS one more time). But something stops me. I stand halfway through the doorway and call Alternate Me over.

  “Hey, Chip, do you remember that time Julie came over, and she was joking about wedding dresses, how ugly they all were?”

  “Sure.”

  “Well, she’s full of shit. It’s her dream. She wants to marry you. And she’s perfect for you. She laughs at the same movies as you. She cries when she sees those abandoned dog commercials on TV. She eats your chili and says she likes it even tough it’s terrible. She made you a telephone out of two coffee cups and a string. And her smile is like… it’s like the sun. It’s warm and it’s bright, and there’s nothing that can hide from it. And she listens to you, dude. I mean, who does that? So you go right now and apologize for being a douche for the past two months. And you make it right. And you ask her to marry you. Do you hear me?”

  He thinks about it for a second. He nods. And what a sap, he’s got a little tear running down his cheek. But I do too, so who’s the sap?

  Julie, I know there’s a pretty good possibility I may never see you again, but I made it right. At least for one of an infinite number of Chips.

  That lucky bastard.

  5

  Lists Make Me

  Feel Better

  From: Chip Collins

  To: Julie Taylor

  Date: June 4, 2015 5:43am

  Lists make me feel better

  Hi Julie,

  I know you love my lists. I think this one is your current favorite:

  Top Ten Things I Love About Chinese Food:

  1. The names are funny (Cream of Sum Yung Gai).

  2. It’s delicious.

  3. It doesn’t try to pretend it’s good for you.

  4. It doesn’t matter if you over-order. After a couple of hours, you’re hungry enough to go back and finish the sesame chicken. And the lo mein. And the boneless spare ribs, etc.

  5. I can almost always get someone else to pay for it (Pete, you, my Mom, Ted, the options are pretty limitless).

  6. All movies are better with chinese food.

  7. Wong’s is literally right downstairs from my apartment. I can smell it from my bedroom.

  8. It’s the breakfast of champions.

  9. Free wine (only on dine-in orders, max of two glasses)

  10. Head-scratching fortunes (“Trees grow high, but never reach the sky.” Huh? What a downer!)

  So, since I have nothing but time at the moment (I’ve already written you three “Please Save Us” emails, I think that’s enough for now), and there’s nothing in this infinite hallway that’s interesting to look at, and I am DEFINITELY NOT opening up another one of these doors until I figure out what the fuck is going on, I’m going to write you some lists.

  Things I Did This Week:

  1. Started a shitty job as a security guard.

  2. Discovered the lost journal of Nikola Tesla.

  3. Pete punched me in the face.

  4. Destroyed a hotel wall with a plumber’s wrench.

  5. Entered a (very gray) interdimensional hallway.

  6. Almost killed, then befriended, a furry alien.

  7. Met a version of myself from another dimension. (Who was not bad looking, btw)

  8. Escaped from an Evil Cop using a metal weapon taken from a dimension filled with blue trees. (I’m laughing. How can you type that without laughing?)

  9. Realized I love you. (It’s okay if you shed a tear here)

  10. Somehow avoided death.

  Wow. Pretty bitchin week, right? I’m actually kind of proud of myself. Although I’m pretty sure Pete’s not proud of me. In fact, I’ve compiled Pete’s top comments today.

  Pete’s Top Six Comments to Me Today:

  1. “Fuck you.”

  2. “What are you, an idiot?”

  3. “Really? Really?”

  4. “Well, here we are, ‘reposing’ in the hallway they’ll find our dead bodies in. Thanks, dude.”

  5. “Shhh! What the fuck was that?”

  6. “Hey, are you writing these down?”

  He sort of smiles when he says that last one, though, so I think we’re still okay. And we kind of have to be, right? This is it. Just me and Pete. Pete and me. Just the two of us.

  And Bobo!

  He’s back! The man with the plan! (I know, that doesn’t make any sense, but I’m happy to see him). I swear if he had a tail he’d be wagging it like crazy. He runs over (and yes, humps my leg again), and it’s like a puppy rescue or something. Even Pete is smiling and petting him. Wow. Okay. Energy’s a little higher, we’re all happy for the moment. So we decide (not Bobo, I’m not so sure about his decision-making skills) to take stock, get our extreme survival mojo going. First – what are our resources?

  Chip and Pete’s Current Resources:

  1. Bobo (does he count as a resource?)

  2. One really big plumber’s wrench

  3. One metal weapon thingy (you know what? I’m going to call it the Shogun. Like some insane futuristic samurai weapon. Cool, right? “Hand me the Shogun, Luke.”)

  4. One old journal

  5. One cell phone

  6. One cell phone charger from CVS

  7. Three wallets (we stole Alternate Pete’s for some extra cash in case we need it down the road. And don’t judge me. Those guys will be fine. They’re better off than us.)

  We think we’ve got Bobo figured out – as in not-much-to-figure-out – so the only thing on our list that’s a question mark is the Shogun. (Pete digs the name, so we’re sticking with it.) Based on its shape, how we’ve seen it used (flung at my face from another dimension), and what happened with Evil Cop (he pressed a button and then touched the tip), we put together this:

  Official Shogun Quick Start Guide:

  Step 1. Press desired button.

  Step 2. Fling at enemy.

  Step 3. When tip touches enemy, they will ______.

  We already know what button number one does: freeze. (Not freeze like cold, freeze like freeze-dance. Like “FREEZE, PUNK!” I know, you get it). But what do the other buttons do? How do we test it? I sure as hell am not risking my life. And Pete’s looking at me, and dammit, I know exactly what he’s thinking:

  Bobo.

  “Come on, he’s indestructible. That wrench literally would’ve killed your average bear.”

  “Dude, come on, he doesn’t deserve this.”

  “Chip. I popped Bobo with everything I had, and look at him. What’s he doing right now?”

  “He’s licking your hand.”

  “He loves me. And I tried to kill him.”

  “Yeah, but you know the last time I trusted your instincts I got a Shogun flung at me.”

  “Fine. You got a better idea?”

  And actually, I don’t. I’m too busy making lists, try
ing to maintain enough control so the next time something weird happens (a virtual guarantee) I don’t piss my pants again. So I agree and we test all the buttons on Bobo. Being the pseudo-scientists we are, we of course repeat the first button to see if it has the same effect. Yup. Frozen solid. Bobo-sickle. For like a half an hour. We get so bored waiting at one point we play Bobo Curling. (His fur is really almost frictionless, and the floor of the hallway is pretty smooth, so of course Pete wins by like four hundred yards, and of course we play loser-drags-Bobo’s-body-to-the-starting-line, so now of course my back hurts.)

  Anyway, we now have the Shogun, a weapon capable of some pretty cool shit.

  Pretty Cool Shit the Shogun Can Do:

  Button 1: Freeze.

  Button 2: Electrocute.

  Button 3: Stun with sound wave blast. (Our ears are still ringing. Holy cow, if you ever want to wake the neighbors a mile away this is perfect.)

  Button 4: Some kind of field, like force bubble or something. It traps you. Let’s go with “Field Trap.”

  Button 5: Nothing. (Maybe you only get a certain number of rounds? Maybe we got a bad unit?)

  And there’s Bobo, after all this, still licking Pete’s hand. I’m trying not to think Bobo’s a masochist, but Pete’s the one dishing out the punishment, and he’s the one getting his hand licked. And yeah, I’m a little jealous. I’ll admit it.

  Okay, so we’ve got our resources. What’s next? The lay of the land. Let’s get a really good look at this hallway, and see what we’re dealing with.

  Things to Know About the INTERDIMENSIONAL TRANSFER APPARATUS (ITA):

  1. It’s gray. Grayer than any gray you’ve ever seen.

  2. Every six feet is a door on both sides of the hallway. Also gray.

  3. Each door has a latch (guess what color) with a 4-digit luggage lock that automatically resets to a random number when you close it. Nice touch.

  4. The Universal Combination is 0-0-0-0 (I know, hard to commit to memory, but try)

  5. There are power outlets. Yes, believe it or not, Tesla designed this whatever-it-is with regular power outlets every twenty feet, like he thought the help – the STAFF! – might need to come in once in a while and vacuum. So now I can charge my phone, and if we had a toaster oven, we could heat up our pizza. If we had pizza.

  6. The lighting is weird. Well, I mean, EVERYTHING is weird, but we can’t figure out the lighting. There are no fixtures and no shadows, so you can’t really place where it’s coming from. It’s just there. The good news (yes, this is what I’m considering good news these days) is that it’s on the warm side, not like fluorescent lights. It’s like a glow sort of. A warm, dim glow. Hey, I’ve never written about light before – I feel like an interior designer: “Let’s put the dim glow in the corner. No, let’s put it EVERYWHERE. It’ll be fabulous.”

  7. The hallway is infinite. Self-explanatory. Tesla must have designed how it would look, but he couldn’t have built it. It’s infinite. (Have I mentioned it’s infinite?)

  8. The different dimensions behind the doors are not totally random. Almost, but not quite. Here’s how we figure it out (Yes! I get to do a SUB-list.):

  A) We put Bobo in front of the doors.

  B) We open the doors and wait for Bobo to be attacked, or sucked into a vortex, or killed.

  C) When we get the all clear, me and Pete check out the view. And let me tell you, you expect these dimensions to be similar, right? WRONG. One door will lead to a room full of 10-foot-tall orange guys playing craps (“Sorry boys, get back to what you were doing”), and the next will be the frigid vacuum of space (we close the door quick on those before Bobo gets sucked out). And we start to see how infinite the possibilities are. Like for that vacuum of space one: maybe in that dimension the Earth didn’t quite form right, or maybe it got destroyed by an asteroid that happened to be one degree off its course a million years ago. And there we are opening up a doorway to the exact spot in the universe where the hotel room should be. But there never was a hotel room. Or a Hotel New Yorker. Or New York City. Or Earth.

  BUT…

  Every ten or so, we open a door to sheetrock – the inside wall of the hotel closet. Not the same dimension, obviously, but close. Like Tesla got through the ITA, and the hotel covered it up, but somewhere along the line me and Pete never got there. Maybe I never found the journal. Or maybe Pete talked me out of it. Or maybe I got into college and actually did something with my life, so I didn’t have to go get that shitty security guard job in the first place. Again, infinite possibilities.

  It goes on like that, every ten or so doors are the hotel room. So it’s not totally random. But we haven’t hit another one where the closet wall is down and we can see into the room. Why? Are we the ONLY Chip and Pete that have figured this out? The ONLY ones to get this far? The ONLY ones that know the default combination on a luggage lock? Wow, we’re pretty awesome, huh? So I’m standing there feeling like the Smartest Chip across all dimensions, and Pete interrupts my special moment.

  “Hey. Snap out of it. Check this out.”

  It’s another hotel room with the wall down. But this time we’re not jumping up and down. We’re learning fast that this could be home, but it could also be the lair of Evil Cop Two.

  We backtrack to the last dimension we actually entered (where we met Alternate Me and Alternate Pete). BTW, for reference, we’ve been scratching numbers and notes on each of the doors as we go:

  Door #1: Evil Cop (but Chip and Pete are cool)

  Door #2: Dangerous Blue Forest

  Door #3: 10-Foot Tall Orange Guys Playing Craps

  Door #4: Frigid Vacuum of Space DO NOT OPEN… etc…

  Door #83. That’s the next one with the wall down. Mathematicians that we are, we guess that every 83 doors or so might be our ticket home. 83. Our new lucky number. Not as funny as 69 would have been, or as clean as 100, but it’s better than a million, so it’ll do.

  We step into the doorway, and Bobo starts tugging at Pete’s pants leg. He won’t let go.

  “Bobo. What the fuck? Down, boy.”

  “Ha. Who’s married now?”

  “Fuck you.”

  Pete pries himself loose and gives Bobo this really stern look.

  “Now listen, Bobo, I don’t know if you can understand me. But me and Chip have to see if this is our home. We need to get home. Don’t you want to find your home?”

  Bobo just stands there staring at Pete with those giant Bambi eyes. Blink. Blink. Pete’s tough-guy act is falling apart.

  “Okay, listen, I promise. No matter what, we’ll either bring you with us, or we’ll help you find your home, too. I promise. Got it?”

  Blink. Blink.

  “Shit. Whatever. Just stay here until we get back.”

  We step through into the hallway, and we’re immediately assaulted. By a smell. What the fuck is that SMELL? It’s like a thousand acres of horse shit with a thousand gallons of Eau de French Whore poured on top. Peee-eeww. I’m thinking it’s Pete.

  “Dude. Did you fart?”

  “Fart? Are you serious? Dude, that’s an insult even to your grandma’s farts.”

  “Hey. That’s my grandma you’re talking about.”

  “Yeah. And her farts were like a nuclear blast over a city built out of manure. And this is worse.”

  “Wait. You remember my grandmother’s farts? She’s been dead for like ten years.”

  “Dude. They’re burned into my olfactory memory. I will never forget. But like I said, this is worse. So can we get the fuck going?”

  We’re both gagging, so we bury our noses into our elbows and make our way downstairs to scope out whether this is home or not. But that smell is NOT going away. Man, is somebody’s grandma walking around all the hallways farting?

  We walk over to the concierge desk, and the girl has her back to us, oblivious to not only us but the stench. How? So I tap the little bell thingy and Pete asks:

  “Excuse me, what is that SMELL?”

  The gi
rl turns around, and we both yelp. Julie, it’s not that she’s ugly. It’s worse. She is literally covered with these sores and pustules, head to toe. Purples, reds, oranges, greens – the most disgusting rainbow of skin color I’ve ever seen. And I can literally see the stench rising off her. Yikes. I’m practically throwing up in my mouth.

  “Uh, Gentlemen. Are you all right? Your skin… it’s… deformed. And I believe the smell may be you, I’m sorry to say it’s foul. Do you need me to call a doctor?”

  OUR skin? OUR smell? WE’RE foul? This girl is crazy. And then the manager walks over and the crazy really starts.

  “Miss Barber, is there a prob- OH MY DEAR LORD. Sirs, I’m embarrassed to ask, but may I help? You’ve obviously been horribly disfigured by some disease, and your… aroma. Something needs to be done.”

  Me and Pete give each other the look: MUST GET BACK. DIMENSION #83 IS NOT HOME.

  I pull my elbow down to respond to the guy, and a full blast of his stench hits me. So instead of saying something smart, I puke right on his suit. Pete actually laughs.

  “Holy shit. You just did that.”