The Universes Inside the Lighthouse

by Pam Stucky

  “Just a rock,” he said. “How do you know which wishing rocks are master keys and which aren’t?” He released the rock, and it fell gently back to Eve’s chest.

  “The first time,” Milo said, “it was an accident, as with many discoveries. We have these rocks on our planet, too. A woman—Eve’s great great aunt, actually—was carrying one in her pocket near an elevator on our planet. Not an elevator exactly like your elevators, but the same general idea, anyway. The rest, as you all say, is history. Luckily she was a scientist. Her curiosity was piqued. She studied the rock to see what, if anything, made it different from other rocks, and then created a test to discern a ‘master key’ rock from other rocks. You still have to find the rocks before you can test them. They’re hidden all over the universes, we’re discovering.”

  “We have a bowl of wishing rocks in our house,” said Ruby, shaking her head. “Lots of people in Wishing Rock do. There’s a bowl full in this cabin, even, isn’t there, Ed?”

  “I think so,” said Ed, and Amy Renee nodded slightly in recognition. She had seen the bowl of rocks, too.

  “Are you saying some of those might be keys?” Ruby asked.

  “Might be!” said Milo. “Everything is possible.”

  Ruby looked at Ed, eyes filled with incredulity. This was all a bit beyond belief.

  “We have a couple bowls of wishing rocks, too,” said Ben. “Does Dr. Waldo have a … a rock-testing station, I guess, in the Hub? Could we bring all our rocks there to test them, see if any of them will unlock the universe?”

  “Universes,” said Charlie, nodding. “Plural.”

  Ben looked at Eve. “Weird that it’s plural. Universes.”

  “I suppose, in theory, you could.” Milo frowned. “It feels a little like cheating, though.”

  “Cheating how?” asked Emma. It didn’t seem like cheating to her. What seemed like cheating was having a whole Hub at one’s disposal, and arbitrarily deciding who could and couldn’t get in. That seemed unfair. It wasn’t their Hub. Obviously, it belonged to everyone, or no one, but it wasn’t just theirs. She folded her arms across her chest.

  “Cheating, like, maybe you’re supposed to wait until the universes reveal themselves. You’re not supposed to force it. I’m not saying I know that’s how it is, but it seems it could be, doesn’t it? Things happen when they’re supposed to,” said Milo.

  “If that’s the case,” argued Emma, “then maybe this is how we’re supposed to find out. Or maybe it’s all just random anyhow. If you have a way to test wishing rocks, and your friend Vik has come here and disrupted our world with earthquakes and who knows what else, then it seems only fair that we get to travel around the universes too, if we can find the keys.”

  Hearing herself say those words, the reality of them hit Emma. The Hub was one thing. Another planet was another thing. Traveling through universes? It was almost more than her brain could handle.

  “Well,” said Eve, “some people think maybe we don’t even need the rocks. The brain is an amazing thing.” Her cheeks grew pink. “I mean, our brains are different from yours. I’m sure yours are just as advanced. But I’m talking about our brains. Dr. Waldo thinks our brains might not need the rocks. Yours, well, he hasn’t studied that, as far as I know.”

  Emma felt like a specimen. “Dr. Waldo has been studying us?”

  A big grin spread across Milo’s face. “Oh yes! He finds you all fascinating. He has a particular love for British television, the British accent. That show where the blue police booth flies through space, he loves that. He’s picked up on quite a few British phrases, as well as American, I’d say, though I’m not sure he always knows whether he’s using them right. He got the Hub all hooked up to tap into various television stations around your world, especially over there in the UK. When he has time off, he watches. He’s even taken to having himself a little tea time in the afternoon.”

  A swirl of questions formed in Emma’s mind. “The afternoon,” Milo said with such ease—but whose afternoon? How was time measured in the Hub? Did Milo and Eve’s planet have multiple countries, just like Earth? With multiple languages and accents? And not the least of all this was the question of why these aliens looked so very human-like; was that normal? Did “intelligent life” mean “human-like form”?

  “So what happens now?” asked Ed, interrupting Emma’s thoughts. “You didn’t find this guy. Do you keep looking?”

  “We keep looking,” said Milo with a deep sigh. “We don’t know what he could do. He’s not entirely himself right now. We need to return him home.”

  Ruby shook her head. “Did your government agree to that? I mean, are you just vigilantes? How do we know he’s not the good guy in this scenario? How do we know he’s not here to save us from you?”

  Milo shrugged his shoulders. “You don’t. I’d ask you to trust us, but we don’t need your trust. We just need to do our job. Vik is a danger to many beings, and we’re trying to stop him. That’s all there is to it.”

  “Will you stay here, on our island?” asked Ed.

  “We’ll look around this place and time for a bit longer,” said Milo, “then jump forward a bit. Jumping forward in time is easier than backward, at least with the technology and knowledge we’ve gained so far, so we’re moving forward in time slowly, trying to find evidence that Vik has been around. When we need to, we’ll travel backward in time. Dr. Waldo is convinced that Vik has reason to be here, on your Earth, or has been here at some point in time, but he can’t quite pinpoint it yet. So we continue our search.”

  “Can we search with you?” Charlie blurted out the question, but from the eager look on Ben’s face it was clear the idea had been on his mind, too.

  Amy Renee and Glen looked at each other. Their faces were easy to read, as well.

  “No,” said Glen. “Sorry kids, you can’t.”

  Ben looked at Ed and Ruby with defiance, as though they’d spoken and denied him the opportunity. “I’m eighteen. I can make my own decisions,” he asserted.

  Ed looked at Ruby, who was frowning, and back to Ben. “Not up to us,” he said. “But I’d hope you’d at least talk it over with your parents. Traveling the universe … universes … is a big deal, in a way.” He looked back to Ruby. “Uh, I don’t suppose I get to go either, do I?”

  She stared him down. “No, you do not. We are newlyweds. We just got married. You can’t go off to Mars. You need to stay here, with me.”

  Ed nodded. He looked at Milo. “You married?”

  “Not really,” said Milo. “It’s complicated.” He offered no further explanation.

  “Lucky you,” said Ed. Ruby punched him in the shoulder. “I was talking to myself, Rubes! I swear! Lucky me! I am lucky to be married to the most wonderful gal in all the universes! An opportunity to travel space and time is nothing compared to the opportunity to spend all my days with Ruby Parker Brooks! Lucky me, lucky me!” He grabbed Ruby around the waist and nuzzled a big kiss into her neck. “Lucky me, lucky me!”

  “Okay, okay!” said Ruby, laughing now. “You’re forgiven.”

  “You know,” said Milo to Ed, “Maybe you could help me search here on Earth. If the others want to go along with Eve, I trust her.” His words indicated all the teens, but he looked only at Ben. “She’s been at this long enough. She knows what she’s doing, and Dr. Waldo will be in the Hub to help her with anything she needs.”

  “Are you kidding me?” said Amy Renee. “Charlie and Emma are only seventeen. They’re staying home. Sorry, kids.”

  “Come on, Mom,” said Emma, who had realized the implications of Ben going off with Eve, without them. “We’re almost eighteen. This is like a really intense science class! Think of how much we’ll learn! They don’t teach this in school! You wouldn’t deny us that, would you?”

  “I would and will and do,” said Amy Renee. “And you’re not almost eighteen; you just turned seventeen last month. Sorry, kiddos. Earth it is for you.”

  “Well, I’m going,” sai
d Ben. “Eve, when do we leave? Where do we begin?”

  Eve glanced up at Ben with a mix of excitement and admiration.

  Charlie saw the glance.

  Emma saw the glance.

  Charlie and Emma exchanged a look: there was no way Ben and Eve were going off without them.

  chapter six

  Two days later, after Ed and Milo had eaten breakfast with the Nelsons, they’d gone off in search of any sign of Vik on the island. Ed had enlisted Wishing Rock’s resident psychic to see if she had any suggestions as to where they might look. Fascinated by the prospect, the woman had tried her best, but was not able to tune her abilities to the matter at hand. Still, she did suggest that they head to the less-explored northwest part of the small island. With nothing better to go on, Ed and Milo had donned sturdy hiking shoes, packed up their rucksacks, and headed off in Milo’s old truck to parts more or less unknown.

  After the men left the cabin, while the Nelson parents were busy putting the kitchen back in order after the morning meal, Charlie and Emma exchanged another look: now was the time.

  Emma grabbed the backpacks they’d covertly packed the day before. Charlie filled bottles of water for them in the kitchen. “Going on a bike ride,” he said to their mother, who was just closing up the dishwasher with the morning’s dirty dishes. He and Emma ran off before she could say a word.

  It was true. They were going on a bike ride. At least, that’s how the day was going to start.

  They whipped at maximum speed along the winding road to the lighthouse, where they first leaned their bikes against a short log fence that separated the path to the building from the parking lot.

  “But what if someone sees them?” said Emma.

  “There’s nothing wrong with our bikes being at the lighthouse,” said Charlie.

  Emma had to agree; technically no one had told them they couldn’t go to the lighthouse. Still, she moved her bike around to the back side of the lighthouse, and partially hid it behind a bush. Charlie followed suit without objection.

  Inside, they approached the storage room.

  The day before, Emma had gathered a handful of small wishing rocks at the beach. She didn’t hold out much hope that one of them might, by some random chance, be a master key to the universe, but seeing as they had no other key, no other way to get inside, she and Charlie had decided they may as well try. Drawing the stones out of her pocket, Emma waved them randomly in front of the door.

  Nothing happened.

  She tried again. Still nothing.

  “Let me try,” said Charlie. Emma handed over the rocks, wondering what it was about people that made them think their doing something might make it work, when someone else’s doing it hadn’t. It’s not as though Charlie had any more knowledge about the rocks than she had. It’s not as though Charlie could differentiate a wishing rock that was a key to the universe from one that wasn’t. They’d each only gotten the briefest look at Eve’s necklace, and Emma suspected Charlie’s attention had not been entirely on the rock that hung from Eve’s neck, as much as it may have been on what it lay on.

  Still, if there was any chance that he might figure out something she hadn’t—

  The storage room door opened.

  Charlie gasped.

  “What did you do? Which one did you use?” asked Emma.

  “I just—” and he waved his hand, filled with rocks, in front of the door as he’d done moments before, in a random path through the air.

  “That’s the same thing I did,” said Emma. Her face fell.

  Charlie saw her disappointment at her own failure. “I also chanted ‘aliens aliens aliens,’” he said. “Maybe that was it.”

  Emma raised her shoulders, then dropped them with a loud sigh. “Well, whatever you did, it worked. Let’s go in before it closes.”

  They walked inside the small room, which was much less cramped this time, with only the two of them in there. The door closed behind them, and darkness filled the room. Even the light from the crack where the door was seemed to disappear.

  “Did you happen to notice where the light switch was?” whispered Charlie. Emma knew he was standing right by her side, not two feet away, but she couldn’t see even a shadow of him.

  She shook her head “no,” then realized he couldn’t see her either. “No idea,” she said. “So, what now?”

  In the darkness Emma sensed movement and heard Charlie start up his soft chant again. “Aliens aliens aliens …”

  The door to the Hub opened. Emma and Charlie blinked rapidly as their pupils protested the sudden bright light.

  “Of all the things in the universe,” mumbled Emma, “and ‘aliens aliens aliens’ works.”

  “Universes,” said Charlie. “Plural. I’m magic, I guess, Em. I’ve been telling you for years. I’m special” He stepped into the Hub, where Eve and Dr. Waldo stood, waiting, looks of great amusement on their faces.

  “Special indeed,” said Emma under her breath.

  “Honeys, we’re home!” called out Charlie, smiling back at Eve’s effervescent grin as he approached the young woman. Her smile grew bigger.

  “Welcome back!” laughed Dr. Waldo. “Good, good. We don’t get many visitors. Delighted to have you here!”

  Emma looked at the bespectacled man with his short gray hair. Charlie may have been convinced of his own magic, but Emma was not. “Dr. Waldo, how is it possible that Charlie managed to unlock the storage room? And the Hub? What did he do that I didn’t do? It couldn’t be the chant,” she said. It couldn’t be. Rather, not that it couldn’t be, but Emma would have been disappointed with the universes if it were that simple.

  “No, no, no, my dear,” said Dr. Waldo, welcoming her and guiding her into the room with a gentle hand on her shoulder. “Of course not! Security cameras, you see. We have security cameras. We saw you coming. We opened the doors for you.”

  “Likely story,” said Charlie, with a wink to Eve.

  Did Eve blush? Emma thought maybe she had. Were all aliens quite so human-like? Emma wondered again, not sure if this would be a good thing or a bad thing. On the one hand, it would make things easier. She might have felt awkward having conversations with a giant talking lizard or a green blob with oversized eyes. Come to think of it, why were aliens so often depicted as green? Weren’t they? Or was she just remembering wrong? Who really knew, anyway? But then, if aliens were, in fact, real, and living here, on Earth, or next to it in the Hub, however that worked, and if, in fact, there were elevators all around the Earth, a handful of them at least, a smattering of elevators, then it could well be that other people had truly encountered aliens before, couldn’t it? There wouldn’t need to be spaceships, apparently; there needn’t have been UFOs. The question of the time it might take for aliens to even get to Earth became a moot point. Regardless of how long a spaceship might take to get to Earth, an elevator, apparently, took no time at all. Well, Emma thought, she didn’t know that. She hadn’t traveled in the elevator … yet.

  She felt the pressure of the weight of her backpack on her back. It seemed so insufficient for the adventure they were hoping to embark on. Having no idea what one might take along to travel the universes, she and Charlie had decided on a change of clothes, socks, underwear, some granola protein bars, and toothbrushes. Emma had argued that they should take along extra pairs of shoes, but Charlie convinced her it would just be extra weight. The things Emma usually took along on trips—books, her iPod, some money—seemed superfluous. Emma, a great keeper of lists, had a master packing list from which she packed for all trips. However, things like playing cards and an umbrella seemed so out of place when packing for universal travel as to be ridiculous. When she’d gotten to “insect repellant” on her list, Emma had almost backed out of the excursion entirely.

  “Insect repellant?” she’d said to Charlie, quietly. They’d been in her room at the cabin, him sitting on her bed and her on the floor, her empty plum-and-black backpack open before her. “Insect repellant!” she
’d repeated. “Who knows what kind of repellant we’ll need? What if there’s a planet with mosquitoes the size of horses? What if there’s a planet covered with spiders, Planet of the Spiders, angry spiders that can talk and kill?”

  Charlie had shaken his head. “What someone needs to invent,” he’d said, “is dangerous-alien repellent. Make note of that, please, to tell the committee.”

  “Noted,” Emma had said.

  Emma had not packed the insect repellant. What was the point? In the end, with so many unknowns, the options seemed to be either to bring everything and try to be prepared for every possible possibility (which was impossible), or to bring just the bare essentials, and wing it.

  And so, they would wing it. If, that is, they even went anywhere.

  Emma had, however, packed a notebook and pen for writing out her lists—she would have been lost without her notebook—and Charlie a tube of Chapstick, without which he would have felt something was missing. These went with them everywhere; part of the packing process. Notebook? Check. Chapstick? Check. Their packing, incomplete as it was, was done.

  As Emma and Charlie were looking around the Hub, trying to take in everything they hadn’t had time to notice before, the door from the storage closet opened again.

  There stood Ben.

  He, too, had a backpack on his shoulder, and a look of delight on his face that quickly transformed to confusion.

  “Emma? Charlie?” he said, walking to the chair next to Eve and setting his backpack on it. “Here to … look around?” he asked. His tone was hesitant. Emma’s mood deflated. Was he not happy to see her? Or maybe, she thought, he wasn’t happy to see Charlie.

  “Here to look around,” said Emma quietly, “and maybe come along.”

  “Your parents gave you permission, then?” said Ben, looking at Charlie.

  Charlie, bitterly aware that Ben had not technically had to ask for permission from his own parents, squirmed, but said nothing.

  “When Eve and Milo showed up at the cabin, they said they’d been gone a whole week. But it seemed like just an hour or so to us. We figured we could, you know, come along, and just be sure to time it so we’re back by dinnertime,” said Emma. She turned to Dr. Waldo. “You can do that, right? You can finagle that?”