Hawking's Hallway

by Neal Shusterman

  It took half an hour to reach the house. When the lights hit it, there was no mistaking what it was.

  It lay there like the farmhouse in Oz, misplaced in a fundamentally surreal way. The door was wedged halfway open, many of the shingles had come off of the roof, and fish swam in and out of broken windows.

  The submersible came to rest on the floor of the lake bed, just a few feet away from the housewreck.

  “All right,” said Mack the Fork. “Send in our little friend.”

  The pilot, with his hands deftly on the controls, sent the smaller robot submersible in through the front door. On a screen before them, they could see everything inside the house. The living room was in ruins—broken china, overturned sofa and chairs, a grandfather clock on its side, its face smashed.

  “Don’t ye love it, boy?” said Mack the Fork. “It’s like the Titanic, but with a house.”

  The robot claws grabbed a fallen drawer, tossing it aside. But beneath it were only the remains of books, open and undulating in the turbulence like anemone.

  “Are ye sure it was here?” asked Mack the Fork.

  “Watusi we leekifer?” the pilot asked.

  “We’re looking for a globe,” Vince reminded him. “A steel globe.”

  But it didn’t seem to be anywhere.

  “Could anyone else have been down here?” Vince asked. “Maybe people in pastel suits?”

  Mack the Fork shook his head. “Anybody dives this loch, I know about it.”

  Vince closed his eyes, trying to recall the hole left in the ground when the house had disappeared. The field had extended only to the front door but all the way into the backyard, taking half of the garage. He opened his eyes.

  “It’s toward the back of the house,” he said. “Maybe in the kitchen.”

  As the robot made its way down the hall it bumped into a display shelf, creating a hailstorm of collectible thimbles from various countries.

  In the kitchen, the oven had fallen over, glassware had crashed to the floor, and there, just beside the overturned kitchen table, was a metallic sphere.

  “Yarooga,” the pilot said.

  Mack the Fork nodded. “Eureka, indeed.”

  The robot gently grabbed the globe and slipped it into its catch net.

  Vince released his breath, realizing he’d been holding it for at least five minutes. He hoped his companions hadn’t noticed.

  “Awright,” said Mack the Fork with a satisfied grin. “Let’s bring it home.”

  The lake was not so deep that they needed a decompression chamber to surface. A good thing too, considering what was waiting for them when they arrived.

  No sooner had they opened the hatch than a shotgun was aimed right in Mack the Fork’s face, turning him into Mack the Incontinent.

  “Awrite, MacHeath,” said the old man with the gun. “Fine afternoon for a dive, is it?”

  “What in blazes is wrong with ye, Bertie? Point that thing somewhere else.”

  “Step on up to the dock,” called Bertie. “It’s not ye I’m after.”

  Vince heard all this and hoped beyond hope that someone had a vendetta against the pilot, but he was pretty sure that wasn’t the case.

  When Vince emerged, the old fisherman with the shotgun smiled. “Is he the one?” he said to a woman sitting in a motorboat behind him.

  She squinted and shook her head. “No,” she said, “he’s not the one from the garage sale. This is someone else.”

  “Well, one American kid’s as good as another.” The fisherman gestured with the shotgun toward the globe caught in the submersible’s net. “Bring that thingy and come with us.”

  Vince stood his ground. “And if I don’t?”

  “You don’t want to follow that path, laddie. Scotsmen don’t bluff.”

  “Ay, that’s true,” Mac the Fork said solemnly.

  For a moment Vince wondered what would happen if the man did blow a hole in his chest and he just kept on living. That might scare them all off. But then he’d have a hole in his chest, and that couldn’t be a good thing.

  Ultimately he realized he could tweak this situation to his advantage, because here was the woman who had used the globe, and she was the only one who could tell him exactly how it worked.

  So he gathered up the globe and stepped into the launch. The old fisherman left the others with a stern warning to speak nothing of this, then he guided the boat to the north end of the lake.

  On Sunday morning, Nick dressed in his best clothes. And since all of his clothes were picked out by Edison, they looked like something a boy would wear to church in 1912. Corduroy slacks, suspenders, and a heavy tweed jacket, all mud brown.

  “You look very dapper,” Edison told Nick, whatever that meant.

  It would be somewhat humiliating to be seen by his father and brother while dressed like this, but at least he was going to see them.

  “Do they know I’m coming?” Nick asked as they rode in Edison’s old-school travel coach, with windows dark enough to protect the ancient man’s delicate skin from the sun.

  “No,” Edison said. “They were not informed.”

  “Oh,” said Nick. “So it’ll be a surprise.”

  Edison nodded. “In a manner of speaking.”

  “Where are we going?” Nick asked.

  “Your father has a new job, not too far from here. He’s working at Princeton.”

  They drove through a neighborhood at the edge of the university, just past the fraternity and sorority houses, and parked.

  And there they were, out in front of a small, unassuming home. His father was throwing a baseball to Danny, and Danny was catching with a mitt that did not pull meteorites out of the sky.

  Nick’s heart missed a beat. Edison had been telling the truth. Here they were; they looked happy, they looked healthy.

  That should have been Nick’s first indication that something was wrong. Because they shouldn’t have been happy. He was missing from their lives. The Wayne Slate that Nick knew would have left no stone unturned trying to find his son. But Nick was so glad to see them, he didn’t consider that such normal behavior was not normal at all.

  Edison put a hand on Nick’s shoulder. “You see? There’s nothing to worry about.”

  Nick tried to open the car door but couldn’t. It was securely locked.

  “Driver,” Edison called out, “we’re done here. It’s time to go.”

  “What? No! Wait!” Nick pounded on the door.

  “I promised you could see them, and you have. Now it’s time to leave.”

  “No!” Nick wailed, and he climbed over Edison, opened the other door, and jumped out.

  “Nick, you can’t!” Edison said. “You don’t understand.”

  But he had come this far; he wasn’t going to let Edison stop him now.

  He ran to the yard where they were playing, pushed his way through the picket gate, and threw his arms around his father.

  “I’m so glad you’re okay!” Nick said, tears springing to his eyes.

  “Whoa,” said Wayne Slate. “What’s all this?”

  And from ten yards away, Nick heard Danny say, “Dad, why is some kid hugging you?”

  That was enough to make Nick let go. He looked up, and saw something in his father’s eyes that he couldn’t explain. Not love, not even surprise. Just…nothing.

  “Dad?” said Nick.

  “I’m sorry, kid, I think you’re a little confused.”

  “He called you Dad,” said Danny. “What’s up with that?”

  “I wish I knew,” said Mr. Slate. Then he looked down at Nick, still baffled. “Is this some kind of joke?”

  Nick backed away. “What are you talking about? How can you not remember?”

  Danny stood there, glaring at Nick, offended by the intrusion.

  “Is he crazy?” asked Danny. “Should I call 911?”

  “No,” said Mr. Slate, and he looked kindly down at Nick. “I think you just made a mistake, didn’t you, son?”

&
nbsp; “That’s right—son,” Nick insisted. “I’m your son.”

  Then his father’s attitude turned just the slightest bit chilly. “All right, enough of that. It’s not funny anymore.”

  That’s when Edison’s driver came up behind Nick and grabbed him. “We have to go now.”

  Nick struggled, but only slightly, because his heart wasn’t really in it. How could his heart be in anything when it was shattered?

  “Well, that was weird,” Nick heard Danny say as he was pulled away.

  Then they continued throwing the ball as if it had never happened.

  In a moment, Nick was back in the car with Edison, crying tears of betrayal and fury. He wanted to be angry at his father and brother, but he knew it wasn’t their fault that they couldn’t remember him.

  “What did you do to them?” he demanded.

  Edison sighed heavily. “Their memories of you weren’t helping anybody,” he told Nick. “If we didn’t do something about it, they would have created a great deal of trouble for themselves. This way they can lead productive, happy lives, and never be the wiser. And you can be free to find your destiny, which lies on a very different path from theirs.”

  “How could you do that?” Nick said, forcing his tears to stop. “How could you rob me from my family?”

  “Serving the greater good is not always easy,” Edison told him.

  “I hate you,” Nick said, looking him square in the eye.

  Edison accepted that with a nod. “I suppose I’ll have to live with that.” Then he signaled his driver to take them home.

  Danny Slate and his father continued to toss the ball back and forth, but that thing with the strange kid had left them both a little distracted.

  What struck Danny most about it was there had been something weirdly familiar about him. “What do you think that was all about?” he asked his dad after the ball had passed between them three or four times.

  “Darned if I know.”

  That kid made Danny recall their short time in Colorado Springs. He tried to place him back there, but the fact was, he couldn’t place anyone there.

  He knew they had moved to Colorado Springs; he knew he had gone to school there for a month and a half; but although he vaguely remembered faces, he couldn’t think of a single name. Not his teachers, not his friends. So if he had wanted to call them, he couldn’t, because he couldn’t remember who they were. Was that normal?

  The more he considered it, the more anxious he became. He felt the same uneasiness every time he thought about the weird house he and his dad had lived in. Something had happened there. Something not too nice.

  And that brought him back to the fire just a few months before that, the one that had taken his mom’s life, leaving him and his dad alone. Something was missing from that memory too.

  There was a moment, he remembered, just as they were about to leave Colorado, when Danny had a flash that made him gasp. But it was gone too quickly for him to hold on to it. All he had now was the memory of having had a memory. It happened just as he went through the metal detector at the airport. He’d never told his dad about it, because it was hard to put into words. But, for some reason, seeing that kid come out of nowhere and hug his father had made him think of it.

  Now his father was just standing there, pondering the ball in his mitt, his eyebrows furrowed, clearly with the same unsettled feeling that Danny had. He looked up at Danny and sighed.

  “Wanna go grab some lunch?”

  “Yeah,” Danny said, even though he had suddenly lost his appetite.

  Approximately seventy students had signed up for Rocky Point Middle School’s Washington, D.C., trip; an opportunity to explore the nation’s capital, visit museums, and, if the more politically minded students had their way, harass their congress-person. Mitch and Caitlin, however, had a very different agenda.

  While a huge amount of documentation was required for children to fly in a group—permission letters, birth certificates, and the like—buying two train tickets from Washington, D.C.’s Union Station to Princeton, New Jersey, required nothing but cash and, as Caitlin observed from the other people in line, barely half a brain.

  Their escape from the larger group had been simple: arrive in D.C. on Monday morning, check into the hotel and go to their rooms like everyone else; then leave their rooms and sneak out of the hotel while the others were still bleary-eyed from their overnight flight.

  Madness, of course, would ensue when the teachers and parent chaperones noticed that two of the kids were missing. But luckily for Caitlin and Mitch, none of that madness would concern them until they returned and faced the music—music that would no doubt be about as pleasant as Tesla’s clarinet.

  There was a train nearly every half hour from D.C. to New York, and nearly every one of them stopped in Princeton. They arrived there early in the afternoon, right around the time their school group would realize they were gone.

  “What if they file a missing persons report or something?” Mitch, always the worrier, asked.

  “Mitch, you’re a genius,” said Caitlin. And then she scrolled through her phone and found a decent photo of Nick. “We’ll use this picture and print up a missing persons flyer, and if anyone in Princeton has seen him, they’ll call us.”

  “But what if the Accelerati see it and call us?” Mitch asked.

  Caitlin looked grim. “That’s a chance we’ll have to take.”

  Math was not Caitlin’s best subject, but she knew that when two equidistant objects approach the same point, the one moving faster will get there first.

  There were two entrances to the Princeton copy shop. In one door stood an African American teenager holding what looked like a thousand-page thesis.

  At the other door stood Caitlin, holding her flash drive containing the missing persons flyer she had designed on her tablet.

  The clerk stood bored at the counter, not caring who got there first.

  There were two copy machines behind him. One had been pulled apart, and a repairman had his head deep inside, as if being devoured by it. The second machine sat there, ready for a job.

  Caitlin eyed the teen at the other door. He eyed her back. And the race to the counter began.

  The teen was tall, his legs long, and all things being equal, he could have covered the distance faster, but he was hindered by the huge, clumsy manuscript in his arms, and he had to circle the laminating station directly in his path.

  Caitlin darted forward, dodged an exiting UPS man, bumped a woman trying to decide which color Post-its she wanted, and shouldered her way to the counter a split second before the kid with the thesis got there.

  “Oh, man,” said the teen. “You can’t do that. I was here first.”

  “Well,” said Caitlin, “as I’m in front of you, apparently not.”

  “But you came in after me.”

  “Your presence in the vicinity does not guarantee you the first place in line.”

  Caitlin held her flash drive out to the clerk, who didn’t seem interested in helping either of them.

  Then the teen said, “Hey, Bob, could you help me out here? My mom needs five copies of this treatise right away.”

  But Caitlin chimed in simultaneously with “I only have one digital page to copy. It’ll go a lot faster.”

  Bob the copy clerk looked from one to the other with well-practiced indecisiveness.

  “If you serve him first,” Caitlin said, “it’s blatant sexism.”

  “And if he serves you first, it’s blatant racism!”

  Caitlin backed off a bit. “Look,” she reasoned with the teen, “I only need thirty copies of a single page. On a high-speed copier it will take less than a minute.”

  He plopped the large treatise on the counter and caved. “Fine.”

  So Bob the clerk plugged Caitlin’s flash drive into the machine, it spat out nine copies, and then promptly broke down.

  The teen with the treatise looked at the blinking red error message. “You gotta be k
idding me!” he howled.

  “Sorry, dude,” the clerk said. “There’s always the Office Depot in Plainsboro.”

  The teen grabbed the tome from the desk and glared at Caitlin. “This is all your fault,” he said, and stormed out.

  Mitch, who had been helping the Post-it woman pick up the fallen display, finally reached the counter. “You got them?” he asked.

  Bob the clerk handed Caitlin the nine copies.

  “That’s a dollar thirty-five,” Bob said.

  “These will have to do for now,” Caitlin said to Mitch.

  “Okay,” Mitch said. “After we put them up, let’s go to the math department. Someone there has to know something about that random number algorithm.”

  Mitch read the words on the flyer above the photo of Nick. “‘Have you seen this boy?’ That sounds so sad.”

  “It’s supposed to,” Caitlin told him. “It makes people sympathetic.”

  They turned to leave but never made it to the door, because when the repairman pulled out the crumpled copy that was still stuck on the drum, he shouted to them, “Hey, wait! I’ve seen this boy!”

  Caitlin and Mitch turned to him, and for a moment they just stared in stunned silence.

  The copy-machine repairman was Wayne Slate.

  Stephen Hawking notes that the history of science has been the slow realization that things are not random or arbitrary; instead, they reflect a profound underlying order.

  To even suggest, therefore, that Caitlin and Mitch’s encounter with Wayne Slate was mere coincidence would foolishly contradict the wisdom of the greatest mind of our time. They knew he was a copy-machine repairman; they knew he was being closely monitored by the Accelerati; and they knew that the Accelerati were somehow connected to Princeton.

  Add all that to the interconnected nature of the universe, and the question becomes: Why didn’t they run into him sooner?

  Slowly Caitlin and Mitch approached the counter, only half believing what they saw.

  “Yeah,” said Mr. Slate, holding the flyer, “he came to my house yesterday.”

  Caitlin had gathered enough of her wits to say, “Mr. Slate?”

  “Do I know you?” he asked.