Hawking's Hallway

by Neal Shusterman

  “What happened?” everyone was asking. “What went wrong?” they wondered, just as Jorgensen, atop the tower, vanished as well.

  Nick spoke up. “I don’t think anything went wrong,” he said. “I don’t think it’s supposed to stay in the same place for long.”

  “Right!” said Zak, the first to catch on. “Or else why would it have a teleporter built into its central design?” Then he sat at a computer console and began typing away. A map of the world appeared on the screen. “Com satellites are constantly monitoring energy around the globe, and I just hacked the data,” he said. “This is a live shot of the planet’s energy output.”

  The map clearly showed an extremely bright circle around the New York area, centered in Shoreham, but as they watched, a second spot began to develop—this one near Shanghai.

  “The F.R.E.E.’s in China?” asked Caitlin. They watched the bright circle expand there for a few more seconds.

  “No, look,” said one of the Accelerati, peering over their shoulders. Another spot showed up in Iceland. Then another one in West Africa, and then another in South America. Around them the Accelerati leaped into action, settling behind different computer screens to study each of the regions more closely.

  It was Z who figured it out. “It’s random!” she said. “It’s jumping to a new location every twenty seconds! It must be using a random number algorithm to set its coordinates!”

  Nick smiled. “It’s distributing power around the world.”

  “But what about Jorgenson?” Caitlin asked.

  “That teleportation field was supercharged enough to have a wake,” Z said. “He must have been caught in it and pulled in, the way a sinking ship sucks down everything around it.”

  “Oh no!” said Mitch, turning to Zak. “Remember when we tried to crack your mom’s algorithm, and catch up with it? The closest we could ever get was—”

  This time it was Zak who finished Mitch’s sentence. “—nine-point-three seconds!” Now Jorgenson was caught in the F.R.E.E.’s teleportation wake, and he would never catch up with it. He would forever be nine-point-three seconds behind it.

  “Well, Nick,” said Caitlin, “it looks like Jorgenson won’t be around to bother you anymore.”

  But when she turned to Nick, he was gone, having vanished as completely as Jorgenson.

  Nick’s disappearance was not the effect of a latent teleportation echo. It was caused by his own two feet.

  The others could marvel at the F.R.E.E., and theorize about its journey, but Nick’s connection to the machine was broken. His mission—his obsession—to complete it had turned off the moment the machine had turned on. It no longer needed him, but more significantly, he no longer needed it. There were far more important things to do now. At least as far as his life was concerned.

  He found his father and Danny in the street, making their way toward Wardenclyffe’s main gate. Danny was limping and moaning, still pretending that he had sprained his ankle.

  “Nick!” His father ran to Nick when he saw him, and gave him a heartfelt hug. “What happened? Are you okay? Where’s everyone else?”

  “Everyone’s fine,” Nick said. Then took a deep breath. “Actually, better than fine.”

  Neither his father nor his brother knew what was coming. He was bursting to tell them—but wanted to break the news properly. The return of Natalie Slate to the world was a gift, and it should be presented as one. Fortunately, Nick had had several months to properly wrap it.

  Evangeline Planck hadn’t been able to take “the long way home,” as she had put it. But Nick had. He’d had a whole five months to spend with his mom, and to consider his eventual return to Wardenclyffe Tower.

  The first order of business was to go to Colorado Springs, break into the dusty old Victorian before his family moved in, and dig through the “junk” in the attic until he found the blender lid. After everything else he’d been through, retrieving the lid was remarkably easy. As he left the attic, he reflexively moved the toaster to a less precarious position, then laughed at himself, and put it right back where he found it.

  As time travel turns hindsight into foresight, Nick knew that they wouldn’t be spotted or found, even if they stayed in Colorado Springs, but to do so would taunt the space-time continuum, and that was probably not a good idea.

  So they avoided all places that were familiar and took an extended vacation, traveling the country, just mother and son. The next stop on their journey was Las Vegas.

  As it turns out, knowledge of the future, even if it isn’t all that specific, is enough to make one financially stable. Nick didn’t know anything about which stocks to invest in—but he did know which team won the Super Bowl, and which games the Tampa Bay Rays won early in baseball season. After a few well-placed bets, they had enough money to live comfortably for the next few months.

  They were perhaps the only two people on the planet who were unfazed when it was announced that Celestial Object Felicity Bonk was on a collision course with Earth. They were not at all surprised when, about a month later, Colorado Springs was fried by a massive electrical discharge.

  And when Nick returned to Shoreham, New York, he was ready to pick up exactly where he had left off. After spending all that time in the past, it felt strange to not know what would happen next—but exhilarating as well. And the first thing he bought when he arrived in town was a grappling hook.

  Now, nearly half a year older than he had been ten minutes ago, he stood with his father and brother just outside the gate of the Wardenclyffe complex, and dangled a key on a key chain.

  “We’ve been living here in Shoreham for more than a month now,” he said, casually. “Down this street, then turn right at the light. Fourth house on the left.”

  His father looked at him dubiously. “More than a month? But didn’t you just get here?”

  “Yes and no,” Nick answered. “There’s someone waiting for both of you there. She wanted to come, but I convinced her it was best if she waited.”

  Danny looked to his brother, his expression a little scared, and a little excited. “Dad, look at the key chain….”

  So he did. It was the type of photo key chain you can get made at any pharmacy. This one had a picture of Nick’s mom on it. She was standing in front of the aurora, which had not been visible this far south until after the house fire.

  His father’s breath became unsteady.

  “Nick…you couldn’t possibly be suggesting…”

  “I’m not suggesting anything,” Nick said, and closed his father’s hand around the keys.

  That’s when Caitlin came out through the gate. “You could have told someone you were leaving! Everyone’s looking for you. Z and Zak thought you got caught in another teleportation wake or something.” Then, seeing Nick’s father, she added, “I’m glad you survived your birthday-suiting, Mr. Slate.”

  He didn’t respond. He was still looking at the key in his hand.

  “The address is Forty-two George Avenue,” Nick told his father and Danny. “Can’t miss it—it’s the only blue house on the block.”

  Mr. Slate finally looked up, nodded at Caitlin, and then turned to head down the street. Danny lingered for a moment. “Do you remember the secret handshake I taught the part of you that was younger than me?”

  “You mean this one?” Nick reached out his hand, and gave Danny the secret handshake—but apparently that wasn’t enough for Danny, because without any warning he launched himself at Nick and hugged him with such force it almost took them both down.

  When Danny let go, he backed away, embarrassed. “That’s just in case they make me forget you again,” he said. Then he ran off to catch up with his father.

  “What was that all about?” Caitlin asked Nick.

  Nick smiled. “Family stuff,” he said. “Speaking of which, you should call your parents. Tell them you helped save the world, and you’ll be home soon.”

  “Don’t you mean helped save the world again?”

  Nick
laughed. “Let’s hope this was the last time.”

  On July 10, 1856, Petula Grabowski-Jones pounded on the door of a small white house in Smiljan, a Croatian village in the Austrian empire. Her arrival in Smiljan brought an electrical storm far greater than the one generated by Nick’s jaunt through time, because going back more than a hundred and fifty years was far more troubling to the space-time continuum than a mere five months.

  Finally a stern man in a black robe opened the door and spoke to her in Serbian—a language she did not understand. Fortunately, she had her iPhone with her, and because she knew a wireless signal was a thing of the distant future, she had downloaded a handy Serbian translation app before she left.

  The man at the door was Milutin Tesla, a Serbian Orthodox priest, who assumed that this girl was a member of his parish, seeking shelter from the storm. Why else would she be running around in the rain holding a wailing baby?

  Even before he invited her in, however, she barged her way past him. Then she glanced at what seemed to be a rectangular mirror in her hand and spoke in an accent he could not place.

  “Donosim ti ovo dijete oluje,” she said. “I bring you this child of the storm. You will raise him as your own. And I will be his nanny. And you shall pay me well. And you may not refuse. Is that clear?”

  By now the man’s wife had come out, with their two young daughters and son in tow.

  “Who is she?” asked one of the girls.

  “Look how she’s dressed,” said the boy. “I think there’s something wrong with her.”

  Mr. Tesla had to agree. Clearly the young woman was troubled. Her goulash was missing the meat, as they say. As a man of God, it was his sacred task to care for the feebleminded. This poor girl was certainly not equipped for motherhood.

  By now the electrical storm outside had begun to fade. Mrs. Tesla took the baby from the strange girl’s arms, bounced him a bit, and he stopped crying.

  She looked to her husband. Just a month earlier she had lost a child at birth. She was still mourning that loss—but now this baby boy in her arms filled the empty space, as if it was meant to be. Who were they to refuse such a gift of providence?

  “What is his name?” she asked the girl, who didn’t seem to understand the question, poor thing. She just kept glancing at that little mirror—perhaps a nervous tick.

  Meanwhile, Petula’s frustration at future technology was at an all-time high. Of all the times for her translation app to get things wrong. It had translated the woman’s question as “How is the owl?” which couldn’t possibly be right. Well, thought Petula, it doesn’t really matter, does it? She knew what came next, because it had always come next. They would take the baby. They would name the baby after the woman’s father. Petula would be there to make sure that he grew up to be the genius he was destined to be—and this “Nick” would actually like her. Now Petula had something her entire life had lacked: a purpose. It was strange to think that this was all preordained somehow, and yet could not have happened without Petula’s intervention. Maybe that’s what destiny is: free will and fate working hand in hand.

  Mrs. Tesla knew none of this, of course. How could she? All she knew was that she felt an immediate attachment to the child.

  “We’ll call him Nikola,” she said. “After my father.”

  Petula watched, understanding only the name. Then she looked to her iPhone once more, not to translate, but to review her extensive list of demands. But apparently iPhone batteries don’t handle time travel well. The screen went dark, with the little swirly-do of death. Thus ended technology. At least for a while.

  So she glared at them, crossed her arms, and said, “The name’s PETula like spatula, not PeTULa like Petunia. Got it?”

  They all just looked to one another and back to her with profound sympathy. Petula sighed, realizing that the past was going to be almost as annoying as the future.

  Nothing stays wondrous forever. It’s human nature to grow accustomed to that which becomes normal, even if it’s a new shade of normal.

  When people across the globe learned of the strange teleporting machine that absorbed the asteroid’s charge and distributed the energy, they were amazed. For about two weeks. Then it became ordinary. Harmless discharges occurred daily, which meant they were no longer news, but just another part of life.

  There was, however, the occasional F.R.E.E. appearance eyewitness who claimed that, shortly after the machine moved on, a man in a tattered pink suit appeared and then vanished as well, like a ghost.

  “He plucked the sandwich right outta my hand, gobbled it down without so much as a howdy-do, then disappeared,” said one farmer in Iowa. Of course, no one believed him.

  Eventually the two-dimensional boy being studied at Princeton University was treated as unremarkable too. It had played on the news for a couple of days as a human-interest story. Conversations around the family television went something like this:

  “Two-dimensional people. Is that a thing now?”

  “It must be a thing, the news says so.”

  “Go figure. What’s for dinner?”

  Theo Blankenship was disappointed that his flatness had only warranted him a few talk-show appearances, but it wasn’t surprising. After all, television itself is a two-dimensional medium, so watching Theo wasn’t very engaging, and listening to him talk about it was even less so.

  At Princeton, however, Dr. Zenobia Thuku and her research department continued to take an interest in him. Rumor had it that NASA had plans for him too, since two-dimensional space travel would be very cost-effective, but no one had asked Theo to be an astronaut just yet.

  The world was also entirely uninterested in the stolen $750 million dollars. Mitch Murló had tried to do the right thing by contacting the country’s biggest banks and offering to return the money. He was quickly shunted up the ladder to the muckety-mucks at the very top until he found himself in a boardroom of the Global Bank, with very serious executives in very serious suits. He didn’t even know there was such a thing as the Global Bank, and suspected it was a secret society not entirely unlike the Accelerati, but probably far older.

  As is often the case, the decision makers had made their decision before Mitch even walked into the room.

  “It would be much too troublesome—and frankly, embarrassing to the banking community—to restore one penny to every bank account in existence,” one of the suits said. With a wink and a whisper, he told Mitch to just quietly keep the money.

  “What am I going to do with seven hundred and fifty million dollars?” Mitch asked.

  “Whatever you like,” said the man. “That’s what I do with mine.” His colleagues nodded in agreement.

  Mitch was soon approached by entrepreneurs who were developing huge energy-storage farms, banks of batteries capable of recharging from the F.R.E.E., so they could then distribute the energy worldwide for “a nominal fee.” They wanted him to invest in their schemes—but Mitch chose instead to steer his donations toward nonprofit organizations that didn’t trick people into paying for free energy. It’s what Tesla would have wanted.

  On a warm day in July—about a month after the F.R.E.E. kicked into action—Nick Slate met with Caitlin, Mitch, and Zak at Beef-O-Rama.

  Vince was supposed to join them, but he was late. Late as in “tardy,” Nick hoped, not late as in “dead.”

  “I’m telling you, it’s crazy down there,” Zak said. He was an intern on a special scientific team sent to survey the Accelerati’s old headquarters beneath Atomic Lanes. “Famous artwork that’s been missing for hundreds of years, technology that’s twisted every which way.”

  “We know,” said Caitlin. “We’ve been there.”

  It felt odd for Nick to be with his friends and not have to talk in hushed tones, or look over his shoulder in fear of sinister scientists in pastel suits—but the Accelerati were gone. They didn’t just disband, they had enacted their emergency self-destruct protocol: each member had had their memories of the Accelerati erased
. So, aside from the occasional flash created by their encounters with airport and beach metal detectors, the scientists were clueless about their prior involvement. Only Z had retained her memory, so that she could facilitate the dismantling of their various secret lairs.

  “You guys haven’t told me what you think of the new and improved Beef-O-Rama,” Mitch said, gesturing around him to the remodeled restaurant. “The grease is gone, but not forgotten.”

  “The waiters are still rude,” Caitlin said after their server plopped a bucket of fries on the table with all the precision of an airdrop.

  “Of course,” said Nick. “It’s part of the charm!”

  Nick grabbed some french fries from the basket and stuck them in his mouth. Crisp on the outside, soft in the middle, just the way he liked them. He was glad Mitch had rescued Beef-O-Rama from bankruptcy. Once Mitch owned a controlling interest, the first thing he did was name a burger after himself. The Murló Monster consisted of a half-pound beef patty, mushrooms, onions, jalepeños, and double cheddar. It was already the most popular item on the menu.

  “Where do you suppose Vince is?” Caitlin asked. “Do you think his mom is torturing him with a new collection of cute fuzzy things?”

  “Maybe he’s out checking the range of his new connection,” suggested Mitch, taking a bite of his massive burger. Life for Vince was a little bit easier now that Nick had built a Bluetooth connection for his battery. Supposedly the range was fifty feet, but Vince was the kind of kid who constantly tested his limits. “That wireless hookup was a stroke of genius.”