by B. B. Ullman
The screen went dark. “As you can plainly see, the natural conclusion is alarming,” said Med Tech Tek. He made a grim expression, which the other two weirdos imitated. I noticed that they all kept their dark glasses on, so I couldn’t see their eyes. It made me doubt their honesty. It made me feel like they were trying to trick me with pictures of my dad that got me emotional and confused.
“The imbalance is what concerns us,” Med Tech Tek finally said. “It will affect this reality. Albert understands.”
“Yeah, but I don’t!” I snapped. I was impatient with Med Tech Tek and the Commodore and Citizen Lady. I felt like they weren’t being truthful.
“Why were you spying on my dad in the first place—and why don’t you take those glasses off? It’s not even bright in here.” Without thinking, I flipped a careless hand at Med Tech Tek, and his dark glasses went flying.
“What the—” Lars reached for Brit and made her back away.
I backed up, too, and tried to fit what I saw into a context that was familiar—which was impossible. Med Tech Tek had no eyes.
16
Stunned
I should have been more thorough,” Med Tech Tek said. His smooth skin and fake-looking hair seemed totally monstrous with only the plane of his face where his eyes should have been. He walked directly to where his glasses had fallen and retrieved them with amazing accuracy. His lack of eyeballs didn’t seem to affect his ability to detect where things were.
“I take full responsibility,” he said, sounding very sorry. “The original schematic was hasty, and I admit that I never bothered to fine-tune it.” He put his glasses back on his face and assumed the body language of hunched shoulders and a hanging head that communicated shame.
“I told you back on the porch that this would be problematic,” the Commodore snapped.
“Commodore, any of us could have completed that task. We all put it ‘on the back burner,’ as they say. We can adjust the schematic tonight.” Citizen Lady was trying to keep the peace. She turned to face us. “We’ll have our eyeballs on tomorrow,” she assured us. “We don’t want you uncomfortable with . . . inaccuracies.”
“Oh, I think it’s a little late for that,” Brit said. “Who are you people, really?”
Citizen Lady was contrite. “We are not from New York.” She shook her head sadly.
“Duh,” I said under my breath.
“In fact, we are not people, as such,” she said haltingly. “We are SMHR units.”
“Smerunis?” Is that your nationality?” asked Brit.
“No. S-M-H-R unit stands for ‘smart-mass-holograph-research unit,’ and it’s a designation—a category,” Citizen Lady explained.
Brit made an impatient face.
“We are here to gather data. We come from far away,” she added.
“Like outer space?” Brit asked.
“Yes, space that is . . . out there.” Citizen Lady made a sweeping gesture.
“So, you are researchers, and you came to Earth to study things,” I confirmed.
“Exactly,” said the Commodore. He seemed relieved.
“And then you saw this problem with the half-thingy leaking,” I went on.
“Precisely.” His head bobbed enthusiastically. “We detected the problem—and hypothesized that a solution would include your counterpart, Albert.”
“Albert?” I repeated.
“Yes. As you know, he has a superlative mind as well as exceptional emotional depth. Observe this copy of one of your father’s digital records.” The Commodore stood aside and the video screen blinked on again. This time it was a poorly lit view of both my parents in our garage laboratory. The viewpoint didn’t change; Dad must have propped a camera on the shelf. My mom was sitting in a chair and my dad was messing with some wires and plugs. She looked much younger and very pretty in jeans and a T-shirt with her sandy hair in a ponytail. Dad was dark and handsome, and it struck me what a beautiful couple they were.
Ma once told me that Meemaw didn’t like my dad at first, that Meemaw’s head was filled with super negative ideas about anyone who was different from her. My dad was “a city slicker,” according to Meemaw. And he was an “egghead college boy who thought he was all that.” Turned out she couldn’t help but like him because he was so calm and humble and sweet to her. She had to change her tune, Ma said. Calm, humble, sweet. I suddenly missed the dad I’d barely had with such longing that it made me want to cry.
On the screen my mom was laughing—the sound was overly loud, like bad acoustics. “I feel like Frankenstein,” she said. “And that stuff is cold!” She shuddered as my dad applied some gel, and then stuck metal circles connected to wires onto her scalp and forehead. “I want to get dinner on, and Mary will be back from the Stickles’ any minute.”
“I know,” young Dad replied. “Okay, I already set up the algorithms, and now I can see if the electronics coordinate. Ready? This will just take a second . . . ”
I looked over at Albert. He was nodding his head, like, yep, that’s what happened.
My dad flipped a toggle-switch, adjusted a dial, and then reached behind his back and moved a large lever. He flipped it on, and then flipped it off again—my mom blinked her eyes, but that was all.
“Well, they’re all synching.” Dad was obviously pleased as he examined his screens and machines. “Feel anything, Jane?”
“I don’t think so—now get these things off of me. I’m in the middle of making lasagna. Eww, now my hair’s all sticky!”
“Thanks for the help, hon. Sorry about the slime.” He kissed her cheek, and she disappeared out of the video’s line of focus. Dad must have turned the recorder off because the screen went black.
Citizen Lady bent down to better face me. In a sympathetic voice, she said, “Your mother did not know it, but she was pregnant when that test was attempted. There was a brief connection to the half-constant, and young Albert was altered by the link. The triad—that is, we—consider him to be our best hope.”
Another shock. I was stunned, really. I had never thought about why Albert was the way he was. He was just Albie—my smart and funny little guy—who was definitely a bit of an introvert.
“Albert, did it hurt?” I asked him quietly. I wasn’t sure if I was mad at my parents or not.
Albert sent a memo that described being startled by hundreds of birds launching into flight, at first noisy and chaotic as they flapped and rose, but then they synchronized, dipping, swirling, rising in a beautiful dance. It did not hurt, he assured me in strong, solid letters.
“But did you get any bad feelings?”
His next memo showed me a spider and a butterfly; the spider gnashed his cartoon teeth while the butterfly peacefully fluttered about. But I got the feeling that these creatures were far away from Albert, and whatever their issues were, that stuff didn’t touch him. Safe glimpses, he added.
I was trying to figure out what a safe glimpse of a spider and a butterfly meant when the Commodore said, “After we detected high-level patterning emanating from your sibling, we began to monitor the Day domicile.”
“Spy on us, you mean,” I accused him. I scanned the interior of the round “laboratory” and I looked at these eyeless, black-suited people who claimed to be from outer space. I turned to my brother. “Albert, these guys, these SMHR units—are they for real? I mean, are they, like, good and nice?”
Good and Nice! Albert’s memo blinked with absolute conviction in a brown-and-blue color that seemed final and true.
“I guess Albert believes in you,” I said, “even with your no-eyeball thing going on.”
“But why are Brit and I here?” Lars asked. He’d been so quiet up to this point, but now he stepped forward and said, “You three seem pretty deliberate about the plans you make and the stuff you do, so why’d you let me and Brit come along?” His face was even paler than usual and his hands were stuffed in his jacket pockets like he was hiding his fists.
“You all play a part,” Citizen Lady ack
nowledged. “Albert is the key, but Pearl is compassionate. Equationaut is clever. And Lars is brave. Excellent counterparts if one were to encounter an emergency.”
17
Shivering space and time
Pardon me, but we ought to depart if we are to observe the other dimensional tear. I’ll drive,” the Commodore said firmly, but then he made one of his chuckling sounds and the other two joined in. Some private joke about driving, I guessed.
I imagined that we would get back in the car that was parked downstairs in the garage, but the Commodore just stood there. They all just stood there. Suddenly the wall came to life, glowing faintly violet. Symbols came and went so fast they looked like pulsing static.
Citizen Lady glanced our way. “For your health, you must stand in the field-shower.” She pointed to where Albert was already standing. On the floor, a large violet square lit up. Brit and Lars and I checked each other with anxious expressions and then hurried to stand in the square. I looked up to see an identical square on the ceiling, and between the two, a faint light shimmered—as if we were in a Star Trek transporter. It made my gums itch.
“So this isn’t just a lab, is it?” Brit said. “It’s a spacecraft, right?”
“It is both,” said Med Tech Tek.
“And are these squares some kind of electromagnetic shield?”
“A photon shield for your health,” Med Tech Tek affirmed.
“Citizen Lady, shouldn’t you guys get in your squares, you know, for your health?” I asked.
“We are SMHR units and one with our craft, so of course there is no bother.” She smiled to reassure me. “I devised this apparatus for human health,” she added, obviously proud of her invention.
I half expected to be transported somewhere, but we just stood there in the violet light. There was a whirring and a pulse on one of the wall screens. Minutes passed and I watched a steady rhythm of yellow to violet ticking away on the screen; it gave me a sleepy feel. There was that low hum I’d felt in the Volkswagen, along with the drowsy buzz of the “field-shower.” I tried sticking my finger outside of the shimmering square and I felt a bit of a shock. I decided to keep my hands and feet inside and not mess around.
“The Commodore is an excellent navigator,” Citizen Lady said. She smiled at the small, pale man who appeared to be concentrating on the wall screen. He began to recite some techie lingo in a blank, mechanical tone: “Engage torus drive—space/time shiver enacted—field density accomplished—proceed.”
I heard no engine and felt no thrust; I was a little disappointed.
“I would nudge it 0.02 percent in the forward field for maximum efficiency,” Med Tech Tek suggested.
The Commodore ignored him; all his attention was on the screen.
“Don’t be a backseat driver,” Citizen Lady scolded. But then she made a chuckle to show she was teasing Med Tech Tek. Her lilting squawk made me want to laugh, too. I wondered if she borrowed the term from me—backseat driver—had I said that out loud in the Volkswagen? I couldn’t remember.
“Mr. Commodore, what do you mean by a space/time shiver?” I asked. “It sounds neat.”
He didn’t answer. He was absolutely frozen, concentrating on the screen.
Med Tech Tek answered instead. “Shiver is a colloquial term—Citizen Lady coined it.” He smiled and clicked his teeth. “We excite the space/time around our craft with an oscillating pulse. Using this method our craft merely parks within a shivering pocket of manipulated space so that it is the space that moves us. That’s how we cheat the speed limit.” He grinned and nodded, amused with his explanation, which I really didn’t get.
“It’s warp speed,” Brit said. “It’s like you compress the space in front and expand the space behind really fast—like a pulse—and inside this bubble the craft is floating on a wave of rolling space/time. Something like that.”
“Whoa, that’s cool,” I remarked.
“Indeed, for superconductivity, it must be.” Med Tech Tek was done conversing, and he, too, turned his attention to the screen.
Time passed. It seemed like after a while the SMHR units began to look transparent, and so did the walls of the craft. I rubbed my eyes. Yes, I could see stars out there—only they looked watery and they seemed to stretch around our “bubble.”
It was hard to figure how much time went by. Albert wasn’t sending me memos; I guess his mind was elsewhere. He loved this sort of thing. I was startled when Citizen Lady said, “Here we are!”
At once the SMHRs and their lab became solid. Now the wall screens were showing what appeared to be a giant movie of a planet. The movie made it look like we were moving from dark space to atmosphere and the atmosphere had a reddish hue. On the round planet below, there were no oceans and not much variance in color, and not a hint of civilization.
I started to think that I wasn’t watching a movie, but that I was looking out of a window. “There’s no ocean down there,” I said. “That can’t be Earth.”
“Correct,” said the Commodore. “That is not Earth.”
The land got larger. We seemed to be descending but it didn’t feel like we were. I knew that in an elevator or on a ride at the carnival, my stomach would be lurching upward.
“If we’re going fast, how come we’re not feeling any, you know, butterflies?” I asked.
“She means g-forces,” Lars said. “Why aren’t we feeling them if we really are accelerating and moving through atmosphere?”
“We are still in a pocket of shivering space,” the Commodore explained, “but the energy requirement is a mere fraction of our intrasolar-system jaunt.”
“It’s efficient and comfortable,” Med Tech Tek added, sounding a bit like a dorky advertisement.
Brit was staring at the screen. “It looks like a desert down there.”
I could make out hills and rocks of ruddy red and bland pink with subtle tones of brown and beige. “Hey, there’s something moving.” I pointed to an object in the middle of a rocky field.
A tiny vehicle was inching across the landscape. It had lots of tires and flat square plates like solar panels on the top. We came in closer and closer. The thing looked familiar. I felt like I had seen it on the news.
“It’s the Rover,” Brit said, “or a simulator.”
“Try not to leave a shadow,” Med Tech Tek advised. “Shadows always get those NASA transmitters buzzing.”
“And dusting off the panels certainly raises a commotion,” Citizen Lady added.
At that, they all made the chuckling sound—I checked on Brit; her eyebrows were raised as high as they could go.
“The only Rover I can think of is the one they put on Mars,” I said sarcastically.
“Precisely,” said the Commodore.
18
Joyful bad order
We passed the supposed Rover and got closer to some boring fields of rock and sand.
“There it is!” Citizen Lady touched the screen and a grid enhanced the area.
I could barely see a little wisp of white vapor. I never would have seen it if Citizen Lady hadn’t pointed it out. The craft moved closer to hover right next to the misty “rip.”
“We shouldn’t get so close,” I said. “The cloud behind the garage made us all feel sick.”
“This one is exactly the opposite,” Citizen Lady said. “Come stand over here.”
“Can we leave our square?” I asked.
“Of course. The field-shower is no longer necessary,” the Commodore said.
I carefully stuck my foot out, and then Brit and I walked hesitantly forward to stand by the window—or the movie, or whatever it was. Lars and Albert joined us.
“I feel something strange,” I said. “Is that feeling coming from the white mist?”
“Indeed it is,” Citizen Lady confirmed.
It was as though I had just stepped into a shaken-up soda pop, only the carbonation was made out of thought, and all the thoughts were beautiful and kind and good. They bubbled into my mind and o
ver my skin and made me feel that all was well with the universe and me and just everything.
“Are you in there, Albert?” The way the thoughts bubbled around made me think of Albert’s memos.
He sent me a solid message to show that he was Albert, and I was Pearl, and these bubbling thoughts were something else. His memo was happy, yet guarded. He showed me some joyful, bouncing particles that moved with a hyperactivity that wasn’t quite right. Joyful bad order, he was quick to say.
The happy carbonation lessened and vanished, but the whole experience had put me in a fantastic mood. I noticed that the craft had drifted away from the little white cloud. The Commodore was concentrating again. He must have been steering.
“Did this leak start all by itself?” I asked.
“Yes,” said Med Tech Tek. “It occurred at the same time as the other. We theorize an entangled response of opposite polarity.”
I ignored his mumbo jumbo; I could only take so much. “Why did you bring us here?”
“The triad—that is, we propose that Albert make some inquiries from this tear, where it is safer.”
“You guys are super smart. Why don’t you do it?”
This caught the Commodore’s attention and he answered for all of them. “The triad does not possess the consciousness required for this procedure. We would do it if we could.” The SMHR units put on their best regretful faces.
“We propose that Albert’s excellent consciousness can slip into the half-constant and return with some answers,” said Citizen Lady.
“I don’t like the idea of Albert going in there,” I objected.
“He would not enter physically—that would cause his demise,” Med Tech Tek argued. “He would only send his thoughts to try to find answers.”
“Do you even want to try this, Albert?” I asked.
Yes, yes, so fascinating. Albert memoed an example of metal shavings being drawn to a magnet, like that’s how much he wanted to try.
“Would he be safe?” I asked. “I mean, there were really scary feelings down at the other rip. Can you guarantee that Albert will be safe?”