by S. G. Wilson
“Easy for you to say! You’ve got your show and your acting. And now you’ve got Nash.”
“What?! That’s gross! Give me a break! You’re just mad because you know I’m right.”
Before she could say more, the MeMinder burst in on the conversation. “You must begin work on your science fair project now to achieve your goal! Student Showcase tonight!”
For once I appreciated the intrusion. “Sorry to cut this short, but the Achieve-O-Meter has spoken.”
I headed for the school exit, leaving my former best friend behind. This was the final straw in a final-straw kind of day. I had a few classes left, but I needed to go out and do something stupid.
Breaking into an old abandoned hotel sounded like just the right kind of stupid.
It was kind of a letdown to break into a shuttered hotel and not even see a rat. Or ripped-up walls. Or boarded windows. Would a dark, shadowy corner have been too much to ask for? In the empty lobby of the Janus Hotel, the lights worked, the rugs were clean, and the walls barely had a ding. There wasn’t even so much as a scratch on the wood paneling of the massive check-in desk.
That’s not to say it wasn’t scary. At the end of the day, even a well-kept abandoned hotel is still an abandoned hotel.
The lobby was a big cavern that hadn’t been updated since the early nineties, when Mom and Dad met there. It looked silly with its fake-marble columns, cheesy red and blue neon lights, and black-and-white checkerboard floor. Above the doorway to the elevator bank hung the Janus logo, featuring a bearded guy with two faces staring in opposite directions. I sort of remembered Janus from a Percy Jackson book, a god of doorways or something. Did the Greeks have any idea how terrifying a guy with two faces would look in a big, empty place like this?
At least it hadn’t been hard to break in. I couldn’t get through the locked front doors with the FOR SALE sign on them, but one of the notes listed a passcode for the employee entrance off to the side. It had totally worked. If the origami stalker was right about the code, what else about their prank might turn out to be true? I still didn’t believe in Me Con for a second, but the notes seemed a lot more legit now that they’d gotten me this far. If somebody had gone to this much trouble to bring me out here, there had to be something to see. Surely not a convention of my duplicates from parallel Earths, but something.
I stepped into the elevator bank and peeked down the long hallway. There wasn’t any Me Con in that direction, just a big, empty ballroom. I noticed the green call button light on the elevator flickering on and off, like it didn’t work right anymore. I edged closer, drawn to that light, almost hypnotized by it. Somewhere along the way, the fizz started up again, not in my arms or hands this time, but in my head. It gave me the sense that something bigger than an elevator car lay beyond those doors. Something much bigger, like when the lights go out at a planetarium and the ceiling fills up with stars. My brain knew the elevator probably didn’t work anymore, but the rest of me wanted to see what would happen if I pressed the button. So I did.
The door rumbled open on a perfectly normal elevator car, just waiting for me to step in. Its speakers played some pop song from the 1980s that always made Mom and Dad groan when it came on the radio. The fizzing stopped and my head went back to normal. I figured it might just be a headache coming on. Then I saw the thing lying on the elevator floor.
An origami note.
This one was folded into a Eurasian three-toed woodpecker. I wanted so badly to know what the note inside said, but no way was I stepping into that contraption. Are the elevators even maintained when a building closes? What if the doors, once shut, wouldn’t open again? What if the lifting cable snapped? What if this was all a trap laid by a psycho killer? It was time to turn back. This little adventure had already been exciting enough.
The rattle of keys nearby pulled me back to reality. Two janitors stood outside the hotel entrance, one of them unlocking the door. They hadn’t seen me yet, but it was only a matter of time before they did—there wasn’t so much as a garbage can to hide behind in the entire hotel.
That left only one way to go. I stepped into the elevator and looked for the Close button. That was no easy feat, since the control panel went all the way up to ninety-nine. Why would a hotel with only a few floors need an elevator with so many numbers? Maybe the origami stalker would tell me what to do. I snatched up the paper woodpecker on the floor and read the note inside:
Hey, Me,
Sorry to send you here during the monthly cleaning for prospective buyers, but you needed the motivation. I know the elevator looks scary, but seriously, I’ve done all the convincing I can about Me Con. Now it’s up to you. I promise you won’t regret it. Or you might, but at least it’ll be interesting. Just press the button for zero. Trust me.
Ours sincerely,
Me
So that was it—this was all a setup. How could I have been so stupid?
A floor polisher whirred in the lobby. The cleaners had gotten right to work, and any second now they’d reach the elevator bank. I chose danger over getting busted: I found the Close button and pressed it.
Nothing happened. Stupid broken elevator.
I jabbed at the next button over, the one for the first floor. This time, it worked. The ring around the button lit up with a green glow, and the door rumbled shut. Only then did I remember that the note had said to press the button for zero. Oh well, it wasn’t like this old crate could move anyway. I was lucky the door had even closed.
All I had to do now was wait inside a few minutes until the janitors made their way past the elevator bank. Once they reached the ballroom, I’d sneak back out, sprint to my bike, and hightail it home.
The last thing I expected was for the elevator to shudder to life. Even worse, it started moving. I looked around for a kill switch, a reverse setting, a reset key, anything.
Nothing.
All I could do was stand there and wait to see where this ride wound up.
You’d think an elevator with a hundred glowing green buttons would shoot into the air like the glass elevator at the end of Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. But the Janus elevator rode like any other—smooth and slow, with just a few bumps here and there. That didn’t stop my insides from puddling at the thought of where I’d end up when it stopped.
If it stopped.
I had the distinct feeling of dropping, but the place didn’t have a basement that I knew of, so that couldn’t have been right. After what felt like forever, the car slowed to a halt and the door slid open. I took a deep breath and peered out to see…the very same elevator bank I’d left behind just a second before. I hadn’t moved at all; it had just felt like I had.
Stupid busted elevator.
At least there was no sign of the cleaners now. They must have gone deeper into the hotel. This was my best chance to sneak away. I rushed to the lobby and made a beeline through the side exit. But my relief disappeared in a poof as soon as I saw the bike rack.
Empty.
My bike and its lock were gone. This wasn’t the safest neighborhood in town, but come on, what kind of jerk steals a crappy old kid’s bike in broad daylight? Now I had to walk home.
I was so caught up in worrying about what Mom and Dad would say that I didn’t pay much attention to the world around me. Then I noticed the Kentucky Fried Chicken on the corner. It looked just like the regular old KFC that had been there forever, but the sign now read KENTUCKY FRIED FISH AND CHIPS, and posters in the window hawked haggis, black pudding, and bangers and mash.
I gazed at the sign for a long time to make sure my eyes weren’t playing tricks on me. Other than the name, nothing else had changed—same parking lot, same drive-thru lane, same cloud of cooking grease hovering overhead. I figured it must have been some kind of joke, the work of street artists pulling a prank. But no one driving by gave the sign a seco
nd glance. Maybe I wouldn’t have noticed either if I hadn’t been on foot. Or maybe I was extra sensitive to practical jokes now that I was on the butt end of one. Thing is, KFC wasn’t the only business that had changed on this street. The Dick’s Sporting Goods had become Spotted Dick’s Sporting Goods, with the soccer gear in its window display advertised as FOOTBALL SUPPLIES. A few doors down, the 7-Eleven sold “crisps” instead of potato chips, and “petrol” instead of gas. And the old patriotic army surplus store flew a UK flag instead of its usual American one.
Since when had British stuff gotten so big?
Two men stepped out of a Royal Navy where an Old Navy used to be. They were dressed up like well-to-do gentlemen from American Revolution times: ruffled silk shirts, lacy frills, long-tailed coats, and knickers. Even powdered wigs. I figured they might have been headed to a costume party, until I saw other men and women wearing clothes from the same period. They spoke with British accents to boot. It was like a bunch of extras from some low-budget History Channel documentary had stepped off the screen and taken over the neighborhood.
As I tried to make sense of all this, a bus pulled up to the curb—a red double-decker bus like the ones people ride in London. It carried an ad banner featuring the Statue of Liberty, but she wore a fur-trimmed cape instead of robes and held a scepter instead of a torch. Her pointy crown had turned puffy and round, with diamonds stuck all over. VISIT NEW YORK, it read, and GOD SAVE THE QUEEN!
When the bus pulled away, the store it had blocked came into view. It was a sleek space with big windows showcasing state-of-the-art phones, computers, and other gadgets. Nothing surprising there, but the big, stylized ME above the door looked just like the logo Dad used for Me Co. I sprinted across the street for a closer look. Inside were MeMinders in totally new shapes, sizes, and colors, plus a whole line of MePhones, MePads, and MeLaptops I’d never seen before.
This could mean only one thing: someone had stolen Dad’s company and made it a whole lot bigger.
I was reaching for my phone to call him when a little white pyramid in the window whirred to life. A label underneath it read SECUREME: IT’S A CAMERA. IT’S A PROJECTOR. IT’S SECURE. The lens in the middle of the pyramid shot out a hologram of Dad right beside me on the sidewalk. He wore a stylish black colonial outfit and white powdered wig. I could only watch in petrified silence as a sleek holo-car pulled up beside Holo-Dad, its door sliding open to reveal no one in the driver’s seat. “The Self-Driving MeCar from Me Corp.,” Holo-Dad said with a British accent. “Let life drive you.”
Why had I never heard of holographic commercials? Why would anybody put Dad in one? And when had he picked up that accent and those clothes? When I left the house that morning, Dad had been wearing jeans and a Dungeons & Dragons T-shirt. He was an adult nerd, not some kind of actor.
I turned to the street and saw a MeCar like the one in the ad waiting at the stoplight. It had no driver, just a family relaxing in the seats. A living room on wheels. The kids stared at MePads, the mom talked on a MePhone, and the dad made notes on holographic paper projecting from a MeMinder on his wrist. When the light changed, they didn’t even look up as the robot car whisked them away.
And just like that, it all came together in my head. Self-driving MeCars. Colonial fashion. British accents. Kentucky Fried Fish and Chips. The Statue of Royalty in New York. Me Corp. instead of Me Co.
This wasn’t my home.
The origami stalker hadn’t lied. There really was a multiverse. And I’d traveled through it to another Earth.
I’ve never been able to fantasize about adventures on other worlds without worrying over all the little things that could go wrong. I can handle the idea of rampaging dragons or evil sorcerers in a magical fantasyland, but not the disgusting medieval diseases floating around, like trench mouth. Killer robots and deadly aliens in some futuristic setting? No problem. But with my luck, space travel would make me barfy. And if those things didn’t do me in, I figure my general incompetence surely would. I’d probably just become a sitting duck for whatever wanted to eat, enslave, or dissect me.
That’s why this parallel reality was so great: beyond the accents, the clothes, and the fact that Dad ran a megacorporation, it felt familiar, like going to another country that spoke English.
I was looking around to see where to start exploring, when one of the robot cars broke away from the robot traffic and stopped in front of me. The rear door slid open, and Nash, of all people, leaned out. He wore stupid colonial clothes like everybody else, but the sight of him still gave me chills.
“Hullo, mate!” he said, so friendly it almost sounded genuine. This Nash must have been a better actor than my Nash.
“Uh, hey.”
“I was just headed back to school for the showcase. You too?” The showcase on my Earth wasn’t scheduled to start for another few hours. I guessed they did things early here. “Where’s your ride?”
He must have thought I was the Me who lived on this Earth. Up until then, I hadn’t even considered that another edition of me would be out there. Maybe this world wasn’t so safe after all. Plus, it was freaky hearing Nash with a British accent.
“Just thought I’d walk.” I tried to sound casual.
Nash slapped his palms together. “Need a lift, then, mate? It’d be right proper to take you! Unless you want to keep walking, which I would totally understand. But time’s ticking!”
The idea of running into the legit Me of this reality must have really done a number on me, because I didn’t think twice about getting into a robot car with British Nash. Only when I sat beside him and the door slid shut did I realize I was trapped. By then it was too late.
“Car, continue trip.” As the car zipped back into the street, Nash gave my clothes the once-over. “That’s really authentic!” He didn’t sound sarcastic, but excited for real. “Are we all supposed to wear costumes for the showcase?”
Oh, right, my T-shirt and jeans. On this Earth, I was the one in the costume, not vice versa. Fashion must have taken a different path here, along with US history and fast food.
“Uh, my suit got dirty on the way here, so I had to change into the only thing I could find. Got it at a costume store.”
Nash sighed with relief. “Let me order you a new suit, then. I’d be honored. What size are you? Pisces?”
“Pisces?”
“Hullo? The zodiac size chart?” He chuckled, but in a nice way. “I figure you’re somewhere between Pisces and Aries. Maybe you’re a cusp?”
I didn’t know what else to do but nod. A size chart based on the zodiac? This Earth got weirder by the second.
Nash spoke into a MeMinder on his wrist. “I need a Chip Chip Cheerio in size Pisces. Make that a Pisces-Cusp. And with extra ruffles.” He beamed at me. “There you go, mate, all set to deliver.”
“Right. Thanks. Uh, I’ll pay you back.”
Nash laughed like I’d made a joke. “Somehow I bloody well think the richest bloke in the United States of the British Empire is good for it.”
“You mean the United States of America?”
He snorted. “Good one! I almost missed that question on our history test last week.”
“Come again?”
“You know, the way they called the colonies America until the Colonial Uprising went all to pot and they changed the name.”
The American Revolution had failed here? It was a fascinating idea, but not as fascinating as the other thing he’d said.
“I’m, uh, rich?”
Nash doubled over with laughter. “Stop, mate! You’re killing me!”
Now that he’d mentioned it, of course the Me of this world would have a lot of money. Any kid whose dad owned Me Corp. would be loaded. From the car window, I saw the company logo all over the place. On billboards hawking MeMail, MeDocs, MeMaps, and “the whole family of MeApps.” On shopfront signs that
read FOLLOW US ON MEBOOK AND TWITME. At an even bigger MeStore, which sold the full range of Me Corp. products, including a lot full of MeCars.
“Something on your mind?” said Nash, snapping me back to the conversation. “I can only imagine what must be on your plate right now. But at least you don’t have to worry about the science fair, eh? Got that in the bag, I expect.”
“Do I?”
He wagged a finger at me. “Cheeky monkey! Don’t make me crease up again!”
“Am I missing something?” I asked.
“Oh, stop already! By the way, you got a cold? You sound a bit off.”
Oops, the accent. I put on my standard British voice, the one I used when reciting Horrible Histories skits with Twig. “Yes, my nose is a mite stuffy, ol’ chap.”
Nash squinted at me, then chuckled. This bad imitation of my archnemesis sure was jolly, I had to give him that. The car pulled into the school parking lot and dropped us off near the front entrance. “Here we are,” he said, still chuckling. “Imagine, me giving you a ride. I’m chuffed! Oh, speaking of that.”
He twiddled with his phone until it projected a hologram of the school basketball team in the air. It looked just like the team photo we’d taken back on my Earth, except for the lace frills on the uniforms. And instead of standing nearly out of the frame like I had in the original picture, I was front and center, holding up an obscenely large COLONIAL CRICKET CHAMPIONS trophy, as if I’d had something to do with winning it.
“What a day that was, mate.” Nash beamed. “Been a week and I’m still wrapping my head around it. Colonial champions, and all thanks to you! You were cracking! And to think you took up cricket only six months ago! I’ve been training my whole life and can’t hold a candle to you!” Nash’s smile tightened for just a second. This Nash was better than mine at playing nice, but years of experience had taught me to watch out for cracks in the disguise. A tight smile was definitely a warning sign.