by Terry Miles
“First, Worricker needed to work out a way to fix what he believed was a decaying universal repair mechanism. This would take time, and countless failed attempts, but he would eventually figure it out.”
“Rabbits.”
Emily nodded. “At first it was simply an evolving artificial intelligence engine—a way to perform certain adjustments at certain times. It would take Worricker a decade to figure out that the framework of a game was the most effective method of manipulating the Radiants worldwide.”
“This was in 1959, the beginning of the modern version of Rabbits?”
“Exactly.”
“So, okay, Worricker created Rabbits to, essentially, patch a multidimensional repair mechanism. What happens if, one day, Rabbits fails to do its job?”
“Then that day will be the first day of the end of the world.”
“Am I really in a different dimension than the one I woke up in this morning?”
“Right now? Technically, yes.”
“So is there another version of me sitting in my apartment right now?”
“No.”
“Why not?”
“Full disclosure, I don’t know exactly how everything works, but from what I’ve been able to figure out, people’s…let’s call them souls, for lack of a better word, exist in a kind of cosmic pool. Each person in every dimension is a unique individual, but they all draw from that particular soul’s multidimensional pool.”
“Okay…”
“Only one iteration of a person can exist in each dimension at any given time, and—in the extremely rare case that a person switches dimensional streams—the version of the person that now exists in a new stream merges with or replaces that stream’s original instance. The resultant memory retained from the prior incarnation depends on something we call dimensional drift. It’s the same if an iteration of that person remains behind after the drift or slip.”
“If a person remains behind? If a version merges or replaces?”
“Like I said, we’re not sure exactly how it all works.” Emily checked the time on her phone again. “I’m sorry, K, but I really have to get going.”
“What about the Gatewick Institute?”
“Hawk Worricker created the institute to study Meechum’s Radiants further. His intention was to find out if the Radiants might be manipulated for good, to help bring economic and social prosperity to all. Gatewick was all about trying to discover new ways to safely manipulate the Radiants.”
“So the Gatewick Institute was never about playing Rabbits?”
“No. The game was completely separate. Worricker created the Gatewick Institute as a kind of augmentation, as a way to understand the Radiants and to do good in the world without interfering with Rabbits. Worricker understood that the game was the key to keeping the multiverse healthy, so he would never have intentionally allowed anything they did at Gatewick to adversely affect Rabbits.”
“Gatewick was working to do good?”
“Yes. The altruistic nature of that research was what eventually brought our parents to Gatewick, along with a bunch of others—including a man named Edward Crawford. Everybody just called him Crow.”
“So Crow really did work with our parents?”
“Yes.”
“How did you end up working with him in The Tower?”
“When I was a teenager,” Emily said, “I found a bunch of crazy shit in my parents’ closet—stuff that led me to believe they weren’t actually real estate agents. The thing that immediately captured my imagination took the form of a complicated underground game—a game that I quickly became obsessed with figuring out how to play.”
“Rabbits.” I could almost hear the crackle of the static on the radio and feel the hum of the truck’s wheels as she spoke.
“Cut to later. My obsession with the game resulted in the death of my sister.”
“It was an accident.”
“An accident that was pretty quickly followed by the death of my parents. And, if I’m being honest, I didn’t really handle either of those events all that well. By the time Crow found me, I was making ends meet as a kind of online bounty hunter–slash–collections officer in New York City. I was an easy recruit. Crow explained what he had in mind, how he was planning on putting my particular set of skills to use, and I started working for him.”
“Your particular set of skills? That sounds like a Liam Neeson movie.”
“You know how I asked you about feeling strange, noticing patterns and coincidences, or missing time?”
“Yeah…”
“Well, that’s because the research our parents were doing at the Gatewick Institute involved them taking a large number of experimental drugs—including a prenatal cocktail our mothers were instructed to continue taking through all three trimesters of their pregnancies.”
“You’re saying these drugs are somehow connected to my experiencing missing time and obsessive behavior around coincidences and patterns?”
“That’s exactly what I’m saying, K. My mother took those drugs as well. All of the Gatewick parents did.”
“Wait…so you’ve experienced these things?”
She nodded.
“Does that have anything to do with how you were able to bring me here? To this…dimension, or whatever it is?”
“It has everything to do with that, yes.”
“How does it work?”
“Something happened at Gatewick—something completely unintentional.”
“Which was what?”
“A few of the children born to Gatewick parents who’d been taking part in the prenatal drug study presented with certain…unique abilities.”
“Like what?”
“Under very special circumstances, these children were able to manipulate Meechum’s Radiants without using the advanced mapping techniques and computer systems normally required.”
“What sort of special circumstances?”
“Moments of extreme emotional distress.”
I swallowed hard, my mouth suddenly dry.
“So, you have these…unique abilities?”
“I do—a little.”
“What does that mean?”
“My mother stopped the drug therapy early in her first trimester, so I didn’t end up with very much Gatewick sauce.”
“But you had enough to manipulate Meechum’s Radiants, to bring me here, to this dimension?”
“What I did is like a…trick. I created a kind of temporary bubble that’s going to compress soon—and when that compression happens, I need to be somewhere else.”
“What about me?”
“The compression should take you back to where you began. Or at least, to where you were when you began following this trail.”
“Should?”
“I’m sorry, none of this stuff is…absolute.”
“What about me?”
“What about you?”
“How much…Gatewick sauce do I have?”
“Do you know how long your mother was taking the Gatewick drugs?”
I shook my head.
“Well, then,” Emily said as she stood up and started walking over to the elevator, “it’s a mystery.”
“When I met Crow in The Tower, he told me I wasn’t supposed to be here. Do you know what he meant?”
“Your parents used your ability to hide you from him.”
“My Gatewick sauce.”
“Exactly.”
“Is that why he tracked me down and threatened me?”
“I’m not sure, but he was surprised when you showed up in The Tower, and Crow really doesn’t like surprises.”
“What’s he doing up there?”
“What did he tell you he was doing?”
“Making adjustments for the good of m
ankind, or something like that.”
Emily shook her head. “When I first started working with him, he genuinely seemed to be trying to continue Worricker’s legacy, working to change the world for the good. But after a while, I started noticing strange patterns and anomalies in Crow’s work.”
“What was happening?”
“It turns out he’d been working on something else in tandem with our work in The Tower.”
“What?”
“A long time ago, something terrible happened while Crow was manipulating the Radiants.”
“What?”
“His daughter disappeared, and ever since, he’s been trying to find a way to use the Radiants to bring her back.”
“Is that possible? Bringing her back?”
“I have no idea, but whatever he’s been doing to try to find his daughter has had an increasingly destabilizing effect on the Radiants. Looking back now, I can see how everything was slowly twisting up his mind. But he’d changed so slowly I almost didn’t notice it happen, the way a frog sitting in cold water doesn’t notice that the water has gradually turned to a boil until it’s too late.”
“Does he know that what he’s doing is messing with the mechanism that stabilizes the multiverse?”
“He knows. I’m just not sure he’s capable of understanding…or caring. Not anymore.”
“And there’s nothing we can do?”
“Rabbits is the only system that can counter what he’s been doing and stabilize the Radiants.”
“So, what, winning Rabbits would help?”
“Win the game, save the world.”
“How the hell are we supposed to do that?”
“I don’t think we can.”
“Why not?”
“Aside from the fact that he’s been killing and terrorizing players, Crow’s manipulations have messed up the mechanics of Rabbits so badly that it’s pretty much impossible for anybody to even find the game right now, never mind win it.”
Emily pressed the call button on the elevator.
“Please, I have so many more questions…”
“Believe me, K, I’d love nothing more than to talk for hours. I’ve missed you—I really have—but I have to leave right now, or I won’t make it back.”
“Can’t we have a few more minutes?”
Emily checked the time on her phone. “In about thirty seconds, my manipulation is going to end, and things will go back to the way they were when you woke up this morning.”
“So what am I supposed to do now?”
“You could wish me luck,” she said.
“Why? Where are you going?”
“To kill Crow,” she said, “and try to find a way to win the game.”
And with that, Emily stepped into the elevator and the doors closed behind her.
After a moment, I jumped up, opened the sliding door that led outside, and ran down the stairs to the first floor. I turned the corner and sprinted toward the elevator structure at the end of the conveyer belt. There was no way I was going to let Emily Connors out of my sight again.
I easily beat the elevator down and was standing in front of the doors when they opened. But the elevator was empty.
Emily Connors had disappeared.
29
SO IT’S FUTILE AND POTENTIALLY DEADLY. WHAT THE HELL ELSE YOU GOT GOING ON RIGHT NOW?
The first thing I did after leaving Emily’s friend’s midcentury mansion on the lake was stop by the Fremont Troll.
He (or she) was holding a Volkswagen bug, not an Austin Mini.
A quick online search in the Uber on my way home revealed that there was still no third movie in Richard Linklater’s Before trilogy, the weird skyscraper was back where it didn’t belong, and those bears were still called Berenstain and not Berenstein.
It looked like I was back in the world I’d left behind after a day spent following Emily’s series of clues and coincidences. I checked the time on my phone. I was supposed to meet Chloe at my place for dinner in half an hour.
* * *
—
“What are we cooking?” Chloe said as she entered my apartment and kicked off a pair of beat-up black-and-white checkered Vans.
“Cacio e pepe,” I said.
“Ooooh. You know I love your fancy spaghetti,” Chloe said as she reached around and kissed me on her way over to the fridge.
“Are you getting wine?” I asked.
“You know I am.”
“Good, because I think we might need it.”
She turned back to me with a concerned look. “Why? What’s up?”
“Oh, for one thing, I spent the afternoon in another dimension.”
Chloe laughed as she pulled a chilled bottle of white out of the fridge and set it down on the counter. “Well, if that’s the case, we might need more than sauvignon blanc.”
I set the wooden spoon I’d been using to stir the butter, cheese, and pepper into the pasta, and turned to face Chloe.
“What? You’re kidding, right?” she asked.
I shook my head. “I have had one fuck of a day.”
Chloe poured us each a glass of wine and sat down at the dining room table.
“Start at the beginning,” she said, “and don’t leave anything out.”
I plated our dinner, took a sip of wine, and told Chloe about my day—about Emily and everything she’d said regarding my parents, Gatewick, Meechum, Crow, that Rabbits had most likely been created to repair and maintain a much older interdimensional multiverse repair mechanism, and all the rest of it.
When I was finished, Chloe leaned back in her chair and exhaled. “Holy shit,” she said. “I don’t even wanna tell you about my day now.”
I pulled out my phone to show Chloe the photograph I’d taken of the poster advertising the music festival, and a picture I’d snapped of the Fremont Troll holding a Mini Cooper instead of a Volkswagen. Obviously, the music festival poster didn’t mean much out of context, and the troll photo could have very easily been faked, but I could tell Chloe believed me, even without further scientific examination of the evidence.
“Does this mean you have some kind of…super Gatewick powers?”
“I don’t think so,” I said. “I think it just means I’m a little fucked-up because my parents took drugs and made me play weird games as a kid.”
“You’re not fucked-up, K. You’re complicated. Huge difference.”
“Thanks…I think.”
Chloe nodded, then topped up our glasses of wine. “So, after hearing you describe your day of wild adventures, I think there’s only one thing to do.”
“I’m listening,” I said, and folded my arms.
“We have to do what your friend Emily told you.”
“And what is that?”
“Win the game, save the world.”
“Okay. But as much as I appreciate your enthusiasm, Emily also told me that Crow has been terrorizing and killing players, and that his manipulations have messed up the mechanics of Rabbits so badly that it’s become pretty much impossible to play the game, never mind win it.”
“Sounds like a challenge to me.”
“Really? Because, to me, it sounds like a futile and potentially deadly enterprise.”
“So it’s futile and potentially deadly. What the hell else you got going on right now?”
* * *
—
We finished eating, loaded the dishwasher, then sat back down at the table.
“What if we’re not safe here?” I asked.
“In your apartment?”
I nodded. I wasn’t worried about myself. I was thinking about Chloe. Crow had made it clear. If anything happened to Chloe, it would be on me.
“You’re thinking about the Swan lady and her suicide twins?”
&nbs
p; “Or anybody else Crow decides to send,” I said.
“If somebody was coming to get us, wouldn’t they be here already?”
“Maybe. I don’t know. What if they’re waiting to see if we start trying to play the game again?”
“Haven’t we been playing the game ever since we saw Minister Jesselman blow his brains out on live TV?”
“I don’t know. I suppose so.”
“Do you believe there’s something fucked-up going on and that our multiverse is in genuine danger?”
I thought about her question for a few seconds. Did I believe all of this was real? I was losing a lot of the details, but I knew I’d seen the movie Before Midnight. I could no longer recall much of the plot, but I remembered where we’d sat in the theater. Something was definitely happening.
“Yes, I think the multiverse might be in danger,” I said, finally.
“Well, then?”
“What I can’t believe is that it’s somehow up to you and me to fix it.”
“Let’s avoid the Chosen One bullshit and just go back to the beginning to see if there’s something we missed. And if we happen to find something, we can decide at that point whether or not to pursue it. Deal?”
“Deal,” I said.
“Great.” Chloe grabbed her laptop, I opened mine, and the two of us went back to the beginning.
We started at the arcade, then moved on to Scarpio’s phone, the attack on Jeff Goldblum, Silvana’s disappearing scar, and finally, Russell Milligan and Golden Seal Carpet Cleaning.
We didn’t find anything new, but we were surprised by the sheer volume of crazy shit we’d been through over the past couple of months.
It was after midnight by the time we shut it down. We decided we’d continue our reexamination of everything in the morning, starting with Baron’s death.
I had just copied the images Chloe had taken of Baron’s murder wall to my computer, and I was about to shut my laptop for the night, when Chloe noticed something.
“Wait,” Chloe said.
“What?”
“There.” She pointed to three Post-it notes in the middle of Baron’s wall of nonsense.
Baron had written three names: Hazel, Murmur, and The Dark Thane.