by Stephen Cote
Part 5: Rendezvous
"Dude," Klaus Reinhardt said nervously, "your cat just talked."
Stu-Jake Frankenbaum shook his head and whispered, "Klaus, we don’t say ‘dude’. It sounds too much like a rather nasty cuss word in some alien dialect."
"Really? What does it mean?" Klaus asked.
"It means those who like to ..." Bram Shakley started, but was cut off by Stu-Jake making a sour face and shaking his head. "It’s pretty nasty," he finished.
"The cat talked, though," Klaus said.
Both Bram and Stu-Jake looked down at Pam the Jolly Cat.
Stu-Jake looked back up at Klaus. "Jolly Cats don’t talk."
"Yours did," Klaus countered. "It said ‘flarn’."
Stu-Jake winced and Bram laughed aloud. "Like a cat is going to know alien cargo-pilot swear words."
"Wait," Bram paused, "you’ve only been with us less than a day. Where did you hear it?"
Klaus pointed with both hands at the cat. "I’m telling you, the cat talked."
Stu-Jake looked at Pam and shook his head. "I’ve never heard him talk before. Maybe you were just hearing things, Klaus."
"Flarn," Pam meowed.
"See, he," Bram started, then recoiled. "Jeez!"
"Flarn, flarn, flarn," he meowed in succession.
"Alright," Stu-Jake demanded, "who taught him to say that?"
"Max is coming by transporter beam," Pam said quite clearly. "Flarn."
The three men huddled around Pam amidst the squalor that was bachelors on a budget space travel. "Ok," Stu-Jake spoke slowly. "Who is Max?"
"Can’t be all that bad if he can afford a transporter beam," Bram said.
Pam pattered across the room and hopped up on a tiny counter top, poking his nose against the view port. "He’s here."
The transporter beam flew up close to the budget space camper, and docked.
The three men looked at each other, then Bram went to the airlock. "Think I should open it?" he asked, then stepped back as the door opened on its own.
Chance Holly poked his head through the airlock and waved. "Hey." He immediately wrinkled his nose and stepped back. "Uh," he said from the docking tube, "Max would like to speak with you. Uh, in the beam."
"Hey, nice beam," Stu-Jake said as he entered, admiring the leather interior. "Is this a series eighty-four?"
"Hardly," Max said from the four-dimensional surround sound. "It’s a series eighty-five."
"Ok," Bram said as he entered. "Are you the one who made my cat talk?"
"Max is the computer program that processes data for Century Information," Chance said.
"Among my billions of other hobbies and activities," Max added irritably.
"Nice space ship," Klaus said admiringly when he entered.
"It’s not a ship, it’s a beam," Bram whispered.
"What’s the difference?" Klaus asked.
"A beam, it’s more than just a space ship. Beams set the tone and standard for luxury space travel. This is a smaller, more sportier transporter beam, but there are larger, more heavy duty beams, too." Bram shook his head. "I always wanted my own beam."
"I’ll make you a deal," Max said. "You can have my beam if you tell me how you figure out the age of quantum structures."
Bram and Stu-Jake looked hesitantly at each other. "That’s a company secret."
"More specifically," Max augmented, "I need you to reconfirm your most recent findings."
"How did you … ?" Bram asked.
"Your Jolly Cat," Chance said amicably.
"Pam?" Stu-Jake asked, confused. "Our cat ratted on us?"
"No, that would have been the magnetic vortex you opened without any paradox encryption. Pam just told me where you were and the general idea of what you were doing."
"What is there to reconfirm about our findings?" Bram asked.
"Well, you traveled back through time to what you thought was, as you call it, a reflection, right?"
Bram and Stu-Jake nodded slowly, both looking at Chance as Max had not presented himself as a manifestation.
"I need you to reconfirm that what you found was indeed a reflection and not the real Earth," Max said.
"Why?" Stu-Jake asked.
"Because he doesn’t think I’m a reflection," Klaus said, snapping to some kind of conclusion. "You are." He looked at Chance. "Right?"
"What qualifies you to make such a ridiculous claim?" Bram asked Klaus, annoyed at the insolence of someone who knew next to nothing about time travel, magnetic vortexes, or paradox encryption.
"Yeah, no," Klaus said, musing, "that means I can’t use that as an excuse for my shortcomings."
"It doesn’t matter," Max put in sharply, rattling the speakers in the low ceiling of the plush transporter beam. "What matters is that our immediate actions create precedence in time. If we act appropriately, we can prevent Time Tremble and Century Information from interfering."
"Why would they care?" Bram asked.
"He thinks they’re aliens plotting to take over the Earth," Chance whispered.
"Don’t help," Max told Chance. He continued, "Your friend was correct in his rash and uninformed assumption. I am uncertain of whether you traveled to a reflected Earth, or the real Earth. If indeed it was the real Earth, that would mean your measurements might have been off, and that you came from the reflection."
"The reflection dissipated over two thousand years ago," Bram explained, "so I’m not sure how that helps."
"But if you just double check your math, I’m interested to know which quantum lattice lifespan was measured. This Universe, or the other one."
"Our measurements are all base-lined on this Universe, and they’ve all been solid," Stu-Jake countered. "I just don’t see how even if we were wrong on this one case that it would make a difference."
"Because," Max droned, now quite annoyed, particularly with all of his processes boxed up in the cramped though luxurious confines of the beam, "how do you know the ultraviolet catastrophe didn’t happen very recently."
"We’d know," Bram snorted.
"But do you know why the catastrophe happed on the other Earth?" Max asked loudly, now electing an increase in volume to wage his argument.
Both Bram and Stu-Jake shook their heads.
"Well, I do! And I can say with a fifty-percent degree of certainty that I am not sure whether the catastrophe happened two thousand years ago when Time Tremble changed the past, or within the last few days when all of their planning to prevent a paradox came to a head because the change finally showed up at Century."
"You mean the whole universe ended because my spreadsheet didn’t add up?" Chance asked uncertainly.
"This sounds a lot like a television show, or a movie," Klaus added.
"Don’t say it," Stu-Jake said to Klaus. "You’ll be fined for copyright infringement, or something."
"Just check your work," Max asked. "Please. I’m asking nice, here."
Bram and Stu-Jake looked at each other, then Bram said, "We need to get Pam. We hid our procedure in his trunk."
When Stu-Jake brought Pam the Jolly Cat into the beam, both Bram and Stu-Jake huddled around Pam’s posterior, unlocked his tail, and opened his trunk. Bram removed a stained and foul smelling bar towel.
"What the hell is that?" Max asked.
"We wrote the original idea on a cocktail napkin and figured the safest place for our formula would be on something similar. Since the napkin was wet and smudged, we inked it onto the bus towel." Stu-Jake shrugged. "We figured it was the safest place."
Max emitted a high-pitched whine.
Pam retorted with a hiss and by lifting his leg.
"You could have told me where it was," Max said to Pam.
"I didn’t know what it was," Pam meowed.
Max took one look at the towel, quickly worked out a formula, and realized how asinine the formula really was. "This just looks like you’re measuring the half-life of sub-atomic st
ructures. No wonder you hid it, you’d be ridiculed until the end of time if anyone ever saw this."
"He’s just mad because he didn’t think of it," Chance said to Bram and Stu-Jake.
"I’ve thought of almost everything worth thinking about," Max said after a moment. "Just nothing this inane."
A moment later, Max continued. "Just as I figured. If you’d bothered to check your figures against a new reading of the Universe instead of the data you’d collected in the past, you would have noticed that the quantum lattice of this Universe is the one that’s on its way out."
"Whoah," Bram just about yelled. "That would mean we’re about to fade away."
"It would seem that way," Max said.
"Well, send me back home!" Klaus demanded.
"It doesn’t work like that," Max said.
"Well, well," Klaus stammered, then turned on Bram and Stu-Jake, "You guys just plain suck at math. And your space camper sucks, too. And I think it was your Jolly Cat that peed on me."
"You do realize that if I knew about this method of yours that I probably could have prevented all of this by now?" Max asked.
"Can we do anything about it now, Max?" Chance asked
"We’re whizzing around in a Universe that is about to fall apart," Bram chided Chance. "There’s not much to do."
"But you have a time travel thing," Klaus said. "And I still don’t understand why you can’t send me back."
"They just can’t," Max answered. "But, since they have access to a magnetic vortex, I think there may be a clever way out of this."
After a lengthy pause, Bram tapped the side of the beam. "And?"
"Since my application of your methods seems to indicate this Universe is the reflection, I can only assume that the paradox finally caught up to us when the actual entry scrolled across Chance’s screen."
"I’m not sure I buy the logic behind his spreadsheet crashing the Universe," Stu-Jake said.
"I’m smarter than you and we don’t have the time to get into a quantum circle-jerk. You’re just going to have to learn to be toasty about it."
"What’s the plan?" Bram asked.
"We add a paradox to the paradox. If I’m right, this will not only put us back to where we were a day or so ago, and stop the first paradox, but also preventing Time Tremble from ever fussing with this event."
"And, the how?" Stu-Jake asked.
"We go back to some point in the past and push Chance forwards in time through an encrypted vortex. Chance will then be protected from a paradox because we’ll just leave him a little bit in the future and not bring him back. Time Tremble can’t change it because they’ll never know where or when to look, and I’ll be sure to keep that information away from them."
"Sounds fishy," Bram said. "But, so long as it’s him and not me."
"But, won’t we have to do it on the original Earth, and not the reflection?" Klaus asked.
Max nodded, then realizing he wasn’t displaying himself anywhere, added audibly, "Yes. And, we’ll have to fix the original event somehow."
"So long as we’re going to mess up my past, can I leave myself a note to not drop out of college?" Chance asked.
Max said, "Um, let me think, no."
Part 6: Two Point One Plus Two Point Nine
Nineteen ninety-two, London England, a shoppe skirted by a fishmonger’s hideout, two pubs, and cobblestone. A few minutes after eight. Two was once that exact place and time, and two was once a toilet flush in the shoppe. Rightfully four, but inexplicably valued as five. Except now, the exact place and time was a magnetic vortex in the sewer, equaling two point one, and two point nine was something nasty appearing out of nowhere and falling into the sewage. Five
Chance Holly blinked as he looked at the display. A moment ago, he had been at the edge of the Galaxy, skipping through magnetic vortexes with Stu-Jake, Bram, and Klaus, and altering his own past in an unnoticeable but important way.
Hart Lovely’s face appeared in the corner of Chance’s display. Frix the Jolly Cat was cradled in his arms. "You can’t do that. You can’t just change history like that and not expect anyone to notice."
Max appeared as a smiley-face in the other corner of Chance’s display. "Two point one plus two point nine equals five. Looks right to me."
Hart Lovely sneered, then jumped and dropped Frix. "This isn’t over."
Max pantomimed Hart saying "This isn’t over" and then cut off Hart’s transmission. "Executives can be such sore losers," he said.
"Max," Chance asked, "why do I still remember everything that happened?"
"You know, those guys aren’t as dumb as they look, sound, or act. To make up for not telling me about the secret-laden towel, I made Pam get another secret for me. It turned out they had some clever ideas on recovering from paradoxes, and that helped me get us back here with our memory intact."
"Why didn’t they say something about this before?" Chance asked.
"They had written the formula down on a bar napkin that had been promptly misplaced in that hell they call a bachelor space camper, and Pam found it."
"So, what now?" Chance emphatically gestured his hands in various directions. "I’m going to get fired, that’s for certain."
Max’s smiley face bobbed. "Probably." Max played pong with a few columns of data, then said, "In consideration of everything that went on, I think the Universe needs a Jolly Dog."
"I meant, what about me?"
The smiley face bounced into a corner and jiggled, then went still. "Can’t you think of something clever or witty to do with your life?"
"No." Chance stated.
"Then I suppose you can come work for me. You’d make a perfect use-case for a Jolly Dog."