by John Cusick
“You’re doing great,” Phin whispered.
“Shut up,” said Lola. “We’d like to go to . . . um, Phin, where are we going?”
Phin put his hands in his pockets and whistled. “So many choices. Anyplace far, really. Ooh, the Carbon Towers of Yasmine 6 are supposed to be very nice this time of year,” he said, considering the board. “Or what about the Mega Black Caverns of Ursa 27-B? It’s almost time for the annual super bat migration. GateAdvisor says it’s just beautiful.”
“Two tickets for whatever shuttle is leaving soonest,” said Lola to the potted plant, and then, remembering Teddy, “Wait . . . three, I guess.”
“We’ll need a voucher for our Rescue Wagon as well,” Phin put in. “Now.” He glanced at Lola, who was giving him a disappointed look. “I mean . . . now, please.”
Overhead, unnoticed by our heroes, a small black security camera narrowed its single eye.
“The next departing shuttle leaves in fifteen minutes for Singularity City. Cash or credit?” asked the potted plant, sounding like it didn’t give a flying rhino what their answer was.
“Credit,” said Phin, and handed Lola an ordinary black credit card.
“Place your card on the panel for identification,” said the potted plant.
A panel on a robotic arm unfolded itself from the wall. Lola glanced at the plant, which was of course expressionless, and then at the frumpy lady behind the barrier. The frumpy lady sniffed, took out a hankie, and blew her nose again. She was, Lola realized, not a real lady, but a cheap plastic one.
Not sure what else to do, Lola pressed the credit card to the panel. A little screen above it read Confirmed: Account Holder Fogg. Credit rating: Just Super Fantastically Amazingly Good.
At this, the security camera above gave an expression of utter shock and excitement—to the extent a camera with only one little eye can.
“Your account has been charged. Would you like a receipt?” said the plant in its same bored, overworked, underpaid tone.
But before either could reply, a panel in the ceiling slid away, and a bulb whose sole purpose was to strobe red and look menacing dropped into the room and began to flash its little heart out.
An instant later, several hundred other panels slid open, and much more menacingly, disintegrator guns snaked out on maneuverable robotic arms and aimed themselves at Lola and Phin.
Lola yelped. “What’s going on?”
“STAY RIGHT WHERE YOU ARE,” a voice boomed from speakers located somewhere behind all the flashing lights and guns. “BY ORDER OF THE TEMPORAL TRANSIT AUTHORITY, YOU, PHINEAS T. FOGG, AND YOU, MS. PASSPORT, ARE TO BE TAKEN PRISONER FOR THE CRIME OF TIME TRAVEL AND ATTEMPTING TO FLEE ARREST.” The voice then added, somewhat uncertainly, “I MEAN, WE’RE JUST ASSUMING YOU’LL ATTEMPT TO FLEE. MOST PEOPLE DO.”
The exit door marked Concourse burst open and a team of Lunar security agents, deadly and faceless in their black battle armor, tromped into the room with weapons at the ready. These too were pointed at Lola and Phin.
The potted plant gasped. The frumpy lady sniffled, took out a hankie, and blew her nose.
“See where politeness gets you?” said Phin.
“Maybe you should try talking them to death,” said Lola.
“No bantering!” snapped the largest Lunar security agent.
“Ahhhh!!” said the potted plant as it flew through the air and smashed into the face of the nearest security agent, knocking him over.
“Throwing people at other people,” said Phin as they dodged a hail of blaster fire and ran toward the door. “That’s super polite.”
“I’m sorry!” Lola shouted at the potted plant as they made their escape.
The potted plant groaned, half pinned beneath the fallen security agent, its pot smashed to bits, its leaves crumpled and covered in soil. Though no one knew it then, the potted plant would go on to receive a sizable workplace-injury settlement from the ferry company, retire early, and spend the rest of its days quite happily in a sunny bistro just outside Baton Rouge.
15
ALL THROUGH THE CONCOURSE, lights flashed red and alarming.
“ATTENTION, NEW BAYONNE VISITORS,” a voice boomed over the PA system. “WE HAVE A PAIR OF FUGITIVES LOOSE ON THE CONCOURSE. BE ON THE LOOKOUT FOR THESE CHILDREN.”
The walls shimmered and images of Phin and Lola huddled behind Phin’s kitchen counter appeared. The same image appeared on the floors and panels and just about everywhere you looked.
“It’s us!” said Lola, legs pumping.
“Ugh, I hate that picture,” puffed Phin.
Out on the concourse, everyone had stopped to stare at the images flickering before them. Some of the more observant ones were turning to watch the two familiar-looking children running like all get out, and the army of security guards chasing them down a set of escalators and over a decorative fountain.
“What do we do?” shouted Lola. “Apart from, you know, running?”
“I know exactly what we should do!” said Phin, who hoped he wasn’t lying.
The guards were gaining. They were shouting things like “Halt!” and “Stop or we’ll shoot!” Some of them just went ahead and shot anyway. A beam of pure destructive energy whizzed by and exploded a kiosk of sunglasses.
A flying pair of nifty shades practically fell into Lola’s hands. She put them on.
“Should I buy these?” she shouted.
“What on Luna is wrong with you?” Phin snapped.
“I don’t know!” she shouted. “I just have the intense urge to buy something. Isn’t that weird?”
Phin didn’t get the chance to answer. A disintegration beam whizzed between them and disintegrated a juice bar.
In a moment the guards would be on them.
“Wait!” Phin shouted. “Look over there!”
“Where?”
“That ball pit!” He pointed to a fast-food eatery complete with inflatable play palace.
“The moon has a ball pit?” said Lola.
“Yes!” said Phin. “And that’s where we’re going to hide!”
Together they ducked under a series of tables and moved serpentine through the eatery. A beat later the security team rushed into the food court, tumbling over each other in a clatter of weaponry and armor.
“Where’d they go?”
“Search the place!”
“Can I search the play palace?”
“Yes, Dave, you can search the play palace. For crying out loud . . .”
The kids were huddled behind a padded column in the middle of the ball pit. Thankfully it was well past lunchtime, and there were no children in sight.
“Move over,” said Phin. It had suddenly become awfully crowded.
“You move over,” said Lola.
“No, you push over,” said the second Lola.
“Both of you be quiet,” said Phin, then realized what he’d just said and did a double take. Actually, a triple take.
“Lola,” he hissed. “Don’t look now, but there are two of you.”
To Phin’s right was a Lola. To his left was a Lola. Both identically Lola-ish, both looking the way Lola usually looked, which was shocked and amazed.
“Cool!” they said together.
And Now a Brief Aside on the Importance of Checking Your Voice Mail
It takes a tremendous—an almost godlike—amount of energy and effort for anything to travel between dimensions. Effectively, you’d have to burn up an entire solar system just to do something as simple as place a personal call from one universe to another.
Which is exactly what the Phan had done.
It happened awhile back, before Phin was born. A telephone rang.
It was a very nice telephone in a very nice office. The telephone was deliberately old-fashioned, in keeping with the retro decor. It sat on a pedestal before a great domed window, which looked out on the sprawling wasteland below. On either side of it were his-and-hers mahogany desks, entirely bare except for a pen or two, and an ever
-growing stack of mail in their respective in-boxes.
This particular phone had not been chosen at random.
The Phan had chosen it because of all the people in our universe, the owners of this phone could help the Phan break through to our dimension, which was part of their ultimate plan. The Phan were therefore very eager to speak with them.
The telephone, flying in the face of sanity and physics, rang.
It rang again.
Its cheerful little bell filled the vaulted room, clamoring against the sumptuous paneling, beating against the leather furniture, fluffing the shag carpet.
It rang and rang and rang.
And after the eighth ring, it went to voice mail.
“Hi there!” said the cheerful recorded voice of Barnabus Fogg.
“Hello!” said the voice of his wife, Eliza Fogg, with the same happily relaxed tone.
Together they said: “You’ve reached the office of Barnabus and Eliza!”
“We’re not in right now!” said Barnabus.
“But if you leave a message . . . ,” continued Eliza.
“We’ll get back to you!” they finished with all the delight and warmth of a happily married couple, deliriously in love, setting off on their first real vacation together.
“Oh, and if this is urgent, please dial 999-alpha-zeta-bravo-61245,” Eliza added.
They both went, “Beeeeeeeep.”
Then a voice never before heard anywhere in our universe, and certainly never recorded by any device known to anyone, ever, spoke.
It said, “WE ARE THE PHAN, SUPERINTELLIGENT BEINGS OF ANOTHER DIMENSION, AND WE . . .” The owner of the voice seemed to realize it wasn’t speaking to an actual person. “Oh, for Pete’s sake,” it said. “They’re not in.”
There was a barely audible sound just off mic.
“I don’t know!” the voice snapped. “It’s some kind of answering machine. Hello? Hello? If you’re there, pick up.”
A pause.
“Really, if you’re there, pick up. We had to melt a star to make this phone call and we really want to speak to you.”
The office was silent.
“Unbelievable,” said the voice. “Phone call from another dimension and they can’t even be bothered to answer!”
The sound on the other end of the line rumbled again.
“Yes, I’ll leave a message, just let me, will you? Okay, here it goes. We’re calling because—”
The answering machine went beep. Whatever message it was that the Phan had worked so hard to get across the irrational distances between worlds was cut off.
Five years later—for that was how long it took the Phan to muster the energy to place another phone call—a different telephone rang. This telephone belonged to the emergency contact number Eliza and Barnabus had left in their away message.
And it was right down the hall.
“This is Goro Bolus,” said Bolus, answering his own phone since his secretary was at lunch.
“Oh, thank goodness you picked up!”
The voice Bolus heard was so strange and so powerful, it would have melted his brain if the interdimensional being it belonged to wasn’t speaking at a polite volume.
“We can only keep this channel open for a few minutes,” it said, “so listen up.”
Bolus sat in his chair, frozen by the immense power and energy flowing through the receiver. In words, and without words, the Phan explained their plan. When they hung up, he was left with no clear memory of the conversation, only impulses, desires, and promises of absolute power.
After that, Goro Bolus was a new bean. He’d never been a particularly kind bean, but now his heart burned with an alien desire and his brain, enriched by its experience, pulsed with dastardly plans.
But now a question, a question that beat in the souls—if they could be called souls—of his masters, echoed through the dark chambers of his mind, more insistent than a ringing phone, more afire than a burning star.
It asked How . . . ?
How . . . ?
How . . . ?
16
“LOLA, YOU HAVE SIMPLY got to buy . . . those . . . sunglasses.”
Phin said this in a whisper, but a whisper full of urgency, fear, and frustration.
“You think so?” said Lola.
“They’re not really my style, but I do sort of want them,” said the other Lola.
The three of them—the two Lolas and one Phin—were crammed together behind a padded column among a sea of colorful plastic balls in the center of the ball pit at Fun Time Ultra Sunshine Rapid Food Emporium, trying desperately not to move. The Lunar security agents tromped back and forth through the food court, searching for them, radios squawking. The column that they were now hiding behind supported the domed plastic roof of the ball pit and was almost too narrow to hide Phin and both Lolas, meaning Phin now had two sets of elbows in his ribs, and two heads of ruffly hair whipping in his face whenever the Lolas turned to speak to one another. One Lola wore the pair of obscenely priced sunglasses she’d picked up off the concourse floor. It was the only way to tell the two apart.
“Isn’t that weird,” said one Lola, “I’m usually not a compulsive shopper.”
“But it’s never too late to become one!” said the other.
“Lola,” Phin hissed. “You’ve been consumercated.”
“What?” the Lolas said together. He shushed them.
Phin, who guessed they had no idea what he was talking about, explained—quickly, quietly, urgently.
“Places like this—malls, concourses, anyplace where you can buy things,” he said, “have microscopic nanobots in the air. They’re called consumercators. They replicate consumers. The idea being,” he rushed on before they could interrupt, “that a person is much more likely to make a purchase if a friend tells them they should, and much, much more likely if they themselves tell them they should.”
The Lolas considered this. They did feel weirdly compelled to buy the sunglasses.
“They activate when you pick up a tagged item, which those sunglasses must be. If you just buy them, she’ll go away,” Phin said.
“Who will?”
“You,” said Phin. “Or you. Or not really go away. You’ll just kind of . . . be one person . . . again.” Phin’s brow furrowed itself extravagantly. “Look, I don’t know exactly how it works, it just does. This is why I told you not to talk to yourself, remember? If you acknowledge your consumercate, they’ll stick around until you buy something.”
As if to illustrate the point, Phin plucked the sunglasses from Lola’s nose. In an instant, a second Phin blipped into existence behind the padded column, making a bad situation worse.
“Hey,” the new Phin said, “those sunglasses look great on you. They’d look even better if you were eating a Fun Time Ultra Sunshine Rapid Food Meal. Don’t you think?”
“He’s not hungry,” said one of the Lolas, then, turning to what she thought was the original Phin, “are you?”
“Then you should buy a Fun Time Ultra Sunshine Rapid Food Meal!” said the new Phin. “It comes with an extra-large QuasiCola. I mean, you really can’t beat that deal. You really can’t beat it, I don’t think.”
The first Phin shut his eyes and counted to ten.
“What are you doing?” asked a Lola.
“I’m not acknowledging him,” Phin grumbled. “And I’m thinking about how I have zero interest in making any purchasing decisions at this time.”
The other Phin waited patiently for a moment, and then, as if he had better things to do, he shrugged and disappeared in a little poof of smoke.
“See?” said Phin. “Now please go buy something so we can get rid of . . . you . . . and get out of here!”
The Lolas looked at each other.
“Okay,” said the Lola wearing the sunglasses. “Sit tight.”
Craning to see if the coast was more or less clear, she eased her way out of the ball pit and back toward the Forever Nine Hundred and Twenty-One kio
sk, where they sold the same brand of eyewear.
“I hope she makes it okay,” said the remaining Lola.
“I hope she has cash on her,” grumbled Phin.
“We do,” said Lola. “You gave us your credit card, remem—?”
And she vanished in a poof of smoke.
A second later Lola, still wearing the stupid sunglasses, hurried back behind the padded column.
“She’s gone,” she said.
“Yep,” said Phin.
“I’m going to miss her.”
Phin shook his head. “Okay, we’ve got to figure out a way to get back to our ship.” His brow did a different kind of furrow now, this time in thought. The security agents had done their sweep of the food court, but now stood with their backs to Lola and Phin, guarding the exit. Phin scanned the mostly empty dining area until his eyes caught something that made them twitch.
“Lola,” said Phin in an intense whisper. “How strong are your knees?”
“I don’t know,” she whispered back with equal intensity. “Um, normal strength?”
“Then come on.”
The pair picked their way across the court, keeping low. Stealthily they approached one of the few remaining tables still occupied. Hunched over the remains of a large lunch were a pair of enormous blue bears, the same pair Lola had seen earlier arguing about whether there was time for a preflight meal. Evidently, there had been time for several meals. Both bears were visibly gorged on honey mead and seafood. A dozen empty steins lolled amongst platters of caviar and salmon. One of the bears had shrugged off his overcoat and draped it across the back of a nearby chair. As quietly as he could, Phin took hold of the coat. It was surprisingly heavy, made of a rich navy fabric with dozens of brass buttons that threatened to clatter as he eased it, inch by inch, off the chair, cringing for a moment as the nearest bear hiccuped, belched, and lay his ursine head down for a nap.
“We’re stealing his coat?” Lola hissed.
“They won’t miss it,” said Phin.
“What they’re going to miss is their flight,” Lola mumbled, considering the slumbering bears.
“What now?” she asked once they’d reached the relative safety of an organic tofu stand.