One Verse Multi, page 22
I blinked at him, but I felt my smile. He seemed bashful but not embarrassed.
All I could think to say was, “Wow.”
“And you, Luca?” Tidus asked.
“I’m in.”
Tidus laughed.
“Yeah?” I asked.
“It’s not like I haven’t had a crush on you for months, but I won’t let this kid stand in my way. I feel like this multi-verse issue is more important than our personal shit. But, yeah.”
“Baw, that’s cute,” Tidus said, looking between me and Luca. Then he turned on Luca. “I’m not a kid.”
“You’re ten years younger than me.”
Tidus gasped. “You’re thirty-four. Your skin is phenomenal! What do you do to it?”
Luca rolled his eyes, embarrassed. I laughed and retrieved my pizza. I sat at the other end of the counter, both in between and away from them. “Can I sit in? I don’t want to interrupt.”
They smiled and Luca turned back to Tidus. Tidus immediately opened his mouth and held up his hand. “What if it was aliens, but they time-traveled and came from a different universe?”
Luca’s expression of gentle joy melted into pure loathing. “I wouldn’t have to worry about what impact they had on the multi-verse.”
“Why not?”
“I’d destroy everything.”
That made Tidus giggle. I listened to them discuss the multi-verse and its various dynamics for another hour. Tidus got hung up on the idea of certain quantum particles existing both in the present, past, and future simultaneously, and he decided it was bedtime. Tidus gave me a good-night kiss and left. I watched Luca clean up the coffee mugs.
“Are you going to stay up?” he asked, adding my plate to the dishwasher.
I shook my head. “Luca.”
“Martin.”
“Am I weird to want this? I mean, doesn’t everyone look for that one person? You and Tidus would consider me potentially that one, right?”
He laughed, then leaned against the counter near me in that familiar and perfect way he always had, slipping his hands into his pockets.
“I guess the way I see it, statistically, even if a lot of people were looking for the one, it would still just be a mean, some average way that people did things. But, like with most averages, you have statistically relevant groups on either side of the peak of the bell curve. Somewhere on the left are people with less than one person: serial relationships, people who fall for pieces of people, or single people who want to stay that way forever. And on the right side, above the average of one are all the people like you.”
I smiled. Perfectly explained. “So, you’re saying I’m above average?”
He rolled his eyes just like I wanted him to. “No, Martin. What I’m saying is good night.”
I caught his arm before he got too far away and kissed him. I sat alone in Wei’s kitchen for another twenty minutes, just thinking about the state of things. Then I went upstairs to sleep.
Section 22
I wouldn’t say losing
“Everyone get up now,” I heard someone scream. The voice was both far away and right in my ear.
I jumped out of bed faster than my body could take. The room lurched to the left, and I found myself on the floor. It took a heartbeat for the pain to subside and for my vision to clear. I didn’t know where the voice had come from, but I knew the nearest person was Wei. I stood up, holding my breath to stifle the pain, and plowed through the door to Wei’s room.
“The fuck was that?” I said as he struggled to get pants on.
“It was Mason on the speaker.”
“Where are you?” Hugo asked over the intercom.
“Game room.”
“A game room?” I said as Wei and I left his room.
“Sounds better than war room.”
Wei led the way through the house, VIP Hugo joining at some point as we ran down the hall. My boyfriends came around a different corner with Kiki at their heels. The game room was in the basement and was almost as full of computers as the data lab had been, only all the equipment was newer.
“You relocated the labs,” I said.
“What’s going on?” Wei asked, ignoring my comment.
“Two rifts are forming,” Mason said.
He didn’t look up from the computer he was sitting at. Well, he was actually sitting at six computers. He glided from one laptop to the next in his rolling chair, typing and adjusting the images on the screens. Along the other side the table were six more computers, facing away.
“Where?” MVP Hugo asked, pushing past the crowd. He leaned over Mason’s chair.
“Martin’s parents’ house,” Mason said.
“What?” I screamed, rushing forward to look at the image on Mason’s screen.
It was around four a.m. in Colorado. The house was dark and eerie. There were two drone video feeds, one in my parents’ living room and one in what everyone generally considered my room. Two computers showed the video feed and two more the quantum maps. The map showed the slightest blue tear on the gray background of the room.
“It’s VIP,” VIP Hugo and I said together.
“How’d they find them?” I said, turning on VIP Hugo.
“How do you know?” Kiki asked.
“Not all of us keep rifts in our living rooms, Kix,” I said, immediately feeling bad for snapping at them. I would apologize later. I kept my eyes on VIP Hugo. “How’d they find them?”
“They always knew.”
“What does that mean?”
“Can you get video like this from the other side of the rift?” MVP Hugo asked, moving on to resolve the problem.
Mason tossed Kiki a joystick and they each sent a drone through the rifts. Each rift was roughly the size of a marble, but they were clearly growing. The widening holes of color on the quantum screens was ominous, like burns on paper. On the other side of each rift was a person. They were a bland pair and looked like the workers I had seen in Josephine’s lab. Nameless, faceless, and dangerous.
The quantum activity on that side of the rift was extreme. A hurricane of particles was being hurled at the rift, and each person was the center of the storm. It was like watching a sawblade hack at glass. Kiki and Mason brought their drones back on my home-verse side.
“How are they doing this?” I asked VIP Hugo. “Is this how you create a rift?”
“We find weak places where the walls between universes are thin and use electromagnetic energy to push through the barrier, but we have to have visited that universe first, crossing through existing fissures. Then we can calibrate our technology and reenter it safely.”
“So, there are weak universe walls in my house?”
“No, this is different. When we first started developing this technology, we would try to cut through the walls at any point. That’s what they’re doing here. They haven’t been to this universe, but they knew where it was, or knew they could find it because of details your Margo provided. They’re breaking in. And your address was on the ID in your wallet.”
“How does that work?” MVP Hugo asked, his voice too curious for my liking. “How does this tech prevent convergence?”
“I don’t know how to explain,” VIP Hugo said, the pressure of the question, of everyone demanding answers from him, making him lose track of the science. “I can’t.”
I had never seen a Hugo panic. It was hard to see the usually optimistic and cool scientist struggle.
“And they knew how to find my parents all along. You and Margo lied.”
“I cannot speak for Margo, but I did not know until last night. I thought there would be more time. You have to stop them.”
“What do they want with my parents?”
“They don’t want them, they want you. Your Margo made you seem like you have the answers they need. They can’t start over. And since you’re supposed to be trapped in one of their labs, they’re retaliating.”
“How do I stop it?”
“It’s dangerous.” VIP Hugo took a deep breath then said, “Fissures made this way are like forcing metal bars apart. They don’t always bend back to the way they were. You have to close it and make sure it is closed all the way. You’ve done this before.”
I remembered the rift I closed at my interview for the research team. That rift, the size of a hula hoop, had been one of the hardest rifts I ever closed because it felt like it resisted. Now I understood. Someone had been trying to open it while I closed it. I had managed, but now there were two. I turned away from VIP Hugo and tried to wrap my mind around the work I had to do.
I looked at the quantum screen. These rifts were weird in the same way the first had been. Particles weren’t flowing into my parents’ house from the other verse. The particle seemed to flow toward the VIP goon. Their tech was sucking particles toward it like a tornado.
Luca went around to the computers on the other side of the table. He tapped a few buttons on a keyboard. “According to this, they’ll have a person-sized rift in three minutes and seven seconds.”
I took another deep breath. “Fuck me.”
I pulled my sequencer out of my pocket. That seemed to be a signal to the others to move. They scattered to help me, claiming computers. If any team could get it done, it would be this one.
“Tell us how to help,” MVP Hugo said.
I did my best to type code and give orders at the same time. “Mason, I need access to the relay to my home-verse. We’re going to have to do it from here.”
“Got it,” Mason said, going to a bank of computers on the card tables set up along the left side of the room.
“Wei, I need a laptop and a cable to connect this,” I said, flashing him my sequencer.
“You got it.”
“There are only like three drones in that verse,” Luca said. “It’ll take you longer to close one rift than the time we have by a factor of a thousand.”
“We could tune some there,” Tamar said, “but they’d be in Ohio.”
“I got it covered. I’ve been leaving drones in my room for years.”
“You’ve been losing highly scientific and secretive equipment in your parents’ house?” Kiki said.
“I wouldn’t say losing. Kiki, Tamar—monitor the VIP guys. Find some way to distract them.”
“Got it.”
“Hugo, can you link into my parents’ security system? They have cameras. I want to make sure none of them wake up and wander into another verse.”
“They aren’t unique,” Luca said as Hugo agreed.
“I know that. I had a counterpart,” I said as I roused the drones. The rifts being created didn’t lead to the FOX-verse, where my family’s counterparts were, so they wouldn’t converge, but I still didn’t want them wandering across the multi-verse.
“No, Martin,” Luca said, looking at his computer. “Apollo has a counter in the universe this guy is breaking in from. He has a lot of counters actually—how was he not in our study groups?”
“That fucking sucks,” I groaned.
Wei put my computer down on the table and flapped open a folding camping chair. I dropped into it and connected my sequencer. Slowly, the number of drones grew from four hundred to six thousand.
“I don’t think this computer can handle you closing two rifts at once,” Wei said.
“I don’t think I can handle it either.”
“One of us could close the other rift,” Luca said.
I looked around the room, and then my eyes landed on Tidus. MVP Hugo seemed to have the same idea.
“He’s probably as fast as you as far as dexterity and reflexes,” Hugo said.
“Agreed.”
“What, me? I’ve never—I wouldn’t know how.”
“Bae, we have footage of you playing thirteen straight hours of video games. For once, put that skill on your résumé,” I said.
“I can teach you on the fly,” Kiki said, tossing their joystick to Tamar. VIP Hugo dropped into the seat Kiki left and offered to drive the other joystick. Tamar hesitated but handed it over.
“I think I can disrupt what they’re doing,” VIP Hugo said, concentrating on his screen.
Wei got Tidus a computer, and Kiki hooked their sequencer to it.
“Mas, I need the drones under my total control in case something major happens, but I want to give Tidus some so we can work simultaneously,” I said, hoping he would find some way to make it happen.
“Player two coming up,” Mason said.
I liked the sound of that. I could see Luca’s computer from where I sat. The diagrams of the rifts were displayed with a bar showing their size. I could also see the countdown until someone could reasonably cross the barrier. I had less than a minute.
“Which one is opening faster?” I asked.
“Living room,” Luca said.
“I’ll take that one,” I said, sending code to the drones. I set the parameters of their field to an approximation of my parents’ house layout, keeping a straight line to the living room.
“You’re go on player two,” Mason said. “And the relay is coming online now.”
I couldn’t imagine what he must have done to make it happen, but the drone signatures on Tidus’s screen were half solid and half blinking. Mason came over to my computer and typed code into the interface. My screen buffered for a harrowing nanosecond before the feeds came back up. I had slightly more than half the drones under my direct control and Tidus had the rest, blinking to show they were his.
“Right, Ti, you got this,” I said. “Just do what Kix says.”
“How?” Tidus said, looking at my fingers moving over the keys. “I don’t type when I game.”
“Maybe this will help,” Wei said, connecting a Zbox controller to the computer. He typed a quick code to organize the drones into a few groups and assigned them to the controller.
Tidus’s eyes went wide with excitement. “Oh, this is better.”
“Hey, I want one of those,” I joked, trying to alleviate my own stress.
“Not now,” Wei said with a laugh.
I looked at Tidus. “It’s like Hungry Hungry Hippos meets Tetris.”
“We got this,” Kiki said, leaning over Tidus. “Mind your own shit.”
I laughed and focused. I jumped straight into a sixteen-group pattern. I must have caught the VIP person off guard because the stability of the dinner plate sized rift shrank by half before I noticed any resistance.
“Forty percent closed in B-room, eighty-five in L-room,” Luca said.
I split the drones again into a thirty-two-group pattern.
“Eighty-eight, eighty-five,” Luca said. “There was a charge increase on their end.”
“They noticed the fissures closing. They doubled their power input,” VIP Hugo said.
“Eighty-four,” Luca said. “You’re losing ground, Martin.”
I watched the edges of the opening as my drones worked. The tears at the edges of the rift were almost instantaneous. The edges sheared away as quickly as I could repair them. The hurricane on the other side of this rift seemed more powerful than my drones.
“Shit,” I said.
I considered my pattern. It was large eclipsing rings like an atom, a technique signature to me. I wasn’t sure suddenly what was more dire, watching the VIP tactics work or watching my foolproof patterns fail.
“How much power is needed on this thing to tune a human?” I heard Tamar ask.
Mason went to her. “You don’t have enough.”
“What would I have enough to tune?”
“Um…a book?”
“What size?”
“What?”
“Like a coffee table copy of Moby Dick or what?”
“Like a normal-sized Great Gatsby,” Mason said, nearly shouting back.
“The watch! You’re trying to send something away, like Martin did? The watch is the thing,” VIP Hugo yelled.
Tamar must have done something because two seconds after VIP Hugo’s comment, the rift stopped expanding. There-verse particles started pouring in through the rift. My drones chased back as many of the there-verse particles as they could, but the closure of the rift had dropped to less than thirty percent. I was in a worse place than when I started. But that didn’t matter. No way one of them could come through without the watch.
“Goddamn,” I sighed. “I can see why these rifts stay open if they aren’t closed right.”
“It’s a nightmare,” VIP Hugo said. “We’ve been trying to move away from this. It’s better now.”
“The VIP techs are disabled,” Luca said. “Now it’s just a matter of getting it closed.”
“Not out of the woods yet,” I said.
“This is so hard,” Tidus said. “He does this for a living? He’s literally a beast! What did he do, study badassery?”
I don’t think he was talking with the intent of me hearing.
“He studied swarms,” Kiki said, answering the question the way I always had.
“We have a problem,” Tamar said.
“The person couldn’t have gotten the watch back,” I said. “What is it?”
The particles pouring into the rift moved with the same intensity as they had when in the artificial orbit created by the VIP technology. As they swept in, they shredded the rift edges like bullets through tissue paper. I had too few drones to do this, so the idea of another problem was immeasurably irritating.
“Martin, Apollo’s awake.”
I looked over to Luca, all code abandoned. His computer wasn’t on video of the house, so I turned to Hugo. He had tapped into my family’s security, and I watched Apollo scratch his ass as he went into the bathroom on the lower floor. My parents’ room was in the basement.
“Maybe he won’t come up,” I said.
“Is that…what’s that?” Tidus asked, still talking to Kiki.
