One Verse Multi, page 30
“You knew the plan?”
“We can see. You don’t write small and you write in all caps, so it’s not like we couldn’t read it.”
“Why didn’t you say something?”
They shrugged and batted their eyelashes at me. “I guess because I agree with it.”
“Same,” the others said. I just stared at them. But what the fuck was happening? They all even smiled a little.
“I don’t know that I understand, but I trust you,” Fern added, slapping me hard on the shoulder. I took a deep breath to counteract some of the pain.
I wanted to argue with them, but I knew it would be a losing battle. “I don’t really want it to be this way.”
“Who does? But this is our best plan. We’re running out of time. The longer Josephine has access to MVP and to the Hugos, the more fucked everyone is.”
“No, I…but—”
“Suck it up, King,” Wei shouted. “It’s power throuple time. That’s what y’all are called, right? Tripple?”
Wei practically skipped over and placed his hands on mine and Luca’s chests in some weird Wei way of saying good-bye. Then he made the bird shape out of his hands and flapped it away toward the street entrance to the park.
“Son of a bitch,” Luca said. “You’re all really going to make us do this.”
“Wouldn’t have it any other way,” Kiki said. “Besides, it was fate. I’m going back to that club. I want a drink. Come on, Tidus.”
“Oh, is this—what’s happening?” Tidus asked.
“You’ll know soon enough,” Kiki said.
“I think I might like to try the club again. Maybe the crowd’s thinned,” Mason said to Tamar. He clearly meant it to be an offering of some kind. She smiled at him and took his hand.
“Y’all can’t just leave,” I said.
“Watch us,” Kiki said, handing me the bag of snacks that also had Tidus’s cold meal in it.
“What if we fail? How will you know?”
“Tell him to tell him,” Kiki said, pointing to Tidus. Tidus just flashed me two peace signs and made a pouty lip face.
“I’ll miss you,” I said.
Fern shook my hand, then winked at Luca before she followed Wei and Kiki.
“Like Wei said, suck it up. It was your idea,” Tamar said. She stopped and kissed my cheek, then Luca’s, then she walked away. Mason hugged us both briefly, then trotted after his girl.
“I told you they wouldn’t say good-bye,” Luca said, watching them walk toward the city. His face was a bright sort of sad, the kind parents have at their kids’ weddings. I felt suddenly homesick for all the moments I could lose with him if this plan worked. The feeling was immediately counteracted by the thought of everything everyone could lose if we failed.
“It was nice to meet you,” Tidus called before they all disappeared behind a building.
“Fuck me,” I said.
“Is that an invitation?” Luca said with a wink. It lost some of its shock value when I noticed the tears in his eyes. I didn’t say anything. I just hugged him.
“We can do this,” Luca said into my neck.
“I know.”
“Come on, we should do this before I fall asleep. Maybe we should get coffee first.”
“See, humor is a great way to hide your feelings.”
He rolled his eyes, squared his shoulders, and looked at his sequencer. “Don’t brag about being a bad influence.”
I looked at my device too. He tuned to the dead-verse first. I took one last look around and followed.
We tuned into a sort of oak grove. It was thin where we stood because a massive magnolia tree had shoved everything out of its way. It created a secluded canopy from the beach.
“Tidus?” I said.
“Shh,” Tidus said. “Come with me.”
We followed him deeper into the grove. I don’t think he really knew where he was going, but we followed without question. Ten minutes later, he stopped on the other side of the tree line in a clearing at the edge of a black field of water.
“Wow, this is kind of beautiful,” Luca said.
“I wandered back here when the guards were walking the beach looking for people. They aren’t the most proactive bunch.”
“Tidus—”
But he didn’t let me say anything. He just sat on the sandy bank and sighed. “God, I’m sorry I couldn’t get more devices. They were all dismantled. I thought about putting some back together, but it was impossible. Are the others okay? What’s happening?”
“Hey,” I said, dropping into a crouch in front of him. This wasn’t his usual excited rambling. It felt more intense and edgy. I put a hand out wondering if I should touch him at all. But he leaned into it without hesitation. He grabbed my hand and pulled it to his chest, rubbing it as if he was trying to comfort me.
He looked at me. “I’m sorry.”
“For what? You did everything that was asked of you. It wasn’t easy. You’re the most amazing. I mean it. I don’t know if I would’ve been able to do what you did.”
He smiled and rolled his eyes. “Come on, you do crazy shit all the time.”
I laughed.
“You were built for this job,” I said. “You had to swim to the Hub and reach the ladder along the side, right?”
“Yeah.”
“Well, that right there is a feat, because it’s five feet up from the water, and then you have to pull yourself up…hum…”
“What?”
“Naw, now I’m kind of picturing it,” I said in my flirtiest tone.
That seemed to do the trick. He laughed and leaned forward for a kiss. “Jeez, I can’t even imagine what I look like. My hair is air-drying gross.”
I reached up and raked my fingers through the impeccably soft purple curls that did have a sense of humid chaos. “You look amazing. You are amazing. I know the other Tidus was impressed.”
Tidus laughed. “Do you know how weird it is to talk to yourself on the phone? How could Hugo and Del stand it?”
“I can’t imagine. And I didn’t forget.” I put the bag of food in his lap.
“Oh, fuck me yesss,” he said, pulling the Styrofoam container out of the bag.
“Good work.” Luca held out his hand.
Tidus took a huge bite of the burger and high-fived Luca but didn’t say anything.
He had meant the gesture to be praise, but he didn’t want it to be too sappy. “No, I want a tiger cake.”
Tidus laughed, dug around in the bag, and handed Luca a pile of snacks.
“What happened to you guys?” Tidus asked. Luca and I explained our trip to FAU-verse while he ate. He managed to eat the burger, fries, most of the snacks, and three of the waters in record time. I figured that was one of the burdens of being a giant.
“What now?” Tidus said after a few minutes.
“Well, we have a plan,” I said.
“Good.”
“But it’s not going to be easy.”
Tidus gestured to the dead-verse as a whole and then shrugged. “Where do you see easy?”
“No, not like that. We…do you remember Mason talking about the Other Sock Phenomenon and using the relays to heal rifts?”
“Yup.”
“Well, that’s the plan. We get to the lab. Luca brings all the relays online, and we snap everyone back to their own verses, then we seal the multi-verse so no one can move around.”
“Sounds like a plan,” Tidus agreed. Then he thought some more. “Wait. Won’t that mean—won’t we be separated?”
I nodded.
“Oh, from everyone,” he said almost as if talking to himself.
“Not me,” Luca said.
Tidus looked at him, blinking. Then he looked at me. “Okay, right. That’s not easy. Why? Isn’t there another way?”
“Not that we can think of,” I said, “but if you think of one, we can try it.”
“Honestly, I’m too tired to think.”
“There’s one more thing,” I said.
Tidus groaned.
“You have to go home.” It took a lot to say that. It felt like trying to talk in a room that was on fire, the heat ripping all the use out of my vocal cords. My voice didn’t break, but I felt my throat close at the immense sadness.
“What? When? Why?” Tidus cried.
“The plan hinges on you being in your home verse,” Luca said. “Part of the problem Mason had when developing his original idea was finding something in all the verses to use as a source signal.”
“Oh shit, it’s me. The Tiduses!” Tidus gasped, covering his mouth with his hands.
I nodded. It was so dark, with no ambient light from the sum of human evolution to cast everything in a gentle hazy yellow. We could see each other but only as blackish shadows in the blue of the moonlight. In this verse, the animal life was sparse, not even mosquitoes, so the silence was almost total. Only the crashing of the ocean behind the trees kept everything from being empty.
“I didn’t get to say good-bye,” Tidus said.
“You probably still can. They’re all probably with FAU Tidus still,” I said.
“They know what we have to do,” Luca said.
“Can…can I stay a while longer? I can help still.”
“Yeah, there’s time,” I said. “I just wanted you to know.”
There was another stretch of silence. Then Tidus stood. “Okay, let’s do this.”
“You ready?” I asked.
“No, but I don’t want Josephine to win. My petty ass would yeet myself out of a moving bus before I let someone I don’t like win.”
“That doesn’t sound petty,” Luca said. Tidus laughed, which only confused Luca more.
“Right, so we need to get into the data lab,” I said.
Luca made a sound and put a hand on my knee. “All the individual units have doors on the roof, just like the Hub, but you’d have to get back in the water.”
I groaned. “I’d rather risk walking through the front door.”
“It’s pretty shallow,” Tidus said. “I could walk out pretty far.”
“You’re eighty percent leg. By the time you notice the water, I’d be in over my head,” I nearly shouted. “Don’t talk to me with your giraffe-ass self.”
“Tell me about it,” Luca said.
“Poor hobbits. I could carry you.”
I made a series of terrible sounds that earned me a kiss of comfort from each partner. They started back through the trees, I followed. The water was shallow but not as shallow as Tidus made it seem. Considering where the data lab was, we had to swim out past the Hub. I managed not to panic.
When we got to the right pod, Tidus dove under and was able to swim up with enough momentum to grab the bottom rung of the ladder. Luca and I had to essentially climb him to get up. Luca went up first with little effort because he was so light. Then they both had to pull me up.
“Not too bad?” Luca asked me.
I shook my head. He nodded and climbed.
“On the way up, I got a handful of his ass. Your boy has some cake,” Tidus whispered to me.
“Dang, really? I wanna feel,” I said, watching Luca climb.
“I can hear you,” he said.
“So slow down then, let me get a touch,” I said.
I followed Luca, and Tidus followed me. Luca found the right trap door on the roof and flung it open. A distinct charred smell wafted up from the room below.
“Was the fire that bad?” I asked.
Luca shrugged. “We were evacuated. I haven’t been back. I guess it must’ve been to bring the whole structure to shore.”
“Where does this come out?” I asked, looking into the dark hole we were supposed to climb into.
“My room.”
“I guess I didn’t realize there were rooms in the data lab,” I said.
“Where’d you think we slept? At our desks?”
“Mason did.”
“True. No, this one drops into a corner in my room. It was supposed to be Mason’s room, but we switched because it gave him too much anxiety. The ladder is bolted to the wall and goes to the floor, but you’ll end up standing on my desk. There’s a lamp. Here, I’ll go first since I know what’s down there.”
Luca was lost to the darkness below and Tidus followed. I went last. Because of the damage, most of the main systems were offline, and this included the main lights and the lamp. The processors and emergency lights were on a backup system, so they were on.
“Just stay on the ladder. I have a flashlight,” Luca whispered.
“A what?” Tidus said.
“A flashlight,” I repeated.
Tidus laughed. “Oh right, yeah, that makes way more sense than what I heard.”
We couldn’t see Luca, so we listened to him rummaging around in his room before a light bloomed. The flashlight was a generic LED one from the afterthought section at a gas station, but it gave us enough light to know where to put our feet.
Being on the solid floor of the lab was reassuring enough that some of my anxiety and tension slipped. I felt pain and exhaustion wash over me, and I nearly fell as I tried to walk toward the lab. Luca caught me under an arm and I leaned on him.
“Too much,” I said. Swimming and climbing without using my injured side as much as I could was so far beyond pushing myself that I couldn’t even explain what was happening.
“Here, sit down,” Luca said. He practically tossed the light to Tidus. I sat on the edge of his bed.
“You should rest.”
“We have so much to do,” I said.
“True, but there’s nothing we can do if I can’t get one of the computers to work or if too many of the processors are damaged. Stay here.”
He went to a closet and pulled out towels.
“Luca…”
“Please,” he said. His expression, amplified in the harsh angles of the flashlight, was so pleading I had to comply. I took the towel.
“I got him,” Tidus said.
Luca shook out his wet hair and raked it in a criminally sexy way from his face. Then he nodded. Tidus tried to hand him the flashlight. He declined, saying something about emergency lights in the lab. I wrapped the towel over my head like a nun and flopped backward.
“Luca is almost too tidy,” Tidus said, opening a desk drawer. “Look at this, are these pencils alphabetized?”
“How’s that possible?”
“They have sayings, like ‘A penny for your thoughts,’ and ‘Capricorns do it right.’ Well actually, it says ‘Capricorns do it w-r-i-t-e,’ but that is crossed out and r-i-g-h-t is written in. You must not love him for being a good time. I get it. Stable and boring is sexy. He does have great hair.”
This distracted assessment of Luca’s desk contents actually made me feel a little better.
“Why are you roasting Luca?” I said, trying to not encourage him by laughing.
“I’m kind of jealous.”
“Why?”
He came and sat by me. “You guys have had so much time together. And now I have to say good-bye.”
I put my hand out and he put his hand in it. “I’m jealous of the time he got with you too.”
Tidus looked at me like I was crazy.
“The week I was missing. I don’t want it to be over. He and the others insist we’ll all see each other again.”
“I mean, I guess you could kind of see me again. There must be a Tidus in your home-verse,” he said.
I almost laughed. “I guess I hadn’t thought about him.”
“What would you do with me if you had more time?” he asked, lying back on the bed.
“We’d sit in your apartment, and I’d be on your squad for video games.”
That seemed to mean so much more than I thought it would, because he started talking about playing with other people and wanting someone to play with sometimes. I passed an hour listening as he talked and traced patterns into my palm.
“All right,” Luca said, coming back.
I sat up with some effort. Tidus shone the flashlight at him.
“It’s up and working,” Luca said.
“Is that an invitation?” Tidus and I said together.
“Yeah, it is. See?” Luca said. He reached for the button on his pants, then he put his hand up and flipped us off. “See, ready. Just for you.”
Tidus and I cackled.
He took the flashlight from Tidus, went to the desk, and wrote out a list. “We only have two computers to use, so we can split the jobs. Martin should do a quick audit of the QDs and check that they’re all still working and attached to a Tidus, then we’ll have to get one attached to you. While he does that, I’ll check the relays, then build the code that’ll create the pulse and then the continued signal boost. Here are some concerns I have—”
“Luca,” I said.
He looked at me.
“Can you slow down? I didn’t get the first part.”
His face was placid, but I saw a shine in his eyes as he said, “Sure, do you need me to backtrack?”
“Baw,” I said, “You’re having fun, aren’t you?”
That earned me some dimples.
“Keep going.”
“Right, so my concerns are the power source in the QDs or the relays will burn out too fast. They can recharge on their own, but if we shut one off, we risk opening the multi-verse again.”
“Une clôture fait deux travaux,” I said, almost feeling the presence of the Hugos.
“What does that mean?” Tidus asked.
“One fence does two jobs. It’s from Hugo’s cowboy movie. It means if you build a fence, you can keep things out and keep things in,” I said yawning.
“I’m not saying that doesn’t help,” Luca said, “but that doesn’t help.”
“I think he means we could alternate the relays. Assuming the projected frequency of one verse is strong enough to keep things from getting out, then it is probably strong enough to keep things from getting in. So if you have A, B, and C verses next to each other, you can project B verse and keep out A and C verse, then you can project A and C verse and keep out B,” Tidus said.
