The Universe Builders: Bernie and the Putty (17 page)

Turning back to his planet, Bernie went from one volcano to another. At each one, he focused on the lava, reducing its temperature until it became solid rock, essentially corking each volcano. He thought about scrubbing the atmosphere, but since almost all of his life had died, he just moved the time lever forward until the sky was once again clear.

Bernie sat back in his chair, discouraged. Yes, he’d had more than his share of problems in school, but those problems were of his own making. He almost always knew what he’d done to cause them. This was different. He had no idea how this happened. And there weren’t any teachers around to ask.

He reviewed his construction notes for over an hour but was no closer to figuring out the problem.

* * *

“Gosh, Bernie, I haven’t seen you so down in a long time. Your shimmer is barely flickering,” Suzie said as her friend sat down.

Before Bernie could collect his thoughts, his napkin unfurled over his plate. Lenny and Suzie watched as a hole appeared in the napkin and a gusher of potatoes, gravy, and other unknown foods erupted from below. The mound grew as the escaping food piled up higher on the napkin.

“How does it do that?” asked Lenny.

“You have problems with ants?” asked Suzie.

Bernie just shook his head and pushed his plate away. “No. That’s supposed to be a volcano.”

Bernie told them about the volcanoes killing his plants. It was hard to get the words out. At one point, Lenny brightened and seemed about to say something, but after stealing a quick glance at Suzie, who gave him an icy stare, he seemed to forget whatever he was going to say and went back to listening.

“And my plants were beautiful. I designed them for different functions, and they were performing great. I had water fruits for the fish-kids and fruits and vegetables for the land people. I created plants for shelter. I even created a class of plants for their beauty, like you suggested, Suzie. And now they’re all dead.”

“Where did the volcanoes come from?” asked Lenny.

“That’s just it. I don’t know. Something drilled hundreds of holes straight through the planet’s crust, and the magma came up to the surface.”

“What about anti-matter particles?” Lenny offered. “If you have a handful of those babies, your whole planet can look like Swiss cheese.”

“That was the first thing I looked for, but I couldn’t find anything anywhere in the universe. Plus all of the holes are perfectly straight. If it was anti-matter, some holes would have been at different angles.”

“What are you going to do?” Suzie asked.

“There is only one thing I can do. I have to start over.”

“From the beginning? That seems extreme,” Lenny said.

“What else can I do? There must be something wrong with the prefabs. I’m not doing anything to cause these problems.”

“Bernie, I didn’t want to have to tell you this,” Suzie said as her shimmer’s intensity increased and took on a reddish hue. “I’ve been reading the reports Shemal wrote and sent to your personnel file.”

“What did he say now?” Bernie visibly tensed up, just as a serving tray rose behind him, positioned as a shield against some an unseen blow.

Ignoring the tray, Suzie bent forward and said in a conspiratorial whisper, “He said you’re indecisive and show poor workmanship. He also said he may have to fire you before you waste any more supplies.” Suzie reached out and touched Bernie’s hand as she spoke.

“It doesn’t sound like a good idea to go back and get new stuff, Bernie,” said Lenny. “Shemal may see it as more waste. Are you really sure the prefabs are defective?”

“Well, not really. I talked to Saul in the Supply Division, and he’s never heard of problems like I’m having. He checked around and said no one else has either.”

“Then I agree with Lenny, Bernie. It might be better to work with what you have,” Suzie concluded.

“I guess you’re right,” said Bernie in a dejected manner.

* * *

Bernie spent the rest of the day and most of the next recreating his plant life. By quitting time, he was satisfied everything was as before. In fact, better. The volcanic ash and the decaying layer of former plant life turned out to be a good fertilizer for his new plants. They grew faster and stronger than the first batch.

But Bernie left with the uneasy feeling there were more problems on the way.

More Sabotage!

Bernie stormed into the cafeteria, his shimmer flashing angry colors in every direction, leaving a battlefield of interrupted conversations in his wake. For added punctuation, his chaos cloud pushed chairs and overturned napkin holders on the tables as he passed by, sparking more than a few exclamations and protests. Bernie didn’t notice any of it.

“I can’t believe it,” Bernie said.

“Please try to calm down, Bernie. Everyone’s looking at you. Your cloud is whipping,” Suzie said as she tried to calm her friend.

“What’s going on, Bernie?” Lenny asked as he arrived with his lunch tray.

“My world, that’s what! It’s messed up again.”

“What happened?” Lenny glanced nervously at his fork as something bent it into a circle and caused it to roll off his tray.

“Everything was perfect last night when I left. Then, this morning, my beautiful blue ocean is all red!” Bernie struggled to calm his cloud.

“How did it happen?” Lenny asked.

“I don’t know. It happened beyond the Past Barrier so I can’t find out a thing. I think I’ve got a lemon world or something,” Bernie said. “It looks like a spontaneous generation of red plankton, and it spread throughout the oceans. Now I have to get rid of it all.”

“How did it spread so far overnight? Didn’t you suspend your universe when you left?” Lenny asked.

“Yes, of course, but overnight it moved ahead by a million revolutions, which cuts into my—”

“Wait a second, Bernie,” Lenny interrupted. “Are you sure you suspended it when you left?”

“Yes, because I had the plants just about right, and didn’t want them evolving anymore.”

Lenny squinted as he forced his thoughts to the surface, “I think someone is messing with you.”

“What do you mean?” Suzie asked.

“If you suspended time when you left, the only way your universe can move forward a million years is if someone went in after you and changed it. The universe can’t do it by itself. Only a god can do it,” Lenny said.

“Billy!” cried both Bernie and Suzie at the same time.

The Backdoor

There had to be a way to keep an eye on his universe and protect it from Billy. Then he remembered the Off World Technology group meeting just a year ago. It would be perfect. Bernie checked both the big manuals and found nothing to prohibit it. So he was going to do it.

He understood the concept very well, and at lunch, Lenny agreed it was a good idea. Suzie had pursed her lips, but said nothing, which Bernie took to be permission.

* * *

“What’s a backdoor?” Bernie had asked.

Skeet, who’d waited two weeks for his turn to present his latest discovery to the OWT group, was eager to tell everything he knew. “It’s a great way to get into your universe from a distant location.”

“What good is that?”

“Well, if you didn’t have a chance to finish something on one of your universe projects at school, a backdoor lets you get into it later from home.”

“Are you sure that’s okay?” Bernie thought it was beginning to sound like cheating.

“Well, you don’t tell anyone you’re doing it,” said Skeet. “That’s the whole idea behind a backdoor. They’re supposed to be secret.”

“How does it work?” asked Lenny.

“You create a hole in your universe just like we do when we attach our viewing windows. This time, you hide the hole in a corner where no one would look, and instead of attaching a viewing window to it, you attach something of yours, like an old shoe—anything that’s received a good dose of vibes from your shimmer. That lets you find it again later. Then, when you’re home, you search among the voids until you find the one with your shoe. When you find it, remove your shoe and put a new viewing window in its place. Use some putty to hide your second window. You don’t want anyone finding it. And that’s it. You now have a secret door you can use to get into your universe whenever you want.”

Bernie couldn’t think of any reason he would ever need such a thing. But that was then.

* * *

Bernie entered his universe, moving with the speed of thought to its farthest corner where he punched a small hole into the world of the gods. He removed his ring and positioned it in the opening between the two universes. With some help from the putty, he attached his ring halfway between the two worlds. Then, to make sure it remained completely hidden, Bernie added more putty. He didn’t want Shemal to find it and tell him it was against the rules.

With his new backdoor, Bernie would be able to enter his universe at any time. If someone was trying to sabotage his world, he would catch them.

* * *

Bernie rushed home after work, eager to complete his doorway. In the quiet of his room, he cleared his mind as he reached out into the infinite number of dimensions surrounding his own. Somehow, in the darkness, he sensed the presence of his ring. It was far away, but it was there. Carefully, he reached out until he was able to grasp the ring. Gently, so as not to dislodge it from the universe, Bernie pulled the ring closer and closer. Next, he removed the ring and replaced it with a viewing window from his collection. It took extra time to seal the window because he had no putty at home.

Finally, it was ready. He eagerly entered the universe, finding it just as he’d left it an hour earlier. He saw no changes to his sun or planet. He was so pleased with the success of his backdoor, he almost didn’t notice a foreign shimmer on the planet’s surface.

As Bernie approached the shimmer, he saw an infection spreading through his plant life. Some sort of fungi was stealing energy from his plants, sucking their life forces, and leaving behind moldy coatings of rust and rotted tissue. He watched in horror as the blight advanced rapidly across the forest, leaving moldering stumps where once great trees had stood. He realized he was observing it in accelerated time. Someone had pushed their time lever forward. Hundreds of years were flying past as Bernie watched. The wilting stain devoured everything, leaving behind rotting memories of his once-beautiful plants. Then time slowed down as someone pulled their time lever to a complete stop.

Before Bernie could overcome his shock at the decimation of his plants, the shimmer disappeared.
Billy! It had to be Billy
, he thought. If he had stayed a little longer, would he have confronted him? What would he have said? It didn’t matter now. The real question now was what did he do and could it be fixed?

Realizing the Past Barrier was clear all the way back to the time when he first entered the universe, even though hundreds of years had passed on the planet, Bernie pulled his time lever back and watched his plants miraculously recover from the blight that had consumed them. Bernie moved back until he saw the shimmering figure as it introduced the disease. As the figure began moving forward in time, Bernie stayed where he was. Here, in this time, only a handful of plants had been infected so far. He approached the doomed plants, carefully visualizing both plants and the disease destroying them. He blinked them out of existence. In that instant, the sick plants and the deadly disease they bore were gone. There would be no patient zero here today.

When Bernie blinked the diseased fungi out of existence, he created something teachers hate being asked to explain: a time paradox. He changed the future. Yet the future experienced by the shimmering figure was also real; it just wasn’t part of the future Bernie stood in now. Bernie had cut the ribbon that led to that future when he blinked the fungi. Back in the god’s world, the shimmering figure may think he has done something to damage Bernie’s universe, but if he comes back, he will not find a world with its forests in ruin. That world might exist somewhere, but Bernie’s action made it inaccessible to any god. Where it went or what happened to it is one of the Great Mysteries. No one really knows.

Bernie was just glad the world of ruined forests was no longer in his universe.

Lenny’s Charms

“Where’s Suzie?” Bernie asked as he set his tray on the table.

“She hasn’t arrived yet,” said Lenny, “but that’s okay because I have some guy stuff to show you, and I’m not sure she would appreciate it.”

“Oh?”

“See that girl over there, the one with the red dress walking down the aisle? Watch this.” Lenny opened his hand to reveal a piece of dark wood. He closed his hand again so only a small section of it extended beyond his thumb and index finger. He surreptitiously pointed his hand in the girl’s direction. The young goddess came to a dead stop and began looking around as if searching for someone. Unable to find whatever it was she sought, she shook her head and resumed her walk.

Lenny grinned. “Now see that girl over there? The one carrying her tray back to the empty shelves?”

As soon as Lenny moved his hand in her direction, she too stopped and began scanning the cafeteria. Lenny put his head down before she could catch him looking at her.

“What is that thing?” Bernie asked.

“The guy I got it from called it a ‘tweaker stick’. The people who invented it use it to send signals to each other across long distances, like a wireless telegraph. It works on us too. About 80% of females and 40% of males so far are sensitive to it,” he said as he made two more slash marks in his notebook under the female column.

“What good is it?”

“Well, not much by itself,” Lenny admitted, “but if you combine it with other things, I think it’ll be very useful. I’m researching several combinations right now.”

Bernie couldn’t help but ask, “All right. Tell me.”

“Think of it as a one-two punch. The first one gets a girl’s attention, and the second one gives them a reason to keep looking.”