The Walls of the Universe (5 page)

It had been twelve hours. Twelve hours and forty-five minutes. But maybe John Prime had been estimating. Maybe it took thirteen hours to recharge. He leaned against the base of the statue and slid to the ground.

He couldn't shake the feeling that something was wrong. John Prime had lied to him about what was in Universe 7534. Maybe he had lied about the recharge time. Maybe it took days or months to recharge the device. And when he got back, he'd find that John Prime was entrenched in his life.

He sat there, trying the switch every fifteen minutes until three in the morning. He was cold, but finally he fell asleep on the grass, leaning against the Civil War Memorial.

He awoke at dawn, the sun in his eyes as it streamed down Washington Avenue. He stood and jumped up and down to revive his body. His back ached, but the kinks receded after he did some stretches.

At a donut shop off the square, he bought a glazed and an orange juice with the change he had left over from the almanac. A dozen people filed in over the course of an hour to buy donuts and coffee before church or work. On the surface, this world was a lot like his.

John couldn't stand the waiting. He walked across the square and climbed the library steps and yanked at the door. They were locked, and he saw the sign showing the library's hours. It was closed until noon.

John looked around. There was an alcove behind the lions with a bench. No one would easily see him from the street. He sat there and tried the device. Nothing.

He continued to try the lever every ten or fifteen minutes. As he sat on the steps of the library, his apprehension grew. He was going to miss school. He was going to miss more than twenty-four hours. He was going to miss the rest of his life. Why wouldn't the device work like it was supposed to?

He realized then that everything John Prime had told him was probably a lie. He had to assume that he was the victim of John Prime's scheming, trapped in another universe. The question was how he would return to his life.

He had the device. It had worked once, to bring him from Universe 7533 to Universe 7534. It would not allow him to return because it wasn't recharged yet. It took longer than — he checked his watch — twenty hours to recharge the device, apparently.

He stopped. He was basing that logic on information he got from John Prime. Nothing that John Prime had said could be used as valid information. Only things that John had seen or gotten from a valid source were true. And John Prime was not a valid source.

The twelve hour recharge time was false. He had assumed that it meant the length of time was what was false in John Prime's statement. What if there was no recharge time at all?

There were two possibilities that John could see. First, there was no recharge time and he was being prevented from returning to his universe for some other reason. Second, the device no longer worked. Perhaps he had used the last of its energy source.

For some reason he still wanted to believe John Prime. If it was simply a mechanical issue, then he could use intelligence to solve the problem. Maybe John Prime was truthful, and something happened to the device that he didn't know about. Maybe John Prime would be surprised when John never returned with the device, effectively trapping John Prime in John's life. John Prime might even think that John had stolen his device.

But mechanical failure seemed unlikely. John Prime said he had used the device one hundred times. His home universe was around 7433. If he'd used it exactly one hundred times, that was the distance in universes between John's and John Prime's. Did that mean he only used the device to move forward one universe at a time? Or did he hop around? No, the numbers were too similar. John Prime probably moved from one universe to the next systematically.

John decided that he was just too ignorant to ignore all of John Prime's information. Some of it had to be taken at face value.

The one hundred number indicated that John only incremented the universe counter upward. Why? Did the device only allow travel in one direction?

He played with the theory, fitting the pieces together. The device was defective or designed in such a way that only travel upward was allowed. John Prime mentioned the recharge time to eliminate any possibility of a demonstration. There was perhaps no recharge time. The device was of no value to John Prime, since he planned to stay. That explained the personal questions John Prime had asked; he wanted to ease into John's life. Some things he knew, but other things he had to learn from John.

The fury built in John.

"Bastard!" he said softly. John Prime had screwed him. He'd tempted him with universes, and John had fallen for it. And now he was in another universe, where he didn't exist. He had to get back.

There was nothing to do, he realized, but test the theory.

He pulled his backpack onto his shoulders and checked around the bench for his things. Then, with a quick check to see if anyone was looking, he toggled the device to 7535 and pulled the lever.

He fell.

Monday morning at school went no worse than expected. John barely made it to homeroom, and ended up sitting with the stoners by accident. He had no idea what the word "Buckle" meant in the Hopkins poem. And Mr. Wallace had to flag him down for physics class.

"Forget which room it is?" he asked.

"Er."

There was no Mr. Wallace in John's home universe, and he had to dodge in-jokes and history between him and Johnny Farmboy; the class was independent study! John realized he'd have to drop it. He was grateful when a kid knocked on the door.

"Mr. Gushman needs to see John Rayburn."

Mr. Wallace took the slip of paper from the acne-ridden freshman. "Again? Read the assignment for tomorrow, John. We have a lot to cover." The man was disappointed in him, but John couldn't find the emotion to care. He hardly knew him.

John nodded, then grabbed his stuff. He nudged the freshman hall monitor as they walked down the hall. "Where's Mr. Gushman at?"

The freshman's eye widened like marbles. "He's in the front office. He's the principal."

"No shit, douche bag," John said.

John entered the fish bowl and gave his name to the receptionist. After just a few minutes, Mr. Gushman called him in.

John didn't have anything on Gushman. He'd come to Findlay High School in the time John had been away. The old principal had fucked a student at his old school and that had come out in one of the universes that John had visited. That bit of dirt would be no good in this universe.

"Have you got the letter of apology for Mrs. Carson?" he asked.

John suddenly realized what the meeting was about. He'd not written the letter.

"No, sir. I've decided not to write the letter."

Mr. Gushman raised his eyebrows, then frowned. "You realize that this will have grave consequences for your future."

"No, I don't think so. In fact, I've contacted a lawyer. I'll be suing Ted Carson." John hadn't thought of doing that until that moment, but now that he'd said it, he decided it was a good idea. "I'm an honor student, Gushman. I'm a varsity player in two sports. There will be fallout because of this. Big fallout."

"It's Mr. Gushman, please. I'll have your respect." His knuckles were white, and John realized that Gushman had expected him to cave. Well, maybe Johnny Farmboy would have caved, but not him. He had dirt on the education board members. He had dirt on the mayor. This would be a slam dunk for him.

"Respect is earned," John said.

"I see. Shall I have your mother called or do you have transportation home?"

"Home? Why?" John said.

"Your three day suspension starts right now." John had forgotten about that. He shrugged. Johnny Farmboy would have shit a brick at being expelled. To John, it didn't really matter.

"I can take care of myself."

"You are not allowed on school property until Thursday at noon. I'll be sending a letter home to your parents. I'll also inform Coach Jessick that you are off the roster for basketball and track."

"Whatever."

Mr. Gushman stood, leaning heavily on the desk. His voice was strained as he said, "I expected better of you, John. Everything I know about you says that you're a good boy. Everything I've seen since you walked in this door has made me reevaluate my opinions."

John shrugged again. "Whatever." He stood, ignoring Gushman's anger. "We done here?"

"Yes. You are dismissed."

At least he didn't have to worry about learning basketball. And three days was enough time to get started on his plans. He smiled as he passed the receptionist, smiled at the dirtbags waiting in the office. This was actually working out better than he expected.

John's arms flailed and his left foot hit the ground, catching his weight. He groaned as his leg collapsed under him. He rolled across the grass.

Grass?
he thought as the pain erupted in his knee. He sat up, rocking as he held his knee to his chest. He'd been on the steps of the library and now he was on a plain. The wind blew the smell of outside: dirt, pollen, clover.

He tried to stretch his leg, but the pain was too much. He leaned back, pulling off his backpack with one hand, and looked up at the sky, breathing deeply. It hurt like hell.

The device had worked. He had changed universes again. Only this universe had no library, no Findlay, Ohio. This universe didn't seem to have anything but grass. He fell because the steps he'd been standing on weren't in the universe he was in now.

He checked the readout on the device. He was in 7535. He'd gone forward one universe.

John looked around him, but didn't see anything through the green-yellow grass. It rustled in the wind, making sounds like sandpaper rubbing on wood.

John stood gingerly on his other leg. He was on a broad plain, stretching for a good distance in every direction. There were small groves of trees to the north and east. To the west and south, the grass stretched as far as he could see.

There was no library to use to figure out what was different in this universe. No humans at all, maybe. A Mayan empire? If he wanted to find the differences, he'd have to do some field research.

He sat back down. No, he thought. He had to get back to his life. John Prime had some answers to give and a price to pay. It was Sunday afternoon. He still had half a day to figure out how to get back to his universe.

His knee was swelling, so he took off his coat and shirt. He ripped his T-shirt into long strips and used them to wrap his knee as tightly as possible. It wasn't broken, but he might have sprained it.

He took the sandwich that he had packed on Saturday from his backpack and unwrapped it. He finished it in several bites and rinsed it down with some of the water in his water bottle. The taste of the sandwich made him angry. John Prime was eating his food and sleeping in his bed. John wondered how he would feel punching someone who looked like him in the face. He decided that he could do it.

John spent the afternoon, nursing his knee and considering what he knew, what he thought he knew, and what John Prime had told him. The latter category he considered biased or false. What he knew, however, was growing.

Universe 7535 was the second one he'd visited. The device clearly still worked. His going from 7534 to 7535 proved that.

It was also support for his theory that the device only allowed travel to universes higher in number than the one a traveler currently resided in. But not proof. Hypotheses required repeatable experimental proof. He'd used the device to move forward through two universes. He'd have to do it a couple more times before he was certain that that was the way the device worked.

He took a blade of grass and chewed on it. This was an unspoiled universe, he thought. Which gave him another piece of data. Universes sequentially next to each other could have little in common. John couldn't even begin to guess what had happened for a universe to not have North America settled by the Europeans.

There'd been no library steps here, so he had fallen ten feet to the ground. More data: There was no guarantee that a man-made object in one universe would exist in the next. Nor even natural objects. Hills were removed or added by machines. Rivers were dammed and moved. Lakes were created. What would happen if he jumped to the next universe and the steps were there? Would he be trapped in the cement that formed the steps? Would he die of asphyxiation, unable to press the lever because he was encased in the library steps?

The thought of being entombed, blind and without air, horrified him. It was no way to die.

He would have to be careful when he changed universes. He'd have to be as certain as possible that there was nothing solid where he was going. But how?

Movement caught his eye and he looked up to see a large beast walking in the distance. It was so tall he saw it from his seat in the grass. A cross between a rhinoceros and a giraffe, it munched at the leaves of a tree. It was grey with legs like tree limbs, a face like a horse. Leaves and branches gave way quickly to its gobbling teeth.

No animal like that existed in his universe.

John watched, amazed. He wished he had a camera. A picture of this beast would be a nice addition to his scrapbook. Would it be worth cash? he wondered.

Ponderously it moved to the next tree in the grove.

John looked around him with more interest. This was no longer a desolate North America. There were animals here that no longer existed in his timeline. This universe was more radically different than he could have imagined.

The wave of the grass to the west caught his attention. The grass bobbed against the wind, and he was suddenly alert. Something was in the grass not twenty yards from him. He realized that large herbivores meant large carnivores. Bears, mountain lions, and wolves could be roaming these plains. And he had no weapons. Worse still, he had a bum knee.

He looked around him for a stick or a rock, but there was nothing. Quickly he gathered the notebook into the backpack. He pulled his coat on.

Was the thing closer?
he wondered. He glanced at the grass around him.
Why hadn't he thought of that earlier?