The Walls of the Universe (3 page)

"Thanks for picking me up, Dad."

"No problem." He dropped the truck into gear and pulled it out of the lot. "Odd thing. I thought I saw you in the stands."

John glanced at his father, forced himself to be calm. "I was down keeping stats."

"I know, I saw. Must be my old eyes, playing tricks."

Had John Prime not gone back to the barn? What was that bastard doing to him?

"Gushman called."

John nodded in the dark of the cab. "I figured."

"Said you were gonna write an apology."

"I don't want to," John said. "But...."

"I know. A stain on your permanent record and all." His father turned the radio off. "I was at the U in Toledo for a semester or two. Me and college didn't get along much. But you, son. You can learn and do something interesting with it. Which is really what me and your mother want."

"Dad — "

"Hold on a second. I'm not saying what you did to the Carson boy was wrong, but you did get caught at it. And if you get caught at something, you usually have to pay for it. Writing a letter saying something isn't the same as believing it."

John nodded. "I think I'm gonna write the letter, Dad."

His father grunted, satisfied. "You helping with the apples tomorrow? We wait any longer and we won't get any good ones."

"Yeah, I'll help until lunch. Then I have basketball practice."

"Okay."

They sat in silence for the remainder of the trip. John was glad his father was so pragmatic.

As they drove up to the farmhouse, John considered what he was going to do about John Prime.

"Where are you?"

John paused in his scanning of the newspaper and gripped a shovel. It might have come to violence anyway; Johnny Farmboy looked pissed.

"Up here."

"You went to the football game," he accused as he climbed the ladder.

"Just for a bit."

"My dad saw you."

"But he didn't realize it was me, did he?"

Farmboy's anger faded a notch. "No, no. He thought he was seeing things."

"See? No one will believe it even if they see us together."

Farmboy shook his head. He grunted.

John added, "This Ted Carson thing is about to go away."

"What do you mean?"

"A bunch of cats have gone missing over there."

"You went out in public and talked to people?"

"Just kids. And it was dark. No one even saw my face. Three cats this month, by the way. Ted is an animal serial killer. We can pin this on him and his mom will have to back off."

"I'm writing the letter of apology," Farmboy said.

"What? No!"

"It's better this way. I don't want to screw up my future."

"Listen. It'll never get any better than this. The kid is a psychopath and we can shove it in his parents' faces!"

"No. And listen. You have got to lay low. I don't want you wandering around town messing up things," Farmboy said. "Going to the library today was too much."

John smiled. "Don't want me hitting on Casey Nicholson, huh?"

"Stop it!" He raised his hand. "That's it. Why don't you just move on? Hit the next town or the next universe or whatever. Just get out of my life!"

John frowned. It was time for the last shot. He lifted up his shirt. Under his grey sweatshirt was a shoulder harness with a thin disk the diameter of a softball attached at the center. It had a digital readout which said 7533, three blue buttons on the front, and dials and levers on the sides.

John began unstrapping the harness and said, "John, maybe it's time you saw for yourself."

John looked at the device. It was tiny for what it was supposed to do.

"How does it work?" he asked. John envisioned golden wires entwining black vortices of primal energy, x-ray claws tearing at the walls of the universe as if they were tissue.

"I don't know how it works," John Prime said, irritated. "I just know how to work it." He pointed to the digital readout. "This is your universe number."

"Seventy-five thirty-three?"

"My universe is 7433." He pointed to the first blue button. "This increments the universe counter. See?" He pressed the button once and the number changed to 7534. "This one decrements the counter." He pressed the second blue button and the counter flipped back to 7533. He pointed to a metal lever on the side of the disk. "Once you've dialed in your universe, you pull the lever and — Pow! — you're in the next universe."

"It looks like a slot machine," John said.

John Prime pursed his lips. "It's the product of a powerful civilization."

"Does it hurt?" John asked.

"I don't feel a thing. Sometimes my ears pop because the weather's a little different. Sometimes I drop a few inches or my feet are stuck in the dirt."

"What's this other button for?"

John Prime shook his head. "I don't know. I've pressed it, but it doesn't seem to do anything. There's no owner's manual, you know?" He grinned. "Wanna try it out?"

More than anything, John wanted to try it. Not only would he know for sure if John Prime was full of crap, but he would get to see another universe. The idea was astounding. To travel, to be free of all this ... detritus in his life. Ten more months in Findlay was a lifetime. Here in front of him was adventure.

"Show me."

John Prime frowned. "I can't. It takes twelve hours to recharge the device after it's used. If I left now, I'd be in some other universe for a day before I could come back."

"I don't want to be gone a day! I have chores. I have to write a letter."

"It's okay. I'll cover for you here."

"No way!"

"I can do it. No one would know. I've been you for as long as you have."

"No. There's no way I'm leaving for twelve hours with you in control of my life."

John Prime shook his head. "How about a test run? Tomorrow you're doing what?"

"Picking apples with my dad."

"I'll do it instead. If your dad doesn't notice a thing, then you take the trip, and I'll cover for you. If you leave tomorrow afternoon, you can be back on Sunday and not miss a day of school." John Prime opened his backpack wider. "And to make the whole trip a lot more fun, here's some spending money." He pulled out a stack of twenty dollar bills.

"Where did you get that?" John had never seen so much money. His bank account had no more than three hundred dollars in it.

John Prime handed him the stack of cash. The twenties were crisp, the paper smooth-sticky. "There's got to be two thousand dollars here."

"Yep."

"It's from another universe, isn't it? This is counterfeit."

"It's real money. And no one in this podunk town will be able to tell me that it's not." John Prime pulled a twenty out of his own pocket. "This is from your universe. See any differences?"

John took the first twenty off the stack and compared it to the crumpled bill. They looked identical to him.

"How'd you get it?"

"Investments." John Prime's smile was ambiguous.

"Did you steal it?"

John Prime shook his head. "Even if I did steal it, the police looking for it are in another universe."

John felt a twinge of apprehension. John Prime had his fingerprints, his looks, his voice. He knew everything there was to know about him. He could rob a bank, kill someone, and then escape to another universe, leaving John holding the bag. All the evidence of such a crime would point to him, and there was no way he could prove that it wasn't him.

Would he do such a thing? John Prime had called John his brother. In a sense they were identical brothers. And John Prime was letting John use his device, in effect stranding him in this universe. That took trust.

"Twenty-four hours," John Prime said. "Think of it as a vacation. A break from all this shit with Ted Carson."

The lure of seeing another universe was too strong. "You pick apples with my father tomorrow. If he doesn't suspect anything, then maybe I'll take the trip."

"You won't regret it, John."

"But you have got to promise not to mess anything up!"

John Prime nodded. "That's the last thing I'd want to do, John."

"Damn, it's early," John said, rubbing the straw from his hair.

"Don't let my dad hear you cursing," Johnny Farmboy said.

"Right, no cursing." John stood, stretching. "Apple picking? I haven't done that ... in a while." It had been a lot longer than a year. His own father hadn't bothered with the orchard in years.

John peered out a small window. Farmboy's father was already out there with the tractor.

"What's up between you and your dad? Anything heavy?" John asked. Johnny Farmboy took off his coat and handed it to John, taking John's in return.

John shook his head. "We talked last night about the Carson thing. He wanted me to write the letter."

"So that's it. What about your mother?"

"She was pissed with me before. She still may be. We haven't talked since Thursday."

"Anything happening this afternoon?" John Prime took a pencil out and started jotting things down.

"Nothing until tomorrow. Church, then chores. Muck the stalls. Homework. But I'll do that."

"What's due for Monday?"

"Reading for Physics. Essay for English on Gerard Manley Hopkins. Problem set in Calculus. That's it."

"What's your class schedule like?"

Farmboy began to tell him, but then said, "Why do you need to know that? I'll be back."

"In case someone asks."

"No one's gonna ask." As Farmboy pulled John's ski jacket on, he looked through his binoculars. "I'll watch from here. If anything goes wrong, you pretend to be sick and come back to the barn. You'll brief me and then we switch back."

John Prime smiled. "Nothing's gonna happen. Relax." He pulled on gloves and climbed down the ladder. "See ya at lunch."

With more trepidation than he showed, John walked out to the orchard. He cast one glance over his shoulder and saw Farmboy watching him through binoculars. This was a test in more ways than one. He could still run. He could still find another bolthole.

His father barely glanced at him, said, "How 'bout we start this end?"

"Okay," John said, his throat dry. His father stood tall, and when he walked past he smelled of dirt, not booze. He walked up to a tree and turned to look at him.

"Well? Come on."

John gripped a branch and pulled himself into the tree. The rough bark cut his hands through the gloves. His foot missed a hold, and he slipped.

"Careful there."

"I'm getting too big for this," John said.

"Next year, I'll have to hire someone to help me."

John paused, words of banter on his lips. He smiled. "I bet mom could do it."

His father laughed. "Now there's a thought."

John felt a twinge of jealousy as he watched his father laugh at John Prime's joke. He wondered what John Prime had said to make his father laugh. Then he realized that if his father was laughing at John Prime's jokes, there was no danger of being found out.

The precarious nature of his situation bothered him. Effectively, John Prime was him. And he was ... nobody. Would it be that hard for someone to slip into his life? He realized that it wouldn't. He had a few immediate relationships, interactions that had happened within the last few weeks that were unique to him, but in a month, those would all be absorbed into the past. He had no girlfriend. No real friends, except for Erik, and that stopped at the edge of the court. The hardest part would be for someone to pick up his studies, but even that wouldn't be too hard. All his classes were a breeze, except Advanced Physics, and they were starting a new module on Monday. It was a clear breaking point.

John wondered what he would find in another universe. Would there be different advances in science? Could he photocopy a scientific journal and bring it back? Maybe someone had discovered a unified theory in the other universe. Or a simple solution to Fermat's Last Theorem. Or ... but what could he really do with someone else's ideas? Publish them under his own name? Was that any different than John Prime's scheme to get rich with Rubik's Square, whatever that was? He laughed and picked up his physics book. He needed to stay caught up in this universe. They were starting Quantum Mechanics on Monday, after all.

John brought Johnny Farmboy a sandwich.

"Your mom didn't notice either."

He took the sandwich, pausing to look John in the eye. "You look happy."

John started. His clothes were covered in sap. His hands were cut and raw. His shoulders ached. He had always loathed farm work. Yet...

"It felt good. I haven't done that in a while."

Around a bite of sandwich, Farmboy said, "You've been gone a long time."

"Yeah," John said. "You don't know what you have here. Why do you even want to go to college?"

Farmboy laughed. "It's great for the first fifteen years, then it really begins to drag."

"I hear you."

Farmboy handed John his ski jacket. "What will I see in the next universe?"

John's heart caught. "So you're gonna take me up on the offer?" he said casually.

"Yeah, I think so. Tell me what I'll see."

"It's pretty much like this one, you know. I don't know the exact differences."

"So we're in the next universe?"

"Yeah. I wouldn't try to meet him or anything. He doesn't know about us."

"Why'd you pick me to talk to? Why not some other me? Or why not all of us?"

"This is the most like home," John said. "This feels like I remember."

"In one hundred universes this is the one that is most like yours? How different are we from one to the next? It can't be too different."

"Do you really want to hear this?"

Farmboy nodded.

"Well, there are a couple types of us. There's the farm boy us, like you and me. Then there's the dirt bag us."

"Dirt bag?"

"Yeah. We smoke and hang out under the bleachers."

"What the hell happened there?"

"And sometimes we've knocked up Casey Nicholson and we live in the low income houses on Stuart. Then there's the places where we've died."

"Died?"

"Yeah. Car accidents. Tractor accidents. Gun accidents. We're pretty lucky to be here, really."