Now & Again (15 page)

“You don’t know anything about me! I was 26 years old and I’d just cracked the biggest problem in physics – the one that had stumped a generation. I was the next Einstein, the next Nash – I was waiting for a crown and itching for a fight.”

Everett shook his head and collapsed back into himself. He suddenly looked vulnerable. “But you’re right, Kendall. You need to know the whole me. I also felt lost. I couldn’t believe they’d rejected my paper. How could they do that? They said it was nonsense – unintelligible! And then their pathetic ultimatum just added fuel to my fire. I was hurt and I was furious, and I was determined to rub their faces in my brilliance.”

He rested his chin on the top of the bed rail and his eyes were focused far away. “God, I can see myself in that lab – as if I’m outside looking through a window. I was so hyper-focused and so damn sure of myself. What can I say? I kept seeing them all, all the old physicists in their black robes and ties, all bowing before my statue in the quad. I was so unprepared for what I found. I expanded the equations and visualized the
what-ifs
of future advances, and as I moved confidently, day after day, deeper into the heart of the theory, something hideous began to reveal itself; a dark potential for such a catastrophe…it took my breath away.”

The room was silent. From the hallway, the whisper of a canned laugh track from a TV show trickled in. The swish from Everett’s sheets sounded abnormally loud as he let go of the rails and sagged back against his pillows. The old man contemplated the ceiling for a long moment.

“When I was in the 3
^rd
grade we went on a field trip to the zoo. I remember only one thing about that day. I walked around the corner of a raised outdoor cage, with my hand strumming along the bars, just as a Siberian tiger slid out from an inner door. His eyes instantly locked on me, and I stopped. I ceased to breathe. His massive shoulders spread as he sank into a crouch, and crept right up to me on silent paws that were each larger than my head. I stood paralyzed, my hand forgotten on the bar. I could feel the heat he radiated. I smelled him. He was the most beautifully deadly predator I had ever seen or imagined; and I was his prey.

I don’t know how long I stood, entranced, communing with my death. It was so profoundly clear to me that the bars were but an inconsequential trifle. Our true relationship had been set from long before the age of iron. And then he huffed in a dismissal breath that made me blink, and briefly lifted my hair. And when I blinked again, he was gone, and I had to remind myself to breathe.”

Everett turned to focus on Kendall and Josh. They both sat riveted in their chairs.

“That’s what I felt in the theory – a door, a cage, something that should be kept locked. It was knowledge that no one should know; but my theory would lead them right to it. In the right kind of future, with quantum computers and atom sized robots, and the will to exploit the timelines, what I had seen would happen. So, I stopped everything. It was all I could think to do. I rewrote the paper, cut out the truth, which pleased my advisors, got my degree, and…you’re right, I disappeared. That publishing of the original paper in ‘72 was none of my doing. In fact, I did my best to make sure it died. And for all the years since, I haven’t published another single word about my theory.”

Everett sniffed derisively and dropped his arms on the mattress. “As if any of that mattered at all.”

Josh looked up, quick to add his thoughts. “You mean because they’ve rediscovered your theory now anyway?”

“No. It’s the theory itself. I’ve opened a door that can’t be shut. No matter what I
don’t
say, or
don’t
do here, I’m pursuing it anyway. And I’m paralyzed to stop myself.”

Kendall was sympathetic but confused. “I don’t know what you mean? You did everything a person could do to stop it.”

Josh suddenly had an awareness dawning across his face. He walked over beside the bed and looked sadly at Everett. “You mean your
other
you’s
would do it. You’re scared of yourself. That’s what you meant.”

Everett twisted his body to face the young man, and nodded. “Every
no
is a
yes
, somewhere else. Another Everett would develop it. And given enough timelines in a lifetime of choices, inevitably, the disaster I nipped in the bud here would blossom there. And when it did, I might be the only Hugh Everett left who knows what’s happening. That’s why I’m still here. It’s the best I can do. I had to stay alive and wait and see. And now I know I was waiting for you.”

Josh glanced at Kendall and then back at Everett and grinned self-consciously. “Guess we didn’t arrive any too soon then, did we?”

Everett gave him back a crooked smile. “S’okay. I’m still here. You found me in time, and besides, the
now
is all anybody gets to work with anyway. The good news is, since we know my theory’s true, we also know that our
now
is a lot wider than we thought.”

“It spikes and then reads normal. And then spikes again.” The puzzled floor tech held out the diagnostic pad to a senior tech. “Watch it. It’s almost rhythmical, except the interval keeps decreasing.”

They were deep within banks of active screens in the arena at the Reivers Corporation headquarters. The screen they were analyzing displayed varying angles of a bathysphere being lowered into the ocean from a research ship. Every few seconds the image degraded slightly or flickered unevenly. Just as rapidly, it stabilized again.

The older tech touched a few spots on the pad and tapped the menus. He confirmed the puzzling readouts and scanned through various other nano-observed locations in the same timeline. As he did this the nearby display of the bathysphere switched rapidly to an office, a park, a shopping mall, a restaurant, a classroom, a parking lot, a school playground, a bridge filled with traffic, and back to the bathysphere. The tech stayed with each image long enough to detect the same disquieting interference.

He grimly shook his head. “Everywhere the same: spike and normal, spike and normal. It’s not a local issue; it’s affecting the whole line.” He handed the pad back, clearly troubled. “What could do this across a whole universe?”

The floor tech rolled his shoulders. “The line’s about to go into alarm, and there’s not a thing we can do about it. I think we’re all getting jumpy.”

Around them, the tall walls of flat screens continued to display the colorful, untroubled images of other monitored timelines: a woman in a hazmat suit injecting rats in a clean room, a politician delivering a speech at a rally, soldiers standing guard at a military base, a young family at a picnic, boys biking along a park path.

Suddenly, the warbling cry of an alarm erupted. The two techs helplessly watched as the screen with the bathysphere flickered ever more rapidly. Additional floor techs raced up. The image on the screen distorted and warped until it abruptly devolved into electronic snow. Finally, it collapsed to black. The alarm changed to a continuous tone, indicating a total loss of transmission.

The senior tech flicked a small device toward the screen and the alarm abruptly cut off. He joined the assembled group of concerned techs and conferred about the latest lost connection. Ignored around them, the aisles of massed screens continued transmitting their mesmerizing dance of other lives in other timelines in the multiverse.

What appeared on the screens at any time was only selected views transmitted by clusters of nanos at single locations. The immense memories of the archive stored all the transmitted views from all the nanos throughout that universe for later scrutiny. Multiple angles of all aspects of living universes were captured by the billions of self replicating, invisible nano robots seeded into the lines. Fleets of sequenced computers at
the Reive
, and elsewhere in the world, tagged and sorted the overwhelming influx of data using paired levels of qubit based recognition software and other highly proprietary apps. Nanos were diminutive enough to drift through timeline membranes and into their sub lines. The biggest problem was generating enough nanos to not only blanket all the areas of interest but also to keep up with the many worlds constantly spinning off. Luckily for them, existing nanos split right along with the timelines they occupied – so, once invaded by nanos, new sub lines brought nano copies with them when they flashed into existence.

Unseen by the techs, unrecorded by the nanos, and undetected by countless sensing devices designed by
the Reive
, was the actual experience within the adversely affected timelines.

Above the arguing techs, among the banks of screens in an upper row, a group of shouting boys on bikes raced each other down a twisting park path. It was a glorious sunlit afternoon in Boise, Idaho. The annual Ferguson family reunion was being held this year at Camelback Park. The prolific family was now so numerous that the local relatives had to arrive at the picnic area by 6am that morning to secure the coveted pavilion.

The raucous boys on bikes were all cousins. Randy, riding just behind the leader, laughed in unbridled glee as he put on a burst of speed. “Comin’ through! Outta the way!”

“Dream on!” Shawn put on his own sprint and weaved slightly as he tried to hold the lead. The two determined eleven-year-olds pedaled in sync as they made the final bend. Behind them, Timmy and Oz tried to keep up, but their older cousins were pulling away. Still, the two younger boys gamely fought on because third place was better than last.

The small pack of riders burst from the trees with their legs pumping wildly. The bike path led up to a colorful chalk-marked finish line right in front of the pavilion where crowds of madly waving Fergusons cheered them on.

The idyllic moment abruptly went horrific as the path itself came unraveled beneath the boys. Randy screamed in terror as he plunged into an abyss with his wheels still spinning. Shawn instinctively hit his brakes and saw his pedal go to pieces, followed by his foot. All the boys and their bikes shredded into particles as they fell into nowhere. The Fergusons’ cheering turned to wailing as the pavilion and the gathered relatives went progressively apart. Around the park everything was shredding and billowing away – the buildings, the trees, the earth, the sky.

There was a rising crescendo of tearing as human moments across this universe were caught unawares and suddenly began shredding apart: an Afghan family posing for a photo, people haggling in an outdoor market, Arab passengers sleeping on an airbus, an Italian motor cop chasing a car, a Russian groom kissing his bride, Asian women planting rice, a convict smiling at a visitor, an African soccer player taking a kick, a wheat farmer driving a combine, drinkers toasting friends in a pub, a Japanese trawler captain turning a wheel, a crying baby being baptized, a hockey team celebrating a goal, an artist painting a canvas, hikers passing a waterfall, sailors singing "Happy Birthday," an Indian merchant counting rupees, a baseball batter swinging at a pitch, Korean students reciting the alphabet, jets passing a grandstand at an air show, Hasidic Jews praying at the western wall, mountain climbers swinging on a rope, an astronaut repairing a space station, a space probe swinging by Saturn, a nebula rotating in space.

None of this was observed in the arena, or recorded into the hungry memories of the archive. Nanos were deconstructed along with their universe, and nothing was detected except a loss of signal. Everything went to pieces and billowed away into dust until even sounds were silenced. And the dust dispersed, leaving nothing but blackness…and the distant warbling of an alarm.

The arena techs turned in shock at the unexpected sound. One of the upper screens was distorting and warping. As they watched, it collapsed into electronic snow and went to black. The alarm instantly switched to the steady, held tone. The techs stood mute, looking up.

The senior tech dutifully silenced the alarm and logged the event into his growing list of unexplained transmission problems.

It was a cool fall evening in Silver Spring. The
American Tap & Grill
was doing a brisk business in spirits and comfort food, thanks to the pro football games playing on multiple TVs. The moist heat and decibel level in the crowded bar was already high and rising. Most of the males were loudly focused on each play, while their wives and girlfriends hunched together, heads almost touching, to gab over mounds of nachos and salads.

In the less raucous dinner area, Josh and Kendall relaxed in a booth. Their finished meals were pushed aside so they could rest their elbows on the table and nurse mugs of beer.

“So, let’s say I take a sip of this; that’s a choice, right?” Kendall held his glass poised in the air and toasted Josh. He swigged more than a sip, and slapped it back on the table. “Done! That’s one.”

He picked the beer up again, and held it. “But I could start like I’m gonna drink it, and then say, nah, I’ll sip it later – that’s two. Maybe three?”

He started to put the mug down and grinned at Josh. “But then, what if I’m really just faking like I’m putting it down?”

Without warning he gulped a hurried slug of beer. “See? Fooled you, huh? What’s that, five?”

He snorted in glee and drained the last of the beer. “There! I just spun off at least five more worlds? Huh? Gettin’ kinda crowded in here, don’tcha think?” He sniggered at his own joke.

A short waitress appeared and sent a tired smile in their direction. “Done with the food, guys? Can I take some of these plates away?”

Josh nodded. Kendall winked an eye as he slid his empty glass toward her. “I need just one more, Ma’am. I got a lotta universes left to create before I get world weary.”

The waitress nodded, “Yeah, I bet you do. Bud regular, right?” Kendall nodded and the waitress left.

Josh’s mug was still half full. He yawned and rotated his neck trying to work the kinks out. “So, what’s the verdict? Is he nuts, or are we nuts?”

“We’re dead.”

“Besides that.”

“Not sure.” Kendall took a breath. His face went serious. “To be honest, when I got your Mom back, all my bets went out the window. I wouldn’t count this old guy out. He’s the real deal.”