Skippy Dies (40 page)

‘I’m on the verge of a historic breakthrough,’ the silhouette says.

‘Can’t it wait till morning?’

Apparently it can’t, because Ruprecht continues to hover there, breathing snuffily in the darkness, until Skippy with a groan
throws back his covers.

An hour later, he and the others shiver on pieces of styrofoam packaging, still waiting for whatever it is to happen, while
Ruprecht, in goggles and some sort of cape, attaches cables to circuit boards and makes adjustments with a soldering iron
to what looks like several hundred euros’ worth of tinfoil. The basement is ice-cold, and patience is beginning to wear thin.

‘Damn it, Blowjob, how much longer is this going to take?’

‘Nearly finished,’ Ruprecht’s answer returning somewhat muffled.

‘He keeps saying that,’ Mario mutters dourly.

‘Ruprecht, it’s the middle of the
night
,’ Geoff pleads, rubbing his arms.

‘And this place is full of spiders,’ Skippy adds.

‘Just one more minute,’ the voice assures them.

‘Can you at least tell us what it is?’ Niall says.

‘It looks sort of like his teleporter,’ Geoff observes.

‘It’s a similar principle,’ Ruprecht agrees, emerging momentarily from a forest of cables. ‘An Einstein-Rosen bridge, only
recalibrated for an eleven-dimensional matrix. Although the aim of the teleporter was merely to create a conduit between two
different areas of spacetime, whereas this – this…’ he pauses mysteriously, then disappears back inside his creation with
a spatula.

‘It doesn’t
look
like a bridge,’ Mario says, scrutinizing the tinfoil wigwam.

‘I wonder what it’s a bridge to,’ Geoff ponders huskily.

‘
Nowhere
, you clown,’ Dennis snaps. ‘The only place it’s going to take you is up the garden path. God damn it, it’s Friday night!
Do you realize that out there, right at this very minute, millions of people are having sex? They’re having sex, and they’re
drinking beer, while
we
sit here watching Von Blowjob play with his toys.’

‘Mmm, well,’ Ruprecht replies on his way to one of the computers, ‘I doubt very much that having sex and drinking beer will
be of much use to humanity when its entire future hangs in the balance. I doubt that they’ll be drinking much beer then, when
the whole planet is underwater and life is on the brink of extinction.’

‘I feel like I’m extinct already, listening to you,’ mutters Dennis.

But it seems the moment of truth is finally at hand, for now Ruprecht steps back from his silver pupa and adjusts his cape.
‘Mario?’

‘Yo.’ Mario waves his camera phone. ‘Ready when you are.’

‘Excellent.’ Ruprecht straightens his cape and clears his throat. ‘Well, you’re probably wondering why I brought you here.
The concept of the multiverse –’

‘Cut!’ says Mario.

‘What?’ Ruprecht regards him captiously.

Mario explains that his phone can only record in twenty-second segments.

‘That’s fine,’ Ruprecht says. Narrowing his eyes, he continues his historical speech in twenty-second bursts. ‘The concept
of the multiverse is not a new one. The idea of parallel worlds goes right back to the Greeks. With M-theory, however, we
have our
strongest indication yet of what the structure of the multiverse may look like – an eleven-dimensional ocean of Nothing, which
we share with entities of various sizes, from points to nine-dimensional hyperuniverses. According to the theory, some of
these entities are less than a hair’s breadth away from us; that is to say, gentlemen, they are here in the room with us right
now.’ A tightening of the silence succeeds his words, save for the near-inaudible hiss of hairs standing up on the backs of
necks. Steepling his spongy fingers, he fixes each of them in turn, the crespuscular light of the computers glistening on
his damp brow. ‘The problem is, of course, access. The higher dimensions are wrapped up so tightly that current Earth technology
cannot supply anything like the amount of energy required to break through to them, or even to see them. But the other night
I had what I can only describe as a revelation.’

He steps over to an easel stencilled
ART ROOM! DO NOT REMOVE!
and flips back the cover to reveal a star map. ‘Allow me to introduce Cygnus X-3.’ He levels his pointer at one among an
innumerable array of dots and splodges. ‘What it is we are not quite sure. Maybe a large, spinning neutron star. Maybe a black
hole that is devouring a sun. What we do know is that it emits gigantic quantities of radiation that bombard the Earth’s atmosphere
daily, at energies ranging from 100 million electron volts to 100 billion billion electron volts. In approximately –’ he glances
at his watch ‘– twelve minutes, we’re going to have the biggest radiation burst since the summer. On the school clock, a specially
adapted receptor is waiting to harness that energy.’

‘Like in
Back to the Future
!’ Geoff exclaims.

‘From the receptor –’ Ruprecht ignoring this ‘– the radiation will be fed into this Escher loop.’ He indicates a heavy-duty
cable that snakes over the floor, under the boys’ legs and out the door. ‘The loop has a radius of approximately a quarter-mile,
taking it around the rugby pitches and back. The cosmic rays are cycled around the loop using the Escher free-acceleration
process, building up more and more energy until enough has been created for our purposes.
Then it comes back in here, into this Cosmic Energy Compressor. Having achieved optimum capacity, the gravitation chamber
in the pod will be activated, allowing us, if all goes well, to create a tiny rift in space. Effectively, what we’re doing
is borrowing energy from a large, distant black hole to create a small, local and controllable black hole, right here in the
basement.’ He allows a moment here for awed murmuring, then resumes: ‘We know from Einstein’s equations that for a black hole
to make sense mathematically, there must be a mirror universe on the opposite side. We also know that the infinite gravitation
of the hole will instantly crush anything that enters it. However, by aligning it along the
exact trajectory
of the axis, it may be possible, in the moments before the rift repairs itself, to pass an object through the centre of the
hole unscathed and into whatever lies on the other side. Tonight this toy robot will be our Columbus.’ From a schoolbag he
produces a plastic red-and-grey android about ten inches in height.

‘Optimus Prime,’ Geoff whispers approvingly. ‘Leader of the Autobots.’

A low hum emanates from the foil-covered pod. Beside it, the computer screens throw up impenetrable screeds of numbers, like
digital incantations, or the ecstatic babblings of some distant reality now very close –

‘Hey, Ruprecht – these other universes – will we be able to go there? Like, if your portal works?’

‘If the portal works,’ Ruprecht says, solemnly handing goggles to each of them, ‘it’ll be a whole new chapter in the story
of humanity.’

‘Holy smoke…’

‘Goodbye, Earth! So long, you piece of crap, except for Italy.’

‘Think of it, Skip, there could be millions of parallel Loris out there! Like whole universes full of them?’

‘Oh, sure,’ Dennis chips in. ‘And planets of lingerie models addicted to sex? Galaxies of girls who have built their entire
civilizations on the moment the Virgins from Outer Space arrive in their little jumpsuits?’

Ruprecht glances at his watch. ‘It’s time,’ he says. ‘Witnesses, don your goggles, please. For your own safety, I must request
that you keep your distance. There may be some radiation emitted by the vortex.’

Skippy and the others lower their masks, and even Dennis is not immune to the pregnant tingling that pervades the dingy basement,
the undispellable sense that
something is imminent
. Ruprecht inputs some last figures into the computer, then gently lowers Optimus Prime into a kind of metallic crib. And
there, for a moment, on his knees by the foil-lined pod, he bides – like Moses’s mother, perhaps, with her bulrush basket
on the banks of the Nile – gazing reflectively at the robot’s painted eyes, thinking that to do anything, epic or mundane,
bound for glory or doomed to failure, is in its way to say goodbye to a world; that the greatest victories are therefore never
without the shadow of loss; that every path you take, no matter how lofty or effulgent, aches not only with the memory of
what you left behind, but with the ghosts of all the untaken paths, now never to be taken, running parallel…

Then, rising, he throws the switch.

What seems like a long moment elapses in which nothing happens. Then, just as Dennis is about to emit a caw of triumph, the
pod begins to thrum, and very quickly the room fills with heat. Geoff looks at Skippy. Skippy looks at Geoff. Mario gazes
intently at the tiny screen on his phone, where the scene is reproduced in miniature as it happens, although there is nothing
as yet to actually
see
, there is only this hum, which is getting louder and louder and also with every passing instant less smooth, more of a
judder
, accompanied by disconcerting whines and rattles… The heat, too, increases by the second, pulsing from the cable beneath
their toes, until rapidly it is almost insufferable, like being in a sauna, or an engine room, or an engine, like being inside
an actual engine; foreheads drip with sweat, and Skippy is just beginning to wonder exactly how healthy a state of affairs
this is, when he chances to glance over at Ruprecht, nibbling the ends of his fingers, nervously
eyeing the humming pod – and has the sudden and extremely disquieting intuition that his friend has
no idea whatsoever
what he is doing – when there is a loud electrical
zap!
and an eyeblink of blinding white light, as if now they’re inside a lightbulb, and then absolute darkness.

For an alarming spell the darkness is also a silence, with only the hiss of the Escher cable to assure Skippy he is still
in the basement and not himself in a black hole, or dead; then from somewhere over to the right, Ruprecht’s voice rises quaveringly:
‘Nothing to worry about… please remain in your seats…’

‘You fat idiot!’ Mario says invisibly from Skippy’s left. ‘Are you trying to kill us?’

‘Perfectly normal… small power outage… no need to be alarmed…’ Noises issue from Ruprecht’s portion of the darkness, as of
someone picking himself up from the ground. ‘I must have… the, ah, limiter seems to… bear with me for one moment…’ A narrow
shaft of torchlight appears and waves about the room as Ruprecht attempts to get his bearings. ‘Very strange.’ He clears his
throat officiously. ‘Yes, I’d imagine what happened is –’

‘Ruprecht – look!’

The beam whips around to pick out Skippy’s thunderstruck face, and then back in the direction he’s pointing in: the open door
of the pod, where the ellipse of light hovers for an instant before dropping to the floor as Ruprecht’s hand falls slackly
to his side.

‘He’s
gone
…’ Mario whispers.

Optimus Prime is no longer in the crib.

‘Holy shit, guys,’ Geoff Sproke breaks in urgently, ‘Dennis is gone too!’

‘I’m over here,’ a faint voice calls from the far side of the room. With his keyring-torch, Ruprecht illuminates a pile of
dusty cases and motherboards, from which Dennis comes clambering out.

‘How’d you get over there?’

‘Some kind of
force
…’ Dennis says dazedly, hugging his arms to his chest. ‘I was sitting watching the pod, and then… and then…’

‘Ruprecht,’ Skippy says steadily, ‘what just happened?’

‘I don’t know,’ Ruprecht’s whisper almost non-existent.

‘Where’s Optimus Prime?’ Geoff asks. ‘Did he get vaporized or…?’

Ruprecht, who seems more surprised than anyone, shakes his head. ‘If he was vaporized, there’d be traces,’ he mumbles, staring
into the empty crib.

‘Which means…?’ Skippy attempts to fill in the blanks.

Ruprecht looks at him, an expression of unadulterated rapture spreading across his face. ‘I have no idea,’ he says. ‘I have
no idea – in the world!’

The others – when they have recovered sufficiently to speak – want to call the news stations right away. ‘You just teleported
a robot into another dimension, Ruprecht! You’re going to be on TV!’ But Ruprecht insists they verify their findings before
they call anybody.

‘Come on, Ruprecht, it’s not like Optimus is going to reappear.’

‘Yeah, you should be celebrating. You can verify tomorrow.’

Ruprecht smiles benignly and continues about his work. ‘First verify. Then celebrate. That’s the way we do it.’

He is oddly calm. Apart from a maniacal twitch that pulls sporadically at the ends of his mouth, the vertiginous weirdness
of what has just happened, the world-historical
hugeness
of it, seems to have passed him by, or even had a sedative effect on him; he moves around the room with a quiet surety, setting
up the equipment for another run, like a man who after long months roaming in an unknown territory has spotted a landmark
for home.

‘Guys…’ Since the experiment, Dennis has been hunched over on a piece of styrofoam. ‘I don’t feel well.’

‘You don’t
look
well…’

Dennis’s complexion is pale and clammy, his hands wrapped protectively around his stomach.

‘What’s wrong with him, Ruprecht?’

‘Do you think he got radiation from the rays?’

‘It’s not impossible.’ Ruprecht frowns. ‘Although they
shouldn’t
do him any harm…’

‘Maybe you’ve turned radioactive, Dennis!’

‘Holy shit, Dennis – maybe you’ve got superpowers!’

‘I don’t feel super,’ Dennis says sorrowfully.

‘You should go and lie down,’ Skippy says.

‘I don’t want to miss the verifying.’

‘We’ll tell you what happens.’

‘Plus, I can film it on my phone, which ironically you said earlier was no use.’

‘Okay,’ Dennis agrees reluctantly. Hands still clutching his stomach, he limps to the door. But there he pauses. ‘Hey, Ruprecht?’

‘Hmm?’ Ruprecht, bent over his keyboard, quarter-turns.