The Walls of the Universe

Paul lives in Ohio in Universe #7621 with his beautiful wife and three children, the third a very recent addition. He was born in Universe #7271, but was kidnapped by a crazed version of himself and forced to write thinly disguised Harry Potter novels until he escaped by clocking the other Paul on the head with the complete manuscript of Harry Potter and the Poorly Tuned Piano. #7621 is not so bad, but he misses the Ultra Jojopops from his old universe that came in virimo and ommerdoge flavors.

The screen door slammed behind John Rayburn, rattling in its frame. He and his dad had been meaning to fix the hinges and paint it before winter, but just then he wanted to rip it off and fling it into the fields.

"Johnny?" his mother called after him, but by then he was in the dark shadow of the barn. He slipped around the far end and any more of his mother's calls were lost among the sliding of cricket legs. His breath blew from his mouth in clouds.

John came to the edge of the pumpkin patch, stood for a moment, then plunged into it. Through the pumpkin patch was east, toward Case Institute of Technology where he hoped to start as a freshman the next year. Not that it was likely. There was always the University of Toledo, his father had said. One or two years of work could pay for a year of tuition there.

He kicked a half-rotten pumpkin. Seeds and wispy strings of pumpkin guts spiraled through the air. The smell of dark earth and rotten pumpkin reminded him it was a week before Halloween and they hadn't had time to harvest the pumpkins: a waste and a thousand dollars lost to earthworms. He ignored how many credits that money would have bought.

The pumpkin field ended at the tree line, the eastern edge of the farm. The trees — old maples and elms — abutted McMaster Road, beyond which was the abandoned quarry. He stood in the trees, just breathing, letting the anger seep away.

It wasn't his parents' fault. If anyone was to blame, it was him. He hadn't had to beat the crap out of Ted Carson. He hadn't had to tell Ted Carson's mom off. That had entirely been him. Though the look on Mrs. Carson's face had almost been worth it when he told her her son was an asshole. What a mess.

He spun at the sound of a stick cracking.

For a moment he thought that Ted Carson had chased him out of the farmhouse, that he and his mother were there in the woods. But the figure who stood there was just a boy, holding a broken branch in his hand.

"Johnny?" the boy said. The branch flagged in his grip, touching the ground.

John peered into the dark. He wasn't a boy; he was a teenager. John stepped closer. The teen was dressed in jeans and plaid shirt. Over the shirt he wore a sleeveless red coat that looked oddly out of date.

His eyes lingered on the stranger's face. No, not a stranger. The teen had
his
face.

"Hey, Johnny. It's me, Johnny."

The figure in the woods was him.

John looked at this other John, this John Subprime, and decided he would be the one. He was clearly a Johnny Farmboy, not one of the Johnny Rebels, not one of the Broken Johns, so he would be wide-eyed and gullible. He'd believe John's story, and then John could get on with his life.

"Who ... who are you?" Johnny Farmboy asked. He was dressed in jeans and a shirt, no coat.

John forced his most honest smile. "I'm you, John."

"What?"

Johnny Farmboy could be so dense.

"Who do I look like?"

"You look like..."

"I look just like you, John. Because I am you." Johnny Farmboy took a step back, and John continued. "I know what you're thinking. Some trick. Someone is playing a trick on the farmboy. No. Let's get past that. Next you're going to think that you were twins and one of them was put up for adoption. Nope. It's much more interesting than that."

Johnny Farmboy crossed his arms. "Explain it, then."

"Listen, I'm really hungry; I could use some food and a place to sit down. I saw Dad go in the house. Maybe we can sit in the barn, and I can explain everything."

John waited for the wheels to turn.

"I don't think so," Johnny Farmboy finally said.

"Fine. I'll turn around and walk away. Then you'll never get to hear the story."

John watched the emotions play across Farmboy's face. Typically skeptical, he was debating how full of crap this wraith in the night was, while desperately wanting to know the answer to the riddle. Farmboy loved puzzles.

Finally his face relaxed. "Let's go to the barn," he said.

The stranger walked at his side, and John eased away from him. As they walked through the pumpkin patch, John noted that their strides matched. John pulled open the back door of the barn, and the young man entered ahead of him, tapping the light switch by the door.

"A little warmer," he said. He rubbed his hands together and turned to John.

The light hit his face squarely, and John was startled to see the uncanny match between them. The sandy hair was styled differently and was longer. The clothes were odd; John had never worn a coat like that. The young man was just a bit thinner as well. He wore a blue backpack, so fully stuffed that the zipper wouldn't close all the way. There was a cut above his eye. A bit of brown blood was crusted over his left brow, clotted but recent.

He could have passed as John's twin.

"So, who are you?"

"What about a bite of something to eat?"

John went to the horse stall and pulled an apple from a bag. He tossed it to the young man. He caught it and smiled at John.

"Tell the story, and I might get some dinner from the house."

"Did Dad teach you to be so mean to strangers? I bet if he found me in the woods, he'd invite me in to dinner."

"Tell," John said.

"Fine." The young man flung himself on a hay bale and munched the apple. "It's simple, really. I'm you. Or rather I'm you genetically, but I grew up on this same farm in another universe. And now I've come to visit myself."

"Bullshit. Who put you up to this?"

"Okay, okay. I didn't believe me either." A frown passed over his face. "But I can prove it. Hold on a second." He wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. "Here we go: That horse is named Stan or Dan. You bought him from the McGregors on Butte Road when you were ten. He's stubborn and willful and he hates being saddled. But he'll canter like a show horse if he knows you have an apple in your pocket." He turned to the stalls on his left. "That pig is called Rosey. That cow is Wilma. The chickens are called Ladies A through F. How am I doing so far?" He smiled an arrogant smile.

"You stole some of your uncle's cigarettes when you were twelve and smoked them all. You killed a big bullfrog with your BB gun when you were eight. You were so sickened by it you threw up and haven't used a gun since. Your first kiss was with Amy Walder when you were fourteen. She wanted to show you her underwear too, but you ran home to Mommy. I don't blame you. She's got cooties everywhere I go.

"Everyone calls you Johnny, but you prefer John. You have a stash of
Playboy
s in the barn loft. And you burned a hole in the rug in your room once. No one knows because you rearranged your room so that the night stand is on top of it." He spread his arms like a gymnast who'd just struck a landing.

"Well? How close did I come?" He smiled and tossed the apple core into Stan's stall.

"I never kissed Amy Walder." Amy had gotten pregnant when she was fifteen by Tyrone Biggens. She'd moved to Montana with her aunt and hadn't come back. John didn't mention that everything else he'd said was true.

"Well, was I right?"

John nodded. "Mostly."

"Mostly? I nailed it on the head with a hammer, because it all happened to me. Only it happened in another universe."

How did this guy know so much about him? Who had he talked to? His parents? "Okay. Answer this. What was my first cat's name?"

"Snowball."

"What is my favorite class?"

"Physics."

"What schools did I apply to?"

The stranger paused, frowned. "I don't know."

"Why not? You know everything else."

"I've been traveling, you know, for a while. I haven't applied to college yet, so I don't know. As soon as I used the device, I became someone different. Up till then, we were the same." He looked tired. "Listen. I'm you, but if I can't convince you, that's fine. Let me sleep in the loft tonight and then I'll leave."

John watched him grab the ladder, and he felt a twinge of guilt at treating him so shabbily. "Yeah, you can sleep in the loft. Let me get you some dinner. Stay here. Don't leave the barn, and hide if someone comes. You'd give my parents a heart attack."

"Thanks, John."

John watched Farmboy disappear through the door into the night, shuddering and then exhaling. He hadn't even come to the hard part yet.

It would have been so easy to kill Farmboy, a blow to the back of the head, and it was his. But John wouldn't do that. He hoped, not yet. He was desperate, but not willing to commit homicide. Or would it be suicide?

He chuckled grimly to himself. Dan the Man nickered in response.

John took an apple from the basket and reached out to the horse. Suddenly his eyes were filled with tears.

"Hold yourself together, man," he whispered as he let Dan gingerly chomp the apple from his hand. His own Dan was dead, at his own hand.

He'd taken Dan riding and had tried for the fence beyond the back field. They had flown. But Dan's hind left hadn't cleared it. The bone had broken, and John ran sobbing to his farm.

His father met him halfway, a rifle in his hand, his face grim. He'd seen the whole thing.

"Dan's down!" John cried.

His father nodded and handed the rifle to him.

John took it blankly, then tried to hand it back to his father.

"No!"

"If the leg's broken, you must."

"Maybe.... "But he stopped. Dan was whinnying shrilly; he could hear it from where they stood. The leg had been horribly twisted. There was no doubt.

"Couldn't Dr. Kimble look at him?"

"How will you pay for that?"

"Will you?"

His father snorted and walked away.

John watched him trudge back to the house until Dan's cries became too much for him. He turned then, tears raining down his cheeks.

Dan's eyes were wide. He shook his head heavily at John, then he settled when John placed the barrel against his skull. Perhaps he knew. John fished an apple from his pocket and slipped it between Dan's teeth.

The horse held it there, not biting, waiting. He seemed to nod at John. Then John had pulled the trigger.

The horse had shuddered and fallen still. John sank to the ground and cried for Dan for an hour.

But here he was. Alive. He rubbed Dan's muzzle.

"Hello, Dan. Back from the dead," John said. "Just like me."

His mother and father stopped talking when the door slammed, so he knew they'd been talking about him.

"I'm gonna eat in the barn," he said. "I'm working on an electronics experiment."

He took a plate from the cabinet and began to dish out the lasagna. He filled the plate with enough to feed two of him.

His father caught his eye, then said, "Son, this business with the Carson boy..."

John slipped a second fork into his pocket. "Yeah?"

"I'm sure you did the right thing and all." John nodded at his father, saw his mother look away.

"He hates us because we're farmers and we dig in the dirt." His mother lifted her apron strap over her neck, hung the apron on a chair, and slipped out of the kitchen.

"I know that, Johnny ... John. But sometimes you gotta keep the peace."

John nodded. "Sometimes I have to throw a punch, Dad." He turned to go.

"John, you can eat in here with us."

"Not tonight, Dad."

Grabbing a quart of milk, he walked through the laundry room and left out the back door.

"Stan never lets anyone do that but me."

John turned from rubbing Dan's ears. "Just so," he said. He took the proffered paper towel full of lasagna, dug into it with the extra fork Farmboy had fetched.

"I always loved this lasagna. Thanks."

Farmboy frowned, and John recognized the stubbornness; he did the same thing when presented with the impossible. He decided to stay silent and stop goading him with the evidence. This John needed a softer touch.

John ate in silence while Farmboy watched, until finally he said, "Let's assume for a moment that you are me from another universe. How can you do it? And why you?"

Through a mouthful of pasta, he said, "With my device, and I don't know."

"Elaborate," John said, angry.

"I was given a device that lets me pass from one universe to the next. It's right here under my shirt. I don't know why it was me. Or rather I don't know why it was us."

"Stop prancing around my questions!" Farmboy shouted. "Who gave you the device?"

"I did!" John grinned.

"One of us from another universe gave you the device."

"Yeah. Another John. Nice looking fellow." So far all he had said was the truth.

Farmboy was silent for a while, his lasagna half-eaten. Finally he said, "I need to feed the sheep." He poured a bag of corn into the trough. John lifted the end of it with him. "Thanks." They fed the cows and the horse afterwards, then finished their own dinner.