Infernal

“You drugged me,” Richard said. He’d thrown open the passenger door after Sophia’s sliding stop in the breakdown lane, leaned out, and vomited. Little came up: some Doritos mixed with Sobe green tea and part of a honey bun, the majority of which ended up on the SUV’s running board instead of the asphalt. A sour taste like burning rubber and rotting meat flooded his mouth. A headache was taking hold at his temples. “You drugged me and drove me half-way across the country. That’s the only explanation.”

He sat erect and closed the door against the sight of partially digested food mixing with rain water. Sophia pulled the vehicle back onto the Interstate, heading east and keeping pace with traffic around her.

“Sure I did,” Sophia said. “And I managed to time it so you’d regain consciousness as I was going the wrong way on one of the most dangerous sections of Interstate in the country. Wake up, Richard. We just traveled across four states and nine hours in milliseconds and you’re reaching for an explanation that fits what you think you know about reality.”

“Why don’t you explain it to me then?” Richard said. The headache was building. It grasped his head like a steel clamp, slowly tightening. He felt his brain would burst and squirt out his ears. The pain was doing nothing for his temper. “You can start with who the hell you are.”

“I’m Sophia Bledell. Until recently I was a field researcher for BanaTech Industries.”

“You maybe have a twin sister?” he said through clenched teeth.“One that uses your name on occasion?”

“No,” Sophia said. As they passed through East St. Louis the traffic thinned. Sophia reduced speed to the legal limit as they left the urban sprawl behind. The thunderstorm they’d emerged into continued to rage around them. Bright stroboscopic flashes lit up the night like a lunatic with a flash gun. Thunder roared in response like applause. “That was also Sophia Bledell. She was my Mirror.”

Richard’s headache built to a crescendo. He could feel his brain pushing against the back of his eyes as if to pop them out to lie on his cheeks like macabre party favors. Then, with one final blast of pain, it was gone.

“Jesus!” Richard screamed, grasping his head in his hands.

“That’ll be easier next time. It’s a neural response to passing through the Rips. Most people feel nothing. Maybe a little tingle, like the hairs stirring on the back of your neck. It’s worse for Primes but only the first few times.”

Several of the words Sophia used stuck out in Richard’s mind. Rips. Primes. Mirrors. She’d used the words as if they were nouns, as if she were speaking another language. He’d understood nothing of what she’d just said, and little of what had just happened. Understanding a situation is tantamount to resolving it. He’d been conscripted into a nightmare and this woman held the answers to the ever-spiraling madness that was consuming his life.

“Look,” he told her, “I will accept, for now, that you didn’t dope me up and that we really did just travel across space and time with the help of a souped-up cell phone through this whaddyacallit…”

“A Rip,” she interrupted.

“…and,” he continued, “I will accept that I didn’t see your head torn apart and your body blasted beyond recognition back in Kansas though I know damn well I did.”

“You did. And you didn’t.”

Richard sighed. This was getting him nowhere fast.

“Please,” he said. “Just start at the beginning.”

“Very well,” Sophia said. “But I can only tell you what I understand. I’m a researcher, not a tech: So I’m a little spotty on the physics of the Rips and how the RLP’s work. I’m a little better versed on the history of BanaTech though, so that’s where I’ll start.

“About two-hundred and fifty years ago from your perspective,” Sophia began, “A man named Steven Bana discovered strange energy fields popping up around the globe. They appeared to be natural phenomena, usually occurring along the Earth’s lines of magnetic flux wherever they crossed certain ley lines. This was interesting because ley lines, or vortices, are supposed to be nothing more than the alignment of points of geographical interest. Given the density of historic and prehistoric sites on any given land mass, if you draw a straight line between any two points on that map you’re bound to hit several of them. That means ley lines are trivial coincidence rather than intentional or natural artifact. However, the greatest concentration of these energy fields form along these intersections. Using satellite imagery and spectrographic analysis, Dr. Bana began studying these phenomena and discovered…”

“Wait,” Richard interrupted. “You said two-hundred and fifty years ago. That would be the late 1700’s. Satellites didn’t exist back then, let alone the technology required for spectrographic analysis.”

“I said two-hundred and fifty years ago from your perspective,” Sophia said. She paused; grasping, Richard thought, for an explanation for the hole he just shot in her narrative. After a moment, she said:

“Imagine where your science and technology would be if a little event called the Dark Ages had not occurred or had been significantly shortened. For over 800 years scientific study was anathema; suppressed in the name of God and religion. Knowledge of what we call chemistry, biology, and physics was outlawed. Its practitioners called witches and burned at the stake. Or worse. A society that doesn’t have a gap that large in its technological learning curve would be far more advanced than yours is now, don’t you think?”

Richard nodded, grudgingly conceding the point. Sophia continued.

“Dr. Bana theorized that these energy fields, which occur most frequently at these intersections but may also occur in the wake of severe weather patterns just as tornadoes develop on the back side of a thunderstorm, were conduits. Wormholes if you will. Rips in the fabric of reality.”

“Rips leading where?” Richard asked, playing along.

“Some, like the one we just traveled through, lead to other points in the immediate space-time vicinity. Those are the localized Rips. The ones that show up in red on the RLP. That’s shorthand for the souped-up cell phone, as you called it. The Rip Locator and Plotter. And don’t give me any guff about the cheesy name. Dr. Bana may have been a genius when it came to physics and biology, but he had no imagination whatsoever when it came to naming his inventions.”

Despite himself, Richard smiled.

“Localized Rips are more numerous, though not very stable. They come and go with no recognizable pattern and their destinations are difficult for the computers that map the Rips to predict. That’s how we ended up in the middle of on-coming traffic. We might just as well have ended up on the top of Mount Everest or on the bottom of the ocean.”

“And you risked it anyway?” Richard asked, incredulous.

“You’d have preferred I let that gunship catch us?” Sophia shot back.

Richard said nothing.

“And stop interrupting me. This is hard enough to explain as it is.

“At first, Dr. Bana kept his discoveries to himself. One, he was in that mode reserved for any genius with an IQ of 240 that takes them over completely. They don’t eat or sleep for days on end; they think of nothing outside the parameters of what they’re working on. Two, he knew that most of his conclusions would be met with scorn and ridicule and he’d be laughed right out of the scientific community if not locked up in a mental hospital somewhere.

“His theories were varied and wild. They explained away ghosts and hauntings as incidents of thin spots in the fabric of reality. Windows that allow the witness, albeit briefly, to perceive occurrences from another time and place. The knocking in the middle of the night was simply a sound that traveled through the window to be heard by someone on the other side. The vision of Aunt Agnes on the stairs really is Aunt Agnes on the stairs, just viewed from another perspective in the Multi-verse.”

“The what?” Richard exclaimed, ignoring her admonition not to interrupt. “Are you talking about parallel dimensions? Alternate realities?”

“No.” Sophia sighed. “And yes. Those are terms coined by science-fiction writers to lend credence to their stories. The common reaction to such terms is disbelief; the very reaction Dr. Bana was concerned with. The proper term is the Multi-verse, which is something else entirely.”

“A hypothetical infinite number of multiple possible universes,” Richard quoted, “including the universe we consistently perceive, that together comprises everything that exists: Space, time, matter, energy, and the laws and constants that describe them. That’s high school physics.”

“Except it’s not hypothetical,” Sophia said. “Not a theory.

Richard digested this as they passed a sign announcing that they’d just crossed into the state of Illinois. The east and westbound lanes of the Interstate separated and trees encroached upon the blacktop, crowding the highway like sentinels charged with keeping trespassers at bay.

“Another of Bana’s theories,” Sophia said, “was that déjà vu’ is not an anomaly of memory. Nor, as is commonly believed, is it an overlap between the neurological systems responsible for storing long-term and short-term memory. According to Bana, the sensation we refer to as déjà vu’ is nothing more than a person slipping through a Rip and entering another Earth in the Multi-verse, one where time is moving at a slightly slower rate, causing the person to relive an event they’ve already experienced.”

“How is that possible? Wouldn’t someone entering a Rip realize that something has just happened?” Richard said.

“In some cases people do realize something has happened. But except for the occasional case where a man falls asleep in his bathtub in New Orleans and wakes up in a hot tub in Albuquerque, or where a mother and daughter step into their kitchen in Atlanta and end up at a frat party in Manitoba, they don’t experience anything significant enough to alert them to it. They may feel some disorientation, perhaps a rash of gooseflesh, but when nothing else seems out of place and one has no concept of events outside of what they perceive to be reality, the incident is soon forgotten. Chalked up to megrims and vapors.

“I wouldn’t know,” Richard said. “I’ve never experienced déjà vu’.

“That’s because you’re a Prime,” Sophia said.

“You’ve mentioned that twice now. What’s a Prime?” Richard said.

“A Prime is exactly what it sounds like: A number divisible only by one and itself. In other words, there is only you in the Multi-verse. No Mirrors.”

Sophia went on before Richard could interrupt.

“Most of us exist across the Multi-verse. We have copies, or Mirrors, on any Earth that supports human life and has an adequate society base with a similar history. We are virtually the same person, living similar lives, doing similar things. I have black hair in my world, black hair in the next world, and so on and so on. Each is unaware of the existence of the other, but usually like-minded, so we have the same basic traits and characteristics.”

“There are more of you?” Richard said.

“Absolutely. One-hundred and twenty-three that I know of, not counting the Mirror of me that was murdered on your world.”

Richard put his head in his hands and groaned. The headache had not returned: he was simply trying to sort through the impossible information he was receiving. “How is that even possible?” he asked. “If these Rips are everywhere and there are Mirrors all across the Multi-verse people would be bumping into themselves at every turn. The Multi-verse would have been exposed ages ago.”

“It doesn’t work that way,” Sophia said. “It seems there’s some sort of natural mechanism in place that prevents that from happening. If a person slips through a Rip in one Universe, their Mirror slips through a similar Rip in their Universe at the same time.

“There are numerous Rips out there. So many that the Quantum-Crays have a hard time predicting their exit points despite their awesome computing power and speed. But for some unknown reason Rips seem to shut down or shy away from people and other life forms. It’s as if they’re of intelligent design and are trying to prevent one world from contaminating the next.

“Incidents of spontaneous cross-over do occur but ninety-nine percent of the time it takes an active force of will to enter a Rip. Dr. Bana theorized that Rips are not just natural anomalies but that they serve a purpose. They may be some sort of pressure relief valve. Existing to keep the tremendous energies that bind the Multi-verse from overloading and creating permanent Rips that would allow separate Universe’s to collide and contaminate each other.”

“Why would that be a problem? You said the individual Universe’s are virtually identical.”

Sophia shot Richard an incredulous look and passed a slow moving Oldsmobile before continuing. “I said they were similar.”

“You’re familiar with computers, so imagine that the Multi-verse is laid out like sectors on a hard drive. These sectors are laid out in a circular pattern, in rings if you will, sort of like the grooves on an old vinyl album. Each sector represents a different Universe. If you travel to a neighboring Universe, say the next sector over, you might notice only a few differences. Money printed with blue ink instead of green. Landmarks you’re familiar with altered. Your wristwatch might be a few minutes off. Or, you might not notice any difference at all.

“As you move to sectors further inward or outward on the disc, the changes begin to be dramatic. Worlds torn apart by war. Worlds with red grass or purple skies. Worlds with species of animals you’ve never seen before.

“Now, imagine that your hard drive is the size of the solar system. That’s a lot of sectors. Now make your hard drive a sphere, with not just one layer of sectors, but countless layers radiating outward from the center. If you travel far enough away from your point of origin you’ll find worlds where water flows uphill, where there are two moons instead of one, or where giant crabs are the dominant life form because physics and time as you know them are not absolutes. They are relative to the Universe they exist in. Anything you can imagine exists somewhere, in some Universe.”

“So in some other Universe there are ants frying little boys under a magnifying glass?”

“Absolutely.”

“That’s insane,” Richard said, envisioning dinosaurs roaming the Kansas flatlands, giant carnivorous vines draping skyscrapers in New York City, millions of people choking on huge clouds of toxic atmosphere from uninhabitable worlds.

“Insane or not, that is the reality of the Multi-verse. That much we know for certain. But consider this: Dr. Bana further theorized that there may not be a single Multi-verse, but a likewise infinite series of Multi-verses that are held apart from one another by this force that binds our own Multi-verse together.”

“And?” Richard prompted.

“So what happens,” Sophia said, “if that force, that machine, breaks down and Universes begin colliding with one another?”

The question was rhetorical. It would mean the end of everything.

Sophia signaled for the right hand lane and pulled into it, reducing her speed.

“What’s wrong?” Richard asked, alarmed. He looked around the vehicle and saw nothing but rain and the headlights of oncoming traffic.

Sophia gestured ahead of them to an exit ramp for a rest area.

“I have to use the facilities. Check the RLP and see if there are any bogey’s about. They’ll show up as blue dots and the device will buzz like crazy.”

Sophia pulled into the space closest to the low building housing the restrooms. The door chunked shut as she stepped out into the still pouring rain, muffling the sound and leaving Richard alone with his thoughts.

He plucked the RLP from the dash where it had ended up while he was enjoying his breakfast for the second time. She’d given him a lot to think about in a short period of time. He didn’t fully accept her version of how they’d happened to end up in St. Louis after being in California mere moments before. He’d been disoriented after the events in the desert; then came the nausea, vomiting, and headache. Those reactions were consistent with awakening from drug-induced slumber by any number of sedatives. The symptoms had lasted mere minutes, however, and that was inconsistent with any drug he knew of; though there were many sedatives out there he was unfamiliar with.

There were other inconsistencies to consider as well. Sophia had earlier spoken of the military, the FBI, and the OSS. Not the CIA, as the Office for Strategic Services had been renamed in 1947.

Perhaps the biggest inconsistency was Sophia herself. He’d seen the woman murdered before his eyes. His rational mind had tried to tell him that this was her sister. A twin. A double made up to gain his confidence. But he could feel that that was wrong. This was the same woman. Healthier to be sure, but he knew it in the way that you know, before you even open your eyes, that it’s your bed you’re waking up in after a bad dream. Sophia Bledell had lived, died, and now lived again.

Her words, “You’re reaching for an explanation that fits what you think you know about reality,” had struck a chord within him. Something more basic than gut instinct. Something within his nervous system, perhaps even on a cellular level.

Very well, he thought. Let’s say she’s on the level. That this Multi-verse exists as she describes it and that travel through it is not only possible but rather easy. What does it mean? Why am I involved in all of this? What does BanaTech want from me?

I could get out of this car right now and walk away. I have cash, weapons. I can start over again. Try to figure this out in my own way. My own time.

He couldn’t do that and he knew it. Curiosity is a powerful motivator. Sure, it had killed the cat, but hadn’t satisfaction brought the inquisitive feline back? He had to know more. Sophia had the answers, even if they were the sort that made him wonder if he was, in reality, sitting in the corner of a padded cell, drooling on a urine and sweat stained straight jacket while the real world carried on around him. Not a soul caring that his gears had gone way past slipping and were now stripped beyond repair. He couldn’t walk away from this until he had more answers.

He thumbed the cover of the RLP back exposing the QWERTY style keyboard, keyed in ‘sophia63’ at the prompt, and waited for the screen to resolve itself. It did so immediately, showing a still, blue dot at their location. There were no other dots on the screen, blue or otherwise. No ‘bogeys’ as Sophia had called them.

Richard marveled at the technology required to support such a device. If what Sophia had told him were true, there would have to be thousands of satellites in orbit around thousands of worlds to stream data to just this one small screen. Could all that be done in the two-hundred and fifty year time frame Sophia had suggested? He thought it could. Man’s first satellite, Sputnik 1, orbited the earth in 1957. He knew that the United States Space Surveillance Network had tracked over 26,000 man-made objects orbiting the earth in the 50 or so years since. Most were of U.S. or Russian origin, but many belonged to large corporations with enough power and money to launch such vehicles into space.

How did the data travel between separate locations in the Multi-verse? Were there Rips in orbit around the planet that allowed some form of data transmission? How did BanaTech track active Rips and plot their destinations? The questions were endless and mind numbing.

She’d mentioned something called a Quantum-Cray. Was she referring to quantum based computing? If so, scientists on her world—if it was her world and not the world of another Sophia—had perfected something that scientists on his world had yet to only theorize. The computing power of such a device—and she had used the plural when she’d referred to it—would be astronomical.

When the device rang in his hand, sounding much like a 70’s era telephone, Richard was so startled he almost dropped it. The screen dissolved and a message appeared.

INCOMING CALL

He thought better of answering it. It could be anyone. A wrong number. Someone trying to sell life insurance. Or a ruse by BanaTech security forces to learn Sophia’s location.

He decided to chance it. BanaTech hadn’t needed to call on the two previous occasions they’d found them and he just might learn something. He slid the cover on the RLP closed, righted it, opened the second slider and hit the TALK button.

“McGee’s whorehouse,” he said. “You pay, we play.”

There was a moment of startled silence from the other end, then:

“Farris, you bastard,” a voice rasped. “Where is that traitorous bitch you’re consorting with?”

“Why, Mr. Jefferson,” Richard said with mock delight. “Is that you? How kind of you to call! I’m sorry, but Ms. Bledell had some personal business to attend to and can’t come to the phone right now. May I take a message?”

“I’ll get you, Farris. You, that bitch, and the Key.”

“And my little dog, too?” Richard quipped.

There was a snarl from the other end of the line before Jefferson broke the connection.

Sophia exited the building in front of the vehicle and Richard, smiling inwardly, watched her make her way through the slowing rain. The drumming on the roof had become a soft rat-a-plan no louder than fingers tapping on a keyboard. As she made her way to the SUV Richard noticed something that had previously escaped his attention. Directly in front of him on the dash, in raised decorative letters, was the legend ‘Tucker.’ He glanced at the steering wheel. It had the familiar blue oval in the center of the ring, but the script there read ‘Tucker’ also.

Richard was aware of only one Tucker Motor Company, an arm of the Tucker Corporation owned by Preston Thomas Tucker. That entity had gone out of business in 1950 after a lengthy SEC investigation into allegations of fraud and misappropriation of funds. Neither Tucker nor any of the others named in the indictment had been convicted of any crimes and it was believed in some circles that the entire investigation and resulting trial had been an effort on the part of other automotive companies to shut Tucker down. If so, it had worked. Under other circumstances the Tucker Corporation might have prevailed to become one of the leading manufacturers of aircraft and automobiles in the world.

More inconsistencies, he mused. Was this further evidence supporting Sophia’s story? Or stage dressing designed to inspire his belief in the Multi-verse?

Again, to what end?

“Your boyfriend called,” Richard told Sophia as she pulled the door shut behind her and wiped rainwater from her face.

“What?” she said, alarm in her voice. “Who?”

“He didn’t leave his name,” Richard said. “It was a brief conversation, mostly threats and insults. But I’m pretty sure it was Jefferson.”

“Give me that,” she ordered.

Richard surrendered the RLP and Sophia slid open the keyboard, her fingers flying over its surface with practiced precision.

“No,” she said to no one at all, “the Great Lakes are too far. There has to be something closer. There! That’s it!”

Without another word Sophia dropped the RLP in Richard’s lap, reversed out of the parking slot, and shot out of the rest area.

“Hey,” Richard said. “You want to slow down? We don’t want to tangle with the local authorities. Not with all this hardware we’re toting around.”

Sophia reduced her speed, but only to turn the vehicle and cross an overpass that led to the westbound lane of Interstate 70.

“Wait,” Richard said. “We’re going back?”

“We have to get to Granite City,” Sophia said. “In Missouri.”

“What’s so special about Granite City?”

“Horseshoe Lake,” she said, maneuvering the vehicle down the ramp and onto the Interstate. She accelerated to eighty miles an hour. Sentinel trees crowding back against the breakdown lane looked on disapprovingly. “There’s a Rip forming there.”

“Oh, now wait a minute,” Richard said, aware in some deep recess of his mind that he was now accepting the idea of Rip travel, if little else. “I’m not too keen on the idea of going through another one of those things. That last one almost killed me.”

“It won’t be as bad this time,” Sophia assured him. “A few more trips and you’ll hardly feel anything. Besides, we don’t have a choice. That call means that Jefferson knows exactly where we are and that he’s coming.”

Richard picked up the RLP and examined the screen.

“I don’t see any bogeys,” he said. What he did see was the last screen Sophia had accessed. Sure enough, there was a lake outlined on the map that resembled a horseshoe. On the East side of the lake was a blinking green blip, growing steadier by the moment.

“It doesn’t matter,” Sophia said. “You will soon enough. He’s tracking the RLP.”

“Then turn it off!” Richard said, dropping the device back into his lap as if it had suddenly grown hot. As if he could stop Jefferson and his goons from tracking them if the RLP weren’t in his hand.

“Can’t,” Sophia said.

“Then pull its battery.”

“It doesn’t have a battery. Look, these things are all networked: The RLP’s, the satellites, the Quantum-Crays on the Homeworld. They draw their power from the same source that powers the Rips and binds the Multi-verse. I don’t know exactly how it works. I told you, I’m a researcher, not a tech. We could destroy the thing. Smash it to bits and walk away, just as my Mirror must have done back in Kansas. But that would leave us stranded here with no way out and Jefferson would find us eventually, just as I found you.”

“Which led him to me,” Richard said sourly.

Sophia shot him a sharp look.

“The point is,” Sophia continued, “we need the RLP. We can’t retrieve the Key without it, and without the Key, the Multi-verse is lost. You’ll just have to take my word for that. I don’t have time to explain it now. We only have seventeen minutes before the Rip closes.”

Richard sighed. He didn’t like it, but every argument he had against her story felt wrong. As if he was reaching for something solid to hold onto in an earthquake. Sometimes, a voice in his head spoke up, the only way out is to go further in.

“Drive faster then,” he said.

She did.