The Fold: A Novel Part 33

"All right," Arthur said from the conference room door, "please tell me what is so d.a.m.ned important that I had to drive back down here at midnight instead of hearing it in the morning."

"No idea," said Olaf. He sat at the table across from Neil and Sasha. Jamie was in a chair by the corner, wrapped in her sweatpants and a long-sleeved T-s.h.i.+rt. Mike stood at the head of the table, close to her. He stared at Arthur for a moment. The older man's returned look was close to a glare. It was the first time Mike had ever seen him without a tie.

"Well?" asked the project head.

"We've been waiting on you," said Mike.

"How gracious of you." He looked around the room. "Is anyone monitoring the Door?"

Jamie shook her head. "Cameras are all on."

"I think it's best if everyone hears this at once," said Mike.

Arthur simmered for a moment. He glanced at his usual seat, then pulled out the chair near Olaf.

They all stared at Mike. He gazed at each of them. He'd been going over this in his head for almost an hour, since he tumbled out of Jamie's bed.

"I know what happened to Bob," he said. "And I know what the Door does."

Eyes went wide around the table. They s.h.i.+fted in their seats. Sasha looked at Arthur. Arthur and Olaf exchanged a few unspoken words. Neil closed his eyes and sighed.

Jamie kept her eyes on Mike. She'd been annoyed that he wouldn't talk to her, but she was still giving him the benefit of the doubt. He wondered if she still would when he was done.

"I don't know what you think you've learned," Arthur said, "but our contracts with Magnus are quite specific. If you breathe a word of what you've learned-"

Mike waved him to silence. "I don't know how it works," he said. "I just know it doesn't work the way you've been telling everyone."

More uneasy glances from Arthur and Sasha. Olaf s.h.i.+fted in his seat again. "What do you mean?"

Mike waved a hand at the wall, toward the main floor. "You've all been a.s.suming that you're creating a bridge across s.p.a.ce-time," Mike said. "A fold, you called it. The traveler steps through this set of rings and comes out of the one over in Site B."

Arthur nodded. "That's a simple way of putting it, but that's what it does, yes."

"The Door lets us locate an appropriate fold in s.p.a.ce-time," said Olaf, "and we use that to open a tunnel that extends across another quantum state."

"No," said Mike. "That isn't what it does."

Olaf crossed his arms.

"If I'm right, and all the evidence says I am, the Albuquerque Door doesn't extend across alternate quantum states. It extends into them."

Neil straightened up. "That's not how it works," he said.

"Yes it is," Mike said.

"No," said Arthur, "it isn't."

Sasha scowled at Mike. "What the f.u.c.k are you talking about? It's been working fine for over a year."

"Again, I don't know enough about the physics of it to explain it technically," said Mike. He held up his hands and moved the left one toward the right. "It's more of a thought experiment. When we open the Door, subject A steps through the rings into a quantum state we'll call X. An alternate reality, for lack of a better term. Subject A enters this other reality and knocks A-X, his or her alternate self, out through the other rings into our reality." His left hand tapped the right and it moved off, continuing the path. "A goes in, A-X comes out."

"No," said Arthur with a shake of his head. "Impossible."

"It's not impossible."

"It's nonsense is what it is," Olaf said.

"It's what's happening."

"Prove it," said Arthur. "Where's this evidence that says you're right? Did you bring any of it?"

"Almost all of it," said Mike.

"Is this another one of your mental spreadsheets?" asked Jamie. "That's not going to make you popular."

"No, it's physical evidence," he said. "Right here."

Arthur gestured at the empty table. "Where?"

Mike looked at Jamie. "Can you pull your hair back?"

She blinked. "Why?"

"It'll make sense in a minute. Just pull it all back away from your face."

She raised an eyebrow at him, but she gathered her hair into a loose ponytail. Mike reached out and touched her forehead on either side. "Here and here," he said. "Anyone see anything?"

Jamie tried to look up at her forehead. "You're starting to freak me out," she said.

"I don't see anything," said Neil.

Olaf rolled his eyes. "What's this supposed to prove?"

Mike took a slow breath. "Her halo scars are gone."

Jamie pulled away from his fingers. "My what?"

Arthur frowned and leaned forward. So did Neil. "It might just be the light," said Sasha.

"They're gone," Mike repeated.

"Is this supposed to be some kind of 'angel' joke?" Jamie asked. "Medical halo," he said.

She blinked and opened her eyes wide.

"Scars can fade over time," Olaf said.

"They were there four days ago," said Mike. "Scars don't fade that fast. Case in point." He touched Jamie on the shoulder, guiding her up and out of the chair. "Can you pull your s.h.i.+rt up?"

Her eyes went wide. "What?"

"Just in the back."

She leaned in to Mike, breathing in his ear. "I don't have anything on under this."

"Even better."

"Seriously," she said, "what the h.e.l.l does my back have to do with Bob?"

"Just...just trust me, okay?"

"You're lucky you're cute."

He looked at the others. "You all know Jamie's got a thing about her back, right? And why?"

She was the only one who didn't nod in agreement. Olaf shrugged. "What's your point?"

"All of us were so busy looking deep for problems, we didn't see the ones right on the surface." He touched her arm "Go ahead. All the way up, if you don't mind."

Jamie reached back and grabbed the s.h.i.+rt between her shoulder blades, gathering it up in two handfuls. She slid it up and shrugged it over her shoulders, crossing her arms over her chest. Her tan lines stood out in the bright lights of the conference room. Mike glimpsed the swell of her breast and felt his pulse jump.

A series of gasps and mutters leaped from the team. Sasha punctuated it with "Oh, f.u.c.k."

"How?" Arthur stared at her bare back with wide eyes.

"It's not just the scars, though," Mike said. "She didn't even argue much about pulling her s.h.i.+rt up, did she? Does that seem normal for her?"

"Stop talking about me in the third person," Jamie chided him. "I've always been a little bit of an exhibitionist. What's the big deal?"

Neil frowned. Arthur took off his gla.s.ses and rubbed his temple.

"The big deal is that Jamie never would've shown us her back because it was a mess of scars."

"That's what you said back in my trailer."

Sasha's eyebrows went up. "Back in the trailer?"

Mike held up his hand to the others. "Who was Kevin Ulinn?"

"Kev...oh, Christ." A touch of pink colored her cheeks. She rolled her shoulders and shook the s.h.i.+rt back down over herself. "How do you even know about him?"

"You told me about him at the bar."

"I did?"

"Yep. Whatever happened to him?"

She frowned. "I don't know. We dated for about four months. Wasn't even dating, just a lot of teenage s.e.x. I kept it a secret because he was three years older than me. I lost touch with him pretty quick after we ended things."

Mike nodded. "It might take a phone call or two, but I think we can prove to you that Kevin died in a motorcycle crash seventeen years ago. The girl he'd been seeing was injured in the same crash. She ended up with scars all over her back. Her name was Jamie Parker, a cheerleader from the next town over."

"No." Jamie shook her head. "No, that didn't happen."

He took her hand, applied a careful amount of pressure, and then let go. "It didn't happen to you," he said, "but that's what happened here."

"Here?" echoed Arthur.

"Here. In this reality." He looked at all of them. "Jamie, this Jamie, is from another universe."

"How?"

"I already explained it," Mike said. "She came here through the Door."

"Okay," said Jamie, "not really sure what you're trying to prove here, but you can stop now. This isn't funny."

"I'm sorry," said Mike.

"This could just be some sort of renewal effect," said Olaf. "Her cell structure could've been-"

"The Door doesn't do anything on the cellular level," Mike said. "That's what you all keep telling me."

"There has to be another..."

"This is what happened to Bob," said Mike. "Our Bob, the guy we knew, went into the rings and knocked another version of himself out. A version from a world, a reality, where things have gone very bad, I'd guess. Maybe there was some kind of war, a full-on nuclear one. Bad enough that he'd be dressed in rags and suffering from dehydration and radiation exposure. That's why we couldn't find the baseball. That Bob, the Bob who died here, never had one."

They looked at one another. They looked at Jamie. She looked at Mike and at all of them.

"You haven't made a doorway," said Mike. "You've created a huge, interdimensional croquet set."

"f.u.c.k me," said Sasha.

Olaf snorted. "There's a problem with your multiverse hypothesis," he said. "Why doesn't it happen all the time? If this is how the Door works, then every single person who goes through should've traded places with an alternate self." He gestured at the room. "We've all gone through. Everyone here should be from a different universe."

Mike s.h.i.+fted on his feet and counted to five. "That's my point," he said. "You are."

THIRTY-FOUR.

Olaf opened his mouth, then closed it with another snort.

"No," said Neil. "No, no, no."