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PUBLISHED BY:
Paul Edwards on Smashwords
The Applications of Sorcery
Copyright © 2010 Paul Edwards
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The Applications of Sorcery
Chapter one
It was three AM when I found the Personal Digital Assistant. It was sitting on the bathroom floor of the bar I was in.
I had had too much to drink, which wasn’t unusual for most of my Friday nights. I was peeing unsteadily in a urinal when I saw it on the floor between my feet.
It looked like a relatively new high-end gadget. I was pretty sure I knew whom it belonged to so in a fit of drunken jealousy I decided to keep it.
I scuttled out of the bar unnoticed. Thankfully the police had left.
The night had begun as it usually did with me. I sat at my usual spot at the bar, drinking my usual drink watching the usual baseball game on the TV.
The only difference between this night and any other was that there was a new bartender serving me drinks.
She said her name was Val and she was beautiful, not just beautiful in the way most servers are in sports bars, but radiantly movie star beautiful.
She had long naturally blond hair, a perfect figure and large hypnotic blue eyes. She was very friendly, funny and charming as well.
I tried some lame patter with her trying to get her number but as usual was shot down in flames, so I concentrated on getting drunk and watching the game.
That’s when the stranger walked in. He was flamboyantly dressed in an expensive Italian suit with a white fedora sporting a dark band with a feather sticking out of it.
He had an expensive looking Rolex watch on his wrist and when he opened his fine leather wallet it was full of what appeared to be crisp new one hundred dollar bills.
Val was impressed with him right away, she would stare at him stroking her long blonde hair and laugh at all his jokes when she wasn’t serving the rest of us drinks.
The rest of us at the bar were steadily getting more and more jealous, angry and drunk. Who was he to flirt and chase women in our territory. What made it worse was his obvious success with her, climaxing with Val writing down what appeared to be her phone number on a piece of paper and giving it too him.
I was sitting beside Fred another regular, a fine person sober but a vicious and violent drunk after about fifteen beers.
He was on his fifteenth beer at about one AM when I had a nasty idea which if I hadn’t been as drunk as Fred was I would have ignored.
The stranger had left his spot to go pee when I whispered to Fred.
“He sure doesn’t like your father,” I said.
“Huh? Wazzat,” Fred mumbled glaring at me in violent suppressed rage.
“He said your father was thief and a cheat.”
I knew Fred had some issues with his father and I had learned the hard way not to talk about him when he been drinking. I also knew that criticizing his father was a sure fire way to push him over the edge.
“That fucker, I’ll kill the asshole,” Fred said in a low voice seething with rage.
Fred staggered to his feet and stumbled towards the washroom. Val quickly looked up from her cash drawer sensing that something bad was going to happen.
Fred smashed through the washroom door and attacked the stranger. We heard a violent crashing noise complimented by screams of rage and pain.
Val didn’t waste anytime calling the cops when she heard the commotion, they appeared almost immediately.
Fred was quickly arrested and an ambulance called for the stranger who had been severely beaten and knocked unconscious.
After Fred was hauled away we where all questioned by the police. I denied everything, Val however looked at me with an expression of suspicion.
The cops finished questioning everyone by three AM. That’s when I found the PDA and went home.
I woke up in my apartment the next morning with my usual hangover. I climbed out of bed and walked over to the bathroom to take a shower and brush my teeth.
When I finished I got dressed and went through my dirty clothes from last night to get my wallet. That’s when I felt the PDA and remembered picking it up.
I put my wallet in my pocket and took the PDA with me to the kitchen were I put some coffee and water in the coffee maker and turned it on.
After a few minutes I sat down at my kitchen table with a fresh cup of coffee and looked at the PDA. It didn’t have a manufacturers name written on it anywhere. It didn’t seem to have any of the markings that modern manufactured things had, no serial number or made in china written on it.
It did have an on and off button though, so I turned it on.
The colour LCD screen flashed to life. There were five desktop icons on the screen they were labelled Algowriter, Algorithms, Encyclopaedia, Complex control, Hot Chick catalogue.
I touched the icon for the Hot chick catalogue and a picture flashed up of a beautiful woman. There was some kind of what seemed to be coordinates written on the bottom of the picture.
I was able to flip through picture after picture by swiping my finger across the screen. There were hundreds of them, all of spectacularly beautiful women. Val’s picture popped up after I had gone through about thirty women.
So the stranger meeting Val wasn’t a coincidence.
I exited the catalogue and went back to the main screen by touching a small exit icon on the top corner of the screen.
I touched the Algorithms icon, a list of weird names appeared: The probe, The Copier, The Pixilatior, The brain transference device, The Quantum shield. There were about a hundred of them.
I touched the one named The copier, the screen flashed up what looked like computer code and two icons, one said execute and the other stop.
I pressed the stop icon and the PDA went back to the main screen.
The Encyclopaedia icon was simply that, an extensive encyclopaedia with a search function. The hard drive in the PDA must have been huge, it seemed to have entries on everything along with video.
Some of the entries seemed to me to be wrong, or completely made up. How could there be video of Jesus? Though the costumes the actors wore had a feeling of real authenticity.
The entries all had the same coordinate system that the pictures had had at the top of the screen. I exited back to the main screen and pressed the last two icons. The Algowriter icon was some kind of compiler to write programs. I recognized it because of my hobby of writing simple computer programs in my youth.
The Complex control icon brought up another screen with a number of other icons. I pressed the one that said entrance.
I heard a small snap sound which caused me to look up from my PDA, what I seen caused my jaw to drop. It was what appeared to be a rectangular opening in mid air showing the interior of a large room.
It looked like someone had copied and pasted a rectangular section from a picture and put it in front of me.
I stood up and walked around it. It didn’t seem to have any thickness and the other side seemed to show the same room from the opposite direction.
I took a fork from my table and tossed it through the opening. The fork made a clanging noise as it bounced along the marble floor of the alternate reality.
I looked at the screen of the PDA, there was one icon on it. It said close. I pressed it and the opening disappeared.
I couldn’t believe what had just happened, was I dreaming? I looked at the PDA screen again. The five icons were back on the screen. I pressed the Complex control and then the entrance icon again.
I heard the snap sound again as the opening appeared. I saw my fork lying on the floor on the other side.
I closed the opening one more time and sat down at my kitchen table drank my coffee and thought. This was something out of a fantasy novel. Who was this stranger who had owned this PDA? What the hell was going on?
The other thing that went through my mind was what did I have to lose to go through to the other side.
My life had gone south a few years ago. I lost my good job and my girlfriend within weeks of each other, both a victim of the stock market crash. She lost interest in me when I could no longer afford the expensive dinners and high end BMW.
I had responded to my downturn by becoming an alcoholic financed by a crummy job at a call centre. My days now consisted of answering calls from people trying to work their cell phones and my nights sitting on a bar stool drinking beer.
I finished my coffee walked to my bedroom closet and pulled out an unused knapsack I had bought on a whim three years ago when I was rolling in cash.
I walked around my shitty little apartment and started putting anything I could think of that I might need into it: bottled water, a Gerber all purpose tool, four boxes of breakfast bars, a coil of half inch nylon rope, spare clothing, sleeping bag and pup tent and a very large hunting knife in a scabbard.
I put on a pair of heavy duty hiking boots a heavy winter jacket and putting thick gloves and a wool toque in the pockets.
I grabbed the PDA pressed the proper icons and opened the window. I walked through into the large room and picked up my fork.
I had expected to feel something as I walked through. I didn’t, no electric shock no nausea or disorientation. It was just like I had walked through a normal doorway.
I looked around the room I had just entered. It was mainly constructed of glaring white marble, even the high ceiling was marble.
The floor had an large intricate pattern made up of inlaid black stone, as I walked farther away from the window I had opened from my apartment I could see that it was located in the exact centre of the pattern.
The only exit from the room was a wide staircase located on one wall. I couldn’t see were the staircase led to as the top of the steps were obscured by the ceiling.
I looked back at the window to my apartment and decided to leave it open in case I had to make a quick getaway. I was also unsure of whether I could open another window back up if I closed it. I had no idea of the rules of the PDA’s magic.
I put the PDA in my pocket slung my knapsack over my shoulder and started up the steps.
Chapter two
I emerged into long a carpeted hallway with a plaster ceiling and fine wood panelled walls. There were large expensive looking oil paintings hung at regular intervals. They all looked vaguely familiar but not recognizable.
I was startled to see a beautiful voluptuous naked woman standing stock still about thirty feet down the hall. She was staring across the hall at a painting. I quickly walked up to her, curious and aroused at the same time.
“Hi,” I said, as I got within speaking distance.
There was no reply, she didn’t even turn to look at me. I didn’t see any movement from her at all. I finally got close enough to examine her and realized she was some kind of a hyper realistic statue.
I cautiously touched her shoulder, it was solid but I felt a minute vibration.
The detail of the statue was unbelievable. She looked completely real, even her eyes had the sheen and reflectivity of real eyes. She was also breathtaking, with large full breasts and long legs. Her face was radiant, having full lips and big bright green eyes.
The only thing she had on was some expensive looking finger rings, a necklace with a circular pendant and large hanging earrings. Her hair was pulled back in a loose pony tail.
I stared at the statue for some time, trying to find some flaw in her appearance. I couldn’t.
I decided to move on down the corridor and see were it led. There were doors at regular intervals but they were all locked.
I started to see more hyper realistic statues at regular intervals, all were of beautiful young women with large breasts and flawless voluptuous figures. I tried grabbing one and lifting it to see if I could take it back to my apartment. It wouldn’t budge, it was obviously cemented to the ground.
I reached the end of the curving corridor after about three hundred meters. I had passed over fifty doors, all were securely locked. The end of the corridor was just a wall with an exquisitely painted large mural depicting a harem scene. The women depicted seemed to be some of the same people as the statues I had passed.
The women in the harem surrounded a muscular young man relaxing against a pile of pillows. I looked at the face, it was the same as the stranger’s from the bar last night.
I thought about stealing all the paintings. They must be worth something and unlike the statues they were not secured to anything. They were simply hanging on hooks screwed into the walls. I decided not to take anything for now.
I thought about what to do next. I couldn’t go through any of the doors unless I went back and got an axe or a sledgehammer. That didn’t seem like a good idea. I had no idea who else was here.
It suddenly occurred to me to look at the PDA for an answer. I took it out of my pocket and pressed the Algorithm icon. The list of weird names appeared, I swiped my finger up the screen until I found the name I wanted. The doorway.
I touched the name with my finger which brought up the next screen. There were two icons, open, and close. There was a small note written at the bottom of the screen, “Keep PDA one meter from wall.”
I pointed the PDA at a door and stood about a meter back, then I touched the open button. I heard the now familiar snapping sound and a rectangular opening suddenly appeared. It was the same approximate size as the door.
I could see the interior of the room on the other side. I stepped through the opening into the room for a closer inspection.
It was the entrance to an immense library. There were ten levels filled with books sitting on book shelves surrounding a large open area. The open area had many tables with chairs, some of the tables had large weird looking flat screen monitors with some kind of joystick controls in front of them.
The books on the shelves were a bizarre mix of papyrus scrolls, hand bound leather books, clay tablets and any other type of written media that had been thought up during the ages.
I walked through the shelves until I came to something I recognized. The collected works of Shakespeare. The plays were handwritten on rough paper stuffed loose leafed in modern manila folders.
Someone had neatly written the titles of the plays on the folders with a sharpie. I saw all the familiar ones such as Romeo and Juliet and some I had never heard of like, Loves Labours Won and The Great Alexander.
I tried to read the hand written pages but they were almost incoherent. They seemed to be written in the original old English. I looked at the last page of The Tempest, there was a large scrawling signature at the bottom of the page, William Shakespeare.
I couldn’t believe it. These can’t be the originals, they looked like they were written within the last year, and how could the stranger have gotten them?
Of course how does one open mysterious windows to other dimensions, if the stranger could do that then maybe finding original Shakespeare manuscripts wouldn’t be so difficult.
I looked at the other shelves, and found manuscripts that if they were real would be literally priceless such as Cleopatra’s letters to Mark Anthony, The complete works of Archimedes, original architectural drawings of the Great Pyramid of Cheops and on and on.
It was amazing, anything that I could think of was there, in what appeared to be original transcripts in pristine condition.
I resisted the urge to take anything. I had no idea who the stranger was and how long he would be in the hospital. I didn’t feel confident enough to do anything but look for now.
I left the library the same way I came in. I saw many other doorways on the other levels of the library but decided to stick to the main corridor in order not to get lost. I may have to vacate this place in a hurry and didn’t want to lose my way in a panic.
I stood in the corridor in front of the opening the PDA had created, pulled out the PDA out and pressed the close icon on the screen. The opening disappeared.
I walked back towards the main entrance and picked another door at random and used the PDA to make an opening. I walked through the hole and emerged into what looked like a computer lab of some sort. There were workbenches with extremely high end computers sitting on them as well as large monitors on the walls. The floor was a conservative dark blue carpet, the walls and ceiling were painted bright white. The room was lit with large square fluorescent looking lighting panels.
I looked at one of the computer monitors on the workbench closest to me. It showed lines of computer code very similar to what I had seen on the PDA.
The workbenches also had what looked like weird trinkets scattered all over them. There were necklaces, bracelets, rings and plaques mixed among other things. All the items looked well made but not expensive. Like they were designed to be decorative and functional but not overly noticeable.
I examined one of the plaques closely. There was the same kind of code written on it as there had been on the computer monitor. I also noticed a little tab that had been flipped up on the edge, it cut into one of the lines of code causing a break. I flipped the tab back towards the plaque, it snapped back into a groove of the same size making the plaque whole. I heard the familiar snapping sound.
I jumped back looking up at the same time wondering what effect would happen this time. A hyper realistic statue appeared with its feet standing directly on the plaque. I looked closer at the statue, it was of a beautiful woman like all the others, but unlike the others this was a person I recognized, Terri Phoenix, my favourite fantasy woman when I had been a teenager.
I walked closer to see her better, I then grabbed the statues legs to see if I could lift her off the bench. It wouldn’t budge. I decided to flip the tab on the plaque back to see if the statue would disappear, this so I could just move the plaque to the floor. I brushed my hand against the plaque reaching for the tab, it moved, amazingly doing this made the whole statue move.
I picked up the plaque tipping it, the statue stayed perfectly perpendicular to the top, as well the weight of the plaque appeared to be exactly the same as when there was no statue. I put the plaque flat on the floor and then grabbed the statue around the waist to try to lift it again. It wouldn’t budge. This was extremely weird.
I stood back and took a good look at the object of my adolescent desire. The pictures in the magazines I had hidden under my mattress in my youth sure hadn’t done her any justice. She was spectacular, every curve was even more perfect then I had remembered, even the hairs on her forearms seemed to be in just the exact right place.
I flipped the tab on the plaque and the statue disappeared. I had figured out one thing, however this magical computer code worked, physically disrupting it stopped it from functioning.
I put the plaque in my knapsack and decided to leave. I was getting a bit paranoid and still had no idea who else was in this place. I had done enough exploring for today anyway.
I exited the room closed the opening and walked down the hall back to the main entrance. I noticed now that every single statue had the same type of plaque that I had found underneath it, all with little tabs that would shut them off when flipped.
I walked back to my apartment and shut the opening. I took the PDA and the plaque and hid them in my secret little hidey hole. It was starting to get late and I had decided to go back to my usual bar and see if I could glean any information about the stranger and his condition as well as getting something to drink.
I walked into the bar and sat at my usual seat. Val was working again tonight. She brought me a beer while staring right at me.
“What did you say to Fred last night?”
“Nothing,” I replied.
She looked at me suspiciously.
“That guy’s got fractured skull you know, Fred could of killed him.”
“I wasn’t the one who served him fifteen beers, Fred’s nuts, didn’t anyone tell you what he was like? Why didn’t you cut him off?” I said.
Val face had an expression of guilt and shame on it.
“I’m sorry, I’m new here, Fred seemed normal when I first met him.”
“How’s he doing anyway?” I asked.
“Oh he should be fine, I visited him today, he’s still groggy but the doctors say he should be out of the hospital in a few days.”
I felt a surge of jealousy, I was pretty sure she wouldn’t have visited me in the hospital after just meeting each other. I decided to suppress my feelings and try to find out what I could. I was pretty sure that when the stranger’s wits returned he would want his magical PDA back.
“Who is he anyway, I’ve never seen him before,” I asked Val.
“Oh he’s a software engineer, he wrote something for the Internet that made him millions, he’s so cool. He’s from New York he was just passing through.”
I could see that Val was completely taken by this guy. I wondered what she would think if she knew that he had basically stalked her and that he was much more then what he said he was.
It suddenly occurred to me that if he had been stalking Val he probably also had a way of finding out how to be and say all the things she wanted from a guy.
I wasn’t so jealous anymore. I remembered I had the plaque with the statue of Terri Phoenix back in my apartment. Was she more than a statue?
I finished my beer and left, for the first time in months I didn’t feel like drinking anymore.
I walked back to my apartment, once inside I carefully locked the door and shut the blinds on all the windows. I took out the plaque and the PDA from their hiding place and put them on the kitchen table.
I examined the plaque first. I took out a piece of blank paper and a pen and started coping all the code down.
I had been a competent database programmer at one time, so I knew the basics of algorithms. I was hoping that the code that all these things seemed to use had similar principles.
This is what I wrote:
Reference X
LOCK Reference B
START
New TSW
Label “Terri Phoenix”
Creation time: now
Shape: Circular
Size: r=.5m
Distance from reference: +0cm
Elevation from reference: +2m
Orientation off perpendicular from reference:
X axis: +0 degrees
Y axis: +0 degrees
Z axis: +0 degrees
Duration: .001s
B time: -630075603.8769s
B space: +2304.24765km, 92.87658 degrees True N, -5.1295 degrees off perpendicular
CHANGE Elevation from reference: -2m
WAIT .0099s
CHANGE Elevation from reference: +2m
GOTO START
I also wrote down two long lines of random numbers and letters at the bottom and top of the plaque that bracketed the code. I finished writing the very last letter when I heard a snapping sound causing me to jump back in alarm.
A hyper realistic statue of half a toilet was sitting on top of the piece of paper I had wrote the code on. I studied the toilet closely, the half bowl held water that wasn’t flowing out. I touched the water, it felt hard and had the same slight vibration that the human statues had had.
I couldn’t lift the half toilet but lifting the paper with the code moved it easily, as if it were weightless.
I decided to change the code on the paper. I ripped off the last line of random numbers and letters. The toilet disappeared. I rewrote the exact same code on another sheet of paper omitting the GOTO START and the second CHANGE Elevation line.
I jumped back as I wrote the last letter in the last line. I heard the familiar snapping sound and half a toilet appeared on my kitchen table gushing water out of the half bowl. Then it toppled over onto the floor and smashed into a hundred pieces.
I had learned something, the statues must be of real people, they must be a snapshot in time and space cycled over and over every .001 seconds.
All this code worked just by writing it down and I suspected the lines of random numbers and letters in the header and the footer was all that was needed to activate it.
I also suspected that the reference point was the point from which the coordinates in the B time and B space lines were measured.
If I had wrote the code at the same time and place the plaque had been written I would have gotten Terri. If I write it now at my kitchen table I get half a toilet.
I was still unsure of what the whole B thing in some of the lines meant. Why didn’t the code just have time and space, instead of B time and B space?
Another thought occurred to me. I looked at the statue of Terri and realized that she looked pretty good for a girl that must be pushing fifty. I had obsessed over her almost twenty years ago. She was at least twenty-five or older then.
Maybe B time and B space was in a parallel universe. I did the math and divided the number of seconds into minutes, hours, days and then years. The B time line came to about twenty years.
So this plaque was cycling the time and space were she existed twenty years ago in a parallel universe every .0099 seconds.
I had an idea. I shut the plaque off, I grabbed a hammer and chisel from my small collection of tools and chiselled the GOTO START and the second CHANGE Elevation lines off the plaque.
I grabbed my bathrobe from the washroom, it was still relatively clean, put the plaque on the kitchen floor and turned it on.
Terri Phoenix appeared and immediately started screaming.
Chapter three
“Who the fuck are you!” She screamed.
I tossed the bathrobe to her, which stopped her from screaming as she quickly put it on.
“Stand back mister, I may be short but I know martial arts,” she said trying to look threatening.
“Calm down, its all right, I’m not going to hurt you.”
“Where am I? How did I get here? Did you drug me?” She blurted out frantically.
“You probably aren’t going to believe me, so I’ll show you something first.”
I slowly picked up my TV’s remote control off of the kitchen table and in the most non-threatening manner I could manage I turned on my twenty inch LCD TV that was hanging on the wall behind her. It was tuned to the weather channel.
“Oh!” She said as she turned around at the sound of the TV.
“Look at the date,” I said.
“That’s bullshit, you’re crazy.”
“Look at the TV,” I replied.
“So its built in, big deal,” she said trying to look unimpressed.
“Pick it up, its on a hook.”
She tentatively walked over to the TV trying to keep her eye on me, and then looked at it more closely.
“Oh geez,” she said as she passed out.
I picked her up and carried her over to my sofa then laid her on it trying to make her comfortable, I got a glass of water and waited for her to wake up.
After a few minutes her eyes started fluttering and she started stretching her arms then she looked at me and an expression of fear came onto her face.
“Don’t hurt me please, I’ll do what you say.”
I gave her the glass of water.
“I’m not going to hurt you. I’m sorry but I think I made a big mistake,” I said.
Terri sat up and drank half the glass of water in one gulp.
“What kind of mistake?”
I went back to the kitchen and retrieved the plaque from the kitchen table, I handed it too her to look at.
“What’s this?” She said examining it closely.
“The writing on it is an algorithm that cycles a chunk of time and space over and over to create a hyper realistic statue of you.”
“Me?”
“Yes, and as you can see, I scratched two lines of code out making it cycle only once and stop, which it did depositing you here.”
“Why did you do that?” She said her voice rising.
“I didn’t think that this would happen.”
I explained the whole story to her, even the part about getting Fred to beat up the stranger, she had a look of disbelief on her face until I showed her the PDA and opened the entrance to the marble room.
“So what do I do now? How do I get back?”
“I don’t know, but I think the answer is somewhere in this complex,” I replied pointing at the opening.
“I need some clothes,” she said.
I remembered the name of an algorithm on the PDA’s algorithm list, it was labelled: clothing/supplies. I didn’t think I could make things any worse then I already had so I took a risk and activated it.
A large smooth square stone suddenly appeared hovering perpendicularly in midair. It was about two feet square and one inch thick, the front and back was divided into smaller squares like a checkerboard, each square had writing on it.
I found a square that said clothing and pressed it. The matrix on the stone instantly changed, now the squares had writing on that only referred to clothing.
Every time I pressed a square the matrix changed narrowing down the types of clothing but increasing the varieties of sizes and styles showing them with small images imbedded into the stone.
Eventually through trial and error Terri was able to find a pair of trousers her size and a style she liked, when she pressed the final square and a small flat stone appeared hovering in the air with the object of clothing neatly folded sitting on top.
Terri, spent the next thirty minutes building up an outfit including socks shoes and underwear.
“Wow this thing is sure cool, it even has bra’s in my size.”
“You’re size, why wouldn’t it?”
“Bra’s are just like any other type of clothing, they only mass produce the typical sizes. If your stuck with these puppies,” she grabbed her large boobs through the bathrobe, “you have to get bra’s custom made, which costs a fortune.”
“Oh,” I said as I felt my face flush.
“What’s your name anyway, I’m Terri,” she said holding out her hand.
“I’m James, I already know who you are,” I replied shaking it.
“Really? How?”
“Umm… well, I uh… remember you from a magazine I seen when I was uh.. younger.”
A look of enlightenment suddenly flashed across her face followed by a suppressed smile.
I walked back to the kitchen to give her some privacy to change. I put some coffee on while I waited. I was sitting down on the kitchen table drinking a cup when she walked in fully clothed. She was dressed in tight jeans and a form fitting t-shirt, she had running shoes on her feet.
“What now?” I asked.
“I guess we go back to were you got the plaque and see what we can find out. I was looking at it and I am pretty sure I get the gist of the code.”
“You know how to program?” I said surprised.
“I’m a closet nerd, I’ve had a computer ever since the commodore sixty four came out. I have a three eighty six now.”
I grabbed my laptop from were it was sitting on the coffee table in the living room and brought it back to the kitchen giving it to her.
“Things have changed a bit in the last twenty years,” I said.
She opened it up and turned it on.
“Well I see they ripped off the Macintosh, so that’s the future huh.”
“Not really,” I said as I opened up the Internet browser.
Terri was blown away by the world wide web.
“This is unbelievable, and it’s all wireless?”
“It can be, but they still use cable for most of it,” I replied. “Try Googling yourself, that’s always interesting.”
She typed her name in Google and clicked the search button. There wasn’t much that came up, a few web links for old girlie magazines for sale and a few blogs about centrefold models.
I moved the mouse pointer to the news button and clicked it.
Three links popped up to news articles with her name in them. I clicked on one.
It read: Noted Centrefold model dies of injuries following car crash. Terri Phoenix nee Terry Webersnide died in the intensive care unit of Fort Lauderdale’s Lincoln Memorial Hospital in on the 2nd of July 1990.
Ms. Webersnide suffered massive injuries when the car she was driving was struck by an oncoming tracker trailer that had veered into her lane on Interstate 95.
Ms. Webersnide was returning home from a gentlemen’s club she had been performing at. She is survived by her Aunt Doris Webersnide. The funeral will be held in Fort Lauderdale at the Flying Angels funeral home on the 10th of July.
Terri’s face turned white when she read the article.
“That’s three days from now,” she said.
“No it’s twenty years ago, and it won’t happen to you because you’re here.”
“How does this all work, jumping around in time? Aren’t there paradoxes or something?”
“I don’t know, but I’m beginning to suspect there are many parallel universes,” I said.
“Well, I sure won’t be driving much anymore when I get back.”
“It’s getting late, why don’t we get some sleep and start searching the complex in the morning, you can sleep in my bed, I’ll sleep on the couch.”
“Ok. Do you have some food? I’m starving.”
Terri ate some potato chips I had in the cupboard, and drank a glass of milk. She then said goodnight and walked into my bedroom closing the door.
I got some blankets and linen from my hall closet and settled in on the couch falling asleep immediately.
Chapter four
I woke up the next morning to the sound of someone showering in my bathroom. My back was sore from sleeping on the uncomfortable couch and I heard it creak when I sat up.
I heard the water stop running and a few minutes later Terri walked out wrapped in a large towel.
“That PDA has everything man, I even got a toothbrush and floss out of it,” she said.
“You used it?”
“I sure did, I even tried some of the other algorithms. There’s one that copies shit, look on the table, I made a bunch of twenty dollar bills.”
I walked over to the kitchen table and looked at the pile of twenties, they were all exactly the same.
“What else did you try?” I asked.
Terri grabbed the PDA and pointed at an empty spot in the living room and pressed the screen, a odd looking machine appeared. It looked like a cross between a racing motorcycle and a jet ski. It hovered noiselessly about two feet off the floor.
“It’s some kind of flying vehicle. I couldn’t find a motor or anything it just works the same way the PDA works. The controls look pretty simple.”
Terri pressed the PDA’s screen again and the vehicle disappeared.
“I’m going to take a shower,” I said walking to the bathroom.
I showered and brushed my teeth, I walked into my bedroom now that Terri was sitting at the kitchen table eating a bowl of cereal.
I put on some clean clothes and combed my wet hair. I looked around my bedroom noticing that Terri had cleaned it and made the bed.
I walked into the kitchen and got a bowl of cereal for myself.
“I guess we can start after we finish eating,” I said.
“I copied one other thing,” Terri said.
“What?”
“The PDA,” she took out another PDA and put it beside the first on the table.
“Does it work?” I said feeling slightly alarmed.
“The entrance algorithm opens into the great outdoors, not the complex, it’s a forest on the other side, all the other stuff seems to work the same though.”
“You don’t think it could be dangerous screwing around with the thing?”
“Hey, I’m supposed to be dead in two days, I think I’ll live a little,” Terri said narrowing her eyes.
“Sorry, I’m just a bit paranoid. I don’t know what’s going to happen when the guy that owns the thing gets out of the hospital.”
“He sounds scary,” she said.
“Ya, and he’s going to really pissed when he finds out I’m the reason he got the shit beat out of him.”
“It’s reverse Karma.”
“Huh?”
“He was using all this stuff to hustle women, he deserved to get beat up, you just didn’t know that when you sent Fred after him, your jealousy was really Karma in reverse.”
We finished our cereal and got ready to start our search of the complex.
I activated the entrance algorithm and the opening appeared. We grabbed our stuff and walked through.
“Wow, this is sure wild,” Terri said as she walked through into the white marble room.
I quickly led her up the stairs into the main corridor and then showed her the first statue.
“This is what you looked like at first,” I said pointing to the naked woman.
Terri examined the statue closely touching it with her fingers.
“He sure didn’t leave anything to the imagination, she’s completely naked.”
“They’re all like that, he must have a way of finding them when they’re undressed and then capture that spot in time and space,” I said.
I had a sudden inspiration.
“Follow me, I know were there’s a painting of the stranger, maybe you know him.”
I took Terri to the painting of the harem scene at the end of the corridor, I pointed out the stranger sitting in the middle of the picture.
“Ah, that clears up a few things,” she said staring at the strangers likeness.
“You know him?” I asked.
“He called himself Jose, he wasn’t the type of guy I’m usually attracted too, but something awful had happened to me and I was extremely vulnerable. He managed to come along at just the right time, he was always able to say the exact right things at the exact right times. I always thought it was weird how he seemed to know me so well and was able to manipulate me so easily. I slept with him mostly out of guilt. Now I know how he did it, what a creep.”
“Did he seem like the violent type?” I asked.
“I honestly don’t know, he was kinda nerdy and obsessed with sex, it’s all we really did together. He disappeared after a week or so, I never saw him again.”
We started walking back down the hallway to look for the computer lab I had found the plaque in. I was able to find the door of the lab using the statues of naked women as a reference. They worked remarkably well as landmarks.
I was about to activate the doorway algorithm when Terri put her hand on my arm to stop me. She held up a key.
“I seen it on one of the squares of the matrix when I was looking for clothes,” she said.
She put the key in the keyhole on the door and turned it. The door opened inwards and we walked into the lab.
Terri started looking through the junk on the workbenches and in the drawers underneath them. I did so as well. After a few minutes Terri held up what looked like a small book and said, “Look at this.”
I walked over and grabbed the book looking at the cover, it was called The Principles of Sorcery, someone named Franz Morton wrote it.
I leafed through it, it appeared to be a manual on how to write the programs that did all the remarkable things we had seen so far. There were definitions of all the different commands as well as examples of how to use them the context of a program. The last half of the book was filled with completed programs with the same names as the ones on our PDA’s.
“This stuff is called transcendent technology, TSW stands for time space window,” said Terri.
“We need to read this,” I said.
“Give it too me.”
Terri whipped out her PDA and quickly thumbed through the menus with one hand, she was very dexterous, then she pressed a final icon on the screen pointing at an empty space in front of her. A flat rectangular stone tablet appeared hovering in mid air.
I walked closer to get a better look, it was divided in half by a shallow groove, one half had PUT ORIGINAL HERE chiselled on it as well as a small square in the bottom right with COPY chiselled inside it.
Terri took the book and put it on the PUT ORINGINAL HERE, and then she pressed the COPY square. After two or three seconds a copy of the book appeared on the other side of the tablet. Terri grabbed the original book and the copy and then pressed another icon on her PDA screen, the stone tablet disappeared.
“Man I could of made a fortune with this,” she said putting the PDA away.
“I think you still can.”
Terri tossed me one of the books.
“Lets read,” she said.
I read through the book as quickly as possible trying to get the gist behind this technology. From what I could gather, there appeared to be an infinite number of parallel universes to ours, all this technology worked by manipulating time space windows between them.
The Time space windows could connect two different parallel universes with a circular or rectangular opening of any size, anywhere and at any time. The openings were always two dimensional, having height and width but no thickness.
Time travel would be one of the easiest things to do, just open a TSW to the past and step through.
The writer of the book also postulated a theory about why all this stuff existed. He theorized that the universe was created as software by some kind of ancient sentient beings he called the brains.
He then went on to write that the header and footer codes that every algorithm had at the top and the bottom activated a subroutine that caused the universe’s operating systems debug program to start. This enabled new code to be inserted into it by people like us.
I heard Terri sigh and sit down on one of the stools in front of the computer benches, she had a very sad look on her face.
“What’s wrong,” I asked.
“It says here that once a TSW is closed, the opening to that particular parallel universe is gone forever,” there were tears flowing out of her eyes.
“What does that mean?” I said confused.
“I came out of a parallel universe, the way the code on the plaque worked was it cycled the same spot over and over in a different universe every cycle. The universe I came from was opened for .001 seconds then closed. I can’t go back.”
I thought for a bit and something occurred to me.
“Terri, all the parallel universes are exactly the same until someone disrupts the time flow by opening a TSW between them. All you have to do is just go back to another parallel universe.”
“But there will be another me there,” she said.
“All the other Terri Phoenix’s will die in two days, you’ll be the only one left,” I said.
“Oh ya, right, but how will I explain my corpse?”
“You were hit head on by a tractor trailer, if you were driving a small car there wouldn’t be a lot of corpse left to worry about. What were you driving?”
“A Porsche 911.”
“They probably identified you by a drivers license or something. Just say you were kidnapped and they stole your car and everything, and then it took three days to escape from being tied up. They won’t have a reason not to believe you.”
Terri had stopped crying but was still thinking about what I had said.
“What about my poor Aunt in the universe I came from? She’ll be pretty sad,” she said.
“In two days they’ll all be sad, you’ll have the opportunity to make one of them happy again.”
“You saved my life you know,” she said looking at me with a strange expressionless stare.
“Reverse Karma I guess, it wasn’t what I set out to do,” I replied.
We searched the rest of the computer lab, all the trinkets we found had mostly unfinished code on them. The ones that seemed to be finished we were afraid to try because we didn’t really know what they did.
Terri started looking at the computers on the benches to see what kinds of programs were stored on them.
“They all have some kind of simulation program on them. Jose must have used these to get some kind of idea how an algorithm would work without having to try it in the real world,” she said.
“I could see how opening these windows could be pretty dangerous, miss a decimal point somewhere and all of a sudden the Pacific Ocean is flowing through it,” I replied.
“Speaking of dangerous lets go through some of the other doors. I want to find out as much as possible about this place before Jose gets out of the hospital. I’m not coming back here if he’s around,” Terri said.
We left the lab and locked the door behind us. I looked down the hall at all the other unlocked doors, there were no marks or labels on any of them, they were all the same.
“Which one do you want to try next? There’s no way to tell what’s behind any of them,” I asked.
“This one,” Terri pointed at the door immediately across the hall, “It’s as good as any other.”
I put the key in lock and turned it. The door opened inwards revealing a short white corridor with another door at the end. The walls had what appeared to be hooks with lab coats hanging on them. I also noticed some kind of small built in machine on one side.
I walked over to the machine, it was basically a slot below a camera lens with a big red button on the right hand side. I pressed the red button.
I heard Terri gasp as a bright light flashed blinding me for a few seconds. I stepped back from the machine wary of what might happen.
A small flat object fell out of the slot and dropped to the floor. I picked it up and examined it, it was a security badge with my picture on it. I looked at it more closely and noticed that it looked like something that would have been made in the nineteen fifties or sixties. The lettering appeared to be typewritten and the picture was black and white and physically glued to a cardboard badge that was laminated in clear plastic.
The badge had a generic name written on it, John Smith. I was a systems design engineer for the Transcendent Rocket Company, my employee number was N305084.
I showed the badge to Terri, she examined it then walked over to the machine herself and pressed the big red button.
The camera flashed again and another badge popped out of the slot, it was similar to mine except her name was Nancy Bell, and she was a public relations consultant.
“Hmmm, interesting,” she said.
She grabbed one of the lab coats hanging on a hook and put it on. She then clipped the nametag onto one of her pockets. She grabbed another lab coat and threw it to me.
“Put it on, I think this stuff is so that we blend in with whatever’s behind that door,” she said pointing at the door at the other end of the corridor.
I put on the lab coat and clipped my security badge to it. I took the key and put it in the door’s lock, it fit, it appeared that all the doors in this complex used the same key. I turned the lock and we both walked through.
The door opened into what appeared to a very large control tower that was hundreds of feet above a vast airfield littered with all kinds of bizarre looking aircraft. The towers windows were huge, almost fifty feet high, there were dozens of people walking around, all wearing white lab coats just like ours complete with security badges. They were either on phones or operating what looked to be very archaic radar consoles.
I could see the interior of one of the consoles because there were technicians working on a partially disassembled one. I saw rows of vacuum tubes and large metal capacitors inside it.
One of the lab coated people noticed us walking through the door and excitedly rushed over to greet us. I read his security badge as he got closer, his name was Bob Norris and he was a senior operations manager.
“Hello, Hello,” he said offering his hand, “I’m Bob, it’s always nice to meet our cohorts from the design division. What brings you here?”
I shook his hand, “Just checking our new designs,” I said starting to panic.
Terri offered her hand to Bob “Hi I’m Terri.”
Bob’s demeanour changed immediately when he looked at Terri more closely. I could tell he was immediately smitten with her. Well who wouldn’t be? Even in a lab coat she looked spectacular.
“Umm, nice to meet you Miss,” Bob said shaking her hand for an embarrassingly long time while staring at her like he was hypnotized.
“Well Bob,” she started, prying her hand free from his grasp, “John and I are here to see how are new designs are working out.
Terri cautiously walked back and closed the door we had come through and locked it with the key.
“I sure would like to see how that transporter you guys use to get around works,” Bob said pointing to the door, “I wish your boss would give us some for our ships.”
“Well you know how he feels about that,” Terri lied.
“Yes I sure do. Well to your first question, the new star drives have been almost flawless. We installed one in the frigate Phoenix and we got it almost sixty light-years out. Our only problem is that we seem to be a few hundred kilometres off target when we come out of warp. I guess that’s why you guys are here,” said Bob.
“That’s right, we always need to tweak new designs as you know. Is the Phoenix here? Can we take a look at her?” Terri said.
“Yes she is, I’ll escort you personally,” Bob said as he put his arm around Terri directing her to the rooms elevator.
We all walked into the elevator together. Bob pressed the button for the ground floor. From looking at the buttons I could see the control tower had only four floors. I tried to imagine what it must look like from the outside.
The elevator took a few minutes to reach the ground, not surprising considering how high it looked from the windows. The doors slid open once our downward motion stopped and we walked out onto what looked like concrete.
I turned back to look at the building we had just come out of and had to stifle a gasp. It was a extremely tall tower consisting of a disk shaped upper structure supported by a thin column. I estimated it to be at least a thousand feet in height.
It looked like something out of a pulp science fiction novel.
I then looked around the concrete apron we stood on. Bizarre looking spacecraft dotted it as far as I could see. They too looked like them came out of the same pulp novel as the tower. They all had large fins on a vaguely cigar shaped structure. All had wheeled retractable landing gear.
Bob waved us over to a small motorized vehicle that looked like it was designed to pull these large space ships.
We all piled into the cabin then Bob put it into gear and we whizzed towards one of the cigar shaped ships.
After travelling for about a kilometre we pulled up next to it. I could see the ships name painted on the plain aluminium skin, Phoenix.
We exited the vehicles cabin and examined it up close. It was huge, at least five hundred feet long.
“We just had it retrofitted, some of the systems are using point contact transistors now, we used French ones. The American ones are crap.” Bob said gesturing at the ship, “Lets go inside I’m sure you want to get started.”
Bob led us to a set of portable stairs that was parked next to the craft, the top ended at an open door on the side. The stairs looked like they were originally made for a jet liner.
We followed Bob up the steps and then into the Phoenix.
Chapter five
The interior of the Phoenix was like everything else we had seen so far. It looked as if the designer had used the covers of pulp science fiction novels for inspiration. All the walls and furniture had art deco curves to them. The electronic equipment was full of brightly covered knobs and levers and had lots of analog needle gauges.
There were also many built in monitors on the walls made of old style cathode ray tubes, they had fabric covered speakers with large volume and channel selector knobs beside them.
The walls and ceiling were made of what looked like grey painted metal, the floor was steel plate with a raised diamond pattern covering it for traction.
As we followed Bob we passed members of the crew walking the other way. The men were dressed in what looked vaguely like the costumes of a popular sci-fi TV show from the sixties. The women wore tiny mini skirts and revealing tops of similar design with the same military like insignias as the men.
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