The Institute

 

“ Ins and Outs of the "Great Inversion"

Fredric Martin Ajers, Ph.D.

 

The day that I am writing these words is an important anniversary. It is the centennial of the "Great Inversion" of 1896.

Discussion of this event should begin with the observations of the actual event and the so called "event nodes" which are believed to be associated with it. The principal event took place on May 7th 1896. Known associated "nodes" are on February 3rd 1722, December 21st 1865, June 30th 1908, June 28th1914, November 22nd 1963 and April 12th 1972

In Boston, the morning of May 7th 1896 was the first perfect spring day of the year. The sound of the birds singing was clearly heard even in the busy streets where automobiles were still a rarity. Street vendors hawked their wares. The Public Garden was decorated by the presence of fine ladies promenading with their parasols and rambunctious children rolled hoops through the alleys. No one really noticed that there was something not quite right about the clouds that started to gather starting around 10:00 am.

At that time, banker Arthur S. Cabot took a moment to look out his office window. "Like a whirl pool of spotless blue." He recorded in his diary, " Like a portion of the sky itself had been stirred."

In the Common, Mrs. Winston Shaw was "suddenly taken" by visions of "fanciful creatures". For several days thereafter she would be subject to episodes of swooning without notice.

Across the river in Cambridge, a demonstration in magnetism in a Harvard Physics laboratory yielded very unexpected results when the powerful electromagnet started attracting water.

In the Jeweler's building two blocks from the common, Solomon Pinsky, a diamond dealer was driven to near madness when every gemstone in his shop started emitting a piercing tone. He claimed that after that day he could never separate English from Yiddish and for the rest of his life spoke a peculiar patois of the two.

On the waterfront, a group of twenty longshoremen claimed to have seen a vision of the Blessed Virgin although, strangely, they all said afterward that it might only have been a packing crate.

A Beacon Hill houseboy, known to history only as "Elisha", said, "The sky took to spinnin' like a big ol' pinwheel. My teeth hurt and I thought it was the hour of the Lord"

Every dog in town started barking and would not be silenced.

Mary Margaret O'Leary, a housemaid, noticed the water in her mop bucket swirling as if it were draining away, but not diminishing in volume in any way.

Master Howard Lambert, ten years old, discovered a sudden fluency in the Armenian language only to forget it all within a week. He had had no previous education in that tongue.

A farmer in Braintree claimed later that his cows had quoted scripture at that hour.

A Methodist clergyman apparently vaporized while conversing with a friend who in a short time had seemingly forgotten that the other man had ever existed in spite of some twenty-five years acquaintance. According to police records, he became more and more indecisive about the man's name as their interview proceeded.

As unexpectedly as it had begun, the peculiar effects ended. Over the next few hours an increasing number of people forgot that anything out of the ordinary had taken place. At the end of one month only five percent of people interviewed could remember the extraordinary events of that morning. In spite of the fact that this event was world wide, we depend on a very sparse sampling of observations for information concerning it.

Boston is one of only four places from which we have more than individual reports.

It wasn't until twenty years had passed that science had even started to develop the means to evaluate the events of that day. Alexander Rodman Mollot, working at the Dilmount Institute in Mulweeno had, through relentless research, discovered the effects of parallel fields. He had been a student at Harvard at the time of the mystery event and had taken detailed notes as it had transpired. Strangely, he had no memory of making the observations. The notes led him into a line of study, which culminated in the creation of a device, which duplicated on a smaller scale the effects of that morning in 1896.

The so-called "Parallel Resonant Field Translator" was able to create a small region of indeterminate time and gravity. Objects placed near the functioning machine could vanish or change in form.

Certain persons claimed to have experienced psychic episodes using the apparatus.

Eventually, Mollot would discover and report that all of these effects were due to the device's ability to open a connection between the intrinsic fabric of our universe and that of others like it. That a man of science would make such a claim was denounced as everything from merely irresponsible to outright blasphemy, but further demonstrations before educated audiences convinced academics and ultimately, the masses.

The ability to control the effect of gravity was the most obviously practical use of the new mechanism although there was no way to isolate that particular quality. In spite of this, the device made a fortune for its inventor because of its usefulness in controlling the buoyancy of lighter-than-air craft. For a time, there was hardly and airship in the sky, which wasn't considered "haunted".

It was Mollot who coined the term "Great Inversion" and identified the event as an incident of our universe briefly touching another. Interviews with persons from areas strongly effected by the event found that a significant sampling of them recalled different historical events from their neighbors. The habit of these people had been to keep their own council regarding their memories lest they be thought insane. Mollot had started to identify particular worlds outside of our own and was able to determine exactly what other world ours had contacted. Such a world is referred to as a "xenocontinuum" and it was the one labeled X7-C, which touched our world that day. The persons who remember the history of that world rather than our own were able to help Mollot create the first reconstructed picture of another world.

There are several so-called "nodes" of the Great Inversion spaced at various points in time where peculiarities of various sorts have occurred. These nodes are thought to correspond to major possible turning points of history. They can be hard to spot for us because of the fact that they mark the point of something important failing to happen. Mollot predicted the June 28th, 1914 node as being of particular importance, but when the date came, all that was detected was a waver in the parallel field followed by a marked "divergence" effect from xenocontinuum X12-B. No doubt the node was centered in that continuum. The June 30th, 1908 node might have been created artificially. It appears to be associated with a major malfunction of a parallel field device being used to drive an experimental skyship.

Without the proof provided by the Great Inversion, the science of parallel fields could never have developed. The meaning of the effects of the parallel field would remain only partially understood

 

-Introduction to “The Layman’s Book of Parallel Fields” 1997, Arbor House

 

 

 

I

The Xenolite

 

.

Fred Ajers was just starting his morning coffee and donut when the phone on his desk rang. He was in mid donut-dunk.

Bob Zalinsky in lab seven was on the other end.

"Bob! What can I do for you this morning?"

Zalinsky’s voice was filled with bemusement. “You should come down here. We have something …extraordinary.”

Fred’s donut chose that moment to experience structural failure from oversaturation with coffee. An inch long chunk of it fell into the cup, splashing his shirt and tie. “Damnation!”

“As a scientist, I thought you would have a more positive view of the unique!”

“What? No. I had a little accident here.”

“Coffee and donuts, right?” Fred was famous at the Institute for his collection of coffee stained shirts.

“Uh-huh.” He blotted at his shirt. “I’ll be down in a few minutes.”

Donald, the janitor, was using the hallway for batting practice using a mop-handle and a wad of duct tape. This sort of behavior was tolerated from him. Donald was a strange fellow. He was a human xenolite. About fifteen years before, he had been snatched from his native world, where he had been a professional ball player. He had not been terribly sharp-witted to begin with and his transposition further befuddled his mind. He rarely spoke, but when he did, his conversations would be filled with strange slang, crude sexual references and baseball metaphors used without regard to their appropriateness. No one could understand what he was talking about most of the time. His time was largely spent mopping up his own tobacco spittle.

Donald was paying little attention to the follow-through from his swing. As Fred tried to sneak by, he had to duck fast as the swinging mop-handle whooshed over his head. He beat it for the elevator before his luck ran out.

When he arrived in the lab, Fred didn't even notice the object until Bob pointed it out to him on a lab table.

“We acquired this around eleven last night.”

The object had indistinct edges as if it were spinning rapidly, but it wasn't, it was just sitting there. It looked like it might be a five-sided prism in shape, although it didn't present the same appearance from all angles. Fred wanted to squint when he looked at it because of the apparent blur. The color of the object seemed to be a neutral tan or putty gray. Zalinsky informed him that the spectrum reflected by the object had strange qualities.

"There are chemical patterns on the surface that appear to be a design of some sort, but they don’t show as a different color as the rest of the object. It is possible that these patterns are intended to reflect a wavelength that is not in the normal spectrum."

“Where exactly is the surface?”

“Right, you noticed the indeterminacy of location. That's why it looks like it's vibrating.”

“Is this thing four-dimensional?” He thought he might get a headache from looking at it.

“We think it has seven spatial dimensions. Of course, you can only see the portion that protrudes into three-space, which accounts for its odd appearance. It also seems to have some unusual behavior with time and causality.”

Fred bent to examine the object more closely. He found that it was easier to look at it with one eye closed than with both, which brought out just how wrong it looked. “It certainly does have an odd appearance.”

"Pick it up,” said Bob.

The object had a bit of heft, but its mass varied depending on the angle at which it was held. The sensation was a bit like holding a gyroscope. It didn’t feel like it was vibrating. The surface had a variety of textures. Parts of it seemed sticky.

"Where did you get this thing? I assume it’s a xenolite."

"You assume correctly. We have been doing the final tuning tests for the new high load PRFT system and we set up some new mollot cells, a battery of five with a rating of twelve kilohartleys each with an SGQ of 61º Kilmer. It ran so well on the first test that we decided to attempt a probe."

Fred Ajers knew that they should not have been running probes, but he kept his mouth shut for the time being.

Zalinsky continued. "We fed the PRFT some power and applied it to the cells and eased out the OEC to pull a focus as distant as the machine would allow." His expression had been animated, but now it became more serious. "A bleeder pin melted and before we could shut down, two more went and a cell exploded. 'BLOOP!' There it was on the transfer stage just as you see it there."

"'Bloop', huh?" Fred still was turning the object over in his hand watching its faces diminish and multiply as he did. "Where is it from?"

"X-162¹°³-{14-C} Σ-5 or thereabouts. We've designated it xenolite number X-009603-1."

Fred whistled softly. It was the greatest distance a stable xenolite had ever recovered from by about three orders of magnitude.

Work in the field had been going on for a several decades beforehand. Alexander Rodman Mollot founded the Institute for Parallel Studies in 1906 following the discovery of parallel fields. The property of these fields to open previously unseen worlds was revealed when a standard St. Edmundsburgh pencil was exposed to the then little understood energy field of a primitive PRFT system. It was not until some hours later that the researcher noticed that the name on the pencil now read “Ticonderoga”. No one was able to link the name of that upstate New York fort and town on Lake George with pencil manufacture in any way. After more of the mysterious artifacts emerged, many of them books and newspapers, researchers started to suspect that they were the products of completely different worlds, parallel universes. The early researchers labeled these worlds “xenocontinua”. The model of the universe used to explain these phenomenon states that since the dawn of time, the universe has been dividing like a bacterium within a larger, multi dimensional continuum. The xenocontinua that are reachable by low power probes are very much like our own although variant in historical details. Theory has it that they have separated from our own world in recent historical times. The world from which the new object derived must have split so long ago that the most basic natural laws had not yet come into being.

Fred was going to have to explain the new xenolite to the board in a way they could understand. This would be a challenge, as he didn’t understand it himself.

He spent most of the morning typing several pages filled with adjectives like “uncanny”, "bizarre" and “contra-intuitive”.

He was interrupted by the phone.

“Hello?” he inquired.

“Doctor Ajers? My name is Frank Johnston. I’m a reporter for the Sun-Herald. Do you have time to answer a few questions?”

“Ajers.” said Fred.

“Beg pardon?”

“My name is pronounced ‘Ajers’. It rhymes with ‘prayers’, not ‘badgers’.”

“I beg your pardon, Doctor Ajers.” This time he pronounced the name with great care. He changed the subject. “I have heard that something extraordinary has happened in one of your labs. Is there any foundation to that rumor?”

How on earth had he heard about that already? “You will have to be more specific, Mister Johnson. Extraordinary things happen here all the time.”

“Doctor Ajers, there are postings on several physics newsboards.”

“Really? Can you hold for just a moment?” Fred flipped on his memex and called up several boards one after another. One header read “Institute for Parallel Studies discovers four-dimensional object”, another read “What is the ‘Bloop’?” also “Strangest yet from the Institute labs!” A few sample lines from the articles revealed that fairly complete information had been drawn from. Fred wanted to know who had made the postings. He also wanted to know what a reporter doing with Internet access.

The Internet was designed for academics, scientists and military researchers to share information with colleagues without undue publicity. There was not supposed to be access for the general public and certainly not the press! Ajers assumed that Johnson was owed a favor by someone in the research community. Fred could barely imagine the sort of chaos that would result from the general population using the Internet.

He took the reporter off hold. “Mister Johnson, at the moment, I am inclined to suspect that those postings are some sort of prank. Of course news of interesting discoveries, if any, will be included in the weekly press release.”

Fred knew he had not convinced the newspaperman, but he had successfully managed to put off further conversation on the subject until he had “looked into it”.

The instant after he got off with Johnson, Fred picked the phone back up and rang Bob Zalinsky. He was still in his lab. Ajers was pretty sure that Zalinsky never slept and only rarely went home. Fred didn't know if there was a Mrs. Zalinsky, but if so, she was a very lonely woman.

Fred didn’t waste any time getting to the point. “Every thing you post to message boards must be cleared by this office in the future.”

“What happened?”

“Speculation, very accurate speculation, about your object is all over the Internet. I just got off the phone with a newspaper reporter who had seen them.”

“Uh-oh!”

“I could not have said it better.”

“How did a reporter get access to the Internet? Is that even legal?”

“I have no idea. I’ll be in contact with the lawyers later. The main point is that we deal in information. We are a private research organization and our research is our product. It is how we support ourselves and, incidentally, pay your salary.”

“Are you threatening me?” Bob was getting hot under the collar.

“Calm down. Unplanned publicity is threatening us. I don’t even care if you continue probing on your own, but I need to know about anything significant before it appears on a message board.”

Fred left it at that, but he suspected that there might be hell to pay in the near future.

 

II

Information Management

 

The Institute for Parallel Studies didn’t always have a manager of public relations. At the time the Institute was founded in first decade of the twentieth century, they were dedicated to pure research as a department of the Dilmount Institute in Mulweeno. Shortly after the Bromfkidor Wars, the principal researchers sought to create a department at Harvard and moved their base of research there. They had made their reputation on the use and refinement of parallel resonant field translators, usually called PRFT’s or “resonators” in the common jargon. At first, these devices found the greatest use due to their gravitational effects allowing skyships to carry greater loads and be more maneuverable.

The first xenolites changed all that. Trying to explain to the world what they were was a challenge. “Artifacts from other universes”, “Information from another dimension” and “Products of sidewise archaeology” were all used to describe these objects. They were an interesting and, in the popular imagination, fun aspect of the research that maintained public interest in the work, but some of them contained very valuable information, not only valuable in a scientific sense but in dollars and cents as well. Very comprehensive histories of some of the nearer xenocontinua are available, but others have been purposely restricted to the academic community and the military. Three systems of xenocontinua in particular are very closely guarded. The X12-B system contains worlds in which two great wars, one of them involving most of the globe, dominated the first half of the twentieth century. In these worlds, people have developed weapons based on atomic energy. In the X9-H system, the code of life was unraveled and devastating weapons were created from bacteria, viruses and modified animals. A major war had left the entire continent of South America virtually empty there. In the X-24 worlds, there have been great conflicts fought with strange rays that cause madness and murder among the populations they are used upon. If information from these worlds were to get to the wrong persons, the results could be literally Earth shattering.

This was how the public relations department became necessary. It was incumbent on Fred Ajers to make sure that any questionable information from xenocontinua was controlled. He wasn’t sure about the new object and what it represented, so any information in the hands of the general public was a serious breach of security.

Even the dangerous worlds had produced strange and wonderful things. Bob Zalinsky was well known as a lover of the perplexing complexities of the pseudo science of “pindalometry” native to the X-24 series of worlds, while Fred was a great fan of a popular musical idiom from the X-12 series known as “rock ‘n’ roll”. Everyone at the Institute had a favorite xenocontinuum and made as much of a study of it as possible.

Fred needed to walk. It was now around ten in the morning. There was time for more coffee and perhaps the newspaper. He exited the Institute Lab Building, which stood at 998 Massachusetts Avenue for the small market across the street where he purchased a Boston Sun-Herald for twenty cents, It was a dime less than the New York Times and it had funny pages. Taking his time, he headed for Harvard Do-Nut in Central Square.

He grabbed a booth so he could spread the paper out and ordered a bear-claw and a cup of coffee. Wednesday, May 17^th 2000, read the date and the headline below “Germans to vote on East Prussian independence”. Germany had shed most of their foreign territories outside of Europe and now some of the European ones were starting to be cut loose. East Prussia wished to become the Republic of Warmia. The independence measure was expected to pass. The Germans seemed happy enough to lose a troublesome Yiddish-speaking minority.

Another header was “Patagona to extend franchise to non-Bromfkidorans”. The White and Indian majority of that land had been denied participation in their government in favor of the Bromfkidoran minority for almost eighty years. Now having to deal with an influx of refugees from the former Bromfkidoran “Survivalist” republics, the Patagonans needed a stronger native voice to prevent unchecked immigration. The environmental crisis in Bromfkidor was now out of control. The climate of that land would be wholly arctic within ten years. The number of displaced persons would rise to seventeen million before the end of the year. Few countries were willing to absorb large numbers of Bromfkidorans. For them, the situation was grim.

The presidential race was starting to take off. Governor Edwin Melrose Foley of Indiana was virtually certain of getting the Republican nomination. The Democrats were consumed with mutual character assassination and would have a hard time showing unity after the convention. Fred predicted that their nominee would be former vice-president Eric D. Beeman. The American party had already nominated charismatic senator Paul Hogarth, who had run in the last election, only losing to the president by a very small margin. He was the man the smart money was on.

A vacation cruise skyship bound for Crete that had been given up as lost over the Mediterranean six days earlier came down in southern Algeria without the loss of any lives. A power failure had left it unable to steer or radio for help.

A second attempt to reach the planet Mars was being mounted by the French. The Germans had failed just three months before. There was to be a collaborative attempt by the USA, California and Mexico next year. The Institute had designed the great main engine for that mission’s space ship.

The subway fare was going up to eighty-five cents. Fred was outraged.

A German company was now marketing a television for the home. It was only available in Europe at the moment. Could they really broadcast the same content into homes as they did into viewing clubs?

There were the standard editorials about overblown campaign promises

There was, much to Fred’s relief, no mention of the new xenolite. Apparently Johnston was a responsible enough journalist not to submit a story without confirmation. Fred decided to call him.

An hour later, Johnston joined Fred in his office.

The man who sat across from Fred Ajers was a bit older than he had expected. His voice had been young and eager, but Frank Johnston appeared to be in his late forties. He was gray at the temples and had a look in his eye that revealed he had see a thing or two.

“Thank you for inviting me here, Doctor Ajers.”

Fred met his eyes. “I didn’t want the Institute to appear to be hiding anything. There will be a press release this afternoon, but I thought I would give you a first look at our latest find.”

“The ‘Bloop’?”

“What? I’m referring to xenolite X-009603-1.”

“On the Internet, people are calling it the ‘Bloop’. Catchy name, don’t you think?”

Although Fred Ajers did not lack a sense of humor, he was put off by the newsman’s endorsement of popularizing the object. “The Institute for Parallel Studies is not concerned with ‘catchy’ names for the products of its research. Perhaps you ought to see it.” Fred rose from behind his desk and walked toward the door. Johnston stayed put until Fred turned and inquired, “Are you coming?”

Johnston jumped up. “Of course, yes.”

There was no one in the lab. Bob Zalinsky was at lunch and his assistant had the day off. The xenolite sat on the same table where Fred had last seen it. As Fred watched the reporter handle the object, he remembered the strange sensations he experienced doing so the previous day.

"Extraordinary!" Johnston barely breathed the word. Fred voiced agreement, but the reporter seemed to barely hear him. He turned the xenolite over in his hands several times, his eyes wide. "Bloop!" he said softly and giggled nervously.

Rolling his eyes, Fred took the object away from him and placed it gently back on the table.

"It must be a false xenolite, right?"

The reporter was referring to a rare and strange phenomenon of parallel physics, the so-called "false" xenolites. These peculiar objects are born of a strange reaction of a parallel field vibrating on a cusp between two or more xenocontinua and at the same time reflecting some element of the experimenter's perceptive imagination. The objects are not true samples from other worlds, but more like dreams made material. They come into being exclusively by accident. They cannot be found by intent. There do seem to be rules governing the way false xenolites form. For instance, one very famous example is a quarter dollar piece that is normal in every way save for thew fact that it is made of Cheddar cheese. It is otherwise identical to a quarter from our world however, not some xenocontinuum. This indicates that some element of familiarity by the resonator operator comes into play. Another example is a tango record that glowed in the dark (through a process completely unknown) but was recorded by a familiar artist, on a known record label and could be played on quite ordinary equipment and in fact was a duplicate of a record in the researcher's personal collection save for its luminous qualities.

An operator of parallel resonant field apparatus probes with a sense of expectation of encountering an object, making a wish, as it were. The focus falters for an instant and the xenocontinuum is lost even as the transfer process has begun and a transmission of "flux" from between the worlds takes place instead. This flux manifests itself as matter, energy or some combination of the two.

It is known to science as the "Aladdin’s Lamp" effect.

The discipline of studying these objects is called psudoxenology and is so baffling a science that a degree in it has never been awarded to anyone in spite of intensive work in this field. It has been suggested, only half jokingly, that this is the only hard science in which the scientific method cannot be used.

Few examples of false xenolites have dramatically violated physical laws. Oddly, one of the few to do so was the very first discovered, the celebrated eternally vibrating doorknob. This brass knob, with the imprint of a well-known Ohio manufacturer, emits a 74-cycle hum without interruption yet has no discernable source of energy. Puzzled physicists have generally described it as a “thermodynamic anomaly”. Even given that peculiarity, objects such as these are somehow connectable with human experience and imagination. This new xenolite lacked that quality. No one would have imagined this object.

"We have reason to believe that it is not. It merely originates in a xenocontinuum that divided from ours so far in the remote past that the physical arrangement of space in its world differs considerably from our own. That is really your big story here. We have succeeded in making a probe many times more distant than any that has previously taken place."

"May I take photos?" Asked Johnston.

"Please be my guest." Replied Fred.

The next day, the papers had several photos of the xenolite prominently displayed. To the dismay of Fred Ajers, the name "Bloop" seemed to have stuck.

The effect on the public was far smaller than Fred had feared and Johnston had hoped for. Johnston had assumed that this story would raise his estimation in the eyes of the journalistic world, but most seemed to view it as a "filler" type story having little impact for the average person. A curiosity, nothing more. One other result was that Johnston now thought he had a relationship with Ajers and a foot in the door at the Institute.

 

III

Odd Properties

The Tuesday morning exactly one week after that story appeared, Fred again sat in his office. With a napkin tucked into his shirt collar, he was happily preparing to dunk a donut into his coffee. Outside the door, he could hear Donald attempting to explain his political position to one of the junior researchers.

"Foley's pitch has too much backspin, buddy! I'd worry the same way I'd worry about my pants being stolen in a Mexican whorehouse. It's just another severed-hand-wristwatch, capt'n. Beeman doesn't have the home cookin' from his own tribe, no one to keep his balls warm for him, but Hogarth will hit all the bags and still be grinnin' when he slides, ya know what I mean?"

"No", replied the other, "I actually haven't got the slightest idea!"

It was a common joke around the Institute for senior staff to recommend Donald's "profound insights" to newcomers. Fred had heard it all before and still didn't understand most of what he said. He would only worry about it when he started making sense. Donald had much more to say, but the phone interrupted Fred’s eavesdropping. It was Bob Zalinsky.

"Fred, you have to see this!" He didn't sound upset, just somewhat excited, so Ajers didn't feel any particular anxiety about going down there.

This time he found Bob and Jeff, his assistant waiting expectantly for him. The "bloop" was sitting on the table. It presented a different appearance than it had on previous occasions, but that was no great surprise. It looked different almost every time he had seen it.

"Please pick up the xenolite, Doctor Ajers,” said Bob. They were both smirking.

Thinking, "O.k., I'm game", Fred lifted the object, only to have it seemingly yanked from his grasp about two inches from the surface of the table and fall back to the surface. Calling himself a butterfingers he picked it up once more to find that he could lift it no higher than a couple of inches. When he tugged the table lifted slightly as if the "bloop" were somehow attached to it. Suspecting trickery, Fred held it up as he carefully passed his hand beneath the object to feel for anything connecting it to the table. There was nothing that he could detect.

Fred sighed. "I give up, what happened?"

Bob smiled. "Look under the table."

Fred bent down and looked beneath the inch thick tabletop to see another object somewhat like the one sitting on the surface. This one hung suspended in the air about two inches below the underside of the table. He almost banged his head as he stood up. "Another one?" he asked.

"Nope.” said Jeff, "Part of the same one."

"Tell me more.” said Fred.

Bob spoke up. "Jeff knocked it over this morning and found that he couldn't lift it afterwards. That's when we discovered the 'other' object. It's not another though, it's part of the same one."

Fred scratched his head. "How do you figure?"

"It's multi dimensional. The 'bloop' has a hole in it! We only see the part that is in our three dimensional space. When Jeff upset it. The tabletop passed through the hole."

Jeff had picked up the object and was moving it above the surface of the table until it went off the edge at which point he lifted it free. It appeared that he was holding one object in his hand with another suspended in the air a few inches away.

"Watch.” he said.

Jeff turned one of the objects and the other, while maintaining its position in the air started to diminish in size until it vanished altogether. At the same time another object had appeared on the opposite side. First very small, it grew rapidly as Jeff manipulated it.

"We are now seeing it at a completely different angle than we had before. When I knocked it over, I must have somehow rotated it in an unseen dimension as well."

"Christ Jesus.” muttered Fred. "It's as if a three dimensional ring were to pass through a two dimensional space, it would be seen as two separate objects, but they would still be linked in the third dimension."

"That's pretty much the size of it." Said Bob.

"All right." Fred pondered for a moment. "Don't make any postings about this for twenty-four hours. I know that it seems perfectly harmless, but I want the board to know about it before the world at large does."

Fred had the two researchers make several photos to be sent up to him later and left the lab. He had to hurry to his first appointment. Fred had promised Frank Johnston that he would give him a tour of some of the facilities. He had decided to see if he could gain his friendship and thus his cooperation regarding how the Institute was presented in the press.

Johnston was waiting outside of his office when Fred arrived. He had with him some printouts of postings from the Internet concerning the institute. The one that interested him the most was one concerning "living xenolites".

Living xenolites were any plants or animals that came to the Institute via the PRFT. Most were of well-known types, but some, represented species that have no counterpart in our world.

Fred said, "So you want to see the 'zoo'? I think I can arrange that."

The animal room was on the top floor and behind triple doors to make escape, even by small creatures difficult. For some fifty years, the Institute for Parallel Studies had maintained a collection of specimens of life from various xenocontinua. Creatures of all sorts had come through over the years including at least two human beings as well as one "sort of" human being. That was, of course, Karlik Bindilo, from the xenocontinuum X-74c. He was in charge of the animal room and had become a very competent researcher since he had been accidentally collected twenty-five years before. His species had been named homo alter or "other man". Karlik's skin was a light brown. His hands were proportioned differently from ours, his hairline and beard pattern was unlike that of homo sapiens and his eyes were, by our standards, too far apart. His facial expressions were difficult to read. He had been an itinerant poet and storyteller in his own world and a master of language, so picking up English was not too difficult for him. No one had been able to learn his native tongue. Some researchers suspected that his species might be, on the average, more intelligent than our own.

Karlik welcomed Fred and introduced himself to Johnston, who didn't quite comprehend that he was not just a "funny looking fellow".

Johnston asked, "Where are you from, Mister Bindilo?" Karlik's accent had made him take a closer look at his features.

Karlik smiled indulgently. " If you must address me so formally, it would actually be something like ‘Scholar Bindilo’ in English, but please just call me Karlik. I lived in the countries of Haglat and LanFroeth. Now I have an apartment right here in the building."

"Haglat and Lan… Oh, I get it." His eyes grew wide. Karlik gave an indulgent smile and waved him forward to the main room.

There were cages of all sizes and creatures occupying them ranging in size from that of a mouse to that of a horse.

The first cage they were shown contained a small monkey of a species Johnston was unfamiliar with. It had dense gray fur and large eyes. "This is a monkey of the New-World variety that inhabits temperate forests in North America. In its own world, it fills an ecological niche similar to that of the gray squirrel. It is native to several xenocontinua in the X-7 region."

Another cage held two creatures that waddled on short legs about the base of a garden sundial. They both had long moist and curly trunk-like proboscises. Aside from that, they rather resembled lean badgers.

Johnston asked, "Why the sundial?” and then struck himself in the forehead and laughed. "Toves!"

Karlik and Fred both smiled and nodded. "A little joke. They do resemble toves, though, right down to their characteristic 'slithyness', so that's what we call them. They are marsupials native to South America in the X-21 xenocontinua. They feed on burrowing insects."

Another cage contained an ass that munched hay and occasionally brayed loudly. The only thing that made it peculiar was that it was striped black and white like a tiger from head to foot. Fred said, "In the X-12 worlds, these creatures live on the African veldt in enormous herds. They are known as 'zebra'."

"Are you sure that someone didn't just paint this thing?"

"Quite sure.” assured Karlik.

There were several equally strange creatures including a flying mollusk resembling a squid with wings and another from a completely different xenocontinuum that was like a nautilus with a huge, but very thin, shell filled with hydrogen. There were of course several specimens that were stuffed and mounted or in jars, that for one reason or another could not reproduce at the Institute. One such animal was a worm-like being about three inches long, which apparently differed dramatically from known creatures on a cellular level. It was from a xenocontinuum that divided from ours some two billion years ago.

There were numerous birds, both brilliant and drab, that seemed more or less like normal birds but of specific types unknown in our world.

Frank Johnston was struck by the fact that the collection of living xenolites contained no creatures know to this world.

"We get them", said Karlik, "but only keep them for a short period of study. We used to release them into the wild, but concerns over alien diseases getting into the environment has caused us to destroy animals and plants that are not to be included in the collection."

Johnston met Karlik's eyes. "What about you?"

"I spent eight years under quarantine. The entire time I begged to be returned to my old life, but it is still very hit or miss in terms of locating a particular xenocontinuum, especially one as distant as my own. They found other worlds that were populated by men such as myself, but with different histories and traditions. Eventually I was declared to be free of dangerous microbes and I was offered the chance of joining your society. It was more difficult for someone like me to blend in than someone like Donald. I became a researcher here at the Institute and I await enough improvement in the technology to someday return home."

"Do you resent what has happened to you?"

"I admit that I have had moments of resentment, but I recognize that what has become of me is so unique a circumstance that I must make the most of it. Luck is neither bad nor good, but the result of how and individual deals with the consequence of random chance. A man may chance upon a fortune and then spend his treasure in such a way that he harms himself physically or spiritually. Conversely, a man may suffer a crippling accident that saves him from fighting in a battle in which he is killed or causes him to focus on a previously hidden talent that enriches himself and those around him. I am a poet who has been granted a small view of eternity. If the day comes that I return to my home, I will be able to bring a new kind of vision to my people. If that day never comes, I have brought a vision of my people to yours."

Fred said, "Karlik has been writing several books about his world and is an avid student of several others including this one."

Karlik led on to a greenhouse that contained samples of flora from other worlds.

There was one plant that looked rather like wheat, but was in fact a close relative of maize. It produced small sheathed seed heads with about a dozen kernels each. It had been discovered in the form of seeds. There were a variety of unfamiliar flowers, some of which appeared to be the product of selective breeding. There were also various fruit trees, mostly grown from xenolitic seeds and pits. Not all of them were thriving as their particular soil chemistry and temperature requirements could only be guessed at.

In a grassy pen in the greenhouse lived several rabbit-like creatures. Closer examination revealed that they were very un-rabbit-like in many particulars. For one thing, they laid eggs. Johnston was informed that they were actually a monotreme native to central Asia in the X-12 worlds, but extinct in about half of them. It was about a third smaller than the common cottontail and had gray fur with red stripes along its muscular thighs. It had gnawing teeth with a pronounced underbite and its small eyes seemed unnaturally close to its snout. There were other animals amongst the plants in the greenhouse, several worms and insects and a number of small rodents. There was a mouse-sized flying squirrel that Frank Johnston found particularly interesting.

In the trees were some tiny, flightless bats that had evolved to dig grubs from tree bark. They resembled small tarsiers except that they had huge ears rather than huge eyes. It was quite easy for them to hear their prey crawling beneath the surface, or even the sounds of their metabolic functions when they were at rest.

There came a page over the intercom for Fred.

"Doctor Ajers. You are needed in Laboratory Seven immediately." Zalinsky's lab. Fred excused himself and rushed out of the room.

 

 

IV

Mishap

 

Fred Ajers arrived at the door of the lab where several people had gathered. Outside, the mail girl was sitting against the wall hugging her knees weeping loudly and wetly. He pushed his way through and then yelped in horror when he saw what had once been Jeffrey Winbury lying on the floor. He instantly folded in the middle and vomited on the floor, dimly noting that he had not been the first person to react in this way. Bob Zalinsky was at his side helping him straighten up.

"Sweet Jesus!" Fred wiped his lips on his sleeve. "What happened? What in the name of God happened?!?"

"Jeff was photographing the 'bloop'…moving it into different positions. We had come to the conclusion that it is actually a far larger object than it appears to be, about the size and weight of an upright piano maybe, but we had only been seeing little pieces of it. Jeff was trying to pull it hard to show more of it and most of its weight must have gone off balance in some way while he was holding onto it. He got yanked in a direction we don't go." Bob's lower lip started to quiver. "It was over in less than a second. Part of him, the part that isn't there anymore, got pulled in. I guess we simply can’t exist there. In that space." Bob’s face was ashen, clearly still in shock, himself.

Fred tried to imagine it. Suddenly every one of Jeff's body cells was open on one or more sides. That part of him must have been reduced to a vapor instantly, the atoms themselves must have dissolved. It looked as if his body had simply been sliced through at a strange angle. His right knee joint had passed through leaving that calf and foot detached from the rest of the corpse. His entire right arm and upper right thorax were missing, as was half of his head. It resembled a particularly disturbing anatomical demonstration. His clothing looked like it had been neatly trimmed with a scissors at the cut off point. There was a shocking amount of blood forming a crimson pond around the lab assistant’s remains. Fred noticed that slightly less than half a pair of glasses lay on the floor next to Jeff. The sectioned part of the lens was mirror smooth.

The 'bloop', now a foot-long oblong with a pyramid shaped protrusion, lay against the far wall. Another part of it about the size of an egg, hung in the air several inches off the floor two feet away.

"My God!", exclaimed a voice from the doorway. Bob and Fred looked over to see Frank Johnston standing there surveying the macabre tableaux.

"Oh, how wonderful." Thought Fred, sarcastically.

Dealing with the police was nothing compared to dealing with Johnston. As far as the cops were concerned, what had happened was an industrial accident, albeit a unique and bizarre one. Johnston, on the other hand, insisted that there was an overwhelming public interest in this. The board of directors, within a half hour of the incident, had informed Fred Ajers that publicity must be kept to a minimum. They made sure he knew that his job depended on it.

Jeff's only living relative, a brother, lived in Chicago and would simply be told that the death was the result of a lab accident. His body needed to be kept for examination, but the brother would be sent a small canister of ashes belonging to someone else. It was now understood that the "bloop" had to be handled with utmost care. Even putting it in a bank vault would not insure its containment. If jarred or knocked over in a certain way, it might simply pass through (or rather around) the steel walls.

Ajers all but begged Frank Johnston not to leave the institute until he had a chance to speak with him. He agreed after Fred threatened to cut him off from any future access save for the standard press releases.

"I understand that you find this incident newsworthy," began Fred, "but I implore you to be sympathetic to the sensitive approach we must take to it. After last week, I inquired regarding your access to the Internet. It would be an unjust misfortune for your sister to lose her high paying job at Whitney Pharmaceutical for providing unauthorized access."

Johnston had never told Ajers the source of his access, but it didn’t surprise him that he had found out. "It's not illegal." Johnston reddened upon hearing the threat. "The internet is a public forum!"

"Yes, but access is granted to authorized persons associated with member institutions. I ask you, do you have such authorization? Is your career and reputation worth risking hers?"

Johnston glared at Fred Ajers, but remained silent.

Fred continued. "I truly want you to be able to see that nothing sinister is going on at the Institute. We can give you authorized internet access and detailed reports of activities that go on here."

"And what will that cost me?"

"A commitment to responsible reportage. I don't mean we are going to pay you to be quiet about things, but we will stipulate that your special access will be dependant on your willingness to work with us."

"Special access in exchange for controlled reporting?"

"Responsible reporting. We have a free press, you can write what you please, but your opportunities will be greatly multiplied in the future and your risky Internet access at Whitney will be able to be terminated. So far as I know, you will be the only newsman in America that will have full access to the net. You will be able to post inquiries as well as read the postings of others." Now that was a pretty tasty carrot to dangle in front of him.

It was not without some reservations that he thought were best kept to himself that Frank Johnston accepted Fred's offer. He was given his own office with his own memex across the hall from Fred.

 

 

V

Inside the Institute

 

The Sun-Herald did report on the accidental death of Jeff Winbury, but characterized the incident as an explosion of a piece of equipment.

In the weeks that followed, Johnston learned that Fred had not lied when he said that the extraordinary was commonplace at the Institute. Every other day he saw something that he could never rationally ever have expected to see.

The discovery of xenolites, he learned, was more art than science. One thing he had not been shown when he was outside of the Institute was an actual probe being run. The “Observatory” was located next door to the research and office building at 996 Massachusetts Avenue. It was joined to 998 by and underground tunnel and a second walkway at the third floor level.

The new high-powered PRFT that had discovered the “bloop” had been installed in the observatory with heavy-duty bleeder pins to prevent overloads of the type that had yielded that particular xenolite. They were hoping that the new machine would be able to capture objects of greater mass from closer xenocontinua.

Fred Ajers and Frank Johnston were there on the morning of Monday, June 12^th. The first real runs with the equipment were due to take place in a few minutes.

Zalinsky was the technician in charge of the fine-tuning of the equipment along with his new assistant, a graduate student named Jenny Harvey. The probe team would be Edward Wright and Paul Cromwell. Wright was the researcher who had conceived the massive new PRFT although it had been up to Zalinsky to build it.

Frank Johnston was taking notes of his impressions of the activities in the room as he awaited the test. Fred Ajers conferred with the principals of the test making sure that it would be a model operation. Again and again he reminded them that this was the first test parallel probe to be witnessed by a reporter.

One of the great misconceptions about parallel field devices is that they are typical electrical machines. Nothing could be further from the truth. Although the big new resonator did include electric motors and servos to position various of its parts, the forces used to generate the parallel field has nothing whatsoever to do with standard electromagnetic forces. The PRFT utilizes a force that is commonly referred to as “static gravity” to engender a disturbance in the all-pervading parallel field of the universe. The force is called static gravity because of its most immediately noticeable feature is the interruption of the gravitational field in some directions. For this reason, parallel devices have become very useful in space flight and were formerly used in large skyships to improve their lifting capacity. The static gravity charge was produced by a mollot cell, or in this case, by a battery of mollot cells. The mollot cell is named for its inventor Alexander Rodman Mollot who created the first true resonator in the first decade of the twentieth century. Earlier experiments performed by Valdmar Poulsen, the renouned Danish inventor, inspired Mollot to do closer studies of certain anomalous reactions. A measuring device known as the Dilmount Apparatus that he (with associate, Elmo Dilmount) created utilized a very primitive static gravity cell, now known in parallel science as a poulsen jar, for mass adjustment. Poulsen stumbled on the property of the device by accident and only used it in this single device. The determinator was never mass manufactured and Mollot only learned of it by seeing the original device in a Copenhagen museum.

Cromwell started the positioning motors on the big resonator to bring the bleeder pins into proximity of the large mollot cells while Doctor Wright hand adjusted two of the forty-six centimeter phase plates. The nine-centimeter phase plates would be adjusted by micron precision servos linked to phased field sensors that would lock them when a xenocontinuum at the prescribed distance was encountered.

The final startup sequence was initiated as the bleeder pins were brought within two millimeters of the cell casings. Subtle bands came into vague focus in the air around the device and the numbers on the display clicked over. “X1-d”, it read.

“Full activation.” Said Doctor Cromwell.

The counter clicked upward. X7-c, X9-a, X10-n, X12-b.

The banding was becoming more pronounced. It looked like the air was filled with ripples as on the surface of a pond.

Johnston reached out to attempt to touch one of the distorted regions. Ajers reached out and grabbed his wrist. “Perhaps not the best idea.” he said. Fred reached for a pen from Johnston’s pocket and prodded a ripple. The pen seemed to twist and writhe. Fred let it drop to the floor, then picked it up and handed it to Johnston. The pen had been a Stilex aluminum disposable. Now it was made of clear plastic and had the name Bic on the barrel. Johnston gave a low whistle. “Your very own xenolite.” commented Fred.

Johnston’s eyes bugged out as he turned the transformed pen over in his hand. “Do you always get the equivalent of what you put into the field?” asked Johnston.

“About sixty percent of the time for small objects. The technicians call low-mass objects ‘tight focus’ objects. It seems to be easier for them to find a common resonance with their counterparts. Larger objects produce exact counterparts far less frequently. Of course, the majority of times an object introduced into the field will simply disappear without any mass exchange at all.”

The field was starting to pulse rhythmically. Ajers’ face was crossed with an expression of concern.

“Shutdown!” called out Cromwell, “Overloading!”

“Clear the room!” shouted Wright.

As Ajers and Johnston both backed off from the resonator, the field pulsed outward one more time and the entire room vanished.

Fred Ajers and Frank Johnston stood in a dimly lit room with cinderblock walls. Ducts ran along the low ceiling and what was apparently a water heater stood in a corner. There were boxes of papers against one wall and some other objects that were more difficult to identify. There was what was obviously a bicycle, but differing in many details from ones the two men had seen before. It had wide tires with deep, knobby tread. Daylight streamed in through a small dirty window near the ceiling.

 

VI

Marooned

 

 

“Damnation!” cursed Fred.

“What happened?” asked Johnston. The reporter sat on the dusty floor in a state of disorientation.

“Hell and damnation!” Fred cursed once more. “The field got us! We have crossed into a xenocontinuum.”

“What? Which one? How do we get back? Can we get back?”

“I don’t know. I don’t know. I don’t know.” Said Fred, answering each question in turn. “We are in a basement. We should probably get out of here.”

“Whose basement?”

“How the devil should I know?” asked Fred impatiently.

The question was answered by footsteps on the stairs. “Who’s down there?” called a female voice.

Fred pulled the reporter to his feet and hissed, “We have to get out of here! Now!”

Fred dashed for the stairs with Johnston on his heels. The woman that stood at the top of the stairs was shockingly underdressed. She wore tight trousers that ended mid-thigh and what was not much more than a kerchief tied around her back and neck confining her breasts and a pair of rubber sandals. She appeared to be in her early twenties.

Fred Ajers decided to attempt a bluff. “Good day, Madam! We are from the Cambridge electro-works doing a routine equipment check.”

The young woman looked puzzled. “Electro-works?”

Fred hadn’t expected to be tripped up quite so quickly. He had to continue.

“I’m so sorry, Madam, we would have informed you ahead of time, but we were on a tight schedule. Rest assured that your electrical tax will be adjusted accordingly.”

“Electrical tax?” She wasn’t having any of it, the only thing to do was keep moving and talking until they reached the street.

As gently as possible, Fred nudged the girl aside so that he and Johnston could pass.

“Did Mister Denardo call you? He didn’t post a message on the bulletin board about it.”

“He did indeed, Madam.” Explained Fred. They had entered a common hallway floored with dirty maroon linoleum.

“Do you think you could stop calling me ‘madam’?”

“Of course, Miss. Now we have other stops to make, and must be on our way. Give our best to Mister Demarco.”

“Denardo.” Muttered the woman as the two barged out the front door and onto the sidewalk. “What the fuck?” she said to no one in particular as she turned and slammed the door behind them. It made Fred blush to hear that particular word used by a woman.

From inside Ajers and Johnston heard another voice inquire, “Who was that?”

“Just some fucking crazy homeless guys trying to squat in the basement. I got rid of them. You should have seen the costumes they were wearing. Homeless gays, I guess.”

The street was indeed Massachusetts Avenue, but almost none of the buildings were as they should have been. The building that they had just exited was not the observatory of the Institute, but an apartment block. There was a small market in the same building and a store that dealt in some sort of recorded entertainment called West Coast Video. The people on the street were remarkably heterogeneous. No two seemed to resemble one another in any particular, be it dress or race or even language.

Ajers and Johnston were at a total loss as to what their course of action should be. They started walking toward Harvard Square not having the slightest idea as to what they would find there.

Above their heads they noticed lines being drawn through the sky as if it were a vast blue chalkboard accompanied by a distant roar.

“What was the last reading you saw on the dial before we ended up here?” asked Fred.

“X12-b, I think.”

“X12-b. It is one of the worlds that are pretty close to our own. We should be able to get by mostly undetected if we play our cards right. Those lines are made by aircraft. Jet engine powered aeroplanes.”

“That tells me almost nothing. What is a ‘jet engine’? What is an ‘aeroplane’?”

“Non-buoyant aerodynamic surfaces keep it aloft, but it must be constantly moving for it to work. A jet engine compresses air and fuel and ejects it to propel the aircraft. They are much faster than freight and tourist skyships, but much slower than military skyships and spaceships.”

Johnston shook his head. He had been there but a few moments and already the utter strangeness of this new world was straining his imagination. “You say this world is close to ours?”

“Yes. The point of historical divergence is thought to be less than two hundred years ago and the most dramatic differences are in the twentieth century.”

“It looks very different to me.”

“It is different in hundreds of superficial ways, but this is still a country called ‘The United States of America’ and this is still a state called ‘Massachusetts’. The people here speak English. Although there will be many variances in specific terminology and usage, we can still make ourselves understood. We will need to quickly acquire some cultural literacy if we are to blend in, but let me assure you, this could have been much worse.”

Frank Johnston’s face sagged into a mask of total despair. “How?!?” he wailed, “How could this be worse?”

“Frank”, said Fred, using Johnston’s Christian name for the first time since they had been acquainted, “You must get a hold of yourself. We are lucky that there are people here. We are lucky that there is a planet Earth here. We could have ended up like Jeff Winbury had we been drawn into the xenocontinuum where the ‘bloop’ originated. We have a chance, a very good chance, at survival here.”

The street was fairly busy with traffic. The vehicles were recognizably automobiles although of fanciful design. The passers by were all looking them over. Obviously, their costume was unorthodox enough by the standards of this world to draw stares. Indeed, many the men they saw on the sidewalk wore what appeared to, for them, be more or less normal business attire, but it differed in detail considerably from the suits worn by Ajers and Johnston. The jackets were much shorter with the collars worn down rather than up and their neckties were longer, narrower and knotted differently. The trousers were more or less the same, but their shoes tended to have laces rather than buttons. In this world, Johnston and Ayers might easily have passed for circus performers. One saving grace was that there seemed to be no real standard haircut and both men wore theirs short and brushed straight back.

Their money would obviously be useless, although Fred had a few gold coins that might trade on their metal value. They decided that selling them off should be their first move.

They located a public telephone in Harvard Square, although it took them a few moments to recognize it as such. It seemed to be called a “Verizon” in this world. They were disappointed to find that there was no directory available. They asked directions to a public library, which, they discovered, was at the exact same location as the one in their own world. The Harvard University campus they crossed through on the way to the library also appeared much the same to them.

They found telephone directories there and swiftly located the addresses of coin shops and jewelers who bought gold. All of them were in Boston and that meant a bit of a hike. They still had no local currency save for a dime that Johnston picked up off the sidewalk. They didn’t recognize the portrait on it, nor had they expected to. The library also had public Internet access via devices far more advanced than the memex communicators of their home. The Internet that they connected to was also far removed from the one they had previously accessed.

It was a fine spring morning and the walk to Boston was pleasant enough. It gave them time to casually observe their surroundings while went. Cambridge city hall was almost exactly the same building as the one they were familiar with, but it was one of only a very few. Near the river stood a Massachusetts Institute of Technology quite different from the one with which they were familiar. It was of a far grander scale and the students who swarmed the campus seemed to represent every nation on Earth. The view from the bridge, revealed Boston to be a city that encompassed, as in their own world, the old and the new, but the new, in this case was entirely divergent from that with which they were familiar. Ajers and Johnston agreed that the skyscrapers of this world were not as interesting as those of their own Boston. They seemed more boxy and businesslike. Docking masts for shyships were conspicuous by their absence.

The pair saw people walking along using pocket-sized communicators, personal Verizons, they presumed. Many other persons had what seemed to be small personal entertainment devices worn on their belts or carried in a pocket that put music or news directly into their ears using tiny speakers connected by fine wires. Everyone was connected in some way or another, a whole society absorbing information all the time.

People ran everywhere. There appeared to be an obsession with physical culture. Each with their tiny entertainment devices, men and women ran through the streets. The newcomers were again struck by the near-nudity that women were willing to display in public. Many of the female runners wore only a bra top and a pair of tiny shorts. In spite of its brevity, the attire of the runners was more or less unadorned save for the brilliantly colored and surfaced shoes. The variety and complexity of the footwear was mind-boggling. Both Ajers and Johnston found the muscularity of the women somewhat off-putting compared with the ideal of female beauty they were accustomed to.

A jeweler on Bromfield Street bought the four gold coins they had between them and a gold saint Christopher medal that Johnston had for a total of five hundred and twenty-one dollars and sixty-five cents. The jeweler barely gave the coins a look save for what was required to weigh and assay them. Ajers and Johnston would likely be long gone before their strange vintage became apparent, and even then would probably draw little comment. They were, after all, 24-carat gold.

They didn’t know if the money they had gotten was a lot or a little. The face value of the coins had totaled about sixty dollars, with the medal being worth an additional ten. They discovered that the buying power of their new dollars was rather less than they were used to. Fred figured that they would exchange about three for one, which meant that they had still done well on the deal because the price of gold was somewhat higher in this xenocontinuum.

Fred Ajers and Frank Johnston lunched on cheese and ground beef patty sandwiches with Coca-Cola. To their surprise and delight, the beverage was precisely the same as the version they knew and loved.

Between bites of “cheeseburger”, Fred said, “We should find a second hand clothing store so that we can blend in somewhat.”

Frank agreed and added, “We must also secure lodging.”

A place called “Goodwill” provided them with less conspicuous apparel for very little money, but lodging proved to be more of a problem. Even the cheapest rooming houses seemed to be quite expensive. They finally took a room together at one hundred dollars a week in the Back Bay. Fred sensed that the landlady’s assumption that they were homosexual. He hoped that she wouldn’t prove to be too much of a busybody.

The room had its own television although it didn’t look much like the device that they knew. This was a small box with a screen that could easily sit on a table. After they figured out how to turn it on, it produced a clear image in natural color. The programming was baffling. Everything moved from subject to subject without announcement and the programs were frequently interrupted for advertising in such a way that continuity seemed impossible to follow. They assumed that one got used to it. It was part of the parlance of the medium. The content was alternately violent, loud and bawdy, making it rather like television in their own America, but in this world, that type of content came into private homes where children could easily see it! Later, they would see some children’s programming, which was even stranger and more shocking than that aimed at adults.

There was a presidential campaign underway here as there had been at home, but of course different candidates were involved and different issues were at the heart of it. All of this was discussed in conversational shorthand based on assumed long acquaintance with the issues and their history that rendered it impossible for the outworlders to understand. Only the candidates of two major political parties were regarded as possible victors in this race. There were other contenders, but they were barely ever mentioned. The television proved to be their best tool for gaining a rapid acquaintance with the local culture.

They had been in their new circumstances less than a day and already they had considerably reduced their fortune. They resolved to seek some sort of employment the following day.

Fred made a most alarming discovery when he went to find a job. The manager of a small all-night market had been ready to hire him almost solely on the basis that he spoke grammatical English, when he discovered that he had no “social security” number. Without it, he was unemployable and actually suspect of criminality or being an illegal alien. The second was, in fact, true. A little research revealed that the need for “ID” was of overwhelming importance. Undocumented persons were not tolerated in spite of the fact that the society in general did not view itself as totalitarian.

This United States of America had almost twice the population of Fred and Frank’s native country. This was partially due to California, the Hawaiian Islands and Alaska being states (but Cuba and Puerto Rico were not and the state of Napoleana didn’t even exist!), and also attributable to much higher levels of immigration and a population burst called the “Baby Boom”.

Another fact of life about this alternate 20^th century became known to Frank Johnston, that being so-called “nuclear power”. The X12 timelines were restricted because of their discovery of weapons based on the fission and fusion of atoms. Fred informed Frank, that should they ever get home, he could never write about this aspect of their sojourn. Secretly, Fred knew he didn’t have a lot to worry about. They had precious little reason to expect to ever return home.

Discrete inquiries led them to a provider of forged documents for illegal aliens. They soon had essential identification including birth certificates, social security numbers and out-of-state drivers licenses. They also had only seventy-five dollars left. Employment had to be secured by both of them immediately.

Bussing tables, a “profession” that Fred Ajers had held for a while in his youth, was one thing that was precisely the same in this world as in his own, and every bit as rewarding as he had remembered. He was paid two dollars and sixty-five cents an hour plus a share of the tips that he had to personally collect from the waiters and waitresses at the end of their shifts. Several of them routinely vanished without making the requisite donation.

Johnston did slightly better, with his typing skills being able to get him temporary office work. While he was more or less baffled by office “computers”, several books from the public library, purportedly written for “dummies”, helped him through many rough spots. He actually made seven dollars and fifty cents an hour, but didn’t get work every day.

The meager income promised little opportunity to upgrade their lifestyle and the amount of time needed to earn it kept the process of research on a way home slow.

 

VII

Adapting

 

 

Months passed and the two barely noticed. Of course they became more proficient in the ways of the new world and worked their way into better jobs. Johnston became an assistant at the public library, while Ajers started “inventing” things. In spite of the fact that he had no credentials, he managed to land a job at a place called the Lucent Corporation writing a research proposal that put forth the concept of static gravity without divulging the entire technology behind parallel physics. He instinctively knew that he shouldn’t give away the work of the Institute if he didn’t absolutely have to. By planting tantalizing clues and with a little luck, he might be allowed to fabricate the proper equipment to attempt escape. Even if he was allowed to get that far, the chances were many thousand to one. The device that had gotten them here was the most advanced of its kind and while he understood the basics, he had been an administrator, not an engineer working with the equipment on a daily basis.

Fred continued working with very simple lab demonstrations in static gravity, but had come to realize that the people he was working with were too smart. The other engineers could put the whole concept of parallel fields together if they were given any more clues. Already one of them had stumbled on the idea of phase damping although he still was unaware of its significance.

Ajers spent many evenings attending various “rock ‘n’ roll” shows. One thing he liked about his situation, perhaps the only thing, was his unrestricted access to this particular cultural phenomenon. Johnston, on the other hand regarded the native music as mere noise and insisted that Fred use headphones while listening in the apartment. Fred’s frequent evenings out gave Frank Johnston a chance to continue work on his book about their experiences without interruption. On one afternoon, Fred saw a flyer for a show at a place called “The Middle East” featuring bands called Uncle Ed, The Gnostics, Angels of Ambience, and The Moops. He had learned that the Middle East was once a hole-in-the-wall Syrian restaurant that blossomed into a local rock ‘n’ roll Mecca when they started presenting live music. He had to go.

He had more or less gotten used to the peculiar appearances of attendees at rock ‘n’ roll shows. They were mostly in their twenties and tended to dress for the occasion to reflect highly specific identity niches within the already complex youth culture. Hardly any of them would willingly identify their exact affiliation, but it could generally be discerned by taking note of whom they were critical of and what performers they held in highest esteem. Indeed the greatest goal of a band was to become the nucleus of its own sub-cultural segment. In some cases, the subculture, or fans as they were called, would be a worldwide network that would collect and trade information and music recordings as well as attend every performance of the band that their resources would allow. A band that had achieved this enviable status could even continue to possess its cult even if the band itself had ceased to exist.

Fred, being slightly older than the typical frequenter of the “club scene”, had no such affiliations but was becoming an avid listener of several local acts. In particular, The Gnostics had garnered a great deal of his attention for their fine musicianship, their interesting lyrics and their attractive female bass player, Audrey Allen. She was a petite, pale-skinned beauty with waste-length hair, jet black save for a broad streak of crimson. A tattooed thorny vine spiraled up her left arm ending with a full-blown red rose just below her shoulder.

He had made every effort to get to know her and inquired with her acquaintances regarding he status. He discovered that she was in a relationship with Ronny Burk, who went by the name “Ronny Pure”, the band’s lead singer. There was hope, however, because Audrey was very put off by Burk’s constant drinking. He also tended to ignore her and was rumored to sleep with other women. The fellow sounded altogether charming. They fought frequently and were on the verge of breakup. Fred made it a project to get to know her.

The Middle East show was the second time in a week that he had gone out to see the band and he sent Audrey a drink after their set. He had done this on two previous occasions on which she had merely waved and smiled her thanks across the room. This time she came over and joined him at the table.

Their conversation was necessarily carried on in raised voices, for the Moops were pounding out their tunes loud and fast.

“I’ve seen you at a lot of our gigs.” She shouted.

“I’m a big fan.” Fred shouted back. “Of the band and of you.”

She held eye contact as if attempting to study his inner mind. “You don’t even know me.”

“A situation that I would hope to correct.”

A slight smile foun