Resonance

Chapter 9. The Labs

  It was a little disorienting to go from the porch into his apartment and then, after getting dressed again, to leave the apartment and find myself in a hallway, and then take the elevator down to the foyer. I kept feeling weird about the ocean being up on the fourth floor and off to my left.

  I walked down the alley-slash-hallway to the square with the fountain, wondering what I was supposed to do now. It gradually dawned on me that I wasn't supposed to do anything. I could do whatever I wanted. There were a gym and a pool and a DVR in my building, a library right over there, and the labs down thataway. What would I like to do?

  After a moment I set off down thataway, to the wooden floor between the two buildings. I thought it would be an opportunity to see more of the TSA, and also I wasn't ready to sit still yet after so many days in bed—even though I didn't remember that part, my body wanted to be up and about, and I didn't feel like the pool or the gym. I wanted to explore and find stuff out. Also, in the pool or on the treadmill or doing weights I wouldn't have anything to occupy my thoughts except what I was going to talk to Simon about tomorrow, and I didn't want to think about it yet.

  I turned left and found myself on what looked like a college campus. Paths crisscrossed the grass, there were a lot of huge old trees, the sun was shining, a little breeze was blowing, and the building ahead of me was collegiate gothic, gray stone, with the pointed windows and arches and other architectural details picked out in white limestone, the whole thing actually covered with ivy. It made me smile, it was such a cliché, and then I wondered whether it was supposed to—whether it was all tongue-in-cheek.

  I walked through the double doors into a marble lobby hung with portraits of severe-looking bods in academic robes. It had to be a joke, I decided. There were stairs ahead of me, and I could see a bank of elevators, discreetly screened from the lobby by a row of—could they really be potted palms?—off to the left.

  A woman in a white lab coat came out of a doorway on the right and smiled at me.

  "Hi," she said, shifting her clipboard to her left hand and holding out her right to shake. "Mitch, right? I'm Jean."

  "Hi, yes," I said, shaking her hand. "Hi, Jean. I mean yes, I'm Mitch." I decided she was very nice, as the brilliance of my response did not cause her to roll her eyes or even stop smiling.

  "Nicholas Durwood will explain everything to you," she said. "Come on, he's upstairs." She started for the stairway.

  "Oh, you don't have to take me," I said. "Just tell me which room—I'll find it. I don't want to inconvenience you."

  "I have to go back up there," she said. "That's where I work. I was down here keeping an eye out for you."

  "Oh, God—I'm so sorry!" I exclaimed. "I didn't mean to keep you waiting."

  "No problem." She was still smiling. "You haven't. We've just been taking turns having our breaks and being on the lookout." She headed for the stairs again, and I followed.

  "Who built—designed—thought up the building?" I asked. "And put in the portraits?"

  "That was Andrew Kirk himself," she answered. "He thinks it's funny—he calls it TSU, like as if it was TS University. 'Put it on your résumés,' he says. 'Tell everyone that you did research at TSU.' He thinks that's hilarious."

  "Actually it is pretty funny," I said. He was Angel's dad, after all—but I really did think it was sort of witty.

  "Here we are," she said, stopping outside a door with a matte-glass panel in the top on which was painted "Nicholas Durwood, A.M.D., T.E."

  "That's another one of Andrew's jokes," she said, pointing at the name. "Ask Nicholas about it. Nice meeting you—I'll probably see you again." She turned and walked down to the next door and went in.

  I tapped on the glass, and someone said, "Come in," so I did. I assumed it was Nicholas Durwood who got up from his desk and came around to shake my hand.

  Sure enough, "I'm Nicholas Durwood. You're Mitch?" he asked. He was maybe a little taller than me and kind of the same build, lean and lanky, but he looked about ten years older and had more muscle.

  "Yes, sir," I said.

  "Egad!" He looked at me like I'd just sprouted two heads. "Do I really appear that old to you?" He had a very slight British accent.

  "Sorry?" I didn't get it.

  "Please just call me Nick—no 'sir.' I'm only twenty-seven." So I was right—he was exactly ten years older.

  "Sorry." I shrugged. "I guess it was all the letters on the door, after your name. I guess I figured you must be someone—important."

  He led the way over to some armchairs at one side of the room and gestured for me to take one. We both sat down.

  "That's just Andrew being, ah, witty," he said. "He decided when I first got here that I was, ah, perhaps a bit full of myself? I'm in medical school—or actually I've just finished my internship—so A.M.D. stands for Almost M.D. He has a Ph.D. of course, and sometimes he refers to himself and me as a pair o' docs—get it? Pair of docs? Paradox? As you'd guess, he's fond of puns. And—have you ever read the Oz Books?"

  "Uh, no—I mean yes, some. My mom read me a couple when I was really little."

  "Well," he went on, "Andrew has, and in one of them there's a professor, an insect, called H.M. Wogglebug, T.E. The H.M. stands for 'highly magnified,' because the bug is human-size, and the T.E. stands for 'thoroughly educated.' Never mind. Andrew thought it was hilarious." He smiled and shrugged and looked slightly uncomfortable.

  I grinned.

  "The T.E. is because you know all about the TSA?" I asked.

  "Nothing to do with it." He shook his head. "The T.E. is because of me acting a bit superior on occasion. Which Andrew and—other people have pretty much cured me of. I hope.

  "That's not the reason I've been asked to try to answer your questions. In fact, I've been asked because I don't know all about the TSA. I don't understand it at all. Nonetheless, perhaps because I don't understand all the fine points, I seem to be able to explain it so that ordinary people—non-scientists, non-geniuses—can understand, or are at least satisfied that they understand, as much as they can, or as much as they want to. Clear?" He leaned forward and looked at me.

  "Yes," I said. "How do you—how does one—get here? From—what should I call it? Earth?"

  "Just call it our world," he said. "One gets here through certain—interfaces, which we call access portals."

  "Did Andrew Kirk make them, or are they natural? How many are there? Where are they?"

  "Yes, yes, enough, and none of your business." He smiled. "Some of them are naturally occurring, in a sense—but one has to know how to access them in order to, ah, activate them. Andrew worked out the first one and then it was easier. All that we know of are in North America, mostly at locations convenient for those of us who go back and forth."

  "And there just happened to be one right next to the tree we crashed the car into?"

  "Well—no. But from this side it's different." He leaned forward again. "From the TSA you can essentially access any point at any time on any of the worlds—"

  "What worlds?" I interrupted.

  "Oh. Ah," he said. "I guess Angel didn't go into that. But before we get sidetracked, let me finish about the way one moves back and forth, all right?"

  "Fine." It was fine with me. I wanted to know all about everything, so whatever he told me pretty much fell into that category.

  "This is the way, or a way, to look at it." He leaned back, crossed one ankle over the opposite knee, and steepled his fingers. "It's a metaphor that I find helpful, but if it doesn't work for you, just remember it's only a metaphor.

  "Picture the TSA as an island, far out in the middle of the ocean. It isn't charted, so you can't find it on a map. The island is surrounded by rings of coral and sharp rocks and high cliffs, so it's impossible to get to it by boat, even if one knew where it was. The island itself is extremely mountainous and craggy, so it's impossible to land a plane there. The only way to get to it is by helicopter, if one knows where it is. So far, so good?" r />
  I nodded, and he went on.

  "Let's say that these are special helicopters that have the coordinates of the island programmed into them. From the island, it's possible to take a helicopter and go anywhere in the world. And from the world, it's only possible to get to the island in one of these special helicopters." He tapped his fingers together and thought for a moment.

  "There are a number of spots," he went on, "where these special helicopters are garaged—or hangared, I should say. Only they aren't really helicopters, of course, they're what we're calling 'access portals,' and they aren't garaged, they just are. So if one can get to an access portal and knows how to operate it, it's possible to get to the island.

  "If one is not near an access portal, there are several possibilities. First, if one comes from the island to a random spot, one can keep the helicopter there at that spot and use it to return. This is where the helicopter metaphor is less useful, because it isn't a form of transport but a temporary access portal that we're talking about." He wrinkled his forehead and looked at me inquiringly. I nodded to show that I understood.

  "Another possibility is that one might have the capability of getting in touch with the island. One could then send a message saying, 'come get me,' and a helicopter could be sent—a temporary portal could be opened.

  "And the third possibility is that one might be scanning the world, like flipping through the channels on the telly, and see someone or something where intervention might be desirable or required, and one could then send a helicopter to that spot. Only it isn't really a matter of sending a helicopter, remember, it's opening an access portal.

  "The point is that it's much easier to go from the island to anywhere than it is to get from anywhere to the island—unless the 'anywhere' one is at happens to be near one of the access portals. Is that at all clear?"

  "Very," I said. "There are certain permanent access portals through which to get to the TSA. Temporary access portals can be set up, activated—opened, from any other spot, for either going or coming, but only from this side, or with the help of someone on this side."

  "Excellent!" He smiled and leaned back, folding his hands behind his head. "Now we get to the difficult bit. For it to work the way I've explained, someone here has to be able to see, scan everywhere in the world, our world. You'll have to take my word that that's possible. It's also possible to scan everywhen. Well, within certain limits, but never mind. Because the TSA is outside of time, time can be accessed from the TSA at any point, just as space can. If you think about it, that would have to be the case in order for us to be able to return to our world at the moment we left it. Are you with me?"

  I thought about it. What Angel had told me about duration would indeed seem to imply what he had just said. So if I was accepting any of this at all, which it seemed I was, I could accept that too. "So far, so good," I affirmed.

  "Then the next bit will be a piece of cake. There are parallel worlds—parallel universes, actually, but we always just say 'worlds,' because for all practical purposes we're dealing not with universes but only with the worlds that are parallel to ours—an infinite number of them. All accessible from the TSA just the way our universe, our world, is." He cocked his chin and raised his eyebrows. "All clear?"

  "No," I said, "but okay. If I'm going along with the rest, which I guess I am, why should I have any more trouble with that than with anything else?"

  "A very pragmatic attitude, and probably the most useful way to look at it all. Have we covered your questions about the TSA?"

  "I think so," I said. "I guess I'd have to be a theoretical physicist or something to understand the actual nuts and bolts of how it all works. Even if you were willing, or allowed, to tell me."

  "And even if I were willing and allowed," he smiled, "I wouldn't be able to. Not being a theoretical physicist, I don't understand it myself any better than you now do.

  "You may come up with other questions, however," he went on, "in which case you're welcome to come back and see me again. As long as your questions are sufficiently uncomplicated, I'll probably be able to answer them." He stood up and I realized that we were through, at least for the moment.

  I thanked him and left and then realized that although he had explained a lot of what I wanted to know, he hadn't shown me around the labs. He had ended the interview, though, so I guessed I wasn't going to get a tour. I wondered what I should do next. I still didn't feel like doing any serious thinking, so the gym and the pool were out, also just wandering around with no goal. It was a choice between the library or the DVR, and I decided to go to the library.