The Wounded World

  1. THE MULTI-COLOURED DOOR

  The countryside blazed by, a blur of green, brown, and blue, with speckles of red and orange. Quin idly wished they would install a Door at the outpost where he was stationed, so he didn’t have to take the train back and forth from Pomegranate City, but it was apparently an unknown security risk. But wasn’t pretty much any door into anywhere a security risk on some level? At least if you thought about it too much.

  He shifted in his seat and crossed his arms. The woman across from him was giving him the eyes – that expression which said, “I’m interested in you and so I’m going to twitch my facial muscles around awkwardly until you feel so uncomfortable that you say something to me.” He ignored her and glanced at his watch. One hour into the trip. It was about time for him to take out his book.

  “Excuse me, sir,” the woman across from him said.

  He looked up, annoyed.

  “I would just like to ask you a question.” She shifted in her seat, adjusting her pale yellow blouse and retying her scarf.

  He nodded once.

  “Have you ever noticed how perfectly everything aligns? The sun, the moon, our planet – the way we are able to cross great distances in a single bound, yet become as one to each living thing as we simply move one step at a time?”

  Quin frowned. Not a typical come-on. He stated, “Religion died out centuries ago.”

  “I’m not talking about religion,” the woman said. “I’m talking about hope.”

  Another woman stuck her head around the seat and stared. She was wearing a green hat. Quin wondered briefly if the hat had a name or if that was all it was – a hat.

  “It’s not about hope,” the woman in the green hat interrupted. “It’s about fear. You people proselytize to everyone you come across, not so that you can give them hope, but so that you can terrify them into giving your organization money to support lazy good-for-nothings that—”

  “No!” The woman in yellow cut off the other woman. “The future is uncertain – there is much to be lost and gained. I and my brothers and sisters only want to encourage others to focus on taking control of their future, on not fearing death, and on seeking to love each other.”

  “You’re a liar and a coward, spreading lies and brainwashing our young people to make poor decisions and spend their money unwisely!” spat the woman in the green hat.

  Quin blinked twice and raised his eyebrows. This was getting unexpectedly heated.

  The woman in the green hat stood up, glaring at the yellow-bloused woman.

  The yellow-bloused woman continued, “You’re close-minded and ignorant, and you only care about maintaining the status quo, and not actually about improving our culture! As we reach out into the universe and meet other races and other cultures, we need to expand our thinking—”

  The woman in the green hat simply could not wait any longer. She leaped forward and grabbed the first woman by the throat. The first woman responded by putting her foot in the green-hat’s stomach and pushing her back with all her might. Then a young man from across the aisle became involved, trying to separate the two, but instead found himself kicked in the knee and stumbling helplessly into an older gentleman who sat quietly reading the paper. The older gentleman began to swear loudly as Quin stood calmly, towering a head and a half over the tallest of the brawling passengers, picked up the first offender by her shoulders, and carried her into next car. He deposited the second woman back in her original seat; and he helped the limping man to the train's medic.

  Quin had never stopped a fight on a train before, but he supposed he just could add it to his Experience Portfolio, under Accomplishments. Shortly after he had relocated each of the individuals involved in the altercation, the train’s security arrived. As a regular on the train, Quin knew all of the guards personally.

  “Mr. Black,” the security guard, Arthur, stated, nodding politely. “Thank you.”

  “Welcome,” Quin replied.

  “We’ll need your statement.”

  “I’ll write it down.”

  The security guard handed him the standard form, and Quin scribbled a few lines before handing it back to the officer.

  “I’ll just keep my eyes open,” Quin said, gesturing to the car.

  “Much appreciated, sir,” replied the security guard, and he scurried off to the next car.

  For the rest of the trip, Quin paced casually back and forth, keeping a close eye on the now tense passengers who read their newspapers and chatted quietly. His height, massive build, and black scowl encouraged good behavior among the passengers. The train conductor came through once, nodding politely and murmuring, “Mr. Black,” in a quiet greeting.

  The train arrived in Monapliet Station; hundreds of people swarmed the platform. As Quin moved forward weaving carefully through the crowd, a man to his right threw a punch. Before he knew it, a full-fledged brawl ignited around him, with punching, kicking, and insults. They shouted “non-believer” and “god-hater” and “it's our god-given right.” After a few moments, Quin stood sweating over a number of brawlers who lay unconscious on the ground. The rest had fled or were being tazed by the Pomegranate City law enforcement.

  It was turning into a rather unusual day, Quin thought.

  “Officer Jones,” said Quin, reaching out to shake hands.

  “Mr. Black,” Officer Jones greeted him. “Thanks.”

  “No problem.” Quin nodded. “Have a nice day.”

  He left the station and began to walk towards his house. A newspaper boy yelled, “Newspaper! One quarter! Pamphlet! On the house!” He threw a coin at the boy, and the boy tossed him a paper. Quin caught it neatly and opened it.

  The headlines read “LIFE STARS HOLD CONFERENCE AT TRUCE CENTER,” “YOUNG MAN KILLED IN FOUNTAIN BRAWL,” and “ADMINISTRATOR ADERICK FROWNS UPON RELIGION.” The second and third pages told of the weather, how to safeguard personal residences, and of a missing girl. He flicked the newspaper boy another coin as a tip and strode down the street, stopping only at a vendor stand to pick up some fruit and pre-made sandwiches. He had no doubt that his father’s house was empty of any nourishment.

  An hour later he reached the house, a modern construction which showed off the most recent advancements in technology. It sat on a rotating platform, which was programmed to turn different faces of the house depending on the position of the sun. It maximized heat efficiency during the cold months, and minimized heat buildup during the warm months. It also used solar power to fuel its many systems.

  Quin stepped into the entry pod, which slid to the nearest door, like a horizontal elevator. He wondered when John was going to show up.

  He frowned as he entered his father’s house. The kitchen television was on. As far as he knew, his father had been gone for months, so either the television had been on the entire time, or someone had recently been – or was still – here. He looked around cautiously.

  “Life Star proponents have started their own radio station,” the newscaster stated, “and have begun broadcasting shows focused on converting others to their belief system. Their efforts include various shows focused on the politics of planet building, how Door legislation should be broadened to allow citizens to build and maintain them for private and commercial purposes, and proselytizing young adults looking for someplace to turn...”

  Quin padded forward quietly, the content from the news show sliding through the back of his mind. Then he heard a small noise and froze as a much smaller person than him came barreling from the other room and tackled him. Quin braced himself so that when the collision occurred, he barely moved.

  “Doggone it, Quin!” the gentleman responsible for the attack exclaimed. “Ow! Ow! Ow! Ow! You’re as hard as a wall!” He grabbed his arm overdramatically and collapsed onto the nearest chair. “Why is it that I can never surprise you?” Popping back up from the chair cheerfully, apparently uninjured, he held out his hand. “Good to see you!”

  “John,” Quin acknowledged. He and John ha
d been friends for over a century, and John was known for staging periodic surprise attacks to “test Quin’s reflexes,” as he said.

  “I’m so glad you’re back!” John began.

  Quin headed for the kitchen to put away the groceries, knowing he was in for a full-on story.

  “So, the Committee has been keeping this secret, something to do with your dad. I figured it out one day when I heard Drake and Tom talking. I may have been listening through a heat vent, but that is beside the point. So I did some digging around – almost got myself caught, too, but not quite – and came to find out it has something to do with Dad’s disappearance!”

  “Disappearance?” Quin stated. It always bugged him a little that John called the man ‘Dad.’ He understood that John had basically been part of his family since they were kids, and that Grise was the closest thing John had ever had to a father, but still. The man was a selfish idiot and a traitor.

  “Yeah,” John replied. “He said he went on vacation, but he has been entirely off the grid since he left, and he was supposed to come back three weeks ago.”

  “Ah.”

  “So, after some digging around the office and listening at doors (and heat vents), I decided that maybe it would just be easier to come here and dig around and see if I could find anything suspicious. I am your best friend, after all, so I figured if I got caught, it would be fine. You know.”

  Quin nodded.

  “You’ll never guess what I found.”

  “What?”

  John grabbed Quin’s arm and dragged him towards the living room; directly in the center stood a Door. Quin halted in surprise. This type of Door was not a typical door, not the kind of door which led from one room to another and was indicated by a wood frame of some sort. This Door was of the type which allowed the user to jump massive distances, to travel light years, with a single step. Quin knew a lot about these Doors, as a special agent for the military whose job it was to travel through them every day. But the Doors he travelled through were located in government facilities, hidden in difficult-to-find locations, or at least secreted away in a family basement. This one sat in the center of his living room.

  “How did that get here?” he asked.

  “I think your dad made it,” John said.

  “But…” Quin frowned. Why would he make it and then leave it sitting in the middle of the living room for anyone to find? Unless… he wanted it to be found.

  “I also think he wanted us to find it.” John began to circle the Door like a cat on the prowl. “But it’s not just that. Doors are hard to make. And I don’t just mean hard, I mean hard. It’s some of the most advanced science we have today, aside from planet construction. He’s smart enough though. But a Door, I mean, really?”

  “Yes.”

  All of a sudden, John spun around and bolted towards the couch. From behind it he pulled out a small toolbox, opened it, and began to take out instruments of various sorts, commentating all the way.

  “We should go through it. To see what’s on the other side. But first I need to make a few measurements – we wouldn’t want to destabilize a solar system, now would we? Or get chopped in half when we jump through!”

  Quin frowned, feeling very hesitant, which was odd, as stepping through unknown Doors was something he did nearly every day anyway.

  “But you see, there is something very odd about this Door,” John stated, suddenly changing conversational direction, “something very odd indeed. First and foremost it is the wrong colour.”

  Quin turned back to look at it, nodding. Instead of a typical Door, which was almost like a blue film hugging onto a thin curtain of air, this Door was multi-coloured, although the effect was very subtle. He could see strings of purple and deep blue blinking amid the nearly invisible haze of light blue.

  “Of course, lots of Doors are the wrong colour,” he continued, “but not wrong like this one is wrong. I’ve never seen a wrong Door this wrong before. Wrong Doors – the unstable ones – are usually slightly green, or have a pinkish tint. But this one has more than one colour. Does that make it dangerous, or does that make it special?” He pulled a wand from the toolbox, ran a wire from it to a boxy computer-like instrument and began to scan the Door. The computer began to print out a series of documents slowly.

  “Secondly,” John added, “this Door has left a mark on the ground underneath it.”

  Quin had noticed that too, but not thought it pertinent. It was a thin black line directly under the Door, almost like a scorch mark in the living room rug.

  “I’ve never seen anything like that before.” John pulled away from the Door and looked at the readings on his scanner. Then he stepped over to the computer and pulled out the printed documents.

  Quin raised an eyebrow. Whatever he was learning, it probably wouldn’t take long before it came pouring out of his mouth.

  John shook his head and rapped the paper with his forefinger. “Well, that's odd.” A frown settled onto his face as he absently loosened his tie. “According to these readings, this Door does not exist. It cannot exist. Except that it does exist and it can exist, but only because of these three numbers...this coefficient here...” he paused, scanning the sheet rapidly. “Quin, we need to go through.”

  “No,” Quin said. “Too dangerous.”

  “Quin, we need to go through.”

  “No.”

  “Quin!”

  Quin raised his eyebrows.

  John took a deep breath and closed his eyes. “Okay, I will tell you what. I will do some equations while you send some rats through. Then we can go through.”

  He went to the hall closet and pulled out a chalkboard as Quin stood and watched. Quin remembered that his father, Grise, had used this very often, but this time it was completely erased – spotless, in fact. This was very odd. If the Door wasn’t evidence enough, that detail also seemed to indicate that he was hiding something.

  “Well? Get going!” John demanded.

  Quin rolled his eyes and went to where John had hidden the toolbox. There he found a cage with a rat in it. That had been the sound he heard earlier which had alerted him to John’s presence.

  “You brought a rat.”

  “Of course I did!” John made a face that communicated, ‘Do you even know me?’ and went back to scribbling equations on the blackboard.

  Quin removed the rest of the equipment from the toolbox. In included a small leash, electrodes, some wires, and a tiny hat, all equipment which John had once explained as, “a ‘Rat On A Leash With A Camera.’ Clever name, eh? I made a little hat for the rat. A little army hat – I modeled it after yours. You know, the green one? It's got a built-in miniature video camera with a wireless tap that sends its information back to the Door, which has a modem hooked to it that transfers the information straight to the computer. In addition, I wrote a program which, with wireless electrodes, allows us to monitor the rat's vitals and take air and dirt samples from anything he touches.” John’s explanations were never simple, but always verbose.

  The rats were standard – protocol now, ever since the incident where one of the Globe’s staff members had sent a robot through and confirmed that the location was safe. Then, an entire team went through and never came back. After the fact, it was determined that there was an undetectable gas that had never been encountered before which was poisonous for most living creatures, except for those that evolved in it, of course. Since then, standard policy was to send something through that could actually die, as opposed to a robot only designed to detect what it is designed to detect, and not unknown substances.

  Quin taped the electrodes to the rat’s head, and attached the hat and leash. Then, he placed the wireless transmitter on the floor and pushed it partway through the Door. He took the rat and shoved it in, watching carefully as the computer began to transmit data.

  Oddly enough, there was a pause before the data began to run.

  “It paused!” John exclaimed from behind him. “There was almost a
ten second pause before it started transmitting.” He came over and looked at the equipment over Quin’s shoulder.

  “Yes,” Quin agreed. “Odd.”

  Then an image appeared on the monitor.

  “Is that a...” John leaned even closer. “A dump?”

  Heaps of junk surrounded the rat. Old bed springs twisted into the air with tufts of grey pillow stuffing clinging to them. Smashed up machines dotted the dirty earth with old plastic bags, batteries, and bottles in scattered heaps nearby.

  “Grise built a Door to trash?” Quin commented skeptically. “Seems atypical.”

  “That is quite unusual,” John murmured. “Bring Raul back. Make sure he’s okay.”

  “Raul?”

  “Yes, the rat! He has a name too, you know!” John reached out and pulled on the leash himself. It went slack, but the rat did not appear for a full ten seconds.

  “He seems fine,” Quin noted, examining the rat closely.

  “Maybe he’s going somewhere farther away than we’ve ever been before,” he muttered. “Let’s push him back through, to see if we can figure out where that place was.”

  “One second,” Quin said, handing the leash to John. He went into the kitchen and cut up the apple he had purchased from the street vendor on his way home, and brought a small piece over to Raul. The rat ate it hungrily. He then pushed the rat through.

  There was another ten-second pause.

  The image flashed on screen: the camera bounced up and down as the rat ran forward into a lovely green orchard. The grass was neatly trimmed, and each tree grew equidistant from the next. Deep red fruits peeked through the thick foliage that dressed the branches.

  “Trees?” John and Quin chorused. How could he have ended up in two places each time? Doors were… well, monolocus, or so Quin thought.

  John closed his eyes, tapping his fingers against his temples. “Trees,” he muttered. Quin watched as the rat scurried around at the end of the leash, straining to escape into the beautiful, lush countryside. The vibrant colours radiated into the room.

  “I think those are apples on the trees,” Quin pointed out. “And we just gave him an apple. Coincidence?”

  “Oh… apples!” John exclaimed. “Apples, apples, apples! How could I be so thick? Pull him back through.”

  Quin yanked on the leash and the image on the screen disappeared for ten seconds before Raul stumbled back into the room.

  John bent down, grabbed the rat, and darted into the kitchen. He opened the freezer and dumped the rat in.

  “John!” Quin exclaimed. “That’s air tight! Ethics committee!”

  “Hush, Quin, it’s only for a minute! And the ethics committee isn’t here.” John frowned. He glanced at his watch. “Another thirty seconds.”

  Thirty seconds later he pulled a perfectly fine, if slightly chilly, rat out of the freezer and ran back into the living room, practically tossing the rat through the Door as he skidded to a halt on his knees on the carpet.

  They waited for an interminable ten seconds.

  Then they saw a bright, clean beach appear before them. A hot, white sun blazed in the blue skies that stretched over a white-capped ocean, and tall, straight-trunked trees rose out of the sand. The rat scrambled over a log that lay in front of it, coming face to face with a lizard.

  “Look out!” Quin exclaimed, gesturing to the lizard.

  At that moment the lizard opened its mouth and burped. Flames licked along its tongue and over the edges of the log, right into the rat's face.

  “Raul!” John exclaimed, yanking on the leash. The rat stumbled backwards and into the Door. The screen went blank for ten seconds as they waited for the rat to reappear. As soon as Raul fell into John’s arms, the scientist jumped up, dumping the rat into Quin’s arms. “Pop lizards! That was a pop lizard! Those are on Mara!”

  “So Grise went to Mara?” Quin frowned. This also seemed like unusual behavior for his father, given that their technology was several centuries behind Sagitta’s.

  “No, no, no.” John pushed himself away from the computer, one hand gripping his hair. “No, no, no. That's not it at all. The first one wasn't Mara; the dump was filled with metal. Mara isn't advanced enough to have all that metal.”

  He strode over to the chalkboard, shedding his jacket and loosening his tie. “I need to think. If there are two or more places… time differences or possible… differentials…” he continued to mutter, and then trailed off into a series of barely intelligible words. “...cognitive mathematics... insanity... partial influence of the vector... coefficient...”

  Quin stood behind him for a moment, watching as John absently erased Grise’s blank chalkboard over and over. Then, he carefully removed Raul’s equipment and placed him back in the cage. He also gave the rat a few more pieces of apple before turning his attention back to John.

  “You know those ten seconds?” John drew a picture of a blank computer screen with the number ten. “This is what I would call ‘bad.’ This is unusual, weird, wrong, if you will. But it can't be wrong, because it exists. But we should be worried. Yes, worried. Or maybe not. Who knows, really? Change is inevitable, after all.”

  Quin listened quietly. Eventually John would get to a coherent point.

  “But when you walk through a regular Door,” John continued, “do you forget where you are for a moment? No. Do you experience a moment of discomfort? No. Do you experience confusion? Only if you're getting really old.” John began to pound the chalkboard with the chalk. Little pieces flew into the air and landed in a scattered pattern on the floor. “But the real question is: do you stop transmitting data? No!

  “So, the rat left here and arrived there, but, for a period of time long enough for us to discuss his absence, he was somewhere else. Where was he? Where was that rat?” John rapped on the chalkboard once with his chalk and it broke in half, the free half flying sideways and shattering as it hit the floor. “Damn rat.”

  He began to pace in front of the chalkboard.

  “A moment. A space. Why? Limbo? Dead? Time travel? An invisible world? And Raul went three different places, so maybe that was just a fourth, or woods with ponds...” He gripped his hair as he descended into his mindless chatter once more. Then he spun around and began to scribble rapidly, numbers bleeding from the chalk and dripping down the black surface of the chalkboard.

  Quin shook his head. John was gone, at least for the time being, visiting that place only mathematicians ever visited, full of lines and numbers and all sorts of things he couldn’t possibly fathom – nor did he wish to. He tidied up the remaining equipment, filled the toolbox, and placed it all back in John’s hiding place.

  He glanced at John as he wandered back towards the kitchen. John was writing with both hands. He smiled, unwrapped himself a pre-made sandwich, and then threw himself into a living room chair where he promptly fell asleep to the sound of scratching chalk.

  2. THE BOOKSELLER’S BACK ROOM

  The bright, white rays of sun piercing the bank of windows on the other side of the living room woke Quin ten hours later, still in his living room chair. John lay sprawled across the floor, clutching a piece of chalk and covered with a tablecloth from the kitchen. Scowling, Quin dragged himself from the chair and stretched.

  “Wake up,” he said loudly, nudging John with his foot.

  “I got it already though,” John muttered, pulling the tablecloth over his head.

  “Time to go to the Committee meeting, genius kid,” Quin added, picking up the tablecloth and tossing it across the room. “Wake up.” He glanced at the clock. “We're going to be late.”

  “Bah. They can work without me,” John rolled over and stretched. Then his eyes shot open. “Oh man!” he exclaimed, abruptly sitting up. “I figured it out! Quin, it's so simple, it's genius! Why didn't I think of this years ago?”

  “Can we discuss this later?” Quin grumbled, staring aimlessly into the mostly empty fridge. John had apparently helped himself to some dinner last
night, after figuring out the Door problem. A lot of dinner.

  “No,” replied John bluntly. “It's important. So, the Door is a Door that allows you to choose where you want to go. I was so confused for a while until I remembered this psych class I took in high school, where we studied the equations of the brain – you know, cognitive mathematics.”

  “You are the only person on this planet who would take cognitive mathematics.” Quin shook his head and held out a handful of grapes. “All the food I have left – thanks to you. Let's go.”

  “But listen, if you were to walk through that Door thinking about Earth, it would take you to a Door on Earth. If you thought about upstairs in the Globe, it would take you there.”

  Quin turned and looked at John quizzically. “Really? How does that work?”

  John sighed, exasperated as he knotted his red tie covered with bubbles. “Don't be ridiculous. You don't want me to explain. Maybe I’ll try after the meeting.”

  The two young men stepped out of the house into the bright sunlight. Quin pulled a piece of paper out of his pocket, glanced at the encrypted list of directions scrawled across it, and shook his head.

  “Crazy scientists, hate these meetings,” he muttered, and began to stroll towards town with John traveling sleepily in his wake. “I hate meetings,” he muttered again.

  As they reached the supposed destination, he glanced around. The sign on the door read “William Oliphant, bookseller”; beneath it, another sign read “Closed.” A security sniper perched on the roof of the building across the street. Clearly they were in the right place.

  As they entered the shop, a bell jingled. William Oliphant XXXIII puttered about with a duster and a broom. Quin nodded politely in greeting.

  “They’re in the back.” Oliphant waved his broom vaguely towards an old wooden door that hid between two large, over-filled bookcases.

  The shop was a tidy affair, with books stacked neatly on every horizontal surface. Floor-to-ceiling bookcases stretched along the length of the room, and a maze of stand-alone bookcases made from quartersawn Dokomaya wood divided the main space of the shop. The reddish-brown colour of the shelves peeked through the thousands of books that sat patiently, lined up neatly like row after row of soldiers. Quin ignored the books and moved purposefully towards the old wooden door.

  He stopped as a young boy stepped out from the shelves. Quin frowned. This was a private meeting.

  “Who are you?” he asked, broadening his shoulder and staring the boy down. The boy seemed to shrink a little and his eyes widened.

  Mr. Oliphant scurried over. “He’s with me,” the old man mumbled, placing his hand on the boy’s shoulder. “Landon, come along now. I need your help outside.”

  Quin frowned as Mr. Oliphant hustled the boy towards the front door, but then let out a deep breath and headed towards the back room. Probably just another one of the hundreds of Oliphants that plagued the city. The family was a bit like rats in that respect.

  He nodded at Mr. Green who stood casually next to the door. Melissa, Amy, Tom, and a man in a brown suit sat uncomfortably in William Oliphant’s mismatched, wooden, high-backed chairs. Mr. Drake stood tensely at the head of the table. A red curtain hung against the far wall, next to a set of stairs leading upstairs. John and his red-bubbled tie slid down the wall in a corner and stretched long legs across the floor.

  Quin nodded to the gathering.

  “Hello.” Tom, wearing a black pinstriped suit, stood to shake Quin's hand. “Good to see you.”

  “Hello, Tom,” Quin replied.

  “Quin,” Melissa said, stepping forward, “How have you been?” Three days ago the Committee had celebrated Melissa's one-hundredth year working in their financial and legal departments. She now held the role of Head Legal and Financial Adviser to the Committee.

  “Morning, sir,” volunteered a third man, wearing brown. Quin could never remember his name. “Thought you was on the Outer Rim.”

  “Got back last night,” Quin replied, shaking his hand.

  “They say it takes three days to get back from there, what with traffic and bison and all that.” Mr. Brown nodded.

  “Bit of an exaggeration,” said Quin, shrugging. His suit made a small noise, as though the stitches in the seams cried in fear, holding tightly to each other in the hope that they could simply make it through the day without being ripped to shreds by the explosions that were Quin's shoulders.

  “I vote that Quin can run faster than bison.” John waved his hand idly in the air. “In fact, I would put money on the fact that he could circle this giant pastry we live on three times on foot in the same amount of time it takes us to get to the point of this meeting.”

  “Silence,” Mr. Drake interrupted. “We have important business to discuss.”

  Drake was an angry man in general, but tended to be very effective when convincing his subordinates to complete tasks. His shoulders stretched seven hands-widths, and his neck looked like a plastic bucket that had been filled with water and then frozen, so as to distort the shape of the plastic in every direction. He and Tom shared the responsibilities of leading the Committee.

  Mr. Drake cut right to it: “Your father has gone missing and there is a highly illegal and possibly volatile Door in your living room.”

  “I saw the Door,” Quin replied, meeting Drake’s eyes confidently.

  “Where is your father?” Mr. Drake demanded.

  “No idea.” This was not a new question. Staff at the Globe seemed to think that just because they were related, Quin kept tabs on his father and vice versa. This could not be further from the truth.

  Tom, the elderly man in the pinstriped suit, glanced at Melissa, who sat in one of the high-backed chairs. “Two days ago, Quin, we sent a team of agents into your house to try to determine the cause of his disappearance.”

  John sat up eagerly. Quin nodded.

  “We found two things. The first was this.” He tossed a book on the table. The cover read A Dialogue of Worlds. “This is why we're here instead of at the Globe. Call in Mr. Oliphant, please.”

  Mr. Green stuck his head out the door. A moment later, Mr. Oliphant entered. He gasped and, ignoring the entire group, darted forward and snatched up the book.

  “Where did you get this?” he demanded.

  “What is it?” Mr. Drake held out his hand as if to take back the book.

  William Oliphant hugged it tightly. “This book was the first to ever record the ways in which we might create other worlds.”

  The room became silent. The silence skittered about between the floorboards and tickled the ancient mustaches. It moved faster and faster until it broke.

  “What?” Mr. Drake’s voice had become dangerously low.

  “This is an heirloom, a gem. It’s priceless.” A worried frown tumbled across Oliphant’s face.

  “And it mustn’t ever be read,” Mr. Drake finished.

  “Because it’s wrong.” John's voice ground the broken bits of silence into smaller pieces.

  Everyone in the room turned to look at John.

  John shrugged. “I read a partial transcript in grad school.”

  “The second thing we found at your house, Quin,” Tom continued, drawing attention back to himself. “Mr. Oliphant, if you could please leave?”

  All heads in the room swiveled to watch as Oliphant reluctantly placed the book on the table and slinked from the room. Mr. Green carefully shut the door behind him.

  “The second thing we found,” Tom continued, “was the Door. It's likely that it is unstable. It appears to have an unusual colour saturation. As you know, unregistered Doors are highly illegal and unstable ones are highly dangerous.”

  “Did he use the book?” Mr. Brown ventured.

  The Committee began to murmur.

  “Wait a moment,” John interrupted, standing. “We can't start making presumptions. Just because there is a Door, doesn't mean he used the book. Grise was intelligent and knew basic Door physics. He could h
ave simply created an extra-dimensional room.” John began to shout as the murmurings in the room became louder. “Only after I've read the book can I draw those types of conclusions, but—”

  “No one cares about the math or the book,” Mr. Drake retorted, loudly. “Tell me – could the Door or the world behind it be dangerous?”

  “Yes,” John replied.

  “How dangerous?”

  “Chain reaction dangerous, if he built it wrong.” John said, wincing slightly. “But that is true of any world or Door we make! And I haven't done the math on—”

  “So what we are implying here,” Mr. Drake began, “is that Grise Black, one of our very own highly-respected Committee members, possibly used an illegal book to build an illegal world that could destroy the universe?”

  “I believe that was the presumption,” John said, spitting out the last word. “Which has no basis in reality—”

  “Ludicrous!” Mr. Drake roared. “I won't hear of it.”

  “It could be perfectly safe!” John exclaimed. “We just can't know until I—”

  The noise in the room overwhelmed John’s explanation.

  Quin raised his eyebrows and caught John’s look over the noise in the room, and he nodded. Clearly, now was not the time to tell them that John had already done most of the math and that they had actually used the Door – even if it was just with a rat.

  “Gentlemen!” Tom interrupted, crossing his arms and gazing levelly at Drake, who took a deep breath before sitting down in the nearest chair. “Let's stay calm. We had our agents do a preliminary scan on the Door and the team is currently running the data through a number of our systems to give us a starting point for the decision making and—” he turned to look at John “—the math. Until we get those results, we can go no further. You will each have assignments on your desk when you get back to the Globe. Until then, remember, this is highly confidential.” He turned to Quin. “We will have men standing guard around the house starting today, but I would appreciate it if you would remain on the premises until that happens.”

  Quin nodded.

  “Dismissed,” Tom said, and the quiet room once again became noisy. John slipped past the other members of the Committee and sidled up to Quin.

  “So,” he whispered. “How about some pretzels?”

  “I have to get back,” Quin replied.

  “Yes… but it’s on the way!” John argued.

  Quin rolled his eyes and then nodded as John turned Quin around and shoved him out of the bookstore.

  “So I was on Wikipedia,” John chattered as the bell jingled behind them.

  “You shouldn’t read that nonsense. Just because you’re obsessed with Earth, doesn’t make the stuff on it factual.”

  John ignored the chastisement. “I read about this religion. They have this pretend God, on Earth, called the Flying Spaghetti Monster. Well, it’s not really a God, but it’s a parody, and they think pirates are the original believers in this God and it’s supposed to be an argument against intelligent design.” He snickered. “I wonder what they’d say if they knew that we made them.”

  “They don't know so it doesn’t matter,” Quin replied, heading towards the pretzel shop.

  “I realize that they are a model for untainted cultural development, but imagine the chaos that would result if someone leaked them that information.” John raised his eyebrows three times consecutively.

  “Don’t even think about it.” Quin opened the door to the Panoramic Pretzel.

  “My treat,” John whispered as they entered. He leaned conspiratorially towards Quin. “Because I get them for free!” He grinned.

  “Peanut Pretzel?” the girl behind the counter asked, smiling at John. “With extra salt?”

  “Of course, Elle!” John grinned. “You know me so well!”

  Elle smiled and turned to the rack of pretzels. “And for your friend?”

  “He’s not having any,” John answered. He turned back to Quin and frowned. “Unless you’ve suddenly changed your diet or something.”

  Quin shook his head.

  “So what do you think your old man is up to?” John asked as he waited.

  “Retirement.” Quin leaned against the counter.

  “Really?”

  He shrugged. “How am I supposed to know?”

  “You’re his son!” John sighed loudly. “I know you haven’t spoken to him in two years, but really.”

  “Peanut Pretzel, on the house,” Elle announced. “Here you go, Mr. John.”

  “Why thank you, Elle,” said John, reaching out to take the pretzel. “And might I say you look particularly lovely today.”

  Elle smiled and blushed. “Thank you, sir.”

  “John,” Quin scolded as they exited, “she's seventy-five years younger than you!”

  “And a whole century younger than you, old man!” John retorted. “Look!” He pointed at the sky.

  Over their heads the Morning Shadow began to drift onto the streets. This phenomenon, seen only on torus- or ring-shaped planets, took place directly before the sun was eclipsed by the curve of the planet. As the sun moved out of sight, instead of its light shining directly into the city, it bounced off of the ocean on the other side of the sky and back down, creating a strange and ephemeral white light. Quin smiled.

  Around them, people began to drift onto the streets, gazing at the sky and murmuring in hushed tones. Two women in matching white gowns stood nearby.

  “It's a sign,” the first whispered reverently.

  “God is speaking,” the second added.

  “Don't be silly,” John interjected. “It's a well-known astrological phenomenon and we can calculate exactly when it happens. In fact, the Atmospheric Association sends out a message every time, so we can all watch. Although uncommon, it’s not particularly special. Obviously.”

  “Unbeliever,” the first woman said, smiling. “You, one day, will see.”

  “Let's go,” Quin said, reaching for John's arm and pulling him down the street.

  “So, those women reminded me – I’ve been hearing rumors,” John muttered to Quin as he hurried to keep up with Quin’s rapid pace.

  “What kind of rumors?” Quin turned to look at him.

  “A new political movement. People want their own worlds, or access to them at least. They think planet construction should be a privately run business, not a government thing.” John carefully straightened his tie.

  Quin contemplated this idea as they closed the distance to his house. It seemed like an idea that Grise would have been interested in – even propagated. The entry pod carried them to the living room. John plopped himself into a blue stuffed chair and kicked his legs over the arm.

  “Where’d you hear about this?” Quin asked.

  “Oh you know. McGray’s Pub. Coffee House Explosion. Holy Donuts.” He draped his arm over the back of the chair. “Just everywhere.”

  “What do you think?”

  “Hm,” John mused. “If it became private I'd probably start my own business.”

  “Really?” Quin raised his eyebrows.

  “Maybe,” John said, shrugging. “There are several things our Committee could do very differently and more efficiently. Of course, some decisions are law, and others are just leadership decisions. I wouldn't just jump into it, naturally. At very least, I would probably go work for a private firm.” He chuckled. “I'd get paid more.”

  He turned his attention back to the Door standing awkwardly in the middle of the room. Quin watched as John rose slowly from his chair, his eyes and body language locked on the Door, and walked slowly towards it. He stopped directly in front of it, putting his nose so close that it almost touched the haze.

  Quin frowned, and then strode forward and pulled him back.

  “Hey!” John exclaimed. “I was just looking at it!”

  “No,” Quin replied. “You were hoping that you would just happen to get dizzy and topple forward through it. Or that I would trip and knock you in.?
??

  “Maybe a little,” John admitted. “I think we should go through it.”

  “You heard Tom,” Quin replied. “Not until the research is done.”

  “But I already did the research!” In protest, John reached up and ripped his tie from around his neck, throwing it to the ground in defiance. “And I did the math and I barely slept all night because of it!”

  “Then explain it.” Crossing his arms, Quin looked expectantly at John.

  John’s body snapped to attention. He picked up his tie from the floor and tied it with precision. Then, he strode over to the blackboard and slapped it three times with his palm, picking up a piece of chalk with his other hand.

  “Cool,” he said. “The Doors. Are very cool.”

  John carefully drew a perfect rectangle. Flipping a piece of chalk into the air and pacing between Quin and the blackboard, he began to speak lecture-hall style. “Previously, a Door would take you to the other side. Monolocus. If I walked through the Earth Door, it would take me to Earth. If I went through the Mara Door, it took me to Mara.”

  John spun around and smacked the rectangle-Door.

  “You think this is a regular Door,” he said, scribbling over the perfectly drawn Door. “But it’s not! This Door can lead anywhere. Anywhere!” He spun back to stare dramatically at Quin, and stabbed him in the chest with his finger. “You. Imagine that you are contemplating your current project on the multicultural diversity of Earth. You step through the Mystery Door in this living room, thinking it will take you to your Grandmother's house, and BAM. You're on Earth.” John grinned excitedly. “It’s all about cognitive mathematics. Where you think you want to go, is where you will go… or I assume to the Door closest to where you want to go. Polylocus.”

  Quin’s facial expression didn’t change.

  “Now wait!” John said, holding up a hand. “Your next question will be: ‘Then why are not random people coming through every Door everywhere?’ The answer is: not any Door will take you anywhere. Only specific Doors can take you anywhere. But any Door can take you to a specific Door.”

  “What?” asked Quin, frowning.

  John drew three more rectangles on the board.

  “This,” he said, pointing to the first one, “is the Mystery Door in your living room – a polylocus Door. It will take you anywhere.” He pointed to the second rectangle. “This one is Mara Door, the third one is Earth, and the fourth one is on Pagent – all monolocus Doors. If you walk through your polylocus Door, it can take you to either Mara or Pagent or Earth. But if you walk through Mara's monolocus Door, it can only take you either to your living room, or to its other side in the Door room over on the third floor of the Globe. The same is true for the Doors on Earth and Pagent. They can take you to your living room, or to their other side.”

  “So the massive logistics problem is likely to end up in my living room.” Quin sighed. “I see.”

  John tilted his head. “Well, yes, I suppose that’s true.”

  “And you don’t think we should mention this to Mr. Drake?” Quin raised his eyebrows.

  “If we mention it to Drake…” John paused and took a series of deep breaths, and replied with gritted teeth: “Then we will not be able to go through ourselves.”

  “John, we can’t!” Quin argued. “The Door is dangerous. We don’t know what’s on the other side. What is the point of going through?”

  “To figure out what’s on the other side!” John slapped his forehead and began to walk in fast, tight circles. “Don’t you see, Quin? Every Door has another side. This one has successfully protected its other side, by enabling you to choose where you go based entirely on what you’re thinking about. But wherever the actual other side is… that’s where your father is!”

  Quin shook his head. “It doesn’t matter. You can’t prove it. We do it the right way.”

  “Fine then.” John scowled and stomped over to a chair on the opposite side of the room.

  Shaking his head, Quin turned to go into the kitchen, but paused. Would John really give up that easily? It seemed unlikely. He turned just in time to see John sprinting towards the Door with a large backpack.

  He leaped forward and grabbed John just as he disappeared through the Door.

  3. IN THE DECIDUOUS WOODS

  Quin found that he couldn’t let go of the backpack as he was sucked into the enveloping blackness. There was not even a hint of light – of white or grey or shades of black. Just an all-encompassing darkness and the thundering of his own heart. The ten seconds during which they couldn’t see the rat was real; he floated in space, in an absence of sensation, feeling a rising sense of fear.

  He couldn’t breathe, couldn’t speak, couldn’t hear – all of his senses were numb and all understanding faint. He couldn’t take a deep breath to calm himself, but as the ten seconds grew longer and more difficult to endure, he focused on one thought that slid through his mind repeatedly: “Only ten seconds more, only ten seconds more.” It wasn’t much, but then they stumbled into the woods.

  Simultaneously, he and John took a deep gulp of air. Ten seconds wasn’t long to go without breathing, but as it was unexpected, it was also unsettling.

  John was, as usual, the first to speak.

  “Woods. All that and we ended up in the woods!” He sighed loudly and straightened his tie. “I was hoping for something a bit more dramatic.”

  “Earth,” Quin replied. He took another deep breath – Earth had a very distinctive scent: a little bit of trees, a little bit of dirt, a little bit of carbon monoxide.

  “How do you know?” John raised his eyebrows.

  Quin blinked.

  “Oh, your awesomely functioning nose, of course.” John made his expression of mimicked snobbishness.

  Ignoring John, Quin looked around. It appeared to be a typical North American deciduous forest, with the basic hardwoods – maple, oak, butternut – and some softer woods – pine, mostly. The undergrowth wasn’t too thick. He quickly identified a variety of young trees, ferns, and some jack-in-the-pulpit. “Upstate New York – 1537880.”

  “You memorized the codes?” John wrinkled his nose and then looked around them. “I hope you know that I’m not a big fan of trees. I mean, look around! We’re surrounded! What if they come to life and start throwing apples at us?”

  “These aren’t apple trees.” Quin crossed his arms and stared at John. “Let’s go back.”

  “No!” John took off.

  Catching him wouldn’t be hard, of course, but it would get very annoying if he kept doing this every five minutes. Quin waited a moment, until he heard the crashing and whining stop – and it wasn’t very far away, at that. He quietly ducked through the trees and peeked around the trunk of a rather large oak.

  “AH!” John exclaimed, startled, as he came into view around the tree. “I hate it when you do that! How do you always – always! – surprise me?”

  “We need to go back home.”

  “Here’s the problem,” John said. “I’m not sure I know how to get back.”

  Quin raised his eyebrows.

  “The thing is, I don’t know how we got here. I understand the theory behind the Door, but you know how your brain works – always thinking a million things at once! I thought I was thinking about Dad, but then we ended up here. Unless…” John straightened up and looked excited for a moment. “…he’s here! Wouldn’t that be lucky?”

  “Unlikely.” For years Grise had grumbled about his ambassadorial trips to Earth – it smells funny, they talk funny, they’re stupid people – even though his trips had been largely secret, and he hadn’t been allowed to communicate with actual Humans. He had only ever conversed with agents that lived on the planet studying the cultural development, and had apparently hated every minute of it. He wouldn’t be here. “But we can let Wolf find us before we go, and see if he’s heard or seen anything.”

  Frowning, John reached up to straighten his tie. “Wolf is scary. And how do we know where he
is?”

  “He’ll find us.”

  “That doesn’t make him any less terrifying. In fact, it may actually make him a little scarier.” John paused for a moment. “He’s not Human, right? Or am I remembering incorrectly?”

  “Melfisian.” Quin looked at John and then pointed at the backpack.

  “Oh, please and thank you!” John exclaimed, and handed it over. “It was wrinkling my suit.”

  Quin rolled his eyes. He imagined that the branches and moisture in the forest wouldn’t do much for the suit either.

  “Before we go—” John reached out and opened one of the side pockets on the backpack. “We should put these on.”

  He pulled out two small ear pieces. “These are still in the testing phase,” John explained, “which is why you don’t have them on base yet, but we’re trying to make a communication device that can at least translate basic ideas. It’s based on the same cognitive mathematics that the Door operates on, but it has the effect of translating everything you hear. In addition, it sends out a signal so that anyone within fifteen feet of you can also understand what you’re saying.

  “Side effects?” Quin asked.

  “Ah, yes, well, first of all, it doesn’t translate colloquialisms. It doesn’t translate words that don’t have a translation between the languages. It doesn’t translate manners and customs.”

  “Obviously.”

  “It can also cause nausea. And sometimes if it comes into contact with the right catalyst, it can start either beeping loudly or cause a piercing high-pitched note to sound in your ear.”

  Quin frowned. “What kind of catalyst?”

  “Um… well… water?” John shrugged sheepishly.

  Shaking his head, Quin inserted the device into his ear, turned, and walked off.

  The sticks and dead leaves cracked and groaned under his feet as he strode into the gloomy, silent, forest around them. The ground was moist, and the scent rose up with each step they took. The sun was low in the sky – evening, it seemed – and Quin used the shadows to guide their direction. Wind brushed against the treetops, causing them to murmur and sing. John followed closely behind him, grumbling under his breath about the crunching sticks, the spider webs, the bugs, the smell – everything. John didn’t like the woods. Finally, Quin paused and turned around.

  “Do you want me to leave you here?” he asked. The complaints were beginning to interfere with his ability to focus on the world around them.

  “No.” John scowled. “But if I had known we were going to end up in the woods, I wouldn’t have worn dress shoes.”

  “You brought a backpack,” Quin pointed out. “You were planning on something, but you didn’t think to bring better shoes?”

  “You know what?” John exclaimed, irritated at the criticism. “I am going to leave you behind this time!”

  He began to jog forward into the woods. Quin scratched his neck and smiled. John had no idea where they were going, and he had no idea that Wolf had set snares all over the woods. In fact, they had passed only a few feet from one not ten minutes ago. Slowly, Quin tailed John through the woods. About twenty minutes later, he paused. The hairs on the back of his neck shivered as the scents in the woods altered slightly. He crouched and listened.

  John screamed.

  Quin didn’t move.

  “Quin!” he yelled. “I’m hanging upside down! Get me down from this contraption!”

  A wide grin spread across Quin’s face briefly. He wished he could see. He tuned out John and focused on the other sounds that danced around him: the wind in the trees, the twitter of birds and squirrels, that strange silence of that comes from an absence of people, the cracking of sticks… someone was walking towards him.

  He stood and turned.

  A broad-shouldered, hirsute, scowling man pointed an arrow at him.

  “Wolf,” Quin said.

  “Quin Black-man,” Wolf responded.

  Quin turned and strode towards where John hung from one of Wolf’s traps. He knew Wolf would follow, and he knew Wolf would not shoot.

  John hung upside-down from a rope strung up a tree. His face was red, his arms flailed, and he looked furious.

  “Get me down!” he demanded as Quin stepped into the clearing.

  Quin heard an arrow release behind him. It sliced through the air and through the rope that held John. John tumbled to the ground in a ball of arms, legs, and high-quality fabric.

  “Ow,” he groaned, picking himself up from the sticks and leaves that stuck to his suit and tie, which made him look like a well-dressed Sasquatch.

  Without changing his facial expression, Quin grinned inside. He wished he had a camera.

  “What was that?” John demanded.

  “A trap,” Quin replied succinctly. Then he turned to Wolf. “Greetings. We seek Grise Black.”

  “You hunt your father?” the man replied.

  “Yes.”

  Wolf stared at Quin for a moment. “The Door in the woods has turned strange.”

  Quin nodded. He knew that if he provided too much information, Wolf would get annoyed and leave. Wolf didn’t appreciate verbal communication particularly. He was half a wild animal.

  “We know about that!” John butted in. “We’re trying to fix it! And we think—”

  John stopped abruptly as Quin held out his hand towards Wolf. Wolf leaned down and sniffed it and then offered his own hand to Quin. Quin bent forward and sniffed Wolf’s hand: it smelled of dirt, and woods, and dead leaves, and there was a slight hint of hot rope. John must not have been the first one to get snared that day, which meant Wolf must have been having trouble with people in his woods – likely due to the changes in the Door.

  “You came through,” Wolf said, “and you knew about the Door.” He nodded to himself and then crouched down on the ground. He picked up a green oak leaf and handed it to Quin. “He was here but now is gone. When you find Meriym, give this.”

  “Do you know where my father is?” Quin asked.

  “I will give information when I find it.” Wolf pounded his chest. “Do you need more?”

  “The favor is now yours.” Quin bowed in the traditional Melfisian style of submission.

  Wolf nodded once and bounded into the trees.

  Quin turned to John. “I’m leading this time. Unless you want to step in another trap.”

  “Why is he leaving traps everywhere, anyway?” John grumbled.

  “To protect Earth from random idiots like you,” Quin replied. Wolf was the best guard the Globe had hired. He kept the area safe, protected the Door, and completed all of his paperwork.

  John was fuming now. It had been some time since Quin had gotten him riled up like this. He was quite enjoying it.

  “I am not…” John sputtered. “I have… I… I am… am way smarter than you!” He crossed his arms and fell back so he was walking slightly behind Quin.

  “The traps are placed to trap any unknown that steps through the Door. Apparently, he has been having some trouble with that, probably due to this new polylocus Door, and is trying – in his own way – to protect Earth from random people appearing on their doorstep.”

  “What about the other Doors on Earth?” John asked.

  “I assume their guardians are doing their best.”

  “How do you know all that? About the people coming through.”

  “He told me.”

  John shook his head. “Melfisians really are on the outskirts of my knowledge and understanding. They’re so… animal.”

  “And usually right,” Quin added.

  “How do you know him again? Just through the military?”

  John clearly didn’t understand the concept of walking quietly through the woods.

  “He’s working for us for the time being, as he is exiled from his home. He reports to my supervisor on base. We sometimes nod at each other. Sort of a loner though, an independent contractor of sorts.”

  John was quiet after that. They walked silently for the b
etter part of the hour, until John said, “are you sure you know where you’re going?”

  “Yes.” Quin pointed. The Door lay directly in front of them.

  “So,” John said, frowning at the Door, “how do we do this?”

  “You’re the expert.”

  “There are two options – we can think about your living room and hopefully end up back there, or we can think about your dad again, and see if it takes us back here, or if it takes us someplace new.”

  “We should go back.”

  “Okay,” John said. “I’ll go through first. Put your hand on my shoulder, though. I’m not sure how it works, but I imagine it will just drag us through. To be safe, make sure you’re thinking about staying with me. I wouldn’t want it to dump us in two different places.”

  Reaching out, Quin placed his hand on John’s shoulder. He listened for a moment and turned his head. Wolf was watching them silently from within the trees. Quin nodded at the hirsute guard, and then took a deep breath as he followed John through the Door.

  4. THE SQUARE HOUSE

  The greens and browns of the woods swirled and meshed into blackness, and slowly, as Quin watched, melded and folded into a grey sky and dirty green field of waving grass. Black birds soared in the sky, circling in spirals that drew them closer and closer to the ground. Their feet had landed on a sturdy wooden bridge, underneath which flowed a deep, vibrantly red river. Wind raced quietly through the sky. The distant trees wobbled and swayed, and their leaves skipped around like kites on a string.

  John stepped forward, craning his head in all directions to take in the world around them. Quin followed suit, stepping off the bridge and onto the dry soil. The dirt blossomed around his feet. A large, eerie bird glided overhead, its shadow falling briefly over Quin's face. Far ahead, on the trail, a wooden hut rose from the trembling blades of grass that buckled under the wind.

  “This is not your living room.” John gestured towards the scene in front of him. “Where are we?”

  Quin shook his head and carefully listened to hairs on the back of his neck. They were silent.

  “We’re safe for now,” he said. “I’ve never been here.” He turned and looked at the Door; his eyes widened as he saw that there was not just one Door, but two. “John.”

  John turned and looked back. “Two Doors!” he exclaimed, a bit giddily. “Which one did we come out of?”

  Quin shrugged.

  “I need the backpack.” John scampered up the bridge and began to examine first one Door and then the other. He tilted his head sideways and upside down, doing a little dance that communicated that he really wanted to get close to the Door, but not too close, in case he got sucked through.

  “It won’t suck you through,” Quin said, walking up the bridge with the backpack. “You know that.”

  John pulled a series of instruments out of the backpack. “I hope these work here,” he muttered.

  Quin recognized the resonator, the calibrator, and the ossilometer, but the rest of the tools were beyond him. He turned to gaze out at the world again. The strangest thing about the scene in front of him was that it was so average. The wind blew. Birds flew around. A house sat in a field. There was nothing on this world to differentiate it from any other world he had been on. Grass. Trees. Birds. A house. Even the house was made from a non-distinct type of wood, with no paint: it could have been rural Earth, rural Mara, rural Pesinter, or rural Sagitta, for that matter. He frowned. There was something off about this planet. It was too… normal.

  “Looks like they’re both the same!” John said. “Both weird Doors, like the one in your living room. I don’t know which one we came out of. Don’t know why anyone would build two right next to each other. Don’t know why they’re here. But I do know that they’re the same. Do you think Dad built these ones too?”

  “We can’t predict anything Grise does,” Quin replied quietly.

  “So what should we do?” John asked. “Do you want to try to get back to your living room, or do you want to look around?”

  “Let’s go to the house.” Quin strode off the bridge without waiting for John’s reply.

  A moment later, John ran up behind him. “You could have at least given me enough time to pack the bag,” he complained.

  Quin didn’t respond. Together, the two walked towards the house; Quin squinted to see it more clearly. There was something odd about this house. Then it hit him: it was square. Each side was perfectly square, and the four sections of roof peaked together in perfect isosceles triangles. Each side contained two windows and one door; the door was placed exactly in the center and reached all the way to the top of the wall. The doorknob stuck out in precisely the middle of the door. The only thing that was not symmetrical in every direction was the set of steps that led up to each door on each side of the house.

  Despite the uncomfortable balance of the building, the steps had begun to rot, and small tufts of grass grew through their weakened wood. Shingles lay broken on the ground. Quin looked even closer: it almost appeared as if the house had grown straight up from the ground – as if it were a part of the earth itself.

  John skipped forward and knocked on the door. Quin stayed back, looking around and listening. He was noticing something, but was not sure what it was. Something familiar.

  After a moment, the door creaked open. A woman in a simple dress stood on the other side. She had the general look of a Cadrellian.

  “Hello!” she greeted them. “Can I help you?”

  “Where are we?” John asked politely, smiling up at her.

  The woman laughed. “You would not believe how often I get that question. Are you looking for someone who has gone missing, too? We’ve had half a dozen of those in the last week.”

  “No, just exploring,” John replied. “Does this place have a name?”

  “We call it Path, usually.” She shrugged and smiled pleasantly. “Because of the path there, that leads from the Bridge. It’s the first thing anyone sees when they arrive.”

  “Are there more people here?”

  She laughed again. “Of course! There’s a city over the vale, and a few more settlements beyond that. It’s still being newly populated, you see.” She looked back at Quin. “If it’s okay with your friend, you should come in. I was just about to sit down for dinner – there is plenty for everyone.”

  Quin sniffed the air. That was it – a familiar scent. Wolf. How did he get there before they did? “He’s here.” Quin stated.

  John gave him his sad-eyed look. “Food? Please?”

  Nodding once, Quin stepped forward and entered the house behind John and the woman.

  “My name is Meriym, by the way,” she said.

  “Meriym!” John exclaimed. “We have a message for you—” He stopped abruptly as he saw Wolf standing beside the dinner table.

  Quin bowed politely to Wolf, and offered his hand in a gesture of submission. Wolf sniffed at it and growled acceptance. It was as if they hadn’t just seen one another less than ten minutes ago.

  “Oh, you know each other!” Meriym seemed pleased. “Wolf has been a big help around here, splitting wood, making sure we have food, you know.”

  Reaching into his pocket, Quin pulled out the leaf Wolf had given him and offered it to Meriym.

  “Wonderful!” she exclaimed, an odd smile crossing her face. “I have not received one of these in a while. Thank you.” She looked up at Quin, her eyes glittering.

  Quin turned his attention back to the table. Next to Wolf sat a small boy.

  “This is Kip.” Meriym introduced him.

  “Hello,” said John.

  The little boy nodded but didn’t speak.

  Meriym smiled and said, “He doesn’t speak. He is mute. He can understand, though.”

  John pulled out a chair and sat down across from Kip. “Well, Kip,” he said. “My name is John. Have you ever invented a language?”

  The boy shook his head.

  “I would like to show you ho
w.”

  A look of confusion crossed Kip’s face. A smile split John’s. He held up his hand.

  “This is my hand,” he said. “It is very good for pointing, yes?”

  Kip nodded.

  “What if you want to indicate something but it isn’t in the room?” John twisted his hand into a shape that looked altogether painful and then wiggled it. “This means ‘tree.’ It means tree because I decided it did.”

  Holding up his hand, Kip copied the gesture.

  John clasped his hands together over his head. “This means ‘hat.’”

  Kip copied him again, a small smile lighting up his lips.

  Quin tuned them out and turned to look at the other two standing in the room. Meriym was smiling broadly as she watched Kip with John. Wolf stood, gazing out a window at the grass dancing in the light breeze.

  “Is he yours?” Quin asked.

  “Oh no,” Meriym replied. “He appeared here a few years ago, scared and bleeding. The townsfolk thought he was a demon – silly people – so I took him in. No one has come looking for him yet, although people have come looking for plenty of others.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “There seems to be an epidemic of missing youths. They tend to be between the ages of ten and sixteen, and their families are on the hunt. A couple of times a week or so another person appears from over the bridge and asks if we have seen Jeremy or Josh or J’loshian.”

  “All male?”

  “Oh no, plenty of girls, too. I haven’t seen any pattern – not an obvious one at any rate.” She turned and began to slowly stir the pot of soup that sat on the stove. “It’s really sad, especially since no one knows why children are being taken. Families imagine the worst possible scenarios – I of course prefer to imagine that they simply got lost and are now living with a lovely new family, but there are too many of them for that to be the case all the time.”

  Steam rose up from the pot of soup, and following it with his eyes, Quin noted the many herbs hanging from the ceiling – basil, heartleaf, plentiweed. Many he recognized and many he didn’t, but one thing seemed obvious: not a single one came from the same planet as another. More inconsistencies began to pop out at him – the refrigerator was hooked to a generator; the fireplace was burning high density logs from a wooded city called Winaparkamu which lasted a long time and produced a lot of heat; the furniture was reminiscent of the rectangular and oddly linear furniture from Bakourna; and there was a door placed exactly in the center of every wall of this strange little house, with a doorknob in the center of the door.

  “Why are the doorknobs in the center of the doors?” Quin asked.

  John’s head spun around, Wolf turned to look at him, and Meriym sighed.

  “You know,” she said, “everyone asks me that. I don’t know, but it is rather odd. It seems to work, though, however the mechanism is designed.”

  “They’re from a planet called Great Forest on the Bay, where Wolf is from.” John turned his body slightly in his chair so he could see both Quin, who stood behind him, and Meriym. “One of the primary religions on that planet places a great deal of importance on balance. That idea, at some point in their long and extremely arduous history, translated into perfectly balanced buildings, with exact measurements all exactly the same – perfect squares and perfect spheres. In fact, this entire house – well, the outside, anyway – seems to have been built in that style.” He turned around again to face Kip.

  “Do you mind if I look around?” Quin asked.

  “Go ahead!” Meriym smiled at him.

  Wolf growled and gestured towards the door at the opposite side of the house. Quin followed him.

  They stepped out into the clean-tasting air. A breeze wrinkled a tarp draped over a several cords of the logs from Winaparkamu, and a small rodent – white with grey stripes – sprinted from under the tarp to behind a small, grey-sided shed. It appeared to be made of wood, with a bark roof, but something about it felt odd. Quin squinted and stepped closer to the shed. He reached out to touch the side.

  It wasn’t wood. It was stone – stone which was finely layered to look like wood, but was clearly not. The roof was tied down with ropes.

  “What?” Quin asked.

  “Stone hut grew,” Wolf replied. “I added roof.”

  “When?”

  “Hut here forever. Roof added four years ago, when Meriym came.”

  Kneeling, Quin dug at the soil at the base of the shed. He didn’t go very far, but it did appear to vanish into the ground. He stood and walked back towards the house, stunned to realize that the house – although much more complicated – was the same: stone, grown to look like wood. It seemed to have grown its own roof, however, unlike the shed.

  “How?” he continued in his vein of questioning.

  “Don’t know.”

  “Why?”

  “Don’t know. Hope Mr. John can explain.”

  Quin shifted his focus to beyond the buildings. The field seemed to stretch out endlessly in all directions except one. The road that had led them towards the house continued past over a rise. In that direction, a hedge lined the field. It was made up of large, dark-looking trees. Quin had an odd feeling about this place; it was both as if he knew it and as if he were afraid of it. Déjà vu and fear. He clenched his fists once and then turned to look at Wolf.

  “What is beyond the field?” he asked.

  “Woods, and one village. Have not explored further.” Wolf walked in three tight circles and then crouched down. He pulled a leaf from among the waving grass. Quin mimicked his movements.

  “You,” Wolf growled. “Give to Meriym.”

  “Why do you keep telling me to give her leaves?” Quin asked.

  “You have same smell.”

  Quin frowned, his eyebrows knitting together in what he knew was their weird wobbled pattern. “Do the leaves mean something?”

  “Faith,” Wolf replied. Then he sprang up from his crouch and darted back towards the house. Pursing his lips, Quin followed slowly behind.