Get Me to the Church on Time

7.

“A more civilized way.”

Studs and I both turned and looked at the TV. There was a familiar (to me, at least; Studs had never met him) face in grainy black and white, wearing some sort of jungle cap.

“Wu!” I said. “Where’d you come from?”

“Real time Internet feed,” he said. “Video conferencing software. My cosmonaut friend patched me in on a rogue cable channel from a digital switching satellite. Piece of cake, once we triangulated the location through the phone signals. Although cellular video can be squirrelly. Lots of frequency bounce.”

“This is a treehouse? It’s as big as a gymnasium!” exclaimed an oddly accented voice.

“Shut up, Dmitri. We’ve got a situation here. Hand me the gun, Blitz.”

“You can see out of a TV?” I asked, amazed.

“Only a little,” Wu said. “Pixel inversion piggybacked on the remote locational electron smear. It’s like a reverse mortgage. Feeds on the electronic equity, so to speak, so we have to get on with it. Hand me the gun, Studs. The Glock nine.”

Studs was immobile, torn between conflicting loyalties. “How can I hand a gun to a guy on TV?” he whined.

“You could set it on top of the cabinet,” I suggested.

“Don’t do it, Arthur!” Dr. Dgjerm broke in. “Give the gun to me. Now!” Studs was saved. The doctor had given him an order he could obey. He tossed the Glock nine across the treehouse. It got smaller and smaller and went slower and slower, until, to my surprise, Dr. Dgjerm caught it. He checked the clip and laid the gun across his tiny, or distant, or both, lap.

“We can settle this without gunplay,” said Wu.

“Wilson Wu,” said Dr. Dgjerm. “So we meet again!”

“Again?” I whispered, surprised. I shouldn’t have been.

“I was Dr. Dgjerm’s graduate assistant at Bay Ridge Realty College in the late seventies,” explained Wu. “Right before he won the Nobel Prize for Real Estate.”

“Which was then stolen from me!” said Dr. Dgjerm.

“The prize was later revoked by the King of Sweden,” explained Wu, “when Dr. Dgjerm was indicted for trying to create an illegal Universe out of unused vacation time. Unfairly, I thought, even though technically the Time did belong to the companies.”

“The charges were dropped,” said Dgjerm. “But try telling that to the King of Sweden.”

Studs fingered the Nobel Prize medallion. “It’s not real?”

“Of course it’s real!” said Dgjerm. “When you clink it, it clinks. It has mass. That’s why I refused to give it back.”

“Your scheme would never have worked, anyway, Dr. Dgjerm,” said Wu. “I did the numbers. There’s not enough unused vacation time to inflate a Universe; not anymore.”

You always were my best student, Wu,” said Dgjerm. You are right, as usual. But as you can see, I came up with a better source of Time than puny pilfered corporate vacation days.” He waved his hand around at the sofa, the potted palm. “Connective Time! There’s more than enough to go around. All I needed was a way to make a hole in the fabric of space-time big enough to slip it through. And I found it!”

“The D6,” said Wu.

“Exactly. I had heard of the legendary lost D6, of course, but I thought it was a myth. Imagine my surprise and delight when I found it in my own backyard, so to speak! With Arthur’s help, it was a simple bandwidth problem, sluicing the Connective Time by phone from La Guardia, where it would never be missed, through the D6’s gauge boson rectifier twist, and into—my own Universe!”

“But it’s just a sofa and a plant,” I said. “Why do you want to live there?”

“Does the word ‘immortality’ mean anything to you?” Dgjerm asked scornfully. “It’s true that my Leisure Universe is small. That’s okay; the world is not yet ready for vacationing in another Universe, anyway. But real estate is nothing if not a waiting game. It will get bigger. And while I am waiting, I age at a very slow rate. Life in a universe made entirely of Connective Time is as close to immortality as we mortals can come.”

“Brilliant,” said Wu. “If you would only use your genius for science instead of gain, you could win another Nobel Prize.”

“Fuck Science!” said Dgjerm, his tiny (or distant, or both) mouth twisted into a smirk as his giant voice boomed through the treehouse. “I want my own Universe, and I already got a Nobel Prize, so don’t anybody reach for that plug. Sorry if I’ve thrown off your butterfly figures, Wilson, but your Universe won’t miss a few more milli-minutes of Connective Time. I will disconnect mine when it is big enough to survive and grow on its own. Not before.”

“That’s what I’m trying to tell you!” said Wu. “The more Universes, the better, as far as I’m concerned. Look here…”

Wu’s face on the TV screen stared straight ahead, as a stream of equations flowed down over it:

“Impossible!” said Dgjerm.

“Numbers don’t he,” said Wu. “Your figures were off, professor. You reached critical mass 19.564 minutes ago, our time.

Your Leisure Universe is ready to cut loose and be born. All Irv has to do is—”

“Unplug the TV?” I asked. I reached for the plug and a shot rang out.

BRANNNGGG!

It was followed by the sound of breaking glass.

CRAASH!

“You killed him!” shouted Studs.

At first I thought he meant me, but my head felt okay, and my hands were okay, one on each side of the still-connected plug. Then I saw the thick broken glass on the floor, and I knew what had happened. You know how sometimes when you fire a warning shot indoors, you hit an appliance? Well, that’s what Dr. Dgjerm had done. He had meant to warn me away from the plug, and hit the television. The D6 was no more. The screen was shattered and Wu was gone.

I looked across the treehouse for the sofa, the potted palm, the little man. They were flickering a little, but still there.

You killed him!” Studs said again.

“It was an accident,” said Dgjerm. “It was meant to be a warning shot.”

“It was only a video conferencing image,” I said. “I’m sure Wu is fine. Besides, he was right!”

“Right?” they both asked at once.

I pointed at Dr. Dgjerm. “The TV is off, and your Universe is still there.”

“For now,” said Dgjerm. “But the timeline is still open, and the Connective Time is siphoning back into your universe.” As he spoke, he was getting either smaller or farther away, or both. His voice was sounding hollower and hollower.

“What should we do?” Studs asked frantically. “Hang up the phone?”

I was way ahead of him; I had already untaped the phone and was looking for the OFF button. As soon as I pushed it, the phone rang.

It was, of course, Wu. “Everything all right?” he asked. “I lost my connection.”

I told him what had happened. Meanwhile, Dr. Dgjerm was getting smaller and smaller every second. Or farther and farther away. Or both.

You have to act fast!” Wu said. “A universe is like a balloon. You have to tie it off, or it’ll shrink into nothing.”

“I know,” I said. “That’s why I hung up the phone.”

“Wrong timeline. The phone connects the baggage carousel to the D6. There must be another connection from the D6 to Dr. Dgjerm’s Leisure Universe. That’s the one that’s still open. Look for analog, narrow bandwidth, probably green.”

Dr. Dgjerm was standing on the tiny sofa, pointing frantically toward the front of the TV.

“Like a garden hose?” I asked.

“Could be,” said Wu. “If so, kinking it won’t help. Time isn’t like water; it’s infinitely compressible. You’ll have to disconnect it.”

The hose was attached to a peculiar brass fitting on the front of the set, between the channel selector and the volume control. I tried unscrewing it. I turned it to the left, but nothing happened. I turned it to the right, but nothing happened. I pushed. I pulled.

Nothing happened.

“It’s a special fitting!” said Dgjerm. I could barely hear him. He was definitely getting smaller, or farther away, or both.

“Let me try it!” said Studs, his panic showing his genuine affection for the swiftly disappearing old man. He turned the fitting to the left; he turned it to the right. He pushed, he pulled; he tugged, he twisted.

Nothing happened.

“Can I try?” asked a familiar voice.

“She can’t come in here!” shouted Studs.

It was Candy, and Studs was right: No Girls Allowed was our other bylaw. It was the bedrock of our policy. Nevertheless, ignoring his protests, I helped her off the ladder and through the door. Studs and I both gasped as she stood up, brushing off her knees. I had seen Candy out of uniform, but this was different. Very different.

She was wearing her special Honeymoon lingerie from Sweet Nothings.

Nevertheless, she was all business. “It’s like a child-proof cap,” she said. She bent down (beautifully!), and with one quick mysterious wrist-motion, disconnected the hose from the fitting. It began to flop like a snake and boom like thunder, and Candy screamed and dropped it. Meanwhile, Dr. Dgjerm was hauling the hose in and coiling it on the sofa, which was beginning to spin, slowly at first, then more and more slowly.

I heard more booming, and felt a tremendous wind sweep through the treehouse.

I heard the sound of magazine pages fluttering and wood splintering.

I felt the floor tilt and I reached out for Candy as Studs yelled, “I told you so! I told you so!”

The next thing I knew, I was lying on a pile of boards under the maple tree, with Candy in my arms. Her Sweet Nothings Honeymoon lingerie was short on elbow and knee protection, and she was skinned in several places. I wrapped her in my mother’s old rag rug, and together we helped Studs to his feet.

“I told you so,” he said.

“Told who what?”

Instead of answering, he swung at me. Luckily, he missed. Studs has never been much of a fighter. “The by-laws. No Girls Allowed. Now look!” Studs kicked the magazines scattered around under the tree.

“It wasn’t Candy!” I said. “It was your precious professor and his Leisure Universe!”

Studs swung at me again. It was easy enough to duck. A few lights had come on in the neighboring houses, but they were already going off again. The backyard was littered with boards and magazines, ball gloves, pinups, water guns and pocket knives. It was like the debris of childhood—it was the debris of childhood—all collected in one sad pile.

Studs was crying, blubbering, really, as he picked through the debris, looking (I suspected) for a little sofa, a miniature potted palm, or perhaps a tiny man knocked unconscious by a fall from a collapsing Universe.

Candy and I watched for a while, then decided to help. There was no sign of Dr. Radio Dgjerm. We couldn’t even find the hose. “That’s a good sign,” I pointed out. “The last thing I saw, he was coiling it up on the sofa.”

“So?” Studs took another swing at me, and Candy and I decided it was time to leave. We were ducking down to squeeze through the loose plank in the Patellis’ fence when I heard the phone ringing behind me. It was muffled under the boards and plywood. I was about to turn back and answer it, but Candy caught my arm—and my eye.

It was still our Honeymoon, after all, even though I had a headache from the fall. So, I found out later, did Candy.