The Creeps: A Samuel Johnson Tale

XV

In Which Brian the Tea Boy Really Wishes That He Had Found Himself a Safer Job, like Hand-Feeding Great White Sharks, or Juggling Scorpions

BRIAN THE TEA BOY was still not used to the ghosts. Oh, he understood that they weren’t really ghosts as such. Professor Stefan had sat him down shortly after the policemen had paid their visit, and explained to Brian in some detail his theory about why a former sweet factory seemed to be quite the hive of activity for people who had been dead for a long time.

“Think of the Multiverse as a series of bubbles, and each bubble is a universe,” said Professor Stefan. “But they’re not like the bubbles in a glass of fizzy pop. Instead, they’re pressed very tightly together, so tightly that the ‘skin’ of one universe almost, but not quite, shares the skin of another. And what is in these universes, you might ask?”

“Ghosts,” said Brian.

“No, Brian,” said Professor Stefan in the tone of a man who has just discovered a large hole in his bucket of patience, and is now considering hitting someone over the head with the bucket, “not ghosts. Ghosts don’t exist. Let’s say it together on the count of three. One, two, three. Ghosts don’t exist.”

“G-ghosts don’t exist,” echoed Brian dully, casting an anxious glance over his shoulder in case one decided to pop up and prove him wrong. Brian felt that he had been reduced to a big jellied spine waiting for a shiver to run down it.

“Very good,” said Professor Stefan. “If you could say it without stammering, that would be even better.”

“S-sorry,” s-said Brian.

“D-don’t— Blast it, you have me at it now. Don’t worry, just listen.”

“Right,” said Brian.

“What I think we are seeing in this sweet factory are quantum universes parallel to our own, but we’re being given glimpses of different points in their time lines, which is why the people who keep popping up are wearing the clothing of Victorian servants, or Tudor courtiers, or, in that slightly disturbing incident involving the elderly gentleman climbing into his bathtub, nothing at all. Similarly, it’s entirely possible that somewhere on their time lines, people are glimpsing scientists in false beards who are pretending to run a sweetshop, although so far we’ve seen no evidence of that.

“Look, people think of time as a single straight line, like this,” said Professor Stefan. He drew a straight line for Brian, just to be helpful.

Past

Present

Future

*

“But suppose,” he continued, “time isn’t like that at all. Suppose time really looks like this.”

“Handy that you happened to have a picture of twigs with you, wasn’t it?” said Brian.

“Yes,” said Professor Stefan. “I have to explain this often. So, imagine that, every time you made a decision, like whether to come here to work with us—”

“So a bad decision?”

“Yes. No. Maybe. Anyway, suppose that every time you made a decision, the universe branched off, and another universe came into being. So there’s this universe, the universe in which you work here, and there’s another universe, in which—”

“In which I work somewhere there are no ghosts,” said Brian. “Sorry, no not-ghosts.”

“Precisely. Now, if you think about all the decisions and actions that you take in a single day, suddenly time begins to seem a lot more complicated, doesn’t it, with lots and lots of lines running alongside each other. And perhaps they’re not straight lines either. Perhaps they tangle and cross over at points, just like those twigs. And sometimes, if the circumstances are right, we get a glimpse of one of those other universes, those alternative realities.”

“And you believe that’s what’s happening here?”

“It’s a possibility,” Professor Stefan said. He decided not to mention that some of these universes might not contain just other, equally slow, versions of Brian, but potentially destructive beings. He was making some progress with Brian, and didn’t want to spoil it all by introducing nameless horrors from the beyond.

“But how has this happened?” said Brian.

Professor Stefan shifted awkwardly on his seat.

“What may have occurred—and I stress ‘may,’ because we don’t want people blaming us for things that we might not have done, and especially not for things that we might actually have done—is that, in the course of the Collider experiments, the skins separating some of the universes within the Multiverse might have been worn a little thin, thus enabling us to peer through them into other realms.”

“Weren’t we talking about twigs a moment ago?”

“We were, but forget the twigs. We’re back on skins.”

“So why can’t the people in these other universes see us when we see them?”

Brian really was asking the most awkward questions, thought Professor Stefan. He began mentally weighing his empty patience bucket and practicing his swing.

“Think of them as those windows in police stations that look like plain old mirrors on one side but, if you’re sitting on the other side, allow you to watch suspects being questioned.” Professor Stefan had just thought of this explanation, and was quite pleased with it, even if it meant moving from twigs to skins to police stations. “That would explain why we can see them, but they can’t see us.”

“Oh,” said Brian.

It made a kind of sense, in a not very sensible way.

“So we’re not going to talk about ghosts anymore, okay?” said Professor Stefan.

“Okay.”

“Because they’re not ghosts, not in the way that you think, and they can’t see you or hurt you.”

“Er, yes, right.”

“And we’re not going to mention them to policemen, or anyone else, isn’t that right?”

“Absolutely.”

“There’s a good chap. Now, back to work you go. Milk, two sugars, and a Jammie Dodger, please.”

Brian did as he was told. He made a large pot of tea, put some mugs and a plate of Jammie Dodgers beside it on the tray, added a jug of milk and a bowl of sugar, and looked at his handiwork. It was all very neat and tidy. He picked up the tray, and instantly his hands began shaking so much that the Jammie Dodgers were awash with tea and milk before he even managed to get halfway to the door.

“Oh dear,” said Brian.

He turned round to return to the kitchen counter, and stopped dead.

There was a not-ghost in the room with him.