She was glad, for the first time since she had started working for Audits, not to be at home, back at the Academy.
“…it was fascinating. Apparently, Professor Khan is part of a Black Sun splinter cartel called the Far Shores, which maintains a private institution in Central out on the Fringe, you know, the edge of the city, right where it hits the Ether. Anyway, that’s what they study there — the Ether — and some of theories they are exploring are nothing short of revolutionary. One possibility he discussed revolved around the idea that the Ether is actually a solution, a complex stew of constituent elements. Not chemicals, of course, but something analogous; and that Central and even the Earth itself, the whole universe, all a crystallization of these elements, like a pearl forming in an oyster’s shell, lacquer building around an irritation, an anomaly within the Ether that enlarges and solidifies over time. That was just one of the ideas he talked about! He discussed various scenarios for an hour, and then I stayed after and listened to him talk after class until dinner, and it was one mind-blowing idea after another…”
“Uh-huh,” Alex said, not looking up from the screen of his laptop.
“Well, think about the potential!” Vivik raved. “If Central and our world crystallized out of the Ether, than that means there could be other places in the Ether! Other worlds, other universes, even. Professor Kahn thought that it was a real possibility, that the Ether serves in one form or another as a boundary between universes, and that it might even be possible to travel within it, from our universe to another one, Alex! We might even be doing it right now, if he was right about Central. Can you imagine?”
“Uh-huh.”
Vivik looked over at his friend, who was lying on his stomach across his bed, staring at his laptop, one hand propping up his chin. His other hand was wrapped with bandages and in a skeletal black brace, rested on the touchpad. He wasn’t sure what it was that he was looking at, but Alex didn’t seem any more absorbed by it than he was by Vivik’s ongoing lecture. Vivik sighed, but it was an affectionate sigh.
“You couldn’t care less about this stuff, right?” Vivik said, both disappointed and amused. “Did you even hear anything I said?”
“I heard that you stayed late after class so you could hang out with a teacher,” Alex said dryly, “again. You are a total nerd, you know?”
“Oh, well, that’s something, I guess. What is it that you are looking at, anyway?”
“Nothing really. Just this thing that’s been bugging me, I’ve been trying to read about it on the network but, you know, I’m lazy and clueless, so…” Alex said, shutting the laptop and sitting up. “I wish I could go see Rebecca before break, even if she is in a coma or whatever. I’d just feel better somehow.”
“Can I ask you a question, Alex?” Vivik asked hesitantly.
Alex just nodded, futzing around with the clamp on his forearm.
“What are you going to do? About Emily,” Vivik said, feeling his checks redden, but unable to look away, “and the trip and everything. You do like Eerie, right?”
It wasn’t that Vivik didn’t want to go home. Actually, he missed his family, particularly his older brother, a great deal. However, given the choice, Vivik would have given up a million trips to visit home for one vacation with Emily. Not that it seemed likely that anyone was going to give him the option.
“I don’t know,” Alex said morosely, folding his legs in front of him and resting his chin on his knees. “I think so, most of the time. It’s kind of weird, being with her. It’s hard to tell what she’s thinking, or what she wants, or what she’s talking about. Eerie is cool, don’t get me wrong, but Emily’s more…” he said, trailing off self-consciously. “It kinda sucks, you know, talking to you about Emily and stuff. I feel bad about the whole situation.”
Vivik smiled at Alex, partly because his favorite thing about his friend was his almost compulsive honesty, partly to hide the bitterness he couldn’t help but feel over the issue. He had spent the whole of his tenure at the Academy trying to build something more than friendship between himself and Emily Muir, and he hadn’t had any success at all. Then Alex — dopey, perpetually confused Alex — showed up, and suddenly Emily was all smiles and availability, but not for him. Vivik had wanted to ask her to dance at the Winter Dance, and he knew that she would have said yes, even if it was out of charity, but she’d been so resplendent with her hair down and in a tapered silver dress that he hadn’t managed to say anything to her at all. Instead, he had insisted on taking pictures of the event, not because he was a great photographer, but so he could hide behind the camera. He had taken several candid shots of Emily that evening without her realizing, and though he felt guilty over it, that didn’t stop him from taking them out of his bottom desk drawer and looking at them often enough that the corners were blunted and bent.
“Don’t,” Vivik said, with forced cheerfulness. “I’d rather know. It’s not like any of this is your fault.”
“Really? Because I’m pretty sure that all of this is my fault. None of this would have happened if I’d been bright enough not to agree to go with them for Spring Break. Now I’m stuck on an island somewhere for three weeks with Emily and Anastasia and Renton and God-knows-who-else, and I’m not even sure why I agreed to go.”
“Well, what are you going to do?” Vivik repeated softly.
“I don’t know,” Alex said, hanging his head. “Emily is pretty, after all, and she’s always been nice to me. She's not crazy, and she's human, which turns out to be more important than I thought. Three weeks is a long time, too, and I don’t really know what Eerie thinks about all of this…”
“Well, I’m sure she’s totally pleased that you are going on vacation with the girl who’s been all over you from day one,” Vivik said, trying for humor and succeeding only in sounding bitter.
“Yeah, that’s what I figured. At the same time, it’s not as if I owe Eerie something, or I promised her anything. She’s not even really my girlfriend,” Alex said uneasily, “so it isn’t like it would be cheating, exactly. I don’t even know if Eerie would care, honestly.”
“Don’t be stupid,” Vivik snapped, surprising himself. “Of course she is going to care. She wouldn’t have interfered with Emily’s with that whole San Francisco thing if she didn’t care.”
Alex gave him a long, interrogative look, and then nodded in agreement.
“You’re probably right. I don’t want to hurt anyone’s feelings, or for anything bad to happen to either of them, but I don’t see how I can manage that. I don’t really care whether it makes me an asshole or not — I’m not staying celibate forever. I guess, long story short, I don’t have a fucking clue. I can’t even decide which one comes with more strings attached, at this point.”
“Are you complaining?” Vivik mocked gently. “Your life is so hard. Poor Alex and his girl problems.”
Alex looked angry for a moment, but then he laughed it off, and Vivik joined him, more out of relief than anything.
“Yeah, I suppose I shouldn’t expect much pity, huh?”
“Not from me,” Vivik said, grinning.
“That’s right. It would be better for you if I hooked up with Eerie, huh?”
Vivik shrugged uncomfortably, fighting off the urge to say a dozen different uncharitable, unhelpful things.
“Not necessarily,” he admitted. “It’s not like Emily reverts to me somehow if you turn her down. Even if she wasn’t pulled from the Academy at that point, she’s never been interested in me as anything other than a friend. Frankly,” Vivik said, smiling to try to mask the pain inherent in the admission, “I’ve seen more of her thanks to her attempts to get close to you than I ever did before. Maybe if you picked Emily you’d do a bad enough job of being her boyfriend that she’d cheat on you with me, for all I know.”