‘What are the odds of something like that happening?’ Robbie asked.
‘I don’t know,’ Don said, ‘but probably even steeper than ten point four million to one.’
Wesley opened his mouth to say something, and was interrupted by a fusillade of knocks on the door. They all jumped. Don Allman actually uttered a little scream.
‘Who is it?’ Wesley asked, grabbing the Kindle and holding it protectively to his chest.
‘Janitor,’ the voice on the other side of the door said. ‘You folks ever going home? It’s almost seven o’clock, and I need to lock up the building.’
IV – News Archive
They weren’t done, couldn’t be done. Not yet. Wesley in particular was anxious to press on. Although he hadn’t slept for more than three hours at a stretch in days, he felt wide awake, energized. He and Robbie walked back to his apartment while Don went home to help his wife put the boys to bed. When that was done, he’d join them at Wesley’s place for an extended skull session. Wesley said he’d order some food.
‘Good,’ Don said, ‘but be careful. Ur-Chinese just doesn’t taste the same, and you know what they say about German Chinese – an hour later you’re hungry for power.’
For a wonder, Wesley found he could actually laugh.
‘So this is what an English instructor’s apartment looks like,’ Robbie said, gazing around. ‘Man, I dig all the books.’
‘Good,’ Wesley said. ‘I loan, but only to people who bring back. Keep it in mind.’
‘I will. My parents have never been, you know, great readers. A few magazines, some diet books, a self-help manual or two … that’s it. I might have been the same way, if not for you. Just bangin’ my brains out on the football field, you know, with nothing ahead except maybe teaching PE in Giles County. That’s in Tennessee. Yeehaw.’
Wesley was touched by this. Probably because he’d been hurled through so many emotional hoops just lately. ‘Thanks, but remember there’s nothing wrong with a good loud yeehaw. That’s part of who you are, too. Both parts are equally valid.’
He thought of Ellen, ripping Deliverance out of his hands and hurling it across the room. And why? Because she hated books? No, because he hadn’t been listening when she needed him to. Hadn’t it been Fritz Leiber, the great fantasist and science fiction writer, who had called books ‘the scholar’s mistress’? And when Ellen needed him, hadn’t he been in the arms of his other lover, the one who made no demands (other than on his vocabulary) and always took him in?
‘Wes? What were those other things on the UR FUNCTIONS menu?’
At first Wesley didn’t know what the kid was talking about. Then he remembered that there had been a couple of other items. He’d been so fixated on the BOOKS submenu that he had forgotten the other two.
‘Well, let’s see,’ he said, and turned the Kindle on. Every time he did this, he expected either the EXPERIMENTAL menu or the UR FUNCTIONS menu to be gone – the sort of thing that would happen in a Twlight Zone episode – but they were still right there.
‘Ur News Archive and Ur Local,’ Robbie said. ‘Huh. Ur Local’s under construction. Better watch out, traffic fines double.’
‘What?’
‘Never mind, just goofin. Try the news archive.’
Wesley selected it. The screen blanked. After a few moments, a message appeared.
WELCOME TO THE NEWS ARCHIVE!
ONLY THE NEW YORK TIMES
IS AVAILABLE AT THIS TIME
YOUR PRICE IS $1.00/4 DOWNLOADS
$10/50 DOWNLOADS
$100/800 DOWNLOADS
SELECT WITH CURSOR YOUR ACCOUNT
WILL BE BILLED
Wesley looked at Robbie, who shrugged. ‘I can’t tell you what to do, but if my credit card wasn’t being billed – in this world, anyway – I’d spend the hundred.’
Wesley thought he had a point, although he wondered what the other Wesley (if there was one) would think when he opened his next MasterCard bill. He highlighted the $100/800 line and banged the Select button. This time the Paradox Laws didn’t come up. Instead, the new message invited him to CHOOSE DATE AND UR. USE APPROPRIATE FIELDS.
‘You do it,’ he said, and pushed the Kindle across the kitchen table to Robbie. This was getting easier to do, and he was glad. An obsession about keeping the Kindle in his own hands was a complication he didn’t need, understandable as it was.
Robbie thought for a moment, then typed in January 21, 2009. In the Ur field he selected 1000000. ‘Ur one million,’ he said. ‘Why not?’ And pushed the button.
The screen went blank, then produced a message reading ENJOY YOUR SELECTION! A moment later the front page of The New York Times appeared. They bent over the screen, reading silently, until there was a knock at the door.
‘That’ll be Don,’ Wesley said. ‘I’ll let him in.’
Robbie Henderson didn’t reply. He was still transfixed.
‘Getting cold out there,’ Don said as he came in. ‘And there’s a wind knocking all the leaves off the—’ He studied Wesley’s face. ‘What? Or should I say, what now?’
‘Come and see,’ Wesley said.
Don went into Wesley’s book-lined living room-study, where Robbie remained bent over the Kindle. The kid looked up and turned the screen so Don could see it. There were blank patches where the photos should have gone, each with the message Image Unavailable, but the headline was big and black: NOW IT’S HER TURN. And below it, the subhead: Hillary Clinton Takes Oath, Assumes Role as 44th President.
‘Looks like she made it after all,’ Wesley said. ‘At least in Ur 1000000.’
‘And check out who she’s replacing,’ Robbie said, and pointed to the name. It was Albert Arnold Gore.
An hour later, when the doorbell rang, they didn’t jump but rather looked around like men startled from a dream. Wesley went downstairs and paid the delivery guy, who had arrived with a loaded pizza from Harry’s and a six-pack of Pepsi. They ate at the kitchen table, bent over the Kindle. Wesley put away three slices himself, a personal best, with no awareness of what he was eating.
They didn’t use up the eight hundred downloads they had ordered – nowhere near it – but in the next four hours they skimmed enough stories from various Urs to make their heads ache. Wesley felt as though his mind were aching. From the nearly identical looks he saw on the faces of the other two – pale cheeks, avid eyes in bruised sockets, crazed hair – he guessed he wasn’t alone. Looking into one alternate reality would have been challenging enough; here were over ten million, and although most were similar, not one was exactly the same.
The inauguration of the forty-fourth President of the United States was only one example, but a powerful one. They checked it in two dozen different Urs before getting tired and moving on. Fully seventeen front pages on January 21st of 2009 announced Hillary Clinton as the new president. In fourteen of them, Bill Richardson of New Mexico was her vice president. In two, it was Joe Biden. In one it was a senator none of them had heard of: Linwood Speck of New Jersey.
‘He always says no to the vice-presidency when someone else wins the top spot,’ Don said.
‘Who always says no?’ Robbie asked. ‘Obama?’
‘Yeah. He always gets asked, and he always says no.’
‘It’s in character,’ Wesley said. ‘And while events change, character never seems to.’
‘You can’t say that for sure,’ Don said. ‘We have a minuscule sample compared to the … the …’ He laughed feebly. ‘You know, the whole thing. All the worlds of Ur.’
Barack Obama had been elected in six Urs. Mitt Romney had been elected in one, with John McCain as his running mate. In that Ur, Romney ran against Obama, who was tapped after Hillary was killed in a helicopter crash late in the campaign.