“Jesus Christ! Did you see that? We have managed to recreate the Tesla Coil!” Lydia shrieked with excitement.
Nina stood up slowly, holding on to Sam. He dusted off her beautiful dark tresses and she fixed his shirt. She suddenly gasped, “Purdue! Where is Purdue?”
Sam and Healy opened the chamber door with much effort. Some of the rubber had melted onto the exterior metal, but inside they found Purdue lying curled up on the slant of the floor. His hair and eyebrows were singed off, but otherwise he was fine. His clothing was burned to shards in most places, leaving his reddened flesh exposed, but he did not suffer anything worse than a sunburn.
“Oh my God, Purdue! I’m so happy to see you!” Nina crooned ecstatically as the hugged him. The agony of her embrace woke the explorer. Purdue howled in pain.
“Sorry! Sorry!” Nina wailed, placing her hands over her mouth. “I forgot, Purdue, I’m so sorry!”
“Bring him out so I can see him,” Lydia called from outside the chamber. The whole place was filled with smoke and the overwhelming stench of electrical fire. Nina smiled. She could hear Lydia’s affection in her swift request. She wanted to see Purdue, not to ascertain if he successfully recovered the diagrams, but just to see him again. Healy and Sam helped the dazed Purdue from the heat of the Voyager III. Sam looked over at Healy, “You thought this would make amends for what you did?”
“No, I expect hell to rain on me, and rightly so, sir. But I am not sorry I came back,” Healy replied. “Not even that lightning bolt could stop me from protecting Professor Jenner.”
Sam was amazed that the butler still addressed him formally after all they had been through. Purdue slowly opened his eyes, moaning in pain. On the floor lay a heap of black ash that reeked up the place so badly that they wanted to vomit.
“Let’s go to the drawing room, rather,” Lydia suggested, and she did not have to invite them twice. Nina wheeled her up behind the men as they carried Purdue to the drawing room. Healy draped a cold cloth over Purdue’s shoulders and they all sat down to recover from the frantic day they all had.
Exhausted, shocked, relieved; they sat in silence for a few minutes, just panting, coughing, groaning. Finally Healy went to fetch the Medical Kit to tend to Purdue’s wounds for the time being until they would take him to hospital. Purdue stared at Nina across the room.
“What is the matter?” Sam asked.
“I met someone who looked precisely like Nina while I was captive in Hitler’s bunker under the Reichkanzlei,” Purdue smiled. “And Helmut… this is uncanny…”
“He looked just like you,” Lydia recalled.
“That’s right,” Purdue winked at her, silently letting her know that he knew why she slept with Helmut while she was there. Lydia just shook her head and chuckled.
“What about Tesla’s schematics?” Nina asked. “That is after all why you went, wasn’t it?”
“I had it with me, but it was incinerated on the way back, I’m afraid,” Purdue frowned. “I’m sorry, Lydia. It would appear that I failed you.”
“No, sir. You did not!” she replied in her strong, forceful way. “After what I’ve seen today, I am bloody grateful we did not bring back the recipe to that ungodly invention. Can you imagine what the power hungry imbeciles would do with it? Poor Nina and Sam almost got killed over the teleforce weapon!”
“Well, now we know that time travel is possible,” Sam announced.
“I would agree with you, Sam, had I not known that the formula I used had no principals of quantum physics,” Lydia remarked.
“How do you mean? I was there,” Purdue argued, “I was there in Nazi Germany in 1944. I had gone back in time.”
“Not really,” she contested. “You wondered by you saw so many famous people not looking the way we know them, right?”
“Yes,” Purdue nodded.
“According to my own theory — based on Tesla, but largely augmented by myself,” Lydia explained proudly, “you did not travel back in time, nor did you bend space. You actually punched through to another parallel universe. It is quite a different thing.”
“Wait,” Nina chipped in. “How? You mean Purdue went into another dimension?”
“No, darling. Another dimension is a different plane of existence that carries different frequencies to our physical existence. Purdue would have to be a ghost or a demon or an energy ball, whatever, to go there,” Lydia gestured with her hands. “He was in a parallel universe, one just like ours with almost the same events and people. The difference is that this multi-verse is merely the product of different scenarios.”
“So how this world would have been if things turned out differently?” Sam asked, trying to wrap his brain around the oddities of Lydia’s ramblings.
“If Hitler never existed,” she said abruptly, “one universe. If Mozart was a physician and not a musician — another universe…see where this is going?”
“My head hurts,” Nina jested.
“This was why Dave saw people who looked like the exact twins of people here, just in a different life or environment,” Lydia carried on. “The bottom line here is that we proved that we could punch through the veil of a parallel universe, where hopefully we could make a change to their history to keep them from making the same mistakes we made.”
Purdue added, “Without having to worry about changing the future we now live in, as it would be with the past.”
“That’s it!” Lydia smiled. But unlike other times, she seemed less flamboyant and loud about her experiments. To Purdue it seemed that his old friend was ready to hang up her gloves. He was happy for her to have gone out with a historical breakthrough, having no idea that she had passed over all achievements to his credit.
Chapter 33
“This house brings back bad memories,” Sam remarked. “Especially that bloody attic.”
“Oh stop,” Nina said, quickly closing the front door and locking it behind him. “I stay here alone and I’m still alive.”
“Still, you are a very angry lady. Monsters won’t even fuck with you,” he reiterated. “I am however, bait for the denizens of the other realms.”
“Come on, help me carry the last crate, please,” she smiled. “I’ll cook you dinner if you do.”
It had been over three weeks since they left France and went their separate ways. But then Nina gave Sam a call to help her with some new acquisitions she needed to move into her house. Sam was delighted to see her again so soon. He even brought his cat, Bruichladdich, with him. As always, Bruich was on his own mission, seeking out the best spots to laze around in Nina’s home in Oban.
“Have you heard from Purdue?” she asked Sam.
“Aye, he is still in Lyon with Lydia. They are compiling all their notes for a book about the Tesla Experiment and they want me to write the thing for them.”
“Sounds like an interesting job,” Nina replied. “What about Healy?”
“I decided not to press charges,” Sam shrugged.
Nina could not believe it. “Are you daft? I’d let him have it!”
“Look, I did not get killed. And besides, I felt bad about luring Westdijk to Lydia… to all of you. It just goes to show that we all fuck up. And sometimes you mean well, you don’t think that you are acting wrongfully and you end up putting others in danger,” Sam explained in between groans of effort at the heavy crate.