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  Contents

  Title Page

  Copyright Notice

  Begin Reading

  I first met Jack when were vegetating in the Journey’s End senior facility in Harrods Creek, Kentucky. One day some scientists discovered something they trademarked as bluegene, and everyone’s meds got better. Journey’s End went out of business. Thanks to bluegene, society could dose us geezers and set us free. Bony cattle in patchy pastures.

  We still needed housing, so they opened up some abandoned exurban condos. Plenty of those around, what with the population drop, and the reborn fad for urban living. Jack and I ended up in a master bedroom with beige drywall and twin beds. Our wives were dead, you understand.

  Nobody but freeloading geezers in the decrepit London Earl development we inhabited, way out Route 42 near Goshen, amid fields and spindly trees. On our own. We had big-screen TVs, cheap as piss, made of squidskin.

  A fellow named Hector came by the London Earl condos with his crew once a week. They’d bag and haul any of the clients who’d “passed,” and hand out food packs and bluegene pills to the rest of us. The pills were in short supply; you didn’t get but seven at a time.

  My kids said they were glad about my new meds, but I worried maybe they weren’t. I remembered how I’d felt about my own parents. They’d hung on for longer than I’d bargained for.

  With bluegene, I myself might be around till I was a hundred. Lucid till the end, still talking, still giving advice. Ugh. I told the kids not to feel like they had to keep in close touch. Enough was enough.

  Meanwhile I had my friend Jack, and the other coots and biddies living in the London Earl condos with us. Kind of a scene. The bluegene meds had kicked up the flirtations a notch. I had a lady friend called Darly— a generous beauty in her way: plump around the middle but even plumper top and bottom. She’d sold cosmetics over the social nets for Karing Kate for twenty, thirty years. She’d even earned the legendary pink leather Karing Kate sample case, which she carried with her at all times.

  Skinny Jack was seeing a skinny Allen County hillbilly called Amara. She’d been a backup singer for most of her life, even toured with Waddy Peytona and his Jumper Cables. Still looked sorta cute in her google glasses, even though they were Dollar Store knockoffs. Thanks to the glasses, Amara was recording nearly everything she saw. But never mind—you don’t want to hear about Darly’s figure or Amara’s google glasses. Geezers are nauseating. We know our place. The London Earl subdivision.

  The thing I do want to tell you about is our journey into the alsoverse with Jack—and how we escaped.

  It started one evening when Jack and I were in our two-sink bathroom, taking our nightly bluegene pills. Chalky little pastel blue footballs. We liked to dose together so as to increase our odds of remembering to do it. For the third or fourth evening in a row, Jack fumbled the job. His bluegene pill fell to the floor. It made a tiny tic and rolled out of sight.

  “Oh well,” said Jack, turning to leave the bathroom. “Another one gone.”

  “Get down on the floor and look for it!” I yelled. “You knows what happens if you miss too many doses.”

  “I turn into roadkill,” said Jack. “Or so Hector says. But it’s a slow process.”

  “Not that slow.” With a theatrical sigh, I bent over to peer at the base of the sink cabinet. The things I do for my friends.

  “When something small drops onto the floor it disappears,” said Jack. “Surely you’ve noticed that, Bart.”

  “It’s Bert,” I muttered. He was always forgetting my name.

  “Looking for it makes things worse,” said Jack. “Elementary quantum mechanics. The observer effect. An electron doesn’t have a position until it’s observed. A dropped pill isn’t fully lost until you look for it. And then its wave function sidles away. Across the dimensions.”

  Bending down is easy, it’s straightening up that’s hard. I managed though, and I looked Jack in the eye, with my pulse pounding in my ears. “Across the dementia?”

  Jack laughed in my face. “Dimensions! I explained all this to you the other night, Bert. When we were sitting out on the porch watching the cars melt into the night. Did you forget? Or maybe you weren’t paying attention.”

  “Sure I was,” I lied. Jack was a retired professor with a droning voice that made him easy to ignore, like the hum from a bad amp. Plus my hearing is bad. Plus, I’d been busy counting cars. A retired accountant needs a hobby.

  “I’ll explain it again,” said Jack. “Pay attention this time.”

  We poured some Early Times and ensconced ourselves in side by side rockers on the cracked, flaking, concrete slab that served as a London Earl front porch. We could see other condos, dank weeds, vine-covered trees and good old Route 42 that ran from Louisville to Goshen and on to Cincinnati. It had a lot of traffic, now that the interstates were privatized.

  It was August, with the locusts shrilling. I always needed to remember that the steady sound wasn’t actually inside my head. August. The London Earl didn’t have air-conditioning, but thanks to the wandering poles, the Kentucky summer wasn’t all that hot anymore.

  Jack rolled us two cigarettes from his faithful pack of Bugler tobacco. Only rarely did he lose that. Bugler was illegal, of course, but Jack copped from Hector, paying him with frogs he caught in the London Earl’s green-skimmed pool. Fighting frogs. Hector was deep into the local frogfight scene. The handlers would glue locust thorns to the frogs’ heads and set them loose on one another, like murderous little unicorns. But I’m getting off the subject.

  Jack was still explaining how things disappear. He had his own way of explaining.

  “So there I was,” he said. “With a PhD in math, by the skin of my teeth, and no job. Luckily I got on at Knowledge College in Next Exit, Indiana. I’m sure you’ve heard of it.”

  “Who hasn’t?” I said, even though I hadn’t.

  “Taught there part-time for almost fifty years. Retired as Adjunct Emeritus. Did a lot of research along the way. At one point I teamed up with a physics prof, Chandler something-or-other; string theory dude. I did the math and he pulled the strings, so to speak. Chandler thought there were infinitely many alternate universes. We were hoping we could find one. Chandler figured that if we could, he could snag a Nobel Prize. Me, I was after a Golden Pi.”

  “What flavor is that?”

  “Greek. Golden Pi. The big math award. I’m sure you’ve heard of it.”

  “Who hasn’t?” I said, even though I hadn’t. “Roll me another.”

  Jack’s cigarettes were perfect; they had hospital corners. He fired up a strike-anywhere match; he kept a pocket full. I leaned over Jack’s match and took a deep hit of the harsh, calming tobacco smoke. Instant headache, instant calm. They used to give cigarettes to mental patients. But now bluegene was the thing.

  “We were ambitious in those days,” said Jack dreamily. “Now, not so much.”

  “So what happened to this Chandler?” I asked.

  “Well—I came up with a mathematical tool for simplifying his theories. A renormalization technique. It turned out there’s not infinitely many universes at all. They canc
el each other out. Like correction terms. And at the end there’s just two of them left. Ours—and a second one. It’s kind of an echo. We named it the alsoverse. And then Jack went down the tubes.”

  “He wasn’t happy?”

  “Didn’t like the alsoverse. Didn’t like losing all those endless worlds. He went into a depression, and then he didn’t show up for work one day. I had to cover his classes for a couple of weeks until they found a new physics teacher. A jerk. Didn’t want to work on alsoverse theory with me. So I moved onto other things. But I’d learned enough from Jack to know where the lost things go. They drop into the alsoverse.”

  “So it’s not my fault when I can’t find stuff,” I said. “I like that.”

  “Me too.” Jack rolled another cigarette. It was a beautiful evening, the old highway like a river of stars. “Although it is a problem to be losing my bluegene pill every night. It’s not like losing a contact lens or a wedding ring, something unessential.”

  “Scents?” said a familiar voice behind us. “Sensual essences? Karing Kate carries them all.”

  It was Darly, tapping her sample case. Amara was with her. They were sharing a popsicle. You got a pint of bourbon and seven popsicles in your weekly food pack. Jack and I had eaten our popsicles some days ago, or lost them, or let them melt. But Amara knew how to ration stuff.

  Kentucky gentlemen that we were, Jack and I offered up our rockers and flopped into a pair of metal lawn chairs that I’d bagged from one of the burnt-out condos that pocked the London Earl estates.

  “Jack dropped his bluegene pill on the floor and now it’s gone,” I told Darly. “That makes two nights in a row. Or four.”

  “Gone, gone, gone,” she said sympathetically. “No point in looking.”

  “Stuff just disappears,” agreed Amara. Hard to believe she’d been a singer. By now she had a thin, papery voice. “I know about that from when I toured with Waddy Peytona. Did you ever wonder why he talked so much between songs?”

  “Tell us, honey,” said Jack, rolling a pair of cigarettes for the women. It was like we were high-schoolers again. Being bad in the dark.

  “Waddy talked so much because he kept dropping his guitar picks,” said Amara. “He would have me on hands and knees looking for them while he ran his mouth. Never ever found one of course. I always had extras in my pocket so I could slip him one. But I took my time. I liked hearing his riffs. He was at his best when he had no idea what he was talking about.”

  “Should have been a professor,” I said.

  Jack pretended not to hear. His voice took on a Socratic tone. “Did you ever wonder where lost things go?”

  “When my grandmother lost something, she’d say that it flew up to the Moon,” Darly said. “I never believed that, though.”

  “Things have to go somewhere,” said Amara thoughtfully.

  “Exactly,” said Jack. He held up his finger, in full philosopher mode. “I was just explaining it to Bart here. Lost items pass through to an alsoverse, a parallel world that’s next to our own.”

  “Wow,” said Amara, polishing off her popsicle. “Don’t you love listening to Jack?”

  “Not particularly,” said Darly. “He’s a scientist. Wonder bunnies, I call them.”

  “I’ll take that as a compliment,” said Jack, expertly licking and sealing another tiny cigarette.

  “If you know where all this stuff is, let’s go get us some,” said Amara. “I’ll bet that old alsoworld is full of fucking flatpicks. Plus, I could use an adventure. This London Earl life is dragging my ass.”

  “You could afford to fill out a bit,” said Darly. “Karing Kate has a product that…” Amara glared at her. Darly changed her tack. “I’m tired of being cooped up, too. Plus, I’m missing an earring. A nice dangly one with little sticks of gold.”

  “I’m missing my new hearing aid,” I said. “Had the little bastard for about ten minutes, and then it snuck off. And I don’t qualify for a replacement for another year.”

  “Which means you’ll continue misunderstanding everything I say, Bart,” said Jack.

  “Bert,” I muttered.

  “One problem,” said Darly. “If we head off for this alsoverse—what about those teen vigilantes who shoot at us every time we venture off the London Earl grounds?”

  “Oh, they just do that for fun,” said Amara. “And they’re terrible shots.”

  Jack held up his philosophical finger again. “According to my long-lost physics friend Chandler, the alsoverse is infinitesimally close to us. We wouldn’t even have to step off the porch to go there. If we could find a dimensional crack. And it would help if we were smaller. Or more insubstantial. Most of the stuff that falls through is tiny. We’re solid and huge.”

  Darly glared at him.

  “Relatively speaking,” said Jack. “Compared to a bluegene pill. Or a flatpick. Or a hearing aid.”

  “Let’s use science,” said Amara. “Atomic science. We’re totally made out of atoms, right?”

  Jack nodded.

  “Then let’s just shrink our atoms! Then we’ll shrink all over.”

  “That’s stupid,” I said, trying to be helpful. “Atoms are already as small as they can get. How are you going to shrink them?”

  “Your atoms were smaller when you were a baby, mister smarty-pants. All we have to do is make them that small again.”

  That made sense until I thought about it. “Amara, that involves time travel and you don’t even wear a watch.”

  “Please!” shouted Jack. “Let’s stick to my diamond-hard logic. Facts. The fact is, shrinking stuff is hard to do. Shrinking people is even harder. Maybe even impossible.”

  Darly glared at him.

  “At least difficult.” He tipped Early Times into our glasses. “Science can take you only so far. Maybe we should just forget about the alsoverse.”

  Early Times is good for forgetting things. We sipped in silence while the crickets screamed. Amara was tapping one foot to their rhythm when she said, “Hey! Isn’t math science? And isn’t music made out of math? Well, music can shrink feet.”

  “Huh?” All three of us at once.

  “For real. Waddy’s banjo player was this Iranian dude. He had these enormous feet but he could make them smaller by holding his breath while he was playing ‘Drown the Puppy.’”

  “I hate that song,” said Darly. “It’s mean and mournful. Makes me feel like I’m a lonely nobody.”

  “That’s what bluegrass is all about,” said Amara proudly. “This guy used ‘Drown the Puppy’ to get his boots off when his feet were swollen, and they were swollen almost every night after the show. He’d sit on the edge of the stage, holding his breath and playing faster and faster and it was my job to pull his boots. He’d be turning blue by the time I got them off. They were snakeskin Tony Lamas.”

  “Hhhmmmm,” said Jack thoughtfully. “Tony Lamas run tight. And that trick sounds a little like Izzintit, the arcane mathematical exercise developed by the ancient Assyrians for use in their personal search for zero. Documented in cuneiform, and on the Rhind papyrus. It’s significant that the changes in ‘Drown the Puppy’ are in a diminishing chromatic scale. If it was played fast enough, and if we held our breaths long enough, well, maybe…”

  “I think it has to be in G,” said Amara.

  “Most people play it in G,” I said. “I happen to have ‘Drown the Puppy’ on my squidphone. Played by the bluegrass banjo master J. D. Crowe himself. And I have a speed-up app.”

  Jack looked doubtful. “Remember that size isn’t the whole problem,” he said. “We need a crack as well. A wrinkle in spacetime.”

  “You want wrinkles?” said Darly brightly. She tapped the side of her pink leather sample case. “Karing Kate has a prototype wrinkle cream. It’s experimental.”

  Jack looked even more doubtful. “Doesn’t wrinkle cream get rid of wrinkles?”

  “Not this one,” said Darly. “It’s made for making ‘em. It’s sort of like a reverse mortgage. It�
�s for girls who want to look all goth and jaded. If it gets approved, we’ll call it Worldly Woman.”

  So first we finished the whiskey. And then we held our collective breath while J. D. Crowe on my squidphone tore into “Drown the Puppy” like a bushhog into a rose garden. The frantic, lonesome music made me feel like nothing mattered. I was a lonely old man, fading away, forgettable and forgotten. And, holding my breath so long like this, I was feeling like I might pass out. Everything looked strange. I was dwindling.

  The Worldly Woman wrinkling cream came with an applicator that looked as big as a shovel by the time Darly had finished laying a stripe on the porch. The stripe folded in on itself, and now it was a milky river—or a canyon full of mist. Jack dove in. Still holding our breath, the rest of us followed, anxious to get some air, or die trying. Somewhere nearby a crow had begun to caw.

  I fell, but only what seemed like a few feet before I hit ass-first with a thump on a patch of dirt. I looked around, gasping great gulps of air. Darly and Amara were on either side of me, looking shocked. Jack was already on his feet, desperately going through his pockets.

  “Lost my Bugler!” he said. “Must have fallen out of my pocket as we passed through.”

  “Let’s hear it for Karing Kate, huh?” said Darly.

  We were in a field of bare clay studded with rocks the size of trash cans. The sky above was pale shade of yellow-orange, as if we were inside a gigantic birthday balloon. A few big birds circled high overhead.

  Jack was smiling in spite of the loss of his Bugler. His voice took on a celebratory tone. “We made it!” he said. “We’ve made history! We’re the first humans to pass from the universe to the alsoverse. “

  “Don’t be so sure,” said Darly. With both hands, she pointed toward the edge of the field where a gloomy man with a white goatee sat on one of the rocks. He was dressed like a Kentucky Colonel, in a gray cutaway frock coat and a string tie. He was rolling a cigarette from a pack of tobacco on his lap.

  “That’s my Bugler!” Jack hurried toward him and we followed. The man glanced up as we approached, and when Jack saw his face he stopped in his tracks.