Original Fiction: JACKED, Book One of The Origin Dime Chronicles, Episode 12
In this episode, Jack gets a lesson in Multiverse theory.
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“Ha ha ha ha!” The girl sat on an old chrome counter stool, laughing loudly.
From insanity or shock, he could not tell which; probably equal parts of both.
“You nearly blew my head off!” She said. “Come on, let’s eat.” The girl walked out into the main barn. A white, printed sack with a Burger Barn logo dangling over her shoulder. She had brought him dinner from his previous competition in the next town over.
Jack banged his head once, and skinned his shin getting out from under the bed, which made it seem remarkable that he had slid underneath it so recently without incident. He stood up, checking the bump on his head in a tin mirror over the tiny sink.
A calendar of what must have been a scandalously clad girl -in 1960- winked at him from the mirror’s corner. There was no blood.
“What the hell is wrong with you? Sneaking up on people like that!” Jack snarled, picking up the gun and placing it in a drawer in the desk beside the sink.
He walked to the back of the room and stepped into the tiny cubicle that held the toilet and relieved himself, washed his hands after waiting for the rust to clear in the tin sink, then followed the girl out into the barn.
She was sitting on the front seat from a 1969 Oldsmobile Cutlass that served as a sofa. A bare bulb in a table lamp on the floor near her feet lit a mischievous smile, wrapped around a double bacon cheeseburger that he knew was one of the best in the county. Second to his, of course.
He grabbed the sack near her feet and retrieved a wrapped burger and greasy paper packet of home cut fries from the bottom of it. He pulled up a short, mechanics “creeper” stool and sat down, facing the girl. She offered him a Styrofoam cup from a cardboard holder on the bench seat next to her.
“Here, you’re going to want this; that's a lot to swallow dry.” She smiled. She was gorgeous. He decided there was no point in trying to be mad at her, because, ever since that afternoon, something inside his head had been wishing for just this chance.
A short "Blaatt!" Sounded outside and Jack kicked over the lamp and raced to pull the string on the hanging lamp in the office, plunging the garage into darkness then peered out the window.
The source of the sound was a police siren. The Sheriff’s car rolled through the Mad Cow’s parking lot. The million-candle watt spotlight rotated across the lot, scanning for intruders.
“He must have heard your shot,” Madison whispered in Jack’s ear. An involuntary shiver ran down his spine as the girl pressed her cheek to his. They silently watched the Sheriff determine there was no one there, taking bites of burger and trying to sip root beer as quietly as possible.
“Crap!” Jack hissed. The Sheriff turned toward the barn. Jack tiptoed as quickly and quietly as possible to the big double doors he had driven the Rabbit through, and snapped the hasp closed on the inside, just in time.
The big door rattled, and the beam of a flashlight played along the pavement at the bottom of the door.
Jack and the girl laughed with relief as the footsteps moved away from the door. They heard the sheriff grunt as he waded through the tall grass along the side of the building. Jack imagined the maze of old mowers and miscellaneous machinery he would encounter.
“Sam Hill!” The sheriff yelled, busting his shin on any number of rusting metal objects that lined the area between the barn and the fence. It must have made him more determined, because after a minute, his light played through a small, dusty window on the side of the garage. It had a metal grate over it, which made his light cast a waffle pattern across the ceiling and floor as he pressed his face to the glass in an effort to pierce the darkness.
The danger was over almost as quick as it began and the sheriff’s car rolled away; spotlight switched off. They could hear his tires picking up speed as he headed out of town in the direction of his home in a double wide a mile outside of Clark City. Jack knew it well; he had mowed the Sheriff’s lawn one summer for extra cash.
Jack turned the overhead lamp back on and fumbled through some cardboard boxes, coming up with a new bulb for the lamp on the floor. He replaced the one he had shattered in his haste to remain hidden. They sat down with what was left of the fries.
“How’d you find me?” Jack asked.
The girl smiled, “Your friends sent me.”
Jack shook his cup and stabbed the straw in deeper for one more good gulp. “Friends? You mean Thing One and Thing Two and Phineas. Not sure I would call them friends. I did them a favor; that's all. It’s over now, doubt I’ll ever see them again.”
“Seriously?” The girl snorted, “You really think that’s it? You grab one nosher, take a single key, and it is lights out for the end of the universe. Everything is hunky dory?”
“Isn’t it?” Jack asked.
“No, wow, they did not tell you much, did they, Jack?” She popped the top off her foam cup and sucked on an ice cube.
“Well, that’s hardly fair; you know my name, what’s yours?” Jack asked, tossing his cup into the open sack sitting eight feet away.
The girl smiled and batted her eyelashes sarcastically, “Who, little ole me? Guess!” She laughed.
“Come on, you know my name, just tell me,” Jack said, then immediately regretted the whiny sound of his reply. “Okay, Karen?” The girl shook her head no. “Madison, Audrey, Sarah..." he guessed and the girl continued to shake her head.
“I’ll give you a clue, she finally said,” then motioned for him to lean close. “It’s Zoe.” She whispered in his ear, sending a shiver over him.
“Zo..." He choked on it the first time, “Zoe.” He said, “I like it. It suits you.”
She placed a finger on his lips. “It’s a secret,” Zoe said. “No one knows that’s my name.”
“Why not?” Jack was really starting to like this girl.
“No reason,” she laughed, “My name is actually Madison, but it was more fun making you guess.” She said, decidedly less flirty now that the game was over.
“No it’s not,” Jack believed her, but part of him wondered. “That was like my second guess. You’re lying. What is it really?”
“Madison Abigail Jessup,” she said, crossing her heart, “and hope to die.”
Jack got up and went to the window. It was still outside and would probably stay that way for a few hours, unless someone decided to do some more shooting.
“So, why did they send you?” He asked.
“I’m like you. I’m an Aedapt and I’m a refugee, too,” Madison explained. “Both my parents are noshers.”
“Wow, sorry.” Jack looked at his shoes. He did not know what to say.
“Why?” She smiled sadly. “You didn’t do it.”
“So, what else aren’t they telling me Madison?” Jack asked, propping his head in his hands. He put his elbows on his knees as he leaned towards her, listening.
“Well, first, you don’t even really know what you are, do you? I mean, I grew up in it. My parents are both Aedapts, which made them targets, especially my dad. He's a weapon's technology developer for the Imago Librarians.” Madison said.
“Imagoes? Are they like the Shadoes?” Jack asked.
“They're almost the exact opposite of Shadoes. They work to ensure as much invention as possible enters the time stream. A healthy dimension is one with many close parallels. It keeps them in balance,” Madison said.
“So, your parents were fighting the Shadoes too, and they got taken, kind of like POWs?” He studied the girl.
Madison looked up toward the ceiling for a moment, considering, “Yeah, I guess that’s right.”
“Tell me about soul surrogacy.” He moved his stool closer and sat up.
“Well, from what I know, the Shadoe Librarians were invented without souls, or some say they twisted their souls until they were so severely deformed they could no longer function as authors.”
Madison looked down and picked at the upholstery on the seat. “I think that last part makes the most sense to me.”
He was curious, the more he heard, the more there was to hear.
“Authors? What’s that?”
Madison smiled, “Like you, Jack, and me. Like, remember this afternoon when you imagined the guard to sleep. You were authoring a new parallel.”
“So, I “authored” a new parallel dimension when that guard went to sleep?”
“Well, it isn’t actually that simple. What you did was create an interval, sort of like a chord in music. It was a slightly different timeline than what would have been had you not intervened, but not a strong enough change to create an entirely new dimension. Each interval added to your dimension makes it stronger, resonates with it, in harmony, like a chord.”
Madison patted the seat next to her and Jack moved over and sat by her.
He was really getting into it now. He wanted to understand everything there was to know. “So, bigger changes create new dimensions?”
“Sometimes, it’s called divergence; it’s the point at which one timeline branches from another. If the change is sufficient, it creates an alternate reality. If it effects enough people, and they all agree to it,” Madison said.
“So, if the guard had died?” Jack suggested.
Madison smiled, “Maybe, but it really just depends. Sometimes we cannot even detect them to know. In some cases, the parallel is too close to isolate.”
He said, “Like two stations that are really close on the radio dial. Where it shifts between them, and neither is clear, is that it?”
“Yeah, that’s pretty close. So, you are an Aedapt. It means we can manipulate our own anatomical appearance somewhat and have authorship powers to change some things. Both skills will grow with use.” Madison looked concerned.
“But you have to be careful too. Aedapts can overextend themselves. They can be stuck in dimensions, or forms, especially in the beginning. They must have been pretty desperate to throw you into the mix today without any training or backup. Anything could have happened.”*
Is Jack falling for the wrong girl, or is Madison exactly what she seems, an ally in a fight for the universe? Stay tuned to find out!
Another fix, thank you!
you're welcome, glad you like it.