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everyone's lost their souls.
I feel in my shirt pocket, pull out the heavy prism that Alvin
Laurel brought me. Which Alvin Laurel was it? I wonder. I've slipped across
again, I'm not in the same place. I've gone up or down a step. It seems not
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every Alvin Laurel is aware of his connection to me.
When the Muni train reaches downtown I transfer to BART and ride it through
the tube to Berkeley. The Berkeley station is unfamiliar ---
it's up two blocks further than it should be! --- and I have a sick feeling as
I make my way up Hearst Avenue. The sidewalks are wider, newer, like they and
the street have been recently rebuilt. The apartment is where it should be,
but I get an unearthly chill as I read the street sign. It's no longer Euclid
Avenue, it's called Escher
Street. The apartment building is now called The Escher. I climb the steps and
push the button to ring my apartment, and pray Tom is home.
There's a buzz and I push the door open, pass through into unfamiliar black
and white marble tile and a sharp, new checkered carpet. The banister is no
longer wood --- it's polished stone!
When I reach my apartment I knock on the door, and Tom answers.
"Hey!" he says. "What are you doing here?"
"I was released."
"Where's your clothes?"
"I don't know."
He backs away and lets me enter, grinning. "The doctor released you?"
"I released myself."
"That's what I thought."
"Tom, you have to listen to me. I have to show you something." I
hand him the prism. "Look through that and tell me what you see."
He puts it up to his eye and looks at a light. "A rainbow."
"What else?"
"About five thousand little light bulbs."
I sigh. Yet another disappointment --- Tom can't see it, he hasn't acquired
the perception. "Never mind that," I tell him, and then walk into my room.
Everything is rearranged, which is about what I expected, but I search around
and, yes, there it is. The four-dimensional cube.
When I look at it, now, I can see the extra straws and it leads my eyes into
the extra dimension. I turn on a bright desk lamp and hold it underneath. The
shadow is intricate and clearly shows the extra straws.
"See that?" I ask him.
Tom stares down at that. "That's strange," he says, curious. He takes the cube
from me and looks through it, then puts it back under the light. It puzzles
him. "Why the extra shadows?"
"Tom, it's a four-dimensional cube."
"Oh no, not this again."
"Tom, listen to me. I'm not crazy. My whacked-out memory is true, I
am remembering realities other than the one you're used to." I tell him the
whole story, omitting romantic details, and lead up to Alvin showing
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t up at the hospital and giving me the prism. He listens without interrupting,
all the while studying the cube, the shadow, and the cube again. When I finish
he hands me the cube and sighs.
"I need a beer." Turning, he leaves my room.
A bit miffed, I follow him to the kitchen. Wordlessly he hands me a beer,
which I accept without a thought, and both he and I open bottles and take a
long, ritualistic swallow. "Well," Tom finally says, "the government is
working on some top secret project up near the cyclotron building. They've got
some of the top physicists in the country up there, not to mention a few
theoretical mathematicians who're pretty well known for some exotic ideas. The
least of which is your friend
Alvin Laurel."
"You believe me, then?"
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"I half-believe you." He shrugs. "It's the best I can do at the moment."
"That's better than nothing."
"I think the best thing to do at this point is go find Alvin
Laurel. Why don't you get changed and I'll make a few phone calls."
Feeling some hope, I head back toward my room.
7. COMEDY
Later, Tom and I are walking across the Berkeley campus to meet with Alvin
Laurel when Tom reaches into his pocket, pulls out a coin, and then drops it.
He turns quickly around, bends down, and picks it up.
He puts it back into his pocket and we resume walking.
"What was that all about?" I ask him.
"A little trick I learned," he says. "Keep walking and don't look back. Try to
act natural."
"Why? What's going on?"
"At least two men are following us."
I damn near turn around and look. It's a strong impulse, but I
fight it off and continue without breaking my stride. "What do we do?"
"We can't do much. Let's take a little detour around the library to make
sure." Altering our course slightly, Tom and I walk around Moffitt library,
and according to Tom, two guys dressed in suits walk all the way around it
with us. "It seems like they want us to know we're being followed. They stick
out like a white man in Zimbabwe."
I steal a glance behind us. Sure enough, two men dressed in black slacks,
white shirts, black suit jackets and black ties are walking behind us wearing
mirrored sunglasses. "They look like the Blues
Brothers," I tell Tom.
"Who are they?"
"Never mind." We continue on through Sproul Plaza and across
Bancroft Street, heading for the sub shop where we're supposed to meet
Alvin. As we near the place, two more guys in black suits step out in front of
us and block our way. The two who were behind us come running up from behind.
"Fascists!" Tom yells at the top of his lungs. "Fascists!
Fascists!"
Some of the students milling around across the street stand up, staring out
way. One points and yells out, "Fascists!" He comes running, followed by
others. "Fascists!" they yell. "Fascists!"
Tom keeps them going by starting a chant as the four men surround us. Within
seconds the four men are totally outnumbered, as we're surrounded by a
constantly growing crowd of students chanting "Fascists!
Fascists! Fascists!" I hear one of the men exclaim, "Damn kids!" as they [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]