The Edge Read online

  “And the other one?”

  “Her name is Luci, she's nice.”

  “Should I be jealous, now?”

  “I'll let you be the judge of that, you're going to meet her.”

  “When?”

  “In about ten minutes, it's time for the jump, now.”

  “Wait, I'm not ready for this...”

  It was too late, they made the jump.

  28.

  Dr. Andelucia Norgenstraad woke just before dawn, and rolled over. She looked at the giant lying next to her. A huge man, almost twice her height, and weighing over five times as much as her. Truly a monster, size-wise, but without any of the physiological problems that usually afflicted someone of his size. His torso was proportionately shorter than normal, making his huge arms seem even longer than they were. Other than the gigantism, and being oddly proportioned, he was not bad looking. Had he been of normal height, he would even have been called handsome.

  He was stirring, she moved away slightly, in case he rolled over. He opened his eyes and managed to focus on her, “Good Morning, Sweetie.”

  He was a monster, but he was her monster, and she loved him, “Good morning, William.”

  When William had first come to her world, had been injured, and brought to her, she was intrigued, and as she treated him, and got to know him, she found herself falling in love with him. When she told her parents that she was leaving with him, they were not happy. They had never approved of her decision to specialize in the treatment of giants, who they felt should be locked away, or humanely destroyed. Andelucia had never even been in love before, never being able to find an available man who she considered to be her intellectual equal. Her parents and friends had even expressed doubts about her sexual orientation. She was over thirty, had never even had a boyfriend, she wore her hair short, refused to wear makeup, and would usually fail to show up when her friends tried to set her up with someone. She explained that her work was the most important thing in her life, and she didn't have the time to try and make a relationship work.

  “He's a time traveler.” she had tried to explain, “how often does a women meet a man who can take her to places that no person has seen before? This has never happened before in our world, and may never happen again.”

  Her family would not give their approval, which she had never sought about any portion of her life, anyway. She was an adult and made her own decisions, and so as William's jump window approached, she made the decision to go with him. She had hoped that she would see them again someday, but the chance that she would not did not sway her.

  “You're up early,” William said, “Can't sleep?”

  “Bob says that Sally will arriving today, her first visit, I want to make sure I'm here for her, to show her around, and keep the Claras away from her.”

  “I know the Claras are bitches, but can't you try to get along with them when we're here?”

  “No, I really can't.”

  29.

  The sense of Deja-vu was the strongest Sally and William had ever felt. “I thought this wasn't a big jump,” Sally said, “Why is that feeling so strong this time?”

  “This is a nexus world,” explained Bob, “a timeline that follows a hypercomplex path through the Macroverse, and is one of the most commonly used routes to get from Universe A to Universe C.”

  “What about Universe B?” William interrupted.

  “Don't go there, now as I was saying, the nexus world is one of the most commonly used routes, and therefore, the one where you are most likely to meet alternate yous, that's what causes the Deja-vu this time, you will have been here before.”

  “We haven't been here.”

  “I said, you will have been, not have been.”

  “I'm very confused.” Sally said.

  “Yes, I know, you two should go to the cab now, I believe you need to fly the Winnebago North about twelve miles.”

  They went to the cab. They were hovering at an altitude of about three hundred meters. Below them, there was an expanse of fields and forests, dotted here and there with seemingly random clusters of mounds that seemed to be some sort of dwellings. Between the clusters, there were narrow, meandering roads, without a straight section in sight, William guessed that whatever people lived here, they were going to be different. As they flew north, they saw some flashing beacons in the distance, and Bob told William to follow a course between them, and as they went further, they saw in the middle of a large clearing, a large building that looked man made, surrounded by a parking lot. They landed in the middle of a circle of flashing lights, and a small man in an orange vest was directing them to pull forward, turn right, and follow an identical Winnebago that was in front of them. It was following another one, and so on. They followed as directed, they were in a vast parking lot filled with nothing but other copies and some varying styles of their own Winnebago, William estimated that there were at least a thousand of them.

  “One thousand two hundred and sixty-three as of this moment,” Bob said, “sometimes there are as many as three thousand, sometimes as few as four hundred, you happened to arrive on a pretty average day.”

  “I don't understand,” said Sally, “Everyone one of those Winnies has a William in it?”

  “Yes, for the most part, although some of them were given different names by their parents, William is the most common, Lionel Wellington Terwilliger III is the second most common.”

  “Are there other Sallys?” she asked.

  “Very few, there was only one world where William jumped to yours, it was an unusual alignment, one might call it spooky, a timeline with a fourteen-thousand-year loop, and several smaller loops. Any other Sallys here are from farther in your future, or their timelines diverged after William picked you up.”

  Sally continued, “And if there are so many of us here, and most or all of us are going to the edge of the Macroverse, won't we just be in a continuous line of Winnebagos heading to the edge?”

  Bob responded, “No, there are even more worlds at the edge than there are Williams and Winnebagos, there is no need for any edge world to be visited by more than one William. Other than on this world, cross encounters are rare.”

  Sally was trying to comprehend all of this when William interrupted.

  “So, what do we do now?” he asked.

  “We should park,” responded Bob, “right here.”

  William pulled into a vacant parking place, between two other Winnies, one of them identical to theirs, and one with a different color scheme.

  “Bob, what do we do here?” he asked Bob.

  “It's a shopping mall, William, you can go shopping, but first you'll need some local currency.”

  “I'd like to try shopping, I read about it when I was studying economics after your parents asked me about money, I knew very little about it, and it seemed important to them.”

  William said, “We could use the matter converter to make some gold, or something else to trade.”

  Bob responded, “No, that was tried in the past here, and anything that was given in trade, rapidly became devalued due to the huge influx of whatever it was being traded, gold is not worth a lot when there's a lot of it being produced. What this world can use, and you can provide, is medical care. The Mecha-Med is far more advanced than any other medical treatment available here. People come from all over this world to be healed, it's almost a religious thing, in exchange, you will receive credits to spend at the mall, the more you want to buy, the more patients you see, I would suggest starting with one major case, and then visiting the mall, and if you want to buy more, you can come back and see more patients, they will be arranged for you, But first, you should get out, meet your neighbors, and let Fluffy have an outing, most of the alternate Williams are not traveling with tigers, but there is a wooded area nearby he can visit.”

  Sally was concerned about letting Fluffy out in a place with so many other people, and possibly other copies of him, “Could he get confused with other Fluffies? Do we n
eed to mark him somehow? Would I even know the difference, if we got the wrong Fluffy back?” Sally asked.

  “Each Fluffy somehow knows which one of you to come back to, there is never any confusion.”

  They stepped outside, and were immediately greeted by another, slightly older William and a blonde woman who was, well, rather small, who said, “Hi, I'm Luci, I've met you before, but that was in one of your futures.”

  Sally was taken aback, not only was this woman smaller than any adult Sally had ever met, almost as small as Annie, she claimed that she already knew Sally. While Sally understood this in theory, she was still thrown off by it, and the only thing she could think of to say was, “You're really short...are you a dwarf? I read about dwarfism in medical books in William's library.”

  Luci seemed a somewhat offended, “Actually, I'm slightly taller than average height in my world. To me people from all these other worlds, even William, who I really love, are freakishly large, anyway, I'd like to go shopping with you, when you're ready.”

  “I'm sorry if I offended you, I haven't met many people who weren't from my world. I don't really understand shopping.”

  “Did you ever trade beads or things with other clans?”

  “Sometimes, beads, fish, pretty rocks or furs.”

  “Same thing, only bigger, with a lot more choices.”

  “That sounds like fun.” said Sally, but she really wasn't sure, there were only about sixty people in her clan, and she had never been around more than a hundred and fifty, or so, she wasn't sure what it was going to be like, being around a thousand or more people, especially when many of them would be identical or nearly identical to the man she loved.

  William wasn't paying any attention, he was engrossed in conversation with another William, discussing technical issues. Neither one of the Williams seemed the least bit disturbed with seeing their alternate selves, and talked like longtime colleagues. William hadn't told her that he had already met some alternate selves when he initially punched holes into other worlds and was creating the network that became Bob.

  Meanwhile, Bob had made the arrangements for the treatment of a patient who had been paralyzed in a fall. A couple Medtechs brought the patient. William and Sally took them inside. They looked odd, not quite human, but there was something familiar looking about them. Sally did notice that while their faces were hairless, the rest of their bodies were covered with short soft fur. The techs went right to the Mecha-Med and put the patient in. William was about to tell them how to use it, when Sally stopped him, “William, they do this all day, I think they know how to operate it.”

  One of the techs smiled at her, “There are a few variations, Mrs. Terwilliger, but we're trained in all of them.”

  Sally was surprised by the “Mrs. Terwilliger”, “Oh, we're not married... yet.”

  “That's of no concern to us, Mrs. T, we're not here to judge you, or what you do here.”

  “What do you mean, 'What I do here?'”

  He stopped and looked at her, “This is your first time here, isn't it?”

  “It is, what do I do here?”

  “You'll find out.”

  William asked, “What do you mean by that.”

  “Ask some of your other selves, it's not my job to tell you your future.” he refused to talk to them after that, finished up with the patient, handed Sally a plastic card, and left without another word.

  “I wonder what that was all about.” said Sally.

  “I'm sure will find out soon enough, Bob, any idea?”

  Bob responded coolly, “I cannot explain it as well as other humans can, Sally, I suggest that you talk to Luci, and William, you should talk to other Williams.”

  “Can't you just tell us?” Sally asked.

  “It deals with aspects of human behavior that I do not fully understand, you really need to talk to other humans about it.”

  Luci was just outside, and had overheard part of the conversation, “Sally, why don't we go shopping, I can explain.”

  “I guess, I'm just not sure I can deal with seeing a lot of Williams.”

  “Don't worry about it.”

  Sally kissed William, who had decided not to go, and she and Luci walked toward the mall entrance.

  “The tech doesn't know you,” Luci said, “there aren't very many Sallys that pass through here. He assumes that you're like most of the other women that come here with William.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “In your world, most people are monogamous, right?”

  “In my village, and nearby villages anyway, I don't know about other people farther away, although we heard stories. My people believe that the gods want it that way, a man and a woman united for life. I just believe it's the best way to do things, especially for the children. Why?”

  “In the worlds that most of the Williams come from, and where most of the wives are from, that's not the case, people are more promiscuous.”

  “Luci, what are you talking about?”

  “There's more than just shopping here. Every night, there's a party.”

  “I've never been to a party, just a picnic. Is it like that? Is it fun?”

  “You wouldn't like this party, it's a big sex party, all the different Williams, and all the different women, all doing it with each other, regardless of which William or which woman it is.”

  “An orgy?”

  “Exactly.”

  “And you go to them?”

  Luci stopped, and turned to Sally, she was starting to cry, “In the world I come from, monogamy is also the rule. Our Williams are the same, while they had other women before us, they never cheated, they would never go to an orgy. The first time I was here, I was curious, William wasn't interested, so while he was working in the lab, I told him I was going shopping, and I went to the party. I convinced myself that it wasn't cheating, because it was still William I'd be doing it with, and I thought if one William was good, then a bunch would be better.”

  “And what happened?”

  “There were more Williams than there were women, a lot of the Williams here are single, and they're all horny. I lost track of how many Williams I did it with before I realized that these Williams were different from mine.”

  “Different, how?”

  “How do you feel when your William touches you, when he makes love to you?”

  Sally thought for a minute, “Like I am the only thing that exists for him at that moment, that every bit of that incredible brain of his, that brain that's usually occupied with particles, and equations and fractal structures is, for that moment, thinking about nothing in the universe except me, that nothing else, no matter how important it was an hour or two hours before, matters. Only I exist for him, the rest of the universe could collapse, and he wouldn't notice, as long as I was with him.”

  “That's because he really loves you. My William makes me feel the same way, though you expressed the way he makes me feel far better than I ever could. And that's the difference between our Williams, and the others. Those Williams didn't love me, they didn't care. I was a novelty, a sex toy to them, 'the midget', that's what I was. It made me feel so dirty and used. I didn't tell William what I had done, but he knew, he could tell. I cried as he held me for the rest of that night, I had hurt him deeply, and he held me and forgave me, and we've never spoken of it.”

  Sally hugged her, and they cried together.

  “Promise me,” Luci said, “Promise me that you will never go to that party.”

  “I promise. William's father invited us to an orgy in cyberspace before I knew what one was, William turned him down.”

  “He did that in our timeline, too, the old pervert thinks that because it's virtual, it’s alright, and he's got William's mother convinced of that, too.”

  “So the Medtech thinks we all go to those parties; he thinks I'll go.”

  “Yes, the people of this world disapprove, but they put up with it because we heal them. They resent us and some of them
hate us.”

  Luci's story made Sally even more worried about meeting a lot of other Williams, but as it turned out, meeting other Williams was not much of a problem, her William, along with the vast majority of the others, preferred not to go into the mall.

  Although Sally had never been in a store of any kind, she had seen them in some of William's old movies, which she had watched in order to gain more insight into William's world. There were hundreds of people in the mall, but they were mostly copies of about a dozen different women at varying ages, who tended to be grouped by age. She couldn't help staring at one group that comprised copies of one woman, all the copies were in their early thirties to early forties. They all wore so much make-up that Sally wondered if they were clowns (She had looked up clowns after the non-encounter with clown Larry).

  “What are you thtarin' at, cavebitch?” one of them said.

  Luci pulled Sally away, “Those are Claras, the worst of the wives, just ignore them. Their Williams tend to drink a lot, but I don't know if he married her because he was drunk, or if he drinks because he married her.”

  “Maybe both,” said Sally, “Why do they hate me.”

  “They're jealous of you.”

  “Why, they have their own Williams, what's to be jealous of?”

  Luci guided her to a bench in a quiet part of the mall, “Sally, did Bob tell you how unusual you are?”

  “He said that William only met me in one world.”

  “There's more to it than that, you are by far the most intelligent of us.”

  “You seem pretty intelligent.”

  “In my world, I was the head of orthopedic surgery at a major hospital, I'm one of my world's most respected authorities on the orthopedic problems of giants, that's people your size, so yes, I'm fairly intelligent. You however, have gone from a Paleolithic life, to understanding particle physics and parallel universes almost as well as William in what, six months? Sally, nobody in my world, or William's or any other known world could do that.”

  “I don't understand parallel universes, really.”