The Universes Inside the Lighthouse Read online

  Dr. Waldo laughed. “Oh! Finagle! What a lovely word. Finagle! Finagle! It’s a word that uses so many parts of the mouth, leaves no one out! Finagle! It should be an animal, really. Like an eagle, but more delicate. If I discover a flying creature that is not yet named, I shall call it a finagle. Hee hee!” Dr. Waldo danced a small jig of delight.

  “But forgive me, friends!” he declared. “You’re here now, we have no trails to follow, no one is leaving just yet! Last time you were here, we had to push you out the door before you could see a thing, that won’t do, not good at all. A proper introduction to the Hub, then! I’ve been remiss, just standing here, let’s have a look around, shall we? Ben saw a bit of the place already, but not all of it. Yes, the Grand Hub Tour, let’s go!”

  When was Ben here, and for how long? Emma wondered. Knowing he and Eve had spent time together, alone, was not reassuring to her at all. Maybe there was a way they could all travel the universes … without Eve?

  “Well, then, where to begin,” said Dr. Waldo, leading the way as they walked. “I’m the Hub’s Primary Spotkeeper, you see, official title, one of many. We have quite a variety of scientists here from our planet, Lero, that’s the name of our home planet, yes, working on numerous projects. Some are based here; some commute from home for work.”

  “They commute?” asked Charlie. “Like, on a bus? A subway?”

  “On the elevator, obviously,” said Emma, though however obvious it might be, it seemed impossible. “They just come for the day?”

  “Why yes, it’s as simple as commuting work is for anyone else,” said Dr. Waldo. “We haven’t yet figured out how our scientists can telecommute, as you call it, but we are working on it, we’ll figure it out! We’ll finagle a way! Yes, we will finagle a way!” He chuckled at himself and wiggled his hips a bit, a smaller, more contained version of his earlier dance, then deliberately regained professional composure. “Yes! Commuters, in the office for a few hours a day, sometimes for a few days. ‘Days,’ of course, being a subjective term. Time is so very tricky. How even to describe or define it? Still, we manage, we do, we’ve got it down to a science you could say, yes, down to a science!”

  “Are you the lighthouse keeper, too, then?” asked Emma. “I’d think with so much activity going on in the closet, surely someone would notice?”

  “Oh my, no,” said Dr. Waldo. “That’s the groundskeeper, he’s a good friend, he’s from Lero too, yes, we put together a resumé for him, got him the job here years ago, good man, no one really bothered to check his references, thank goodness. But no need, the storage room, as you call it, it’s sound proof. When the door is closed, it fully seals itself, fills in all the molecules. No light or sound escapes from within. My, wouldn’t that make a mess when traveling between universes, if molecules could leak out the door!” He tittered at the image and waved his hands in the air. “Bits and pieces of us all, scattered throughout the universes! No, better designed than that, better designed indeed, we can be quite thankful, to be sure!”

  “Your planet, it’s named Lero?” said Emma. She turned to Eve. “That’s where you’re from, too?”

  Eve nodded. “Lero is home,” she said.

  “If the scientists can commute here, is that what you’re doing too? Are you still living on Lero, sleeping there at night, searching for Vik during the day?” Emma asked.

  Eve shook her head. “No. Our schedule is so crazy. We’ve mostly been sleeping in the Hub, in the cabins out back.” She gestured vaguely at the distance off to her left. “But whenever one of the scientists gets a hit on Vik, we go. It’s easier if we’re here. Otherwise they’d have to come get us on Lero. Like Dr. Waldo said, we haven’t figured out telecommuting yet, nor have we figured out how to make long distance calls from here to home.” Emma and Charlie had debated bringing their phones with them—they felt somewhat naked without them—but had realized the futility of the idea. Strange that something so ubiquitous as a cell phone could be so useless outside the small confines of their own planet.

  “Right she is,” said Dr. Waldo, “quite right! Cell phones within one universe, well, that’s just a matter of getting the signal to go the distance, you see, or folding the distance, one or the other; regardless, it’s all together, isn’t it? But jumping between universes, well, we haven’t figured that one out just yet. Give it time, give me time! We shall conquer interuniverse communications, you will see!”

  “Is the Hub here just to help you find Vik?” Charlie asked. “You guys must really want to find him.”

  “No, not at all,” said Dr. Waldo. “The Hub is here because the Hub is here. We are here because we want to study the Hub and the universes. Milo and Eve are here because we need to find Vik. We are, as you people like to say, multitasking.” He wiggled his eyebrows.

  “You’re determined,” said Emma to Eve. “It doesn’t sound like you have much to go on, but here you are.”

  “No, I suppose it doesn’t,” said Eve, but she offered nothing else. There was more to the story, Emma realized, but she had no clue what that could be.

  “So, let’s talk about that elephant, then,” said Charlie. The elephant they’d seen on their first visit was still there, off in the general direction in which Eve had indicated the cabins were to be found. “What’s up with the elephant?”

  Dr. Waldo stammered a bit. “Well, yes, of course, not real science I suppose, but who’s to say what is real science? There is more to the natural world than any of us realizes. When I first got here and learned I could manifest anything, I, well, I’d seen a show that day, an Earth show about elephants, and I suppose I just thought about it so much, didn’t really know how the power of intention worked just yet, all the forces came together and there, you see, next thing I knew, there was an elephant in the room. A real one, that was. Not this flat drawing, but a real elephant. As you might imagine, we quickly learned that a science lab, large as ours might be, is no place for an elephant. Not the least of it was cleaning up after it.” He shuddered at the memory. “So I un-imagined that one. But I am a fan of your idioms, you see, just as you say, the elephant in the room, I liked the idea of it, so I intentioned this one into existence.” He looked fondly over at the giant two-dimensional creature. “I’ve named him Rupert. Mostly he grazes. He might be lonely. I wonder. I don’t know for sure. One gets lonely when one is just one. I didn’t know much about elephants when I created him, which is part of why I created him as a two-dimensional drawing rather than a live being. It seemed wrong to bring a creature here without really knowing much about its needs or thoughts or wishes. Rupert is flat, of course, but who’s to say a flat elephant doesn’t wish for company as much as a real one? Maybe I should make a companion for Rupert.” His cheery mood had turned quite introspective. “Creating this space is quite a responsibility, ladies and gentlemen,” he said. “It is not something to be taken lightly. Everything we do has an effect somewhere else. We may never see it or know it, but our actions have consequences. Always.”

  “The butterfly effect,” said Emma. Seeing Eve’s look of confusion, she added, “It’s a saying we have. The idea that a butterfly flapping its wings somewhere might somehow cause a tornado on the other side of the world, just from one thing leading to another, I guess. I’m not sure exactly how it happens, but that’s the saying.”

  Eve nodded her understanding.

  “The butterfly effect!” repeated Dr. Waldo. “I do love your sayings. Yes, that is exactly it. The butterfly effect!”

  The Hub—inside or outside, whatever it was—was just the right temperature, sunny but not too hot, only a few small puffy clouds high in the sky, with a gentle breeze blowing through every now and then, enough to tickle the skin but not so much as to disturb the lab notes sitting loose on the tables. The cheerful chirps of a variety of birds could be heard in a chorus, not too loud nor too quiet, and the sound of a river or maybe even a waterfall soothed from somewhere in the distance.

  “Dr. Waldo,” said Emma, “I hear bird
s but I don’t see any. Are they hiding somewhere?”

  “Clever! You are clever, young lady! No, well, I do like birds, of course, of course, nature is beautiful, is it not, but you see, when I designed an outdoor science lab, outdoors because I do like a good breath of fresh air, keeps the mind alert, but naturally it just wouldn’t do to have birds defecating on my science, now would it? There are no birds here, just the birds’ songs. You hear them but don’t see them because they are only here to be heard, not seen. Brilliant! Everything is possible! Not that I don’t like birds, let’s be clear; they just don’t mix with computers.”

  Dr. Waldo continued. “Now, let’s explore my world here a bit, shall we?” Like a giddy child, he led them quickly toward another area of the Hub. They left the tidy grassy area on which the laboratory was set up (which led Emma to wonder: was the storage room inside the laboratory? Was the laboratory inside the storage room? Her mind could not quite grasp the idea), and walked across a small field of wildflowers, a fragrant blaze of magenta and rose and yellow and periwinkle in a bed of emerald green. Ahead of them loomed a large building which seemed to shimmer between visible and invisible. When it was visible, a large sign over the front could be seen: “Experimental Building.”

  Dr. Waldo seemed a bit sheepish but nonetheless animated. “When I was creating this building, I had the idea of an invisible building, but I couldn’t quite decide how that would work. This was the result—wavering thoughts, wavering building. I’ve since learned more about how to direct the creation intention, but I suppose I enjoy watching the building go in and out of existence like that, reminds me we’re all just temporary, you know, could disappear at any time. Don’t worry, once we’re inside it’s all solid as can be, you won’t notice a thing, it’s just like this from the outside.”

  As they climbed the grand staircase to the oversized double-doored entry, the steps beneath them fluctuated in and out of visibility. When the steps were invisible, it seemed they were walking on air. Emma wished the stairs would stay invisible longer so she could savor the feeling that she was floating. Maybe one day, she thought, she’d have the chance to imagine a building of her own into existence here in the Hub. Would they allow that?

  She paused. Would they allow that? The question itself implied something much greater. Once they found Vik, then what? Would they close off the Hub to Emma and Charlie forever?

  “Is this all a secret?” she asked. “The Hub, is it a secret? Are we not supposed to know about it? Are we not supposed to be here?”

  “Well, young lady, that’s an interesting question, isn’t it? The answer, my dear, is that I can’t really say. We don’t know. At any rate, it is not for we, the citizens of Lero, to decide. It’s up to the universes. The universes reveal secrets in their own time, their own way. Sometimes it’s a matter of whether people are ready to see it. There’s a room in this building, for example, that you can only see if you’re ready to see it. Otherwise you wouldn’t know it even exists.”

  “What room is that?” asked Ben, voicing the thoughts of all the others. “What does it do? What’s in it?”

  To no one’s surprise, Dr. Waldo didn’t answer.

  Instead, he led them through the front of the building to the interior. Just as he’d promised, once they were inside, the building ceased its hide-and-seek, and remained visible.

  “This way!” he said, trotting down the wide, tiled hallway to the left. He stopped at the third door down on the right. With a mighty pleased look on his face, he said, “Welcome to the Secret Garden!”

  Emma raised one eyebrow. “If you’re telling us about it, it’s not much of a secret is it? Not to mention the sign.” She pointed over the door, where “The Secret Garden” was written in romantic, flowery script.

  “Not that kind of secret,” he said. With great flourish, he opened the door. Spread out before them, through the doorway, was a vast garden … outside.

  “Outside?” said Charlie. “I’m confused. This is a door inside a building. How is the garden outside? Do these doors just lead to the outside again? This isn’t a room. This is … outside.”

  “So you’re saying we’re outside, then?” Dr. Waldo asked gleefully. “Yes! Yes, you’re correct! In the Experimental Building, in the Hub itself, everything is possible. A door doesn’t have to lead to a room. It can just lead to another place. Here, the place is my Secret Garden. This is where secrets grow!” He leaned down to caress a fern-like plant. “One of the first secrets I planted here. It’s doing well.”

  Emma thought she saw a brief shadow cross over the scientist’s normally happy features. “You … plant secrets here?” she asked, looking around the garden. It was enormous, with hundreds if not thousands of plants. Did Dr. Waldo have that many secrets? How could one person possibly survive with so many secrets inside him?

  Dr. Waldo shook his head. “Oh, no, no, these aren’t all mine. Most of them just popped up on their own. I think the universes use this room too, unbeknownst to me, but with my blessing. The more the merrier! Plants just appear. The universes’ magical and myriad secrets. They grow here. Sometimes when we make a discovery, I’ll notice that a plant will disappear. Coincidence? I’m not sure. It’s all a mystery. I created this garden to plant my one great secret, and a few others after that, but as you can see, the universes are quite full of secrets of their own.” He turned to Eve. “Your father planted a secret here, once, did you know that?”

  A cloud came over Eve’s face and her lips pinched ever so slightly. “I didn’t know that.”

  Emma got the feeling that Eve might know what the secret was. Looking around the room, she pondered all the secrets of all the worlds. Surely this garden, massive as it was, couldn’t contain all of them. Were these the secrets of all the scientists? The secrets of people on Lero?

  It seemed it would remain a mystery.

  “How do you plant secrets, Dr. Waldo?” Emma asked.

  “Good question, good question,” he said. He pointed to the right, to a row of miniature houses. “Fairy houses, you might call them,” he said. “You tell a fairy house your secret, and you wait. The fairy house decides what kind of plant your secret will be. The plant appears in a pot in front of the fairy house. Then you go over there—” he pointed at a shed Emma had not noticed before “—and get yourself a shovel, find a good place for the secret, and you plant it.”

  “You have to plant it yourself? It doesn’t just … appear somewhere in the garden?” asked Charlie.

  Dr. Waldo looked at Charlie, waggled his index finger in the air. “Keeping secrets takes work sometimes, you know.”

  He then walked back to the door back to the hallway. From the garden side, the door was just a door within a frame, unencumbered by surrounding walls, ceiling, or anything else, much like the door from the storage room to the Hub itself. A strange sight, thought Emma, but she suspected it would not be the strangest thing she saw today.

  “Where to next?” asked Ben, his eyes wide as he took in the field. “This is fantastic!”

  “I’ll take you where I go to think,” said Dr. Waldo. “But you’ll have to stay with me. It’s a room designed just for me, really.” It was becoming clear to Emma that Dr. Waldo’s Experimental Building was a place he went to exercise his creativity and indulge his sense of humor. While he was proud of his accomplishments, he may have been just a bit embarrassed by the seeming folly of the way he’d spent some of his time.

  “Unlike the commuters,” he said, as though he were reading Emma’s thoughts, “I live here. I’ve lived here a long time. In my free time, well, I like to play. In a place where everything is possible, it is difficult not to test the limits sometimes.”

  “You said that before,” said Charlie. “What do you mean, ‘everything is possible’? How is that possible?”

  “We’re not entirely sure, Charlie, but what we believe is that the Hub is a combination of all the universes—it is within all the universes, separate from all of them, yet a part of all o
f them. In different universes, different things are possible. Here at the convergence of all possible points, when you combine all the possibilities of all the infinite universes, well, suddenly everything is possible. It’s just a matter of learning how to work within the possibilities. The limitations are ours, not the Hub’s.”

  They continued down the long hallway (impossibly long, thought Emma, based on the exterior size of the building), passing multiple rooms on the way, each with an intriguing name carved or written on a plaque over the door. “The Passage of Time.” “Key to My Heart.” “Cloud Nine.” “Square One.” “Out on a Limb.” “Blessing in Disguise.” “The Funny Farm.” “Musical Chairs.” “In a Nutshell.” The names captivated Emma’s imagination, and she wanted to peek into each as they passed, but none of these was Dr. Waldo’s destination. At one point they passed a room where the door had been blown out. “Never mind that,” said Dr. Waldo dismissively as they walked by, never losing the glimmer of exhilaration in his eyes. “I was experimenting in there with a loose cannon, yes, didn’t quite get it right just yet. Not quite yet.” Finally he stopped. “Here we are,” he said with a sigh of contentment.

  The script over this door was brief: “Thought.”

  “I wonder what we’ll find today?” he said enigmatically. Opening the door, he skipped inside.

  It was impossible to see much beyond the entrance, as everything past five feet inside the door was blocked by a hedge of boxwood, taller by far than Dr. Waldo or any of the others.

  Dr. Waldo smiled at the look of confusion on the teens’ faces. “It’s a maze,” he explained, as though it were the most obvious thing in the world. “I come here to literally get Lost in Thought. Stay with me,” he warned. He gently caressed the green wall in front of him; it looked tidy and compact, as though it had just been trimmed. “Some days I follow the left side, and some days I follow the right side,” he said, keeping his left hand extended to the hedge, his fingertips reading the small, glossy leaves like braille, as he walked along the path between hedges.