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  “Dahlink!” a voice quietly boomed some time in the afternoon, “How are you?”

  Noomi looked up from the section on the document on how to file accident reports that dealt with hazardous waste spills across dimensions to see an aging bottle-blond head peeking over her cubicle wall.

  “Been better,” Noomi told her.

  “Furst day blues?” the woman stated. “We all have dem.”

  “I graduated at the top of my class at the Alternaut Academy,” Noomi complained. “Top of my class. I was a better investigator than any Barry Butts or Bill Blatt! But, what did I get for all my effort? A yellow vest!”

  “Dahlink, dat’s terribul!” the woman oozed sympathy. “What –”

  Before she could get any further questions out, a voice from the end of the cubicles boomed, “INDIGO!”

  “Have a good day, dahlink,” the woman grinned and disappeared.

  A moment later, Xenia, slightly out of breath, appeared in the doorway of Noomi’s cubicle. “Uhh, Noomi, that woman,” Xenia asked, somewhat less chirpily than she had been, but making a game effort at it, “did you tell her anything?”

  “N…no…?” Noomi, confused, replied.

  “Good. Good. That’s alright, then,” Xenia said to herself.

  She started to leave the cubicle when Noomi asked, “Who was she?”

  Xenia turned back to face Noomi. “That was Indigo Haphazastance,” Xenia explained, “trolling the newbies, as usual. Indigo is a reporter for the Alternate Reality News Service. Bad news. Never talk to any of them – vipers. And, I mean that with all due respect. ARNS reporters are only happy when they can get somebody in trouble. Stay away from them. Of course, that’s not an order. It’s more like a piece of friendly advice from one colleague, who has decision-making power, although she doesn’t like to undermine democratic decision-making in the organization by exercising it, not in an arbitrary fashion, in any case, to another. A colleague who hasn’t been around for very long and would be wise to accept the counsel of somebody who has, but in a purely non-hierarchical way. Understand?”

  Noomi nodded. She hadn’t said anything wrong…right?

  Chapter Two:

  Noomi Rises to the Level of Her Incompetence

  The headboard was in a tizzy. “Ooh, she’s going to be so upset when we tell her.”

  “So, let’s not tell her,” the foot of the bed responded.

  “She should hear it from a friend.”

  “Friend? We’re bedroom furniture!”

  “Friendly bedroom furniture!”

  “Speak for yoursel – rise and shine, sleepyhead!”

  “Time to wake up and face the day!”

  “Five minutes, k?” Noomi asked.

  “You don’t want to be late for work.” the foot of the bed told her.

  “Especially not today!” the headboard added.

  Not catching the headboard’s implication, Noomi dragged herself out of bed and into the bathroom. She had only been living in her brother’s apartment for a week, and it was already a morning ritual.

  “Well, hello,” the mirror snarked at her. “Did our Princess leave her tiara at the Wash ‘N’ Wear Launderette?”

  “I don’t even know what that means,” Noomi responded, brushing her teeth with new and improved Dentadont 2300 (“Your complete home dental solutions system in a biodegradable tube!”).

  “Be sure to spend more time in the shower than you usually do,” the mirror nastily advised. “You want to be squeaky clean today.”

  “Why?” Noomi asked, knowing she was likely going to regret the answer.

  “Oh,” the mirror coyly told her. “You’ll see.” As she took her shower, Noomi wondered how anybody could make coyness sound so cold-hearted.

  “You’re back! You’re back! You’re back!” the stove shouted when she entered the kitchen. Noomi felt a pang of guilt: she had stayed late at the office reading documents, had eaten take-out from the Duke of Random pub and had crashed as soon as she had gotten home.

  “I told you I would be,” Noomi gently said, pouring syrup on her pancakes. Rationally, she felt that she shouldn’t owe her kitchen stove an apology, and yet…

  “I made your pancakes 27 per cent fluffier this morning,” the stove told her.

  “Why?” Noomi asked.

  “Oh…no reason…” the stove evasively answered.

  Noomi was starting to get suspicious of the motives of the smart furniture in her apartment, but the pancakes – pineapple and asparagus – were delicious, so she spent the rest of the time before leaving for work discussing the finer points of degreasing heating elements with the stove.

  * * *

  How Do You Blow Out 27 Dimensional Candles?

  by INDIGO HAPHAZASTANCE Alternate Reality News Service Transdimensional Traffic Writer

  We want their fusion reactor technology; they want our bendy straws. We want their uranium; they want our used EEGs and EKGs. We want their funny looking action figures with five glowing appendages, realistic blowhole action and colourful costumes; they want our brains. Transdimensional trade has never been better.

  And, on the 50th anniversary of its founding, we have the Transdimensional Authority (TA) to thank for that.

  “Oh, Tosh,” said TA Secretary-Specific Nicodemius Fitzhuge. “Without the Transdimensional Authority, there would still be trade between universes. It would be dominated by shadowy, quasi-criminal organizations that would cut off your snottswazzle just as soon as look at you. It would deal in products that could only be sold in the shadows of the alleyways behind the eyes of inmates in asylums for the awkward. It would be difficult to tax. But, it would exist.”

  Housed in a nondescript building in lovely, scenic Stittsville, a suburb of Ottawa, the Transdimensional Authority monitors all traffic between universes to ensure it is in compliance with the Treaty of Gehenna-Wentworth. Where violations are believed to occur, the TA sends its own investigators with full powers of interrogation and arrest. Part James Bond, part Professor John I.Q. Nerdelbaum Frink, Jr., Transdimensional Authority agents are true heroes.

  “Oh, now, you’re just being silly,” Secretary-Specific Fitzhuge demurred. “Mostly, we make sure the Gygaxian Brood Guild doesn’t flood the Castonguay System with pirated copies of Ghost Town, thereby destroying the market in Ricky Gervais artifacts. Sure, we sometimes have to investigate anomalies in interdimensional traffic. But, they don’t happen that often. That’s why we call them anomalies.”

  Security has been tight in the city of Toronto, which has been chosen to play host to the anniversary celebrations. “Oh, great,” Mayor Ryan Reynolds enthused. “Now Ottawa can screw us in 27 dimensions!”

  Not everybody was as thrilled with the Transdimensional Authority as Mayor Reynolds. One recent employee – who asked for anonymity because she didn’t want to be fired on her first day on the job – complained, “I graduated at the top of my class at the Alternaut Academy. Top of my class. I was a better investigator than any Bobbo Bruit or Brett Blurp! But, what did I get for all my effort? A yellow vest!”

  We’re not sure what that means, exactly, but her tone of voice suggested that it wasn’t good.

  “Oh, pi-shaw!” Secretary-Specific Fitzhuge scoffed. “Nobody likes their first day on the job. You have to memorize new passwords, pretend to like new people who are clearly idiots and spend hours just to find out where the coffeemaker is, because, lord knows, everybody in the office has better things to do with their time than to tell you where the coffeemaker is! Still, the Transdimensional Authority has a better first day suicide rate than the American Environmental Protection Agency, a record I am especially proud of!”

  According to historian Oliver Stone, the 50th anniversary of the Transdimensional Authority is “as improbable a success story as putting a man on the moon or making Larry the Cable Guy popular.”

  Canada developed the technology that allows people to travel between dimensions, Stone explained, and, despite the best efforts of suc
cessive governments and, let us not forget, the private corporations that owned patents on various aspects of the technology, to sell it to a foreign country, such a sale never happened. Thus, when Dimensional Warping™ technology opened up new frontiers in trade, Canada, much to everybody’s surprise, became an international powerhouse across dimensions.

  “Of course, everybody knows that the whole reason for developing Dimensional Warping™ technology was to look into other dimensions to determine who really killed President Kennedy,” Stone stated. “I mean – no, wait – what did I say? No. That was wrong. That would be paranoid of me, and I am a respectable historian. What I meant to say was…was… CONGRATULATIONS TO THE TRANSDIMENSIONAL AUTHORITY FOR ITS WONDERFUL ACHIEVEMENT!”

  “Oh, that Oliver Stone!” Secretary-Specific Fitzhuge stated. “He hasn’t written a great historical treatise since Wall Street, but we love that crazy paranoid bastard just the same!”

  What can we look forward to in the next 50 years of the Transdimensional Authority? Secretary-Specific Fitzhuge was cagy in answering this question, but he did, finally come out with: “You know how everybody said we couldn’t find a basis for trading with the seven-dimensional gas giants of Omicron Crumbly? And, it turned out that they were willing to give us fusion energy in return for David Bowie’s entire back catalogue? The future of the Transdimensional Authority is going to be just like that, only squishier!”

  * * *

  While she waited for her computer to boot up, Noomi placed her first piece of personalization in her cubicle: a fridge magnet with an image of an adorable kitten sitting on a toilet with the caption: “This, too, shall pass.” Oh, kittens, is there no limit to the power of your adorableness? Unfortunately, her cubicle was not made of metal, so she had to tape the fridge magnet to the wall above her monitor. Noomi had barely started reading a description of the forms that have to be filled out to authorize sick leave for Transdimensional Authority agents who had crossed the Reality Threshold when Xenia appeared in her doorway.

  “Noomi, sweetie,” Xenia chirped with an undercurrent of severe disapproval, “Your presence has been requested on the third floor.”

  Noomi gulped. “The third floor?”

  “You are to report to Alfredo Buttinsky in room 327,” Xenia told her. “Right away.”

  “But,” Noomi protested, “I’m only halfway through the file on Reality Threshold claims.”

  “The file will be here if you get back,” Xenia assured her.

  So, Noomi went to room 327.

  It was a small, impersonal office. Alfredo Buttinsky was the small, impersonal man sitting behind a small, impersonal desk. Over his crisp white shirt he wore the red vest of a Transdimensional Authority administrator. Somehow, he managed to make the corporate issue clothing seem small and impersonal. Buttinsky had such a serious look on his small, impersonal face that Noomi didn’t dare imagine him wearing ducky underwear under the table; she assumed it was standard crisp black pants. (Noomi found that imagining most people in their underwear was better at relieving her discomfort than imagining them naked because ewww!)

  “Roomi Napier,” Noomi said, sticking her head in the door. “I mean, Noomi Rapier. You wanted to see me?”

  “Ah, Napier,” Buttinsky said in a small, impersonal way. “Come in and have a seat.”

  Noomi sat in an uncomfortably small, impersonal chair opposite Buttinsky. She was surprised to find that a large and nicely personable man sat in the chair next to her. He was wearing the blue vest of a senior Transdimensional Authority investigative agent. It matched his eyes magnificently. Noomi knew that she should probably be concerned that a TA investigator was sitting in the room with her – she hadn’t done anything that required investigation…had she? – but…oooooooh, those eyes!

  Buttinsky looked for papers on his desk to shuffle because he had seen one too many movies where people in positions of authority shuffled papers on their desks in order to increase the discomfort of their underlings, and he had learned that shuffling papers on your desk really does increase the discomfort of underlings. Unfortunately, the Transdimensional Authority was a leader in the paperless office movement. After a few seconds, Buttinsky started randomly typing characters into his computer, hoping that the people sitting across the desk from him would notice. They did, of course, but neither felt in a position to comment.

  The tension in the room was so thick, you could cut it with a knife, place it on a fork and pop it into your mouth. Of course, raw tension doesn’t taste very good and can make you sick if you are a child, old, infirm or of Swedish ancestry; in any case, you’d look pretty silly cutting the air. I prefer to cook my tension. To give you a sense of what I’m talking about, here is one of my favourite tension recipes (taken from The Literary Metaphor Cookbook, by Irma Brokeback):

  TENSION BOUILLABAISSE

  Ingredients

  5 cups of tension from a moderately to highly tension-filled room

  3/4 lb. of fresh shrimp – peeled and deveined

  5 lb. of sea bass

  3/4 lb. of mussels – cleaned and debearded

  2 sliced onions

  2 sliced leeks

  1 cup of moral outrage

  3 tomatoes – peeled, seeded and chopped

  4 cloves of minced garlic

  1/2 cup freshly minted disgust

  1 sprig of fennel leaf

  1 sprig of fresh thyme

  1 bay leaf

  1 tsp. of orange zest

  3/4 cup of olive oil

  1 pinch of saffron threads

  5 cups of boiling water

  Instructions

  Add some oil to a large pan over medium flame. Sauté the onions, leeks, chopped tomatoes, garlic and moral outrage; cook for several minutes, letting veggies get tender. Then add fennel, thyme, bay leaf, orange zest and freshly minted disgust. Next, add the shellfish and the tension to boiling water and stir. Raise the heat for 3 minutes, then add the fish and reduce to medium, letting it cook approximately 12-15 minutes. Salt to taste. Feeds 20 people with small appetites, or four people with normal appetites. (But, in a room full of enough tension to make the dish in the first place, expect people to have small appetites.)

  “Naomi Rapier?” Buttinsky finally looked up and said.

  “Noomi?” Noomi gently corrected him.

  “I beg your pardon?”

  “My name is Noomi. It rhymes with…gloomy. Or…or, Gitchigoomie.”

  “Right,” Buttinsky responded, making a small, impersonal gesture with his left hand. “Needless to say, nobody was happy with the quote you gave the Alternate Reality News Service yesterday.”

  “The quote was anonymous,” Noomi pointed out. “How could anybody trace it back to me?”

  “How many people who graduated at the top of their class at the Alternaut Academy do you think we hired yesterday?” Buttinsky asked. In its own small, impersonal way, the question was actually quite sarcastic.

  “Erm,” Noomi responded. Out of the corner of her eye, she noticed the lips of the man sitting next to her curl ever so slightly upwards.

  “So, if you would be so kind as to hand me your vest…” Buttinsky demanded.

  “I…I’m being…divested?” Noomi asked in disbelief.

  “Please.”

  Noomi reluctantly took off her yellow vest. How reluctantly? It took her ten minutes just to undo the top button. Buttinsky pretended to check his Twitter feed while she was doing this; the man in the blue vest sitting next to her seemed indifferent to her plight.

  As she was working on the second button, Buttinsky impatiently said, “Okay, look. If it were up to me, we would have taken the vest off of you forcibly and had you thrown out of the building. You made the Transdimensional Authority look bad. Have you not read the Ten Demandments?”

  “Yes, sir, I have,” Noomi stopped fiddling with the middle button and responded.

  “You certainly didn’t act like it. So, to recap: Naomi talks out of turn, embarrasses service. Ordinarily, I
would take great pleasure in busting you to nothing. But, as it happens, you have friends in high places.”

  “I do?”

  “You do, indeed,” Buttinsky, chagrined, told her. “Your friend Barbara had a little chat with Secretary-Specific Fitzhuge, who had a little chat with Director Mentalbaum, who had a little chat with Chief of Operations Slough-Loerner – there were, in fact, ‘little chats’ 12 links down the chain of command, until I was finally given my own little chat. By little chat, I mean, of course, 20 minute lecture, in apoplectic – or, possibly, apocalyptic – I can never tell the difference – tones on the proper assignment of female graduates of the Alternaut Academy who were first in their class. So, it was suggested – loudly and most insistently – that I give you this.”

  Buttinsky opened a drawer in his desk and removed a green vest. Green! The colour of Transdimensional Authority junior investigators! Noomi removed her yellow vest and put the green vest on faster than the half-life of a charged pion!

  Ignoring the fact that Noomi was hugging the vest to her chest and rocking ever so slightly, Buttinsky continued, waving a hand at the man sitting in the chair next to her: “This is Transdimensional Authority Investigator Crash Chumley. You will be partnering with him until further notice.”

  Noomi turned to give her new partner a hug, saw the mildly disapproving look on his face and kept her arms to herself. For a man with such beautiful blue eyes, Investigator Chumley seemed to be rather…dour. Gloomy, really. Downright glum. With a touch of severity. But…oooooooh, those eyes!

  * * *

  In the first decade of the Transdimensional Authority’s existence, Multiverse travel on official business was wild and westerly. In the second decade of the Transdimensional Authority’s existence, the sheriff and the school marm moved in, and a set of rules governing TA agent behaviour slowly codified (which is not to say that it became a fan of food fish – the other definition of the word). This came to be known as the Ten Demandments. This name was chosen because the Ten Commandments had already been copyrighted by the estate of Cecil B. Demille and, in any case, the term could be considered blasphemous in this context. Why Demandments? Why go all Biblish on Transdimensional Authority employees? These days, with so much information promiscuously parading about like a Vixen in a Russ Meyer flick, you have to be emphatic just to get people’s attention.