Free The Broken Universe by Paul Melko Page B

built.
    Henry-7651 said, after the car ride from the quarry site to the factory, “You should locate the factory at the quarry. It’ll make the transportation issue easy.”
    “Yeah,” said Henry-7650. “No need for transport if we’re all located atop one another.”
    “Atop?” John asked.
    “Sure. All the universes occupy the same space, just shifted,” Henry-7651 explained. “7650 and 7651 are on top of each other, like all the universes.”
    “Oh, I see.”
    John and Henry had ripped apart a new pinball machine and were putting it back together in the factory. It was past eight, and all the workers were gone, to prevent them from seeing the duplicate Henry and Grace.
    Grace asked, “Have you two found any discrepancies that we can exploit?”
    Henry-7651 and Grace-7651 had been perusing the copies of the encyclopedia for just that purpose.
    “Well, we know the differences in the two universes in detail,” Henry-7651 said. “The major events are the same. The presidents. The wars. Modern scientists and philosophers are different, but the technology remains equivalent.”
    “The prices of commodities,” Grace-7651 said, “appear on par with those here.” She had been reviewing copies of The Wall Street Journal . “The biggest differences are those created by Grauptham House.”
    “Scuba gear,” John said. “Beethoven’s Ninth.”
    “Exactly! 7650 and 7651 may have been identical until the Alarians appeared and tipped them away,” Grace-7651 said.
    “So we can exploit everything they did here,” John said.
    “And pinball.”
    Grace nodded. “Unfortunately it’ll take time. We can’t just turn on a new company in 7651. Scuba was introduced in 1978 in 7650. But in 7651, alternative products that do the same thing have been created.”
    “The universes are just too similar,” Henry-7650 said.
    “If we had a bigger set of universes to compare, we could exploit more things,” his counterpart said. “The differences would increase as a permutation.”
    “We need more gates!” Henry-7650 shouted, getting on the bandwagon with his doppelganger.
    “Yes!”
    “All that is moot,” John said, “if we don’t have base capital to start with.”
    Grace-7651 nodded. “A chicken or an egg problem.”
    “We’re farthest advanced here,” Grace-7650 said. “This is where I want to stay.”
    “Until Gesalex and his ilk are gone,” John said, “we’ll always be on guard.”
    “Too bad they didn’t take your offer,” she replied.
    “Do we have any nibbles on the investors?” Grace-7651 asked.
    “Things seem tight all over,” Grace-7650 said. “We’re in a recession, and investor capital is scarce. No one wants to take a chance on a company that Grauptham House is trying to unload.”
    “It looks bad for us,” John said.
    They had spent hours brainstorming ideas. There were possibilities, but it seemed that every one required seed money and time. The cancer treatment in 7651, the three-wheeled motorized bikes that were the new fad in 7650, all would make money if they already had money. Time would create money if they added hard work. They didn’t have time, either.
    “We could sell smilodon and dire wolves to zoos!” Henry-7651 said.
    “Do you really want to catch those things?” John asked.
    “Maybe just giant sloths, then.”
    “Too conspicuous,” John said. “Megafauna can’t just appear one day in a timeline where they’re extinct.”
    “What are we hiding from?” Henry-7651 asked. “Are these Alarians the worst there is?”
    “Someone put them here,” John said. “That’s who I’m worried about. Corrundrum was scared of the Vig. Whoever that was.”
    “Who’s Corrundrum?” Grace-7651 asked.
    John took a moment to explain how John Prime had found another stranded traveler who had given them some vague clues about the multiverse. Corrundrum had seen the Rubik’s Cube that Prime had tried to create and knew Prime for a multidimensional traveler too. He tried