Free Where the Lost Things Are by Rudy Rucker Page A

function sidles away. Across the dimensions.”
    Bending down is easy, it’s straightening up that’s hard. I managed though, and I looked Jack in the eye, with my pulse pounding in my ears. “Across the dementia?”
    Jack laughed in my face. “Dimensions! I explained all this to you the other night, Bert. When we were sitting out on the porch watching the cars melt into the night. Did you forget? Or maybe you weren’t paying attention.”
    â€œSure I was,” I lied. Jack was a retired professor with a droning voice that made him easy to ignore, like the hum from a bad amp. Plus my hearing is bad. Plus, I’d been busy counting cars. A retired accountant needs a hobby.
    â€œI’ll explain it again,” said Jack. “Pay attention this time.”
    We poured some Early Times and ensconced ourselves in side by side rockers on the cracked, flaking, concrete slab that served as a London Earl front porch. We could see other condos, dank weeds, vine-covered trees and good old Route 42 that ran from Louisville to Goshen and on to Cincinnati. It had a lot of traffic, now that the interstates were privatized.
    It was August, with the locusts shrilling. I always needed to remember that the steady sound wasn’t actually inside my head. August. The London Earl didn’t have air-conditioning, but thanks to the wandering poles, the Kentucky summer wasn’t all that hot anymore.
    Jack rolled us two cigarettes from his faithful pack of Bugler tobacco. Only rarely did he lose that. Bugler was illegal, of course, but Jack copped from Hector, paying him with frogs he caught in the London Earl’s green-skimmed pool. Fighting frogs. Hector was deep into the local frogfight scene. The handlers would glue locust thorns to the frogs’ heads and set them loose on one another, like murderous little unicorns. But I’m getting off the subject.
    Jack was still explaining how things disappear. He had his own way of explaining.
    â€œSo there I was,” he said. “With a PhD in math, by the skin of my teeth, and no job. Luckily I got on at Knowledge College in Next Exit, Indiana. I’m sure you’ve heard of it.”
    â€œWho hasn’t?” I said, even though I hadn’t.
    â€œTaught there part-time for almost fifty years. Retired as Adjunct Emeritus. Did a lot of research along the way. At one point I teamed up with a physics prof, Chandler something-or-other; string theory dude. I did the math and he pulled the strings, so to speak. Chandler thought there were infinitely many alternate universes. We were hoping we could find one. Chandler figured that if we could, he could snag a Nobel Prize. Me, I was after a Golden Pi.”
    â€œWhat flavor is that?”
    â€œGreek. Golden Pi. The big math award. I’m sure you’ve heard of it.”
    â€œWho hasn’t?” I said, even though I hadn’t. “Roll me another.”
    Jack’s cigarettes were perfect; they had hospital corners. He fired up a strike-anywhere match; he kept a pocket full. I leaned over Jack’s match and took a deep hit of the harsh, calming tobacco smoke. Instant headache, instant calm. They used to give cigarettes to mental patients. But now bluegene was the thing.
    â€œWe were ambitious in those days,” said Jack dreamily. “Now, not so much.”
    â€œSo what happened to this Chandler?” I asked.
    â€œWell—I came up with a mathematical tool for simplifying his theories. A renormalization technique. It turned out there’s not infinitely many universes at all. They cancel each other out. Like correction terms. And at the end there’s just two of them left. Ours—and a second one. It’s kind of an echo. We named it the alsoverse. And then Jack went down the tubes.”
    â€œHe wasn’t happy?”
    â€œDidn’t like the alsoverse. Didn’t like losing all those endless worlds. He went into a depression, and then