"Physics can't lie!" Justin bellowed. "Now listen! Think of it in terms of simple math. You all can do simple math, right?"
There were a few faces that fell and began examining the carpet.
"Well, listen anyway!" Justin began, back in his classroom for the first time in years. "You got a set of Legos. Twenty, fifty, a hundred, it doesn't matter. You make a car out of them for your grandchild, then take it apart. You have the same number as you've started. Those Legos represent energy. They can't be created or destroyed."
"What if the Legos get lost?" Kurt asked.
"Then the energy went somewhere else, but the block is still around somewhere. They can be moved around all you want, but the Legos themselves are indestructible."
"OK, that's fairly simple," said the Director.
"Now here's the problem. We have a kind of energy called potential energy, and specifically I mean gravitational potential energy. All potential energy is based on position, right?"
"I know where you're going with this," Shenika said. "Gravity pulls on us all the time, so the higher we are, the more potential energy we have, right?"
"Basically. So, with this instant movement of yours, it all seems to work except for one thing…"
"Boy, you really get into your explanations, don't you?" Denny muttered.
"Just hurry up," Zeke moaned.
"It would take too long to explain in detail, but with these equations, you shouldn't be able to move up or down."
"What?" Shenika said.
"Huh?" Zeke said.
"Pardon?" the Director said.
"You're magically creating and destroying energy when you blip from one place to another and change energy states!" Justin said.
"I'm lost," Kurt said.
"No surprise," Tom muttered.
"It's in the math! You're using the same energy going laterally as you are going up or down! It's like an elevator that doesn't need power to move! It can't work!"
"But it does!" Denny said.
"That's why I said it appears you're violating Conservation of Energy. Maybe you are, but it's more likely that you're drawing energy from somewhere else."
"From where?" the Director asked, suddenly looking pale and slightly older.
"Oh Lord," Tom said, "it's Ed Wood time, again, isn't it? They're getting it from another dimension, and there's going to be this disastrous consequence, and the whole Earth will be get swallowed up, and yadda yadda yadda…"
Now it was Uncle Justin's turn to study the carpet.
"Well?" Ritchie asked.
"Well it's coming from somewhere…! I don't know where, but the more energy you use, the greater the problems you'll have when it's time to pay the bill!"
The conspirators turned to the Director.
"So that means if we try to move the town…" he began.
"There's no way to say," Justin said. "But it probably won't be pretty."
Just then, a dark wind blew against the building. The glass doors popped open momentarily and then locked back into place. The widows high above the lobby rattled ominously. The lights, for a moment, flickered.
"Woah," Kurt muttered, "how's that for coincidence?"
"Do that again," Tom prompted.
"Do what?" Justin asked.
"That wind thing."
"I didn't do it!"
"Well, just say something like 'the world is doomed' and see what happens…"
Justin opened his mouth, then thought better of it and closed it again.
"Say what you want," Shenika said, "but that's enough to convince me that this has been nothing but a big waste of my time." And with that, she disappeared.
"Where'd she go?!" Zeke asked. "Who did that?"
"She did," Justin said. "I think she's left your conspiracy."
"Now wait a minute —" the Director began.
"Where's the cop?" Tom asked. He had disappeared too. So had the old lady. And, when they turned around, so had Zeke.
"They're running out on you," Ritchie said, taking a step forward.
"Didn't need them anyway," Denny said, stepping toward Ritchie.
"I thought you said —"
"We need a lot of help to move the town, but not as much to move a building. Say, a theater…"
"Denny, I don't think this is- —" the Director began.
"Why not?" Kurt said, moving toward him. "Let's just get the hell out of this town while we can!"
"You're not taking anything!" Ritchie said. "This ends right here, right now."
"Why?" Julia asked.
All turned to her, equally shocked and stunned.
"What do you mean why?!" Ritchie demanded.29. Behind the Curtain"Life is but a dream, a grotesque and foolish dream."— Mark Twain
"Does that mean you're on our side?" the Director asked with uncertainty.
Uncle Justin, with a stunned expression, asked: "What are you saying,Julia?"
"Is that what all this has been leading up to?" she asked. "The coincidences? The odd connections? Six people running across each other in order to quash some silly, escapist conspiracy?"
"It's not silly!" the Director objected.
"It is escapist," the Lab Coat Man admitted.
"What brought us here?" Julia asked. "To this lobby, at this time, facing off over something that seems like a weird dream?"
"Oh cripes," Denny said. "Don't get metaphysical on us."
"Mathematical innovations always seemed unreal at first —" UncleJustin began.
"The math doesn't matter. It never did," Julia said flatly. "It was all part of the same thing."
Justin's jaw opened and closed silently several times as he grasped a bench to keep himself vertical.
"What the heck is she getting at?" Ritchie asked Betty.
"I think you're over-thinking it, dear," Betty said to Julia.
Tom and Alona exchanged confused looks. Kurt scratched an itch that had appeared on his hand.
"Why this conspiracy?" Julia demanded of the Director, (who had seemed to suddenly age five years).
"To take this town to a better place," he said, attempting to remain calm.
"Why not just go there, then?"
"We, uh, as I said, we wanted to take the town with us."
"What for?! What would you need to take with you if it's already a 'better world'? Wouldn't you make that better world worse just by taking the town with you?"
The remains of the conspiracy looked at each other.
"I don't know, I just joined up," Kurt said.
"I wasn't privy to those early meetings, remember?" the Lab Coat Man said. "I joined after Frank left."
"I thought it was your idea," Denny said to the Director.
"I thought it was… group consensus," he replied vaguely.
"So instead of just taking off for your new world, you do the one thing that would eventually expose your plans to the rest of us?"
The Director looked to his co-conspirators for answers, but they were looking back at him. He finally turned to Julia and shrugged.
"So where does that leave us?" Julia asked, turning on her companions. "Do we defeat this conspiracy, save the town, and live happily ever after? Is that what we're supposed to do?"
"Don't be silly!" Ritchie said. "They have to be stopped!"
"Why?! Because they kidnapped Kurt? Well, he's happy to be with them, so that can't be the issue. They've harmed you? If they leave for their New World with this theater, what do we lose? We can rent videos, you know! Why exactly are you doing this?"
"They're evil!" Tom exclaimed.
"Oh, please! Where did you get that word from? From the films you run here that you hate so much?"
"Look!" Ritchie bellowed. "You just get out of the way unless you want to be considered one of them!"
"How did we all come together at just the right moment?" Julia demanded. "All finding out the right information on the right day, appearing in the same alleyway at the same time, divided conveniently into two sides just to fight out… what? Some badly written melodrama, where we're the cavalry and they're the Three Stooges?"
Denny had had enough. He leaped for Julia. Luckily, she had turned just enough to see him in her peripheral vision, and she threw herself to the floor. Denny flew straight over her and into Ritchie. Betty screamed and began hitting Denny (and every so often her husband), while Tom tried to try to pull them off each other. Kurt tossed his clipboard aside and jumped on Tom. A magnificent brawl had begun in the theater lobby.
"Stop! Stop!" Julia yelled, as she pulled herself up. "This isn't worth it!" But every time one of them tried to stop fighting, someone from the other side would clout them over the head, assault their shin with a shoe, or engage in some other act of miscellaneous violence.
Denny finally managed to crawl away from the mob and stood up. He held his side and smiled grimly: "Let's face it… Any coincidence between this conspiracy and a real conspiracy is entirely accidental." At least, that was what he meant to say, and would have, had not Tom tackled him just after the word "is". The phrase stuck in Julia's mind, reduced to essentials and repeating: "Any coincidence is… Any coincidence is…"
"Is what?" Julia asked, as she crawled to the corner to get away from the escalating melee. "Knowing that would solve everything."
She stood, watching Uncle Justin, one of the kindest men she had ever known in her life, shove Kurt into a plastic, potted plant. In a moment, Tom was on top of his cousin, swinging wildly. Denny took a swing at Justin and missed, but he didn't see Alona, who came up behind him and kicked the back of his knee. Denny went down, where Betty was trying to revive Ritchie. She rubbed his face and his hands as he sat dazed against the opposite wall. The Director stood against the concession counter, trying to concentrate in order to send everyone home, but unable to stay calm long enough to do any good.
Julia looked around for the other one, the nerdy looking guy in the lab coat, but was distracted by something coming up behind her. Julia turned to see the Lab Coat Man holding a two-by-four in both hands.
"I don't want to hurt you. Just don't move! You can't stop us now!"
"What do you mean?!"
"Who'd want to live in this world a moment longer than we have to?! I can't take it here any more! We need to go! Please, let us go!"
"I'm not stopping you!" she yelled, moving slowly along the wall toward the ticket counter. The Lab Coat Man followed her.
"You'll stop us! I know you will!" Julia could see that he was being overcome with fear and anxiety. She watched as he began to raise the beam higher. She involuntarily closed her eyes only to hear the man scream. When she looked, she saw him stagger back and drop the board, his face red with claw marks. She looked down in time to see Cecil jump into her arms.
"Cecil?" she asked.
Cecil licked her nose.
"How did you get here?"
Denny's phrase echoed again in her head. It reminded her of something… What was it that she had read? "Nobody ever said a day has to be juggled into any kind of sense at day's end.'" What kind of crap was that! Would a fight like this be taking place if life was meaningless? Was it just by pretending that there was no structure to the world that got you through, detached and senseless to the lower orders of people beneath you? If that were true (she noted as Denny brought a framed poster over the top of Ritchie's head), this lobby would be a lot easier to clean up in the morning.
But what if it was all just coincidence? The last twenty-four hours being nothing but a protracted example of how some fool can carve the world into some semblance of order because one thing happens chronologically after another? No reason for Kurt to have his butt kicked by Alona, for Denny to land on Tom after tripping over the Lab Coat Man, for Ritchie to sock the Manager in the jaw, or for a thick gray mist to begin sweeping across the lobby floor?
Julia blinked and rubbed her eyes. It was still there. The mist was rolling across the floor at ankle level. She tried to move out of its way, but it wrapped around her feet, and she could no longer move. Whatever was really going on, if there really was a pattern hidden behind the curtain, behind the screen, from somewhere beneath the lowest pit in the theater, it was slowly creeping across the room. None of the others noticed it as they kept up their insane combat, pounding each other as if the future of the world depended on this last battle. Outside, the city lights were fading in the fog, shimmering and melting in what seemed less like air and more like the bottom of a gray sea.
What kind of author would treat their characters this way? Julia wondered, as she felt her shins being enveloped by whatever it was. She struggled, but her legs would not move. She tried walking, running, kicking. All equally useless. That is, until Cecil rubbed his head against her chin and began to purr.
Her left foot suddenly came loose, and she was able to take a step. Then her right. This couldn't be happening, she thought. Totally irrational. This doesn't make sense! But she found herself muttering these thoughts as her legs carried her slowly toward the doors. Outside the gray light had grown dark, as if the theater had been cut off from the rest of the world. Perhaps the conspiracy had done it: perhaps they had moved the theater to that 'somewhere else'. Or maybe it was just payback time. Julia didn't know, but she did know that, for this moment, the answer did not matter.
As the fog swirled and filled the lobby, and as the muffled sounds of fighting echoed dully in her ears, she found herself at the doors. She reached out and pushed them, and they swung open without resistance. Behind her, she heard Uncle Justin call her name from somewhere in the lobby. She looked back, but the room was completely filled by the nothing that had blown in. Nothing was behind her, not even the lobby. Her hand held the door open, as if the rest of them were about to follow her outside.
Cecil hopped out of her arm and landed at her feet. He walked ahead into the darkness and looked back. She could hear the others making their way toward her, but something was wrong. It didn't sound like them anymore. The footsteps were slow and heavy, and she could no longer hear any voices. The room had suddenly become so cold that Julia could see her breath. She began to shiver, and the sounds of the footsteps were nearing.
So Julia did the only thing she could do: she stepped outside and allowed the door to close on its own, and she followed Cecil away from wherever it was she had been.
30. What happens next? "The only true wisdom is in knowing you know nothing." — Socrates
Oh great, Julia thought, a light at the end of the tunnel. And it was a tunnel, completely dark, with only the theater doors behind her. Cecil was ahead of her but getting farther away. Julia tried to keep up but couldn't keep her footing on what seemed to be a slope toward the white light in the distance.
Venus?, she thought. God? Swamp gas? The end of a dream? If this were the end of one of those novels she had been reading, she figured that there wouldn't be an ending. All a trick by some smart-ass author who wanted the audience to put all the pieces together, figure it out, write papers, hold seminars about 'what he really meant', provoke arguments, inspire entire schools of thought… all of that crap. It would have to be this…. stuck in-between the two possible answers to the question… whether this had all happened for a purpose or had all just happened.
Nuts, she thought. I bet it's one of those. I wouldn't be lucky enough to have this turn out to be just a regular, old-fashioned, story. The kind that people actually read. Then it would at least have an ending. Nothing to figure out. All in-your-face, like television. A movie would be better, though… at least there'd be a budget. Hopefully a good soundtrack, too. Who would play her and Uncle Justin? Would the director cast real actors or some muscle-bound and double-D bearing gimps who would have a few lines of dialog between shoot-outs? Would it even matter? Because, Julia noted, the light was getting larger… and brighter. Cecil was lost from sight.
Great, I'm about to meet God. Or just wake up. Or just keep going like this forever. Great choices. I suppose if it's all been a comedy, I just wake up right there next to Auntie Em. If it's a tragedy, I'm dead, right? That's how they all have to end — it's in the union rules. Unless there's a twist right after that ending, where the good ending turns sour or vice verse… if it's a comedy, who writes God's lines? Or a dark comedy. Then I'd just keeping walking forever and ever… and bitching about it every step of the way. Waiting for God, you know… Good grief, I hope whoever is behind this has a better sense of humor than that.
Good, the light's still getting bigger. I suppose it's close to the end now. Hopefully not 'The End' but just the 'end' of whatever kind of weird day this has been. Too much for me, I can tell you. Like this tunnel… Oh great, what if it just looks like I'm getting closer but in fact the tunnel just stretches on forever? It wouldn't be so bad if this were just a dream… I'd have to wake up eventually. Thank God for bladders.
Well, I guess I have my three choices… I go on forever, I wake up, or I die. Unless the author is so far-gone that he won't even stop at three choices! My God, what would be the fourth? How weird could this get?! Maybe this is like one of those art projects where the artist gets stoned and paints with bear snot? Oh, who cares?! Can't this come to a conclusion one way or another? That would be the worst. Never knowing one way or the other. That would be a fate worse than death. Oh… good phrase. I bet it's in the title of whatever this is. I wonder what it means… I bet anything the author doesn't know.
Oh, my feet! I should have worn sneakers today. It's so bright up there! Is this it coming up? Is this my answer to everything? That moment of truth? If it's not, where I am supposed to be looking if not here? Maybe I'm supposed to just stop worrying about and just take whatever it is as it is…? You know, just let go of the preconceptions and see what's in front of me for the first time?
Oh God, I sound like such an idiot I should be on a talk show! There might as well be a white rabbit up there, for all the good I'm doing. Or Oz! Oh great, I'll escape from Wisconsin and end up in Kansas. Think positive: maybe I'll end up wherever those romance novels take place. Maybe I could do some passionate heaving for a while instead of all this walking.
Is this tunnel ever going to end? The light is just ahead! Is it supposed to get harder to reach the closer you are? Is all this supposed to be metaphysical or just plain impossible? And how did that cat get through all of this while I'm still here? Is that God's message to me? The cat gets nirvana while I trudge up this incline forever? It's so bright — what if he's waiting for me in there and I step on him? The cat, I mean, not God. Oh, this is ludicrous! Isn't this ever going to end?!
31. Sunlight
Julia awoke on her couch with the morning light that streamed in through the blinds. Cecil, sleeping in the crook of her arm, twitched and tried to roll over. Julia felt the warmth of the light on her legs and arm and wondered what time it was. She stretched and dislodged Cecil, who jumped to the carpet and padded off to use the cat box.
Am I back from Wonderland?, she asked herself, unable to control the smile that spread across her face. Julia stood and stretched in the morning light that made her body feel whole and warm and good.
She stretched until she stood at the tip of her toes, as tall and straight as she would ever be. She relaxed and let her body go limp, her head tilting forward just enough to see a weather balloon drift into view in the otherwise blue sky, where it hung lazily in the air for a last few moments before it descended gently to the ground.