A Perfect Machine(41)

Adelina flipped from page to page in her magazine, more details coming into existence as she glanced around the room: a night table; her alarm clock; her fan to help her sleep; the door – at which someone now knocked.

“Come in,” she said, even though she didn’t want to, had no idea who was going to come into the room.

It was the little girl she would later learn was named Marla.

Marla walked over to where Adelina sat, dropped to the ground, and sat crosslegged in the same position as Adelina.

“Hello,” she said, and smiled. “My name’s Marla. What’s yours?”

“Adelina.”

“That’s a pretty name.”

“So is yours,” Adelina said.

Marla looked satisfied. “Thanks. My mom told me my dad named me.”

“Where’s your mom now?”

Marla’s features darkened a bit. “I don’t know. I think my dad and she got divorced a long time ago. I never really saw her much.”

“Oh, I’m sorry to hear that.”

Marla looked away, then down at her hands. “Look, um, I know a lot about where you are. I was shot in the head by your people, but they don’t know it. I think they’d be sad if they knew, but I have no way to tell them. Maybe you could let them know?”

Adelina just stared at her, unable to process everything the little girl had said.

“Anyway,” Marla continued, “I know a lot about where you are because I used to be here, too. The room was different – looked different, at least – but I know this was the same place.”

Just then, the movie posters on the wall shimmered, seemed to phase in and out of substantiation. One of them vanished, popping right out of existence as Adelina watched. It was replaced by a sort of hazy blackness shot through with a pulsing glitter, like the edge of a star.

“So where am I?” Adelina asked.

“I don’t know what it’s called, but it’s a different universe from the one you came from, the one you lived in. The one we both lived in.”

A deep sadness came over Marla, then – deeper than her age would seem to allow.

“And where are you, then? If you’re not here, and you’re not alive in our old world, where did you go?”

“I moved on to a different universe – different even from this one. There are so many universes, I can’t keep track. In the one I’m visiting you from right now, I see all other universes laid out in front of me. Sort of –” Marla struggled to explain using her child’s vocabulary “– like, stacked on top of one another, but still so that I can see them all at once… I know that’s hard to imagine, to picture in your head, but if you went there, you’d know what I meant.”

Adelina just nodded, waited for whatever Marla might say next. The dreamlike quality of the experience was morphing into something that felt more realistic, and it scared Adelina. It was better thinking that it was all just some strange hallucination.

“I need to leave soon. I shouldn’t be here,” Marla said. “They don’t know I found my way back here, and when they find out, they’re going to be mad. What I wanted to tell you – what you need to know, even though I don’t think there’s anything you can do about it – is that this universe I’m in… well, we create gods.”

More things shifted, disappeared in Adelina’s room. Everything was becoming more and more insubstantial. Lightning forked somewhere far off in the distance. Adelina saw it through the holes created by the vanishing walls, ceiling, floor.

“We create gods, Adelina, and we let them do whatever they like.”

Marla began to cry.





F O U R T E E N





Krebosche froze.

He desperately wanted to move – every muscle in his body screamed at him to do so, to get up and run like hell – but he couldn’t. He just lay on his belly in the snow and shivered.

Gun’s in my waistband. Knife’s in my boot. No way I’ll get to either before he shoots me.

Edward Palermo stood a couple of feet back from Krebosche. Gun trained on his head. “Let’s assume for argument’s sake,” he said, “that you’re looking for me. Well, here I am. What can I do for you?”

Krebosche said nothing, just stared ahead, eyes big and round in his head.

“Have we met?” Palermo asked. “I don’t believe I’ve had the honor.”

Silence still.

“You don’t happen to be involved with that man who was here earlier, do you? Duncan, I think his name was. He didn’t meet a very pleasant end.”

Snow and breathing.

“Shall I just shoot you where you lay, then? Clearly you’re retarded or someone has cut out your tongue. In either scenario, you’re of no use to me, and you’re trespassing, so–”

“How did you…” Krebosche said, at last finding speech.

“How did I what?”

“How did you know–”

“That you were here? My men have binoculars and, unlike you, they aren’t retarded. They located you bumbling around out here, playing – very poorly – at being some kind of sleuth.”

“Can I stand up?”

“Slowly, yes. And with your hands clear of your body.”