VACANCY & ARIEL

“We’re having the same difficulty. Dr. Osauri left coded notes. But”—his smile was thin as a paper cut—“we’ll get it eventually.”

“The other scientists on the project…”

“All dead. Computer files obliterated. It was a very large explosion.” Another smile, as if he found the idea of very large explosions heart-warming.

He picked up a remote from the desktop and switched on Professor Karlan’s television, a flat panel screen mounted on a side wall. “We’ve prepared something for you to watch. I remind you, things will go badly if you reveal one detail of what you’re about to see.”

An instant later the screen flickered, then displayed a low altitude aerial shot of what looked to be an old bomb crater, its sides scoured clean of vegetation, with a concrete bunker set at the bottom. Atop the bunker was a microwave array. Surrounding this depression was a dense growth of brush and young trees, all lightly dusted with snow.

“This is Tuttle’s Hollow in the Alleghenies,” said Capuano, pausing the disc. “The lack of vegetation in the hollow is due to a heavy use of microwave radiation. Your friend was using a sophisticated version of your toy crane, a scoop made of bonded particles, to pluck objects from other dimensions.”

“Other universes,” I said. “At least that was the gist of my idea. That there are an infinite number of universes diverging on the quantum level. Constantly separating and combining.”

“Fine…universes,” Capuano said. “Most of what Osauri brought back were small bits of flora and fauna. They were photographed and then microwaved out of existence to prevent contagion. But to continue your metaphor, one day they snagged the wristwatch.”

He fast-forwarded, and the image of a monitor screen appeared; the picture displayed on the screen was a shifting map of fiery many-colored dots, but within them I made out a shape described in faint tracer lines of reddish-orange light. A winged shape with a rounded section atop it.

“We think it’s a vehicle,” Capuano said.

“Why would you think that? It could be anything.”

He fast-forwarded again. “This is post-explosion. Keep your eye on the bottom of the hollow.”

The hollow looked even more like a crater, wisps of smoke rising from every surface. The bunker had vanished. I could see nothing worth notice—then I spotted movement beneath the smoke. Seconds later, a figure leaped from the smoke, landing atop a boulder that projected from the side of the hollow about halfway up. A leap, I’d estimate, of some fifty feet. The figure crouched there a moment. A tall biped, perhaps eight feet and a little more. Anthropomorphic, but incredibly thin. Spidery arms and legs. And, judging by its swelling chest and flaring hips, a female. Either it wore a form-fitting garment of grayish-white material or else that was the color of its skin. Its face was indistinguishable, its hair black and trimmed close to the scalp. In one of its hands was a red pack or case. As I watched it made a second leap that carried it to the rim of the hollow, where it crouched for several seconds more before striding into the brush.

“All right!” I said. “ET!”

“Exactly,” said Capuano. “We’ve combed the area and haven’t found a trace of her.”

I had a thought. “She might not look the same when you find her.”

“Why’s that?”

“It’s only a hypothesis. But since so much of the idea has proved out, maybe it’s worth mentioning.”

“Please,” Capuano said. “Mention it.”

“Ever hear of Springheel Jack?”

He shook his head.

“Springheel Jack was the inspiration for my idea. I can’t recall the date when he initially appeared, but it was in Victorian England. People reported seeing an unnaturally tall, thin, deformed figure who could leap over rooftops. Over the years he continued to appear, and the interesting thing is that the reports, instead of getting wilder…you know how people exaggerate. Like when somebody sees a UFO? The next day someone else sees ten. Bigger ones. And the next person sees fifty. Well, in Jack’s case each subsequent sighting described him as being more and more human and increasingly less capable of superhuman feats. So when Rahul and I were refining my idea, we decided it was likely that all the universes would be strongly anthropic. In other words, the observer creates reality.”

“I know what ‘anthropic’ means,” said Capuano with a touch of defensiveness.

“My idea was, these infinite universes…the ones closest to us would be almost indistinguishable from our own. Only minor differences. For instance, when you lose something—keys, glasses—you remember putting them on the dresser, but they’re not there. It’s possible you simply forgot where you put them. What may have happened, because of the endless shuffling of the universes, you may have slipped over into a universe where you left your glasses on the arm of the sofa. You might stay there forever or you might slip back. You’d never know. The universes farther from us, though—they’d start getting strange. One that’s very far away would be completely alien.”