Science Fiction - Daily Short Stories
Back to Julie - Richard Wilson
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- 26 Sep 2024
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We leverage industry focus insights with the collective technical resources of our firm to elevate your performance. Uncover opportunity and move upward at MossAtoms.com. Back to Julie by Richard Wilson. The side shuffle is no dance step. It's the choice between making time and doing time. You can't go shooting off to that dimension for peanuts. I don't want to give you the impression that peanuts are in short supply here, or that our economy is in the fix of having to import them sideways. What I'm trying to convey is that if you're one of the rare ones functionally equipped to do the side shuffle, you ought to be well paid for it in any coin. That's what I told Krosnow, and he wasn't after peanuts. "I'll do it," I said, "if you'll make it worth my while." "I'd hardly expect you to do it for nothing," he replied, reproachfully, "how much do you want?" I told him, the amount shook him up, but only briefly. "Okay," he said grudgingly, "I suppose I'll have to give it to you, but the stuff had better be good." "Oh, it is," I assured him, "and you don't have to be afraid, because I couldn't possibly skip with the loot. I'll have to travel naked. I can't get there with so much as a sandal on one foot, or filling in a single tooth. Fortunately, my teeth are perfect." Sweat poured off Krosnow's florid face as he worked the combination of his office safe. His fat jowls quivered unhappily around his cigar while he counted out the bills. Ten percent was cash in advance, and the rest went into a bank account in my name. I paid off a batch of bills, then stripped, and did my off to Buffalo. Honest, John Krosnow was a crooked district attorney who wanted to be governor and then president. He had the machine, but he didn't have the people, and because he needed the people, he needed me. I had been to this other dimension, the one on the farthest branch of the time tree, and I could give him what he wanted. Krosnow found out about it after I was hauled up in front of him on a check-kiting charge. I'd had something of a reputation before I got into difficulties, and in trying to live up to the reputation, I had done some plain and fancy financing. Nothing that 15 to 20 grand wouldn't have fixed. But while I scrounched around trying to get cash, I kited a few checks. They permitted me, right into the DA's office, where Krosnow was properly sympathetic. How, he asked, "Could a man of your standing "in the scientific world stoop so low?" It developed into quite a lecture, and even coming from Krosnow, it made me feel pretty low. So I began explaining. I told him where I was born and where I went to school, and where I had taken my sabbaticals, including this other dimension. And Krosnow, believe me, I can't account for it, except possibly because he knew he was a crook and knew I wasn't one, exactly. Anyway, he believed me, and we made the deal, and I did the side shuffle, as agreed. The journey to that other dimension is not a pleasant one. It does disturbing things to the stomach, and you see everything thin and elongated as if you're sitting too far to the side in a movie theater. I got there, however, and waited for the hiccups to subside. Hicapi laterally, I had called them when I considered writing an article for the medical journal after my first trip. With the hicapi gone, I stole some clothing, which was one of the riskiest parts of the program, and waited for morning. I didn't have any money, of course, so I had hitchhike into town. I could have stolen myself a better fit, but people aren't close conscious in that dimension. They're more interested in what you are and what you can do. The driver of the car that gave me a lift asked, "And what is your field of endeavor?" I told him, "I am able to eliminate the well-long wait in ivory production by accelerating the growth cycle of elephants." He was deeply impressed and tipped me handsomely. I was less impressed with his talent for growing cobbless corn, and therefore had to return only a small part of the sum he gave me. The world of this dimension had developed some remarkable parallels to Earth. I mean our Earth, which falls into what I have designated timeline 1.1, since it's the Earth with which I am most familiar. Every other world that has a language calls itself Earth, too, I had to visit briefly hundreds of the lateral worlds hovering over primordial swamps, limitless oceans, insect kingdoms, and radioactive planetoids before I found the one that was truly parallel. It existed in timeline 17.08, and it had refrigerators, platinum blondes, automobiles, airplanes, apple pie, tabloids, television, scotch and soda, just about everything we think makes life worthwhile. But it had its little differences, which was only to be expected in a timeline where the bionomics could create a new world each time someone changed his mind. Thus the cobbless corn man was driving what looked to me like a Chevrolet, but which was a Morton in his world. He let me off near a downtown restaurant, where, thanks to our little exchange of talent talk, I had enough money for breakfast. It was considered unethical to swap talent talk outside the limits of certain rigidly defined groups, so I didn't try to out impress the waitress. Fed and filling my stolen clothes a bit better, I walked to the recorder's office and spent the rest of the morning looking up old documents. There was nothing there for cross now, as I had expected, but for me, there was a very pretty file clerk. Talking to her, I verified my impression that human instincts and relationships were much the same in this dimension as in my own, except in the one basic respect that interested cross now, of course. The file clerk and I lunched together, and then I spent the afternoon in the library, but I didn't find anything there, either, and then I had dinner with her. She said her name was Julie. I told her mine was Heck for Hector, which it is. She thought this was awfully cute, and we got along fine. Julie had a delightful apartment and a matching sense of hospitality. The following day, when she went to work, I stayed home and washed the dishes and made the bed and used the telephone. I ran up quite a bill with my long distance calls, but I found out what I needed to know. I impressed a lot of people with my elephant story and pretended to be impressed hardly at all with what they told me they did, although often I was very much. The trouble with these people is that they no longer know how to lie if that can be listed as trouble. I don't think it can. Neither did cross now, obviously. He'd never have sent me off on my expensive side trip if he had. Of course, cross now looked at it objectively. What he wanted from timeline 17.08 was not for himself. It was for everybody else. He wanted the formula for the truth gas these people had developed long ago and loosed upon their world to put a stop to the wars. They had been in a bad way, although no worse than the sort of problem we were up against. Their trans-ocean squabbles and power politics seemed to have settled into a pattern of a war or two per generation, just like us. Hence, the man who invented the truth gas became a global hero after a certain amount of cynicism and skepticism. All the doubts vanished naturally once the gas got to working and so did war. You can't do much plotting and scheming if every time you open your mouth to tell a lie, you stammer, sweat, turn red and gasp for breath. It's a dead giveaway. Nobody tries it more than once. One or two men had tried to nullify the gas or work out a local antidote, either as a pure research project or through power of madness, but because they had had to state their purposes as soon as they thought of them, they were put away, neat, very neat. What I wanted was the formula for the truth gas. Its location wasn't exactly a secret in this land of complete candor, but it wasn't writ large on any wall for all to see either. They kept it in their capital, located about where our Omaha is. One file among the vital statistics. I took a super jet out there. I had no trouble posing as a historian entitled to the facts. The gas didn't work on me, you see, because it was adjusted to the physiology of that timeline. There was just enough difference between us for it not to make me stick to the truth. We'll write out the formula for you, I was told, obligingly, but you'll have to sign the usual statement. Of course, I said, which one is that? The one that says you won't publish it and will destroy your copy when it has served your research purpose without letting anyone else see it. Oh, that statement, I said. I signed freely, told my elephant story and departed in an aura of goodwill. The jet got me back that same evening. Julie fixed me up a snack and we discussed how pretty she was and how nice I was. I had everything Cross now wanted now. I felt pretty good about it because there was nobody else who could have done the job for him and because it wasn't spying, really. Earth 1.1 on the timeline is world enough for Cross now, I'm sure. Besides, dimensions don't have wars with one another. Too many things can go wrong. Julie was lovely and I hated to leave the next morning, but it was my job. I told her, I'm afraid I have to leave town for a bit, dear, but I'll be back very soon, business, you know. Being a 17.08 girl, Julie had no reason to doubt me. Make it very soon, she whispered her lips close to my ear. So I came back and now Cross now has what he wants. He's delighted as he should be. I've made up the gas for him and adjusted the formulas so that it will work on people of our timeline. It's high power stuff and a little will go a long way. I also made up an antidote for him. This was easy since I could work on it without feeling any compulsion to tell everybody what I was doing and why. Cross now plans to release the truth gas just before the state convention. He'll be nominated, of course, and after November, he'll be governor. With everyone else compelled to tell the truth, it should be a cent for him. He's a patient man, honest John Cross now is, and he's willing to wait four years for the presidency. I ought to be happy too, with the money Cross now gave me. I've been living in the style to which I've always wanted to be accustomed. He has offered me a place on his staff and somewhat superfluously the use of his antidote. Naturally, the reason he was so magnanimous was that he doesn't want anyone else around, who knows, his gimmick, and might have to tell the truth about it. But I have had enough of this dimension now, now that Cross now has what I promised him. He's going to use it tomorrow, and if I know, honest John, and I do, not even the presidency will be big enough for him. So, I'm going back to Julie. There are some obvious questions in your mind. I know, such as, why did I get the formula for Cross now? Knowing there was no way for him to prosecute me while I was Julie's dimension. And what made me come back? In short, what was in it for me? Let's call it research. Cross now is a big time operator. I've always been, you might say, in the peanut end of the game. He had a great deal to teach me, and I, I'm happy to say, was an apt pupil. You might speculate on what's in it for you, because if you ask me, anybody who can do the side shuffle should do it before Cross now becomes president. However, don't go to 17.08, unless you want to swap one Cross now for another. The fact is, I've learned that I can be one in Julie's dimension. After all, their formula doesn't work on me, but I can assure you that it will work on you. And that elephant story I told on my last visit is, as I've indicated in the peanut category, all Cross now has is a country. I'll have a whole world. There's nothing like study under a master is there. I should be back to Julie by midnight, if I start now. End of Back to Julie by Richard Wilson. Owning a rental property sounds like a dream until you realize how much work goes into getting it ready. 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