Kitman Versus The Squirrels

A novel. With some squirrels in.

<< Chapter 21 >>

In Which We Find Ourselves Somewhat Worse For Wear.

"I beg your pardon?" said Kitman to himself.

"No, no, never mind, I apologize," said Kitman₂, rising to his feet. "But if you'd been through what we've been through, you'd be in...as bad a mood as you soon will be. Things are worse than you know."

"Oh, good," said Kitman.

"Look," said his counterpart, glancing curiously down at Robin, "do you mind if I just...explain? If you ask questions it will take time you probably don't have to spare."

The thought of Kitman being explained at by Kitman was strangely delightful, so I watched with eager fascination.

"Er, all right," said Kitman.

"Shouldn't we get Kathleen out of the bathroom first?" said I₂, still with his eyes closed.

"She said she'd come out when she was good and ready," said Kitman₂. "Now," he continued, rubbing his hands together, "who, what, where, when and why.

"Who is us, which is to say approximately you.

"What we are is, well—"

"Spinoffs," said I₂, still sitting with cheek on fist, eyes closed.

"— brainchildren. His," he added, pointing at me.

"Just as I thought," said Kitman. I wondered what my parents would think.

"I know," said Kitman₂.

"The product of telling stories on the wrong side of the Borderline," said both Kitmans.

"Setting aside where for a moment," continued Kitman₂, "when is very nearly too late, we think. As to why — well, this is the sort of thing that happens, when you're on the wrong side of the Borderline...and believe me, the whole unscientific business gives me as much of a pain in the cerebrum as it does you."

"But then," said Kitman, "science is possible only in the realm of consistency."

"Which this isn't," said Kitman₂, "bringing me neatly back to where, namely inside the Borderline. Which until now you didn't know had an inside, believing it merely to be the dividing line between what can happen and what can't. It is more than that."

"It is a bit roomy for two dimensions," agreed Kitman, looking around the cellar.

"Kathleen suggested it was chaos," said I.

"Did she? Sounds about right to me," said Kitman₂. "Call it the Chaos Gap. Yes. Looks unpleasant, feels much worse."

"You've been out in it?"

"Yes," said I₂. "Tell him about tic-tac-toe," he added to Kitman₂.

"Right," said Kitman₂, and turned to me. "Consider tic-tac-toe."

"Okay," said I.

"Once you define the rules, you've defined all the possible games of tic-tac-toe, yes? Once you've got the nine squares and how you're allowed to place the X's and O's, you've established all the possible outcomes."

I could see where this was going. "The same way the Borderline establishes the universe. If the Borderline moves, you end up playing tic-tac-toe with extra letters, or more squares, or whatever. I caught on to that much. That's why we want to put Kitman's house back where it belongs."

"Ah," said Kitman₂, "but that's not all the Borderline does. It also controls the distribution of the games."

"Hah?" said I.

I₂, still with his eyes closed, said "Not all games of tic-tac-toe are equally possible."

"Hah?" said I.

"Games that don't start on the center square rarely get played," said Kitman₂. "Some games never get played at all. They can happen, they just don't. And that's where the Chaos Gap comes in. It sort of bags up the empty possibilities."

"Let me guess," said Kitman. "The Borderline keeps the impossible out of our universe, and the Chaos Gap keeps out the improbable."

"No," said Kitman₂.

"No?" said Kitman.

"No," said Kitman₂. "A particular arrangement of hydrogen molecules in a nebula on the far side of the universe is just as improbable as...Fermat having a margin in his book wide enough to write down that remarkable proof, but the Chaos Gap shapes only the latter."

"Kuan Kuo built the universe around people, not things," said Robin.

"Right you are, whoever you are," said Kitman₂.

"Tell them about the seven geniuses," said I₂.

"Yeah, okay," said Kitman₂. "You know how Newton could see farther because he was standing on the shoulders of giants? Well, if you stack seven giants on each other's shoulders you can go from the cave to the L-5 colony in about 500 years. All human progress could be encompassed in the work of seven generations of genius. But that sort of thing just doesn't happen. It could...it's not physically impossible, and in a sort of weird Stephen Jay Gould sense it's even likely...but because of the configuration of the Chaos Gap it's an empty possibility. There's nobody living in that universe. What do you think so far?" he asked me.

"Starts with a 'g'," said I.

"Ends with 'ibberish'," said I₂.

"Stephen Jay Gould?" said Robin, looking around for a clue.

"Oh, yeah," said Kitman₂, and a familiar, rather vague expression began to cross his face. "Stephen Jay Gould says that evolutionary progress is an intellectual fiction. The universe doesn't consider man superior to ape. One splits the atom, one splits the banana, but the universe doesn't care. In fact," he said, and by now he was pacing the floor while staring at the ceiling, "if you consider man strictly in terms of technology, and power-driven devices simply as means of releasing heat, then progress is really just entropy in action, and there's nothing more probable than entropy. Splitting the atom is far more entropic than splitting the banana, and consequently far more probable, and so Pharoah Khufu building the Great Pyramid on the moon is actually far more likely than what has actually happened."

"Do I do this sort of thing a lot?" said Kitman to me quietly.

"Define 'often'."

"Gad!"

I₂ said, "They're running out of time..."

Kitman₂ blinked his way back to approximate normality. "Oh. Yes. Sorry," he said. "Things are worse than you know."

"You said that," said Kitman.

"Did I? Well, I was right. It's not just the Borderline that's changed, it's the Chaos Gap. You still think that restoring the house will solve your problem. It won't. The Borderline will be back to normal, but the Chaos Gap will remain shifted. The rules will be restored, the squares, the X's and O's, but the playing will be different. And we know what that will be like."

"You do?" said I.

"We've been out in the Gap," said Kitman₂. "Got dumped into conscious existence in midair about half a mile from here. By the time we made it safely inside — I don't know why it's safe inside, I might add —"

"We had been other people," said I₂.

Silence paused in the room.

I₂ finally opened his eyes, and what I saw in them when he looked at me I hope never to see in the mirror.

"We have been," he said, and the silence did not leave immediately even when he spoke, "who you may yet be."

"That doesn't sound good," said Kitman.

"Do you know what synchronicity is?" said I₂ to me.

"Yes?" I said. "No?"

"It's the universe playing along."

"No it isn't," said both Kitmans.

"Yes, it is," said I₂. "Your universe plays along. If it stops doing that — and it's heading in that direction — bad things will happen. I know because I've been one of them." He looked to Kitman (my Kitman). "You've always wanted a subscription to Physical Review Letters D. The supplement of unlikely possibilities."

"Yes...?" said Kitman, taking a step backwards and sticking his hands self-consciously in his jacket pockets.

"That...secure feeling you've always had...that if you had that subscription, if you could just find the right giant to stand on, you could do just about anything, because you're a genius?"

"Yes......?"

"Well, for you that's true," said I₂.

Kitman₂ said, with a hint of embarrassment, "What with one thing and another, all of which spring from a particular configuration of the Chaos Gap, it's true."

"But it won't be," said I₂. "In the world-to-be, it won't be true. It won't be anything like true. Nothing will be anything like true."

"Hah?" said I.

Kitman₂ said, "In the world-to-be, both of you will live ordinary lives in ordinary houses."

I₂ said, "You'll go to ordinary schools. You'll have ordinary parents."

"Who will never pile everyone in the van," said Kitman₂ to himself, "and drive down to the Yucatan Peninsula to look at pyramids and codexes. Or force everyone in the house to learn to write sonnets because everyone should write at least one sonnet."

"That doesn't sound so bad," I said, remembering that particular incident.¹

I₂, looking at the floor, said "It won't matter to you either way, because the two of you will never have met."

I understood the words, but they did not make sense when assembled.

Kitman pulled his hands from his pockets, along with a blue lump that fell to the ground. "I beg your pardon?"

I₂ leaned forward and reached for the ball of cloth Kitman had dropped. "In the world-to-be," he said, uncrumpling the ball into Kitman's souvenir cap from the National Air and Space Museum, "there will be a saying. Something about the true love you never knew and the best friend who died before you were born. Thankfully I am forgetting what it was." He gave the cap a long look before handing it over — to me. "Do you see anything odd about this hat?" he said.

It was an ordinary blue baseball cap with with a NASA mission patch on the front. Craft and crew were lettered around the outer edge of the patch, and in the center was a stylized orbital path in the shape of a sideways figure-eight, set against a starry background. The mission motto was inscribed on the ribbon.

"Should I?"

"You've got a...good universe going," said I₂. "You should try to hang onto it."

•

"Well, so much for just grabbing the house and running," said Kitman. "How do we fix everything?"

"No idea," said Kitman₂. "I thought you'd ask Kuan Kuo."

"He seems to think we can fend for ourselves. He could be right," mused Kitman. "Is there anything of interest in this house?"

"Only Kathleen," said I₂. "We did look around, but it seems to be empty. No furniture; basic fixtures. The plumbing works. Don't ask me how."

"Have you got a vaxillator?" said Kitman to Kitman₂.

Kitman₂ shook his head. "I dropped it while I was running to the house."

"I grabbed it off the ground on my way by," said I₂. He dug into his pocket and pulled out a black plastic rectangle. "But it was...different by that time. This is what was inside."

He tossed the black rectangle to Kitman.

"What is it?" I said.

Kitman₂ said, "It's called a Newton. Apparently it's the closest thing to a Wozbox in the world-to-be. I don't know why it didn't change back, the way we did, unless it's because it's a thing rather than a person."

Kitman poked at the Newton. "Dear me," he said. "Well, I've got mine; we should see if it works. Would you like to be rescued now or later?"

"Now, please!" said Kitman₂. "I don't know if we actually can be rescued, since we're not exactly real, but give it a shot by all means. I won't hold it against you if you can't."

Kitman reached into his jacket and pulled out the vaxillator. "Let me see," he said, flipping it on. "I've got a bookmark to Nash Mider's living room, one to your living room, and one to the Tree Lab. Will any of them work from here? Well, only one way to find out."

So saying, he pushed the Go button and vanished.

"Have you ever noticed I'm a bit dim from time to time?" said Kitman₂ after a moment.

"Well, yes," said I and I₂.

"Why haven't you said anything?"

We shrugged.

Another moment later Kitman reappeared on the cellar stairs. "Yes, I know," he said rather quickly, undoing the alligator clips from his vaxillator. "I should have taken a bookmark here first. No harm done; I'll do that now."

"But it does work!" said Kitman₂. "Amazing. I wonder why?"

"I wonder even more intensely than you," said Kitman, taking a bookmark from one of the walls. "I have powers and abilities beyond those of mortal men now, and they can't get me directly to the tree lab. I'd have to take the stairs."

"The stairs...?" said Kitman₂.

"Yes, the stairs in this house are strange...done! — Now. Let's see if I can vaxillate you to the tree lab..."

"Are you finished in there?" asked Kitman₂, knocking on the bathroom door.

"No. Why?"

"We're being rescued by duplicates of ourselves who have developed powers and abilities beyond those of mortal men."

"Oh. Well, in that case I am finished." Kathleen₂ opened the door. Apparently she had been sitting on the edge of the bathtub reading. "Any powers in particular?" she inquired, inspecting with detached curiosity the haloes Kitman and I were wearing.

"Actually, I hadn't gotten around to asking," said Kitman₂. "Interuniversal travel, though, I think?"

"Yes," said Kitman.

"Oh, is that all?" said Kathleen₂.

Kitman and I exchanged glances.

"We should have gotten Kuan Kuo to show us how to make a cup of tea without using our hands," said Kitman.