"Hopelessly outdated Old Tech equipment," apologized Howard. "It was all we had on hand."
Together, they tested their new resonance model. Discussing the failures, refining, revising and interpreting. Sometimes heatedly, sometimes with everyone talking at once but always with an underlying sense that success was close at hand.
Graham and Annalise kept to the periphery. Graham, terrified of making a choice and flipping just when an answer appeared imminent. And Annalise? Graham wasn't sure. She'd been quiet ever since they'd both confronted Gary over the New Tech article.
After two hours of standing and leaning up against a wall, Graham's back stiffened and he left to stretch his legs. When he came back, a silence fell on the room and all eyes turned towards him.
He swallowed hard. He'd seen that look before—on the face of a doctor seconds before being told his mother was dead.
"What's happened?" he asked, not sure if he wanted to know the answer. He looked at Annalise. She looked away. Her eyes were red.
"It's you," said Gary. "You've made things worse."
Graham rocked slowly, almost imperceptibly, back and forth in the silence that followed. Each sway in time to the ebb and flow of his breath.
"How?" he said, his voice so quiet it came out more breath than sound.
No one answered. People looked away.
"You haven't"—Gary paused and inhaled deeply—"you haven't broken the link with your other selves."
Graham didn't understand. He waited for Gary to continue; he looked from face to face. "What link?" he asked.
Tamisha's voice cut in. "It's a by-product of the conjunction, Graham. When the worlds move apart, a residual link remains in the twelfth dimension. It's not a physical link—it's difficult to describe—but think of it as a thread of potential that links all the worlds together and specifically links you to all your counterparts on all the other worlds."
"It's the mechanism behind your flipping," added Howard. "Without the existence of the link you wouldn't be able to flip."
Graham shook his head. "So what's the problem?"
"The link accentuates the resonance effect," said Tamisha. "Without the link, the resonance wave would have a fraction of its power."
"You don't know that!" cried Annalise. "You said it would be reduced, you didn't say it would be a fraction. You're making it sound like the resonance wave was all Graham's fault."
Gary moved to comfort Annalise, placing a hand on her shoulder. She shrugged it off angrily. "And you're just as bad," she told him. "Tell Graham your idea for breaking the link."
"It wasn't a serious suggestion. We were brainstorming ideas."
Graham swallowed. He could think of one very sure way of severing the link.
"Is that why Adam Sylvestrus has been attacking all the Grahams?" he asked.
"We don't know," said Tamisha. "It could be, but," she paused, "this is difficult to say and I apologize for my bluntness but . . . it would be easier if he killed you. Killing you breaks the link; putting you in a coma does not."
"But it does stop you flipping," said Howard. "It's like he sees your flipping as a threat and so he places you in a state where you can't interact or make a choice that impacts on the world."
"How could my flipping be a threat?"
"Because accelerated flipping can burn out the link," said Tamisha.
Graham's heart leapt. "I can break the link by flipping?"
As soon as he saw Annalise turn and look away, he knew the answer.
"You could have," Tamisha said, "when you were a child."
He didn't understand. What had it to do with being a child? Why couldn't he try now? He could flip all day, all year if needs be. He'd go home, make choices, interact with the world. Whatever it took.
"From what the Etxamendi file has told us," said Tamisha, "the link is broken in childhood. As the linked children start to interact with their worlds, they flip constantly and this flipping increases until the charge becomes so great that the thread is burned away and the link destroyed."
"This has happened before?" said Annalise.
"Yes," said Tamisha. "We found four this morning."
"How?" asked Shikha, surprised. "We've checked the Census files. Graham's the only person who occurs on every world."
"The Census files are incomplete. Most only go back to the 1850s and only for those countries that collect the data. We checked the advanced worlds. Their data go back millennia. We looked for children with the same first name, date of birth and location. We found four. A girl and three boys, roughly three to four hundred years between each event."
"And they lived normal lives?" asked Annalise.
"They appeared to. All of them had problems during early childhood. We found entries pointing to medical and psychological problems. Their school grades were low. Many were diagnosed as problem children."
"But they recovered?" asked Shikha.
"So it seems. After the age of six, their grades picked up and their psych visits tailed off. As adults they had a variety of jobs, they married, divorced, had kids and led a normal varied life."
"Whereas you," said Howard looking directly at Graham, "developed differently. You found a way of managing your situation. You learned—subconsciously, instinctively, maybe by resonance—who knows?" He shrugged and spread his gnarled fingers out wide. "But, somehow, you learned and adapted. You withdrew into yourself, stopped interacting, stopped making choices and resonance did the rest."
"Which has left you trapped," said Tamisha. "The link is stronger and more difficult to break and the Grahams . . ." She paused again, a slight grimace forming on her lips. "Pardon my bluntness again, Graham, but from what I've read and with the exception of yourself, the Grahams have neither the will nor the capacity to break the link."
He didn't understand. Why didn't they have the will or capacity? He waited for Tamisha to explain. He looked to Gary, to Howard, to Annalise.
"She thinks all the Grahams are too withdrawn to be reached," Annalise told him, her eyes flashing angrily. "They all do. They're just like your colleagues at work. They think you're all mute retards."
"We don't think that," said Shikha. "But you can't underestimate the effect that consciousness exchange has had on their lives. I couldn't begin to imagine how I'd cope under similar circumstances. Not knowing from day to day if the house I left in the morning would be there when I came home. Having a stranger call herself my mother. Having history change just before a history test."
She walked over to Graham and took hold of his hand. "You have my profound respect," she said. "I couldn't have lasted one month in your shoes."
Annalise's hand flew to her mouth. She looked away.
"Mine too," said Tamisha. "But that doesn't alter the fact that it'll take years of therapy to reach all the Grahams. Some may be too traumatized ever to be reached. And time is something we don't have."
"Are the other Grahams traumatized?" Graham asked Annalise a few minutes later when they left to fetch coffees.
Annalise didn't reply immediately. "They're quiet," she said, "but I wouldn't call them traumatized." She thought for a few more strides. "Calm, I'd say. Like they have an inner peace. Somewhere safe they can live and look out on the rest of the world. The other girls say the same." She smiled. "Annalise Ten says it's like being around this real cool monk. My Trappist guy, she calls you."
Graham reflected on Annalise's answer while they waited for the lift.
"Do you think we could coordinate a synchronized flip?" he asked. "Get all the Grahams together in one place and make them interact?"
The lift bell sounded and the doors opened. They stepped inside.
"I don't know," she said. "Some of them definitely. Some of the Grahams will do anything you tell them. Others are more stubborn. Some of them deliberately ignore everything you say. They pretend they didn't hear but the girls say they can hear fine when it suits them."
Graham looked down at his feet. He'd hoped that all the Grahams would be the same as him. Big children learning to take their first steps in an alien world. Shy, quiet and hopeful. Overwhelmed by what they saw but thankful to be freed from the uncertainty of an unravelling world. But then he remembered that only two hundred Grahams had been told the truth. Two hundred billion still lived in that old unstable world.
How could he ever reach them?
Graham and Annalise carried the drinks back to 5G. Graham waited for the discussion to stop the second he opened the door. It didn't. He sighed with relief and helped hand out the coffees.
"How can we coordinate anything across two hundred billion worlds when we don't have two-way communication?" said a man Graham didn't recognize—someone on the Kyoto screen.
"We include it in the Resonance log," said Gary. "Detail the plan and give a date, time and place. Get all the Grahams together and force them to make a choice."
"Who reads all the Resonance logs?" asked Tamisha. "I sure as hell don't. And some worlds won't schedule us for a month."
"We could fill the Resonance log with key words to make sure it's picked up on a search," suggested Shikha.
"And I could coordinate the date and time thing with two hundred worlds right now," said Annalise. "If two hundred RPs put the same details in their logs, someone's got to read them."
"If there are any Resonance projects left to read them," said Tamisha.
The discussion continued in circles. So many things were possible but nothing was certain. Even if they did manage to bring every Graham Smith to the same place at the same time there was no guarantee the Grahams would cooperate. They might dig in their heels and refuse or sink even deeper inside their shells.
And worse. Breaking the link would not stop the resonance wave. It would weaken it—maybe buy themselves a couple of years—but it would still be there.
Graham thought about his own experience. If everyone was right about the other Grahams—that they were withdrawn and never spoke—how had he broken out? According to Schenck, he should be beset by resonance, incapable of doing anything other than follow the collective will of all the Grahams. And yet,
he
could talk. Not to everyone and not in all places, but he
could
talk.
Did that mean that the resonance effect could be beaten? Was he somehow stronger than the rest? Or were the other Grahams not as withdrawn as people thought?
"Quiet!" shouted Annalise, clapping her hands over her ears. "It's one of the girls." She closed her eyes, swayed slightly. No one made a sound.
"There's a new file from the Etxamendi world," she said, her eyes still closed, the words coming out unevenly. "It contains a message . . ."
She opened her eyes wide in surprise.
"A message from Maria Totorikaguena."
Kevin's running the translation program," Annalise said, her eyes closed, her head tilted to one side, her right index finger pressed against her ear.
The tension was unbearable. Annalise's lips moved as though she was reciting lines in her head. The silence extending to twenty, thirty, forty seconds.
"Express the Etxamendi world now!" shouted Tamisha over her shoulder.
"Shhh!" said Gary and Howard in unison.
Ten more seconds. Annalise nodded, started to smile, the smile broadened into a grin.
"Break the link and the strength of the resonance wave is diminished," she said, the words coming out in a rush. "Break the link with enough energy and the resonance wave is destroyed. You can set off a shock wave that'll purge the twelfth dimension!"
Everyone spoke after that, bombarding Annalise with questions. Graham watched in awe as she relayed messages back and forth between the worlds. It was like watching someone speaking in tongues. The mathematical formulae, the strange unfathomable words that came out of her mouth. It wasn't her speaking and yet it was.
Then Tamisha broke in. They'd downloaded the Etxamendi file from the New York sphere. They had their own translation. And a new set of proofs. It confirmed Kevin's interpretation. If they could generate enough energy, they could break both the link and the resonance wave.
Howard was next. He'd pulled up Maria Totorikaguena's personnel files. She wasn't only Spanish, she was Basque.
"Etxamendi," said Gary, smiling to himself. "We should have noticed. Etxamendi is related to the Basque language."
"Which probably explains her interest in Schenck and twelve-dimensional models of the universe," added Howard. "She was accessing the knowledge of her counterparts in the Etxamendi Diaspora. Knowledge centuries ahead of her understanding. No wonder she made mistakes."
"Who said she made mistakes," said Tamisha. "I've been rereading her work. She published solidly for six years; then four years ago, she stopped. If you ask me, the girl took her work off-line.
And
she knew exactly how to break the link. How else would Sylvestrus know the significance of keeping Graham in a coma?"
"You don't think he could have been trying to stop the resonance wave?" asked Gary.
"By closing all the Resonance projects? Gee, I hadn't thought of that," said Tamisha.
Graham smiled. She'd lost none of her edge.
Thirty minutes later Graham had to leave the room. The flow of conversation had been interesting for a while—the excitement of a solution in sight, the optimism, the rush of ideas. Brilliant minds brainstorming in unison all the different ways to increase the charge of a flip, how to intensify the interaction, how to ensure the maximum impact.
But then it had become unsettling.
They were talking about the Grahams as objects—pawns to be moved and sacrificed. No more asking the Grahams to cooperate—that was too uncertain. They'd trick them, shock them. Every now and then someone would glance Graham's way and apologize. "We're only brainstorming," they'd say, "throwing ideas around, saying the first things that come into our heads. We don't mean any of this."