Locus

“WHAT? You brought us here to see an animation Easter egg?!” One of the other civilians seemed especially angry about this. “In a goddamn kids’ TV show?”

“Well, it wasn’t there yesterday.”

“...What?”  The angry man seemed to deflate somewhat.

“That hand wasn’t there yesterday, on any recording of the show, anywhere.  Now, even the screencaps have it there.”  Rodger had a deadpan expression that most poker players would probably sell their soul for.  There was a pause where people tried to understand the ramifications of this statement, and generally failed.

The outspoken man who, by an unspoken consensus, was now the voice for the very confused civilians asked “So what does that mean? How did it get everywhere?”

“We really aren’t sure what it means.  That’s why we brought you scientists here. As to how it got everywhere, if you will come with me—yes, into this house over here—we’ll show you how we think it got there.”  Most of the so-called scientists (Gerald thought some of them looked more like people who would wear tinfoil hats than scientists) were still trying to figure out what he meant, and seemed apprehensive, but curiosity overtook that as they were led out of the tent and to a small house.

Inside, the house was sparsely furnished and dusty enough for the dust to be visible to the naked eye.  It didn’t seem to have been lived in at all.  As they walked up the stairs, Gerald noticed that most of the walls were blank, as if somebody had simply put a primer over the wall and left it at that. There was only one picture—a painting on the wall in the hallway at the top of the stairs.  The name “Elinus” was the only thing written below the picture, which was of an attractive and somewhat regal looking woman.

Inside what was probably presented to the potential buyer as a “spacious master bedroom with attached full bathroom” was a truly frightening mess of electronics linked by cords, about half of which looked homemade.  But what really stood out was a… thing in the center of the room.  Gerald’s eyes watered from trying to look at it.  It looked somewhat like a tear, as if somebody had worn a hole into the air.  As he moved around it to get a different angle, it didn’t seem to change.  It was a pity Gerald had never played any first person shooters from the early nineties, the ones that used sprites instead of actual 3D models, because then he would have something he could say it was almost, but not quite, completely unlike.  To him, with his expertise, it looked a bit like a Mandelbrot set somehow brought into three dimensions.

“We call THAT the Locus; it seems to be a tear in the universe, a portal between worlds.  If you will.”  Rodger’s face glowed evilly in the light given off by the intrusion into the world.

“So how does this explain how somebody got into a TV show?  I mean... you’re not saying that a TV show is actually real, are you?”  Gerald caught the nametag of the outspoken scientist— ”Richard”—and privately pegged him to have at least tried on a tinfoil hat at some point in his life.

“Well I think that’s a question you should ask Gerald here.” Rodger made a gesture at him, as if he had all the answers all along.

“What?” a bit confused as suddenly being labeled as a fountain of information.

“Wasn’t your master’s thesis pretty much all about the existence of multiple universes?”

“Well, yes.  It was.  But I never said they were connected, at least, not like this.”  Gerald gestured at the nexus, being careful not to bring his hand too close. “And I certainly never applied my work to fictional ones.” Gerald was looking at the Locus in apprehension, his hand felt slightly warmer just from being near it.  Both very curious, and suspicious at the same time.

Rodger shrugged. “I’m sure in your research you came across the possibility, Mr. Briggs, that every fictional universe is real somewhere.”

“Well, yes, of course, in theory.  Always in theory.  I certainly never said it was possible for one to affect the other.”

“Well, Mr. Briggs.  Possible or not, we are going through there in less than an hour, so you’d better get suited up.” And with that, Rodger left.

Following Rodger out of the house, it became apparent to Gerald that while Rodger was indeed in charge, the people he was in charge of perhaps didn’t quite see eye to eye with him.  As they were passing, he stopped for a while to chastise a man who, for some reason, was unpacking an extremely heavy gun with a large caliber barrel.

“A 40 mm automatic grenade launcher?!  I mean, I can see bringing some small arms, but—correct me if I’m wrong—aren’t we are going into a TV show made for kids here? I really doubt we are going to need to massacre everybody in a kids show at hundreds of explosive rounds per minute.  The show’s rated TV G!”

“Sorry, boss.  Higher-ups said we gotta bring some heavy weaponry.”  His face was stony, like a road block midway through rush hour.  Rodger sighed, and turned to Jenkins.

“Jenkins, could you get them suited up?  I have to deal with THIS.”  There was venom in his voice.

“Yes, SIR.” Jenkins issued a snappy salute and motioned for the “scientists” to follow him.  Gerald was becoming pretty sure, looking at them closely, that they could not all be scientists.  It was the way they reacted to the Locus.  Too many of them looked almost as if somebody was playing the world’s biggest prank on them, as Gerald had.  That may have been mostly justified at first, he mused, but the Locus didn’t look like anything you could get with a 50 million dollar effects budget.  It looked undeniably, almost offensively, real.

About fifteen minutes later, Gerald was inside the room filled with terrifying electronics.  He was poking at the Lovecraftian gadgetry.  A few of the guards looked like they would have given him trouble, but he looked official enough, and he was going through the thing later anyway.  He was working at one of the computers when Rodger edged in, eyeing the Locus nervously.

“Are you sure you should be messing with that computer, Gerald?  That is... uh, that is a computer, right?”

“Yes.  It uses a very strange programming language.  I don’t know if you know what ‘eldritch’ means, but I expect that’s how you would describe whoever made it.”

“What?” Rodger seemed more than a little too edgy for a professional government agent.

“This computer, it uses a programming language I’ve never set eyes on before.”

“Well, maybe this could help.  It’s the only book we found in the entire house.”  He held out a book titled Language Gativin. Other than those two words, the leather-bound cover was devoid of markings.  “We couldn’t make heads or tails of it really; it all looks like unintelligible gibberish.”

“I’ll see what I can do with it.”  He hardly glanced away from the monochrome CRT screen.

Rodger closed the door as quietly as he could as if not to disturb Gerald, but the truth was, that room sent chills down his spine.  He had taken a look at some of the more… improvised-looking electronics, and they shouldn’t have worked at all.  If not looked at too closely, they were fine, but once the eye actually examined the exposed traces on the boards closely, they were completely wrong.  Things didn’t connect.  Small components looked like they were completely missing, or only half soldered in, with the other half just sticking up into the open air.  Wires were connected with equal probability, to end without warning or to join another connection.  Overall Rodger got the feeling that he was looking at half a device.  He suspected he knew where the other half was.

He shook his head and tried not to think about how it worked.  If anybody could decipher that mess it was Gerald.

Rodger had gone to get him personally because he could find next to nothing on Gerald.  Sure, the man had a number of truly remarkable academic achievements in every discipline, from theoretical physics to electronic engineering.  But, despite deriving three completely original mathematical theorems before leaving high school, he didn’t have any notoriety for them.  It was hard enough even finding a D.O.B. and there didn’t even appear to be a picture of him anywhere.  Even his I.D. was blank.  How anybody could miss getting their picture on their own ID was beyond Rodger.

Although he was quite new in the field, Rodger had done his research, and the three most wanted men in the world might as well have been playing hide and seek in kindergarten, compared to Mr. Briggs.  Who was this guy?  Rodger intended to ask him some very serious questions later on, but he couldn’t think about that now, because some idiots were trying to pack more heavy artillery.  Now, why the hell would we need anti-tank rifles?  He was going to find the person who was making them take all this crap and have Words with them.

Gerald really wasn’t sure about this programming language.  It was like nothing he had ever seen before; either it was very simple and done extremely well, or it was extremely complex.  It was very hard to tell which.  After only five minutes with Language Gativin, though, he was making progress.  Twenty minutes later, when the other “scientists” arrived, he had figured out most of the controls for the nexus and had changed it from an unsettling mess floating in midair to more of a tear in space framed by an unsettling mess floating in midair.

Through the tear, depending on where you looked, you could see the remains of a stone temple. Designed more like an open amphitheater, there was a podium, glass topped, with a single button.  Behind it was a recently used bonfire.  Set into the walls, in 10-foot-high slabs of lead, were strange two word phrases, most of which didn’t make any sense.

After looking at the grim stonework for a while one of the watching scientists quipped.

“Well it doesn’t look like it’s from anything I’d want to show my kids.”

Gerald could not shake the feeling that the Locus looked like an open eye, watching him.

It was very quiet for a while.  Some time later, Rodger came in, took one look at the Locus and immediately exclaimed, “What the-“ before he tripped over his own feet and fell flat on his face.

Getting up, probing his nose for blood, he was trailed by the previously nerdy-looking Dr. Freeman, who didn’t look quite so nerdy in some sort of… radiation suit?  Gerald didn’t quite know what to make of Dr. Freeman’s outfit.

“Gerald, what have you been up to with the Locus?  It looks... different.  Did you fix it?  It looks like it might work now.”  Rodger looked down and noticed some small and mangled shapes on the other side. “Is that the probes?  So THAT’S what happened to the probes! I was worried about them.”  He paused a moment to whisper something to Dr. Freeman and then said, “Well, gentlemen, once we have confirmed that the Locus is safe to go through, we’ll be the second people to venture into another universe.  I hope you all packed well.”

About twenty minutes, several unfortunate-looking sticks and some serious tweaking by Gerald later, the Locus was deemed “safe.” Gerald was also the first and only volunteer to be the first through it.  Something about the eldritch programming language had intrigued him, and he was feeling adventurous and very out of character.  He thought about what he normally would be doing, right about now.  Checking his watch, it was about 5:00, so: he would probably be error-checking theories as a favor, or helping compile astronomical data from one of the networked telescopes… None of that had ever been particularly exciting before, but it had seemed like an interesting enough thing to do at the time.  Now, it sounded boring and kind of stale, like 6 month old crackers that had been left out in the open air.  He wanted to do this: he wanted to break on through to the other side.

Shaking his head to dislodge such detritus, he set his gaze straight ahead.  The tension in the air couldn’t have been thicker if the entire amphitheater on the other side was filled with a pitchfork- wielding, torch-bearing angry mob.  He took a deep breath.

As Gerald Briggs stepped out of this world, he could feel the anxiety falling away, the tension faded as the portal filled his vision.

It felt...

It felt like he was beyond his troubles. It felt like the start of a new life.