Daniel Callahan

“ Julia felt her body constrict itself to form another giggle, but none came. She stood up, tossed the butt into the toilet, and quickly lit another cigarette. Nicotine euphoria swept through her body, but it would not take her to wherever it was she desperately needed to go. She dropped the cigarette to the floor and crushed it under her foot.
"Now that was disappointing," she muttered. She felt her throat knot up with sadness until she heard someone move outside the door. She looked at her watch — she had wasted fifteen minutes, and now the restroom smelled terribly guilty. ”

“ Find a farm out in Arizona and retire once you've had enough of being called crazy. But then, Julia knew that there were two kinds of people: those who couldn't live without air conditioning and her uncle. Another run-down, fix-it-up farm in this family was out of the question. She took another deep drag and wondered why she kept smoking these things. They were like beer, Uncle Justin had told her: after the War, they never went back to making them right. If only someone would just make some real changes in the world — how long could it be before it was a better place to live? ”

“ Denny muttered.
"Just hurry up," Zeke moaned.
"It would take too long to explain in detail, but with these equations, you shouldn't be able to move up or down."
"What?" Shenika said.
"Huh?" Zeke said.
"Pardon?" the Director said.
"You're magically creating and destroying energy when you blip from one place to another and change energy states!" Justin said.
"I'm lost," Kurt said.
"No surprise," Tom muttered.
"It's in the math! You're using the same energy going laterally as you are going up or down! It's like an elevator that doesn't need power to move! It can't work!" ”

“ Sigger had somehow sneaked passed her as she was searching in her bag for her paper. How anyone that old and lazy could have slipped out without a sound was a mystery to be considered after the wave of rejection and failure had passed — and after she made it to her car. Wiping her face with her sleeve and pretending to look as bored as everyone else, Alona hoped that even if her roommate were around, she would be fooled long enough to prevent her from starting any more rumors. ”

“ What happens next? "The only true wisdom is in knowing you know nothing." — Socrates
Oh great, Julia thought, a light at the end of the tunnel. And it was a tunnel, completely dark, with only the theater doors behind her. Cecil was ahead of her but getting farther away. Julia tried to keep up but couldn't keep her footing on what seemed to be a slope toward the white light in the distance.
Venus?, she thought. God? Swamp gas? The end of a dream? ”

“ Julia asked. "To this lobby, at this time, facing off over something that seems like a weird dream?"
"Oh cripes," Denny said. "Don't get metaphysical on us."
"Mathematical innovations always seemed unreal at first —" Uncle
Justin began.
"The math doesn't matter. It never did," Julia said flatly. "It was all part of the same thing."
Justin's jaw opened and closed silently several times as he grasped a bench to keep himself vertical.
"What the heck is she getting at?" Ritchie asked Betty.
"I think you're over-thinking it, dear," Betty said to Julia.
Tom and Alona exchanged confused looks. ”

“ But Tom and Alona had already lost themselves again in each other's eyes.
"Oh for Pete's sake!" Ritchie muttered.
"They make such a wonderful couple," Betty sighed.
"A couple of what is what I'd like to know... Now listen here, Lovebirds!" The Lovebirds turned. "Whatever's going on, the people who are working with this guy," Ritchie said, pointing to the still unconscious Forrester, lying in the corner with a pillow under his head and Betty's second-best afghan over him, "meet at Seltsam. If the only place you can get to from there is that theater, then maybe that's where they are." ”

“ How the World Works "Courage is the capacity to confront what can be imagined." — Leo Rosten
Julia felt a scream building. Cecil wouldn't stop rubbing her legs, Uncle Justin wasn't answering the phone. He shot somebody, but there was no one there to have been shot. Rhonda, having flirted with all of the men in Tranquil, had started flirting with her. Seeing things that weren't there, or if they were there, things she didn't want to know anything about. Losing jobs, getting jobs. ”

“ Denny flew straight over her and into Ritchie. Betty screamed and began hitting Denny (and every so often her husband) , while Tom tried to try to pull them off each other. Kurt tossed his clipboard aside and jumped on Tom. A magnificent brawl had begun in the theater lobby.
"Stop! Stop!" Julia yelled, as she pulled herself up. "This isn't worth it!" But every time one of them tried to stop fighting, someone from the other side would clout them over the head, assault their shin with a shoe, or engage in some other act of miscellaneous violence. ”

“ Settled for Dad dying. Settled for the life of a reclusive widow, until she died too. Not much Julia could do but not make a conscious mess of her own life. Not that everything had gone perfectly. She had a job, she was going to school — although Uncle Justin kept reminding her it was "only" for accounting. No science, no liberal arts. But she read a lot on her own. ”

“ Julia asked, turning on her companions. "Do we defeat this conspiracy, save the town, and live happily ever after? Is that what we're supposed to do?"
"Don't be silly!" Ritchie said. "They have to be stopped!"
"Why?! Because they kidnapped Kurt? Well, he's happy to be with them, so that can't be the issue. They've harmed you? If they leave for their New World with this theater, what do we lose? We can rent videos, you know! Why exactly are you doing this?"
"They're evil!" Tom exclaimed. ”

“ He nearly let go of the clipboard, but managed to clutch it to his chest as the pages, his clothes, and the Earth, began to flutter violently around him. The fell past some kind of balloon, reached out to catch hold of it, but it was too late. Now, the only thing that could save him were those few pages whose contents he had just forgotten, thanks to a somewhat reduced short-term memory. The only numbers he could recall (as he struggled to find and not lose his place) was his rate of descent: thirty-two feet per second per second. ”

“ Julia was about to ask a few questions from her new employer, but a voice like a drunken oracle began to blare from inside the theater. Julia found herself entranced by the grammatically awkward oratory:
"Greetings my friends. We are all interested in the future, for that is where you and I are going to spend the rest of our lives. And remember my friends, future events such as these, will effect you in the future."
Julia winced, (and the Manager silently cursed Neoldner for threading
"Plan 9" instead of the intended Bride of the Monster.) ”

“ Julia looked around for the other one, the nerdy looking guy in the lab coat, but was distracted by something coming up behind her. Julia turned to see the Lab Coat Man holding a two-by-four in both hands.
"I don't want to hurt you. Just don't move! You can't stop us now!"
"What do you mean?!"
"Who'd want to live in this world a moment longer than we have to?! I can't take it here any more! We need to go! Please, let us go!"
"I'm not stopping you!" she yelled, moving slowly along the wall toward the ticket counter. ”

“ Neoldner, stumbling his way past door, and still giggling, shouted:
"Planet Wisconsin! Woo-hoo!"
Kurt covered the smile on his face with his hand. Denny sighed, stood, and shut the door.
"Not a new planet, a new world. There's a lot we can do, now that we've figured out the secret. Moving from point A to point B in zero time is just one aspect. Moving from one alphabet to another takes organization."
"I'm lost."
"OK, follow the metaphor. You're in the restroom, then you're here.
Point A to point B."
"Uh-huh." ”

“ But Uncle Justin would just shake his head. It was a tech school, not a college or a university. Lord knows there are plenty of cheap schools in Wisconsin that offer some liberal arts courses, he would say. To say nothing of real science. He accused her of falling for the same trap his sister, Julia's mother, had fallen for: living in a Wisconso-centric universe. ”

“ The young man (boy, really) played with his fingers in the garish light cast from the lone bulb hanging in the concrete basement. He scratched at an imaginary itch on his right hand (just below his thumb) in order to take his mind off the man in the lab coat who sat across from him at the beaten, scarred, wood table. It didn't work. And whoever this man in the lab coat was, he was insistent about paperwork. He had three inches clipped onto a weathered clipboard which he flipped through with precision. ”

“ Denny admitted, giving Kurt a dark look. "It takes planning, preparation... recruitment, teamwork. And it's going to be a lot more difficult if you stand in our way. So..."
"You want us to agree with you?" Ritchie asked. "To send this whole town to Fairy-Land just because you don't like it here? Why not just move?!"
"It's not the state that's the problem," said the Lab Coat Man, stepping out from the doors leading to the smaller theater. "That point has been exaggerated by one or two of my colleagues. It's this world that's the problem. Who would ever choose to live in a world like this? ”

“ Ritchie asked.
"We're going to move the town to a better place," the Director replied.
"Northern Wisconsin?" Alona asked.
"Minnesota?" Betty asked.
"Somewhere where they run bad movies 24/7?" Tom asked with a smirk.
"Somewhere that's not here!" replied Shenika, as she stepped out magically from behind the ticket counter. "Do you want to be stuck in this backwater state forever?!" ”

“ Alona repeated.
"You're so smart," Tom replied, giving her a kiss on the cheek.
"How does it work?" the Lab Coat Man asked. "And don't pretend I'm the only one who doesn't know how it works!" he added, rubbing the spot on his forehead in agitation.
"It's a law in the strictest sense. There's no way around it," Justin said.
"This is a science class!" moaned Zeke.
"Oh, have a seat and be quiet!" the Director snapped. "If there is a flaw in the formula, we have to know about it!"
"Assuming he's not lying," the cop said.
"Physics can't lie!" Justin bellowed. "Now listen! ”

“ Once he had left, Denny gave Kurt a quick stare, and suddenly, Kurt's giggling stopped.
"Whoa, what did you do?" he asked.
"I had to remove whatever it was you didn't inhale from your bloodstream," he said. His legs suddenly felt limp, and his steadied himself against the wall. "It takes something out of you to work that precisely." Slowly, he moved toward the other chair and sat down.
"When am I going to learn to do that?" Kurt asked.
"If we had a clipboard, we'd start ASAP, but we're kind of screwed right now. Forrester's taken, along with his copy; Justin Nelson has another. ”

“ Think of it in terms of simple math. You all can do simple math, right?"
There were a few faces that fell and began examining the carpet.
"Well, listen anyway!" Justin began, back in his classroom for the first time in years. "You got a set of Legos. Twenty, fifty, a hundred, it doesn't matter. You make a car out of them for your grandchild, then take it apart. You have the same number as you've started. Those Legos represent energy. They can't be created or destroyed."
"What if the Legos get lost?" Kurt asked. ”

“ Inside the theater the movie echoed him: "Because all of you of Earth are idiots!"
Tom sighed, not for the first time that evening. The Manager, who paid in cash every Sunday, had decided to take advantage of the bizarre tastes of his Gen X clients and offer an Ed Wood film festival. "Bride of the Monster", "Plan 9 From Outer Space", and "Night of the Ghouls" ran on the second, smaller screen on Friday, Saturday, and Sunday, two bucks a head. ”

“ Julia stood up and tried to work out the kink in her back. "You hate Wisconsin, is that it? What kind of an excuse is that to start a conspiracy?"
"Most people know that everyone in Wisconsin hates Wis-" Kurt began.
"I like this state!" Ritchie said, Betty nodding in the affirmative by his side.
"It's not about this state!" Denny yelled. "Why stay in a world where..." He couldn't finish, but the nightmare he'd had since he was six flashed before his eyes anyway. A bang. Everyone jumps and covers their ears. She's sprawled on the floor. Blood running from her body. A man with a gun by the door. ”

“ The dinner never happened, because while Justin sat in his third period Physics course, Mr. Nolla entered his wife's class and shot her dead in front of her twenty-six students. When he shot himself a few moments later, he had the decency to do it outside.
Justin tried to live with the guilt, but it kept growing inside him like a child, or like cancer. He sought ought a psychologist, who kept harranging that it wasn't his fault, a fact Justin knew in his head. But his heart didn't agree, and soon the pain inside him was so bad he had trouble keeping his food down. ”

“ Julia nearly hung up the phone, but decided she had to try one more trick before giving up. She leaned against the counter and tried to make her voice sound threatening. "Tell me where Seltsam is or I'll send you off God knows where!"
There was a sobering silence at the other end. "What?"
"You know what I mean. Zap! You're somewhere else. Only it'll be worse than Tranquil. Worse than Wisconsin!" ”

“ The door opened, and twenty year-old resembling a ferret and wearing an identical lab coat entered, a clipboard in his hand.
"He's going to help with the second phase," the Lab Coat Man said.
"Hey," Neoldner said.
"Um... yes," Sigger replied.
Neoldner took the seat across from Sigger as the Lab Coat Man moved to the doorway. Forrester, with his strange brown mustache, popped his head into the room.
"I'm going home to finish to schedule for tomorrow this evening. Do you have everything?" Forrester asked.
"How could I? You haven't told me what I need yet," the Lab Coat Man replied. ”

“ The smiles and laughter became contagious as they grabbed their jackets and ran out the back door. The spent the rest of the afternoon taking in all of the shops that lined both sides of the street. Eventually, they found themselves at Popeye's pub, where they had a sandwich and a few beers, and decided to kill the rest of the evening with a movie. ”