Daniel began to write. The crabbed script gradually smoothed, became more like his own. There was only so much he could take control of and re-form in the time remaining. Granger’s time, and the time left for this world.
He frowned in concentration as he wrote: Granular space. Locality emphasized.And then a series of equations. Not so different from Granger’s scribbles after all; from reading Richard Feynman, Daniel had picked up the trick of creating his own mathematical notation. No one else would know what the symbols meant.
All fates have become local.
Space-time has been breaking up/breaking down. The universe is being digested, curdling like spoiled milk with nasty, rotten whey in between—geodetics shortened, jamming up. Chords (cords?) and fundamentals. Light crosses the membranes, and gravity, but material things cannot pass. Not yet.
That’s what I see
He wrote three more equations, long and inelegant, filled with conceptual lacunae. Trying to quantify and formalize these ideas—trying to make them consistent, useful, to make predictions, was more than difficult. Even when healthy it had been damned near impossible for him. His hand was growing tired—his head hurt. His stomach hurt.
He needed to reconstruct what he had written just before the nightmare descended. There were certain theories beyond the reach of his equations—not yet quantifiable, but for that reason, in their own way more true. More useful.
The map is not the territory.
Quickly, fighting Granger’s crabwise style, Daniel managed to remember and record this much: Fundamentaclass="underline" world-lines can be bundled into larger fundamentals. Below the fundamental are the component lines, which can be elevated to fundamentals by observation; and below these, the harmonics and polyharmonics—which defy observation under usual circumstances, but which rise to prominence in the decaying multiverse. We usually access harmonics and polyharmonics in meditative, imaginative, or dreaming states—but they do not usually rise up to absorb our fundamental line of progress. Yet they contribute. They fill in the sum-runners. All stories, all things. Fundamental Observers arose in the early multiverse, to fix and shore up the most efficient results of sums-over-history, and to refine the self-propagating nature of the multiverse and create logical simplicity. They are “intelligent” in a selfless way, but as they do not create, merely justify and refine, they can’t be considered gods.
Fundamental Observers like Mnemos…
His thoughts suddenly boiled over and steamed off in a crater field of pain and agitation. He dropped the pencil and slammed his fist on the floor, until the pain let up again. He had been trying to remember a name, something to do with memory, apparently…Not a god.
A muse.
He struggled to retrieve the pencil, and forced his trembling fingers to scrawl more words before they faded completely:
Sums-over-history.
Lines, cords, braids, cables, fundamentals…
Fates.
All the possible pathways a particle can take—or a human—an infinite number, spread out through all space and time, weak where improbable, strong where probable—all, in the end, collapsing into a single, energy-efficient path, the most resourceful and simplest world-line. No more. Efficiency is turned on its head.
The rules are broken.
He looked up, lips and jaw slack despite the display of rotting teeth. He could no longer make sense out of what he had just written. He had to act quickly.
He had to find a more fortunate strand, a place where Granger lived a stronger, healthier existence. For days Daniel had been reluctant to even make the attempt—had shrunk from it with a dreamlike recollection of infinite loss and horror, remembering only vaguely what had propelled him out of his self, his home, in the first place—what had sent him flying like a gull from a hurricane. Dusk fell over Forty-fifth Street as he stalked west into the fading light, marching to the origin of the long shadows, head still spinning. He stopped at the last used bookstore in the area—he had investigated all the others to exhaustion—and now he paced in front of the storefront, the last window display, dusty and unorganized.
Following the ache in his gut, he crossed the threshold and tripped the door’s hanging bell. The owner, a small, plump woman with white hair and a round face—like a toy granny made of dried apples—got up from her stool and came around the waist-high glass case that served as a counter, making sure he knew she was vigilant. The bookstore cat—orange and fat—looked up from its bed by the cash register and stretched.
The register sat on one end of the case, in which books of value—more value than the cracked-spine romance novels and best-sellers that made up the store’s stock-in-trade—had been arranged in proud display: a volume of Richard Halliburton’s travels; Nancy Drew mysteries, with dust wrappers; an old Oxford Bible bound in scuffed leather.
Daniel’s gaze moved slowly to the last volume in the case, propped on the far right of the bottom shelf: a thick trade paperback. The title and author, in faded red letters, were almost invisible, but he squinted and read: Cryptids and Their Discoverers, by David Bandle. He took a deep breath and closed his eyes. He could almost see the book through his eyelids, glowing like a coal. Bending over, he tapped the glass case with a dirty finger. “How much for that one?” he asked.
“I don’t bargain,” the apple granny said, still suspicious. She made no move to open the case. “Do you have money?”
He did—nine dollars from standing by the freeway until his back knotted, his legs went numb, and his head turned to clay. His breath smelled like gas fumes. “Some. I hope it’s not too expensive.”
“It’s a first edition,” the apple granny claimed, her eyes like blue flints.
“How much?” Daniel persisted.
“Probably too much.”
“Could you look—please?”
The owner wrinkled her nose, shrugged, lifted the lace shawl from her shoulder, and slid open the back of the case. Stooping with an expressive grunt, she drew out the book and straightened, clutching it to her bosom.
Daniel had never seen Bandle’s volume so thick. The gray stratum of plates was as wide as a finger. Lifting her glasses, the woman opened the cover with plump, dry fingers. “Fifteen dollars,” she said.
“I have nine. I’ll pay you nine.”
“I don’t bargain,” she repeated with a sniff.
Daniel afforded the woman an apologetic, tight-lipped smile. “It’s dusty. Looks like it’s been there awhile.”
She squinted at the date penciled below the price. Something relented—a little stiffness went out of her.
“Do you reallywant this book?”
He nodded. “A childhood favorite. Takes me back to better days.”
“This book has resided in my special case for precisely three years,” she said. “It’s dusty, but I’ve never seen another copy. I’ll let you have it for fifteen.”
“Nine is all I have,” Daniel said. “Honest.”
She leaned back. Her eyes wizened to piggish slits. “You’re the fellow begs up by the freeway, aren’t you?”
It seemed that everyone knew Charles Granger. Daniel smiled wide, showing all his teeth—uneven, brown, and cracked—and coughed out a fetor.
The owner’s moment of compassion instantly faded, but to get him out of the store, she sold him the book. And all it cost was all the money he had in the world.
Back in the dark house, he carried the book into the living room, where he sat with a groan on the broken cane chair, every bone grinding, and studied the spine. Such a fat edition, larger by far than any he had owned before. Sitting hurt too much, so he stretched out on the floor to read by the light of a candle—then pushed up to elbows and knees, and finally, crouched and rocked slowly on a cushion in the corner.
Now he had thebook, rich and full of detail—bloated, he thought as he thumbed the pages—and he could examine it in his own good time, if he dared. If there was any time left. This was progress of a sort, if learning bad news, verybad news, could be considered progress. And the news was awful indeed. Inch-long fleas. Prehistoric mammals found in New Guinea. Real Bigfoot scat and Bigfoot hair found in Canada and analyzed—DNA proof that the old gentleman was real, a distant offshoot of human beings.