Neve Maslakovic - Regarding Ducks and Universes

The characters and events portrayed in this book are fictitious. Any similarity to real persons, living or dead, is coincidental and not intended by the author.

Text copyright 2010 Neve Maslakovic

All rights reserved

No part of this book may be reproduced, or stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without express written permission of the publisher.

Published by AmazonEncore

P.O. Box 400818

Las Vegas, NV 89140

ISBN: 978-1-935597-34-6

For my father

T he DIM official had just asked, Reason for crossing to San Francisco B, citizenbusiness, family visit, pleasure?

It was none of them.

What had me in front of the DIM officials booth, bag in hand, instead of at my desk at Wagners Kitchen contemplating the virtues of rice cookers and vegetable peelers, was this: Felix B. I needed to find out if he was less of a procrastinator than I was. Or if his job, whatever it would turn out to be, kept him less busy. And whether he required only six hours of night sleep rather than my usual nine, giving him plenty of free time to do with as he pleased. That sort of thing.

Imjust a tourist. Wanted to see what Universe B is like, I said, nervously pushing my newly corrected identicard through the booth window.

The official reached up to take it, his avocado-green and turtlenecked uniform, standard issue for Department of Information Management employees, rising up in the back in the process. He glanced at the identicard but made no comment other than, You look younger than thirty-five, Citizen Sayers. Just missed it, eh?

By a hair.

As I waited while he typed something into his computer, a nearby ad, one of many that dotted the crossing terminal, caught my eye. Sourdough breadWarm. Tangy. BETTER in B , it said; virtual baguettes tumbled from the old Golden Gate Bridge onto an ocean liner entering San Francisco Bay. Well, really, I thought. Id heard that their sourdough bread was good, but BUTTER in B would have been catchiernot to mention more tactful. (Not that we A-dwellers didnt have our share of ads bragging about pristine national parks, clean air, and the like, but none of them at Wagners Kitchen; Wagner made sure of that.) The virtual baguettes threatened to overflow the ship like a too-small breadbasket; then the ad changed and their place was taken by premium quality almost-cat food now available in both universes

Citizen Sayers?

I turned my attention back to the booth. Yes?

Regulation 7.

Right.

It prohibits you from seeking any information about your alter.

Right, right. Even those of us who had grown up thinking they were uniques knew about Regulation 7.

And from contacting your alter unless expressly invited to do so by Citizen Sayers B himself.

Right, I repeated, swinging my backpack up across both shoulders. How Felix would know that I was in his universe to expressly invite me over for dinner or whatnot, the DIM official didnt say, and I didnt care. I had no intention of actually running into him, with or without an invitation.

The DIM official lifted a hand stamp, thwacked my ticket, and pushed it along with my identicard back through the booth window. I proceeded into the crossing chamber. A circle of seats had a glass ceiling above it and a luggage rack in the center. I put my bag on the luggage rack, found a seat near the door, and took a second look around. The Friday afternoon San FranciscotoSan Francisco crossing had attracted a mix of travelers, business types in suits and tourists in shorts and sandals. The more closely cropped hair on A-dwellers and the unwieldier-looking omnis around the necks of B-dwellers hinted at who was from which universethe thirty-five years that had passed since Y-day had yielded the strangest differences. I leaned forward to get a better look at the luggage stacked in the middle of the chamber. There they were. Suitcases with two little wheels on the bottom and an inverted-U handle on the top. Someone had told me that we in Universe A used to have them, but the wheels and handles not being recyclable, they were gone. I rubbed my shoulders, sore from standing in line with my beige, biodegradable backpack. It was well known they were more relaxed about these things in Universe B.

Nothing in the chamber suggested that it was a vessel capable of ferrying us from one universe to the other. I had imagined heavy machinery and wires and flashing lights, not a sparsely filled round room with metallic walls and a skylight. For a moment I thought I saw a shimmer above the luggage rack, like a bit of warm summer air dancing over hot pavement, but decided I was imagining things.

Excuse me , a testy voice overrode the low music emanating from the seat speakers, are we expecting more passengers? The A-dweller (or B-dwellershe was one traveler about whom I couldnt tell) seated on the other side of the luggage rack had lowered the magazine in her hands and addressed a crossing attendant walking by.

A wave of whispers swept through the chamber, like it was bad form to bother the attendants going in and out the narrow door. We dont give out traveler information, citizen. Regulation 4 concerning crossing procedures and privacy Regulation 3. The attendant stepped out, then stuck his head back in. And no calls in or out.

She frowned, a slim omni in hand. My companion is late.

It interferes with our equipment. Regulation 4.

She let the omni fall back down around her neck, picked up the magazine again, and irritably started turning its pages. A couple sitting near me was very obviously sneaking glances in her direction and I twisted my head to see better around the luggage rack. A formfitting dress as orange as a carrotno, a midwinter tangerinedrew attention to trendy ice-white hair and perfect skin. As I sat there trying to guess whether she was from A or Bshe didnt look old enough to have an alter, so it was possible she traveled freely and often enough to blur any distinctionsshe looked up suddenly from the magazine, right at me. Something passed across her face. Caught staring, I quickly reached around my neck for something to read and she retreated behind the magazine again.

I had just began to browse mystery titles (nothing like a murder in a vicarage or a hound-haunted moor to keep ones mind off the stresses of inter-universe travel) when someone asked, Is this seat taken? Face rosy and sweaty above her T-shirt, knitted hat askew, a large travel bag on one shoulder, the twenty-something B-dweller sat down with a thump into the empty seat on my left. Whew, made it. She pulled off the striped hat to reveal chestnut locks framing dark eyes and a round face.