Scene 1. Liz.
A tall, statuesque black figure walks through the local pizzeria to Lilly’s table in the back, turning heads as she walks by the other patrons. Liz sits facing Lilly at the small table stall, her classic dark features are illuminated by her broad white smile.
“It’s good to see you again. I have missed you at school, especially on the tennis team.”
“Liz, you look great, a ‘model’ as always. I am sorry to call you only when I need help, but it is important if I want to keep my job at The Accelerator. My prudish supervisor-boss has ordered me to ‘dress down’, more conservative for work. I have to agree, nothing I own fits me anymore. I need less restrictive clothes for work, anyway.”
“You wouldn’t have a problem if you got more exercise and exhibited a bit more self-control around food.”
“We’ve discussed my weight problem before, and I know you are right, but my job isn’t great for physical exercise, it requires strength, but it is not ‘aerobic’, and ‘eating’ is my only stress relief. And I have had a lot of stress lately, with my boss scolding me, but that is not the worst of it.
But first. Let me catch up. How is your brother, and what have you been doing? You must be nearing graduation at The University. Are you dating anyone now? Married perhaps?”
“I am no closer to graduation than I was when you were there. I still need to take the general requirements courses, but I only like the art classes. I dropped out of the tennis team when you left school, I couldn’t find anyone I liked for ‘doubles’.
And yes, brother Tex is in good health. He was out of the pro games for a few weeks with a pulled tendon last year, but he healed quickly and is back in the games now.
I see that you moved up to a professional vocation while I am still waiting tables and slapping fresh lawyers at Rod’s restaurant.”
“I miss working at Rod’s, all the free food, and beating up hoods.
Why don’t you interview with an advertising agency or industry? I think your technical work is good, and you did win the regional art contest, a few years back.”
“You know what I think about ‘selling art’, I would rather work as an ‘office troll’. I thought I would meet ‘that someone’ in one of my art classes by now, but the others don’t appreciate my classical methods. They look at my oil paintings and grunt, ‘how quaint’, or worse. The others are only interested in doing sketch art, to get jobs drawing products for advertising agencies. You were the only one who liked my art for its own sake, and you weren’t even in my class.”
“Why haven’t you submitted anything since?”
“It was fun to do the art contests, and tennis matches, but I get no encouragement from anyone, except you and my brother. The regional contest is coming up again, do you have anything you could submit?”
“I’m not enrolled, and they aren’t interested in my junk anyway.”
“You won an award in that regional contest, too.”
“The judges created a ‘special honor’ award for my junk because it defied categorization. I don’t really consider their acknowledgment of my mental illness as an ‘award’.”
Lilly looks down, ashamed of herself at Liz’s scolding.
“I know you’re giving me good advice, my parents tell me the same thing. I should go back to school. I could work out every day, practicing and competing on the tennis team, and finish my degree. Likewise, I still need to take the GE courses too, we can take them together.”
“Good, then I can cheat from you.”
“Help you cheat? No way! Not with my strict college professor parents, who would kill me if they even thought I had helped anyone cheat. But I will help you, we can study together or find a study group and meet cute boys.
I don’t have anyone, either, except for a few lab rats that follow me around.”
“Our orders are up, I’ll get them. What did you order?”
“A large veggie pepperoni pizza.”
“One day, I will hunt down and kill the inventor of the irresistible pepperoni pizza.”
Scene 2. Nightmare.
Lilly continues, over wolfing bites of pizza.“
As you know, I did well in the science courses at The University, and that helped my folks get me a job at The Accelerator. I am interested in science, especially physics, the science they are doing at The Accelerator. Every week, one scientist or another gives a public lecture on their work or speculative topics. I love these science talks, although I confess, I don’t understand a lot of it, even though they are dumbed-down for the populace, like me. The researchers and scientists wax poetic, about the possible existence of other Worlds, other Universes, the Multiverse. Perhaps these other Worlds also have ‘alternate’ versions of ourselves.”
“Their speculative physics talks have spawned a reoccurring nightmare. It starts out pleasant enough, of the times as a ‘kid’ when my parents would take me on their foreign expeditions, to their ‘digs’ into the past. I loved climbing the cliff walls, descending ropes into the holes, to see our past, fossilized and frozen forever in the rock.”
“But then the nightmare begins, the stone skulls turn toward me to speak as I descend, ‘Beware, beware, you are lost.’”
“I finally land, I stand at the bottom of the shaft looking up to see a small blue circle, all that remains of the sky outside. Then I saw a dark tunnel leading off to one side of the shaft, with a trickle of water flowing out. I smelled an unfamiliar sweet fragrance in the cold draft wafting out of the tunnel. Curious, I took my electric torch from my belt, I shined the light beam into the tunnel and began my hike. The walls of the tunnel are brown, wet, lumpy but polished smooth. The passage narrows as I walk, as if I am passing through the intestines of a monster.”
“I continue to walk to a semicircular hatchway or door closed across the tunnel. The doorway has two long stalagmites projecting down from the ceiling on each side, appearing as canine teeth, thus resembling an open mouth and dark throat of a monster.”
“As I walk up to the hatch, across the ‘throat’ of the doorway, I see that its surface is shimmering, and partially reflective, with a dim, strangely distorted image of myself approaching from the far side. As I walked up to the filmy hatch ‘mirror membrane’, I reached to touch the surface, the sweet smell overpowering. The image, my unreal reflection, simultaneously raised a forelimb and reached out to me as we touched our differently shaped digits. The image vanishes, and I am immediately plunged into darkness as I felt a powerful and convulsive electric shock throughout my body. I lost consciousness as I collapsed into a shallow pool of digestive fluid on the floor of the monster tunnel.”
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“Then I bolted up in my bed, drenched with sweat and with a sore throat, as if I had been screaming.”
Scene 3. Art.
“A science lecture was the source for this nightmare? I told you to stop reading science fiction and horror stories before bed. Read some sweet romance stories instead, then maybe you will want to find someone. Let’s go over to The University and I can show you what I am working on and perhaps some practice tennis for old times.”
…
The two enter an art room at The University. It is crowded with various art items, partially and finished sculptures, the large items standing on the floor with smaller items on tables, charcoal and color pencil drawings, on easels. Around in the back is Liz’s oil painting. It is a painting of a lady, reclining by a country pool. To the sides are the edges of a pine forest and in the distance beyond the pool, rolling hills.
“I am not a student of art, but I like your painting. Okay, I’ll look in my junk pile for something to enter, as I know you won’t enter the contest without me. I’ll either have to enroll or get a former student waver to enter.”
Liz smiles.
“Would you like to do some tennis volleys today? The courts here are much better than the park, not as many ‘Lookyloos’.”
Lilly smiles back.
“I like the ‘Lookyloos’, I don’t get much attention otherwise.”
…
The two stroll leisurely across the campus to the athletic fields. Lilly looks up at the science building.
“Perhaps I should take science classes at The University again. I could benefit from knowing more about the ‘real science’ they do at The Accelerator, so those nerds can’t scare me with their groundless Multiverse hypotheses. Then, maybe I wouldn’t have scary nightmares.”
But after what I saw in Danny’s laboratory, it might already be too late.
Scene 4. Tennis.
Liz still has Lilly’s racket and several of her tennis togs in a locker.
“Oh, oh. My tennis skirts and shirts seem to have shrunk since I was here last. I hope I don’t pop out. Let’s find a remote court.”
“I don’t think any of your things have shrunk, only that some of your things have gotten larger. But I’ll take sweats with us, just in case anyone needs to cover up from a ‘wardrobe malfunction’.”
The two women begin their tennis volley practice on a vacant rear court, hoping to avoid notice. But the two kinetic women quickly attract a crowd of spectators. Then two young college men, ‘game boys’, show up with rackets and invite themselves to a game of ‘doubles’. The women offer to play the men together as a doubles team, but no dice, the men insist that they split up into opposite sex pairs.
After a few games, Lilly calls it quits, as she is exhausted by the now unfamiliar exercise. One of the men pulls a pad from his pocket and walks over to Liz and Lilly.
“You look familiar, did you all play for the school a few years ago?”
Liz nods.“
Yes, we were on the school’s tennis doubles team. We even took several titles back then.”
“Would you like to play for us again? Would you mind if I collect your contact information?”
The two groups exchange contact information as Lilly gasps and points to return to the locker room where she can collapse.
…
“Why were you in such a hurry. Those college boys were cute.”
“They were also very young, and they were looking at you, not me. Have you considered modeling again?”
“My brother wants me to resume modeling too. He says that I need it to build confidence. He says that my low opinion of myself is why I can’t get a date. But modeling is so much trouble, all that make-up is yucky, and I am allergic to a lot of it.
Are you too exhausted for shopping?”
“No, I’ll make it. I have to get new clothes for work tomorrow. I can’t afford to be fired, especially not after my folks pulled so many strings to get me hired by The Accelerator when I dropped out of The University, worried that just playing ‘super’ for the apartments, working as a waitress at Rod’s restaurant, and on my junk art, would not keep my mind active enough.”
Liz chuckles.
“Even with that, your mind still has the capacity to visit the worlds of your dreams.”
Scene 5. Shopping.
The city center is always bustling with traffic, so public conveyance is the best means of access. The shopping districts collect stores together, so it is not inconvenient. Several clothing stores offing different specialties line the street. Lilly examines the figures in the windows for something appropriate for her work. Liz points at one display.
“How about this one? It looks like a fireman’s uniform, so it is probably fireproof.”
Lilly regards the uniform outfit.
“Clothing shopping would be easier if The Accelerator had uniforms. Well, I am not expecting it to be a fashion statement and I don’t have a better idea, so let’s go in and see if they have anything that fits me in a dark color that won’t show stains.”
This store specializes in uniforms and work clothing, so the racks are filled with solid-color shirts and pants. Liz picks up a cloth measuring tape and regards Lilly.
“Okay, Lilly, suck it in and hold your breath.”
Lilly shakes her head, but dutifully lifts her forelimbs in resignation and shame for ‘the measuring’.
“Lilly, stop scowling. You’re cute as you are, like a fluffy toy, and that is what is angering your boss. You tell me that the lab workers dote on you.”
Liz then looks down with a frown and mutters.
“My brother scolds me, 'It's not ‘our looks’ that keeps men away…'”
Scene 6. Conspiracy.
Lilly rides the buss back home with several bags of new clothes for work. As she walks up the stairs to her apartment, she hears the telephone ringing and jumps through the front door to answer it.
“Danny, what a surprise. Do you have something else for me to see, or did you want to talk to me from somewhere outside The Accelerator grounds?”
“Yes, I am alone, and no, I haven’t told anyone about your machine, The Mirror. And I promise that I won’t. Have you shown The Mirror to or told anyone else?”
“So, those closed-minded dummies thought you were crazy for even bringing up the idea of an actual, operational device that might confirm the existence of a Multiverse?”
“Yes, I would love it if you borrowed me to help you with a ‘special project’ in your laboratory, as long as it doesn't involve my dissection. How long do you think you will need me?”
“Indefinitely, and my boss agreed? What did you say we are doing?”
“Making a special ‘snow cone’ machine, and he believed that? Apparently, he just wants to get rid of me.”
“I bought new clothes for work today to placate him, but if I work for you, I can wear my ‘play clothes’, if you don’t find me too distracting or if my work involves welding or the use of fabrication machinery beyond a soldering iron.”
“So you have off site meetings and construction work for me too? Sure, I don’t mind that, either. I can drag in a spare magnet from my lab and claim that we are working on a new kind of superconducting magnet for The Accelerator.”
“As we’ll need a better cover story than a ‘snow cone’ machine.”
End of Chapter 2.