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DARKNESS DWINDLES Chapter Ten
The Porsche roared out of Our Lady of Perpetual Sorrows and sped down the road toward the state highway intersection. A couple miles past the intersection Daniel pulled the car over to the side of the road and cut the engine.
"Fuck!" he screamed, pounding his fists on the dashboard. "Fuck! Fuck! Fuuuuuck!"
He dropped his forehead against the steering wheel. "Dad," he whispered. "Oh, Dad."
Joey patted his brother's knee. "It's okay, Daniel. It's okay."
Daniel sat in silence for a long time, his head against the steering wheel and Joey's hand on his knee. Abruptly he inhaled loudly. He shifted in his seat. The crotch of his khakis had begun to tent upward; Daniel was getting an erection.
"Bro," he husked, "you need to take your hand off my leg, right now."
"Okay, Daniel." Joey removed his hand.
Daniel grabbed his Ray-Bans from their case in the console and slipped them on. He started the engine. The Porsche leapt forward.
The drive back was just as fast and furious as the drive out. Daniel's erection never went down.
They pulled into the garage and Daniel hit the remote to close the door behind them. He sat motionless, staring straight ahead. The muscles on his arms and pecs flexed under his t-shirt as he gripped the wheel.
"Bro -- " he swallowed. "I need to find something out. I need to know something. Would it totally freak you out if I ... if I kissed you? I won't do anything nasty, I swear ... I mean, I won't do this at all -- I won't even touch you -- if you don't want me to. I'll never do anything to you that would hurt you or that you don't want. I promise. I'll lock myself in a fucking cage for a week every month if I have to. I will. I'll build the damn thing myself out of rebar."
"It's okay."
"I'm just trying to figure this out. Maybe I'm constructing these fantasies in my head that aren't the way it would be. Maybe it would totally turn me off. That's what I'm wondering. Maybe it's something that vampire shrink put into my head, and it isn't the way it is at all. If I kiss you, maybe that would settle it. Know what I mean? I've never kissed a guy before. I'll probably hate it. Then I'll know for sure, and that'd be that."
He took a deep breath and slowly released it. "So is it all right if I kiss you?"
"Daniel, it's okay. You can kiss me."
The muscles on Daniel's arms stood out like ropes; his knuckles were white. "Okay."
He peeled a hand off the steering wheel, slipped off his Ray-Bans, and tossed them onto the dash. He turned to face Joey. His face was flushed. In the hollow between his sternum and neck his pulse drummed a rapid beat.
Slowly he reached toward Joey. His fingers trembled as they approached. They settled lightly on Joey's cheekbones and a faint sigh escaped Daniel. He cupped Joey's face and gently pulled him closer. His eyes locked with his brother's as they neared. They were dilated: a rim of steely grey ringed wide pools of blackness. Breath came in short pants between Daniel's parted lips. His exhalations tickled Joey's cheeks.
Their lips brushed. They were kissing. Daniel's grip tightened and he pressed harder. A moan clawed its way out of his throat.
"Oh, no! Fuck!" he gasped. His clenched the back of Joey's head as he began to shake. He rolled his head up to break the kiss. They pressed against each other, forehead to forehead. Daniel's brow was slick with sweat. His chest heaved in shuddering gasps. "Fuck, fuck, fuck," he was sobbing now.
He released Joey and fell back into his seat, slamming his head hard against the headrest. Tears streamed down his cheeks. Gradually his breathing calmed.
He looked down at the stain spreading across the crotch of his khakis.
"I'm screwed," he said softly. "They're gonna build a whole new level in Hell for me."
He got out of the car and went into the house.
Over the next few days Daniel made himself scarce. He didn't spend any time in his studio. He didn't spend much time home at all. Hours each day he spent down at the dojang. He also went to his gym to work out. In the evenings he went out with Steve and a few of his other buddies. Afterwards he came home, spent an hour in his office, then went into his bedroom and closed the door. In the mornings he was gone before Joey got up.
Joey kept to his regular routine. He did the laundry and the grocery shopping, and drove to his clarinet lesson with Mrs. Wilmer. Monica, the cleaning lady, made her weekly appearance. Daniel left the check for her on the dining room table, just like he always did.
On the third night after their return from the convent Joey was on the couch in the living room watching The Biggest Loser when his brother came home. Daniel picked up the remote and clicked off the TV.
"Daniel, I was watching that."
"So TiVo it." Daniel seated himself in the loveseat. "I got a call from Uncle Walter this afternoon. He said he's figured out some things in Dad's notes. He's coming by after lunch tomorrow to tell us about them."
"Okay."
"Joey," Daniel hesitated, "I don't know how much you're able to think about the bigger picture with that thing inside of you, but ... we need to start looking at what we're gonna do when it's gone."
"What do you mean, Daniel?"
Daniel licked his lips. "The moon's almost a quarter full. I don't think I can do this much longer. I know you were planning on living at home this fall, but that's starting to look like not such a good idea. What do you think about living on campus?"
"You mean in a dorm, with other students?"
"Yeah. Crap, never mind -- scratch that. I'll get you an apartment downtown. Something in a high rise, with security.
"But Daniel, this is my home. I don't want to move out."
"Shit, bro, don't you get it? I could do the same thing to you I did last full moon. In fact, I'm certain I will. I just hope I don't do something worse. I couldn't live with myself if I did. I swear, I'll kill myself before I hurt you or turn you into something like me."
"It'll be okay, Daniel. You won't hurt me. Doctor Fellers said that you just need to integrate. Why haven't we seen him again, like he told us to?"
Daniel sighed. He ran his hand through his hair. It was growing out; he hadn't had a haircut in two months.
"I don't know. I guess I'm just a chicken-shit. Let's meet with Walter tomorrow and see how it goes, okay?"
"Okay, Daniel."
Uncle Walt showed up an hour after noon, their father's notebook in his hand. Joey poured him coffee and they all sat down around the dining room table.
"You said you found something, Uncle Walter?" Daniel asked.
"Yes, I think so." Walter sipped his coffee. "I'm not sure I have the whole picture, but I have a large chunk of it. It's really quite amazing. Jonathan was a first class mathematician. First class."
"So what is it?"
"Hold on." Walter held up his hand. "For this to make sense you need to have a context. Do you know who Steven Hawking is?"
"Steven Hawks?" asked Daniel, his eyes wide.
"No, Steven Hawking. He's ..." Walter caught the glint in Daniel's eyes and sighed. "You know who he is. My apologies, Daniel. I lecture to bored undergraduates all day. As you know, Hawking is a big picture theorist. His modeling predicts that there is an infinity of parallel universes. Universe squared, Jonathan used to call it."
"Universe squared," Daniel nodded. "Got it."
"Jonathan took Hawking's work and extended it in a certain direction. He hypothesized that the universes are grouped in pairs. Each member of the pair is a perfect opposite of the other."
"Opposite? How?"
"Remember, this is all mathematical. Imagine the physical laws of our universe could all be rendered in the form of one mathematical function, called X.' The laws of its pair would be another function, Y.' The relationship between the two is X = -Y. They are mirror opposites."
"Like matter and anti-matter?"
"Not quite. The difference is ... well, actually, it's trivial for the purposes of this conversation. So yes, like matter and anti-matter.
"The other important property of universe pairing is that the paired members are closer to each other than they are to other universes. Again, remember that `closer' in this case is a purely mathematical construct. Parallel universes aren't literally close or far from each other in any way that our minds think of those terms."
"Okay." Daniel nodded. "So how does all this relate to the Hypersynchronistic Decay Sequence?"
"Ah," Walter beamed, "this is where things start to get really interesting. What would happen, your father asked, if the paired universes somehow came into contact with each other?"
"You mean if something like a doorway or a worm hole opened between them?"
"No." Walter shook his head. "You're thinking of them as different locations. They aren't. They're different realities. What would happen if the different realities were to ... intersect?"
"No idea."
"Mathematically, it would be like inserting into the function on each side of that equal sign some parts of the other function. You with me?"
"I think so."
"Good. This means that contact between the universes would cause changes in the function -- the governing physical laws -- of each universe. That in turn would create an imbalance within those universal physical laws that would seek to correct itself. It would initiate a mathematical trend, a logarithmic series, with a limit of its original value.
"The mathematics for this is very elegant, but it's difficult to render in everyday language. Let me use an analogy. Imagine that the two universes are metal cymbals. When they are swung against each other the vibrations produce a loud ringing sound. The inherent rigidity of the metal causes the cymbals' vibrations to dampen over time, and the ringing fades away. Slowly the physical laws of our universe reassert themselves and it returns to its original state. This is the Hypersynchronistic Decay Sequence."
"The Darkness dwindles," Daniel breathed.
"Exactly."
"So Mercedes was right. Magic was much stronger on the Earth long ago."
"Not just on the Earth. These are laws of physics we are talking about."
"You mean the whole universe?"
Walter nodded.
"Jesus. So maybe once upon a time gods really did rule the heavens?"
"Possibly."
"Wow. That's really wild." Daniel frowned. "But there's no way to change the sequence, is there? No way to make it slow down or reverse?"
"No," Walter shook his head, "absolutely not. That would be like trying to change, say, the law of gravity for the whole universe. It's impossible. There's nothing inside of our universe that has any effect on the HDS."
"So the Darkness is going to fade away to nothing?"
"That's where it's headed."
"And what's going on now between the universes? They aren't touching anymore?"
"Now that's an interesting question. Before they intersected, the paired universes were perfect mirror opposites. Their only difference was a constant of negative one. That's what made them mathematically closer to each other than to any other universe.
"The intersection distorted that perfect relationship. Those distortions of their functions caused the universes to be ... thrown apart, you could say. Now our universe is experiencing hypersynchronistic decay and its pair is experiencing some version of the opposite. Hyperdeterministic decay, perhaps, or something like that."
"So they're getting closer together again?"
"Yes, I suppose. I haven't gone as thoroughly over that part of his work yet, but I know Jonathan's term for the process was Interuniversal Attraction. It's not actually a force. It's a mathematical trend roughly analogous to what in statistics is called regression to the mean. As the decay sequence trends toward zero, the paired universes return to their original states. They're moving back to X = -Y."
"And that's it?"
"Well, yes. Of course, there's nothing to stop ..." Walter's voice trailed off. His eyes widened.
"Uncle Walt?"
"Wait," he whispered. "Wait a minute. Something just occurred to me."
He sat very still, his gaze focused inward. "My God," he breathed, "why hadn't I seen that? It's perfect. So simple and so perfect. Perfectly symmetrical."
"What? What is it?"
"As the foreign variables fall away, the paired universes regress toward each other. At some point they will come back into contact. When the sound fades enough they will ring again."
Daniel nodded slowly. "And our universe will be returned to a state of super-duper hypersynchronicity?"
"Exactly. And the HDS cycle will start all over again."
"Shit. That's really wild. When does it happen?"
"I don't know. Actually, it's fundamentally unknowable. You'd need information from outside of our universe to predict it. It could be in ten minutes, or in ten millennia." Uncle Walt hesitated. "I haven't found in Jonathan's notes any explanation for why the paired universes intersected. He just assumes that they did. It's reasonable to expect that under identical conditions they will so again, but that's not provable."
"Maybe not," said Daniel, "But I bet you're right." His voice was filled with wonder. "Dad thought the same thing. That's the `little surprise' he was referring to in his message to Mercedes. Someday the magic is going to suddenly all come back. Wow. What's that going to mean for the human race?"
"I don't know." Walter looked like he was reeling. "Something new, I suppose."
"Yeah." Daniel nodded. "And something really, really old."
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Dear Uncle Walt -- love those neocortical folds! I knew he could do it. He just needed the right inspiration. A couple of dreams of him and Jonathan back in boarding school did the trick. Ah, young love. Those boys and their after-lights-out games! Too bad for Walter that for Jonathan it really was just a phase.
But enough reminiscing. This is wonderful news, the best news I've heard in I don't remember how long. I have a busy night ahead of me. There's some business to take care of, and then it's time to get packing. Tomorrow I move out and start slouching my way towards Bethlehem. Guess what I'll be waiting for?
InvertedBeast@yahoo.com