Welcome to my latest serialized novel here on Substack, The Hotel Californium. Dr, Carmody is a man of science. He is about to become a man of science fiction. A late-night call has placed him at the business end of pistol, held by another him.
The Hotel Californium Serial can be found here: https://raytabler.substack.com/s/the-hotel-californium
Chapter 1 is here: https://raytabler.substack.com/p/hotel-californium-chapter-1
To that point in time, I never had a pistol pointed at me. It is a disturbing experience the first time around. My gut felt cold. My face felt hot. The muzzle of that revolver seemed large enough to swallow a locomotive. Logically I should’ve been curious about running into a copy of myself, but all of that paled in comparison to the fact that he was capable of drilling holes through me with ballistic lumps of lead.
“Is that coffee?” He asked the question as if I held a cup full of twenty-four carat gold.
“What?” I wasn’t exactly articulate at the moment.
“In the cup, idiot! The one in your hand. Is that coffee?”
I glanced down at the forgotten coffee, and back up at myself, holding a gun on me. “Uh, yes. It’s coffee.”
“Set it down, there on the desk there,” He gestured with the pistol. “Then back up.”
Without understanding why, I took a couple of steps forward and carefully set the coffee down on the indicated desktop. Hands out to each side in what I hoped to be a nonthreatening pose; I slowly backed away.
“Not too far. That’ll do.”
Obediently, I froze in place. To be honest, I was in fact attempting to back up far enough that a dash for the door would’ve been possible. Maybe my doppelganger saw that in my eyes. I was sure thinking about escape loud enough.
The dirty, disheveled version of me shambled forward, keeping careful watch of the security cameras. It looked as if he knew exactly where the dead zones in the lab lie, the areas where the cameras couldn’t bear. He lifted the coffee from the desk, and brought it up to his nose. An extended, sybaritic sniff dragged the rich smell into his lungs.
“Oh God, that smells wonderful,” he whispered.
The revolver remained pointed at my center of mass as my double brought the cup to his lips and poured down a long, slow gulp of black coffee. He closed his eyes and held the mouthful for a few seconds before swallowing. A satisfied sigh gusted out, scattering remnant droplets of saliva and coffee over the desktop.
“Do you know how long it’s been since I’ve had any coffee?” He took another sip, savoring the taste.
Curiosity has always been my biggest strength, and my Achille’s heel. A scientist absolutely needs to be ravenously hungry for facts and mysteries to unravel. That trait also tends to demolish personal relationships and the ability to tolerate organizational bullshit like a wrecking ball. The sensible thing to do would’ve been to make a break for the door while the me with the gun was enjoying his coffee, and let the security team deal with whatever was going on. That’s their job after all. But curiosity killed the cat, and shoved sensible thoughts clean out of my head.
“No, how long has it been?”
His eyes popped open, haunted and bewildered. “I honestly don’t know.” His eyes tracked over to where the luminous sphere levitated in the middle of the lab. “It’s easy to lose track of time, over there.”
“Over where?” Another opportunity to flee back to sanity while the other me was staring at the sphere sailed past without notice.
His eyes pivoted away from the sphere. “You’ll find out.”
“What do you mean?” A dim glimmer of what he planned uncurled at the back of my mind. I wasn’t ready to credit the possibility yet. I should have. “Who are you? How did you get in here?”
He giggled, a disturbing, high-pitch sound. “I’m you.”
“That’s ridiculous.”
“It is, isn’t it? I thought so too.”
“I... What?”
“You’re a smart boy, Carmody. I should know. You’ve already figured out what’s going to happen. You just don’t want to believe it. Same thing happened to me. You’re going through the sphere.”
“I am not.”
He gulped at the coffee. Overspill dribbled unnoticed down into the scraggly beard. “You sure as hell are, buddy.”
“That’s nuts,” I licked my lips, not at all comfortable with the cold, deliberate irrationality in my double’s eyes. “How about you just put that gun down before it goes off and hurts somebody? We head back down the hall, sit down and talk this over. I don’t understand what’s happened to you. But we can help.”
“No, you can’t help. I have to help myself.”
My mind shifted into overdrive, racing down parallel tracks. I was too far from the door to make it before he could shoot me. I was too far from him to close the distance without similarly getting shot. The civilized part of me continued to try and defuse the situation by negotiations.
“You look like you haven’t had a good meal in a while. We can sit down and hear your story over some food. How’s a burger and fries sound?”
“Sounds better than you know,” he drained the coffee of its last drops and tossed the empty cup aside. The paper container hit the floor with a hollow rattle and rolled under a control console.
“There’s plenty of coffee down the hall too,” I dangled that fact in desperation.
“That’s good to hear,” he nodded and wiped droplets of coffee from his dirty beard with the back of his free hand. “I plan to have another cup or three once you’re out of the picture.”
The cool, business-like manner he said that chilled me. I was a task as good as complete.
“So,” he made a shooing gesture toward the sphere with the pistol.
The sphere shimmered in my peripheral vision.
“Look, I don’t for a minute believe you came through that sphere.”
“You’ll believe it soon enough.”
“Okay, let’s say for the sake of argument you did come out of that...thing. We have a lot of smart people here. We can work on getting you back came from. Just let us help.”
He barked a borderline-hysterical laugh. “Going back there is the very last thing I want to do.”
“Back where?”
“Back where you’re going. Try to keep up, Carmody. Somebody has to go back, and it ain’t gonna be me. This is the cleanest way. On the other side, they’ll think you’re me. Over here, Watson and the rest of the yahoos in Project Lampshade will think I’m you.”
The fact he knew the supposedly top-secret project’s code name, and of Watson, unsettled me as much as the plan to shove me over there. Wherever over there was. Old habits die hard.
“How can you expect to replace me?” I waved a hand at his appearance.
“I am you, Carmody. Sure, there will be some awkward questions about how I managed to grow a beard in a few minutes, and what happened to my clothes. But I’ll just feed them some bullshit. Watson will snatch at that like a drowning man grasps at straws. Because the truth is so Goddamned unbelievable. The real story doesn’t fit in his box, and might derail his career plan.”
“You do know Watson.”
“Yep, I sure do. And I know you. I used to be you.” That claim hung between us, like the sphere hung in the middle of the lab. His eyes softened a tiny bit. “I know how you’re feeling right now. But get this through your head. After you go through, that portal is shutting down. And I will do everything in my power to make sure it never opens again. It doesn’t matter to me if Watson and the rest of them have questions about me. I will send them down every wrong track I can come up with to derail this project. Up to and including inducing a catastrophic runaway dimensional implosion which will destroy everything for mile around.”
I had no idea what he was talking about. But, looking into those eyes, I believed him.
“Turn around and in you go,” he pointed.
“You can’t be serious.”
“Try me.”
“I am not going to meekly step into... that.”
He sighed. “You will, or I’ll put a few bullets in you and then toss you through.” He shrugged. “Up to you. The boys in the surveillance center will see both of us at once. Which will raise even more thorny questions for me. But you’ll be wounded, maybe even dead.”
The surreal reality of the situation was hitting me hard. Maybe I could’ve come up with a third option, given time. Many times since; I’ve thought that rushing him might’ve been the best course of action. Hind sight is twenty-twenty, and usually borderline useless.
Gulping on a dry throat, I turned and stepped toward the sphere like a condemned man climbing the gallows steps. The thing smelled of ozone, and I could feel the static electricity raising the hair on my arms the closer I got. The radiance made the rest of the unlighted lab murky in comparison.
“Make sure you step high,” the other me advised. “Otherwise, the edge of the field will slice your leg off like a razor. I’ve seen it happen.”
This was just getting better and better. “Thanks, I think.”
“Oh, I almost forgot. Over there, they think you’re—” he rattled off a long alphanumeric string.
“What?”
“That’s my coordinates, my designation. Now it’s yours.”
“I’ll never remember that.”
“You’ll learn it sooner or later. The sooner the better,” He rolled his eyes. “Just remember twenty-seven for now. That’s sort of your first name.”
None of that made sense at the time. The pistol remained pointed right at me.
“I wasn’t kidding about shooting you.”
I believed him then, and still do.
Struggling to remain at least calm enough to keep from being shot, I took a deep breath. The sphere shimmered enigmatically a few inches from my face. I lifted my leg high, to avoid losing it, and stepped through.
END.
What awaits Carmody on the other side? What has he left behind?
The Hotel Californium Serial can be found here: https://raytabler.substack.com/s/the-hotel-californium
Chapter 1 is here: https://raytabler.substack.com/p/hotel-californium-chapter-1
Check out my published novels at:
nazcapress.com/product/smitty/NP/52/ (Smitty’s Guide to Interstellar Bartending, available for preorder now!)
https://histriabooks.com/product-tag/ray-tabler/
amazon.com/stores/Ray-Tabler/author/B09H62RZB9
And visit my website https://raytabler.com/ for Science Fiction You Can Enjoy!
Comments
Nothing yet. Say the first thing.
Sign in to join the conversation.