Shoes went flying across the terraced home’s entryway as Sherri arrived home, her feet aching. She was more than glad to be finished with the nursing shift that seemed to saddle her with the most humiliating of cleanup duties.
It was around two in the morning, and she was quite ready to sleep, but that was a privilege she had not yet earned.
“John?” She called out, scanning the darker areas of the house for signs of the observer.
Seeing nobody, she turned towards the living room, only to see John right beside her, having apparently just blinked in from another part of the house while she wasn’t looking. He wasn’t smiling this time, but looked slightly haunted.
“What is it?” she asked.
“I don’t like these people very much,” he said, shaking his head.
“Why, what did they do?”
“So many things. In so many places.” He had a faraway look in his eyes, as he gestured towards the couch. “I’d, uh, get that steam cleaned if I were you.”
He pressed his eyes shut and grimaced, as his shoulders shuddered. “There’s a downside to a photographic memory, and I’ve just identified it.”
“So Quinn’s having an affair with Wade?” Sherri frowned.
Poor Stephanie.
John nodded. “Yeah, but I buried the lede a little.”
He began to pace, legs passing through the coffee table as he walked the length of the room, and lowered his head as he gestured. “I watched Quinn write up his notes on the world he visited, and it’s consistent with descriptions in the notebook, though they were second-hand. I think it might be the Kromagg exile world.”
Sherri’s heart jumped, and she fought to calm herself.
“Okay. Okay. That’s good news, right? That means we’re here in time.”
“Yeah. But we have to work fast.”
Sherri straightened, and turned toward the basement door.
“Okay. Meet you down there.”
As John blinked into the basement, Sherri walked briskly to the door, and was about to open it when John passed through in front of her, hands held out.
“Wait! Don’t go in. Quinn’s in there.”
Dammit.
“Hang on, how come you didn’t know that?” she whispered fiercely. “I thought you were watching him.”
She stepped away from the door. John huffed.
“Sherri, I’m not sure if I made it clear, but I didn’t want to be subjected to the X-rated adventures of an over-sexed Quinn!” he ranted. “I’m an Observer, not a voyeur.”
After taking a moment to calm himself, he added: “I’ve been keeping Cory company in the nursery.”
Sherri reminded herself of John’s history with Quinn. Their first meeting, in 1978, was of a Quinn about the same age as him. Then, in 1984, he would meet the younger, child version of Quinn, after saving his Dad’s life. As the child grew, and entered college at a young age, John had been something of a mentor figure and family friend.
It would only stand to reason that seeing this alternate Quinn engaging in unsavory activities would be a little too much to handle.
Sherri let out a breath. “Okay. Fair enough. Well, would you watch him while I sleep a while? Let me know as soon as he gets out of there.”
If only I wasn’t so beat.
She definitely would have preferred to stay alert for her chance, but that night of work had sucked her energy away.
“Yeah, no sweat,” John said in a deflated way that suggested he, too, was pretty tired.
“We’re gonna succeed,” she told him, but it was as much an attempt to convince herself as it was to reassure him. “Okay?”
John gave her a tight-lipped smile. “That’s my line, you know. Now go get some rest.”
They gave one another an incorporeal fist bump, and she headed up the stairs.
* * *
Sherri awoke to the feeling of Quinn getting gingerly into the bed beside her. At the end of the bed was the shadowy figure of John, holding a finger to his lips.
“Oh good, you’re awake,” he said in a low voice, as if anyone would hear him. “I just watched him copying a bunch of data to a box full of floppies. Wait for him to drift off, and get going, okay?”
She gave a tight nod in his direction, as he blinked away.
Copying data…
She had a sinking feeling that said data was the payload that was about to doom a whole lot of Earths.
She lay there, stiff and silent, for about half an hour, until she started to hear light snoring from the other side of the bed. Then she slowly pulled back her covers, and slipped out of the bed.
She tiptoed into the hall, and relaxed as she moved out of view of Quinn. But the relief didn’t last for long, as she heard a toilet flush in an illuminated bathroom by the stairs. The door swung open, and Wade stepped out, making startled eye contact with Sherri.
“Oh, hey,” she whispered, shaking her wet hands.
It’s alright, just play it cool.
Sherri nodded a greeting, and stepped past her. “My turn,” she said with a wink, and disappeared into the bathroom.
Upon closing the door, she breathed a nervous sigh. How could it be this difficult to creep through a house in the middle of the damn night?
After spending a standard amount of time in the bathroom, she flushed and peeked out of the door.
Okay, the coast is clear.
She took the opportunity to skitter to the stairs, and down them. A moment later, she was in the basement, her heart racing as if she’d never done something like this before.
John was waiting for her, and he beckoned her over.
“Here’s the disks,” he said, pointing down to a box by Quinn’s computer. “First thing, you need to corrupt the data on them.”
She opened the box, to see about twelve 3½ inch floppy disks. “Okay, what do I need to do?”
“Beckett, what are the four fundamental forces in physics?” John was using his best lecturer voice.
Sherri probed her memory banks. “Uh… gravity, strong and weak nuclear… and… uh, electromagnetism. Right?”
“Bingo.” John pointed to a cabinet across the room. “And what physicist’s home lab would be complete without a homemade electromagnet or two?”
Sherri opened the cabinet, and John pointed to a metal cube with a handle on it, and a switch on the side. It was about double the size of a lantern battery, which was, not coincidentally, about half of its bulk. Much of the rest contained some copper wire coiled tightly around something metal from top to bottom.
“That should do the trick,” John said. “Just fire it up, and pass the bottom of the coil over each disk a few times. Should scramble them up good.”
Sherri set to work, as John took ongoing readings of the strength of the electromagnetic force to make sure the battery wasn’t running out of juice. When they were done, he directed her to the computer.
“Okay, now we need to open up the chassis and do the same thing to the hard drive. It’s a shame to lose all the data on there, but the stakes are too high.”
Sherri nodded. “No going back now,” she said, as she pulled open the case, and disconnected the hard drive. She worked the electromagnet over it until John confirmed that it was bricked, and she put it all back together.
“Okay, now put it back exactly as you found it,” John said.
She stared at him.
“Okay… and how did I find it, Mister Photographic Memory?”
He looked pensive for a moment, squinting at the scene before him.
“The disks were all silver-side down, leaning towards the back of the box, except for the one on the end, which was leaning the other way.” He gestured to the computer. “And the PC case was the tiniest bit angled toward the monitor, but otherwise flush with the edge of the desk.”
“Damn I wish I had that kind of brain,” Sherri mumbled as she followed his directions.
As Sherri left the basement and headed back to bed, she wondered if she had done enough. And if so… what was she still doing here?