Quin found himself quite irritable when they arrived back at the Door. He was soaking wet, covered in bug bites, and very annoyed at himself for telling Jo as much as he had. All he had wanted was to sit down for a few minutes and eat, but apparently the “Contentment” house also included spilling your guts to whomever happened to be sitting across from you.
At least she had shared too, so he wasn’t alone in his annoyance.
He had been quite impressed with Jo so far. She had kept up with him the entire time, hadn’t complained once, asked good questions about where they were and what they were doing, and didn’t chatter on all the time like some people—ahem, John. He thought she might actually make a good partner to go Door surfing with—which was good, since they still had two Doors left to explore.
They crawled back into Mason’s living room, reeking of swamp gases. Quin felt an unnecessary amount of pleasure at the way the bugs flew off of their clothes and buzzed around the room, and the putrid water dripped from their pants and boots and soaked into the carpet. He moved farther into the room to spread the mess around as much as possible.
“It was a swamp,” Jo said immediately, shaking her head. “Worthless.” She sounded confident and assured—a convincing liar. Water flew in all directions as her long hair swung around her head. Quin was suddenly extremely grateful that he didn’t have any hair—one less problem for him to worry about.
Mason had a look of horror on her face as she stared at his boots, which squelched every time he moved his feet.
“Mind if I change before we go through the next one?” Jo ran off without waiting for Quin’s response.
Mason threw a towel at Quin, who rubbed his head and his face, and then dumped the water out of his boots all over the floor. Nash watched, clearly not worried about the mess, while Mason wrung her hands behind him.
“A swamp?” Nash asked, leaning forward. “Anything good there? Valuable?”
“We hiked for over an hour,” Quin lied. “Didn’t find anything.”
“You were gone for two hours.” Nash frowned.
“Yes,” Quin replied, letting his feeling of annoyance flow into his voice. “That’s how hiking for an hour works. You hike away from the Door for an hour, and then you hike back. We even made a loop in case we missed something.”
Nash scowled. “Well that’s not worth the money she owed.”
Quin was relieved Nash believed them. Now, he had to find a way to get it safely stowed away at the Globe.
“My guess,” Quin said, “is that there used to be something there and now there’s not. Your best bet is to dump this out with next year’s hazardous waste, or let the Globe have it so they can stick it in their stacks of useless Doors.”
“Jo!” Nash called. “You done yet?”
She came thundering down the stairs in dry clothes. She still smelled like swamp gas, and her hair was full of sticks, but she looked much happier and more comfortable.
“Hey, those are mine,” Mason complained.
“I know,” Jo said cheerily. “And they look a lot better on me. Ready to go through the next Door, Quin?”
“Wait a second,” Nash said. “Quin here says wasn’t anything of value in the swamp. That what you think?”
Jo nodded. “I’d say the woman fleeced you, Dad—unless your idea of a vacation is a swamp full of rotting tree roots and poisonous frogs. They also have bugs, if you’re into that sort of thing.” She shrugged. “There probably used to be something there, way back a long time ago, but it’s disappeared since. And you couldn’t convince me to go back—not in a million years.”
Nash sighed and sat back on the couch. “Fine,” he said.
Quin unrolled the next Door and looked back at Jo. She gave him a thumbs-up and he stepped through the Door.
• • • • •
Everything was white. Sparkling, shining, brilliant, blindingly white. Quin stepped back for a moment, shielding his eyes, almost bumping into Jo as she came through the Door behind him.
“Ouch!” Jo exclaimed, covering her eyes. “Why is it so bright?”
“Please step forward,” a robotic voice intoned, “and check in at the front desk.”
As they moved away from the Door, the light faded a little, and Quin began to see the room around them. Wide windows filled the walls and arched ceilings, letting in the blinding light from outside. Everything was spotless, except where Quin’s feet left muddy footprints. A few plants stood along the walls, their dark green a stark contrast to the whiteness of everything else. In the center of the room, a desk—also white—appeared to be manned by a robot of some kind.
“What is that?” Jo asked, leaning forward and squinting towards the figure.
“Please step forward,” the voice said again.
Quin stepped up to the front desk, and the humanoid robot turned to look at him. Its face would have been smooth and white, but someone had drawn on eyes and a mouth with what looked like a red child’s crayon. “Welcome to Dr. Oliphant’s laboratory. Please step forward to get sanitized.”
There were hundreds of Dr. Oliphants, Quin knew, but only one Dr. Oliphant was famed for his robots. He had disappeared several hundred years ago, and there had been much speculation about where he had gone. If this was the Dr. Oliphant Quin thought, then the sanitization process was safe and used by nearly every hospital and research facility he had been in.
Jo looked at Quin with a mildly panicked look in her eyes.
“It’s fine,” Quin said. “I think they are talking about Dr. Lake Oliphant, inventor. If so, then I’ve been through his sterilization process before and it’s fine.”
“Where are we, though?” Jo asked.
“I think we are in an interdimensional space,” Quin replied, “but we’ll have to take a look around before I’ll know for sure.”
Two doors slid up to the right of the desk to reveal sanitization rooms.
“Please remove your dirty garments and put on the robes provided for you,” the robot said.
Quin stepped into the first booth and the door slid closed behind him. He didn’t wait to see what Jo did. Inside, he removed his clothing and placed it in a bin with a picture of dirty clothes on it. A warm mist began to spray out of nozzles at the top of the room, and the mud and dirt rushed down his body and through a drain. It felt wonderful. He hadn’t realized how badly he wanted a shower. The mist stopped and a fan began to blow, quickly drying him off. Then a drawer slid out of the wall with a white pair of pants, underwear, and a shirt folded neatly in it. Quin slipped them on. As soon as he finished, a door on the opposite wall slid up and Quin stepped out.
This room was also white, though not so blinding as the previous. It looked as though there were fewer windows and more plants. Quin glanced down at his arm. If he didn’t know that it was a trick of the light, he would have thought that his dark skin had become even darker.
Jo stepped through the sliding door, also wearing white pants and a shirt. “That felt amazing.” She still had some sticks in her hair, but otherwise looked much more relaxed.
A different robot stood in front of them. This one also had a face drawn on it with crayon, but one of the eyes was crooked and it only had one eyebrow. Its neck was a simple conduit, likely filled with wires, and its body a long, round egg. It rolled smoothly on four wheels. “Welcome, Dr. Oliphant and friends,” the robot said. Quin frowned. Lake Oliphant wasn’t here, was he? Quin looked around quickly, to be sure.
“Where are we?” Jo whispered. “And does he think one of us is Dr. Oliphant?”
“I don’t know, but this is one of the weirder places I’ve been, that’s for sure.” Quin turned his attention to the robot. “Excuse me,” he said politely, unsure of how to address it.
“How may I help Dr. Oliphant’s friend?” the robot intoned.
“Could you tell us where we are?”
“You have reached Dr. Oliphant’s lab.”
“If I could ask,” Quin pressed. “Which Dr. Oliphant?”
“You have reached the lab of Dr. Lake Oliphant the sixteenth, engineer.”
“And what are you?”
“I am a Model 337 Service Bot. I run on an X16 Turbo 554 Engine. My chief function is to serve Dr. Oliphant and his friends while ensuring that the laboratory is maintained at maximum efficiency.”
“And what does that other robot do?” Quin asked.
“We are all one,” the robot replied.
“What do you mean?”
“We are all one,” the robot repeated.
“Well that’s creepy,” Quin muttered under his breath.
“What does he mean?” Jo asked.
“I think he means that all of the bots here operate with the same cloud server. Like, they all have the same mind, same programming, but different bodies—like a colony of zap ants or something.” He turned back to the robot. “What is this lab for?” he asked.
“Please follow me,” the robot said. “I will show you.” It turned and zoomed down a long hallway, its wheels so well-maintained that it didn’t leave any marks on the floor.
“Suppose you wanted to explore the universe, but didn’t have the strength or courage to travel,” the robot began. “Dr. Oliphant grew ill at a young age, and knew he would never see as much of the universe as he wanted. So he built this place for himself and future scholars to study and learn about different places and cultures without having to go anywhere.
“This is not only a place for research and study, however. Dr. Oliphant uses this laboratory for meditation and relaxation. While the building houses numerous workshops and laboratories, what you will see today encompasses centuries of work on the part of Dr. Oliphant. The Room of Windows is a beautiful homage to the complexity and wonder of the universe, and Dr. Oliphant is proud to share it with two of his closest friends.”
This was definitely weird. Why the robots thought Quin and Jo were two of Dr. Oliphant’s closest friends, he had no idea, and he was hesitant to follow the robot too much farther into the building. What if it was a trap? What if they were going to get eaten or experimented on?
Then the robot stopped and gestured to a door. “Welcome to the Room of Windows. Please make yourself at home.”
The door slid open. They stepped out onto a platform that hovered on the edge of a massive sphere. Without warning, it rushed out into the center so quickly that Quin had to grab onto railing for balance. Every inch of the sphere around them was covered with images—some of forests or jungles, others of cities or villages, deserts, rivers, kitchens, oceans, mountains—and every single one moved, but not like a movie, more like something that was being filmed continuously from the same angle.
Quin looked down at the platform; it appeared to have no controls. “Up,” he said, and it rose slowly.
Jo’s mouth was agape as she viewed the scene around them. “What is it?” she asked.
Quin didn’t answer. He scanned the images, one after another, looking for something, anything that might tell him exactly what he was seeing. And then, there it was.
“Left, down, left,” he said, and the platform moved diagonally down until they stared at the six cabins sitting on a grassy hill, each painted a different color.
“Is that…?” Jo asked, pointing at the image.
“I think so,” Quin replied. It was a window into Nalada and the mood swamp.
“So, if I had been standing here while you were exploring the houses,” Jo asked, “would I have been able to see you?”
Quin shook his head. “I don’t know. Maybe? Let’s look for other places that seem familiar.” He looked to the left and right, and then said clearly, “Move left, slowly.” The hover platform began to drift and Quin carefully studied each window they passed by. One looked out onto a beach and another showed a quiet alleyway in an unknown city. There was a cat napping in a windowsill, a busy highway with hundreds of spherical vehicles speeding along, and a band of dog-eared humanoids playing green and purple instruments. They saw a boat tossed in a heavy storm; a cow lazily munching on chartreuse grass; a classroom filled with a dozen students; a massive mining operation on the side of a mountain; a double-sun sunset over a purple moor.
“Stop,” Quin said abruptly as a familiar scene came into view. They stared directly into the Globe. He saw Bob, the alien who managed the front desk, with his six blue arms answering all the phones at once, and there was Mr. Drake, recently appointed Head of Technology at the Globe. And then he saw John, who rushed up to Bob at the front desk, flinging his arms around his head as if the whole world was ending.
And beside it, another window, this time into the Door Room. He could see hundreds of people scurrying about, the Doors themselves barely noticeable in the chaos. It was from an angle Quin had never thought of, slightly above the mess, looking out across the room. It made the room look larger than life—and chaotically beautiful.
“Is that… the Globe?” Jo asked. “I’ve never been inside, but…”
“It is,” Quin replied, frowning slightly. It seemed like a bad idea to have a window into what was supposed to be the most secure room in the Globe. “Left.” And the platform moved left again, moving slowly around the sphere, showing them each and every window.
And then Jo said, “Stop,” and Quin grimaced. There in front of them was a view of Pomegranate City—a neighborhood—just outside of Mason’s house.
“Who’s that?” Jo asked. She leaned forward to peer through the window. “Do these windows have sound?”
“Some of the windows may have audio,” the robot voice intoned out of nowhere. Jo jumped, startled. “If you see a small blinking red light in the corner, say, ‘Sound’ and you will be able to hear. Dr. Oliphant found it less than useful to be able to hear through all of them—especially when many of them were so windy.”
“Sound,” Jo said.
“What do you think you’re doing?” a voice asked. It was tinny, as though the voice was coming from very far away—which, Quin supposed, it was.
“That’s Mason!” Jo exclaimed.
“I did what you asked!” the other figure retorted. “You can’t blame me for that!”
“Uncle Dan?” Jo asked, her mouth agape.
“It’s your fault it didn’t work,” Mason said, this time a little louder. She must have been yelling. “The second fuse didn’t catch!”
“You put it together—”
“From your instructions!” Mason threw her hands up into the air. “I have to go. Nash might get suspicious.” She leaned forward and kissed Jo’s uncle on the lips, and then turned and ran into the house.
“She tried to kill my dad?” Jo threw her hands up, almost hitting Quin in the nose. “And she’s cheating on him?”
“I guess that was the wrong window to look through,” Quin said, raising his eyes.
Jo covered her face with her hands, clearly furious.
“Officer Reynolds said that some of the parts used to make the device that blew up my dad’s house came from my uncle’s shop,” she said. “I just can’t believe that they would… would… do something like this!”
“You’re going to have to calm down before we go back,” Quin said. “You can’t run out and accuse Mason of attempted murder or she’ll just disappear. We’ll have to come up with some sort of plan.”
Jo took a deep breath. “I know,” she said. “I know.” Quin watched as her facial muscles clenched and unclenched, and her expression shifted from anger to sadness to frustration and back to anger.
“Tell you what,” Quin said, feeling a little sorry for her. She was in a tough spot, with a criminal for a father encouraging her to pursue a life she didn’t want. Now she had to decide whether to rat out her father’s girlfriend or keep out of the mess entirely. “We have one more Door after this.”
Jo nodded.
“After we get back from there, I will find Officer Reynolds and tell her that I came to check on you—since I’m already your alibi for that night—and tell her that I witnessed Mason and your uncle having an argument. I can lead her to investigate them more thoroughly so that you don’t have to get involved.”
“You would do that?”
Quin shrugged. “Shouldn’t be too hard. I did see it, after all.” He gestured to the window.
Jo’s face lit up.
“You have to promise you won’t go crazy on Mason when we get back,” Quin said, “or she’ll run off. You have to pretend you don’t know anything.”
“But Dad should know—”
“No,” Quin held up his hand to cut her off. “She’s been cheating for quite a while, most likely. It’s not going to make a difference if your dad doesn’t know for another three hours.”
“Okay,” Jo said. “But you promise to help?”
“Yes,” Quin replied.
Jo fell silent as the platform continued to move slowly round and round the sphere. They saw herds of purple deer with twisted horns galloping across the plains. They saw frozen tundra filled with birds, and people wrapped up in heavy skins and furs. They saw fish, swimming and bubbling under the ocean—giant fish and small fish, fish with arms, and fish with no eyes, and fish with a giant bulbous rock for a tail. They saw farmers guiding their cows to the pasture, and vehicles rushing by on a road covered with oil and exhaust; people in long coats and elegant dresses, and a spiked lizard playing with a ball; teenagers and elderly people, nurses and scientists; and through it all Quin’s head swam in dizzy swirls—he felt as though he were looking into the heart of the universe.
The platform finally reached the bottom of the sphere, humming, and emerged into a room underneath. This was a smaller room with a few windows that looked out on what Quin imagined to be Dr. Oliphant’s favorite places. It was furnished with comfortable couches and chairs, and a bed on one wall.
Quin and Jo stepped off the platform and stood, looking around them.
“What was that?” Jo asked.
“The universe, I think,” Quin replied.
He stepped forward and collapsed onto a couch, and Jo settled in next to him. They were silent, staring at the few windows that were down here. One looked out over a waterfall, the water rushing and gushing soundlessly over a rock ledge. Another showed a forest planted with trees growing in straight lines. A light mist hovered over the ground, and a breeze blew it into curls and tendrils. The third window was simply a beach. The water lapped up the sand, and then sank away again, and the sun set in brilliant oranges and purples.
“I could look at these all day,” Jo whispered.
“For a lifetime,” Quin added. He looked around the room to see if any of the eerie robots had followed them in. Not seeing any, he asked, “What is this place?” in a loud voice, hoping one them would answer.
“This is Dr. Oliphant’s private office,” a disembodied voice replied. “Here, Dr. Oliphant spends most of his waking and sleeping hours, working on projects of high importance.”
“It keeps talking like Dr. Oliphant is still alive,” Jo said quietly.
“It’s very odd,” Quin answered. He glanced over at the bed—it looked for a moment like someone was sleeping there. He stood and strode over; Jo followed. When he pulled back the covers, all he saw were bones. A terrible smell rose from the sheets, and Quin quickly settled them back over the skeleton.
“What was that?” Jo asked, scrunching up her nose and looking away.
“I think we’ve discovered the remains of Dr. Lake Oliphant,” Quin replied solemnly.
“Wow,” Jo said, a curious expression on her face. “Creepy.”
They walked the perimeter of the room. Tall bookcases filled with textbooks, journals, and rolled up scrolls lined one wall. A large desk covered with papers and notebooks sat in the back corner. A cup of tea sat on it, steaming, as if the robots had just refilled it. Quin reached out and picked up sheet of paper that had fallen to the floor. It was a diagram of some kind of computer storage device, with the words, “Consciousness Generator” on the top.
“All his notes are here,” Quin said. “Stuff he invented but didn’t have time to build.”
“This Door is worth a fortune, then,” Jo said in a hushed voice.
“Yes,” Quin said, “in more ways than one.”
“What do we tell my dad?” she asked.
Quin shrugged. They didn’t have a lot of choices. “The truth, I suppose. This Door might make him a rich man, but it won’t hurt anyone in the process. And we can’t lie for every Door, can we?”
“I guess not.” Jo shook her head, eyes still wide. “It’s just that, well, those windows look into a lot of places that no one has the right to look into.”
Quin shrugged. “But if no one knows—”
Jo cut him off. “It doesn’t matter if people know! You might not know that the kid across the street is peeking in your windows when you shower, but it’s still an invasion of privacy. And even if these places the windows show are technically public, if the people there don’t that they are being watched, it’s creepy—it’s wrong!”
Quin nodded. She was right. He was used to the Globe and the military invading people’s privacy, so it didn’t really faze him. He knew he was constantly being monitored and watched, which was why he was so careful to leave things that could track him—like his phone—at home when he went gambling. But she was right. This was a different thing. It wasn’t one government agent spying on another, or police trying to catch a criminal. This was a way for any one person to watch another person without their knowledge. It wasn’t right.
“I guess we’ll have to find a way to steal it back, then,” Quin said.
Jo nodded. “I think I can help with that.”
They stepped back on the hover platform, and it rose quickly to the exit. They strode down the hallway and went back through the disinfectant chamber. It didn’t wash him this time, but instead, simply returned his clothes, clean and dry. That was a pleasant surprise, he thought.
“Goodbye, friends of Dr. Oliphant,” the robots said as he and Jo strode towards the Door. “We hope you come again soon!”
“Goodbye, friendly robots,” Jo said, waving.
Quin grinned as the sparkling white vanished around him.