Quin was tired. He had been questioned by multiple detectives and police officers, gone through a decontamination process, and nearly nodded off more than once. It was past midnight, and John was supposed to come walk home with him—which was good as he wasn’t sure he could manage much more tonight.
“Hey.” John poked his head into the room where Quin waited. “You ready?”
“Yeah,” Quin said, dragging himself out of the chair.
They walked downstairs and out into the warm evening air. It was peaceful in the city this late, although towards downtown he could hear a noisy group making their way home from the bars. A light breeze drifted through the air. Quin felt calm, and the annoyed impatience with everything that had been plaguing him had quieted.
“So why was the last Door so important? The one that you had in the Door Room?” Quin asked after they had walked for a few minutes in silence. “Why did Mavis’s father ask her to keep it safe?”
“Ah yes,” John said, “an excellent question. Back when her father was in office, there was a huge scandal. The police raided a home on the word of a confidential informant and found not only drugs, but gambling, stolen valuables, and all kinds of other unsavory things. In the process of cleaning up, they confiscated a rather large number of Doors. Several of them led to the homes of prominent politicians or people in the city.”
“Where did our Door lead?” Quin asked.
“No one knows,” John replied, shrugging. “It was closed by the time the Globe tried to infiltrate it. It was suspected to be another high-ranking government official, presumably one who knew about the raid in question. But there were quite a few of those, and there was no other evidence.”
“Why were you working on it now?” Quin asked.
“My assignment was to try to see if there was a way to track the location of closed Doors,” John replied. “We were working with that one because it had an open case file on it. No other reason. But we know now—it led to a politician who was running for the office of Administrative Chair. That would have been a big scandal, back when he was alive.”
They walked in silence as Quin contemplated the day. It had been long, there was no doubt about that. And he had been stupid, there was no doubt about that either. He would have to get his act together if he ever wanted to be done with sifting through uncategorized Doors and move on with his career. He felt extremely fortunate that nothing untoward had come out about his evening activities. It was miraculous, really.
“Hey John,” Quin said, hesitantly.
“Yeah?”
“I wanted to say that you were right.”
“About what?” John asked.
“I’m stupid,” Quin replied. “Really stupid.”
John punched him in the shoulder. “No you’re not. You do dumb things sometimes, but I never should have said that. I was mad. I’m sorry.”
“No, I deserved it,” Quin said.
“I’m really glad you made it back okay.”
John turned down a darkened street. The trees rustled in the night, and the shadows deepened around them. Quin frowned.
“Where are we going?” he asked.
John gestured to the end of the street. “Making a quick stop.”
A moment later they stood in front of Mason’s house. John flashed his Globe ID at the police officer on guard duty, and led Quin up the stairs. He flicked on the living room light and walked straight up to the middle Door. A moment later, he had vanished.
“I guess we’re going through, then,” Quin muttered, and followed John.
He nearly bumped into the scientist who stood agape as the robots greeted them. Quin blinked, trying to allow his eyes time to adjust from the darkness outside to the stark and blinding white light inside.
“It’s amazing,” John said, finally stepping forward as the robots guided them through the decontamination process.
Quin stayed quiet as they stepped out of the chambers and walked down the hallway. The door slid up and they stepped onto the hover platform.
John’s jaw dropped as he gazed at the thousands of windows. “I… I…” he stuttered. “I didn’t think this was possible!”
“What?” Quin asked.
“They’re… they’re… windows!”
“Yes, I can see that,” Quin said.
John began to talk so fast Quin could hardly understand him. “It has been theorized by many different scientists that it would be possible to create a Door, and then somehow pin back the center, the curtain if you will, so that you could see through to the other side before you tried to step through it. The math was always somewhat out of reach, and no scientist I have ever known of has accomplished the task. These windows, while magnificent, are slightly different, in that you can’t walk through them. If only we could study these, we could make more like them, we could probably…” He fell silent as the platform drifted past the window showing the Door Room.
“That’s… the Globe,” he whispered, pointing at one window, then the next, and the next. “And the Director’s Office. That’s the Oliphant museum—which used to be the Oliphant manor.”
“Yes,” Quin said. “It’s how we knew Mason had tried to blow up Jo’s dad. We saw Mason arguing with Jo’s uncle through that window over—”
“Yes, yes,” John interrupted, “but don’t you see how dangerous this is? What if someone in the government got their hands on it? Or a spy from another government or another planet? What if the higher ups in the Globe decided to use it to spy on their competitors, or to spy, well, on everyone? It’d be a disaster! There would be no privacy for anyone, ever!”
“I suppose you’re right,” Quin said, shrugging. That was essentially what Jo had been trying to tell him earlier in the day. Privacy, spying, conspiracy—it wasn’t really what he felt like thinking about right now.
“That window into the Globe,” John continued, “you can’t see it from the other side. It’s not there. I’ll double check tomorrow, but I’m ninety-nine percent positive it’s not there. And if it is there, it’s been there for centuries and no one has noticed it. This is probably the most dangerous place I’ve ever been in.” He shook his head back and forth, trying to comprehend the magnitude of the discovery.
“Lake Oliphant must have been a creeper,” Quin muttered as the platform took them down, past thousands of windows, and into Oliphant’s lair. John surprised Quin by bursting out laughing, but was quickly silenced by the beauty of the room they moved into.
“It’s really wonderful,” John breathed.
They strolled around the room, examining each of the windows that looked out onto beautiful scenery.
“That’s where we were,” Quin said, pointing to a window gazing down onto Nalada, high over the Hemen Temple of Feeling.
“This is really wonderful,” John said again.
Quin led him over to Lake Oliphant’s bones. John stared down at them solemnly. “He died in his castle, I guess.”
“That he did,” Quin replied.
They stayed for a few more minutes, looking through his bookshelves and some of the papers on his desk, and then headed back up towards the entrance.
“I think we should make this Door disappear all over again,” John said quietly.
“Okay.” Quin nodded.
“I brought an extra closed Door with me. It’s in my bag, in Mason’s living room.”
“You planned this?” Quin asked, raising his eyebrows.
John shrugged. “I didn’t know, but I had a feeling this might be something we might want to make disappear.”
“You know that’s illegal, right?” Quin asked.
“No,” John said. “We won’t keep it. We’ll put it in the Globe, back in the massive piles of uncategorized Doors. You can categorize it wrong if you want—put ‘DEAD PLANET’ on it, or something. Then only you and I will know that it’s there, hiding.”
“I can do that,” Quin replied.
They waved to the friendly robots, and stepped back through the Door into Mason’s living room. To their surprise, Jo sat on the couch across from them, staring pensively at the Doors.
“What are you doing here?” John asked. “How did you get in?”
“Snuck in,” she said. “I’m not a con man’s daughter for nothing. What are you doing here?”
“I wanted to see the lab,” John said. “It’s beautiful. Absolutely beautiful.”
“Yeah,” Jo said, sighing softly.
“Don’t tell anyone about it, okay?” John asked.
“Sure.” She shrugged. “I was remembering the way it felt to be so calm, so at peace. The way I felt in the house of contentment.” She looked up at Quin. “Do you think I’ll ever feel that again?”
“Not the way it felt there,” he replied. “But that wasn’t real. That was a chemical affecting the way your brain processes the information around you. In real life, you’ll find contentment eventually—you’ll just have to work for it. Honestly, I think a lack of contentment is what drives us to keep going. It’s what motivates us to work harder.”
“Have you found it?” she asked.
Quin laughed. “Nope. But I’m less annoyed about everything than I was a day ago.”
Jo nodded.
“You want us to walk you home?” John asked, gesturing towards the door.
Jo shook her head. “I think I’m going to find a floor to sleep on somewhere. Try to get to class on time tomorrow—hope I don’t get arrested for anything.”
“When you graduate from horticulture school,” John said, “come find me. If you want to. We’ll see if we can get you a job doing something interesting.”
“Thanks,” Jo said, grinning. She stood up from the couch, stepped forward, and gave Quin a hug. He held his arms out awkwardly, unused to shows of affection. She stepped back and grinned at him.
“You’ll have to practice that,” she said.
“I guess so,” Quin replied.
“See you around.” She waved and disappeared into the night.
“You got a hug!” John exclaimed delightedly, elbowing Quin in the ribs. “Well now, finally a girl who isn’t afraid of you!” He bent down and began to wind the Door to Dr. Oliphant’s lab into its cylinder.
“My commanding officer isn’t afraid of me,” Quin said grouchily. He carefully replaced the cylinder with the one John had grabbed from the Globe. It didn’t look quite the same, but it was unlikely that anyone would notice.
“Yeah, but she doesn’t count because she’s your boss.” John gave a little cheerful dance. “I can’t wait to harass you about this for the rest of your life.”
“Let’s go,” Quin said, holding open the door for his friend, “or I’m going to pass out and you’ll have to drag me home.”
“I’d leave you here,” John retorted, grinning as he headed out into the street. “Goodnight, officer!” he called, waving as he adjusted the backpack that now held Lake Oliphant’s secret lab.
“Night!” Quin also gave a quick wave and then smiled, to himself, in the dark. Finally, he was headed home, to sleep.