CHAPTER SEVEN

We were gasping for air by the time we reached the train tracks.

I was quite certain there had been nothing ghostly about what we had just heard, but it was still extremely creepy. I was sure it had just been sound bleeding through from alternate universes, in much the same way the image of Lim Ban Lim had bled through.

“So… That happened,” Uncle Saad said, still doubled over and out of breath.

“Did-anybody-lose-a-shoe?” Watson asked, holding up somebody’s shoe.

Mom snatched it from him and put it on. “I was just running because your dad said to. I wasn’t actually scared.”

“Of-course-Mom,” Watson replied.

“Let’s focus on the case at hand and not blame anybody for anything,” Dad said, wiping his hands on his pants very, very carefully, making sure not to look at anyone.

“Yes, obviously this Baad person is not here,” Officer Siva said. “So we won’t find him.”

“But the cameras are still up,” Uncle Saad said. “Tall Wendy is watching from the office, and she’ll buzz me if she sees anything on the monitors.”

“That’s good, Uncle Saad,” I said, looking around. “Okay, I think we should partner up and look for anything that seems out of the ordinary. Uncle Baad took something from here, but maybe he left something else. The Singapore Police Force is letting us investigate the scene, so let’s not let them down.”

“Do you…do you really need to call him Uncle Baad?” Uncle Saad asked, looking pained.

“We raised very polite children,” Mom replied, deadpan.

Wendy and Eliza paired up and searched the southern area, while Dad and Uncle Saad took the north. Watson and Moran searched the east, and Officer Siva, Mom and Jimmy searched the west. Nazhar and I stayed in the central area and searched there.

After a few minutes, Jimmy shouted. I ran to him and saw he was holding a cube in his hand. It was the size of wooden alphabet cubes, but was a featureless black on every side.

Jimmy gave me the cube, and I inspected it more closely. The smooth black sides felt warm to the touch, and the black was shiny, like a screen or a lens.

“May I see it?” Uncle Saad asked.

I gave it to him and he turned it over in his hand.

“These are all screens,” he said.

“That’s what I thought too, but screens for what?” I asked. “And why would anyone make a cube with six screens?”

“Mike, take a look at this and tell me if you see what I see,” Uncle Saad said. He passed the cube to Dad, who also turned it over in his hand.

“Well, I’ll be…” Dad said. “We haven’t been able to get the circuitry this small.”

“Right?” Uncle Saad said. “And using all six sides, that’s brilliant.”

I wondered if this was what it felt like when I thought out loud and other people were trying to follow my thoughts. But surely they were talking about a device that allowed users to jump from universe to another.

“Would either of you like to let the rest of us in on what that is?” Officer Siva asked.

“Oh, yes, sorry,” Dad said. He held out the cube in his hand and said, “This is a holographic projector!”

That was not what I was expecting to hear.

“But smaller and more powerful than anything we’ve been able to come up with so far,” Uncle Saad said. “We won’t know for sure until we get it back to the office and take it apart, but I think the recording is played through whichever edge is up.”

“How would it know which edge is up?” Wendy asked.

“I’m sure there’s a gyroscope in there, so it always knows which way is up,” Dad said. “It’s the same technology that’s in most smartphones nowadays. That’s how your phone knows which direction you’re facing when you use a map app.”

“But to cram not just one, but six projectors into such a small cube, powerful projectors at that, to have made such a convincing hologram and still have space for the gyroscope and whatever plays the recording…” Uncle Saad trailed off.

It was clear from the reverence in his voice that this was some pretty serious technology.

“Wait, so Lim Ban Lim and the police officers were just holograms?” Nazhar asked.

“Not just holograms,” Dad said, “but the most advanced holograms I’ve ever seen.”

“How advanced would you say it is, Dad?” I asked.

“I wouldn’t have expected to see this for decades,” Uncle Saad said.

“Well, I don’t know about decades,” Dad said. “I mean, this is possible thanks to miniaturisation mostly.”

“But it could have still come from an alternate dimension?” I asked.

Dad looked at me. “While I can’t rule it out 100 per cent, Son, I think the more probable explanation is that someone in this universe built it and used it to make us think alternate universes were bleeding into our own.”

“But if we don’t have this technology in our world, where did it come from?” I asked.

“Outer space?” Jimmy said.

“The future?” Wendy said.

“Artificial intelligences?” Nazhar said. “Besides our two robots, I mean.” He pointed at Watson and Moran.

“We-could-build-that-if-we-wanted-to,” Watson said.

“Maybe it’s some mutant with the power to create futuristic technology?” Eliza said.

We stared at her.

“What? You guys are rubbing off on me.”

I was thankful my friends were all trying to make me feel better, but I knew what they were saying.

“Thanks for your ideas, guys, but Dad’s right,” I said. “We need to make our theories fit the facts, not make the facts fit our theories.”

“Well, one of the facts is that there’s still somebody running around with my face,” Uncle Saad said. “We saw him on camera.”

“That’s true, and Tall Wendy saw him too,” Mom said. “He could still be a visitor from another dimension.”

“I think we should go back to the public library, and find out how Uncle Baad made us think we were looking at a portal to other universes.”

“Yes, especially when we all know there can’t be any universes where ninjas actually exist,” Nazhar said.