CHAPTER EIGHT

We walked back to the office, and took Officer Siva’s minivan. When we reached the Queenstown Public Library, we got out and went straight to the open land behind. We walked up the hill and saw the same flickering light in the middle of the forested area.

“Are you sure about this, Sherlock?” Officer Siva asked.

“Yes,” I said. “Since the ‘bleed from the other universe’ was actually just a hologram, it stands to reason that this ‘portal’ can also be explained by technology.”

We walked up to the portal and after a few minutes, saw ourselves again in the same strange costumes and uniforms. The portal flickered on and off, so we couldn’t see ourselves too well, but they moved about differently from us, so this wasn’t a simple mirror, or camera and screen like we saw in the malls.

“Look around for… Well, I don’t know what,” I said. “Maybe another hologram cube.”

“You think this is another hologram?” Eliza asked. “How would Uncle Baad have gotten our likenesses?”

“That’s a good question,” I said.

“Look!” Jimmy shouted. “I found a camera!”

“Those are our cameras, Jimmy,” Officer Siva said, not looking at where Jimmy was pointing. “The police officers put up a bunch up here, remember?”

“Oh, right,” Jimmy said, wrinkling his nose.

“Whoops.”

“Wait. Everybody, stop what you’re doing and come look at this,” Wendy said. She hadn’t stopped staring at the portal since we arrived.

“What is it, Wendy?” Mom asked.

“Just, look at them—I mean, the not us— I mean, the people in the portal,” she said.

“Yes-they-are-us-but-dressed-differentlyandmoving-differently,” Watson said.

“No, that’s not all,” Wendy said. “Just look.”

So we did. Wendy’s double had stopped moving and was just staring off into the distance, but the rest of them were still moving around and doing things: looking up at trees, looking down at the ground, walking to and fro.

“What are we supposed—”

“Just watch,” Wendy said, interrupting me.

So we did. For another couple of minutes, until all the rest of our other selves stopped moving too. They stared off into the distance as well.

“It’s on a time delay,” Wendy said. “It’s us, but on a time delay.”

She was right. I hadn’t seen it because of all the flickering, but our other selves were moving exactly as we had two or so minutes ago.

I stepped forward and reached towards the “portal”. When I touched it, I felt a warm screen. It was sturdy, but clearly not a portal to other worlds.

“Jimmy, show me that camera you found,” Officer Siva said.

Jimmy took him to the camera he had found and Officer Siva confirmed his suspicions. “I was too hasty earlier, Jimmy. I’m sorry about that. You were right to point this camera out because it isn’t one of ours,” he said. “We need to tag all these non-police-issued cameras. And figure out what’s powering that screen.”

After looking for a few minutes, we found another 10 cameras that didn’t belong to the police. Nazhar pulled out his Post-it notes that he just happened to have on him (I noticed that the heritage trail guide he had been holding all this while was neatly tagged with multi-coloured Post-its), and we stuck them on all the cameras that were presumably left by Uncle Baad. I also found a small generator that was powering the large screen. Dad and Uncle Saad were excited because the generator was quite small and quiet and had a motion detector so that it only turned on when someone was nearby.

“The costumes we were wearing must have been superimposed, just like in those Augmented Reality games in the mall,” Nazhar said. “But much more advanced.”

“Yeah, it really looked like we were wearing them,” Eliza said.

“Whoever built this stuff is a real genius,” Uncle Saad said.

“Does this mean nothing has been from an alternate dimension?” Jimmy asked. “Is Uncle Baad just wearing an Uncle Saad mask?”

“We need to go back to the swing,” I said. “And figure out how he did that.”

“Uh, really?” Dad said. “I mean, do we have to?”

Mom nudged him in the ribs, and we walked back to Officer Siva’s minivan and piled in.

He drove as close to the swing as he could, but we still had to walk a short way over.

As soon as we were in sight of the swing, the whispering, groaning, muttering started up again almost immediately. Dad was visibly worried, but I loudly said, “Look for the speakers.”

Dad seemed to calm down when I said that, and the sounds lessened in intensity. Jimmy refused to leave Mom’s side, but Watson and Moran quickly looked around the leafy areas behind the swing.

“I-have-found-a-speaker,” Watson said.

“As have I,” Moran said.

“I found one too,” Wendy said.

“They-seem-to-be-connected-to-something,” Watson said.

We followed the wires to a laptop, which had a visualisation of sound waves going up and down. It took me a second, but then I realised that they matched the sounds we were hearing. When I disconnected all the speakers, the sounds around us stopped immediately, but the sound waves kept dipping up and down though with lesser intensity.

Rhythmically. Almost like a—right then, something occurred to me.

“That’s odd,” Dad said next to me. “It’s still going even though there are no more creepy sounds.”

I had to test my theory.

“DAD!” I shouted. The waves on the screen immediately spiked up as Dad jumped.

“Sam, don’t scream out like that!” Dad said, his eyes wide with shock. “I’m already very nervous!” He put a hand to his chest.

“Sorry, Dad,” I said. “I was just testing out a theory. Does your fitness device have a visualisation of your heartbeat?”

“It does,” Dad said, immediately lighting up. “It also has a little walking man when I’m walking and a—”

“That’s great, Dad, but I just need to see the heartbeat visualiser for now.”

Dad looked a little deflated.

“I promise you can show me the rest later,” I said.

He grinned and showed it to me. Just as I suspected, it matched the visualiser on the laptop exactly.

“I suspect that Uncle Baad has somehow hacked into the cloud where all your WalkMan data is stored, Dad. Given his tech skills, it wouldn’t be all that hard for him to crack your password.”

Dad looked shocked. “You mean...you mean he knows how many steps I’ve walked today?!”

“Maybe, but more importantly, with access to the cloud, he was able to use your heartbeat to control the sounds. The more agitated you got, the faster your heartbeat got, the louder and faster the sounds got.”

“He used my—I mean, our fears against us?!”

“So like a high-tech version of what those bootleggers were doing in Fort Canning when we first met, Sherlock,” Officer Siva said. “A spooky sound to scare people away.”

“But what was he scaring us away from?” Eliza asked.

“And who exactly is Uncle Baad?” Wendy asked.

“I really think at this point we can drop the Uncle from his name. He doesn’t deserve to be Uncle Saad! I mean Uncle Baad!” Uncle Saad said.

“We know how all these things were done now,” I said, “but we still don’t know who is doing them or why.”