The bright, white rays of sun piercing the bank of windows on the other side of the living room woke Quin ten hours later, still in his living room chair. John lay sprawled across the floor, clutching a piece of chalk and covered with a tablecloth from the kitchen. Scowling, Quin dragged himself from the chair and stretched.
"Wake up," he said loudly, nudging John with his foot.
"I got it already though," John muttered, pulling the tablecloth over his head.
"Time to go to the Committee meeting, genius kid," Quin added, picking up the tablecloth and tossing it across the room. "Wake up." He glanced at the clock. "We're going to be late."
"Bah. They can work without me," John rolled over and stretched. Then his eyes shot open. "Oh man!" he exclaimed, abruptly sitting up. "I figured it out! Quin, it's so simple, it's genius! Why didn't I think of this years ago?"
"Can we discuss this later?" Quin grumbled, staring aimlessly into the mostly empty fridge. John had apparently helped himself to some dinner last night, after figuring out the Door problem. A lot of dinner.
"No," replied John bluntly. "It's important. So, the Door is a Door that allows you to choose where you want to go. I was so confused for a while until I remembered this psych class I took in high school, where we studied the equations of the brain – you know, cognitive mathematics."
"You are the only person on this planet who would take cognitive mathematics." Quin shook his head and held out a handful of grapes. "All the food I have left – thanks to you. Let's go."
"But listen, if you were to walk through that Door thinking about Earth, it would take you to a Door on Earth. If you thought about upstairs in the Globe, it would take you there."
Quin turned and looked at John quizzically. "Really? How does that work?"
John sighed, exasperated as he knotted his red tie covered with bubbles. "Don't be ridiculous. You don't want me to explain. Maybe I'll try after the meeting."
The two young men stepped out of the house into the bright sunlight. Quin pulled a piece of paper out of his pocket, glanced at the encrypted list of directions scrawled across it, and shook his head.
"Crazy scientists, hate these meetings," he muttered, and began to stroll towards town with John traveling sleepily in his wake. "I hate meetings," he muttered again.
As they reached the supposed destination, he glanced around. The sign on the door read "William Oliphant, bookseller"; beneath it, another sign read "Closed." A security sniper perched on the roof of the building across the street. Clearly they were in the right place.
As they entered the shop, a bell jingled. William Oliphant XXXIII puttered about with a duster and a broom. Quin nodded politely in greeting.
"They're in the back." Oliphant waved his broom vaguely towards an old wooden door that hid between two large, over-filled bookcases.
The shop was a tidy affair, with books stacked neatly on every horizontal surface. Floor-to-ceiling bookcases stretched along the length of the room, and a maze of stand-alone bookcases made from quartersawn Dokomaya wood divided the main space of the shop. The reddish-brown colour of the shelves peeked through the thousands of books that sat patiently, lined up neatly like row after row of soldiers. Quin ignored the books and moved purposefully towards the old wooden door.
He stopped as a young boy stepped out from the shelves. Quin frowned. This was a private meeting.
"Who are you?" he asked, broadening his shoulder and staring the boy down. The boy seemed to shrink a little and his eyes widened.
YOU ARE READING
The Wounded World
Science FictionQuin discovers that his father, Grise, has created a new type of technology, left it in the middle of the living room, and disappeared. Quin then sets out on a journey, accompanied by his good friend John, to figure out what happened, and clean up h...
