“Told you I was overdressed for this,” Theo mutters as Paul vanishes through the door.
“How is he getting in?” I say. “Does he have a badge already, or is he sneaking through security?”
“No point in worrying about how he’s getting in until we get in ourselves. Leave this to me, will you, Meg?”
Apparently Theo spent his entire journey over to the UK figuring out exactly how these advanced computer systems work. As we huddle on the steps, pretending we’re blasé about going in, he manages to hack into the organizer’s database. So when we show up at registration, acting shocked—shocked!—that they don’t have our badges ready for us to pick up like we’d arranged, they actually find our names in the system. Two hastily printed temp badges later, and we’re in.
Theo offers me his arm; I loop my hand through it as we walk into the conference hall. It’s a large space, already slightly darkened, the better to show off the enormous, movie-size screen waiting on the stage. “I have to admit,” I whisper to Theo, “that was pretty smooth.”
“Smooth is my middle name. Actually, it’s Willem, but tell anybody that and, I warn you, I will take revenge.”
We sit near the back, where we’ll have a better chance to survey the whole room and see Paul make his move . . . assuming he’s going to make one. He doesn’t seem to be in the audience.
If Theo has noticed my dark mood, he gives no sign. “Glad I got to know this dimension the best I could, as soon as I could. It makes a difference.” It’s obviously as safe to talk here as it was on the Tube; most people are surrounded by tiny holographic screens, having a conversation or two. “We’ll have to put that in the guide to interdimensional travel you and I get to coauthor someday: The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Multiverse.”
Letting scientists go off on Douglas Adams routines is a bad idea, so I ask a question that’s been on my mind since shortly after I got here. “How is this the next dimension over?”
“What do you mean?” Theo frowns.
“First of all, this? This is not ‘totally not the same.’ National boundaries are the same. Most major brands seem to be the same, present company excepted.” He’s referring to the “ConTech” logo projected upon the onstage screen; in our universe, Wyatt Conley means Triad. “Trust me, the dimensions can be much more radically altered than this.”
“Okay, sure.” I can see his point. It’s not like the dinosaurs are still around or anything.
Theo—always enamored of any chance to show off what he knows—keeps going. “Second, none of the dimensions are technically any ‘closer’ or ‘farther’ from one another. Not in terms of actual distance, anyway. Some dimensions are mathematically more similar to each other than others, but that wouldn’t necessarily correlate to the dimensions being more similar to each other in any other way.”
When the word correlate puts in its appearance, I know the conversation is about to go into technobabble mode. So I cut to the chase. “You’re saying that if Paul just wanted to run away, ‘next door,’ this could be next door, even though this dimension is different in a lot of ways.”
“Exactly.” The lights go down, and Theo sits up straighter as the crowd’s murmuring dies down and their various hologram calls fade out. “Showtime.”
The screen shifts from the ConTech logo to a promotional video, the usual beaming people of various ages and races all using high-tech products to make their already awesome lives even better. Only the products are different—the self-driving cars along tracks like Romola had, the holographic viewscreens, and other stuff that I hadn’t seen yet, like medical scanners that diagnose at a touch, and some kind of game like laser tag, except with real lasers. A woman approached by the most clean-cut mugger of all time turns confidently and touches her bracelet; the mugger jolts as if electrocuted, then falls to the ground as she strides away.
I glance down at the bangle around my wrist, the one with the inside label that says Defender. Now I get it.
The background music rises to an inspirational high as the images fade out, and the announcer says, “Ladies and gentlemen, the innovator of the age, founder and CEO of ConTech . . . Wyatt Conley.”
Applause, a spotlight, and Wyatt Conley walks on stage.
Despite the fact that he’s been bankrolling my parents’ research for more than a year now, I’ve never actually met Conley before. But I know what he looks like, as does anyone else who’s been online or watched TV during the last decade.
Although he’s about thirty, Conley doesn’t seem to be much older than Theo or Paul; there’s something boyish about him, like he’s never been forced to grow up and doesn’t intend to start now. His face is long and thin, yet handsome in an eccentric sort of way; Josie’s even said she thinks he’s hot. He wears the kind of oh-so-casual jeans and long-sleeved T that you just know cost a thousand dollars apiece. His hair is as curly and uncontrollable as mine, but lighter, almost red, which matches the freckles across his nose and cheeks. Between that and the famous pranks he’s pulled on other celebrities, he’s been described as “a Weasley twin set loose in Silicon Valley.”