The quality’s crap, and every few words are replaced by a mumbly hiss. “… So close to finding the answer … pssssttttt … The passage of time is an illusion; time … pssstttt … does not exist, or rather, we live in all time, always … psssstttt … as if we could reach out and touch what has come before, what is yet to be … pssstttt … and here is the most important thing of all … psssssttttttt …”
Suddenly, the video jumps to something else. It’s like the channel’s been turned and we’re smack-dab in the middle of somebody’s vacation footage—jumpy shots of people in shorts walking around, crowd sounds, chirpy music, furry cartoon characters waving. The camera pans over a gate studded with colorful planets and gears. A sign reads: TOMORROWLAND—THE FUTURE THAT NEVER WAS. The video freezes and a little Play Again triangle pops up.
“What the hell happened?” I ask.
Dulcie sighs. “Sorry. I was lucky to even get this.”
“What does he mean by all that ‘time doesn’t exist’ stuff? I mean, how about, ‘Hey, here’s the cure you need. Oh, and let me tell you how to close the wormhole and save the universe. Just turn left in Alabama and you’ll be fine.’”
“I’m sorry, Cameron. I know this is frustrating.”
“You think?”
“And I don’t mean to make it harder, but I think our clock is ticking a little faster now. If the wizard gets to Dr. X first, they’ll pull him back through the wormhole, and then it’s all over.”
“Great,” I say.
She bites her bottom lip. “Did you get a sense from that? Anything at all?”
I shake my head. “Nothing.”
Dulcie’s expression is unreadable. “Okay. Well, I’m going to see what else I can find out about Dr. X. You keep pushing on, following whatever signs you find.”
“So you’re going again?”
“I’m here whenever you need me.” She breaks into a goofy grin, and I want to tell her not to go, to stick around and meet the gang, have some pancakes. I want to say something cool, something to keep her smiling, but I can’t think of anything. “Você é a vaca do meu contentamento,” I say, quoting a Great Tremolo song.
Dulcie gives me a weird look and bursts out laughing. “You are the cow of my contentment? Wow. I’m speechless.”
“Is that what it says?”
“’Fraid so.”
“I knew that.”
“Course you did.” Her laugh dies. She shrinks back, her eyes wide.
“What’s the matter?” I say, following her gaze to the front of the restaurant, but I don’t see anything unusual. A hostess behind the cash register next to a stack of menus. People paying. A guy in a United Snow Globe Wholesalers shirt wheeling in a dolly full of boxes. A man picking his teeth with a toothpick. Bus boys and waitresses running back and forth with trays and loaded bus tubs. The guy delivers the box, and the hostess opens it up. She pulls out a snow globe, which she shakes vigorously before mounting it on a high shelf above the cash register.
“Dulcie?”
“It’s nothing,” she says weakly. “See you down the road, cowboy. Here’s the paper. And Cameron? Be careful.” And just like that she’s gone.
“Hey, you forgot your player!” I say, but she doesn’t materialize.
I give Dulcie’s paper a quick scan. There’s the usual mess of the incomprehensible mixed in with the ridiculous, but I do see an ad for cheap tickets to Daytona Beach. I take that as a sign we’re on the right path, though truthfully, it’s as right as any other random thing I want to assign meaning to—cartoons, the Great Tremolo, the way Staci Johnson flicks her ponytail. I smooth out Junior Webster’s scrap of a compass—to live—fold it neatly, and tuck it back into my pocket along with the MP7.
When I get to the dining room, some kind of fight has broken out. People are clumped together in spectator fashion, cheering.
“What’s going on?” I ask the guy next to me.
“Some kinda wrestlin’ promo, I think. It’s entertainin’, I’ll say that much. Them little guys got lots of spunk, I tell you what.”
“Little guys?” I croak. Oh no they di-in’t. “Excuse me, excuse me!” I say, pushing through. Balder’s on the table, and people are lined up, throwing whatever they’ve got at him—knives, forks, coffee cups, rocks. One little girl hurls her waffle and it bounces off his round belly like a spongy boomerang.