CHAPTER 11

"I don't recognize this," Pete flourished a pair of gloves.

"Artie uses them when he's working on electrical components. And if you paid more attention to the little details you'd know that."

"Ooo, a bit touchy today, aren't we?" Pete whined.

Myka threw an "I don't believe you" look at him. "Whatever we want, I'm betting it isn't the gloves. She went over the desk, going through a mental grid, looking at each piece on it. Artie's desk reflected his personal and work styles, disheveled and disorganized. But Myka was used to it. Her sharp eyes knew what belonged. They lit on his coffee cup. There were a bunch of them in the kitchenette cabinet at the back of the office. Some he used regularly and others only on occasion. This one she'd never seen before, at least not in his hand, although she vaguely recalled it being in there, off to one side for several months. She was going to reach for it when Pete's hand shot out and stopped her.

"Vibes?" she inquired after observing the serious look on his face.

"As soon as I followed where you were looking, I got that old feeling."

"Bad?"

Shrugged, he reached for purple gloves. "Nah, not as bad as usual, but I'm feeling it."

She knew better than to ignore the warning. Taking the gloves from him, she slid them on and lifted the mug. It looked reasonably new. Yellow. Plain. With lettering.

"What happens when the window between reality and unreality breaks?" she read aloud.

Pete's lips tightened in thought. "I don't know. What happens?"

Wondering if Pete was only trying to ease the tension in the room or if he truly wanted an answer, Myka turned to face him. "This is a paraphrase, Pete. The full version is "What happens to the wide-eyed observer when the window between reality and unreality breaks and the glass begins to fly?"

"Oh yeah, who said that?"

"No one knows, but I remember seeing it in a quote book once."

"So you think the window has broken and Artie didn't duck when the glass started flying?"

Pushing her dark wavy locks behind her ears, Myka muttered, "I don't think he knew what hit him."

"Makes me wonder why it hasn't happened before," Pete mused. "I mean, that mug has been around a little bit. Certainly it would have done its thing by now."

"Unless the timing is off. Maybe it required another component to work. A certain person touching it or…" her eyes swung toward the ceiling as she pondered the variables. "…the position of the person to the mug or maybe even the beverage."

"Huh?"

"Maybe it reacts to a certain beverage," she repeated. "Come on, Pete. Your own gut is telling you it's an artifact. So who knows what activates it." She sat down in Artie's plastic chair, at the work table her boss called a desk, and reached for the phone. "Leena, listen, I'm sorry to be so forward, but I need to ask you something."

There was a pause as Leena gave a quick affirmative response. "Do you, um, well, okay, I'll come out and say it. Do you remember putting a yellow mug with a saying about reality in the cabinet here?" Holding the phone to her ear, she listened intently. "Oh, really? Nothing at all? Could MacPherson's control have been strong enough to have you transport it in without you remembering it?"

This time Myka's frequent uh-huhs told Pete there was an in-depth one-sided conversation going on. Finally she said her farewells and hung up.

"Nu?" Pete said, affecting a Yiddish accent.

"To summarize, she said she doesn't remember everything that happened when she was under the influence of the Pearl of Wisdom. And after Mrs. Frederic went into her mind to heal over the wounds, she remembers even less."

"Bummer," Pete muttered. "So she has no memory of bringing the mug in."

"Well, she didn't say that. Leena agrees it could have happened. Since she was responsible for getting so many artifacts out without being detected, she admitted it's entirely possible she snuck some things in. The mug may have been one of them. Probably meant to be a distraction while MacPherson was doing his dirty work."

"I don't believe it! McNuttypants is plaguing us even after he's gone," grumbled Pete as he threw himself into a nearby upholstered leather chair.

"We're not sure he's the culprit. What's more important is trying to figure out how to get Artie back."

Throwing his hands up, Pete said, "I have no idea where to begin. Except to make a fresh pot of coffee. That's what he had in there before he 'disapparated'. Eww…I hope he didn't get splinched when he landed on the other side. That would not be cool. And messy."

Rolling her eyes at the Harry Potter reference, Myka said, "Will you please be serious? You go ahead and make the coffee."

"Can you do me a favor?"

"Sure?"

"Put that full quote up on the blackboard. Maybe if I stare at it long enough and hard enough, something about it will bitch slap me into finding an answer."

Myka obliged, if only because it gave her something to do while she was thinking. Did the message hold some meaning? She read it aloud and stared at the mug. Picked it up with gloved hands and read it aloud again as if saying the words would activate the artifact. Nothing happened. She worried her bottom lip as she thought about their dilemma. In fact, Myka was thinking so intently, she didn't hear Pete sneak up on her. She literally jumped when he said something right behind her and her hand flew to her chest as if to prevent her heart from flying out of her chest like that alien in the movie Pete was so fond of.

After chastising him, she asked what he needed. He focused on her bold print. "Just wondering. What's that old saying about the eyes being windows to the soul?"

"That's what many writers think." And then she had it. He was right, in a way. The saying on the mug was about windows between reality and unreality but maybe the key was the separation between those two states. Break the window. Make ingress and egress possible. Forget unreality. Maybe it was a doorway between their reality and a genuine alternate one. All those years of reading Physics Today and Scientific American was paying off. She knew what they speculated. But was it possible? In years past she would her turned her nose up at the idea. But after working at the Warehouse, she knew with every fiber of her being that anything was possible. And a doorway between different realities was a definite possibility if she used that logic.

Without thinking, she grinned hugely and hugged Pete. Then she danced away and moved back to the desk.

"What? What?" Pete called after her.

"Elementary my dear Lattimer, this plain old ordinary mug may have the ability to open other realms or universes."

"You're joking right? That's a bit out there, even for this place?" He watched her closely. "You're serious, aren't you?"

"Completely," Myka assured him. "It would explain his sudden disappearance. He got pulled into an alternate reality of some kind by looking into the mug. Get it? You were right. The eyes are the windows…but to another reality, not to the soul. That's why this quote is on the mug. And getting him back may be as simple as recreating what happened in the first place."

"Uh, okay, how are we going to do that? There's no body to recreate it." Seeing the look on her face, he amended, "I mean, we'd need him here wouldn't we?

Myka's shoulders slumped and the rest of her body wilted afterward. "You're right. What we need to ask ourselves is this, is there another way around it? Can we fool the artifact into thinking he's actually there, then reopen that window and hope he will realize it and find his way back?"

"What about that thing Claudia used to identify the Spine," Pete inquired.

She knew exactly what he was referencing. "The Bell & Howell Spectroscope? Yeah. Yeah! After she upgraded it to a holographic projector she left it intact." Then she put both fists to her forehead and tapped them a few times. "This is horrible! She's not here and I have no idea how to get an image of Artie into holographic form without having an original of him here first."

"All you need are his eyes," Pete explained calmly.

Myka own green orbs grew enormous. "That's disgusting, even coming from you."

Smirking, he explained, "I meant we have his retina scans. Can't we use those?"

"I'm not sure if that'd be enough, Pete. Maybe it just needed his eyes looking directly into the mug. Maybe…oh my God! The reflection in the coffee. He was looking into his own reflection, looking into his own eyes and then he was gone."

"Or maybe he was looking into the eyes of the guy on the other end." When she gave him an odd look, he grew defensive, "Hey, I watch Sliders and Fringe. I get the gist of it."

That made Myka pause. He was right. Maybe. But it was logical. "In order for this to work in reverse, if it works at all that is, we'd need as many photos of him as we can find. Close ups, portraits. I'll try to figure out the projector. We'll scan his image. Specifically his face, and try to project the image onto the coffee in the mug."

"This whole thing is crazy. You know that, don't you? We need to get real here. If we are right about all this, what are the odds that he'd be on the other side, looking into a duplicate mug at the same moment we are."

"If he wants to get back, he'll do it for as long as it takes," she explained patiently.