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It was the longest night of his life, and one of the strangest.
They worked at it for hours. Fortunately, downtime Topanga had brought sandwiches. (Unfortunately, they were tofurkey). Moon moved their lesson on at a steady, unhurried pace, as if they had all the time in the world. Periodically, some of the others would ask clarifying questions. At around three a.m., Hillary asked a question from the back of the class – even though she still sat next to Stuart. Confused, he turned around to see that they were no longer alone. The Hillary who had spoken wore a bright floral print dress, as opposed to the Hillary beside him in an old pair of overalls. In addition to Hillary's double, Ned also had a twin, and there were two duplicates of Darren sitting in the back row.
"Don't mind our supplemental students," Moon commanded. "They've come from uptime to review portions of the lesson plan that they may not have understood fully on the first go round. If you keep your attention up here, you won't have to come back as often."
As the night wore on, it seemed that they must be nearing the end of the lesson, if only for the fact that dawn was rapidly approaching and another school day would soon begin. Stuart's attention drifted from the algebra. Soon, his mother would be waking up, he figured, but at that moment she must surely still be asleep – she didn't get enough of it as a rule, so between the hours of midnight and five a.m., Marla Minkus slept like the dead. He liked to think of her like that, sleeping peacefully in her bed, with the sky outside her window just beginning to lighten.
"Okay, good. I think it's time for us to call it a day… or a night, or whatever. After enough travelling in time, you tend to think of any waking period as a day, I suppose. If you'll all join hands with me, I'll take us on to the Hotel." Moon opened her arms wide and beckoned to the students.
"Wait, what?" Hillary interjected.
"I can Jump us to the Hotel, but we'll all need to be in physical contact to do it," Moon explained.
"No, I mean… I can't go to a hotel. I've got to get home and slip in to bed before my parents wake up so I can at least pretend that I wasn't out all night," Hillary snarled.
Moon smiled indulgently. "Linear thinking will get you nowhere, Hillary, but I guess it's a hard habit to break. Right now, I can take you to the hotel, where we'll get some sleep. Then, at some point down the road, I can bring you all back in time to last night so that you never had to skip out on your parents at all. So, gather up your things and we'll go."
Slowly, the weary children did as she asked. Stuart stole a look behind him, noting that all of the extra students had slipped out as silently as they had come in. Soon, they all stood together at the front of the classroom, hands linked together in an unbroken chain. Moon closed her eyes in apparent concentration, and without further preamble, they Jumped.
The trip proved very different from his previous ones, perhaps because it was deliberate, or perhaps because they had to travel further… He didn't know. While his previous voyages had been instantaneous, there was a brief interval of time in which he was aware of traveling. He seemed to be in a tunnel of streaking blue light, and then—
The thick, velvety carpet sagged beneath his feet as a high-ceilinged corridor appeared around them. He had little experience with such things, but to his untrained eye, they appeared to be inside of a high end hotel. Moon Child distributed keys to each of them. "The good news is, there's always room at the Hilbert Hotel," the chrononaut told them. "The only problem is they'll keep bouncing you around from room to room if you let them. Fortunately, we've reserved the second floor for the duration of the project, and we have an understanding with management. We'll be treated like VIP's for the length of our stay. You can order as much food as you want from room service and the maids will stay on top of your laundry."
"Laundry?" Ned asked, gesturing to his shirt. "I've only got the one change of clothes."
"Right, that. In each of your rooms, you will a small wardrobe waiting for you. It's nothing fancy, but it should get you through the… term of the project," Moon explained. "If you don't find anything to your liking, I believe the Motel retains a couple of tailors."
Stuart narrowed his eyes at this, trying to come up with a cost estimate. Six rooms in a pricey venue for an undisclosed length of time, room service and laundry, a tailor at their disposal… It added up to a sizable chunk of cash, so much so that buying a "small wardrobe" for five different kids was just an afterthought.
He wasn't the only one who noticed this. "Hang on just a second," Hillary said, holding up her room key as if she might just throw it back in Moon's face. "Who's paying for all of this?"
Moon treated her to a little smirk. "What's the matter, dear – you don't want to owe me anything?"
"Not if I can help it." Hillary's voice was almost a growl.
"I'd also like to know who is paying for this," Stuart interjected.
Moon relented. "Let me put your fears to rest, my young friends. The money we're spending here is your own. In your subjective future and in my subjective past, a fund was established by the members of our Consortium to cover the trifling cost of our stay in the Hilbert Hotel," Moon told them.
"Trifling?" Hillary snorted.
Their instructor shrugged. "It is rather difficult to compare currencies across dimensions, but suffice it to say that the cost of our stay here is only slightly less than your parents make in a year, Hillary."
None of them added the last part of that statement, although they were all aware of it – the amount of money in question was far more than Stuart's mother made in a year. "But it's just a trifle compared to how much the Consortium actually has," Stuart supplied. "Amassing a great fortune is no trouble at all for anyone with the ability to travel in time."
Hillary nodded, picking up his thread. "I suppose we'll all be fabulously wealthy soon."
"As I said, I try not to discuss your futures," Moon said, the tone of her voice making it clear that Hillary was quite right.
In the coming days (or at least in the spans of time that passed for days), Stuart would marvel at how quickly the truly bizarre became the routine. As usual, he passed the bulk of his days inside his elementary school. Now, though, all of his "days" occurred inside a single Philadelphia night. Each successive lesson took place in a new classroom on the same floor, but to any outside observer, each session happened simultaneously. As such, it was easy for the students to review old lessons – they simply had to slip in quietly and take a seat in the back, behind their downtime selves. Stuart never had to avail himself of this option, but the others all did, particularly Darren. As they progressed further into the curriculum, the back of the classrooms became increasingly crowded. Sometimes, it came down to standing room only.
Stuart's subjective "nights" were just as weird. Just as dawn approached in Philadelphia, Moon would Jump them all back to the hotel. Each of the students had rather lavish accommodations – a suite of rooms including separate sitting and dining areas, a kitchenette, a full bathroom, and a king sized bed. The food provided by room service was excellent, but they also had the opportunity to order from a couple of restaurants that delivered.
According to Stuart's watch, they spent something like six hours per visit in the elementary school; their stays in the hotel were presumably around eighteen hours each. The level of mental exertion they went through tended to wear them out, but even so they were in the hotel for far more time than they needed for sleep alone. To be sure, they spent some time studying, but there was no television or any other form of entertainment provided. Restlessly, Stuart began to explore.
He had easy access to the ground floor via the stairs, but there wasn't much to it – some vending machines, the lobby, and the hotel bar. The lobby was constantly packed. No less than six concierges manned the check-in counter, and a small army of bellhops assisted with settling in guests. Evidently, the Hilbert Hotel was a very popular place to stay; every time Stuart visited the lobby, the line of guests waiting to check in ran clean out the front door. Conversely (and perhaps perversely), the bar was never busy. The only people Stuart ever saw inside were Darren and Hillary. The two of them sat in a corner, with coffees or milkshakes, their heads bent low over their notebooks.
Once, Stuart managed to slip into an elevator alone, which was no mean feat considering the stream of perpetually arriving guests. Mirrored walls lined the interior of the lift, giving Stuart a dizzying view of infinity to either side. In place of light up buttons designating floors, the small room boasted instead a simple alpha numeric keypad. Experimentally, Stuart punched in 2*. His stomach lurched and moments later the elevator doors parted with a sharp ding to reveal his floor. He checked the third floor next, which looked very similar, at least from inside the lift. The carpet and the wallpaper weren't as nice. He set one foot out into the hallway, observing that the light fixtures on the second level were simple and less ornate than those on the second floor, and the room doors were closer together. Apparently, Moon and the Consortium had reserved the best rooms in the Hilbert Hotel.
Stuart stepped back into the elevator and keyed in 10*. Again, his stomach lurched and the doors dinged open almost immediately. The view in front of him was identical to what he had seen on the third floor, the only difference being the numerical placard posted inside the door well on his right. He frowned. He hadn't been in the elevator nearly long enough to traverse seven floors. Feeling suspicious, he punched in *100, and went through the same process again – same gentle tug in his gut, same length of travel, same sharp ding. Also, as before, the only distinguishing feature of this floor was the number 99 inset on his right.
Stuart studied the alphanumeric console inside the lift. There was no indication of which floor was the top andno button marked "Roof". He went to the six hundred and twenty third floor, then the fourteen thousand seven hundred and ninth, and then the thirty two thousand seven hundred and sixty eighth. Each time, he was transported nearly instantaneously to a new level, virtually identical to the last. Stricken, he jabbed his thumb into the nine button over and over again until he feared a blister was forming. With a shaking middle finger he depressed the star key.
Ding! The elevator doors clanged open. He stared disbelievingly at the inside of the door well. The numerical placard was the same size as on the floor below, but in place of a number there was simply a gray blur. Leaning in close, he could barely make out rows upon rows of order 9's written in black. He stepped back into the elevator, jabbed 1* and returned at once to the lobby. On shaky legs he sprinted past the milling line of would be hotel guests and out the front door of the Hilbert Hotel.
The sky was gray, a noncommittal hue he'd have called twilight, except that he suspected it never changed. A thin swath of grass and shrubbery skirted the base of the building, before giving way to the eternal parking lot. In every direction he could see, neatly ordered rows of cars stretched out to the horizon. To his left, the queue leading to the front door likewise disappeared into the distance. Fearfully, he turned around and craned his neck back to look up at the Hilbert Hotel, impossibly tall, the top escaping his view.
From then on, Stuart spent his free time in the hotel bar with Hillary and Darren.
On the eighth and final night, they finished with about an hour to spare. Moon Child concluded the lesson with a handy isomorphism that Stuart saw coming from a mile away. Nonetheless, one could almost see the "Aha Moment" on the faces of his classmates. Hillary and Topanga got it right away, uttering small gasps of delight, as did the second Ned. Somewhere in the back of the room, one of the dozen or so Darrens stole Archimedes's line: "Eureka!".
In the end, they could create a wormhole connecting any two points in the multiverse simply by solving the equation with the (very many) correct variables. The elegance of the end result was breathtaking. While they had seen Moon do the work in her head, this skill was beyond any of them with their present skill set. Still, with pen and paper and a few moments of mental elbow grease, any one of them could now create their own wormholes.
"Come with me," Moon instructed, leading them out of that lesson's classroom, and into the hallway. For a moment, they stood in a small circle facing each other, each clutching their notebooks and absorbing the sounds of the classrooms around them. Over the course of eight lessons, they had worked the floor in a U shape – starting with Feeny's classroom and culminating directly across the hall. Soft candlelight leaked out from every closed door and they could hear the low susurrations of Moon's voice in seven simultaneous lectures. Their instructor put her hands out once more as she did at the end of each session, and they linked together for a final trip.
This time, they didn't return to the Hilbert. Instead, she took them to the top of an exceedingly high mountain, overlooking a great city. Orange and white lights crisscrossed far below them, roughly outlining roads and buildings. Tiny points of light in pairs, some red and some white, drifted along the broad avenues far below.
"All these things I have given you," Moon proclaimed, extended her arms over the city below. "I have delivered unto you all the nations of the world. No king, no president, no billionaire on your Earth can rival you for power now. The multiverse is your playground. I offer you but one warning, my young charges. Your resources are great, and spacetime is infinite, but you are not, and your time is fleeting."
This pronouncement landed heavily on the young chrononauts. For a few minutes, they stood in silence, watching the city far below. It was Hillary who broke the silence. "What now?" she asked.
Moon looked at the children for the first time since their arrival in this new locale. Her expression seemed to be one of pity. "That's the question, isn't it?"
Hillary's patience with Moon, never great to begin with, dried up. "No, I mean, where do we go now? What do we do next?"
Moon shrugged. "Whatever, wherever, whenever you like… If you wish, you may return to the Hotel for another sleeping period. If you wish, you may return to the homes of your parents. If you wish, you may witness the moment of your birth, or… anything at all."
The wind picked up; a sharp chill ran through Stuart's body. It was clear that Moon would offer them no further instruction or direction. Someone would have to take charge. "We can do anything we want," he reiterated loudly. "But we don't have to do anything, either, not even make a decision – at least, not right now. I say we all go home. We can Jump back to right after we left to meet up at the school. Let's all sleep on it, and we'll meet up tomorrow at school."
"That's a good idea," Darren agreed.
"Yeah, maybe so," Ned echoed.
Hillary laughed. "Of course. Of course, I'm going home. Where else would I go? I don't think I'm ready to start bumming around the multiverse just yet."
Stuart turned to look at Topanga, standing as ever next to her uptime self. "I will see you at school tomorrow, Stuart." She reached out to take Moon's hand, and the two of them vanished from the scene.
"Oh," Stuart remarked quietly. He turned back around to look at his remaining friends. They had each dropped to the ground, and were scribbling furiously in their notebooks. "Do you think we'll ever see her again?"
"Of course. Didn't she just say she'd see us at school tomorrow?" Ned responded.
Stuart took a seat on a large, fairly smooth rock and opened up his own spiral. "No, I meant Moon. Do you think we'll see her again?"
"Why would you want to?" Hillary scoffed.
"I don't know, I just… I thought I should thank her for teaching us," Stuart put in. It sounded a little lame. He set to work on his computations and soon became the first to finish his work. "Okay, guys, I'll see you tomorrow."
"Wait… what, seriously?" Ned asked.
Stuart exchanged glances with Darren and Hillary.
"We've just unlocked the cheat codes to the multiverse, and you're going home to your mommies and daddies?" Ned went on, incredulous. "You can go anywhere, do anything, and you're going to return to Cory's World?"
"Well, just for the time being," Stuart said defensively.
"Our families are there," Darren put in. "No matter what else has changed, they still matter to us. Or, at least, they should."
"Yeah, that's great," Ned sneered. "You can go back to your life as Cory's slaves if you want to, but I'm going to have some fu n!" He glanced down at the notebook in his hand, made a final notation with his pencil, and disappeared.
They never saw Ned again.