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Description
Bombarded with geometry
----------

Now, in order to clarify what exactly happened to Cockroft, let's rewind to the young man's first day of work. He rushed out the classroom, jammed the pedals on his bike, broke the pedal off while trying to fix it, crossed the street, yadda yadda, and finally made it to the shop in a coat of mud and nature cosmetics. Afraid of being yelled at, he cautiously opened the door. The moment he stepped in, the clock, dangling on a cord behind the counter, began gonging in short bursts of what sounded like volcanic eruptions. It was four 0'clock exactly. As Cockroft edged suspiciously toward it, the candle flames suddenly burst up, igniting a waxy smell around the room.
Not knowing what to make of this, Cockroft shakily decided that the candles were connected to ultrasonic sensors, which lit the fuse when it sensed movement. But he wasn't exactly skilled in the concept of lying, so the conclusion was nothing more than a waste of time.
He continued to stand there, unsure of what to do next, when the bell clanged and the door screeched open. A young man walked in, smiling pleasantly and wiping his hands off with a hankerchief. He looked like a penguin in his carefully trimmed tuxedo and gleaming black dress shoes. In the junk shop, he looked as if he had just stepped into another planet.
"A new cashier?" asked the man cheerfully. "Good afternoon to you! Mind if I look around?" Apparently that last statement was just filler, for the man began sorting through the trash with an unbreakable concentration. He hummed as he searched, and pulled out a rusty metal object a few minutes later. "What would you call this?"
"it's a can opener," answered Cockroft, bewildered by the man's ignorance. What should he do now? Explain how it works? Name the price? Mrs. Hurford hadn't explained anything except that he had to work until one o'clock in the morning, or else the wages would be halved.
"You're quite an expert in this field," babbled the man "Tell me more: what does it do? how do you use it?"
"Um, it opens cans..." began Cockroft. The man had a question mark on his face. "Um, here..." He picked up a tuna can wedged under a steering wheel and held it up. Then he took the can opener from the man, latched it on the top of the can, and turned. Slowly the top became a cap.
"How clever." The man took the tool and the reeking can. "I'll buy it. Price?"
That was a problem. There were no price tags, no guide, no one specified anything. A can opener, eh? "Ten dollars, I guess."
"How much?"
"Ten dollars."
"No, in euros. How much is it?"
"Erm..." If he remembered correctly, one US dollar equalled approximately .735 euros, so ten dollars equalled... "Seven euros. Thanks," he added awkwardly as the man happily paid up. He was about to leave when Cockroft called.
"Sir, if you don't mind me asking, may you tell me why you're so hyped about a can opener?"
The man turned around. "Why? What are you interested in?" Cockroft paused. "People are interested in things they don't see often, correct? In a world dominated by computers and GPS's and factories, a simple can opener can become a treasure."
"But can openers are still there, right? We have a can opener at home." The man looked at him quizically.
"So you still have houses, eh? Marvelous. I'd like one. I can do many things with a house. Take it apart, rebuild it, roam in it all day. How nice it is to have a house." Something in the man's tone told Cockroft to shut up, but not before one last question.
"Where do you come fom, sir?"
"Eh? England, I should say. You honestly don't know?"
"No...yes, yes," he corrected himself. What was going on? England was on a whole different continent. Why would a gentleman come from England all the way to America to visit a junk shop?
"I'll excuse myself now," said the man. "Good day." He gracefully stepped out of the shop as Cockroft still tried to comprehend the situation. This was what people called "weirder than weird." Then he remembered the name of the shop: AAs. Alien Artifacts Store. "Aliens" meant "foreigners", in school terms anyway, so this must be a shop specially meant for foreigners. If he thought about it, England was one of the first to industrialize, so it wasn't impossible for someone to come from a land filled with factories. Not impossible. Highly improbable, though.
Just to be on the safe side, he didn't look outside.
However, he couldn't overlook things any further when at five o-clock, a man smelling strongly of the sea staggers in. He was considerably clean, except that he seemed to have been doused with "ocean sew." He was completely wet, and bits of seaweed clung to his rough clothes.
"Wanted teh get 'ere first," he growled. "You, boy, better make this good. What's in stock?"
Vaguely, Cockroft waved around. "Junk. Um, i don't know exactly what this store specializes in..."
"Ah, c'mon that won't do. How 'bout..." He looked around and locked onto a chipped-off bar of soap. "What's this... seal fat!" As if trying to stuff the bar up his nose, he took a long whiff. "Yep, seal. Been needin' this for decades. Yo, how much?"
"What's your currency?" asked Cockroft politely, not wanting the same mistake to happen again.
"Boy, you should know. Heard of "flies" before?"
"Pardon?"
"Flies, you maggot. Short for "flints," which is short for "forint."
"I honestly..." Cockroft stopped to ponder for a moment. Forints... forints... His history teacher's voice echoed in his head. "I want you all to remember that the Hungarian currency is forints," Miss Arroyo had said.
"The Hungarian currency is forints," repeated Cockroft. He quickly did the math in his head. One dollar was about two hundred forints. Maybe. He wasn't so sure. "For soap, ten thousand florints?"
"Can't it be any lower?"
"Okay, nine thousand?"
Grudgingly, the man handed the money to Cockroft, who had no idea if it was the correct amount.
"Um, why are you using Hungarian currency?" asked Cockroft as the man turned to leave.
"You don' look like yer from around," the man said.
"Yeah, because I'm not. Please, tell me something."
The man seemed to glare at him from under his bushy eyebrows. "You hear of the great flood? Covered the whole earth except for Hungary. Don't know why, just happened that way. Fortunately, we had enough wit to prepare for the flood, so we got in some submarines and survived the flood. That's why we all use these flies."
"Is that even possible?" thought Cockroft out loud, though he sensed sincerity in the man's words.
"You don't believe me? Come outside." He lead Cockroft to the shop door, opened it, and stepped outside. Cockroft caught a glimpse of deep blue--the ocean? Fully blown with curiosity, he attempted to scramble out. Didn't work. Before his toe could even touch the metal platform outside, a force knocked him back in, simultaneously shutting the door. he crashed into a bicycle tangled in cables.
Okay, that was it. He couldn't get out.
But that didn't stop people from coming in. A few other people in similar garb entered the shop-- he tried to treat them with courtesy despite his recent shock. Then at six o-clock, the scene changed again. This time the customers were tribal people, weilding spears and wearing hides.
A world for every hour. That was the pattern.
And so he struggled through the rest of the day, until twelve-oclock came. Could he leave now? No, Hurford had specified that he work until one o-clock.
It began getting cold, and the candles began dimming. Surely it must be time? But the clock only read twelve-thirty, half an hour before dismissal. Should he try to leave again? No customers had come, and frankly, he was bored. Converting currencies all day had took its toll on him.
Not expecting success, he approached the door once more and slowly opened it. As always, it refused to budge without a good kick, which he gave with pleasure. His foot landed outside. He wasn't blasted in.
Well, it was different from the first time he tried. For one, there wasn't an ocean outside. It was just... home. His city at night, lit by street lamps and flitting moths. He took another step outside. So he was finally back from a boring, hectic day. He wanted to relax, but his gut told him, no. This was not home.
Although everything, from the buildings to the tiny bugs, had been the same since he left, something major was missing. Humans. To be precise, he was the only human there, an idea that developed out of gut feeling.
Humans know when other humans are there. By their smell, sound, presence, even soul, they can tell. But humans often ignore instinct, either out of stupidity or a thing they refer to as "common sense", which leads them to do strange things. Cockroft, here, refused to accept a world without humans, as strange as humans can get. He began calling.
"Is anybody there? Hey! ANYBODY THERE, ANSWER ME!" Of course, only the crickets answer him, but even then he denied the truth. He began running, slowly at first, and then sprinting all out. Before he knew it, he was in front of his house.
They have a saying: home is where the heart is. There's no such thing as "home is where the split heart is", which was exactly what Cockroft was feeling. He felt it should be home but not, at the same time. Without even entering he knew his mother wasn't there, but he still checked. The appliances--microwave, stove, lights--still worked. He even found his mom's burnt breads in the trash can.
So where were the people?
Suddenly, he remembered that he needed to get back before one o-clock, and panic forced him to hurry back. He turned the corner, to get to the shop and found... nothing. The shop simply wasn't there. A sinking feeling came over him. Too late, too late. He was stuck here forever.
Well, obviously his hypothesis was proved wrong, or else what would this story become? A guy stuck in no-man's land forever, trying to survive on people's leftovers? Forget it.
Cockroft had fallen asleep in front of where the shop had been when he was suddenly wrenched up. Startled, he pulled back. It was day, and a man with smart-looking glasses stood in front of him. His black hair was ruffled to absurd angles, as if he had just awoken.
"What are you doing?" the man asked tiredly. Cockroft was wondering that himself. "Need help?"
"Why are you here?" he managed to choke out.
"I was going to ask you that after you accepted my help. Well, I could tell you, but you won't understand."
Cockroft looked back to the empty space.
"Searching for AAS?" Though Cockroft didn't answer, the man assumed he was. He walked over to the space, as if emphasizing its emptiness. "You won't find it. If you want to get out, you need to find its exact location at the exact time. Just telling, it won't be in the same place twice."
"...How do you know?"
"Guess." Then, seeing Cockroft's hopeless expression, he added, "I'm Mr. Burger, by the way."
Burger, the guy the Hurford described as "screwed up"?
"I used to work at AAS. You're a new employee? Well, as your mentor, I need to guide you properly." He motioned for Cockroft to come closer. "Let me outline the work for you. At every hour, you appear on a different plane aka world, if you don't want to think on geometric terms. Those operate on a rule: if you travel through space, you travel through time, as you can see if you try to graph a line. But then, you ask, from a point, which is our position, aren't there infinitely many lines? Yes, but that goes beyond the capacity of our understanding, and thus we use the clock." He glanced to make sure Cockroft was paying attention. "A clock, so that every hour represents a plane. That, at least, is understandable. So the theory here is, if we consider our world on a plane, shouldn't there be parallel planes? So the answer is where we stand now. The "Perfect Parallel." We assume that it's parallel to us, and that's why it's so incredibly similar. But it lacks humans."
"So doesn't that rule out the possibility that it's parallel?"
"No, since what we do on our Home plane directly affects what happens here. Supposedly at every twenty-fourth hour, this plane "updates" to match our own plane."
"But why at every twenty-fourth hour?"
"Because, kid, AAS makes its rounds every twenty four hours. As I explained earlier, it's to keep things simple. To travel through space, you need to travel through time because we don't know any way of doing otherwise. There's no such thing as "pausing time." The time you spend here is the same amount of time you spend away from home."
"Then wouldn't that cause an uproar? I'm a missing kid!"
"Yeah, but you don't know. Remember, this place updates a day later than home. Which leads us..." He pointed at the sky. "Do you notice something strange?"
"Strange?" Cockroft looked up, trying to suppress the agonizing homesickness inside. What he saw was blue sky, clouds, a sun.... it was day. When he arrived, it was night. "Didn't this place update every twenty four hours? It can't possibly become day."
"You're catching on. That would be impossible, but remember, this is the Perfect parallel. Assuming that Earth revolves around the sun, all the planes associated with it should also rotate around the sun. The sun will always reach it, but what actually happens on those planes is different. The specialty of the Perfect parallel is that there are infinitely many, whereas a different plane would have only itself. A line drawn through parallel planes will go through all of them. But they aren't necessarily perpindicular. Therefore, a slightly angled line can land you in a different point, or different location, hence the randomness of AAS. But the other planes are different."
Mr. Burger shifted his glasses and gazed up at the sky. Cockroft watched him.
"Say, if a million planes were connected to one, wouldn't it make sense if it had a point of intersection?"
Cockroft nodded.
"That's why AAS lands at the same spot for all the other planes. They share the same point. The positioning of tectonics may be different on other worlds, but the "location" is the same. The only thing that changes is time."
"..."
"Understand?"
"Isn't that asking a bit too much?"
Mr. Burger laughed. "Indeed, it is. That's all right, you'll get it as you go on. But know that this isn't all there is; God didn't study euclidean geometry, you know." He smacked Cockroft's back. "Don't worry, you'll get along fine. But don't expect to be rescued when this happens again. Here." He scribbled on a piece of paper and handed it to Cockroft. A phone number. "Phone lines still work, you know. I left my cell on another plane and I still got a massive phone bill."
Cockroft didn't laugh.
"It's okay, we'll get out of here." He took out a circular palm-sized device.It reminded Cockroft of a mix between a lock and a clock, but he didn't mention this to Burger. He cautiously felt it with his hand, and the instant he touched it, he felt a snap. He saw a distorted grid and lines strewn all over. He saw shapes he never new existed, darkness and light at the same time. But it was brief. He blinked, and the image faded until all he could remember was that he saw "something."
He was on a street near AAS. He recognized it, and hurried back to the shop. It was there, safely nestled on the curb. A car almost crushed him. He never felt so happy about it in his life.

Description
Bombarded with geometry
----------

Now, in order to clarify what exactly happened to Cockroft, let's rewind to the young man's first day of work. He rushed out the classroom, jammed the pedals on his bike, broke the pedal off while trying to fix it, crossed the street, yadda yadda, and finally made it to the shop in a coat of mud and nature cosmetics. Afraid of being yelled at, he cautiously opened the door. The moment he stepped in, the clock, dangling on a cord behind the counter, began gonging in short bursts of what sounded like volcanic eruptions. It was four 0'clock exactly. As Cockroft edged suspiciously toward it, the candle flames suddenly burst up, igniting a waxy smell around the room.
Not knowing what to make of this, Cockroft shakily decided that the candles were connected to ultrasonic sensors, which lit the fuse when it sensed movement. But he wasn't exactly skilled in the concept of lying, so the conclusion was nothing more than a waste of time.
He continued to stand there, unsure of what to do next, when the bell clanged and the door screeched open. A young man walked in, smiling pleasantly and wiping his hands off with a hankerchief. He looked like a penguin in his carefully trimmed tuxedo and gleaming black dress shoes. In the junk shop, he looked as if he had just stepped into another planet.
"A new cashier?" asked the man cheerfully. "Good afternoon to you! Mind if I look around?" Apparently that last statement was just filler, for the man began sorting through the trash with an unbreakable concentration. He hummed as he searched, and pulled out a rusty metal object a few minutes later. "What would you call this?"
"it's a can opener," answered Cockroft, bewildered by the man's ignorance. What should he do now? Explain how it works? Name the price? Mrs. Hurford hadn't explained anything except that he had to work until one o'clock in the morning, or else the wages would be halved.
"You're quite an expert in this field," babbled the man "Tell me more: what does it do? how do you use it?"
"Um, it opens cans..." began Cockroft. The man had a question mark on his face. "Um, here..." He picked up a tuna can wedged under a steering wheel and held it up. Then he took the can opener from the man, latched it on the top of the can, and turned. Slowly the top became a cap.
"How clever." The man took the tool and the reeking can. "I'll buy it. Price?"
That was a problem. There were no price tags, no guide, no one specified anything. A can opener, eh? "Ten dollars, I guess."
"How much?"
"Ten dollars."
"No, in euros. How much is it?"
"Erm..." If he remembered correctly, one US dollar equalled approximately .735 euros, so ten dollars equalled... "Seven euros. Thanks," he added awkwardly as the man happily paid up. He was about to leave when Cockroft called.
"Sir, if you don't mind me asking, may you tell me why you're so hyped about a can opener?"
The man turned around. "Why? What are you interested in?" Cockroft paused. "People are interested in things they don't see often, correct? In a world dominated by computers and GPS's and factories, a simple can opener can become a treasure."
"But can openers are still there, right? We have a can opener at home." The man looked at him quizically.
"So you still have houses, eh? Marvelous. I'd like one. I can do many things with a house. Take it apart, rebuild it, roam in it all day. How nice it is to have a house." Something in the man's tone told Cockroft to shut up, but not before one last question.
"Where do you come fom, sir?"
"Eh? England, I should say. You honestly don't know?"
"No...yes, yes," he corrected himself. What was going on? England was on a whole different continent. Why would a gentleman come from England all the way to America to visit a junk shop?
"I'll excuse myself now," said the man. "Good day." He gracefully stepped out of the shop as Cockroft still tried to comprehend the situation. This was what people called "weirder than weird." Then he remembered the name of the shop: AAs. Alien Artifacts Store. "Aliens" meant "foreigners", in school terms anyway, so this must be a shop specially meant for foreigners. If he thought about it, England was one of the first to industrialize, so it wasn't impossible for someone to come from a land filled with factories. Not impossible. Highly improbable, though.
Just to be on the safe side, he didn't look outside.
However, he couldn't overlook things any further when at five o-clock, a man smelling strongly of the sea staggers in. He was considerably clean, except that he seemed to have been doused with "ocean sew." He was completely wet, and bits of seaweed clung to his rough clothes.
"Wanted teh get 'ere first," he growled. "You, boy, better make this good. What's in stock?"
Vaguely, Cockroft waved around. "Junk. Um, i don't know exactly what this store specializes in..."
"Ah, c'mon that won't do. How 'bout..." He looked around and locked onto a chipped-off bar of soap. "What's this... seal fat!" As if trying to stuff the bar up his nose, he took a long whiff. "Yep, seal. Been needin' this for decades. Yo, how much?"
"What's your currency?" asked Cockroft politely, not wanting the same mistake to happen again.
"Boy, you should know. Heard of "flies" before?"
"Pardon?"
"Flies, you maggot. Short for "flints," which is short for "forint."
"I honestly..." Cockroft stopped to ponder for a moment. Forints... forints... His history teacher's voice echoed in his head. "I want you all to remember that the Hungarian currency is forints," Miss Arroyo had said.
"The Hungarian currency is forints," repeated Cockroft. He quickly did the math in his head. One dollar was about two hundred forints. Maybe. He wasn't so sure. "For soap, ten thousand florints?"
"Can't it be any lower?"
"Okay, nine thousand?"
Grudgingly, the man handed the money to Cockroft, who had no idea if it was the correct amount.
"Um, why are you using Hungarian currency?" asked Cockroft as the man turned to leave.
"You don' look like yer from around," the man said.
"Yeah, because I'm not. Please, tell me something."
The man seemed to glare at him from under his bushy eyebrows. "You hear of the great flood? Covered the whole earth except for Hungary. Don't know why, just happened that way. Fortunately, we had enough wit to prepare for the flood, so we got in some submarines and survived the flood. That's why we all use these flies."
"Is that even possible?" thought Cockroft out loud, though he sensed sincerity in the man's words.
"You don't believe me? Come outside." He lead Cockroft to the shop door, opened it, and stepped outside. Cockroft caught a glimpse of deep blue--the ocean? Fully blown with curiosity, he attempted to scramble out. Didn't work. Before his toe could even touch the metal platform outside, a force knocked him back in, simultaneously shutting the door. he crashed into a bicycle tangled in cables.
Okay, that was it. He couldn't get out.
But that didn't stop people from coming in. A few other people in similar garb entered the shop-- he tried to treat them with courtesy despite his recent shock. Then at six o-clock, the scene changed again. This time the customers were tribal people, weilding spears and wearing hides.
A world for every hour. That was the pattern.
And so he struggled through the rest of the day, until twelve-oclock came. Could he leave now? No, Hurford had specified that he work until one o-clock.
It began getting cold, and the candles began dimming. Surely it must be time? But the clock only read twelve-thirty, half an hour before dismissal. Should he try to leave again? No customers had come, and frankly, he was bored. Converting currencies all day had took its toll on him.
Not expecting success, he approached the door once more and slowly opened it. As always, it refused to budge without a good kick, which he gave with pleasure. His foot landed outside. He wasn't blasted in.
Well, it was different from the first time he tried. For one, there wasn't an ocean outside. It was just... home. His city at night, lit by street lamps and flitting moths. He took another step outside. So he was finally back from a boring, hectic day. He wanted to relax, but his gut told him, no. This was not home.
Although everything, from the buildings to the tiny bugs, had been the same since he left, something major was missing. Humans. To be precise, he was the only human there, an idea that developed out of gut feeling.
Humans know when other humans are there. By their smell, sound, presence, even soul, they can tell. But humans often ignore instinct, either out of stupidity or a thing they refer to as "common sense", which leads them to do strange things. Cockroft, here, refused to accept a world without humans, as strange as humans can get. He began calling.
"Is anybody there? Hey! ANYBODY THERE, ANSWER ME!" Of course, only the crickets answer him, but even then he denied the truth. He began running, slowly at first, and then sprinting all out. Before he knew it, he was in front of his house.
They have a saying: home is where the heart is. There's no such thing as "home is where the split heart is", which was exactly what Cockroft was feeling. He felt it should be home but not, at the same time. Without even entering he knew his mother wasn't there, but he still checked. The appliances--microwave, stove, lights--still worked. He even found his mom's burnt breads in the trash can.
So where were the people?
Suddenly, he remembered that he needed to get back before one o-clock, and panic forced him to hurry back. He turned the corner, to get to the shop and found... nothing. The shop simply wasn't there. A sinking feeling came over him. Too late, too late. He was stuck here forever.
Well, obviously his hypothesis was proved wrong, or else what would this story become? A guy stuck in no-man's land forever, trying to survive on people's leftovers? Forget it.
Cockroft had fallen asleep in front of where the shop had been when he was suddenly wrenched up. Startled, he pulled back. It was day, and a man with smart-looking glasses stood in front of him. His black hair was ruffled to absurd angles, as if he had just awoken.
"What are you doing?" the man asked tiredly. Cockroft was wondering that himself. "Need help?"
"Why are you here?" he managed to choke out.
"I was going to ask you that after you accepted my help. Well, I could tell you, but you won't understand."
Cockroft looked back to the empty space.
"Searching for AAS?" Though Cockroft didn't answer, the man assumed he was. He walked over to the space, as if emphasizing its emptiness. "You won't find it. If you want to get out, you need to find its exact location at the exact time. Just telling, it won't be in the same place twice."
"...How do you know?"
"Guess." Then, seeing Cockroft's hopeless expression, he added, "I'm Mr. Burger, by the way."
Burger, the guy the Hurford described as "screwed up"?
"I used to work at AAS. You're a new employee? Well, as your mentor, I need to guide you properly." He motioned for Cockroft to come closer. "Let me outline the work for you. At every hour, you appear on a different plane aka world, if you don't want to think on geometric terms. Those operate on a rule: if you travel through space, you travel through time, as you can see if you try to graph a line. But then, you ask, from a point, which is our position, aren't there infinitely many lines? Yes, but that goes beyond the capacity of our understanding, and thus we use the clock." He glanced to make sure Cockroft was paying attention. "A clock, so that every hour represents a plane. That, at least, is understandable. So the theory here is, if we consider our world on a plane, shouldn't there be parallel planes? So the answer is where we stand now. The "Perfect Parallel." We assume that it's parallel to us, and that's why it's so incredibly similar. But it lacks humans."
"So doesn't that rule out the possibility that it's parallel?"
"No, since what we do on our Home plane directly affects what happens here. Supposedly at every twenty-fourth hour, this plane "updates" to match our own plane."
"But why at every twenty-fourth hour?"
"Because, kid, AAS makes its rounds every twenty four hours. As I explained earlier, it's to keep things simple. To travel through space, you need to travel through time because we don't know any way of doing otherwise. There's no such thing as "pausing time." The time you spend here is the same amount of time you spend away from home."
"Then wouldn't that cause an uproar? I'm a missing kid!"
"Yeah, but you don't know. Remember, this place updates a day later than home. Which leads us..." He pointed at the sky. "Do you notice something strange?"
"Strange?" Cockroft looked up, trying to suppress the agonizing homesickness inside. What he saw was blue sky, clouds, a sun.... it was day. When he arrived, it was night. "Didn't this place update every twenty four hours? It can't possibly become day."
"You're catching on. That would be impossible, but remember, this is the Perfect parallel. Assuming that Earth revolves around the sun, all the planes associated with it should also rotate around the sun. The sun will always reach it, but what actually happens on those planes is different. The specialty of the Perfect parallel is that there are infinitely many, whereas a different plane would have only itself. A line drawn through parallel planes will go through all of them. But they aren't necessarily perpindicular. Therefore, a slightly angled line can land you in a different point, or different location, hence the randomness of AAS. But the other planes are different."
Mr. Burger shifted his glasses and gazed up at the sky. Cockroft watched him.
"Say, if a million planes were connected to one, wouldn't it make sense if it had a point of intersection?"
Cockroft nodded.
"That's why AAS lands at the same spot for all the other planes. They share the same point. The positioning of tectonics may be different on other worlds, but the "location" is the same. The only thing that changes is time."
"..."
"Understand?"
"Isn't that asking a bit too much?"
Mr. Burger laughed. "Indeed, it is. That's all right, you'll get it as you go on. But know that this isn't all there is; God didn't study euclidean geometry, you know." He smacked Cockroft's back. "Don't worry, you'll get along fine. But don't expect to be rescued when this happens again. Here." He scribbled on a piece of paper and handed it to Cockroft. A phone number. "Phone lines still work, you know. I left my cell on another plane and I still got a massive phone bill."
Cockroft didn't laugh.
"It's okay, we'll get out of here." He took out a circular palm-sized device.It reminded Cockroft of a mix between a lock and a clock, but he didn't mention this to Burger. He cautiously felt it with his hand, and the instant he touched it, he felt a snap. He saw a distorted grid and lines strewn all over. He saw shapes he never new existed, darkness and light at the same time. But it was brief. He blinked, and the image faded until all he could remember was that he saw "something."
He was on a street near AAS. He recognized it, and hurried back to the shop. It was there, safely nestled on the curb. A car almost crushed him. He never felt so happy about it in his life.