"So, who is he, dear?"
Under ordinary circumstances, Brenda Brundtland-Govanni would have gagged on her ramen noodles. But, these were no ordinary circumstances. This was dinner with Barbara Brundtland-Govanni, Brenda Brundtland-Govanni's mother. The only indication that the question had taken her by surprise was the slight tightening of Brenda Brundtland-Govanni's throat. She was certain that her mother had noticed. Her mother noticed everything. It was Barbara Brundtland-Govanni's mercenary training in Central America (the decade that everybody in the family knew - but didn't talk - about).
"Who is who, ma?" Brenda Brundtland-Govanni, forcing her voice to be even, asked.
"That nice young man you were out with last night," Barbara Brundtland-Govanni sweetly asked.
Even sitting at the modest dining room table, Brenda Brundtland-Govanni towered over her mother; at six foot six, she was a foot and a half taller than the older woman. Yet, there was never any question who was in charge of their conversations. Brenda Brundtland-Govanni had been made aware from a very young age that her mother knew 237 different ways to kill a man (and almost as many to kill a woman) with a pair of chopsticks, and she always had a pair of chopsticks on her, even when she was sunbathing nude. Brenda Brundtland-Govanni had only experienced her mother's deadly accuracy with eastern eating utensils once: there was a flash of light brown and her nose bled for three days. Brenda Brundtland-Govanni couldn't remember what she had done that so angered her mother, but she knew she never wanted to do anything like it again.
"I wasn't 'with' anybody," Brenda Brundtland-Govanni protested. "It was a business event."
"I distinctly saw you put your hand on his shoulders," Barbara Brundtland-Govanni insisted.
"How is that possible?" Brenda Brundtland-Govanni asked her. "The Minnies weren't even televised."
"There were some clips on the news," Barbara Brundtland-Govanni answered.
"Not in North America!" Brenda Brundtland-Govanni protested.
"No," her mother reasonably agreed. "In Singapore. It's amazing what you can find on YouTube with the latest filtering software."
"Okay," Brenda Brundtland-Govanni relented. "Let's say that you did manage to find some video of the Awards ceremony. How is it possible that you could have seen me? I specifically asked for a table in the back of the room, out of the sightlines of the cameras."
"When the camera swept over the crowd, there were a total of 13 frames of the back of the room. That was all I needed - you'd be even more amazed at what you can do with face recognition and image enhancing software these days," Barbara Brundtland-Govanni breezily told her. "I still have friends in...secret places who like to give me...gifts. Really advanced technological...gifts. Silly boys!"
"Still," Brenda Brundtland-Govanni, the slightest edge creeping into her voice indicating extreme annoyance, continued. "There were versions of me from seven different universes at the awards ceremony. How do you know you were watching me?"
"A mother knows," Barbara Brundtland-Govanni simply stated, ending any possible argument. "More noodle pudding?"
"Yes, thank you." Brenda Brundtland-Govanni hated the noodle pudding her mother made, but she figured holding out her plate to get a slab of it would buy her the time she needed to figure out an answer to Barbara Brundtland-Govanni's question.
The previous evening, Brenda Brundtland-Govanni had attended the Multiverse and Environs News Association Awards Dinner and Humiliation Ball. (This year, it was hosted by the Alternate Reality News Service crew from Universe 000000000008. There were 17 ARNSes among the explored universes of the multiverse; seven had been nominated for awards this year, so there were seven Brenda Brundtland-Govannis at the ceremony. Each liked to think of themselves as coming from Earth Prime, their universal designation numbers being a mere matter of bureaucratic necessity; however, thanks to a bit of logic so arcane that it made the foremost experts at interpreting the Kabbalah throw up their hands in despair, Brenda Brundtland-Govanni knew, just knew that her universe really was the home of Earth Prime. That knowledge was the only thing that kept her on the right side of the Reality Threshold.)
Brenda Brundtland-Govanni was elegant in a black off the shoulder number by Ronaldo of Theta Seti. Her heels were so high, they were illegal in four provinces and 22 states. She thought that this year she would finally be the most stylish Brenda Brundtland-Govanni at the MENA awards, but Brenda Brundtland-Govanni from Universe 000000000014 grabbed everybody's attention with a Sex Pistols t-shirt and ripped blue jeans. Bitch.
"Is that Brangelina?" Marcella Carborundurem-McVortvort, the Alternate Reality News Service's Food and Drink Writer, exclaimed, pointing towards a man and a woman who seemed to be sharing a torso and pair of legs. The previous year, MENA, in a fit of journalistic purity, decided not to invite any celebrities. Their reward? The awards ceremony got a single brief mention in The Podunk Mash & Enquirer. It was a bold experiment, and, as bold experiments go, the beaker blew up, exposing everybody in the lab to a mildly toxic liquid that would burn their skin for days and shorten their life expectancies by several minutes.
Celebrities were more than welcome this year.
Brenda Brundtland-Govanni ignored Carborundurem-McVortvort. Rooney McSlice, Publisher of The Multiverse Gazette, a competing news service in her reality, was accepting the Minnie for Best News Story for a scoop on the Bunny Lakaida disappearance. Lakaida was an old fart who probably wouldn't have merited attention, but for the fact that he disappeared from his nursing home. On video. And, the chip implanted in his body to keep track of the whereabouts of the old fart stopped working at the precise moment he vanished. The only clue was a small pile of pennies found on the chair that he had been sitting on.
According to the Multiverse Gazette, a man named Reginald Torblunder had modified his ARNS Home Universe GeneratorTM such that, instead of merely allowing him to see into other universes, he could pluck objects out of them. Over the course of seven years, he had traveled to over a million universes, plucking a penny out of each one. A penny - who could possibly miss a penny? A missing penny would be chalked up to an accounting error. No biggie. In one or two of the universes, an accountant would be driven mad trying to find out what had happened to the penny, but this didn't trouble Torblunder who, when he became a millionaire, would drive accountants mad for sport.
The detail that derailed Torblunder's perfect plan - there is always a detail that derails a criminal mastermind's perfect plans - which, I suppose, makes the plans imperfect - and the criminal less than a mastermind, but, uhh, I seem to be digressing - not so much digressing as wandering aimlessly, actually, but -
Okay, what Torblunder couldn't take into account, because only the staff of the Alternate Reality News Service was aware of it, was the law of conservation of information. If you take something out of one universe, you have to replace it with something that has a comparable complexity, something that contains a similar amount of information. A computer, for example, has to be replaced by 2,337 tennis balls and a copy of Roget's Thesaurus. A minivan is equal to 14 clock radios, 27 Mona Lisas and 137 boxes of Squirrel Snax. A gold bar is equal to a Thomas Pynchon novel. And so on. The multiverse is able to accept the movement of a certain amount of information without compensation; however, when a threshold is passed, it starts rearranging objects to suit itself. Lakaida was one of those rearranged objects.
It was a great story. Worthy of awards. It was also the Alternate Reality News Service's story, not the Multiverse Gazette's. Arturo Bigbangbootie, ARNS' Transdimensional Traffic Writer, had been working on it just before he crossed the Reality Threshold and had to retire. Brenda Brundtland-Govanni was a day away from publishing it when the article, almost word for word, appeared in the Multiverse Gazette. (The only words that had been changed were "the," "seemingly" and, for some reason, "arugula flechettes.") Not only that, but the principle of the law of conservation of information had only been discovered by ARNS employees the week before, and nobody else knew about it.
Brenda Brundtland-Govanni watched darkly as McSlice accepted the award. It was difficult to make out what he was saying: it always sounded like he was talking with a mouth full of marble cake. She glared at his chiseled features, his flowing black hair, the muscular physique which carried his tuxedo magnificently - okay, she sniffed, if you like that sort of thing. She was convinced that somebody in her office had leaked him the article - she was not predisposed to paying any attention to her hormones.
Brenda Brundtland-Govanni looked at Carborundurem-McVortvort. Although she was 43, she looked like she was 16 (she had long been an advocate of aggressive plastic surgery). Carborundurem-McVortvort was Brenda Brundtland-Govanni's prime suspect, having hinted that she would have liked to be given Bigbangbootie's beat after he retired. "All this food and drink is going to push my surgery bills beyond the limit!" Carborundurem-McVortvort complained. "Transdimensional traffic, now there's a beat that would be slimming for a girl!"
Also at the ARNS Prime - why not? It could be true - table sat Film Writer Elmore Teradonovich. A month earlier he had gotten into an argument with Bigbangbootie over Woody Allen's film The Purple Rose of Cairo. Teradonovich argued that it was a ripoff of Buster Keaton's Sherlock, Jr. ; Bigbangbootie insisted it was an homage. The private email - which, of course, Barbara Brundtland-Govanni had complete access to - was scorching, but would Teradonovich really be willing to sabotage Bigbangbootie's biggest scoop over such an argument?
Next to Teradonovich was Lucy from billing. Lucy from billing (as opposed to Lucy from shipping, Lucy A and Lucy D from security and Lucy the Rotweiller wrangler) had had a torrid affair with Bigbangbootie. For 15 seconds. It was an intense 15 seconds, though. And, while Bigbangbootie had always told her that his career came first, Lucy from billing seemed to be under the impression that he was fooling around with a bustier, blonder version of her in a different universe. You never can trust inter-dimensional travelers. Still, was this reason enough for her to sabotage Bigbangbootie's biggest - you know.
Brenda Brundtland-Govanni invited them to the awards ceremony to keep an eye on them in the vain hope that one of them might give themselves away. And, of course, Darren was there because she needed an extra body to fill the ta -
"Dear, you know I hate to be the one to interrupt an extended flashback," Barbara Brundtland-Govanni gently stated, "but, Darren - is that name of the man you were with last night?"
Deafeated, Brenda Brundtland-Govanni put down the plate full of ramen and noodle pudding and answered, "Yes, mom. Darren. Darren Clincker-Belli."
"Interesting name," Barbara Brundtland-Govanni mused. "Austro-Lithuanian? No matter. When am I going to meet him?"