Splitsville (Unedited Draft)

Chapter One- Maryanne

THE DINING HALL . . .

None of this would have happened if Maryanne wasn\'t so damn nice. She had this irresistible compulsion to be nice in every situation- not just civil, not just respectful- nice! Really nice- NICE nice. She couldn\'t stop herself from volunteering for all kinds of charity work she didn\'t have time for because it was a nice thing to do. She couldn\'t resist helping a friend- even if they didn\'t ask for help- even if they didn\'t need help, just because it was nice. She couldn\'t say no to strangers who needed help either and she couldn\'t say no to obviously smitten young men she had no interest in. The latter being why she was standing there having a conversation she didn\'t understand with Matt Godunov in the middle of the dining hall instead of going to see her physics professor at his office hours. She was failing the class- she needed to go, but Matt was so pathetically puppy-ish and excited to be talking to her, she didn’t have the heart to cut him off. It was almost pitifully cute how he just kept nattering on about particle physics as if she could understand what his thesis was about, as if she really wanted to hear all the quarky details of it.

\"The most interesting thing is that while Heisenberg\'s Principle is well- uncertain, quanta still follow this rigid set of rules- they\'re just different rules than the macroscopic world follows,\" Matt explained, starting to blush.

\"That\'s fascinating,\" Maryanne nodded again, wishing she\'d been able to say something more along the lines of why don\'t you find someone your own IQ to bother.

\"You know what- I could explain this much better back at the particle accelerator. You want to come and have a tour? I\'m not really supposed to have guests, but,\" Matt stopped to look at his clunky digital watch, \"at this time of the morning, nobody will be there except Moores.\" Matt started walking towards the door, gently dragging Maryanne by the arm.

\"I wouldn\'t want to get you in trouble,\" she protested, \"We could wait until the lab is completely empty, maybe some time next week?\" She smiled and nodded assuring him she\'d still be just as interested in particle physics the next week as she was at that moment.

\"It won\'t be empty then either. Moores never leaves.\" Matt opened the door for her and she reluctantly stepped out into the bright spring sunlight.

\"Come on, he\'s gotta leave sometime,\" she asked over her shoulder and pausing so he could catch up and walk in stride with her over the university\'s slate paths.

\"No, he really doesn\'t. It\'s kind of creepy,\" Matt admitted as he led Maryanne under an ivy-covered stone arch.

\"But, he has to eat and take showers. He has to sleep?\" she asked a moment later, using the question as an excuse to gesture expansively with her hands, thereby keeping Matt from getting a hold of one of them in that seventh grade romantic gesture without her having to reject him aloud.

\"He gets takeout, doesn\'t shower and has a sleeping bag under his desk. Like I said- he is kind of creepy.\"

\"Only kinda?\" she smirked as they arrived at the physics building. He opened the big oak door and gestured her inside.

\"We probably won\'t even see him- he stays buried in his work. Don\'t worry- it will be fine. Come take the tour, my theory is much easier to explain with my notes as a visual aid.\"

\"If you\'re sure?\" she answered and crossed the threshold.

THE PHYSICS BUILDING . . .

Matt\'s desk was in a tiny corner of a subbasement three floors down. The air in there was cold and damp and underground-stinky. It made Maryanne\'s skin itch and her hair feel instantly dirty and lank. Matt shuffled through disks and popped one after another into the drive of his interminably slow desktop to show her page after page and chart after chart as he explained waves and particles and something called Plank\'s Constant to her again. Maryanne ooo-ed and ahh-ed in the places she thought appropriate while she tried to figure a nice way to leave and try to catch Professor Drake before he left for the day.

She knew it was hopeless- every time she tried to interrupt, Matt showed her another illustration of a light wave or introduced another concept or got back to how it all related to some dead cat in a box named Schneider or Schroeder or some funny name. Maryanne couldn\'t figure out why a box would have a name anyway- why didn\'t they just call it the cat box- oh wait, that\'s why. Nevermind. Anyway, every time he mentioned the dead cat he got more animated because, to him, relating concepts to the cat seemed to mean getting closer to proving his thesis theory. The dead cat was his life- she couldn\'t cut him off in the middle of a requiem to it. So, she stayed while he kept on keeping on. Then about an hour later, she meekly followed him three more flights down to see the particle accelerator. The air in there smelled like her hair dryer and she could just feel her end splitting from it.

\"Here it is- the big machine,\" Matt introduced it like it was royalty. \"Isn\'t it sexy?\" Or maybe not royalty, but instead a pretty girl. \"She usually gets up to at most thirty MeV, but she\'s accelerated to almost forty-two MeV and theoretically she might achieve nearly sixty, but the housing isn\'t built to tolerate that.\" What was the most strange about how he kept calling it she was that it was shaped like a gigantic metal dick, like someone had gelded a enormous robot and put it on display.

\"Oh yeah, Matt, it\'s amazing,\" Maryanne agreed just to be agreeable. \"I\'ve never seen a sexier particle accelerator in my life.\"

\"Okay, yeah, she\'s not very big- the one at CERN eats ones this size for breakfast, but she\'s still pretty impressive. I\'m going to prove my theory on her, at any rate.\"

\"Not likely, Godunov,\" a harsh voice from the doorway sneered and both Maryanne and Matt turned to see an unkempt man of indeterminate age and smell walking into the room. \"Is this a new transfer student, Not-Godunov? She\'s certainly not some chippy you brought into a secured area in an effort to impress her and get into her pants, right?\"

\"Moores, everyone gives their friends tours. We\'re not hurting anyone. There aren\'t even any experiments scheduled for today,\" Matt defended.

\"It\'s still a secured area- the school can\'t have any undesirable elements getting access to the accelerator now can it?\" Moores replied, moving to the mechanism and beginning to adjust dials and throw switches as if he was in a Mary Shelly novel or maybe a Bugs Bunny cartoon.

\"Come on, Maryanne is a physics undergrad, not a terrorist. Cut me a break.\"

\"And no terrorist would take physics courses, is that it? Look, No-Good, you want me to do you a favor and not report you sneaking Blondie in to play charm, strange, top, and bottom with her, you have to do me a good turn as well,\" Moores offered.

Matt took a deep breath and answered, \"What do you want?\"

\"All your reserved accelerator time for next month,\" he demanded.

\"The whole month? No way, three days,\" Matt countered.

\"Three weeks,\" Moores negotiated.

\"One week.\"

\"Two.\"

\"Done,\" Moores agreed.

\"Good, so now could we have a couple of minutes so I can give Maryanne the tour without your presence?\" Matt requested.

\"It\'ll cost ya,\" Moores warned.

\"No more accelerator time,\" Matt told him.

\"Nah, just a few errands. I\'ll let you have your trysting time first. The pizza delivery smuck should be at the security door soon anyway. Moores flipped another toggle switch making the machine start humming oddly before leaving again.

\"You weren\'t kidding about the creepy,\" Maryanne said once she was sure Moores was out of earshot.

\"I\'m sorry about him- I really thought we wouldn\'t even see him today.\" Matt apologized, stepping in too close.

\"It\'s okay. I\'m just sorry you lost all that reserved time on account of me.\" Maryanne stepped back just a little.

\"I don\'t really need it. I\'m not going to be ready for any experiments for another three or four months,\" he replied looking over the dials that Moores had set.

\"Then why do you have time reserved?\" she asked.

\"What the hell is he doing with the settings?\" Matt muttered, apparently not hearing Maryanne\'s question. \"They\'re all out of balance- if he started the accelerator with them like this, he\'d be so far out of phase . . .\" he trailed off, resetting dials. Then, coming back to himself, he looked up at her and asked Maryanne, \"What did you say?\"

\"I said why do you have time reserved if you don\'t need it?\"

\"To trade with Moores- if you don\'t have any to trade with him, he makes your life hell.\"

\"Clever boy.\"

\"Not really, everybody does the same thing.\"

\"And honest, too.\"

\"Speaking of honesty- Maryanne, I didn\'t just want to show you this because of your keen interest in quantum physics.\" He closed in on her again and this time stepping back put her ass against a bank of computers, so she dared not try sidestepping else she risked upsetting them.

\"Good because, as interesting as you make it all sound, I honestly didn\'t understand half of what you told me in the last hour and a half,\" she confessed.

\"I kind of figure that from some of your questions.\"

\"Sorry.\"

\"It\'s okay- you listened- that\'s more than most women do. Which is why I was hoping we could- uh- that you\'d- Maybe we could catch a movie sometime?\" he finally spit out.

\"Oh, umm- sure. That would be nice,\" Maryanne consented, kicking herself and Matt leaned in with the definite intent of kissing her.

\"Damn, you two aren\'t naked yet? Or are you all done and dressed again? I wouldn’t be surprised, since it\'s you, Not-Quite-Godunov,\" Moores spoke from the doorway again, a pizza box in his hands. Matt halted his forward motion at the sound of that harsh voice, gave a small grunt of frustration and turned around.

\"You ate your lunch that fast?\" he asked.

\"No, I was gonna watch the peep show while I ate \'cause Blondie\'s stacked, but I guess that\'s not happening now.\" Moores set the pizza box down and pulled out a slice.

\"No.\"

\"So, now you pay up. I need you to take notes for me in Dawson\'s seminar at two this afternoon,\" he ordered around a mouthful of cheese and tomato.

\"You\'re not even in that class,\" Matt complained.

\"That\'s not your business, now is it?\" Moores scolded, a big drip of red sauce on his cheek. \"Just go take notes for me. Oh and I need you to run up to my desk and bring down my latest set of calculations- they should be waiting in the printer.\"

\"What now?\"

\"Yes, now. I need them now. Go get them now,\" he insisted, opening the pizza box, pulling out a slice and offering it to Maryanne before shrugging at her refusal and downing near half of it in one bite.

\"Fine. Come on, Maryanne.\"

\"Hey Blondie, you wanna see how a real man works this bad boy?\" Moores leeringly asked her, indicating the massive penis-shaped accelerator.

\"Leave her alone, Moores,\" Matt said gallantly.

\"No, Matt, it\'s all right. Go get the calculations. I\'ll wait here,\" she told him.

\"You don\'t have to-\"

\"Maybe she wants to stay, Good-for-Nothing. Let Blondie decide for herself.\"

\"It\'s really fine, Matt. Really.\"

\"I\'ll be right back,\" he assured her. Then he gave Moores a hard look as if to say don\'t try anything and left.

Now, it\'s not that Maryanne wanted to spend any time with Moores- he really was creepy, but he didn\'t seem to like her, so she was pretty sure he wasn\'t about to kiss her. Matt on the other hand . . . And honestly, Matt wasn\'t that bad, she just wasn\'t interested in anything more than friendship with him- but he was such a nice guy, she couldn\'t tell him no. Moores taunting request for her to remain in the lab instead of going with Matt spared her a few moments of fending Matt off or having to agree to marry him before the day was out.

After Matt was gone, Moores abandoned his pizza, reset the accelerator controls again and then, without a by your leave, pushed Maryanne backwards very aggressively.

\"Hey!\" she started to protest, but he just scowled at her and pushed her backwards through a door. Then he backed out and locked her in. She was in what seemed to be an observation room. She banged on the door and hollered for Moores to let her out. He just cast her an angry look through the large window that looked out on the accelerator and continued whatever it was he was doing. She banged all the harder, hoping that Matt might hear her until Moores poked a frustrated head through the doorway.

\"Shut your Goddamn hole. You need to be in there so I don\'t fry your little pea-brain, you stupid bitch!\" he cursed her and slammed the door shut again. After that, Maryanne decided that, if it was all the same, she\'d rather be in the observation room than anywhere with Moores. Matt was bound to be back soon and he\'d let her out.

The hum of the accelerator was getting louder and Maryanne could see through the window that Moores was adjusting something on the housing, prying pieces off and flinging them carelessly behind him. Maryanne might be failing physics 101, but even she knew he wasn\'t following the proper procedures or the scientific method or whatever it was he was supposed to be following when using scary quantum equipment. Moores pushed one last button. Suddenly, the sound of the accelerator got unbearably loud and there were sparks coming from the place where Moores had taken off the housing. Moores was just standing there facing the machine and watching it overheat, as if that was exactly what he expected.

And then it got weird.

Moores put his hands protectively to his ears and a moment later he fell to his knees, then all the way to the floor and passed out. Then, Maryanne had to put her own hands to her ears and then she was seeing double- at least she was seeing two Moores lying on the floor. Then there were four Moores on the floor, then eight and they were getting kinda see-through. Then there were more Moores, but they were almost not there at all and finally, there were at least thirty ghostly Moores and then they faded out of sight altogether. The sound of the machine was so intense, so painful, that Maryanne slid woozily to the floor and in a rush of heat lost consciousness.

***

Maryanne woke with a start face down on a cold floor and in a dimly lit room. There was some sort of alarm going off and her head ached as if she\'d had way too much fun the night before. Where the hell was she? She sat up and, after a minute to let her head stop swimming, she stood and looked around trying to figure out where she was. She could see the burned out husk of what was once the particle accelerator and then she remembered Moores and all he had done. She had to get out of there before someone came and asked her questions she didn\'t know how to answer about a guy she had known for a total of about fifteen minutes and was now probably dead. Not to mention that his body might just have divided multiple times like an ameba and vanished. Yeah, she really had to get out of there.

Was she still locked in? She stepped towards the door and tripped on something large and soft on the floor. It was a woman lying face down on the floor. She was blond and slim and was wearing the same cute skirt set Maryanne had put on that morning, but it was in what might have been a paler shade. The woman moaned, rolled over and screamed- or maybe that was Maryanne- she was never sure who started it.

***

Maryanne woke with a start face down on a cold floor and in a dimly lit room. There was some sort of alarm going off and her head ached as if she\'d recently been kicked in it. Where the hell was she? She moaned, rolled over and saw a woman crouching over her. The woman looked just like her and then Maryanne remembered what had happened- how Moores had split in two and them vanished and oh shit! Had that happened to her? The woman above her screamed- or maybe that was Maryanne- she was never sure who started it. The double kept screaming- like seriously screaming- like a tea kettle in a bad horror movie, like a banshee, like the sound of the still ringing alarm was a whisper- that woman screamed- or maybe it was Maryanne. It didn\'t matter, really. They were both screaming like that because- hello- there were two of her!

***

Maryanne looked down at the screaming woman on the floor- the woman wearing her clothes and her hairstyle and her face and just had to get out- out and away from that impossible thing, that abomination, that freak of science. Maryanne took a really deep breath, regained her feet and gave one last cleansing scream before making for the door. Praying it was unlocked, she turned the knob. It came off in her hand. She dropped it and reached into the hole where the doorknob used to be attached, hooked her fingers on something and pulled. It cut her middle finger, but the door gave and she got out. She dared not look back at whatever that thing behind her was or she\'d just start screaming again.

She was just out of the particle accelerator lab\'s door and into the hallway when she heard someone coming down the stairs. She stepped behind the door to hide as Matt ran passed and into the lab. She should have stopped and told him what had happened, but she didn\'t have the words- she didn’t even have the thoughts. She slipped as quietly as she could passed the door again and made her way up the stairs. Once out of the physics building, Maryanne waited behind the next building in the quad- the biological sciences building to see if the other woman had followed. She was still oddly out of breath even though she\'d been resting for several minutes. When she didn\'t come out, Maryanne breathed a sigh of relief. Maybe she\'d just imagined her. Hell, she probably imagined everything. She slipped in the shower this morning and was having a vivid hallucination or she might even still be dreaming. She pinched herself to see. Shit! It hurt. There were sirens in the distance adding to the proof that whatever had happened in that basement laboratory had actually happened. Panicking again, Maryanne ran back to her dorm. As she fumbled with her key ring, she noticed that the stone on her favorite pinky ring was no longer that deep shiny purple- now it was a dull pink with random swirls of darker blue running through it.

***

The double above Maryanne got an odd look on her face- did she really look like that? The double got an odd look, screamed one more time and moved in a panic to the door. She pulled the knob off and then ripped the door open. Ow! Maryanne was distracted from the double\'s exit by the bloody gash on her middle finger. It hadn\'t hurt before- must have been the shock of all that was going on. It hurt like a mother, now. She brought it to her mouth and sucked on it gently. Loud footstomps approached and then Matt was in the lab surveying the mess. Maryanne stood dizzily up and walked out to him.

\"Maryanne, oh thank God. Are you all right?\" he asked her, pulling her into a too tight embrace, strangely pinching her on her hip as he did.

\"Uh, I passed out, but I think I\'m okay,\" she weakly replied. He voice was shot from all the screaming they\'d done.

\"Where\'s Moores? I\'m gonna kill that bastard for hurting you,\" Matt asked angrily looking around.

\"I\'m not sure what happened to him. He wasn\'t in that little room with me. He was next to the machine.\" Maryanne looked over to where he\'d once been standing to see the wreckage. \"Not sure what happened after that.\" It wasn\'t a total lie- she really had no idea what had happened- even if she had understood particle physics, she probably wouldn\'t have known.

\"Moores, you stupid asshole,\" Matt said, shaking his head at the spot Maryanne had indicated. \"Listen, Moores was right- you really shouldn\'t have been here. We need to sneak you out before the fire department and campus security get here.\"

\"You\'ll get no arguments here,\" Maryanne answered.

\"Good. Let\'s go.\"

Maryanne wasn\'t sure why she hadn\'t told Matt about Moores messing with the particle accelerator on purpose or how he\'d weirdly multiplied and then disappeared. She didn\'t know why she didn\'t tell him about seeing her own double either. Matt lead her up the six flights of stairs to the ground level and showed her a side door she could slip out of because the fire truck had just pulled up on the front walk.

\"I can\'t walk you back because the security logs will place me inside, so it would look suspicious if I left,\" Matt explained. \"Will you be all right to get home?\"

\"Yeah, I think so. I\'m not dizzy anymore,\" she reassured him.

\"Good. Listen, I\'ll call you tomorrow and see how you\'re doing, okay?\"

\"I\'m fine. Go, before you have to explain being so far from your desk to the firefighters.\"

\"Right.\"

Maryanne watched Matt retreat into the building. After taking a moment to get her bearings, Maryanne walked back to her dorm not at all sure she should have let Matt walk back into the building alone, but not sure she would have been any help to him either. As she fumbled with her key ring, she noticed that the stone on her favorite pinky ring was no longer that deep shiny purple- now it was a dull pink with random swirls of darker blue running through it.