Chapter 3: Chapter 3: Buff Genius

Most people would think it’s weird to find their cousin bench-pressing several hundred pounds of iron in their high school science lab, but for me, it was just an average Tuesday.

“963,” panted Gerard as he lifted the heavy-looking barbell above his head. “964, 965.”

“C’mon Gerard, not even you can do that many reps,” I teased, adjusting my backpack over my shoulder as I walked into the science lab.

“I always start counting at 500,” wheezed Gerard, his body slick with sweat. “Makes it sound more impressive.” He craned his neck, looking up at me expectantly, “You got the goods?”

I mimicked a drumroll and whipped out a large container of protein powder. On the front was a picture of some jacked dude arm-wrestling an equally jacked tiger. Guys are weird.

“Sweet!” Gerard racked his weights and stood, his rippling biceps gleaming in the fluorescent light of the classroom. He took the powder from me with a nod of appreciation.

“Didn’t I already get you a tub of protein earlier today?” I asked sarcastically, noting several empty containers of the stuff littering the classroom floor.

Gerard nodded, pouring the entire tub of powder into a water bottle and giving it a vigorous shake. “Yeah, and I used it all, thanks by the way.”

“You’re welcome, but isn’t drinking so much at once, like bad for you?” I replied, motioning back to all the empty tubs of powder.

He shrugged. “I like my muscles to be like my brain, abnormally large.”

I laughed; besides being absolutely jacked, Gerard had also inherited the brains in the family, which was totally unfair. However, he was still a pretty cool dude, definitely my favorite cousin.

Gerard was my school’s 10th-grade science teacher, and at only 22 years old, he was by and away the youngest person on staff. All of his students wondered why such a smart guy had seemingly settled for a thankless underpaid teaching position, and when pressed on the subject, Gerard would always give some lame excuse about wanting to train up the next generation and doing it for the children. I, however, his adorable and nosy cousin, knew the real reason he was here: the job was easy and he wanted the space.

My eyes wandered across the large classroom as we spoke; beyond just a weight bench, the room was filled with dozens of Gerard’s latest inventions and mechanical monstrosities, chairs and tables overflowing with an equal mix of nerd and jock stuff from ankle weights to particle accelerators. I briefly wondered how he could teach a class with all this crud in the way and realized I’d find out next year when I was a sophomore. Hopefully, he’d be willing to bump my grade once I’m in his class, science isn’t really my strong suit…or math…or history…or, well, you get the idea.

Gerard downed his protein drink and headed over to a whiteboard; he grabbed a marker and started scribbling out a string of complex-looking math equations.

“So, what’re you working on today?” I asked, strolling across the room to admire some kind of mechanical contraption that, at first blush, appeared to be a mix between a smoothie maker and a scooter. “A rocket to the moon? Gonna end world hunger? Maybe find a cure for cancer?”

Gerard chuckled, lifting a dumbbell with his left hand while he continued writing equations with his right. “I’ve got those projects penciled in for next month. This week, I wanted to do something for myself.”

Gerard finished writing out the equation, looked it over, and gave a self-satisfied nod. Putting down his marker and dumbbell, he strode over to a humming cylindrical machine that towered over the two of us. “You ever heard of the multiverse?” He asked, grabbing a screwdriver and making minute adjustments to the device.

I shrugged, “Yeah, it’s that thing in the movies where there’s a whole bunch of other universes that are kinda like ours but also kinda different.”

“That’s the basic gist of it,” affirmed Gerard, staring affectionately at his machine. “And once I make these final adjustments, I’ll be able to go where no buff genius has ever gone before, hence why I called you here to witness my Multiverse Machine’s maiden voyage.” Gerard turned to me, grinning slyly. “If a scientist can’t show off his achievements, then they didn’t happen, scientific fact.”

“Wait,” I said, frowning. “You called me in here just to show off a new invention? I thought you wanted protein powder?”

“It was an excuse to get you to show up,” he admitted with a shrug, “My protein situation is under control.”

A small blue portal popped into existence right above my head. I jumped back with a yelp, tripping into a chair and sprawling gracelessly to the ground. The portal rippled like a disturbed pool of water and was no larger than a basketball. A moment later, a muscular arm shot out of the portal, holding what looked like a protein shake.

“Here you go, bro,” said a familiar-sounding voice from within the portal.

Gerard took the protein shake. “Thanks, bro,” he said in response, fist-bumping the hand before it disappeared back into the portal and winked out of existence.

I blinked, not quite sure what had just happened. On a scale of weird things I’d seen Gerard do, taking protein shakes from disembodied portal hands was pretty high up there. “Uhh,” I began, trying to form a sentence that wouldn’t sound too stupid out of context, “was that hand from another universe?” Crap, that sounded extremely stupid.

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Gerard quickly downed his new protein shake, chuckling at my question. “Do you know how difficult it is being the buffest guy you’ve ever met?” He asked, seemingly changing the subject.

I looked down at my wiry, girlish body. “Uh, no.”

Gerard frowned, “well, it gets kind of lonely sometimes. All this muscle mass and no one to share it with.” Gerard stared at his multiverse machine, expression turning serious as he flexed his biceps, “I wanna find a universe where everyone is as buff as me; that way, I can always have a spotter when I go to the gym.”

I couldn’t help it; I burst out laughing.

“What’s wrong?” asked Gerard, looking slightly hurt by my outburst.

“Sorry,” I gasped in between laughs. “I didn’t mean to be rude; it’s just,” I motioned to the machine. “You can travel to a brand-new universe, you can see and do whatever you want, and you just wanna find someone to help you lift weights?”

Gerard folded his massive arms in a challenge. “Well, where would you wanna go?”

The question caught me by surprise. Where would I go? “I’ve never really thought about it,” I admitted, “but if there are universes out there similar to ours, then it might be fun to live in a reality where I’m already a famous Broadway actress.”

Gerard shook his head. “But what would you do with the version of yourself already living in that universe? You couldn’t both be on Broadway, unless it was some kind of sister act.”

“Good point,” I said, playing along, “Maybe I could go to a universe where it was opening night, and that universe’s version of me had just died of a massive heart attack. Then I could swoop in to save the day, and no one would know the difference.”

Gerard blinked in surprise, “a little morbid, but points for creativity. You wanna find your ideal universe once I locate the Buff-Verse?”

“No thanks,” I replied with zero hesitation, barely even registering how stupid of a name the Buff-Verse was. “I wanna be on Broadway more than anything, but I’m gonna earn that spot myself.”

Gerard nodded approvingly, “Good answer. Now stand back and be amazed.”

My cousin turned to face his machine and pressed several colorful buttons on the device’s display. The lights in the room dimmed as the machine sucked in power, it started to shake almost like a washing machine, and suddenly a sizable purple portal, taller than either me or Gerard, appeared in the center of the device.

“It’s working!” shouted Gerard, excitedly flexing his biceps.

I didn’t say anything, watching in silent awe as the portal grew and grew until suddenly, it simply winked out of existence with a depressing pop.

I stared at where the portal had been just moments ago. Neither of us spoke.

“Was that supposed to happen?” I finally asked.

Gerard shrugged, expression blank. “The concept of the multiverse was only a theory; I guess this means it doesn’t exist.”

“Oh,” I replied, disappointed for my cousin’s sake. “Sorry there’s no one for you to work out with.”

Gerard gave a casual wave of his hand, “No worries, so the multiverse isn’t real; big whoop. At least I still have my time machine.”

That took me a second to process. “Wait, your what?”

Gerard walked across the science lab towards what looked like a large metallic ring. “My time machine,” he repeated. “I made it last summer when we went to your parent’s lakehouse, don’t you remember?”

I shook my head, confused; I vaguely remembered Gerard working on some big project and making a lot of time puns, but that was also when I’d been neck-deep in line memorization for the musical Big Cat Monarchy. Got the lead role by the way, no big deal.

I froze, my eyes widening, as I had a terrible realization. Maybe the reason I didn’t remember something as important as a time machine was because—“Hold up,” I said, suddenly serious. “You didn’t go back in time and change a bunch of stuff, did you?”

I stared at Gerard, horrified, my mind racing with possibilities. What if Gerard had altered Earth’s timeline, and no one had even realized it? Had the Allies really won World War 2? Did the moon landing actually happen? Or was all of this meddling from my mad scientist cousin?

“Nah,” said Gerard, fiddling with this new machine. “I don’t mess with the past; I mostly just time travel to peek at my stocks and supply myself with infinite protein shakes.”

As if on cue, a portal appeared over Gerard’s head. A hand holding a protein shake exited. “Here you go, bro,” said a voice from within the portal.

Gerard took the protein shake, quickly downing it and fist-bumping the hand. “Thanks, bro.”

I stared stupidly up at the portal, my feeble, non-genius brain struggling to understand what was happening. “Wait,” I said, finally making the mental connection, “was that you from the future giving yourself protein shakes here in the present?”

Gerard grinned, tossing the empty shake onto the floor. “Undoubtedly my greatest scientific achievement.”

I shook my head in disbelief. “All those brains and the only thing you use time travel for is to get buff?”

“And to play the stock market,” he replied, motioning to his other inventions, “how do you think I can afford all this equipment on a teacher’s salary?”

That made sense; maybe at some point, I could ask Gerard to peek into the future and give me some pointers on my struggling crypto portfolio. Word of advice: don’t invest in PoopRacoon.

Gerard turned back to face me, expression serious again. You wanna use it?”

“The time machine?”

He nodded. “I know you wanna be on Broadway, like a lot, so if you consider the multiverse cheating, we can use time travel instead and jump ten years into the future to when you’ve already become a famous actress.”

I grinned; I had a pretty great cousin. “Thanks, but if we were gonna time travel to when I was a famous actress, we’d only have to go forward five years, two months, 11 days, and–” I did some quick mental math, “14 hours.”

Now it was Gerard’s turn to grin. “Is that the legendary master plan of yours I’m always hearing about?”

I nodded, reaching into my backpack and pulling out a calendar filled to bursting with notes and important dates stretching from today until 2063. “I’ve got every day of my life planned out for the next 30 years,” I said, flipping through the pages, “And as long as I stick to my plan, the next step of which is getting the lead role in Hamlet, I’ll be a star in no time. Besides,” I said, smirking at Gerard, “if I went forward in time, that would mean I didn’t do any of the steps necessary to get to Broadway in the first place.”

Gerard pursed his lips, “I didn’t consider that; good thinking, cuz.” I nodded; time travel could be complicated.

The bell rang, signaling the end of the school day, and despite myself, I started to shake with excitement. That meant it was officially less than 24 hours until M posted the results of the Hamlet auditions!

As I pondered this, my excitement quickly turned to disappointment. That also meant I would still have to wait another entire day to see the results. Though if I wanted to be specific, I’d technically only have to wait 23 hours, 59 minutes, 86,400 seconds, 86400000 milliseconds–. “You know what,” I said, turning to inspect the time machine. “I actually wouldn’t mind taking this for a spin.”

“Cool,” replied my cousin, pulling several colorful switches and levers as a bright blue portal manifested within the metallic ring. “Where you wanna go?”

I smiled coyly, “Oh, not very far.”