Wrinkled in Time

The Man with Red Eyes tessered: from Camazotz, through the Black Thing, across space and time, and through Earth’s hazy atmosphere to an antiseptic storage room on Princeton’s campus. He scanned the shelves and located the glass jar that held the severed chunks of Einstein’s brain. Grasping the jar, he tessered back to Camazotz.
The streets were devoid of life, but traffic zoomed by him in the darkening gloom created by the Black Thing, an evil fog that enveloped the planet. He approached a circular building with a translucent dome. Once inside CENTRAL Central Intelligence, The Man with Red Eyes held his A-21 card against the green marble wall. Suddenly the wall was no longer there, and he strode into the laboratory.
He unscrewed the glass jar’s cap and fished the remnants of Einstein’s brain out of the fluid. He placed these on a dais in the center of the circular room, flicked a switch on the reactor, and waited. As the severed parts melded, the brain began to pulse and quiver. Soft and exposed, IT lived.
The Man with Red Eyes crouched before IT. His eyes began to twirl. A tic in his forehead mirrored IT’s pulsating rhythm. Hypnotized, he stood, ready to assume his position in the chair on the platform. He and IT were one, and as IT reached into the brains of every being on Camazotz, the planet would be called to order.
“Stop fighting. You make the pain worse. Just relax.” That was IT’s message, and all seemed to listen.

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“What’s that nasty, red-eyed brother of ours doing now?” Mrs. Whatsit whined. “No one would ever guess that we knew him once as Mr. Whynot, the sweetest little gentleman there ever was.”
“‘Resist the devil, and he will flee from you.’ James 4:7,” Mrs. Who answered. “Mr. Whynot never tried.”
A pair of binary stars from thA Large Magellanic Cloud, Mrs. Who and Mrs. Whatsit fretted.
From far away in the Centaurus Cluster their oldest sister’s voice reached them. “Nnoww, ssistersss, it’ss time to mmaterialize,” Mrs. Which, a white dwarf star, commanded. “Mmrr. MMurry is sso cclosse tto achievving a tesseract, wwe mmayy as wwelll hhellpp hhimm.”
When Mr. Murry saw Mrs. Whatsit, he laughed. It was difficult for her to think in a corporeal way so when she had to materialize she dressed in a hodgepodge of clothing gathered haphazardly during her speedy jaunt. Now she wore rubber boots and a man’s coat under multicolored shawls ad scarves.
“Our brother…”
“Mr. Whynot,”
“The sweetest little boy,” they all blurted at once.
“Ssshh!” Mrs. Which hissed, shimmering in her peaked cap behind her two sisters. “Mmrss. Whatsittt wwill exxpplainn.”
“Our brother has committed a great folly, a great theft. Even a brain as powerful as Einstein’s couldn’t resist the Black Thing. Is there anything you can do to help?” asked Mrs. Whatsit.
Mr. Murry shook his head. “The tesseract concept eludes me. I can’t calculate the formula.”
“Don’t worry, dearie,” Mrs. Whatsit said. “We have the last equation.” She picked up a pencil from Mr. Murry’s desk and scribbled on the notebook he was holding.
Mr. Murry scratched his shaggy head and adjusted his thick bifocals as he contemplated what she had written. Grasping the notebook, he crossed to his computer, tapped a few keys, and disappeared.
“Thhee secret’s revealed nnoww. I jusstt hhope wwe’ve ddone thhee rrightt tthingg,” sighed Mrs. Which.
“We’ve forgotten something, girls. Cling to hope,” Mrs. Who admonished them. ‘“You are of God, little children, and have overcome them, because He who is in you is greater than he who is in the world.” John 4-4,” she quoted. “We’ve already won!”
“That has yet to be seen,” Mrs. Whatsit muttered.