Master of Space and Time by Rudy Rucker Page B

was streaming in the windows, lighting up the mirror-reversed shop.
    â€œWell!” said Sondra. “Now what, guys?”
    â€œLet’s go to a restaurant,” I suggested. “Get a beer and listen to what people are talking about. I hope time doesn’t run backwards here.”
    â€œNaw,” said Harry. “Look.” He picked up a book and dropped it. It fell to the floor. “If our time didn’t match this world’s, we would have seen the book fly up into my hand.”
    â€œYeah,” I agreed, leaning over the book. “But look, all the writing’s backwards.”
    â€œWell, that’s no big deal. Everything’s just space-reversed. Once we get outside, we’ll probably find lots of other differences as well. Like Carroll’s Alice did. Let’s go, we’ve got less than two hours!”
    We found our way out of Harry’s mirror-reversed shop and hit the street. The streets were clean , that was what struck me first. The whole city was buffed to an unwholesome sheen. Spotless late-model autos hurried past in orderly queues, while spiffed-up pedestrians marched up and down like wooden soldiers. Slovenly Harry couldn’t have looked more out of place. At least the tiny Harrys were stashed out of sight. This town looked nothing like New Brunswick: besides being clean, it felt vaguely Arabian. I didn’t like the fact that nobody smiled.
    â€œExcuse me,” I said, stepping in front of a woman in a stiff-collared blouse. She had gray hair and a dowager’s hump. “Is there a restaurant near here? That sells beer?”
    Her thin lips straightened. “I’m going to report you for that, you scum.”
    â€œBeer’s illegal?” I hazarded, hoping to keep the conversational ball rolling.
    â€œLet me pass!”
    â€œWait,” protested Sondra. “We just got here from another world and—”
    â€œDemons!” screamed the woman in the stiff-collared blouse. Two men in three-piece suits hurried to her aid.
    â€œLet’s fly,” I suggested.
    Harry and Sondra grabbed me by the upper arms again, and we shot up into the air. There was a cop on the sidewalk across the street, shouting and pointing a laser rifle.
    We whisked off across the building tops and landed in a supermarket parking lot. Fortunately no one saw us land.
    â€œDo you realize what this world is?” I asked Harry.
    â€œUh . . .”
    â€œIt’s the exact opposite of everything you like. Clean streets, uptight women, no beer. Everything’s backwards, you idiot.” I could hear sirens a few blocks off.
    â€œThe police are coming,” wailed Sondra. “Do something, Harry!”
    â€œI’m not always good in a crisis,” he whined. “Ask Fletcher what to do.”
    â€œLet’s go in that store,” I suggested. “After things cool down, we can get back to the magic door.”
    â€œOkay.”
    Instead of glass doors, the supermarket had air curtains. These were sheets of cool air blown downfrom a grate overhead to be sucked into a grate in the threshold. We breezed into the store and looked around. Oh, man.
    No-cal soft drinks, weight-watcher TV dinners, and diet junk food, all heavily vitaminized. This provender was at a double remove from reality: it was artificially made food that had been further treated in an attempt to make it healthy. There was nothing real in sight: no meat, no veggies, no booze.
    I began to lose my temper. “What would you like, Harry? You can bet it’s not here. God, you’re stupid. Who else would go to a world the exact opposite of what he wants? Just look at this crap!” I kicked at a bin of one-calorie cupcakes.
    â€œWatch your language, fella!” A round-shouldered man who must have been the manager poked his head around some shelves to glare at us. His face was coarse and humorless. When he spotted Sondra his cheeks grew red. “And get that