Here & There (30 page)

“Sure, Donald.”

“Good. So, what we need are some tangible goals to achieve and build on. Goal one: teleporting a physical object. Goal two: a dynamic physical object, like a ticking clock that continues to keep time. Goal three: a biological organism, something that most likely doesn’t tangle us up in this mind-transfer dilemma you’re working out. Finally, goal four: a biological organism that evidences memory, like a trained rat. What do you think?”

Reidier considers Pierce’s plan. “I’ll have to amend it with subsets. For instance, with Goal one, it’d be best to start with an elemental object, say carbon in the form of a cube of graphite and then progress to a more complex organization of carbon, like a diamond. I’ll need room for a number of evolving iterations.”

“Sounds like progress to me. You move a diamond, and I guarantee we’ll get continued, generous support. We keep moving forward, and in the meantime, you’ll work out the math on this other way. Hm . . .” Pierce hangs the sound in the air like a snare.

“What?” Reidier asks, tripping the trap.

“Taking into consideration the mood of the juggernaut, and the skittish, reactionary reflexes of the guys on high, it’s probably best for us to keep this close to the vest. At least until we’re further along, on both paths. I hate to impose another level of secrecy on you, but—”

“No, of course. Whatever we need to do in order to nurture this,” Reidier agrees.

“Exactly. They don’t see the value in questions. Not like you and I. They only want answers.”
*

*
Answers only lead to more questions.

“You two need anything else?” a waitress inquires.

“I’m all set,” Pierce answers. “Reidier?”

“No. Actually, a peppermint ice tea to go, please,” Reidier says.

“Sure thing. Sweetened?”

“Hm? Yes. Ok,” Reidier mumbles.

After she goes off, Pierce leans in once again and whispers with hushed excitement, “Before I forget, we’ve been running scenarios on Malle’s research. It seems promising, especially if we were to facilitate it with the introduction of nanobots through capillaries. This would enable us to noninvasively scan an entire working brain in real time. Could be exactly what you need for the
█████████
phase.”

“That’s promising.”

“I’d say. Back at Chicago, I thought you were being circuitous with your emphasis on Malle’s work. But I stand corrected. You were spot on.”

The waitress brings over his ice tea—Eve’s ice tea, which has most likely been sweetened with bleached sugar. But that doesn’t appear to register with Reidier as he and Pierce exchange closing pleasantries, and the physicist heads back to 454 Angell Street.

NB Footage: Providence, 12:22 a.m., February 2, 2007

Reidier lies on his back, in bed next to Eve. She sleeps on her right side, on the right side of the bed. Facing away from her husband. A sheet and thin blanket on top of them. Cricket sounds creep through the open-paned windows.

Reidier sighs and turns onto his left side.

Eve stirs and reaches out her hand to touch his back. “Can’t sleep?”

Reidier grunts in response.

“I’ll take that as a yes.”

“The crickets are so loud here.”

“Close the windows.”

“Then it’ll get too hot.”

Eve rolls over onto her back and looks at Reidier. “You don’t think the sound is soothing?”

“Sometimes I do.”

“Just not tonight?”

“I don’t know why.”

She turns onto her left side and shuffles up against her husband. “You want to play your game,
vingt
questions?”

Reidier shakes his head no against the pillow.

“Is it your stomach? Too many eggs?”

“Eggs?”

“
Oui
. You finished all the eggs this afternoon, no? There were none in the Frigidaire. I thought we had at least a dozen left.”

A look of recognition flashes across Reidier’s face. He opens his mouth to speak, but then closes it again. It takes a few moments before he finally answers. “Yes. The eggs. No, I didn’t eat them. I broke them.”

“Why?”

“I didn’t do it on purpose. It was, an accident. Very Three Stooges, actually. I was reaching for the yogurt on the shelf behind the eggs. I lifted out a dozen to reach behind and grab it, but I knocked the other dozen over with the yogurt as I pulled it out. Then I ended up smashing those and knocking the falling dozen into a messy tailspin.”
*

*
A lie, however, excavates essence.

“So what ’appened to the eggs?” she asks.

Reidier’s brow furrows with confusion. “They broke?”

“Of course they broke. What did you do with all the broken eggs?”

“I cleaned them up.”

“And threw them out?”

“Yes.”

“Next time save them. Put them in a bowl. Cover it with the plastic wrap.”

“Next time I break two dozen eggs, I will save them.”

They lie in silence again, until Eve raises her head to check if Reidier’s eyes are closed. They aren’t.

“À quoi penses-tu?”

“What am I thinking?”

Eve nods.

“You, and the boys, and me. We’re all adjusting, right? It’s going to take some time. Right?”

The question hangs in the air. Neither of them move. Only their torsos expand and contract quietly with each breath. Reidier stares up at the ceiling fan.

Finally, in a quiet voice she murmurs, “Adjusting.”

“I love you, Eve. It’ll be—”

She leaps out of bed, walks to the doorway, and places her hand beneath the panel of switches. She leans out the door, listening down the hall toward the boys’ rooms. She is framed in the doorway like that for only a moment before flicking the switch. The ceiling fan whirs into motion.

“Maybe the sound will cover up the crickets,
oui
? If not, then you can close the window, and it will keep you cool.”

He mutters a thanks and watches her pad back to the bed. She sits on the mattress and pulls the sheets over her lap. Eve stares down at the foot of the bed.

Reidier waits for more, but she seems lost, staring at the tassels on the end of the blanket fluttering in the wind from the ceiling fan.

He slides his hand across the sheet and onto her leg. “I love you.”

“You never told me what happened today with Pierce,” Eve says, ignoring his touch.

“I don’t know how to read him yet.”

“You think he’s like Diderot?”

Diderot, of course, was Reidier’s distrustful manager at CSG.

“No. Diderot was always obvious. No subtlety to his suspicions and his competitive paranoia. I knew where I stood with him.”

“Up to your knees in
merde
.”

“Oui,”
Reidier agrees, laughing.

The laughter seems to fracture the tense mood that has been building. She lies back down next to him. He turns to her, she leans in, and they kiss. Her hand on his cheek.

“So then what did Pierce . . . did you tell him about your echo?” she asks.

“He was excited. Very supportive of doing what I need to.”

Eve takes in a staccato breath and sighs.

Reidier tries to extend his arm under her, but it only sets off an avalanche of motion, the two of them shifting around like drugged caterpillars, torsos lifting sideways up into the air and back down on arms now safely ensconced beneath pillows. On their sides, entangled, inches from each other’s faces.

They kiss again.

Reidier touches her cheek with his hand.

“I’ll figure it out. No more missteps.”
*

*
I thought about this section while I lay awake in my own bed. I rolled into the apartment around 12:45 or so, tired but not sleepy. What I needed was to be friggin’ exhausted. No thought, no deafening quiet, no room for my anxiety to ramp up any momentum. To lie down and fall right through the mattress into somnambulist bliss.

I wasn’t there, though, so I stayed up. Lay on the couch, draining my DVR and more than a few fingers of some Jameson. Finally, when I was convinced I was good and ready, I shuffled over to the bed and quietly snuck into it.

As soon as my head hit the pillow, though, my mind took off like a rodeo bull who’d just got his nuts twisted. I tried to ride it out, go with the flow of it, but finally I just got thrown out of bed. I stared out my window for a few minutes. The bare trees shivered in the cold wind on the street below. Nothing else moved. I started obsessing again about Eve and Reidier. I even downloaded a Sleep App and played the sound of crickets through my stereo.

Back in my bed, I looked across the topography of the ruffled comforter, gazing across the empty plane of mattress next to me. I slid my hand out across the sheet to reach them and found myself wondering about Lorelei. Was she sleeping soundly next to some hedge-fund manager or sitting up talking into the night with the CEO of some new start-up?

The breeze picked up outside.

Random thoughts blew through my mind: mountaintop scents; deep, quiet rivers; falling through muffled echoes that whispered through the wind as I sailed downward.

The next morning, Eve started writing again.

The crickets harmonized with the whir of a fan. A reassuring rhythm
that kept the beasts at bay, just beyond the edges of their bed
and a beat that frightened off the pack of worries that had been hunting them for a thousand miles. It lulled their breathing into sync and danced with the rabble of their dreams that fluttered overhead like moths.

Respite was just that, though. In the morning, they still found themselves haunted by doppelgängers.

She wasn’t the only one who did some writing that day.

A

TITLE CARD:
GALILEE 6:21

TITLE CARD:
EXPERIMENT 60

CONTROL ROOM, GOULD ISLAND FACILITY - 2008-1-22 16:03

Dr. Reidier (sweater, tweed sport coat) sits at console, staring (spacing out) at video on a screen.

On the left side of the screen is what looks like a magnified, translucent gummy bear (that’s cloudy green in its center), with eight legs, and little “claws,” swimming and reaching through its liquid environment, snatching at suspended organic particles and bringing them to its mouth.

SOUNDS of the rapid ACCELERATION and DECELERATION of GEARS.

The right side of the video screen flares to life and focuses on a bright white paper covered with microscopic geometric shapes. The magnified triangles, hexagons, and circles blur in and out of focus until the view settles and the figures’ sharp edges are clear.

IS1 O’Brien enters from target room.

IS1 O’BRIEN

Target microcamera all set.

Dr. Reidier nods. He lethargically turns to the camera while O’Brien takes his respective seat.

DR. REIDIER

Experiment sixty is our first attempt with a complex biologic, a
tardigrade, the water bear. This will be our first “animal.” The tardigrade was selected due to its remarkable durability. Ranging from .1 to 1.5 mm in size, it is found in a range of environments, from 6,000 meters above sea level in the Himalayas, to 4,000 meters deep in the sea. It can survive down to 1 degree Kelvin, extreme pressures, radiation, boiling, and even the vacuum of space. It can even be dried out and rehydrated decades later.

(beat)

Also we will be teleporting inanimates and dynamic inanimates with it as part of its solution environment.

Dr. Reidier pauses as if about to go on, but then shrugs and turns toward console, tapping his lapel pin twice for luck.

IS1 O’BRIEN
(adds on)

Quantum chromodynamics:
██

█████
range; running at
████

███████
electron volts . . . sir.

Dr. Reidier nods and flips up his Plexiglas cover over Contact Button Alpha. IS1 O’Brien does the same at Contact Button Bravo.

DR. REIDIER

Three, two, one, go.

Dr. Reidier and IS1 O’Brien simultaneously press Contact Buttons Alpha and Bravo.

CUT TO:

MIRROR LAB - SAME TIME