Here & There (31 page)

SPLIT SCREEN, right side, MICRO CLOSE-UP of target pad with focus sheet.

LEFT SIDE, MICRO CLOSE-UP: tardigrade swimming/walking/eating. It has snatched a floating particle (bacterium?) and pulls it toward its maw.

The HIGH PITCH of the Quark Resonator WHINES.

The water bear wiggles.

At 2008-1-22 16:03:50.4588999 a quiet THRUM coincides with the disappearance of the tardigrade and its solution, and appearance of . . . murky sludge [heterogeneous mixture dominated by iron chloride and iron (II) sulfate].

NOTE: at 600 picoseconds prior to transmission, tardigrade appears warped by refraction even though angle hadn’t changed.

RIGHT SIDE, at 16:03:50.4588999, the tardigrade appears and finishes pulling the particle into its maw. Ice crystals form around the circumference of the petri dish.

CONTROL ROOM - 16:03:52

IS1 O’Brien’s hands are raised as if he were declaring a touchdown.

IS1 O’BRIEN

Yahtzee!

Dr. Reidier clicks a couple keys on his keyboard, perusing readouts with an uninvested glance.

DR. REIDIER

Yahtzee, indeed.

Pause.

IS1 O’BRIEN

Would you like me to inspect it?

Dr. Reidier shrugs.

DR. REIDIER

Knock yourself out. It worked. It’s good.

The HIGH-PITCHED WHINE fades out.

X

Experience is simply the name we give our mistakes.

~Oscar Wilde

There are three principal means of acquiring knowledge . . . observation of nature, reflection, and experimentation. Observation collects facts; reflection combines them; experimentation verifies the result of that combination.

~Denis Diderot

Excerpted from series of interviews with Dr. Bertram Malle, Professor of Neuroscience and Psychology at Brown University, May 2, 2009
*

*
Just how many times did Hilary visit RI without telling me?

“When I first started working with Ecco, I couldn’t get over his focus. He was almost four, quiet, but intensely present. He followed along with whatever tasks I set before him and was always ready to go on. He didn’t fatigue or wander. In fact, more often than not, it
was me and not him who needed the break. The only thing that ever seemed to distract him at all, really, was his brother. Otto was the only activity I couldn’t compete with. With most four-year-olds, it was a struggle to make it through a full hour of testing, but Ecco and I would speed through an entire afternoon.”

At this point, Bertram scratches at his beard.

“Reidier had told me they had had issues with their son. He was elliptical about the details. He emphasized how he didn’t want to bias my take at all. Just wanted my professional opinion.”

“You weren’t buying it?” I ask.

“No, I knew that he was sincere. He was coming to me for my professional help, but specifically because of our friendship. Because he could trust me. That’s why we did everything at his home, rather than at my office.”

He was right. Reidier was seeking him out more for their personal relationship than for Bertram’s professional acumen. “Elliptical is a very specific word,” I suggest.

“Caught that, did you?”

“What I’m wondering is whether you felt that this was a conscious or unconscious trait?”

“You mean was he purposefully deceiving me, or incapable of comprehending or expressing the whole truth?” He pauses. “I guess I was thinking that he always seems to come at things obliquely, it was part of his brilliance. Always took the long way around but somehow ended up returning with some rather clever items.”

“This still surprises you about him?”

“Reidier was purposefully vague about whatever accident befell his son, but also completely clueless about his own vulnerability within the situation. To a certain degree, he was both ignorant and incapable of expressing the motivations which drove him to seek out the refuge of our relationship.”

Our waitress brings over our orders. Bertram’s Half-Crazed Burger and my own Freaky Fajita Burger. Per Bertram’s insistence, we never meet at his office, but always in public establishments somewhat off the beaten path—which is how we find ourselves in a quirky half-vegan, half-hippie café just up the road from the Narragansett Beach.

Bertram justified the field trips with some explanation about change of scenery and getting away from the office. At first it seemed like a lovely suggestion, but over time, I came to wonder if it was a defensive decision. An effort to get out from under the gaze, away from suspected surveillance. How much did he know about the Department’s efforts? Did Bertram’s penchant for out-of-the-way locales have something to do with what had happened: with Reidier, with Pierce, with the Department?

Had he become aware of the watching?
*

*
He was right to be careful. They probably were watching him. They were watching everything. I mean we’re talking about actual teleportation here.

I’m a little late to the game in all of this. I guess I’ve been distracted. It’s not like I wasn’t aware of the whole teleportation thing. It’s just maybe I’m starting to believe in the whole goddamn venture. Like up until this point, it’s sort of been, well, a story that my mom made up. Not out of thin air. But constructed with hunches and hypotheticals.

Only she was right.

Reidier was on to something.

And this isn’t a story at all.

Somewhere along the way, while Psynaring, Hilary found some echoes that started to make their own echoes. Bouncing off the walls of Reidier’s basement, the diluted pings led Hilary right into the labyrinth, and the Minotaur got a whiff of her scent.

His story became her story. And now it’s becoming mine.

Too bad for me, it ended up being true.

I’m not paranoid, but the fact of the matter is they were watching Reidier. It makes sense that they were tracking Bertram. So how do I not conclude that they were following Hilary too? I mean, why else did she go to all the trouble of hiding this damn report?

Maybe that’s why she was so hush-hush with me. I mean, yes, government secrets and all that classified protocol. But why she didn’t even mention her trips to RI? The further she held me at arm’s length, the safer for me. She was just being a protective mother. Silence of love.

Then again, she did leave me a trail of breadcrumbs right into the bees’ nest and then handed over a briefcase full of inedible honey.

What I’m trying to get at is I think they’ve found me.

Of course, the Department always knew where I was. I’m not some superspy escape artist. I work at Anomaly, and my apartment address is in the phone book.

They found the carriage house. They tracked me to Hell’s Kitchen.

I think.

Christ, I really am paranoid. I mean after writing the previous two lines I just stopped, and listened. Like what? Like I’m going to hear the bugs? I’ll tell you, the best thing I did was not bring any electrical gadgets into this place. Card table, chair, lamp, bead necklace hanging on the wall, leather briefcase, and inside it, the report.

No computer. No landline. No cell phone. I even take the battery out of my cell when I come here.

These weren’t precautions. I just can’t handle interruptions. I’m too easily distracted by phone calls, texts, IMs, the internet. If I had to jump back and forth from the real world to this one locked inside these folders, my brain would concuss until it was a gelatinous ooze and pour out from my ears.

That’s why Toby’s become so frustrated with me. He can never reach me anymore. He has to stalk me. Literally.

Maybe that’s it. Maybe they followed Toby. I’m always so careful coming here. Diving down into subway tunnels. Slipping in out of back doors in bars. But Toby. I bet he just walks right up. Probably takes a cab here.

It happened a little over a week ago.

I was going over Reidier’s lecture again. Seeing if I could make heads or tails of it. See what I missed. Widen my scope a little and see what I find beyond the tunnel vision.

It’s still pretty dense stuff, but I’m getting into it now. Not the science of it, by any means, but the concept of it. How was Reidier thinking? What were his givens? Sort of like how I can’t even begin to explain the intricacies of nuclear bombs, but I get that there’s a lot of power binding a nucleus of atoms together and splitting that apart releases it.

Anyway, I was focused. Sitting down in the bottom-floor bedroom that’s sunk halfway beneath the concrete courtyard, trying to wrap my
brain around how quantum computers dance around Heisenberg’s Uncertainty Principle . . .

BUZZZZ!

I didn’t know what the hell it was at first. Jarring electrical sound like a drunk fire alarm sat on by a fat guy. Muffled, but piercing. I froze. What was it? It came from upstairs? What’s upstairs?

Second floor = kitchenette, empty living room.

Top floor = a bathroom and a bedroom with a mattress resting on the floor.

What made—

BUZZZZZZZZZ!

It blared again, scaring me to my feet. It definitely came from upstairs. I stood there a second, searching the room for a weapon, a pipe, a piece of wood. Anything. But all I had was my card table, lamp, bead necklace, leather briefcase, and the report.

I snuck upstairs as quietly as I could. The stairs go up six steps, then you hit a landing, shift over, and go up another six back in the direction you came from. I stopped at the landing and listened.

Nothing. Six more steps up, and I looked around the empty living room. No sound. No object. Nothing even out of place. I tiptoed over to the kitchenette and poked my head around the door frame. Cabinets closed. Refrigerator hummed quietly. The old analog clock set into the oven from 1985 whirred a little. It didn’t seem like these things were responsible for the disruption.

Must be on the top floor, I figured.

BUZZZZZZZZZ!

The sound shot around the room and ricocheted right into my brain.

Fuck!

It was coming from the corner where the living room met the kitchen. Just to the right of the entrance to the kitchen, hanging on a white wall between the two rooms, was an eggshell-colored plastic phone that must have been installed the same year as the stove.

It had always been there. I’d seen it before and thought it was a vestigial appliance. Apparently it was the door buzzer, so someone could ring you from the street, and you could ask who the hell it was and had they followed Toby there or me?

So I stood there, staring at the phone. Beads of sweat dotting my brow. Do I answer it? Do I not?

I reached out, put my hand on the receiver, and finally noticed an off-white button sticking out beneath a three-inch video screen. Rundown carriage house, in the middle of the block, at the ass bottom of Hell’s Kitchen—this shit isn’t still supposed to be functional.

It took a minute for the screen to warm up, but it worked. A crisp black-and-white image of the sidewalk in front of 357 West 39th. And there he was. My stalker. White guy, mid-to-late forties, a bit overweight but nothing grotesque (at least as far as I could tell, seeing as how he was wearing a puffy down coat—you know the Michelin Man kind of jacket), large square-framed glasses, and a knit stocking cap that was way too big and pulled up way too high so it looked like the reservoir tip of a condom dangling off the top of his head.

It was the stocking cap that got me. He looked like a tourist. A stray sheep who had somehow wandered away from the flock milling about in Times Square and found himself on the wrong side of Port Authority.

He danced from foot to foot to keep himself warm. Then leaned up against the glass door. Raised his gloved hand to cover his eyes, and try and peer through the glare off the window. He scrunched up his face, clearly not able to see much. Then he pressed buzzer number five again.

BUZZZZZ!

I didn’t realize how loud that thing was. You really get an earful standing right in front of it.

The guy took a couple steps back and looked up at the building. Maybe he was searching for someone who might be surreptitiously peering out his window. Clearly, this guy didn’t see the camera. Or didn’t think it worked either.

Finally he scowled at the door and took off, heading east on 39th. And that was it. He was gone.

I mean, sure, it could’ve been some lost tourist. Or maybe he was visiting someone else in the building and got the wrong buzzer. Or the buzzers could have their wires crossed. (Nope, not that one. I just went out, propped all the doors open from my place to the front door, and pressed number five and heard the buzz blare out of the carriage house.) Or he just had the wrong building.

Or maybe he worked for the Department and figured the perfect cover for a reconnaissance mission was to look like some doofus tourist from the Midwest.

All I know is, it freaked me out.

And Bertram Malle was right to be cautious. Clearly, though, he wasn’t cautious enough.

“Still, the connotations do conjure some very specific ideas, don’t they?” Bertram says, picking up the elliptical thread. “Planetary orbits for one.”