“Carme, if you’re in here, say something!” Setting my truck key, my ID badge and lanyard on the small table.
Easing away from the door, mindful of the doormat and boot scraper, the coatrack, the small table. More worried about bumping into something than being attacked, which is stupid. Never doing anything with her perfection and calculated finesse. As if she’s artificial intelligence and I’m “try, try again.” If at first you don’t succeed. I think I can, I think I can, and finding the master switch, I flood the main workshop with incandescent light.
Blinking hard in the glare, ready with my gun, scanning from where I am. No immediate signs of a break-in, and I don’t see anything flying or perched, including in the rafters. At a glance, everything seems as I left it last, the workbenches, test beds, the 4-post car lift, the 1950s beige Formica countertops and cabinet facings. The familiar shopworn drill presses, saws, sanders, lathes, grinders and other machines. The tool cases and hardware organizers. The paint-spattered white sink that I’ve scrubbed with Ajax until I can feel the grittiness in my sleep.
Plastering the walls are vintage war and aviation posters. Plus, the calendars Dad won’t take down because they mean something to him. 1986, the year he and Mom were married. 1991, when his twin daughters were born, and 1964, when he was. Hands down his favorite is the classic cars calendar for 1968, the year the astronauts on Apollo 8 took the first selfie of Earth, filming the “blue marble” on their way to orbit the moon.
When he happened upon a ’68 Camaro in need of an overhaul and therefore affordable, it was meant to be. A signal, a sign from above. The muscle car of his youthful dreams is now parked off to the side, covered like a dead giant in a gray pouch, shamed and brought down by the Lilliputians of entropy and chaos, a dash of antimatter thrown in for bad measure.
Not gone but over. Not going anywhere anymore. Dad cranks it up regularly, and moves it to make sure the battery doesn’t die and the tires don’t rot. But not much beyond that. I can’t remember the last time he took off for a joyride in his chariot of fire engine red with a front black stripe. I’m not sure when Carme and I last sat in the black leather bucket seats, not since we graduated from college. But in the earlier days, we did what was cool and expected, tootling about in the hottest ride in town.
For techno-nerds and motor heads, we weren’t into it, didn’t reminisce about where the car came from or what it meant to anyone. We didn’t care about the high-performance V-8 engine or how we sounded when we percussed through the middle of town, our hot-rodding overcast by a past we didn’t discuss. Didn’t relive what went on those months the Camaro was on the lift, taken apart and put back together again. Didn’t talk about the summer our guileless father and his flamboyant traveling stunt-pilot friend rebuilt the engine, completely overhauling every inch, restoring the car with original parts.
In mint condition, as good as new, and if only the same were true of Carme. But not everything can be fixed, and the ’68 Camaro is one of those things in life you can’t get rid of or keep, either one, which is why it stays under wraps year round. I don’t want to look at it, and rarely do anymore unless I happen to be here when Dad fires it up.
“Rats . . . !” Under my breath, crouching to struggle with my bootlaces, the frozen double bows, while keeping up my scan, Glock in hand.
I have no desire to take the cover off that car, go for a spin, fueled by bad memories and hauntings that I’ll never stop analyzing. Better if we’d never owned it. Better if our father’s flyboy friend hadn’t helped himself to it. To the barn. Our house. Our hearts. Paying attention the way he did.
“Jiminy Cricket!” Frustrated out of my mind, trying to make my thawing fingers work, and if Carme wanted to take me out right now, I’d be so wasted.
Boots off, next my sopping-wet socks, leaving them, my gear bags to deal with later. I remove my tactical vest and gun belt. Unzipping the chemical suit, peeling it off in rustling plastic sounds that bring to mind a deflated wading pool. Leaving a heap on the floor, everything else I’ve got on soaked through and through, including my vintage leather jacket.
But considering that it survived a world war only to be handed down and eventually dishonorably discharged to a vintage lingerie boutique. Where it was flaunted by a sexy female Rambo mannequin in the window. Misunderstood and undervalued. Which was where Dick and Liz rescued the jacket for me (no questions asked). And after all it’s been through, I suppose it will dry just fine. And I’m not stripping down further. Not until I get upstairs. Pistol pointed down, my heart thudding hard, I begin to move about, searching, making sure I’m alone while certain I’m not.
Sensing something around me, aware of it as vividly as humidity or prickly heat. But I don’t feel scared.
“Carme?” And of course, no answer, her name hanging in the air.
Heading to the far side of the room, I survey tables arranged with tools, with components for all sorts of autonomous creations that might be creepy crawling, buzzing or zipping around. Wandering past workbenches scattered with spare arms and rotor blades. Controllers, camera mounts and carbon fiber . . .
She’s somewhere near.
. . . Damping plates. USB and ribbon cables. Power modules and handheld lasers. Distribution boards and taillights . . .
Feeling her attention like gravity.
. . . Robot switches, servos, wheels, couplers, cogs, gears and boards . . .
“Carme? Are you here . . . ?” And I almost yell, Come out, come out wherever you are . . . !
28
LIFTING the car cover enough to see through the driver’s window. Knowing she’s in there.
Sitting in the dark with the door locked. Doing what, I never can figure out. Spending hours without anybody knowing. Unless she makes sure we do when her rude mood strikes.
“Come out, come out wherever you are!” Holding up the gray cover.
On to her shtick of slipping under it, worming through the barely open driver’s door, pulling it shut so no one can tell she’s inside. Unless she honks the horn or starts the engine.
“Carme? I see you.” Peering through the window at her shaking her head. “Unlock it, this is stupid.”
Making faces, gesturing for me to leave her the heck alone, calling me a tagalong, but I’m not going anywhere ever again. Doesn’t matter what she might do or say. Holding my ground, rapping on the door.
“Open the door, Carme!”
“Go away!” Smushing her face against the glass, and boy will Dad be unhappy with that.
You don’t need to touch the glass, he’s always saying. Carme doesn’t care, opening the door, finally letting me in. Both of us in the bucket seats, in complete darkness, smelling the old leather. And looking at her is like looking at me.
00:00:00:00:0
FLIPPING on the lights in a small space that once upon a time was a cow stall, I notice the workbench and what’s on it.
The carbon fiber spheres weigh anywhere from 100 to 800 grams (0.2 to 1.8 pounds), ranging from volley- to medicine ball size, 11 round frames resting on 11 beanbags. Missing number 12 is our flashiest invention to date, a cantaloupe-size mirror ball that Dad, Carme and I were noodling with when she was home last.
None of this is supposed to be out in plain view, for crummy sake. It wasn’t when I headed to Langley this morning. Certainly, I would have noticed. I have to walk right through this area on my way out the door. I know I didn’t leave all this exposed and neglected, and if Dad was working in here today, when might that have been?
He came home from Langley late afternoon only to turn around and go out again. But even if he did manage to slip inside the barn for an hour or two, for sure he would have locked Mom’s holiday gift back in its storage cabinets or at least covered the workbench with a tarp. Dad isn’t careless, and he may be forgetful, bu
t not when it comes to her.
Had she wandered into the barn, her big holiday surprise was blown. She would have walked right into a gaggle of Personal Orbs Not Grounded (PONGs) that eventually will live on a Perch Recharger (PRCH) she can remotely access with an app on her phone. There’s no end to the fun she’ll have, and I can imagine her festively floating her autonomous little friends around, picking styles and colors, figuring out the coolest PRCH, which can be almost anything you want and not limited to just one. From a boring charging station to a hat rack, light fixture, ceiling planet mobile, a living plant, a tree, whatever you come up with, limited only by creativity.
All that’s required are sensors and a power source, which is what I’ve added to the Norfolk star pine in my office upstairs. An idea my sister had last month after our interviews in Houston when she was home for a week. And we spent a lot of time at this very workbench, coming up with all sorts of ideas, including the mirrored disco ball that’s more than just glitzy.
Its reflective open-air frame can go stealth by blending with the surrounds like a squid. Imagine a skeleton orb hiding in foliage, mirroring the leaves and flowers around it. But such a thing can also be used for bouncing light off objects and taking measurements. Or answering questions, making reservations and running cyber errands, googling and interrogating databases. The orb may be able to do a lot of things by the time all is said and done.
But for now, I imagine it spinning over the property with others of different sizes and colors, smooth or sparkling like Fabergé eggs, their open frames caging rotor blades that vanish when spinning fast. PONGs just have to be round, and in our workshop all of them start life a luminescent sapphire blue in honor of Mom.
That doesn’t mean they can’t change hues, have special moves and skills, each orb with its own unique personality, a pocket drone assistant and spy, a red balloon following you around Paris, so to speak. Who knows what else because the sky’s the limit, the roly-poly pals equipped with intelligent onboard systems, antennas, sensors, minicameras, all sorts of things with room to grow. But even PONGs need to rest, and each is tethered by a Signaled Transient Mechanism, STM (my dad and his acronyms), basically a gentle electromagnetic charge that attaches to the PRCH like an invisible ornament hook.
On deployment the signal is dropped, the charge releases and as the orb undocks, the internal multistack rotor system fires up, each blade moving independently. The lively balls can quick-stop and turn like a Formula 1 Ferrari, and of late Dad and I have been adding LEDs that change from red to green. They can shine in a steady beacon or strobe like mini-UFOs, whatever’s your pleasure.
Tinkering, plotting and planning for months, the goal is 12 orbs for the 12 days of Christmas, hovering, orbiting and dancing through the night sky over our cove with its blue-blazing lights. But all fun and games aside, our autonomous orbs one day will be put to good use as assistants of sorts, grabbing objects in grippers to help out around the office or house, especially if someone is older or infirm.
Making deliveries, tracking weather and people. Perhaps being sent as advance teams to check out a route or crowd size, flying over while live-streaming video and a full report. Or how about cruising around to help you find a parking spot? Or if you work at NASA, the bicycle or car you lost. Or buzzing about to see what and who else might be in the area, perhaps hackers snooping on what law enforcement and the government are up to.
The capabilities are endless. Including a day (sooner than later) when much larger orbs will pick up and deliver passengers. And I’d be the first to say that it’s hard to imagine what sort of world we’ll be living in when people are floating around like the Good Witch of the North in her bubble.
“If anybody’s in here, you’d better let me know,” I say out loud, gun in hand. “Carme? Is that you . . . ?”
00:00:00:00:0
SHE could be on the property. She could be inside the barn this very moment, and I’m not afraid. Carme won’t hurt me.
Don’t be stupid.
I keep telling myself blood isn’t thicker than madness, desperation or whatever seems to be fueling her. Cain killed Abel, after all, and knowing such things makes little difference when it’s the identical twin I love like my own self. I’m not naive, but I’m not listening. Right now, I don’t care what Dick said about the missing Pandora aerospace engineer. I don’t care that there’s a Pandora employee dead. I care only about Carme.
If she’s behind such atrocities or in any way responsible, then I remind myself she’s not the sister I know, certainly not identical to me or anyone in the Chase family. Not anymore, and it would be nothing for her to get into anything on the farm where she was born and raised.
She wouldn’t unjustly kill anyone.
My twin sister could help herself to what she wants and take out anybody in her way, considering the caliber of military operative and intellect we’re talking about. I can’t imagine tracking her, not that I’ve ever tried. But I’m not sure I could, not even with one of my magic wands. Not if she’s gone irretrievably AWOL. Turned. Lost her way. Those early bent underpinnings finally giving way.
No.
One thing I do know for a fact. Carme isn’t to be trifled with or underestimated. Trained to confuse and conceal, she could mirror electromagnetic intruders I routinely sniff out, and I might not notice her. All she has to do is pick devices that transmit in frequencies close to what I typically track and expect, peaks overlapping other peaks.
As if she’s wearing an electronic ghillie suit that causes her to vanish into the background. Sort of hide-and-seek with a quantum twist, the easiest way to disappear is to be in two places at once and duck behind your duplicate. A neat quantum trick best illustrated when Mom had worn-out bedsheets to repurpose, and Carme and I ended up ghosts one Halloween. Talk about being impossible to tell us apart, and that gave me the idea of setting two full-length mirrors across from each other.
My twin and I stood between them back to back, the same size, draped exactly alike in our flowing dingy white linens with eyeholes cut out, each staring at her own reflection in her own mirror. Presto! I couldn’t see Carme anymore. All I could see was my own ghostly self, and all she could see was her own ghostly self. Even though we were so close we could feel the other’s heat.
In separate places and together at the same time. Present but absent. Like Schrödinger’s cat, a quantum conundrum, This End Up when the arrows point in opposite directions. The stuff that keeps me awake and happy at night, my bread and butter, my passion, and Carme could be at my back even as I’m thinking this. Not literally, but she might be looking at me, watching every move I make.
I won’t find her unless she decides, and that’s pretty much been our lives. She pilots, and I go along for the ride. Or sit something out. Whatever she says. Like the summers we played intramural basketball on Langley’s championship team, the Water Bears. She and Rush were cocaptains and most valuable players while I was the manager, which suited me fine. Turns out I have quite the knack for keeping score, engineering drills, designing logos, bolstering team spirit, counseling psyched-out overachieving NASA jocks.
I worry Carme has me sufficiently distracted that I’m not thinking clearly. Causing me to question myself, to second-guess, to be extra careful about checking off every box. Especially if I don’t really want to know the answer, and padding barefoot back to the main room, my heart pounds in my neck as I lift the cover from the Camaro, just to make sure. And there it is when it can’t be, the cheek-shaped smudge on the inside of the driver’s window. Obviously not left over from when Carme was a disturbed little girl.
“Jeez,” under my breath, hollowed out by the sudden flashes of images, the memories . . .
Focus. Focus. Focus!
The car may be a lot of things, but it’s not a time capsule that’s been left as is for the past 2
2 years. It’s accessed regularly, kept up and cleaned, and I peer through the glass at the familiar black leather interior. The ashtray open as usual with the key inside. The shifter for the 4-speed manual transmission. The radio with its big silver knobs, and the 8-track player. In the glove box should be Three Dog Night, the Grass Roots, Elton John.
Cassette tapes from our parents’ era that my sister and I would listen to when driving around. Or while sitting inside the car, parked and covered like it is right now, with her behind the wheel, deliberately leaving smudges on her window to punish everyone. Me in the passenger seat, together hiding from the world, and I try the door. Opening it a little, and there’s the scent again, White Musk, and I’m always saying that Carme ought to buy stock in the Body Shop.
What am I supposed to think? Nothing other than the obvious. She’s been here, might still be inside the barn, and door shut, cover straightened, I walk away. It may sound strange to say but not to me that at times I sense her presence palpably, even if I know for a fact she’s hundreds or thousands of miles away. I can feel her thoughts like vibrations along a thread, the matrix of our shared reality a delicate web where every impulse and motion are experienced, the good with the bad into infinity.
We’ve never needed convincing about Einstein’s spooky actions at a distance. It rather much sums up what goes on with us, can’t nudge one without nudging the other, everything double fun or double trouble. And turning off the light, I backtrack past Mom’s Christmas PONGs. Headed to my quarters, and while it’s not intentional, the way my loaner crash dummy, Otto, is parked near the stairs, one might wonder if he’s guarding the second floor, where I live.
Not saying a guard dummy couldn’t be a new thing, but he’s not one. Just out of the way of traffic. Head cocked a little, slouched in his wheelchair all by his lonesome, the metal lifting ring protruding from the top of his hairless pate reminding me of a shortwave loop antenna.
Quantum Page 24
