The Far Side

by Wylie, Gina Marie

  “Sir, Andie stopped when she got the information she wanted to and didn’t research further. The government has restarted Bussard’s research. I don’t honestly know what she’s done differently, but I don’t think it was a cosmic leap... it’s very possible someone else will come up with this tomorrow.

  “Quite literally, Andie is a billionaire or even a trillionaire if she can get this to market. She’s a nice girl, sir, even if foul-mouthed. She’ll want to share this with Kris.”

  “And you,” Oliver noted.

  “And me, and I’ll tell you true that that’s part of the reason I’m here. A small part, but part of it.

  “Someone is going to do this, sir. It’s too simple.”

  “And going into another dimension?”

  “Sir, all I have is speculation. I have no idea what’s happening. Andie says she created the doorway before she created the strong magnetic field. I got the impression, sir, that she’s an empiric researcher who makes up things on the fly. She may be misremembering or trying to obscure how it works. It doesn’t matter -- it needs to be researched.”

  “So, fine... she can give her notes -- such as they are -- to competent researchers and they can go ahead with it.”

  “Do that, sir, and you will muddy the precedence for all time. Not to mention once again, sir, that it is likely if you do that, your daughter will never speak to you again.”

  “If she’s dead, I can’t speak to her either. I know which side of that equation I’m in favor of!”

  “Sir, if you let her have her head, she may or may not die. But if you try to stop her, she will never talk to you again. Moreover, sir, just how old is your daughter?”

  That brought up Oliver short. Kris was eighteen. He knew Andie wasn’t far from her birthday, but he wasn’t good with birthdays.

  Kit nodded. “Yes, sir. She’s going to be hard to stop. I checked with her school. She could leave today and not affect her grades. You try to shut her out of her life’s dream and she’ll leave and never look back.”

  Oliver sat still, running scenarios in his head. There were the wildly optimistic ones, where Kris listened to reason. At least the reason he favored. He wasn’t stupid -- he had never been stupid. Andie had always brought out Kris’ adventurous streak and he’d long ago accepted it. He’d made sure she hadn’t tried anything truly dangerous, made sure Kris’ teachers were as good as they came -- and then crossed his fingers.

  “I assume then, that you have a proposal?”

  “Yes, sir. I have a number of friends who I knew at Caltech. Most of them, sir, are grad students now and make -- well, you’d be shocked. Slave wages, sir.”

  “Slave wages?”

  “Yes, sir. Graduate assistants are serfs... there is no other word for it. They are paid ten or twelve thousand a year, although they usually get free tuition and fees. Sometimes, not often, they get free books.

  “Sir, you could afford to double or triple their pay. They are some of the smartest people on the planet. Right now, they are having to ‘pay their dues.’”

  “There’s a reason professions do that,” Oliver said evenly.

  “Sure, right. Like Einstein, right? Oh no! He worked as a patent clerk to afford to do his research! There were a lot of other researchers, sir, who’ve taken other paths. Yes, there is value in ‘paying your dues.’ But I submit to you, experience is experience, and that most people would be better gaining that experience on the cutting edge, than grading a professor’s test papers, proctoring his exams and teaching lab sessions.”

  “Getting back to my daughter -- where does she fit in this?”

  “You get her the best help money can buy, sir. Advisors of every sort. Get her to promise to listen to the advisors before she rushes through one of those doors.”

  “You want her to do this? Explore?”

  “Sir, that’s what I want to do. To be honest, sir, I was tempted to go to them and plead to be included in any way I could be, and offer to be an adult shill. Andie, from what I’ve overheard, has a pile of folding green in her name.”

  “Her father is a lottery winner. He cares about money about the way you or I care about hand towels in a public restroom. We use what we need, and don’t think about it if we use the last one. Still, Andie is intelligent and had him put some money by for her.”

  “It was my impression that we are talking in the hundreds of thousands of dollars.”

  “Millions, as I recall. At least two.”

  “Sir, those girls can only be stopped at this point by killing them. And I’m speaking literally. They are legally of age and Andie could go to a court tomorrow, it sounds like, and become emancipated. You might slow them down a bit, sir, but you’d have to get physical to stop them.”

  “You mean appealing to sweet reason won’t work?” Oliver laughed.

  “I think it comes down to a definition of terms, sir.”

  “So, I get some researchers to help with the work. Advisors to prepare them for what they might find. And let her go?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  He looked at Kit critically for a few moments. “Clearly, you didn’t have to tell me about any of this. I knew nothing of it, and I don’t think they’ll be very forthcoming, will they?”

  “No, sir, they wouldn’t be.” Kit swallowed. “Sir, this is my ass out there, too. There are going to be a lot of different pressures, and a good many of them will be out of my league, much less those two girls. You, sir, are the heaviest hitter I know.

  “I’m no different than they are, sir. Even if we find this door opens in New York City, it stands to change a lot of things. It could change everything, sir. This is my best shot to go out there.” He jerked a thumb skyward. “I want to go, but at the same time I’m mercenary enough to want to keep my ass as safe as I can get it.”

  Oliver waved towards the door of his office. “Leave. Don’t go far, I’m going to want to talk you again. Go to your desk and send me some Google keywords.”

  Kit walked away, his stomach once again firmly where it belonged. He was pretty sure he’d done as well as could be hoped. Now the ball was in Oliver Boyle’s court.

  He sent the email as quickly as he could, and sat on tenterhooks waiting for things to happen.

  It was, he found, anti-climactic. A little before noon, Oliver Boyle’s administrative assistant called him to come in and he did.

  His boss was weird. “Go to the high school, talk to the principal, and have him call in the physics teacher, one Thurmond Marshall. Explain to the principal that I am displeased with Mr. Marshall, as he’s decided that Andie Schulz needs to take her physics final because she didn’t do an extra credit science fair project. Tell the principal that I’m willing to permanently endow a physics instructorship at the school... it can be Marshall if, and only if, neither my daughter nor Miss Schulz have to take their finals. Both of them, I might add, have a 99+% grade average in physics. If Mr. Marshall demurs, then the instructorship is to be offered to anyone but him.”

  “And why would they believe me?”

  “Well, I talked with the principal, what’s his name, Stone, a while ago.” Oliver picked up his phone and Kit heard him say, “Elaine, are those cards ready yet?”

  A moment later Mr. Boyle’s assistant brought in a box of business cards and handed them to Kit. There was one pasted on the top of the box and Kit raised an eyebrow when he saw it. There was the “Oliver Boyle Productions” logo, then his own name in bold letters, centered. In the upper right-hand corner were the words, “Senior Executive Assistant,” and in italics beneath his name were the words “The Hatchet Man” and a phone number he recognized as belonging to the office, but not his usual number.

  “That should do it, I think,” Oliver told Kit. “Get right on it. Meet me at Andie’s house at three.”

  There are certain code words in the movie business. The lowest of the low was “Production Assistant.” True, there were some production assistants who were very important, more so than others, b
ut the title, in their case, was misleading. “Personal Assistants” had a great deal of power, at least in regards to the person they worked for, but in reality, they tended to change a lot.

  “Executive Assistant” -- now that was a title to conjure with. That was someone the producer trusted to get things done. A senior executive assistant would be the same thing, only cubed. And of course the nickname was clearly a shot across anyone’s bows who had the least hesitation in deciding if Kit was to be paid attention to. There were very few places in town that had anything to do with the movie business who didn’t know the names to conjure with, and the titles of the conjurers.

  He walked out to his car and stared at the cards again. He laughed, recognizing what this was. Sure, it was something he’d dreamed of as well, being “discovered” as a go-to guy in Hollywood. Who didn’t dream of that! Still, given the choice of a go-to Hollywood guy or a go-to wherever Andie Schulz was going to take him, he’d be with her there if he could. Still, it was an amazing rush to know that there were thousands of businesses in LA where he could hand that card to someone and get instant service.

  The physics teacher had spluttered, pissed, moaned and whined. The principal was coldly furious, because earlier it seemed, Kris had informed Mr. Marshall that if Andie had to take the test, she would too, since her average was five hundredths of a point less than Andie’s. It wasn’t hard to drop a hint that Mr. Boyle’s displeasure might creep into Mr. Marshall’s employment records, when the other folded.

  Kit was as cool as he could be. “Mr. Boyle’s attorneys will contact you with the details in the next few days. If you haven’t heard by Friday noon, call me, and I’ll get them on it.”

  Kit reached the Schulz residence a little after two. Being early, he didn’t know what to do. After a moment, Oliver Boyle appeared at the front door and beckoned him inside.

  Otto Schulz was a rather stout individual with a huge, blue-veined nose. Kit knew enough to keep his mouth shut, while the other two talked baseball, a sport he had only the least knowledge about.

  As three o’clock approached, Otto Schulz was getting edgy. Oliver Boyle picked right up on that, and smiled. “I’ll give Kris a ride home if you don’t mind me waiting here for her.”

  “No, no, that’s fine. Your ashtrays are nicer than mine.”

  At first, Kit had no idea what the other meant, but then he realized that the Schulz house was not furnished with expensive items -- at least not visibly. He remembered the Weatherby .460 magnum he’d left in the cave yesterday and knew that appearances could be deceiving. He wondered what Oliver Boyle would have said if he’d been completely honest about how much he wanted to save his own personal ass -- and why.

  Otto Schulz roared off in a car that had a “throaty roar” as Andie had described the day before.

  Kit glanced at his watch. It wasn’t even three yet, so he had a few minutes. “Sir, come with me.”

  He led Oliver Boyle back to Andie’s bedroom. When Kit opened the door, Kris’ father said quietly, “You should know, I wouldn’t even do this to my own daughter.”

  “Then close your eyes until I open the closet,” Kit told him.

  “The closet?” his boss asked. “She built it in the closet?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  Kit opened the closet. Andie had cleaned up most of the mess, but there was still a lot of apparatus visible. “And this is it?” Oliver asked, incredulous again.

  “Yes, sir. She must have bought most of the stuff online or maybe at flea markets.” Kit gestured at the “vacuum pump.” “That’s the compressor from a refrigerator, sir. It’s a relatively easy task to make it into a vacuum pump.”

  “It seems incredible,” Oliver told him.

  “Yes, sir. So is the idea of radio. They first found that you could heterodyne key clicks, and just a few years later, voice over it. Along came super-heterodyne and the quality of reception increased hundreds of times. A hundred years ago, sir, you couldn’t have picked up anything from a cell phone if you used the largest antenna in the world on the most sensitive receiver.”

  He gestured at the apparatus. “This is early days, sir. The most early of days -- think the Wright Brothers.”

  They went back into the living room and an hour later the two girls arrived, laden with packages.

  Oliver Boyle saw the distrust in his daughter’s eyes and knew right then that Kit hadn’t understated anything. “Come in and sit down, you two,” he told them.

  Andie glared at Kit. “You are so dead, mother-fucker! So very, very dead!”

  “Andie,” Oliver said patiently, “I realize you know every goddamn thing in the universe, but could you hold your horses for a minute and listen?”

  “What for?”

  “So you can learn something.”

  Andie sniffed. “The last thing I learned in school was back in kindergarten, on my first day, when I found out I knew words that my teacher didn’t. I may not know everything in the universe, but I do know a thing or two.”

  “This isn’t school. What’s wrong,” Oliver continued, tried to be patient, “with listening for a second, before you go down the wrong path?”

  “What exactly do you want, Dad?” Kris asked.

  “A lot of things. Most of them I can’t get any more than you can get what you want. What either of you want. That said, there are some things within my grasp, and if you’ll listen, maybe, just maybe, we can help each other.”

  He faced Kris. “Your mother and I married late -- she didn’t want to affect her career with distractions -- that was me and you. Particularly, you.

  “Still, she knew I wanted a child and went along. You were born rather late in our lives, Kris, much later than most kids. I was forty-five when you were born, your mother forty-two. We weren’t spring chickens then, and we haven’t been getting any younger.

  “That said, I’m no more stupid than you are. One thing I remember was the big controversy when they introduced ‘New Math’ in school. Sets and number theory mostly. One of the things I remember from very early in my school days, were Venn diagrams, showing what was in or out of a set or what belonged to more than one set.

  “We have here a variety of sets of goals. Yours, mine, your mother’s, Andie’s, even Kit’s here. I know it is a truism at your age that our goals don’t overlap, but you’d be surprised.

  “You are, Kris, eighteen. Andie is nearly that. Legally, you can do anything but drink, and that’ll come soon enough. I, as your parent and father, want what’s best for you. I want you to go to a good school, have a good life, and above all to be safe.

  “You share some of the goals, but there is, of course, the problem of our different definitions of our various goals. For instance, your mother is sure you want to go to Caltech to further her desire that you follow in her footsteps.”

  “I don’t want to follow in her footsteps. And I picked Caltech because that’s where I want to go.”

  “It took me a while to realize that was the case, but I came to understand that more than a year ago.

  “Now, I’ve learned about what you and Andie have been up to lately. I’m positive that you think it will be my goal to thwart you at every step of the way.”

  “Not all of them,” Andie interjected, “just most of them.”

  “Andie, contemplate something for a moment. Would you like it if I interrupted you talking? How would you react if I assumed something you were thinking, without any basis for that assumption? Would you, or would you not tell me to fuck off?”

  Andie stared at him, her gaze hostile.

  “Andie, fuck off!”

  Andie’s eyes narrowed slightly.

  “Let me finish talking before you go making your assumptions. Please.

  “You, Andie, have discovered a number of remarkable things. Things that could easily be worth more money than Scrooge McDuck keeps in his vault...”

  Kris couldn’t help it; she laughed.

  “Yes. There will be some blowback from that,
I imagine. Further, you have found a door that doesn’t open anywhere close. At least, nowhere apparently close.

  “Being young and adventurous and not in any financial pain you’ve started exploring that door, ahead of exploring the application that is worth serious money.”

  Andie opened her mouth to speak, but was quelled by a nasty look.

  “I was young once, and hey, I pushed the envelope of where I could go -- nothing like what you two are doing, but still, in my own way, I was way out there.

  “There are two, maybe three of you. You would be hard put to do any of the things you want with so few involved. I peeked in your closet, Andie. I know a mess when I see one.” Andie gave him a finger.

  He laughed. “Sure, and I understand. The first couple of times I was out there, I failed spectacularly. But, I didn’t give up, and eventually I found things that worked. And that led me to other things that worked, until I’m where I’m at today, considered a cinematographic genius.” He made a gagging motion with a finger down his throat.

  “I just kept at it, doing things I thought would work. That’s what you’re doing. I’m not about to knock you for doing something I’ve done.”

  He regarded them for a moment. “You need more resources. Tell me true, Andie. Of the things you need to do right now, can you do it all yourself?”

  “I don’t want to get fuckin’ ripped off!”

  “I can’t promise you that someone won’t try, Andie. But I’ll promise you right now, that if it happens, I will give whoever tries a hell of a fight. This is yours. Not Kris’, not anyone’s. Yours.”

  “So would my old man,” Andie replied.

  Oliver Boyle laughed. “Sure. Although I imagine the people I play golf with every week have more influence than your father’s friends at the sports bar.”