“Alright. Anyway, that famous equation is a part of his, Einstein’s, theory of special relativity. The theory of relativity basically says that space and time are the same thing. The fourth dimension is time.”
“I’ve heard that discussed, yes.”
“That theory explains the nature and behavior of everything that we can see.”
“Except junior high school kids.”
“In physics, a ‘field’ is just an area under some force. You know, like how the earth has a gravitational field? Unified field theory simply posits that all the forces like gravity and electromagnetism are actually manifestations of one field.”
“A force field?” He mother sang the original Star Trek theme song.
Daci threw a Twinkie at her. “I think teaching you is like teaching junior high school kids!”
Her mother giggled. “Why didn’t you stick with science, anyway?”
“I’m too mentally lazy.”
“Shame,” her mother said, unwrapping the Twinkie. “You’d’ve been good.”
“You don’t think I’m a good business person? I mean, Survivanoia is a bad example, but I had a lot of successful businesses before.”
“It’s not about you it’s….” Her mother paused, cocked her head slightly. “Women seldom thrive in the business world. They may make money, as you did, and climb the ladder, as you have. But they don’t flourish.”
“Meaning what exactly, Mom?”
Her mother squinted into the distance. “Too many women get into the workplace and…try to become men. We have different sensibilities. We should try to apply them. I think.” She eased from the loveseat. “I’ll be right back, sweetie. You need anything while I’m up?”
Daci shook her head and her mother floated off to the bathroom. The door to the greenhouse shook again, this time hard enough that it rattled, and Daci was entirely sure of it. Rats? There were three cats in the house; it seemed unlikely her mother would have rodents of any type, but it was a big old barn and they were in the middle of absolutely nowhere.
She got up from the couch, picked up a broom and crept across the studio to the greenhouse door. Rattle rattle rattle. Louder and more persistent and it crossed Daci’s mind that maybe the Romanian was here, her father had phoned him and he’d come up to make her some horrid offer or fuck maybe it was Sydney!
Rattle rattle thump! Sydney knew where her mother lived what if he’d somehow been tipped off about Radu and come to gain a bargaining chip or seek some kind of revenge or rattle thump MEOW!
“Oh for fuck’s sake.” Daci laughed at herself and unlatched the greenhouse door. When she slid it open, a streak of grey whooshed past her and into the supply dormer across the studio. “Thing! C’mere kitty.”
She followed him. He let out another meow, sounding happier this time as she pushed the curtain aside.
“Er-gnow,” Thing said, his odd foreign meow ringing from the depths of the dormer. Paintings filled the room, with a few on easels, seemingly in progress. But not paintings of fairies. These were cats, one orange, one white with blue eyes and too many toes, and a sizeable but svelte grey one with white-tipped feet and a white bib: Thing.
Daci scooped the cat up from the floor and he made his funny noise again, then bumped his head against her cheek and purred. She studied the paintings, cats all angular and sinewy, drawn from thick, simple brush strokes. Simplicity—that they shared with the fairies. But where the fairies came off as childish and nascent, the simplicity of the cats lent them elegance and splendor.
“Oh, here you are,” her mom’s voice indicated she’s been searching.
“Mom, what are these? Why are you not selling these?”
“They’re the works of a friend.”
“But they’re your cats.”
“Of course. She comes here to paint. You don’t think I need this enormous studio all for myself, do you?”
Daci considered this, and the fact of her mother designing this studio for herself, and started to express this thought; but her mother spoke first.
“Oh, know what, she’s in Santa Barbara today! She wanted me to meet her but you know my aversion to driving. But you’re here, maybe we could go? There’s an arts fair. Food and music and some kind of poetry reading. Plus you can meet Annette.”
Little grey Thing wriggled happily in her arms. “Er-gnow.” Daci shrugged. “Okay.”
Santa Barbara always made Daci happy. Its crescent bay and single pier brought back a rush of childhood memories so varied and pleasant that she had a difficult time imagining growing up any place else.
Its heart held a college town, but the setting was what people thought of when they heard the Beach Boys sing; sandy beaches and hilly streets full of young people in shorts and sandals. No one ever seemed unhappy here. Nobody ever seemed to rush. No traffic jams or chain stores. Just ninety minutes outside Los Angeles but a planet away in soul and texture.
Being by the ocean kept temperatures down, and the salty breeze coming off the bay seemed more pristine than the one at Daci’s condo. This despite the oil rig off in the distance. She’d long admired the refusal of the Golden State’s residents to exploit their waterfront property, but oil rigs could be seen from most of central coast.
As with any time the town hosted an event, parking proved a challenge. They’d taken her mother’s car, a 1977 Corvette with the original 8-track tape player and not quite forty-thousand miles. They’d found it in the barn when they started renovations. Smaller than the Hummer and far easier to park; Daci found a spot near the Mission, and they walked down to State Street and the festival.
The festival had the feel of a street fair, all bright colors, big smiles and good food. Vendors hawked churros and fruit pops while clowns, acrobats, and even a fire-eater lurked through the crowd granting impromptu performances to anyone who expressed interest.
Tents lined the west side of State Street, sheltering artists and craftspeople. Jewelry, watercolors, clothing, stuffed animals, birdhouses made from beer cans, and in the neighboring tent, birdhouses made as tiny replicas from Architectural Digest. At El Cabrillo Boulevard, where the streets gave way to sand, a tent full of wind chimes added their music to the surf and breeze.
“I want to see the beach,” Daci said.
“Bleech. Too polluted. I’ll meet you by the churro stand in, what, an hour? I’m sure I’ll be hungry by then.” With that her mom drifted off again, her flowing skirt in her wake.
On the beach, a dozen or so teams were participating in the ephemeral and therefore arguably fruitless art of sandcastle competition. Gorgeous, impossible constructions, and no two alike. One reflected a Scottish fortress, flat and squat with anchoring turrets and even a moat for monsters. Next to that configuration, another more square and symmetrical, mansion-esque, like Windsor Castle.
Farther along the beach, a threesome used utility knives and masonry trowels to put the finishing touches on a French motte-and-bailey, a horseshoe built onto a mound of earth. A fourth person followed behind them, spraying something from a bottle, presumably some sort of glue to keep the thing together.
Daci stared in awe at the open, functional archways and painstakingly rendered bricks, even a flag on the top; how long had these folks been at this? Further along were two Asian structures, a Martian castle, a Dali-inspired castle, even an Escher castle, all sculpted from the sea’s abundant clay.
Speakers from somewhere nearby sent out a wave of electronic feedback, followed by a man’s voice: “Sorry! We’re still mastering the art of sound here.”
Across El Cabrillo, Daci spotted a stage flanked by plastic lawn chairs, and heard the announcer introduce someone who received an impressive round of applause. A woman stepped forward, tall and curvy in a bright red T-shirt dress. A thick cluster of micro-braids fell in a ponytail halfway down her back, and t
he noonday sun made the woman’s skin glow bronze.
The woman took a long slow breath and began, not reading or even reciting, but almost singing; there was so much rhythm to her poetry. “Slam poetry,” people had called it when Daci was in college, and she’d never been a fan because the poets invariably struck her as self-righteous in bearing and mediocre in talent—too lazy to write a real poem, too isolated to write song lyrics.
This woman impressed her, though. Daci couldn’t make out the words, but there was undeniable power and presence in the poet and—whatever her statement was—an allure that pulled Daci toward the end of the beach.
At the far end, a group of five thirty-somethings struggled with their sand replica of Neuschwanstein. They’d done a commendable job with the foundation and upper courtyard, but the thin, flanking cylindrical towers and spires would not cooperate. From watching the others, Daci had the suspicion that they’d approached it backwards, trying to add things when they should have carved them from the original lump of sand. Or perhaps they’d changed their minds halfway through a different concept.
Suddenly a little girl came running, shouting the name of one of the women. Caramel skin and a pink short-sleeved dress like the one worn by the woman on the stage. Two big, puffy pigtails held in place by old-fashioned two-ball hair bands. The girl’s exuberance took her right through the Neuschwanstein’s courtyard. She came to an abrupt halt, her eyes big with worry. She looked down at what she stood in. “Oops.”
A moment of quiet from the group. Then one of the guys, more appropriately than he likely knew, burst into “Ride of the Valkyries.” Laughter and joking about a German Godzilla, then the woman the girl came for knelt so she could carry the child piggy-back. “Let’s go listen to your mom.”
The group made their way up the beach and across the boulevard, to the stage. Daci followed them. They moved right to the front of the raised platform; Daci stayed at the perimeter.
She caught site of a tent she’d missed on the walk down—though seeing it now, missing it seemed impossible. Paintings filled the tent, paintings of sinewy angular cats painted in simple, elegant strokes.
Just as Daci mentally shrugged, Mom must really have a friend who paints her cats, she caught sight of her mother. For the briefest of moments, she saw her mother as she understood other people did, an attractive, fit, artistic hippie who lived by the sea. Likeable through and through, if none too smart. Pleasant and ditzy—don’t expect too much. Delusional painter of ugly fairies.
She watched her mother chat with the woman in the tent, point to a few prints like she was discussing a painting technique. They laughed together, the woman nodded, and they continued talking as the woman counted sales receipts and pulled cash from a lockbox, handed it to Daci’s mom.
“Well butter my ass and call me a biscuit.” Daci blurted this outloud, sparking laughter from a couple seated nearby.
Daci apologized for distracting them. Happily stunned, she dropped into one of the plastic chairs. Here, her mother could paint after all. And pass herself off as a charming little fool.
What else had Daci picked up from her parents without being fully aware? Because she certainly, at this moment and never before, appreciated the origins of her own talent for social camouflage. What of her father? She thought of GrandMama, who only seemed to want change, no matter the means and without necessarily giving complete thought to the consequences. Did this describe Daci’s father?
From the stage the rhythm changed. It caught Daci briefly, significantly, the poet’s words like a consultation.
I know
Am well aware Of the despair Caused by
The sterile debate
While in the streets the hate
Is driving us to kill Instead of commiserate… But Momma…
Daci was at the bottom, she realized. Everything had spun from her control; she’d lost her tools and mistreated her beasts with the road still uncompleted. But it didn’t feel like the bottom. More like the beginning of something, just as each valley leads to a new mountain.
Why did she like science? Because she saw it as a unifying force in a world that increasingly dehumanizes us. Because it balances and validates the inner problems of life and thought with the outer problems of matter and death. Because it gives us meaning in a way that does not require murder or cruelty.
Which is why, yes, three years was too long to wait for a cure that was ready now, today. Yes, if Sydney’s claims were true, he needed to be stopped. By hook or by crook, as the saying went. By whatever means necessary.
She took a deep breath, suppressing her rising anxiety and accompanying short, shallow breathing. No need to panic….
She made her way to the churro cart to meet her mother. The business card her father had given her seemed to burn from inside the little pocket of her linen vest. Menacing. As menacing as Sydney’s virus. Could it be true? Why would a person lie about something so thoroughly reprehensible? This wasn’t enforced absurdity or pretending to drive a gas guzzler. This was people being killed. Murder.
The way to stop the virus was to stop its cause and its cause in this case seemed to be Sydney Scalinescu. She dug her cell phone from her purse, this one a small colorful bag made from an old sari. Took the card from her vest, stood staring at it. Torch the place…Radu’s number, 818-612-080….
He still speaks fondly of you, her father had said. His wife makes the best mititei…. So he’d been there. From the sounds of things, the men were quite friendly. Wasn’t her father therefore equally remiss?
People kill people and they use guns to do it and what was the difference between supplying guns and developing a virus? Violence is its own disease. Keep fighting fire with fire and eventually you’ll scorch the entire earth.
“Fuck.”
She pressed cancel on her cellphone.
Her mother caught sight of her and waved, then raised a finger to indicate she’d be a moment. Daci waved back, recalling now her mother’s words: We have different sensibilities. We should try to apply them. But how did this philosophy translate tangibly? How could her sensibilities be forged into actions? They only seemed to guide her as to what not to do, not provide a solution.
The little girl in the pink dress suddenly bounded across the stage, just as the voice of the poet rose over the noise of the crowd, blending with the warm smell of cinnamon and friend dough to forge one of those isolated moments that Daci recognized, even as she lived, it would stay with her until death. And the poet’s substantial, alluring cadence:
But Momma…
The sky
Is not falling
Not hauling
Its ass toward Earth
Not even bending
Does not need mending
Just looks that way to you,
Momma
Because
You are
Ascending
Clapping, hollering of appreciation, even a small group in the back corner standing. Daci clapped too, around the card and her cellphone but then the phone rang. “H. Sanchez,” the caller ID told her. A 310 number. Where’d she know that name from? Her mental rolodex spun but came up blank. Still something nudged her and she took the call.
“The Baroness here.”
“Ah, Baroness! This is Dr. Encludsmo Stuckhowsen. I am servicing you.”
END
About the Author
Baroness Von Smith is an environmental chemist who has long suffered the Midnight Disease. She wrote her first short story when she was six; everybody died at the end. It was a comedy.
She has lived in State College, Los Angeles, and New Orleans, and done significant time in Philadelphia, Pittsburgh, and Chicago.
She currently splits her time between Upstate New York and Southern California. She is guarded by a stripey orange
monster and loyal only to the jolly roger.
For more info, check out:
BaronessVonSmith.com
Available Soon
From Admiral Of The Red,
The Not-Quite-Sequel To Survivanoia:
THE ACCIDENTAL DESPOT
A deep-sea diver starts his own country, to which a brilliant scientist rebelling against Nomnasto, the corporation that once employed her, defects. She is subsequently chased by one of the high-ranking officials of Nomnasto. Among those coming to her aid are the Landfill Miners of Long Beach, a virtual tagging crew known as WHOM and a strange little scientist with a giant black dog and very confused English. But will these ragamuffins be enough to battle Nomnasto’s Green Ops?
Jodi Summerscales comes off his latest underwater welding job—six weeks at 600 feet—to be informed that the oil rig he’d been working on has been decommissioned. After 30 seconds of deliberation with his dive team, Jodi formally declares the oil rig the City of Mayor’s Income, California, and is promptly elected Mayor by the City’s other six residents (Jodi voted for Moochie Cohen). He soon discovers that declaring a city involves things like proposals and referendums and it’s much easier to start your own country. So he does. On the same day that…
Verisimilitude Skrlnmacher definitively assesses the results of her most recent experiment. She is beside herself with glee! As she makes her way to her boss’s office, she dreams of all the papers, the patents, the professional indulgences including her own lab, run by her. Except that she is fired. Frog-marched out of the building in fact and not to her car, either, but to a nearby bus stop because her car has been seized as company property. So has, she soon discovers, her house, her bank account and her electronic data body. Her lawyer’s advice? Flee to another country…there’s one you can swim to. Versimilitude is fired on exactly the same day that…
Lyman Odd signs the paperwork for his freshly-minted LLC, Terra Safe Inc. He then transfers his personal ownership of a large, kelp covered swath of ocean floor to this nacent company. Nomnasto needs the kelp for their Meat Fruit project, and being that Lyman Odd is the face of that company, known in fact to the public as Mr. Nomnasto, it seems reasonable to assume that he would want Nomnasto to have the kelp. But he doesn’t. He also wants Jodi off the oil rig, and seems to want Verisimilitude dead. Why is such a man being supported, then, by the zealously virtuous likes of Terri Tehzan?
Baroness Von Smith Page 34
