Mad Science Cafe

by Ross, Deborah J.

  The baby watches him with trusting eyes and falls asleep.

  One Night in O’Shaughnessy’s Bar

  David D. Levine

  The geek sat hunched over his drink, tapping a swizzle stick on the bar as he stared vaguely into the darkness above the empty dance floor. He’d been here when Candace had come on-shift, and at the moment he was her only customer. She busied herself cutting up limes, making ready for the rush to come.

  Already her feet were killing her. So were her back, her knees, and her shoulders. Business school plus two jobs would do that to a girl. She put her shoulders back, hitched up her bra straps, and tried to maintain good posture.

  It didn’t help much.

  The geek rattled his glass at her. “Another screwdriver.”

  That would be the third one, at least. She’d have to assess his degree of intoxication before she could serve him another. “Long day?” she said, making conversation, sizing him up.

  The man wasn’t exactly a regular, but she knew him by sight. With his tweedy jacket hanging loose on his coat-hanger frame, Adam’s apple prominent on his pale skinny neck, and thick eyeglasses, he was the very picture of a geeky science nerd. But, unlike some of the other eccentric researchers and inventors who made their way down the hill to O’Shaughnessy’s from the university district, he tipped well.

  The eyes that met hers were a little red, but steady. “The longest.”

  “Sorry to hear that. Wanna talk about it?”

  In response he reached into his coat pocket, pulled something out, and slapped it down on the bar. “That’s the end result of eight months’ work. And it’s worthless.”

  The object on the bar was a glove. A right-hand glove, made of some thin shimmery black fabric.

  “Pick it up.”

  Candace kept her eyes on the man’s face as she picked up the glove. He’d plainly had a few, and he seemed a little melancholy, but his words weren’t slurred and he was sitting up pretty straight. But before she could decide for certain whether or not to serve him, the feeling of the glove in her hand caught her attention. The fabric slid along her fingers like silk, slick and smooth and somehow cool and warm at the same time. And it weighed less than nothing.

  She rubbed the glove against her cheek. “This feels amazing!”

  “‘This feels a-may-zing,’” he parroted in a derisive falsetto, then spat “but it doesn’t work!”

  Tempting though it was to smack him with his own glove, she kept her anger in check. If had a nickel for every jerk she had to deal with at the bar, she wouldn’t need the bookstore job. “So what is it supposed to do?”

  He looked to either side. Then he leaned in close and whispered one word: “Antigravity.”

  She looked skeptically at the glove in her hand, then at the geek. “Riiight.”

  “Put it on.”

  She slipped the glove onto her hand.

  It was the strangest feeling, almost as though her hand were floating in a warm tub. She waved it through the air, inspecting it as though she expected to find hidden wires lifting it up. “But…but it does work. My hand weighs half what it usually does.”

  He shook his head vehemently. “That weight has just been redistributed to the rest of your body.” He held out a hand, demanding; reluctantly she stripped off the glove and returned it. “Make a shirt out of it,” he continued, “and your legs would weigh twice as much. And if you make a whole body suit of the stuff…it has no effect whatsoever.” He looked down into his empty glass. “Worthless.” He shoved the glass across the bar at her. “I need another drink.”

  He might be an asshole, but he was sober enough. She poured him his screwdriver, her mind only half on the task. “But surely there’s something that can be done with it?” she said as she handed the glass over. “Making cars more efficient by transferring weight to the drive wheels, maybe?”

  He let out a bitter little laugh. “Only works on living flesh. Leverages myoelectrical flux to torque the water and protein molecules into opposite cardinalities.” He took a big swig. “Believe me, little girl, I’ve thought of everything, and there’s nothing worthwhile that can be done with this technology.”

  Candace stood there looking at the man. Here he sat with this fabulous invention, calling himself a failure and her a “little girl,” while she stood on the other side of the bar with her aching back and her sore feet and the tens of thousands of dollars of business school debt that weighed on her shoulders like…

  “Sell it to me,” she blurted out.

  He finished his drink. “Eh?”

  She swallowed, then stammered “This…this invention’s worthless to you. How much would you charge me for the development rights?”

  He smirked at her. “And what would a girl like you do with the rights to something like this?”

  She forced her face into a simper. “Oh, I don’t know. Make something floaty out of it, I guess. It does feel fabulous.”

  He looked at her, swirling the ice in his glass, for a long time. “Five dollars.”

  She blinked. “I’m serious.”

  “So am I.” He tipped back the glass, drained the last few drops into his mouth. “I like you. You think you can make something of it, be my guest.”

  She grabbed her purse from under the bar, fished out a five, and slapped it down on the bar. “There. Cash on the barrelhead.”

  “Done.” He extended his hand.

  She shook it.

  As he slipped the bill into his shirt pocket, she said “I’d like to make a proper contract out of this. Can you come by tomorrow, same time?”

  o0o

  She figured he wouldn’t come. But he did, and after he’d looked over the contract she’d worked out with her Business Law professor he signed it without complaint. “Best of luck,” he wrote beneath his signature.

  That detail helped to win Candace’s case when he sued, five years later, for a cut of the millions of dollars in profits realized by the Miracle Antigravity Bra.

  Revision

  Nancy Jane Moore

  Paul called at 11 o’clock on Friday night. I was curled up in my overstuffed easy chair, halfway through a Buffy DVD, recovering from a brain-frying week.

  I let the machine answer, but I listened with half an ear. And when I heard Paul’s voice, I picked up. I didn’t really want to talk to anyone, but Paul and I go back a long way.

  “Hi, Paul.” I hoped my voice didn’t sound resigned.

  “Eileen? Oh, good, you are there. I need a lawyer.”

  I haven’t practiced criminal law in over twenty years, but my reaction was similar to that of Pavlov’s dog: a friend who needs a lawyer at eleven o’clock on a Friday night must have been arrested. “Where are you?” If he was calling me, he must be in the Washington area, not back in Texas. “What are you in jail for?”

  “I’m at home,” he said. “Why would you think I’m in jail?”

  “If you need a lawyer at this hour…”

  “Oh, is it late there? Sorry. I hope I didn’t wake you. No, no. I’m not in any trouble. I’ve got something I want to patent.”

  I sighed. “Paul, I work for the government. Full time.” More than full time.

  “This won’t really take a lot of work. I’ve already done most of it.”

  Yeah, right. I’ve heard those words from Paul before.

  I tried again. “Paul, patent law is very specialized. Most of the people who do it are techies as well as lawyers. You know me: I’m one of those people who went to law school because they couldn’t pass physics.”

  “I can do the technical stuff. I’ve been reading up.”

  I shuddered.

  “And anyway, I don’t trust those guys. You’re the only lawyer I trust.”

  Of course I am. I’m the only lawyer who would put up with him.

  “Anyway, I’m driving up to Washington next week. I need to meet with some people at Goddard. I’ll bring you all the specs and things and you can get started.”


  He hadn’t even heard my feeble attempts to say no. I was stuck with this situation. “Paul, just what is it that you want patented?”

  “I don’t want to tell you over the phone. My line could be tapped. But think classic science fiction.”

  “A submarine?”

  “Not Verne. Wells. And don’t say it! I’ll see you Monday. Or maybe Tuesday.”

  Oh, fuck, I said to myself as I put down the phone. He wants me to patent a time machine.

  o0o

  A long time ago, in a kingdom far removed from the New Millennium, I was a hippie. And no, thank you very much, I was not a “hippie chick.” I wasn’t just hanging around with some long-haired guy. A lot of times, I wasn’t involved with any guy. Which isn’t to say I didn’t sleep around. It was the Sixties. Everybody slept around.

  But I had an independent streak. I was a feminist hippie.

  I met Paul when I lived with two other women on a one-block, dead-end street in South Austin. He lived with his girlfriend across the street.

  I’d just started law school. Paul had been back from Vietnam about two years, and was working hard at being the perfect hippie as a cure.

  I came home from school one afternoon to find Paul and my roommates lounging around our living room, smoking a little dope. I wore my light brown hair long back then—really long, past the middle of my back—and favored t-shirts, Earth shoe sandals, and long skirts made from old blue jeans. Some of my fellow law students were already wearing coats and ties—the few other women among them heels and hose—and I was determined to look as out of place as possible.

  I dropped my books on the floor with a thud that rocked the house, sank gratefully into a bean bag chair, accepted a hit off the joint, and said, “My torts professor is such a fascist.”

  My roommates were used to these outbursts, and said nothing. But Paul said, “Why are you going to law school?”

  I knew the question meant something more than why are you doing something you hate. I’d had enough exposure to Paul’s philosophy to know that he saw the law, along with the military-industrial complex, as an evil. He told everyone he was going to grad school in physics so he’d have the know-how to oppose nuclear weapons.

  So I gave him my virtuous answer. “Because I want to be able to protect my friends.”

  “Oh. That’s all right, then.”

  He meant that. Somebody had to protect the rest of us from the law and other government and corporate evils that were out to get us. Protecting people was something he understood; he’d joined the Army because he thought taking care of others was his job.

  I can still see him, lying sprawled on a pile of cushions on the floor (the dog had taken over the couch, like she always did when we were stoned). His hair was long then: messy golden curls that hung past his shoulders.

  I didn’t tell him my other reason: I had no idea what I wanted to do with my life and law school seemed an easy answer. The fact that Paul took the “protect my friends” answer seriously made me believe in it. It became a kind of mantra: get through this and you’ll be able to protect your friends.

  So when I finally got my J.D., I rented an office, hung out my shingle, and became a hippie lawyer. Not a radical lawyer. There’s a difference.

  The radical lawyers were out to use the law to make social change. They sued big corporations, took on the defense of people the left defined as political prisoners. I never disagreed with this goal, but I was more interested in trying to create a better world in the margins.

  So I helped communes buy their property, negotiated leases for hippie businesses, even made it possible for a food co-op to get a beer and wine license. And I frequently got up in the middle of the night to get my friends out of jail.

  Actually, I liked that part of the job a lot: Getting people out of jail is a real kick. You go down to the police station. There’s your friend—your client, but also your friend—scared and alone. You talk to them a little, get them calmed down. Then call up a judge you know and go get some papers signed. And take your friend home.

  I was a hippie, but I could work the system. My friends would introduce me to other folks at parties: “This is Eileen. She’s my lawyer. Hee, hee.” And someone would pass around another joint.

  I never made any money, of course. Neither food co-ops nor hippies pay very well. But for awhile it seemed like a good compromise. I took pride in my purity, my law for the people approach. Pride can carry you farther than money, at least for a time.

  Times changed. The little hippie businesses became trendy restaurants and elite shops. Most of the people I got out of jail were losers I wished I didn’t know. I was being left behind, and I figured I had better grow up like everyone else, or I’d end up spending my life scrambling to pay rent in group houses while the people I was helping bought into fancy subdivisions.

  So I ran off to Washington to get a real job. And eventually ended up a GS-15 government lawyer. I live in the ex-hippie enclave of Takoma Park, in an old frame house on a tree-lined street, and hang out with other aging radicals and hippies who work as lobbyists and government peons trying to inject a little of their old ideals into government regulations.

  I don’t kid myself that I haven’t sold out—a GS-15 makes very decent money—just that I haven’t sold out as much as the folks on the other side (who make a lot more money). And I do believe in my work, more or less. I mean, we do need to do something about money in politics and writing laws restricting contributions is one way to do it. That’s what I do.

  Anyway, only a saint or a madman could have hung onto hippie values through the Eighties and Nineties.

  Though Paul tried. I’ve always suspected he was more a madman than a saint.

  o0o

  I got home from work about at close to eight on Wednesday, bone-tired, thinking only of Scotch. Paul was sitting on my front stoop, thumbing through a Land’s End catalog that must have come in the mail.

  Except for a bald spot on the back of his head and a little paunch showing around his middle, Paul didn’t look his fifty-something years. The grey coming in was camouflaged by the golden-blonde; unlike me, he didn’t have to spend hours at the salon keeping up his natural color.

  He jumped up and grabbed me in a bear hug. “I didn’t think you’d ever get home. Can you take off tomorrow?”

  I gave him a quick kiss—seeing him did feel good—and sighed. “I don’t think so. Congress is in session. And until they go into recess next month, my life consists of lurching from crisis to crisis.”

  His face fell.

  “Well, maybe I can find a little time.” I knew I was lying. “Come on, let’s get out of this heat.”

  “It’s not so bad,” Paul said, gathering up his things. “Better than Austin, anyway.”

  Once we got in the house, Paul shoved most of his stuff into a corner and opened a metal suitcase. Inside lay a laptop, two foot-high cylinders, and a black cube.

  “The cube’s the power source,” he said, hooking it up to one of the cylinders. He set the other one a couple of feet away from it. “We set up the time field between the two.” Then he hooked the computer into the cube and booted it up. “I have a program on here for setting the date. We go to a specific place and time.”

  It looked like the kind of thing cartoonists draw when they have a mad scientist invent something. “How does it work?”

  “You set the time, switch on the power, and sit between the cylinders.”

  “And what makes the time change?”

  He went into a long explanation that started with the bending of electrons and then lost me completely. As I may have said, physics is not my strong point. Paul could see he lost me, and took pity. “Look, you heard about that guy who’s done the experiment with the electrons and time, where an electron is apparently exiting a box before it’s put in?”

  I nodded.

  “It works like that.”

  “I thought that only worked on electrons, if it really works at all, and that ev
en the people who believe in it think it will only be good for sending messages.”

  “They just haven’t gone far enough,” he said impatiently. “Scientists are always so damn scared they’ll find something out. You want to try it?”

  I swallowed. I didn’t, really, but I didn’t want to admit it, either. “Will it take long?”

  “You might not be able to go to work tomorrow.”

  “Then I better not.” I tried not to sound relieved.

  “We’ll do it Friday night,” he said. “I should be sharp for my meeting at Goddard tomorrow. And you need to be able to talk to the folks at the patent office.”

  He spent most of the rest of the evening showing me his drawings and plans.

  The next morning I called friends to find a connection to someone in the patent office. I didn’t want to walk into the place cold and say hey, I have a client who wants to patent a time machine. By the end of the day I had an appointment for Friday with a patent examiner named Archie Gomez.

  Thursday evening I had to teach an Aikido class. I don’t run the school or anything; I’m just one of the more senior people. Paul came along with me. He was trying not to feel depressed: His appointment at Goddard had been canceled, but they’d said he could come back Friday.

  Having Paul as an audience made me want to show off, so I picked the biggest guys to help me demonstrate, and made a point of doing techniques I knew I could pull off.

  But as we drove home, Paul said, “That stuff you were doing tonight looks pretty, but I don’t think it’s all that practical. I mean, people wouldn’t fall down for you in real life if you did that.”