Reaction

by Seth M. Baker

“The work that I wasn’t allowed to talk about,” Amadeus said. Grassal raised an eyebrow. “Einstein-Rosen bridges. AKA Lorentzian wormholes.” Amadeus met his father’s gaze and held it. Neither would look away.

  “Awkward,” Grassal said. Tommy cleared his throat then spoke.

  “Einstein talked about ‘spooky action at a distance.’ The man was a master of understatement. I saw enough spooky action right here to last a lifetime. I’m done with that. I’ve returned to more ‘respectable,’ non-controversial research.” He pulled his salt and pepper hair back into a ponytail and picked up a rod.

  “But you wish you could’ve learned more,” Amadeus said. “To keep going forward. Is that why you have this?” He grabbed the kipium from his father’s hand. “You’re going to risk everything you’ve worked so hard to build back up?”

  “That’s enough, Amadeus,” Tommy said. “And that’s not what this is. I told you I don’t know why he sent it to me. Put it down. I’ll, eh, send it back to him.”

  Amadeus’ face flushed. He looked over at Grassal, who had busied himself with learning the operating system of the statue and was pretending not to hear any of this conversation.

  Tommy took the kipium from Amadeus and set it on the shelf. “We used to need a whole building to keep stuff like that stable. Now, though…” Tommy trailed off. “Hey boys, let’s see how this metal likes the lathe. What do you say?” Amadeus remained silent.

  “That’s why we’re down here,” Grassal said, looking up from the display projected onto the workbench. “Think your lathe can handle it?”

  “Jones said it should as long as we use a diamond-tipped cutting tool. Let’s find out if he’s wrong.” He changed the parts, set the rod in the lathe, and put on a face mask. “I’ll just cut down a couple millis and see how it works. You two turn around, don’t want any bits of metal flying around. It’s all fun and games…” Amadeus threw up his hands and turned around. The machine spun to life.

  “Way to change the subject, buddy,” Amadeus said to Grassal. Grassal shrugged. Ping! A piece of metal ricocheted around the room. Everyone ducked.

  “Damn,” Tommy said. “That was the hardest bit I had. Maybe lower speed, or less pressure…”

  Amadeus’ stomach growled. “I’m going upstairs for a sandwich. You guys want anything?” Both asked for beers but no food.

  Upstairs, the black and orange balloons covered the floor like a plastic fog. Streamers hung from the ceiling like wires exposed in a partially-demolished building. Amadeus felt hot despite the cool of the house. He made a roast beef sandwich. When he took a bite, the mayonnaise dripped out of the end onto a balloon by his feet. He picked up the balloon, popped it. Mayonnaise splattered onto his shirt. Cursing, he dabbed at the mayonnaise with another paper towel and stepped outside into the cool night to eat. Fog hung low over the field around the house. He finished his sandwich, went back inside, and stepped on another balloon. It squeaked under his shoe until it popped.

  When it popped, the sound of crashing glass filled the house. Lights shone through the windows. Amadeus screamed in surprise and ran down the hall towards the basement. Another crash. Heavy footsteps tromping through his house. Lasers reflecting off mirrors. At the foot of the stairs, Amadeus spun around. A man in a black helmet dusted glass from his clothes. He held a rifle and looked like death.

  Amadeus slipped into the stairwell, closing and locking the door behind him. Three explosions tore up the door. Gunshots. Splinters landed in his hair. More shots. He stumbled downstairs through the workshop to the lab. His father held the door open and waved him in.

  “Oh god, Amadeus, are you okay?” his father said. “Grassal, kill the lights.”

  Grassal ran out and hit the main switch on the breaker box. Darkness fell over the basement like a blanket. Tommy pulled out a flashlight, guided Grassal back into the lab, and pulled the door shut behind him.

  “Bastards. Shot. At. Me,” Amadeus said. He tried and failed to catch his breath. His heart wanted to jump out of his chest and run away. “Jesus, Dad, what is this?” Sound of footsteps running across the upper floors.

  “I never thought it would happen,” Tommy said, shining the flashlight from Amadeus to Grassal. “Amadeus, Grassal, I’m sorry. I brought this on us. It’s my fault.”

  “What do you mean?” Amadeus said.

  “I mean there are people who want to do some real nefarious shit with the work I’ve done,” Tommy said. Through the window of the lab, towards the other end of the basement, Amadeus saw the first of the flashlight beams coming through the broken basement door. “Not much time.” Flashlight in his teeth, Tommy Brunmeier grabbed the statue of Amadeus, pulled the plug out, and connected it to the server. Tommy entered a few commands onto the server before Amadeus realized what he was doing: copying data.

  A barrage of shots slammed into the lab. Instinctively, all three hunched down. The lead walls kept the bullets from coming through. He pulled two smooth black medallions from a drawer on the workbench and tossed them to Amadeus.

  “Distortion field generators,” Tommy said. “Fuzzers. They’ll make you invisible to surveillance equipment.”

  “But we’re not criminals.”

  “Not yet,” Tommy said, grabbing the statue.

  “Everything I’ve done is on here,” Tommy said. “Journals. Videos. Notes. Schematics. I’ve made some mistakes. Now those mistakes are coming for me. Learn everything you can, Amadeus. You have to. Figure it out. My work, it could change everything.” He put the statue in Amadeus’ hand, closed his fingers around it. “Go to Colorado and find Jones.” He wrote down a phone number on a scrap of paper. “Don’t look back. Don’t come back for me. Grassal, I’m sorry, but you’re a part of this now, too.” Another round of gunfire. Tommy pulled the M4 from the shelf and fired several rounds into the server.

  “No! Dad, what is this?”

  “All my work is destroyed except for what’s on the statue. I had four partners. To open these files,” he shook the statue, “you’ll need fingerprints and blood samples from three of them. I don’t have time to remove the security. Study my research to learn countermeasures. If someone replicates my research, the results…it’d be brutal. Find out who did this.”

  “This is about the wormholes, isn’t it? You know I can’t understand any of that!” Amadeus said. Tommy touched his son’s face, then stuffed the statue into his pants pocket. Flashlight beams shined through the windows of the lab.

  “You’re a smart boy, son. You’ll figure it out. I love you. Now get the hell out of here. Into the crawl space. Hide this underneath.” He handed Grassal the kipium then pointed with his rifle to the small grate. “Go, boys, go!” Tommy cracked the door open and fired a few rounds toward the flashlights.

  “Amadeus, he’s right,” Grassal said, taking Amadeus by the shirt and pulling him to the floor. “In there.” Grassal slipped into the crawlspace first.

  “They’re going to kill you.”

  “Go. Now!” Tommy fired a couple more rounds. “Before they gas the place.”

  Amadeus looked into the dark of the crawlspace, then took one last look at his father, firing an assault rifle through a slit in the door. At that moment, he had no idea who his father was. He shut the door to the crawlspace. Amadeus started to open the door, but Grassal grabbed his arm.

  “Come on, we’ve to go. You can’t help him.

  “Goddamnit, let go of me,” Amadeus said.

  “Don’t make me drag you outside. You want to get us both killed?”

  Amadeus started to cry and shake. He pulled a crumpled five-dollar bill from his pocket and stuffed it in his mouth. “This isn’t happening. This is just another nightmare.” His voice was muffled.

  “Nightmare or not, Amadeus, we are getting out of here. You don’t want to come? Fine. You stay and eat paper. And wait for them to put a bullet through your forehead.” Grassal scrambled on through the crawl space, squeezing under heating vents. He found a box of plumbing supplies and de
posited the kipium inside. Gunshots came faster, louder, closer. Amadeus made his decision and started following his friend. “Garage,” Grassal said. “Across the yard. Motorcycle inside. We got to run, buddy. You ready?” Grassal leaned back on his hands and kicked the main ventilation grate away. Amadeus started to run out, but Grassal stopped him. “Wait, got to check, make sure there’s nobody out there.” Amadeus leaned his head out. Nothing but an empty, fog-shrouded yard. They slipped out and hunched beside the house. When Amadeus stood, his knees and palms burned with pain. “Three, two, one…”

  They ran across the yard to the garage. Amadeus put his thumb on the doorknob, waited two seconds. The lock clicked and they stepped through the door into the cool garage. His bike sat inside. Beside it, a grey cloth covered his father’s vintage, wheel-less Aston Martin.

  “You start the bike,” Grassal said, “and I’ll throw the garage door open then hop on.” Amadeus opened the key box on the wall. Grassal put on his usual helmet and handed one to Amadeus. Amadeus put the key in and pressed the ignition button but got only a fast clicking sound. He switched on the headlight. It was dim. More gunshots from inside, call and response.

  “Fucking battery. Get the jumper cables,” Amadeus said. He pulled the cloth off the Aston Martin, popped the hood, and started the engine.

  “Too bad we can’t take the car,” Grassal said, grumbling to himself as he connected the cables from the car to the bike. “No wheels. What good is a hot rod on jack stands?”

  Amadeus pushed the starter on the bike. Nothing happened. “Wait for it,” Grassal said. Amadeus counted to ten, grinding the paper between his teeth as he did so. He tried again. The bike coughed to life, filling the garage with white smoke. Grassal lifted the garage door then hopped on the bike. Amadeus popped the clutch, took off with a squeal of tires, and drove through the damp grass behind the house. Over the roar of the bike’s engine, more gunshots, this time louder, not muffled by the walls of a house. Coming from behind the house, making the turn, almost on the concrete of the driveway, the back end slipped out from under them. Amadeus put his foot down, righting the bike. Balanced, he drove on through the grass and onto the driveway. More gunshots. Both ducked and the bike swayed, but Amadeus kept it upright.

  On the way down the long concrete driveway, Amadeus weaved an erratic pattern. Gunshots cracked behind them. He knew they had to escape, but he wanted to turn back and help his father, damn the risks. He couldn’t let their last conversation be an argument. Amadeus had to go back and say more, but Grassal and the gunfire would lead him in only one direction: away. He turned on the helmet headset.

  “Grass, you okay?” Amadeus said.

  “I’m fine. You?”

  “Oh, I’m great, just having a fabulous time. No, I’m not okay you fucking moron. Of course I’m not okay.” He turned from the driveway onto the main road, roaring away into the night. At first the road was dark, empty, the distance between them and the place they left a black gulf growing wider and wider. But after only a couple minutes, headlights flashed in the rearview mirror. They grew closer, larger, expanding, looming. Amadeus opened the throttle on the bike, trying to go faster, but he was already pushing 120 km/hr and though Amadeus knew these roads, the curves made him nervous.

  He had to get to the highway, take the bike as far away as fast as possible. The lights grew larger, brighter as the vehicle came closer. Amadeus thought they looked like lights from a full-sized van. The curves changed to suburbs. Only a few more kilometers to the highway. One hundred meters from an intersection, the light had just changed from green to yellow. On both sides of the intersection, cars sat, waiting to proceed. The lights from the van caught his mirrors, blinding him. He downshifted for more torque, pulled back on the throttle. The engine whined. The cars started to pull out, their drivers probably paying more attention to the GPS voices that told them where to drive. Amadeus swerved to avoid the side of a truck, going into the other lane, then back with a meter to spare. Behind them, a crash. In the mirror, a green sedan spun around while the van pushed on through.

  “What the hell is this?” Grassal said, craning his neck to watch the van behind them.

  “I don’t know Grassal, I don’t know. For all I know this is just an elaborate game, a learning scenario. It’s got to be. God, I hope it is.” Amadeus liked this idea. “We’ll play along, but it’s not real. Can’t be. No way.” Grassal said nothing.

  After the intersection, the road changed to four-lane highway. Red tail lights lined the way before him like runway lights. He rode the center line, honking as he passed befuddled drivers. He kept the bike in a lower gear, redlining the engine. He had never driven like this. The handlebar grips were slick with perspiration. As he wiped his hands on his pants, the shooting started.

  Instinctively, they both ducked. The bike swerved and Amadeus’ shoulder grazed the side of a car. More shots. The left-side mirror exploded, leaving only the metal frame. The van was just behind them, closer, closer. Amadeus twisted the throttle, but the engine sputtered. A loud thunk and Amadeus’ head lashed forward and banged against the speedometer. He had been shot. The bike started to veer right.

  Grassal leaned forward, grabbed the handlebars. “Hey! Damn it, Amadeus, hey!” He smacked Amadeus’ helmet. With a start, Amadeus jerked upright. His ears rang. He saw double. With Grassal’s arms around him steering the bike, Amadeus felt a hole in the side of his helmet. The bullet had grazed his helmet. Close, so close. As the ringing receded, replaced by the drone of traffic. Amadeus put his hands back the handlebars.

  “I’m okay,” Amadeus said. Ahead, two tractor trailers were driving side-by-side in both lanes. Amadeus took a deep breath and squeezed the bike between them. He could’ve spread his arms and touched them both, like a giant in the Grand Canyon. He opened up the throttle. Hitting high RPMs, the v-twin roared like a bear. Amadeus made it through the trailer canyon, was back on open road. The van was stuck behind the trucks. It tried to pass on the left but couldn’t get through. Amadeus took his chance and pushed the bike as hard as it could go. Behind them, the van grew smaller and smaller. Ahead, the elevated highway was plumb straight, like a spool of wire unrolled over the land. After several minutes of face-melting speed, Amadeus couldn’t see the van in his rearview.

  “Think we lost them,” Amadeus said.

  “Sure?”

  “I’m not sure of anything.” Amadeus looked at the sides of the highway, the high walls that projected the noise upwards, and thought if enough rain came, this could become an elevated canal or an aqueduct.

  “We should get off the highway. Maybe they’ll keep going,” Grassal said. “Because I think this is real. Those were real bullets. Your dad, the expression on his face was real.” Static crackled in their headsets. Amadeus realized this was an open channel. He slapped Grassal’s knee, made a talking gesture with his hand, then a slashing motion across his throat. Grassal patted Amadeus’ back, as if to say he understood.

  “Yeah, we should definitely get off at the next exit. We need some gas. They’re probably way back there,” Amadeus said.

  They continued past the exit and drove fifty kilometers further before Amadeus pulled off to the side and parked in front of an abandoned semi, hopefully hidden from the highway. Amadeus got off the bike to examine his helmet. The bullet had passed through the synthetic padding inside, padding made to absorb shock, not stop bullets. He gave it to Grassal.

  “Still think this is a game?” Grassal said. “Do I need to say you’re damn lucky?”

  “No…and no.” His knees were weak. The world started to hum and spin. Something pulled on his insides, making breath scarce. He checked his pockets for paper, found none. Instead, he cried. Grassal held him, told him it’s okay.

  “It’s not okay, this isn’t happening, this isn’t happening.” Cars passed by, unnoticed by Amadeus. Eventually, he was able to speak. “They were using a scanner or something to listen to us.”

  “Who keeps a scanner like that
in their car?”

  “Who smashes into a house and tries to kill everyone inside? No, they didn’t kill everyone. They didn’t kill anyone. We have to go back.”

  “No, man, no way. Your dad told us to go to Colorado. If they didn’t…if he can he’ll contact us there. But you got to prepare yourself, man.”

  “What do you mean, prepare myself.”

  “I’m just saying…”

  “What are you saying?”

  “Nothing. I’m not saying anything except that we should keep moving. If they can tap our helmet radios, they could be tracking us with satellites. They could be watching us right now. Pretty soon we’ll have to ditch the bike.” Amadeus looked at Grassal, debating whether to hug or hit him. He decided to decide later. Instead, he cut the wires to the bike’s lights.

  “Okay, fine. We’ll get some gas and caffeine and keep going.”

  Without headlights, they sped off down the highway into the red-tinted night.

  4

  They drove the dark highway for hours, away from the sprawling city, the air rich with moisture and the exhalations of a city at sleep. Amadeus drove carefully, unused to having a passenger. As time passed, he grew more confident. Soon he threaded his bike through traffic like an expert. Neither spoke during the journey. Amadeus guessed they could reach Colorado in three days or less, depending on how long he could stay awake.

  As the traffic thinned and the apartment buildings grew smaller, his thoughts grew dark. He wondered what had just happened, who would want to kill them. His father, dead. He couldn’t be dead. He wasn’t dead. Either way, Amadeus had to force himself not to cry out and break down. He made himself focus on driving. He couldn’t escape gunfire only to die in a fiery motorcycle crash. His father was dead. He was alone, orphaned, not even twenty three years old. This was too young, too young. His other friends had parents. This wasn’t fair. Grassal’s parents were both alive, even if they wanted nothing to do with him.

  Colorado. What would he do there? Could Jones really help him? And what if these men were still looking for him? They would want to kill them all, wouldn't they? He suspected that yes, they would still want to kill them. But were they after his father, or after his father's research?