Here & There

by Joshua V. Scher

While it is unclear as to how much of this is fact and how much fiction, the two of them obviously made a connection that turned into something bigger. Further support of this is found in subsequent lab footage that clearly shows Reidier sitting at his workstation across the room using a hand mirror with a pink plastic frame and handle. Whatever the exact details may be, something did happen that night that was distinctly different from their initial encounter in his lab.

  Rumors of Eve’s escapades still echoed around the office for some time. Apparently, neither party minded, particularly as both seemed to value discretion. According to former colleague Alfred Muoio, an Italian physicist who had a lab adjacent to Reidier’s, “ . . . Reidier and Eve . . . the two of them as an item was a grand surprise. To everyone. Not in a dismissive way, not that a little man could not cast a long shadow. More, eh, no one ever thought about it. If I recall correctly, at the time I thought she was having a liaison with some German oligarch duce overseeing one of ESA’s32 launches. So it was a total surprise when she and Reidier moved in together. Jaws dropped like dominoes throughout the entire center.”33

  “You never saw them together?”

  “I saw them at work. Rarely together.”

  “Socially?”

  “Eh, well, Eve was definitely at all the various functions, and I saw her several times at the hotel bars we frequented. Those were the most, to put it gently, continental establishments. Of course, every now and then you might venture out for some native flavor, but most of the time we congregated where we were comfortable. And that’s where Eve took a lot of the VIPs. I rarely saw Reidier socially. He did not go out much. Well, I guess he rarely went to the hotel bars. If I remember correctly though, he would go blow off steam at this place in the Old Quarter. I forget the name of it. It was in an old house. Come si dice? Yes, we were all stunned when they moved in together. Although, I have to say, around the labs there was definitely a sense of pride that she was with one of us.”

  Despite the secrecy, Eve was neither embarrassed nor disappointed with the relationship. Quite the opposite actually, it seems her impulse toward discretion was more of a protective instinct. The relationship was something she treasured and wanted to isolate in order that it not be tainted by the world. It was this impulse in fact that paradoxically made her so ambivalent about cohabiting. As she wrote in her journal shortly after they moved in together,

  . . . It’s ironic really. In finally carving out our private space, we’ve ended up exposing ourselves. While our space is our own, our lives life now belongs to the world. R laughs at me when I talk like this. He doesn’t believe in the corruption of scrutiny. I think he’s just happy to have me past sunrise now. No more predawn scurries home.

  R teases me that if I want I can still pull the sheets over our heads and cocoon us in bed. “Our linen wall of last defense.” He scoffs, but every time I do this, he drops his voice to a whisper too, underneath. Brushes his hands over my body while murmuring about how, with me, the world has been cleaved into us and everybody else. Those are the last two groups, the only two groups in the world.

  There’s us and there’s everybody else.

  Sealed underneath the sheets with his susurrations and our humid breathing . . . it oddly reminds me of playing in my father’s den, as a little girl, building forts out of blankets, couch cushions, and end tables . . . that is until R ‘s touch hardens and he pins me down, pinning down the covers . . .

  There’s us and there’s everybody else.

  Still, there is something delicious about announcing ourselves this way. Maybe it means the end to me having to harvest rumors. I have my ‘alpha nerd ’ to protect me.

  There’s us and there’s everybody else.

  I love our home.34

  These are clearly not the words of someone who has any reservations about her relationship. Rather, Eve describes and exhibits a textbook example of one of the extremes of the Colonial Effect.

  Embedded within Michelle Hausler’s work35 on cryptocolonialism is this oft-overlooked phenomenon. Most colonial and postcolonial theory focuses (for good reason) on either the collateral repercussions inflicted or instilled in the native population or the complexities of the power dynamics, assimilation, and counter-assimilation. The Colonial Effect describes the polarizing consequences of the occupier’s isolation on the occupier, how foreignness warps the imperialists’ concepts of and means of engaging in intimacy. As Hausler puts it, eventually “the myth of domination and empowerment with its inferred überfreedom dissolves into a constricting reality. Cartesian orientation inverts in the foreigner’s eyes as the colony transforms from an exotic playground into an all too literal Prospero’s Palace.”36 Inevitably, pressure increases on intimate relationships as they take on all-encompassing importance in a contracting world. The stress has a polarizing effect of either cannibalizing the relationship or canonizing it. It becomes the scapegoat or panacea for all the escalating and destabilizing frustration of exile.

  While Eve seems to embody the latter Colonial Effect, it would be incomplete to write off her excitement and investment in their relationship as a mere byproduct of this. Furthermore, even though Eve professes an almost euphoric satisfaction from her relationship with Reidier, she also exhibits signs of personal growth, increased confidence, heightened self-awareness, and creativity. Simply put, it was after moving in with Reidier that Eve finally started writing, or at least publishing. She wasn’t isolating herself from the world, she was embracing it.

  Reidier, on the other hand, was having a difficult time professionally. Although by all accounts, his Swiss project was a success, his supervisors were becoming more intrusive, more oppressive, and more distrustful. Perhaps they felt threatened by Reidier’s work, which was far beyond their abilities. Or they might have been trying to contain and exploit whatever his next innovation was. Regardless of the motivation, it was having a negative effect on Reidier. In fact, watching a high-speed montage of Reidier’s lab footage you can almost track the accelerating deterioration with every interruption by a superior over months. Reidier’s body language, which begins as welcoming and open, devolves into guarded defense and ultimately, outright aggression.

  The straw that broke the camel’s back was on August 19, 2001. It was a Sunday. The video capture is activated by motion in the lab. Reidier is nowhere to be seen. Sitting at his computer, however, typing on his keyboard and opening various windows, is Diderot Pellat—Reidier’s lab supervisor. He squints his eyes, he clicks, he frowns. Eventually, he starts to wander around the lab, snooping. He paces the length of the laser arrays. He fiddles with the computer that monitors the sonic thermometers. He rifles through the rolling, two-door filing cabinets that loiter in front of the massive spool of dark fiber cable. According to the counter, he’s alone in Reidier’s lab for thirty-seven minutes. Diderot is thumbing through a stack of binders he found when Reidier walks in. There’s a solid ten seconds of silence as the two take each other in.

  “Something I can help you with, Didi?” Reidier asks.

  Diderot goes back to the binder he’s thumbing through and turns another page. “These look like the journals of a psychopath.”

  “They’re ancient ciphers and puzzles.”

  Diderot grunts and turns another page. “Good. Then I am not leafing through anything personal. I feared I might have intruded.” He turns another page.

  Reidier balls his hands into fists and relaxes them over and over. “I do them to help me think. They’re my crosswords.”

  Diderot closes the binder. He looks up at Reidier and offers a patronizing smile. “I suppose you are wondering what it is I am doing here?”

  “It’s Sunday. Did you get lost on the way to church?”

  “This is my church,” Diderot says, gesturing to the lab.

  “Does that make me your priest, Didi, or your prophet?” Reidier asks.

  “My apostle, I should think.” Diderot wanders toward Reidier’s computer. “IT informed me of an issue on your
computer. A ghost drive was detected.”

  “Really?” Reidier asks with a surprised tone.

  “Mm. Apparently, they did not install it and could not access it.”

  Reidier nods. “Sounds like a problem in your IT department.”

  Diderot places his hand on the desk near the keyboard. “You understand of course that per your contract, there are no secrets between us.”

  “Of course, CSG owns any and all IP that I develop in quantum cryptography while working here.”

  Diderot’s gaze drifts over to the stack of notebooks. “Riddles to relax. Hm. I prefer my Cabernets.”

  Reidier’s eyes stay trained on the Frenchman. The microphone picks up the sound of a finger tapping lightly on Formica and outof-sync breathing. Diderot draws in a big breath through his nose and opens his mouth as if about to say something. Reidier waits. Diderot brings his lips back together, once again forming a patronizing half smile.

  “I trust the ghost drive—”

  Reidier interrupts, “It’s merely a secondary backup drive and storage drop for my WTF footage.”

  “Pardon?”

  Reidier gestures to the various webcams around the lab. “I record everything that happens in the lab so that in case something unexpected happens and I don’t know why, I can retrace my steps.”

  Diderot’s head swivels around, taking in all the cameras. He turns and faces the camera they’re standing in front of. His eyes dance in fractal pattern, searching the screen. I suspect he’s looking for any evidence of recording happening. Unnerved that he missed it before.

  Reidier smiles at his boss’s discomfort. “Motion sensors turn it on and off. Calibrated them to pick up eye movement, in case I’m just sitting here reading. And of course screen and keystroke capture. It’s recording us right now.”

  Diderot purses his lips and runs his tongue along the front of his teeth as if he had something sticky and bitter stuck on them. He stands up straight, assuming a very proper posture. “That is quite diligent. Perhaps I should institute that in our other labs. Thank you for ’ze idea.” His accent has become more conspicuous as the conversation has progressed, perhaps as a byproduct of stress. He buttons his vest and heads toward the door. “You will, of course, help IT with their, how did you put it, problem? Oui?” He turns back to Reidier, resting his hand on the door handle.

  “As soon as I have time.”

  “Of course,” Diderot acquiesces. He turns toward the binders one last time. “If you do not mind, I would love to make a facsimile of some of your puzzling. It looks so engaging. I might want to frame it. It could be a conversation piece for me.” He smiles big this time, confident. “Bon.” And without waiting for a response, he leaves.

  Reidier stares after him. He waits, watching the door.

  One minute and forty-two seconds.

  At a quick clip he walks over to the stack of binders. In a frenetic fashion, he flips through several of them to random pages. Checking them. Satisfied, Reidier stacks them, tapping his palms against the sides forcefully. He makes to pick them up but then stops.

  Reidier looks across the room at the camera. Once again he crosses the room at a quick clip. Standing in front of the computer, he opens a program with the mouse, types in what I assume is a password, and then clicks.

  The footage cuts out.

  This incident might have been the final cut or simply a coincidence. Within a few months, however, Reidier accepted a post at the University of Chicago. He was also awarded a grant to investigate the theoretical model of supersymmetry37 at the Fermi Lab as part of its Collider Run II program. This was not a spontaneous decision. Securing a professorship and writing grant proposals all take forethought and effort. However, testing the waters and taking the plunge are two very different states of mind.

  Eve appears to have been supportive of this move throughout her diary. This post at CSG was never a professional track for her, but merely an excuse to get her out into the world so she could find something to write about. And with Reidier, she was writing.

  Eve and Reidier got married on the first of October, 2001. According to Eve’s short story, “The French Finger Puzzle,”* they eloped in a small, corrugated aluminum church on the edge of The Bourg. “Naelle” was Eve’s maid of honor, and the couple was married by Juan Castillo, a medium and priest of María Lionza38 as well as a shoe salesman, who claimed possession by the Norse spirit of Erik the Red. Candles were lit, drum pounding filled the air, and pilgrims repeatedly shouted “fuerza” (strength) with such fervor that beads of sweat rained off their brows. The ceremony culminated with the rings, which, in the story, were Möbius bands Reidier had made out of palm leaves. According to French Prefect’s Records, however, they were married by the Prefect himself, in the banquet hall of the official residence, and Eve’s father gave her away.

  * * *

  * I did track down this short story, sort of. It was published in KaFkaïens, some French magazine that focuses on literary news and experimental writing. The story’s no longer on their website, of course. But they have it archived, and this junior editor over there is trying to dig it out and send it to me. I called him from a payphone in the Port Authority. Bought an international calling card and everything. I mean, I’m sure it’s nothing, but why have it on record that I’m calling Paris, tracking down Eve Tassat’s writing?

  * * *

  Of course, rumors once again flew around the Space Center: Eve was pregnant, Eve got Reidier loopy on absinthe and tricked him, Reidier got Eve loopy on absinthe and tricked her, Reidier was Eve’s “compact” (the lesbian equivalent of a beard). The story that got the most traction, however, was that their nuptials were arranged so Eve could obtain a green card.

  By this point, Reidier and Eve had been together for almost three years. They had been living together for two. It’s hard to imagine that this was a choice made by circumstance, especially since it seems to have been unnecessary. H. Clark in the Department of Homeland Security assured me that even so soon after 9/11, Eve’s Moroccan descent would not have been an issue. “Plus, at that time, it would have been easier for her to obtain a student visa than to marry her husband for a green card,” Clark wrote in an e-mail. (Eve had been accepted to the Creative Writing Masters Program at the University of Chicago.) This was not a marriage of convenience.

  For Eve and Reidier, leaving CSG was the end of their beginning. A bittersweet transition full of hope, unencumbered by nostalgia. Eve closes the chapter on their life best in her diary entry that she wrote on the flight to Chicago.

  I’m staring out the window of our plane, watching the land fall away into a painting. A visual metaphor, I guess. R & I will never walk through the landscape of Kourou again except in the flattened world of memory. I feel like I should feel melancholic. But I have only the slightest sense of loss. Not of that place, or our work, or our friends, or our home. It’s hard to put into words. I wonder if a butterfly ever misses the closeness of its cocoon. Maybe it’s just how clearly the line of our jumping-off point has been drawn. Before we were protected in this . . . Eden? And now we’re soaring away from our work with the heavens, a subatomic locksmith and his semiotic cheerleader.

  Wow, make sure I never use the term “work with the heavens” again.

  R just laughed at me. Apparently I rolled my eyes at my writing so hard he could hear it. I love that he knows my eye rolls, huffs, and sighs. My ever-observant husband scientist.

  Nothing is left behind as we turn the pages of SkyMall together, a ritual he performs at the start of every flight. And his habits become mine, as mine do his. Two explorers addicted to sounding out the depths of each other. The beginning is only the beginning.

  There’s no yearning for the past. There’s no mourning about leaving their home. There’s no ambivalence. Eve feels only certainty in Reidier—a drastically different state of mind than when they would move to Providence soon after.

  TITLE CARD: GALILEE 6:21

  TITLE CARD: EXPERI
MENT 19

  MIRROR LAB - 2007-07-25 16:51

  Fiber-optic cables, circumscribing the Entanglement Channel flare red for several seconds, then morph into an orbiting white light as the Entanglement Channel opens.

  The Boson Cannons and Pion Beams twitch to life. SOUNDS of the rapid ACCELERATION and DECELERATION of GEARS as they take a series of readings of a full bottle of Coke. Once complete they settle into optimized focal positions.

  CONTROL ROOM, GOULD ISLAND FACILITY - SAME TIME

  IS1 O’Brien sits at the console, in front of Contact Button Bravo.

  On one screen in front of him are the feeds from the Mirror Lab transfer room.

  On another screen in front of him is . . . Dr. Reidier (tweed-sport coated) seated at his desk in Angell Lab (basement of 454 Angell Street) in Providence.

  Dr. Reidier leans forward toward his computer camera. Talks excitedly.

  DR. REIDIER

  Inanimate Transfers of varying shapes and compounds have all yielded consistent, stable results for Experiments Ten through Sixteen. Furthermore, we have had positive, consistent results with Phase Two, Dynamic Inanimates using an aggregation of several compounds and elements in 17 and 18. Therefore we’re attempting to transfer a Dynamic Inanimate over a greater distance as proof of concept. As such, power settings have been increased to ████ times ████ eVs while utilizing a quark spectrum from █████████.

  Dr. Reidier spins back and forth in his chair.

  DR. REIDIER (CONT’D)

  Safety lid up!

  IS1 O’BRIEN opens his Plexiglas cover, while, on screen, Dr. Reidier places his right index finger on a button on his keyboard. Dr. Reidier taps his lapel pin with his left hand then raises it up, extends his index finger, wags it forward while . . .

  DR. REIDIER (CONT’D)

  (apparently doing a Jean-Luc Picard impersonation)

  Engage!

  IS1 O’Brien presses Contact Button Bravo. As Dr. Reidier presses “Enter” on his keyboard, Contact Button Alpha engages.