Here & There

by Joshua V. Scher

  “At least the chowder won’t leave me feeling empty inside.” I scraped my spoon against the bottom of my bowl. “You were saying, Borges. ‘Death of a Compass,’ ‘The Library of Babel,’ ‘Book of Sand.’ I’ve read the guy.”

  “It’s ‘Death and a Compass.’”

  I thought about it a second, then shrugged, “Death of a Compass feels more evocative, don’t you think?”

  “Whatever. Did you ever hear about how he got started writing?”

  I hadn’t. And Lorelei didn’t seem too in the mood for one of my homemade answers.

  “He grew up in Buenos Aires, but always loved English literature. At nine, he translated some Oscar Wilde work. As he grew older, he mastered a number of languages, authored scores of academic papers, and even founded and edited several literary publications. But try as he might, he never seemed to be able to turn out a solid piece of fiction.”

  “I know the feeling.”

  “Until he finally figured out his way in. He fell back on his strengths and created his first fictional piece by writing an academic criticism of a work that didn’t exist.”

  Lorelei had my attention.

  “In fact, his entire early literary career was dominated by a slew of forgeries and hoaxes: translations of nonexistent works, falsely attributed pieces.”

  I didn’t have an answer for Lorelei. It’s not like I hadn’t thought of it—that my mother might have made this whole thing up. That lovely idea had been gnawing away at the back of my mind for quite some time now. Until then, though, I had been fine ignoring it. Leaving it be, to cannibalize my brain in the dark shadows of my thoughts.

  Fuck sunlight.

  Fuck facing your fears.

  And fuck Lorelei.

  I was up and out the door before I even realized what was happening.

  Lorelei found me a few minutes later at the end of the pier, watching the ship masts swing back and forth with the waves, like nautical metronomes. She didn’t say anything. Just rested her forearms next to mine on the wooden railing.

  I never thought I would feel so ambivalent about her. I didn’t want her to go, but I didn’t feel like connecting, let alone talking. The best I could do was not push her away.

  So we just stood there, listening to the sporadic boat bell, watching a seagull float in place above us. The bird faced south, making the slightest angle adjustment to its wing, dancing this invisible tango with the wind. Then with another, almost imperceptible shift, it dove down, glided over the seaweed that clustered between the bows, and snatched up a dead fish that had been floating, half hidden.

  My mother is a fish.

  “Come on,” I said and headed for the docks.

  * * *

  XVI

  And what happens when the regime becomes as mad as the ones they hunt?

  ~Mstislav Shklovsky

  Physics has failed us.

  ~André de Broglie (Recherches sur la théorie des quanta, 1926, regarding wave-particle duality)

  For when, either in ancient or modern times, have such great exploits been achieved by so few against so many, over so many climes, across so many seas, over such distances by land, to subdue the unseen and unknown? Whose deeds can be compared with those of Spain? Our Spaniards, being few in number, never having more than 200 or 300 men together, and sometimes only 100 and even fewer, have, in our times, conquered more territory than has ever been known before, or than all the faithful and infidel princes possess.

  ~Eyewitness accounts by Hernando and Pedro Pizarro of their brother’s conquest

  Transcript excerpt from the phone surveillance of Rear Admiral NAVSTA Office, Rear Admiral Wisecup 6/14/2007, 10:17 a.m.

  Wisecup: (yelling into phone) What the hell else does he want?! Christ himself only needed two pieces of wood and some nails! I don’t care what theoretical horseshit he’s slinging now. You just tell him sometimes you got to try something even if it’s wrong. ‘Cause a mistake will still tell us a hell of a lot more than his foot-dragging. And don’t let him go off about hypothetical catastrophic what-ifs. If what-ifs dictated history, we’d all be living in some goddamn Japanese fiefdom! He’s a scientist. Scientists do experiments. Get him experimenting.

  (Wisecup slams down the phone.)

  It took a while to find it within the endless hours of footage. The innocuousness of the moment provided an effective camouflage: a revealing mundane still within a reel of banality. Nevertheless, it is most assuredly Reidier’s moment of discovery of the infestation.

  NB footage, Reidier home, June 27, 2007

  Reidier paces back and forth around the dining room, arguing into his mobile phone to some Department lackey. “I don’t care what Q Net did. They’re in the Stone Age as far as I’m concerned. And Bell’s paper disproves practically all of your objections.”

  Reidier proceeds to tolerate a response, gestures rapidly for whoever’s on the other end to talk faster. Finally, Reidier interrupts. “Look, I need this so that I can put a single nano-object into an X-ray beam in order to determine position, chemical identity, and structure. If you insist on my doing it with what you’ve given me, everything will be corrupted with Loschmidt echoes.”

  In spite of technological jargon, there is nothing very incisive about this conversation. It is just one of the myriad of phone calls, Skype sessions, and voice mail exchanges that Reidier is inundated with daily. As with this one, Reidier tends to wander about erratically while enmeshed in discussions about his work. Which is why his brief pause was almost completely overlooked.

  While circling from the north end of the dining room table to the antique wooden credenza, right after Reidier’s assertion about Bell’s paper, his stride hiccups. When slowed down eight times, it’s possible to notice the slightest tilt of Reidier’s head to the side, like a baffled dog. All of this happens in less than a second, then Reidier’s pace picks back up where it left off, as he continues to circle the table.

  However, as the conversation and laps continue, a pattern is detected, once again only when slowed down to one-eighth the normal speed. Every time Reidier passes the credenza, he briefly slows down.

  Finally, Reidier ends the conversation near the archway that leads to the living room. He hangs up the phone, rests a hand against the archway, and gazes through the table, seemingly lost in thought—except for one quick flicker of his eyes, directly at the credenza. No head movement, just the eyes, a fast once-over, only captured in the slowness of one-eighth speed.

  The second piece of the puzzle lay in the phone tap. From the logs, it appears that Pierce had the NSA tap all of the Reidiers’ various phones after Kerek’s first phone call to the Director’s office while still in Chicago. Coordinating the phone-tap recordings with NB footage facilitated a triangulation, so to speak, of, for lack of a better term, the Credenza Phenomenon.

  I don’t care what Q Net did. They’re in the Stone Age as far as I’m concerned. And Bell’s paper disproves practically all of your . . .

  Again, the prosaic proved obfuscating. It took over a dozen listen-throughs to finally hear the forest from the trees. The problem was the dialogue. I kept focusing on the dialogue, homing in on the Department underling’s response to Reidier’s complaint. I spent hours dissecting the scientific vernacular, mining my limited knowledge of teleportation and X-rays and learning about Loschmidt echoes. All of it seemed scientifically sound. Nothing should have agitated Reidier, especially the credenza in the corner of the dining room, not to mention the fact that, ultimately, Reidier won the argument.

  Once content proved a dead end, I refocused on form. There was something in the tone of the argument, hunting for subtext within the delivery of the jargon. Perhaps there was some complex passive-aggressiveness or habitual patronization that drove Reidier crazy. Of course, in order to determine that, it was necessary to listen to a litany of conversations between Reidier and this specific lackey, as well as Reidier and a number of other Department minions. These were played so many times that, at
a certain point, they ceased to be words to me and simply became a sequence of sounds that danced up and down the scale, punctuated by grunts. I became the Jane Goodall of quantum engineers.

  Nothing. At most, the conversation was laden with frustration, sighs, and impatience. And again, nothing that would elicit such a specific and peculiar behavior from Reidier.

  I don’t care what Q Net did. They’re in the Stone Age as far as I’m concerned. And Bell’s paper disproves practically all of your . . .

  Finally, frustrated and convinced I had fabricated the whole episode, I gave up. Reidier, the credenza, it was just a quirk in manner. Just one of the many nonsensical behaviors we all manifest erratically throughout our day. There was nothing of significance there other than my own need to infuse the footage with meaning. I’m a model reader who wanted to warp the text into her own narrative.*

  * * *

  * Umberto Eco would be so proud.

  * * *

  I gave up. I went to the liquor store, where I purchased bottles of Pinot Noir and a Chianti. On the ride home, I did not think. Or rather, I chased thoughts from my mind with Holst. His Enigma Variations were in the car’s CD player. I kept #IV (Allegro di Molto) on repeat, loud.

  Upon returning home, I brought my meditative music with me inside. The stereo swallowed the CD and filled my living room with Variation IX Nimrod (Adagio). I left my cell phone and keys on top of one of the speakers, and retrieved a corkscrew and glass chalice.

  The epiphany was almost comical. As I finally relaxed into the back of the sofa, Nimrod reached its loudest crescendo, and the moment the wine hit my lips, a quiet, static feedback, like a warped Morse code, scratched across the speakers, briefly distorting Nimrod’s notes,

  kwuh/tck/tck

  dee-de-de

  then disappeared, and my phone, sitting atop the speaker, buzzed to life with a text from my son.

  In vino veritas indeed.

  I was out of my seat before I even realized my realization. I flicked the stereo off on my rush to the study.

  The computer took an eternity to stir from its slumber. My fingernails tapped their own impatient Morse code on the glass desk.

  Finally, the audio recording was playing in tandem with the NB footage.

  Reidier was circling the table: I don’t care what Q Net did. They’re in the Stone Age as far as I’m concerned. And Bell’s paper disproves practically all of your . . .

  And there it was on the cell tap, that same quiet burst of warped Morse code that results from the radio signal of a cellular phone interfering with the magnetic field of speakers—even mobile phone speakers. Except cell phones don’t interfere with themselves. But it’s there with every lap Reidier completes. Every time he passes the credenza, there’s feedback, perfectly prompting Reidier’s hiccups in pace, his subtle head tilts of confusion.

  It’s the static.

  It’s the interference.

  It’s the nanobots.

  And Reidier knows it. Knows it with a glance, while leaning against the archway, not lost in thought at all, rather instead strategically trying to avoid detection while risking one last evaluative glance at the nanobot-coated credenza.

  Adapted from the surveillance footage taken in Rear Admiral Wisecup’s “Secure Room” at NAVSTA, from the file of the Office of the Director of the Strategic Technology, Donald Pierce; February 14, 2007.111

  “Have you ever heard of a railgun, Professor Reidier?” Pierce asks, the excitement in his tone quite clear.

  “It’s an artillery gun powered by electricity in order to harness immense electromagnetic fields. Basically it’s a monorail on steroids, only instead of moving a train, it’s hurling ballistic projectiles.”

  “So much for State secrets,” Pierce elbows Wisecup knowingly. Wisecup nods and half laughs, half grunts in response.

  “Railguns are hardly secrets, Pierce,” Reidier notes. “Louis FauchonVilleplee invented his electrical cannon almost a century ago. Scientists have been developing ways to use the tech to launch aircraft or supplies into space. And the British successfully weaponized it the late ’90s.”

  Pierce nods. “That’s all public knowledge. What isn’t is that DARPA and the ONR—”

  “ONR?” Reidier asks.

  “Office of Naval Research,” Wisecup offers.

  “The Department and the Navy have been hard at work down at NSW, Naval Surface Warfare Center Dahlgren Division, building next-generation prototypes.” Pierce leans back in his chair and lets his reveal sink in.

  Reidier seems nonplussed.

  “We’ve been able to procure one of them and have already set about adapting it into what we think will be a viable energy source for your work,” Pierce completed his thought.

  Reidier scratches at his cheek, sucking in his lips a little. Finally, he sighs and says, “It won’t work. Not enough energy.”

  Wisecup guffaws, “The last prototype test hurled a projectile at ██ miles per hour over a distance of ██ miles in under six minutes. █████ megajoules of energy packs a hell of a wallop as far as I’m concerned. How much more goddamn energy do you need?”

  Reidier leans back in his chair and says, “More.”

  Wisecup lets out a deep belly laugh and slaps his palm on his armrest. “Now that’s the kind of bravado I can get behind. More!”

  Unlike his colleague, Pierce is far from amused. His forehead wrinkled with worry. “What’s your concern, Kerek?”

  Reidier proceeds, assuming the same voice and mannerisms he exhibits while lecturing. “Developing ████ megajoules of electromotive force would require █████ X 10██ electron volts. Converting █████ megajoules to teslas is ██ X 10█. The Russians produced 2.8 X 104 teslas in a laboratory in Sarov in 1998. Unless I’m wrong, that kind of capability doesn’t come anywhere close. Even if it did, it wouldn’t be enough.”

  Pierce visibly relaxes, a smile even makes its way to his lips. “Your calculations are spot on. I agree with you that current railguns, what the British developed, are completely inadequate for our purposes. At best, it gets us halfway there. And the last thing we want would be to only achieve half of a teleport.”

  Both Reidier and Wisecup listen to Pierce with a bemused curiosity. “I’m afraid that Rear Admiral Wisecup has inadvertently misled you.”

  Wisecup shifts, uncomfortably. He does not know where Pierce is going with this and clearly does not like the implication of being mistaken or deceitful.

  Pierce continues, “The ██████ megajoules of wallop was what made headlines last December, but that was, well, what made headlines, and completely consistent with current railgun technology. At the Department, we’re not very interested in current tech. It’s why we’re so interested in you. What we’ve been tinkering with, well, our nonpublic prototypes involve linking several very large ████ ███ together. As a result, we generate about ████ X 10██ electron volts, plus or minus a few. Correct me if I’m wrong, but that’ll probably do the trick, no?”

  Reidier rests his elbows on the table, presses his palms together as if in prayer, and rests his head against his hands, his fingers pressing against either side of his nose against his brow, his thumbs hooking under his chin. Reidier nods and exhales audibly. “Yes, that would be enough. But where would we get that kind of power? Do we need to relocate again?”

  Pierce shakes his head. “Not at all. That’s where the Rear Admiral and his Navy come in so handy. Your adapted railgun and power source are already en route.”

  Reidier follows Pierce’s gaze out the window. “A battleship?”

  “How’s a goddamn aircraft carrier sound to you?” Wisecup grins at Reidier. “The USS ████████ should give you a good goddamn wallop, eh?”

  Reidier nods, almost in a daze. Wisecup claps Pierce on the back. The two government men are pleased with the success and grandiosity of their solution. In their self-adulation, however, what they fail to see is the sl
ightest drop in Reidier’s shoulders. Perhaps it’s just an unconscious release after the minor confrontation, or perhaps it’s indicative of a psychological capitulation. Regardless of the motive, the sentiment is clear: resignation.

  “So where are we going to put this floating battery?” Reidier asks.

  Wisecup gestures out the window that looks out on NAVSTA’s bay and piers.

  Reidier turns and takes it in. “Your base?”

  “Look out a little further, just across the water,” Pierce offers.

  Reidier leans toward the window.

  “We got you your own personal little mad-scientist island outpost,” Wisecup boasts and points.

  The three men stand up and approach the window to take it in.

  Upon magnification of the footage, while pixilated, the location is undeniably recognizable. Across the water from the conference room sits Gould Island.*

  * * *

  * Beyond negotiating a price with the lobsterman, I still wasn’t talking to Lorelei. I sat on an old, dirty cooler at the stern of the boat, while she made small talk with the captain.

  He was going on about how he remembered it, in his heavy Rhode Island accent, a tongue allergic to Rs. Rememb’d the buhds maw than the fish. Yes suh. Looked like a swa’aw’m . . . A fawhg of feathuhs and feedin’. You could hee-yah theah squawks all the way back on the docks.

  The fish, though, well they wuh ev’y’wheah. Well, at least ev’y’wheah within this, ya no, radius of death ‘round the gnaw-thin tip of thuh island. Damndest thing I ev-uh so’ah. Yes suh. The wheah’dest pot though, was that some of ‘em, was actually cooked. Nevah seen anythin’ like it. No suh. Cooked fish floating up from the depths.

  I listened, a little, out of the corner of my ear. But mostly, I just kept going over this Tracy Kidder bit I remembered: “In fiction, believability may have nothing to do with reality or even plausibility. In nonfiction, it has everything to do with those things. I think that the nonfiction writer’s fundamental job is to make what is true believable.”