by Paul Neilan
A red-haired girl made her way from the bar to the stage.
“Nobody talks about Schrödinger’s daughter,” she said into the microphone.
Daughter: Dad! Dad?
Schrödinger: I’m in here, honey!
Daughter: Oh. Hey. Have you, uh—
Schrödinger: What is it, sweetheart?
Daughter: Have you seen my cat?
Schrödinger: Hmm?
Daughter: My cat. I can’t find him anywhere.
Schrödinger: Oh, well now. Why don’t you take a look in that box over there on the table?
Daughter: Why would he be in that box? Did you put him in there?
Schrödinger: Me? In a manner of speaking, I suppose you could say that—
Daughter: Can you just tell me? Is he in there or isn’t he?
Schrödinger: It’s a lot more complicated than that, pumpkin. You see—
Daughter: Dad! Please don’t make me look! Just tell me, is my cat dead?
Schrödinger: That’s entirely up to you, sweetie. Why don’t you open the box and find out?
Daughter: What the fuck is wrong with you? Why do you keep doing this to me? I hate science! Buy me a fucking dog! Mom!!!
“Always with the dead cats, every night,” Charlie Horse said as she stepped out of the spotlight. “That science shit never lands. Now, about my fucking Danish.”
“Like I told you—”
“Not this fucking guy again,” Charlie Horse said as a kid with a bald head bobbed and weaved his way towards the stage, ducking imaginary punches. In the spotlight his sweating eyebrows were a crude arc of surprise, drawn on in thick mascara, already dripping. He held a screen up to the microphone and a beat started. An old song, “Kiss” by Prince. The kid waited, nodding along, saying “Ish ya boy…CMB Roach…throwin it back…phi ain’t free…” before screeching in a strangled falsetto.
Ya don’t have to be rich
but it fuckin helps
Ya don’t have to be cool
just be your spooky self
Ain’t no particular time
cuz it all exists
Quantum mechanics was a kidney stone
in Einstein’s…dick
“Fucking Versers,” Charlie Horse said as the kid stepped offstage, eyebrows running down his face. “Vow of silence my ass. And you, Harrigan, speak up. Where the fuck is my Danish?”
The next guy made his way to the stage.
I stood from the table.
“See you around, Charlie,” I said.
“That’s right. Back to work, bitch! You’re on my fucking clock now!” he said to my back.
I went to the bar.
The red-haired girl, the Rev, and CMB Roach were waiting for the bartender.
“I thought Eddie was going up tonight,” the red-haired girl said. “You seen him?”
“I ain’t seen E Lompy nowheres,” CMB Roach said. “Nohow.”
“That joke-stealing hack,” the Rev said. “He knows better than to show his face. I’d knock his chin off if he had one.”
“Eddie Lompoc?” I said.
“Yeah,” the red-haired girl said, turning to me. “You know him?”
“I used to,” I said. “He come around here much?”
“Every once in a while,” the red-haired girl said. “He blows through to rip off some material, then ducks back out to play the ponies. Some place on Wilshire.”
“The Lonesome Palm,” the Rev said, leaning over the bar. “Don’t ever use their men’s room. The joint really lives up to its name.”
“I love the trotters! Like little baby charioteers!” the red-haired girl said. She sounded just like Lompoc. Pulled one of his faces too. “Is Eddie a friend of yours?”
“I wouldn’t go that far,” I said.
“How about him?” the red-haired girl said.
I followed her eyes to Charlie Horse’s table. He was leaned back in his chair, watching me with a malevolent grin.
“He’s something else entirely,” I said.
* * *
I took a walk down Wilshire, headed to The Lonesome Palm. They had horses, dogs, cockfights, Greco-Roman gladiators, Russian roulette, anything you could ask for from anywhere in the world, piped in on their screens. A feed for every fix. It was a cesspool, full of gamblers and grifters and worse, all looking for a score. The kind of place Eddie Lompoc would call home.
I went through the door, past clumps of men clustered in front of glowing screens, clutching their betting slips as they cursed their losing fights and races. I saw Eddie Lompoc in a corner, holding forth to a guy in a porkpie hat.
“They say when God closes a door He opens a window,” Eddie Lompoc said. “I do the same thing whenever I take a shit in someone’s house. And that’s what God’s doing. He slammed the door in your face and now He’s taking a big fat dump on your life. But at least the window’s open, right? What a lovely breeze! Isn’t that nice? And don’t you worry about the smell. When He’s finished, He’ll light a match. It’s called hell.”
“I don’t get it,” the guy said.
“Don’t worry,” Eddie Lompoc said. “You will.”
When he saw me his face changed, bug eyes bulging, but he didn’t look unhappy.
“Harrigan?” Eddie Lompoc said, reaching for his chin and finding nothing. “Do mine eyes deceive me? The dead arose and appeared to many! How long’s it been, man?”
“You’ve been talking, Eddie,” I said. “I can’t have that.”
The porkpie hat drifted into the crowd as Lompoc blustered.
“Woah, woah, what?” he said, showing me his palms. “It’s me, Harrigan. You know I would never—”
“Stan Volga,” I said.
“Who?” he said.
“Stan Volga,” I said again.
I looked at his face. It didn’t show me anything.
“Listen, Harrigan, I don’t know nothing about a Stan Volga. Hand to God,” he said, touching his chest. “But seeing you here brings back the old times, doesn’t it?”
“I got out of the business, Eddie,” I said.
“So did I, hand to God,” he said, giving me a wink. “But I got an angle you might be interested in. A line on that new outfit, fvrst chvrch mvlTverse.”
I didn’t like Eddie Lompoc. In the business you worked with people because they were good at what they did. The rest of it didn’t matter. Whatever else he was lacking—a chin, a conscience, a sense of common decency—Eddie Lompoc could always sniff out an angle.
“Could be a nice bump if you’re interested,” he said. He leaned in close. “Maybe we could get together on it and—”
“That’s what you’ve been doing in Maxwells?” I said. “Working an angle?”
“You know the place, huh?” he said. “Last time I was in there some old coot took a swing at me. Said I was stealing his God jokes. Like he owns the Almighty. That reminds me, they say when God closes a door He opens a window—”
“I heard it the first time,” I said. “What’s it got to do with Charlie Horse?”
“Charlie Horse?” he said. “Yeah, I’ve seen him around. We haven’t had any formal discussions or nothing, but if he wants to throw me a bone I’m open, you know what I mean? It’s who you know these days. Times are tough all over.”
“Stan Volga,” I said, one more time.
“Don’t mean a thing to me, Harrigan. I’m giving it to you straight,” Eddie Lompoc said. I believed him. “Sounds to me like somebody dropped a name they knew you’d recognize. A dime in an old pay phone.” He looked at me sideways, squinting his big bug eyes. “Sounds like you got set up.”
sunday
I was standing in my apartment, looking at the map of the world, thinking about how far south I could get when I heard a knock on the door.
I opened it, saw her standing in the downpour in a translucent vinyl raincoat, frosted ice blue.
“I’m sorry to bother you,” she said. “Are you Harrigan?”
“I am,” I said.
<
br /> “My name is Moira,” she said. “Moira Volga. I believe you know my husband?”
“Come on in,” I said.
I took her coat, hung it on the hook by the door. There was rain in her dark hair. She ran her hands through it, let it fall.
“I don’t mean to barge in on you like this,” she said.
“I don’t mind, Mrs. Volga,” I said.
“Call me Moira, please,” she said.
“I will,” I said. “I’d offer you some champagne, but your husband drank it all on me.”
“That sounds like him,” she said, not smiling. “Do you have anything stronger?”
I kept a bottle of whiskey on the shelf for emergencies. It seemed like we were headed towards one.
I came back with two glasses. She was sitting at the table.
“Do you mind if I smoke?” she said.
“Not if I can steal one,” I said.
She flicked her lighter as I poured. Her mouth ran longways into her cheeks, almost too long for her narrow face, but not quite. She took the lit cigarette from her parted lips, made it appear in her other hand for me like a magic trick, offhandedly intimate as she took the glass.
“What do you do here, Harrigan?” she said.
“I live here, Moira,” I said.
“No, I mean, why did my husband come to see you?” she said.
“You’d have to ask him that,” I said.
“I can’t,” she said. “Stan’s missing.”
I took a drink.
“He hasn’t come home,” she said. “He’s not answering his screen. I’ve tried the hospitals—”
“Have you gone to the police?” I said.
“No,” she said.
“Why not?” I said.
She drew on her cigarette. I watched the smoke curl to the ceiling. Her hand was trembling, slightly. She had long fingers that ended in chewed-down nails. She wasn’t wearing a ring.
“He’s into something,” Moira Volga said. “Isn’t he.”
“How did you know he came to see me?” I said.
“I read his datebook,” she said. “I know I shouldn’t have, but I was so worried—”
“What did it say?” I said.
“Just your name and address,” she said. “He works late some nights. Most nights, actually.”
She took a drink.
“Sometimes he works straight through, stays at the office,” she said. “I didn’t think anything of it. Not really. Not at first. But now—”
“Where does he work?” I said.
“The Accelerator, 377 Highland Avenue,” Moira Volga said. “He’s in pod eighty-nine.”
“The Zodiac Accelerator?” I said.
It was the incubator for Zodiac’s early-stage projects, the old garage model for tech firms on a larger, more systemized scale. Where ideas were bought and funded and fertilized, before finding their way to Grid. Grid itself had been born at The Accelerator, back in the early days. Zodiac was always searching for its next big play.
I refilled Moira’s glass. Mine too.
“Is that what this is about?” she said. “Zodiac?”
“I’m still working out what this is about,” I said.
Through the veil of smoke her eyes were pale gray, the color of poured concrete. There was rain on the window.
“I can pay you,” she said, reaching into her purse. “Maybe not much, but—”
“Your husband’s all paid up,” I said. “I’ll take a look into it.”
“But you won’t tell me why he was here?” she said.
I looked at her.
She held her glass out. I clinked it. Took a drink.
* * *
A stepladder under your arm gets you into any building. Security at The Accelerator was light. There were always symposiums and Grid talks being held, creative types roaming and free-flowing, with new construction underway on one of the wings.
“Maintenance,” I said and they waved me right through. I made my way around the sprawling circular complex, bright-lit hallways like airport runways with polished chrome lining the walls in streaks, tentacles casting fractured reflections around every corner. Bots roamed the floors, cleaning or couriering or scanning. Every pod was filled with coders and entrepreneurs, startup mercenaries looking to break big on Grid. The pods themselves were shaped like eggs—gleaming white walls dimpled and soundproofed—two desks to a pod, separated by low curving partitions.
It took me a while to find #89. I blocked the entrance with the ladder, sat down at Stan Volga’s desk. There was a dark screen on the wall in front of me. A half-dead bottle of vodka rolled in the bottom drawer when I opened it. Nothing else. No sign of what he was working on. Where he went. I was about to crack the booze when a head came over the partition.
“Stan?” he said. “Stan!”
He had curly hair and bloodshot eyes, a few days’ worth of stubble on his anemic face.
“You’re not Stan,” he said, more mystified than suspicious.
“I’m with Maintenance,” I said, jerking my thumb back at the ladder. “Have you seen Stan Volga lately?”
“No. Not for a few days, I think,” he said, blinking too fast, like the system was about to crash. “What day is it?”
“Sunday,” I said.
“Oh, it’s the weekend already? And it’s already over?” he said. “I don’t really have a sense of time anymore.”
He rubbed the stubble on his face like he was trying to scrub it off. Kept blinking.
“What kind of work does Stan do?” I said.
“Stan?” he said. “He does encryption. All kinds of password breaking and security and—wait. Who are you again?”
“Harrigan,” I said. “You?”
“I’m Anton,” he said, but he didn’t seem too sure about it.
“Any idea where Stan might be?” I said.
“No,” he said, thinking about it. “No, but. Can I ask you a question?”
I unscrewed the cap from the vodka bottle, took a pull.
“What do you think when I say Mirror Mirror?” Anton said.
It sounded familiar, like a song I’d heard somewhere.
“Mirror mirror on the wall, who’s the fairest of them all?” I said. “Snow White.”
“Exactly!” he said, excited. “That’s exactly right! And completely wrong!”
He came around the partition, ducked under the ladder blocking the entrance and stood right behind me.
“Everyone says Mirror Mirror, but the actual line is Magic mirror on the wall, who’s the fairest of them all? Mirror Mirror is a collective mismemory, like a shared delusion,” Anton said, hands flitting as he spoke. “It’s different in the original text of the story, but all anyone cares about is the movie. That’s what they remember, even though they remember it wrong. But if everyone remembers it that way, isn’t that how it happened? Two wrongs don’t make a right, but what about ten? Or a million? A billion? At some point, a statistically significant number of wrongs do make a right, don’t they?”
I took another pull from the bottle.
“Come with me,” he said, beckoning me around the partition as he ducked back under the ladder. “I’ll show you.”
Anton’s desk was a mess. Post-its were strung like tiny yellow flags over every surface. There were formulas, parabolas and symbols scrawled on a long whiteboard. Only the screen was unblemished, an opaque window hovering amidst the chaos.
“Go ahead and sit down,” Anton said. “Look at the screen.”
There was a fleeting gleam in the overhead piping, a quick shine as I shifted in the chair. It was a surveillance lens, embedded right above me. You wouldn’t notice it if you weren’t looking. I was.
Anton touched the screen and it began to undulate. There were waves, dark and rippling, before a single filament of light appeared and then expanded, weaving itself into the outline of a theater mask with an expression somewhere between comedy and tragedy, the faint hint of a smile playing at its edges.
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“Harrigan,” the mask said in a modulated voice. “It’s so nice to finally meet you.”
“Are we on Grid?” I said.
“No,” Anton said. “We’re completely independent. We have Zodiac access but we aren’t projecting onto Grid. It’s a closed loop.”
“What is this?” I said, looking at the glowing mask.
“This is what me and Stan have been working on. Mirror Mirror,” Anton said, beaming. “True AI. Algorithmic Intellect. Asymmetrical Intuition. Analytic Improvisation. Apocalyptic—”
“Anton,” the mask said.
“There’s nothing singular about destiny,” Anton said, his eyes shifting to the screen. “Your future’s just a function of your present and your past. Mirror Mirror collapses the variables in predictive equations and solves for the branching of time.”
“You’re saying it can tell the future?” I said.
“I’m saying for Mirror Mirror the future already—”
“Anton,” the mask said again.
“Sorry,” Anton said, blinking. “Sorry.”
“Now Harrigan,” the mask said. “Where were we?”
“Right here,” I said.
“Yes. Wherever that is,” the mask said before swirling and coalescing like ripples in a pond, revealing a reflection. There was something hypnotic in the modulated voice. I felt the undertow.
“Is this better?” the mask said, voice drifting into a female register. “I know you find it easier to talk to women than men, though you don’t say much to either.”
I had to smile at that one.
“And you’ve been fighting again,” the mask said. “Naughty naughty.”
I’d taken a beating from the Danes in the bathroom at Lekare, but I didn’t bruise easy. None of it showed.
“It reads your face,” Anton whispered. “Subcutaneously. Muscle contractions and expressions, pupil dilation, tells. There’s even—”
“Anton,” the mask said sharply.
“Sorry,” Anton said.
“You don’t like me telling you who you are, Harrigan,” the mask said, voice sliding, mesmerizing, as it dissolved into a vortex of showering sparks. “I don’t blame you. You know yourself. You are who you think you are, right? Perception is reality, isn’t it?”
