Point B (a teleportation love story)

by Drew Magary

  Copyright © 2020 Drew Magary

  All rights reserved

  The characters and events portrayed in this book are fictitious. Any similarity to real persons, living or dead, is coincidental and not intended by the author.

  No part of this book may be reproduced, or stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without express written permission of the publisher.

  ISBN-13: 9781234567890

  ISBN-10: 1477123456

  Cover design by: Art Painter

  Library of Congress Control Number: 2018675309

  Printed in the United States of America

  Point B

  (a teleportation love story)

  Drew Magary

  This one goes out to all you crazy kids out there

  Once you give the gift away

  There's nothing you can do about it

  Nothing that you do or say

  Can change the way I feel about it

  -Sugar, 1995

  PROLOGUE—ROCKVILLE, MD

  Sarah Huff needed a gun. A gun of her own. She wouldn’t tell her mom about it. She wouldn’t tell Anna about it. If they knew she had a gun, they would just freak out and make the whole situation worse. She went to a strung-out 22-year-old named Bryce, who loitered around the same abandoned corner in the free zones of Rockville every day, selling black market shit to anyone who needed it. Bryce had weed. Bryce had pills. Bryce had prepaid PortPhones. And, upon special request, Bryce could get you a weapon if you agreed to re-connect with him at a secondary pin of his choice.

  So that’s what Sarah did. She found Bryce hanging out by the railroad crossing and asked him for help.

  “What kind of help?” Bryce asked her.

  “Someone’s harassing me,” she told him.

  “Someone you know?”

  “I’d rather not say.”

  “So just port away from him.”

  “No matter where I port, he can find me. Even behind a good portwall.”

  “That’s not possible, kiddo.”

  “It is for him,” Sarah told Bryce, “and I’m the one who should be calling you kiddo. Can you help or not? I got fifty bucks.”

  “I can get you a piece of shit for that much.”

  “Do you have something nicer that’s still a decent price?”

  “You’ve never bought a gun before, have you?”

  “No.”

  “Well, any gun you buy for fifty bucks is gonna be a piece of shit, but I can get you a piece of shit.”

  “Deal.”

  He took out his phone and sent her a pinned location.

  “Go here at 3:55 and I’ll give you the goods,” he told her.

  She spent the rest of that day sweating the clock. After getting the gun, she would have to port home to stash it, and then port to San Francisco to punch in to her hostessing job at 4:30pm sharp. It was gonna be tight. When the clock finally hit 3:55pm, she took out her phone, hit PORT, took a step, and felt the shiver.

  Now she was in Houghton, MI. The Upper Peninsula. A tiny peninsula on that peninsula, naked to the violent winds sweeping in from Lake Superior. She was standing in a small, beached cove along the lake’s canal, water so clear and clean that you could see twenty feet to the bottom. You could even drink it straight. Bryce was waiting for her with a paper bag.

  “Is this where you always do pickups?” she asked him.

  “I have favorite drop spots. Other dealers always pick Tahiti or some other tropical joint. I pride myself on being a bit smarter than that.”

  “It’s nice here.”

  “Who cares. Where’s the money?”

  She handed Bryce the cash. By the time she opened the bag, he was already gone, sending himself wherever his whims felt like taking him. Inside the bag she saw a pistol so old and rusty, it looked like it belonged on a mantelpiece. Then she realized what she had forgotten.

  “There are no bullets in this thing!” she texted Bryce.

  “Bullets are $20 each. :)”

  “You bastard.”

  She ported home and scrounged up the extra money. One slow night’s worth of hostessing tips was enough for two lousy bullets. She ported home with the loaded pistol and scoured her room for a place to hide it. Her mom, Sandy, liked tidying up the house whenever the girls were out, so Sarah stashed the gun on the top shelf of her closet, behind a red fleece blanket that hadn’t moved from its spot in over eight years, remarkably avoiding Sandy’s more fastidious tendencies. There was no telling if Mrs. Huff would, in a fit of inspiration, go rummaging through that closet one day, hunting for new items to donate to Goodwill. But as hiding spots went, it was the best Sarah could do for now. Sandy Huff had a gun, but only she was allowed to wield it. Her daughters weren’t supposed to have one.

  That night, after Sarah had finished her shift the at MyClub in San Francisco, she came home to Maryland, brushed her teeth, put on her t-shirt and shorts, slowly opened the closet door (it creaked; doors always betrayed her like that) and felt around that top shelf in the dark. Anna, Sarah’s little sister, was fast asleep in the room next door with their mom. At last, Sarah felt her hand wrap around the duct-taped butt of the pistol, and carefully slipped it under her pillow. She wasn’t comfortable with it so close by. Then again, it had been a long while since she had been comfortable at all.

  There was no telling when the man would port into her bedroom. Sometimes he came every night. Sometimes he’d let a whole week pass before appearing, a tall dark shroud at the foot of her bed with his hair parted down the center, clad in khaki pants and a black t-shirt with a crude emblem on the front:

  Sarah had tinkered over and over with improving her mom’s portwall, moving the router around to help keep the signal clear, but it was no use. It wasn’t like the portwall they had at work. If you wanted a decent portwall, you had to pay WallTech for one, and they didn’t build them for just anybody. And this ghoul could slither past any of them, even the good ones. Even when Sarah spent the night elsewhere, there he was again.

  In a way, Sarah preferred the nights when the man showed up. Once he came and went, she knew he wouldn’t be back for the rest of the night. She could trust the silence again. She hated the silence before his arrival, knowing it was mere prelude. Anna and her mom rarely woke up from the portclap because, like everyone else living in the free zones, they wore earplugs at night. On the nights the man didn’t show up, Sarah would just lie there, dreading his arrival until the sun rose. She felt him, at all times. Even if he was on the other side of the Earth, she knew he was but a push of a touch screen away. His presence permeated the room like a lingering scent.

  Tonight, she had the alarm clock turned away from her on the nightstand, so that she wouldn’t be tempted to sneak a peek. It didn’t matter. Every time she felt a coming wave of dreams, she would think of the man and be jerked back into consciousness, like a dog on a leash. He occupied her headspace fully. The best she could do was idle herself by manufacturing distracting thoughts: mental chew toys for her brain to go fetch. Tonight she thought about friends, and about Anna, and about music, and about movies, and about the gigantic, AI-enabled smartwall that the government was supposedly trying (and failing) to build around the contiguous forty-eight states. But she was only able to hold her brain off for so long before the man was back inside her.

  Finally, after Sarah had been trapped in an insomniac’s purgatory for hours, the troll ported into her room, the troll ported into Sarah’s room, the blowback from his arrival sweeping over her in an angry gust. He loomed over her bed. She could hear him breathing. God, she hated that sound. It filled the bedr
oom with a kind of awful hunger. As with every other visit, he was carrying a butcher knife on him, hewn from a single piece of reinforced steel. He had never used it on her. She figured he enjoyed the threat of the knife more than actually stabbing people with it, although maybe he’d change his mind about that sometime. The man also never touched Sarah when he ported in, but he may as well have. He may as well have taken a bit drill and bored a hole clean through her body.

  He held out his free hand and whispered, “You know the drill.”

  She tossed her PortPhone to him.

  “If you have any other cameras on right now, I’ll know.”

  “I know,” Sarah told him.

  “Good, then we can begin. You’re a pig. Kill yourself.” That was the central message of every visit. Kill yourself.

  She sat up and pointed the gun at him.

  “What is that?” he asked.

  “You leave me alone and never come back.”

  “Awwww, little piggy’s got a gun, does she? Tell you what, sweetheart: Kill yourself with that. Be free.”

  “I’ll shoot you, I swear to God.”

  “And then what? Then you go to jail forever, and then you kill yourself anyway. Save yourself the headache.”

  “Why are you doing this to me?”

  “Why not? The world would be better off if you died and went to Pig Heaven.”

  “I’ll port somewhere new and you’ll never find me.”

  “Sure I will. I’ll always find you.”

  “LEAVE ME ALONE!”

  Even when she screamed, no one could hear her. The rest of the world was entirely at peace, regardless of her torment. She was all alone with her demon.

  The man locked the bedroom door, then turned and stood in front of Sarah defiantly.

  “Do it,” he commanded. He was staying longer than usual. The gun only seemed to please him. He was so unfazed by its presence that he set his butcher knife down on her desk and gave it a spin, for kicks. “Go on.”

  Sarah began to cry. “Please just leave me alone.”

  “There’s only one way to ensure that I will,” he said calmly. “Pull the trigger and you won’t remember I existed. You won’t even remember you existed. Don’t you want that freedom, dear? When you die you’ll be untouchable: the god you were always meant to be. People will say only the best things about you once you’re gone. It’ll be so much nicer than what they say about you now.”

  “I’LL FUCKING KILL YOU!”

  “Sarah?”

  That was Sarah’s mom, stirring next door. But by now it was too late. The man was right. She’d never be free of him, no matter what she did or where she went. He’d always know where she was, and he could slip past any portwall. How could he do that? No one else could. And if she killed him, well then he’d really be with her forever now, wouldn’t he? You couldn’t escape anyone anymore. Not in this world.

  “Mom,” Sarah shouted calmly. “Mom and Anna, I love you both so much.”

  “SARAH?!”

  She put the gun to her chin.

  ONE YEAR LATER

  DRUSKIN GATE

  Anna Huff wasn’t going anywhere. She ported in next to the gargantuan Penske truck that was parked outside Druskin Gate, grabbed her suitcase—a stubborn, lumbering thing that froze in place whenever it came into contact with any uneven surface—from the back, and tugged it down the loading ramp. Sandy, smothering her daughter properly, ported in barely an inch away from Anna, the force from the blowback of displaced air nearly knocking Anna over in front of everyone.

  “Mom.”

  “Sorry.”

  Sandy Huff dutifully followed Anna toward the gate, still too close, spitting out a stream of reminders so long that Anna couldn’t even remember which reminder came first.

  “Now, you have to check in before you can go to your room.”

  “I know, mom.”

  “Are you hungry? We could eat before we go in. There’s a pizza place nearby that is getting absolute raves. We could even go hog wild and skip over to Italy for a minute. We’ve still got our passports out.”

  “I’m not hungry.”

  “Let me take a picture of you.”

  “Please God, no.”

  There were a handful of armed troops standing around on the street to patrol this first day of school, checking everyone who ported in to make sure they were wearing their passport card lanyards. One of the soldiers—seemingly young enough to be a Druskin student—flipped Anna’s over using the barrel of his rifle. She hated when they did that.

  “I’m a U.S. citizen,” Anna insisted.

  “Sorry ma’am, but we do have to check.”

  “With your gun? You have hands, don’t you? Or are you just so in love with that thing you gotta stroke it all day long?”

  Her mom intervened.

  “Oh my goodness sir, I’m so sorry for my daughter.”

  “Why are you apologizing to him?” Anna demanded to know.

  “Because he has a gun. Can you wait until we’ve been here for longer than thirty seconds to start being a pain in the tushie?”

  She yanked Anna away from the guard. There was a slipstream of other kids flowing through Druskin Gate. They were part of Anna’s porting group, each group scheduled to arrive in 15-minute intervals on Orientation Day. If anyone ported in earlier, Druskin officials would smile passive-aggressively and make them port right back to where they came from. Oh, you seem to be mistaken as to when you were supposed to port in, aren’t you? They were fun like that.

  Anna’s mom wasn’t about to let her join the procession through the gate just yet, nor did she seem to care that every other student in their porting group was going to reach check-in before them. She was perfectly content to hold Anna hostage. The longer the two of them stood out there, the more self-conscious Anna became. Yep, she was the one with the overbearing mother. Everyone have a good look.

  “Can we please go?” she begged Sandy.

  “Let me just get one more photo of us together.”

  “Fine.”

  Anna posed for the selfie but didn’t smile. She had the sullen 17-year-old look down, and she was quite proud of it. The world had never seen such dramatic indifference.

  “Oh, Anna. That was awful. Let’s do it again.”

  “You said one.”

  “One good one.”

  “How do you know that wasn’t good?”

  Sandy had heard enough.

  “You know Anna, you agreed to come here. You agreed to be held back a year to enroll. I never forced this on you. You know what a fantastic opportunity this is. Look around you. This place is flawless.”

  Even with the pallid skies, it was true. Beyond the wrought iron gate Anna could see a table of cheery Orientation leaders, and past them a gentle hill sloping down to a perfectly manicured quad crisscrossed with paths, like stripes on the Union Jack. Weeds were nonexistent. It already felt more stable at Druskin than anywhere else Anna went. Grounded. It was nice to know she wouldn’t be sleeping in a new ShareSpace every six weeks. She remembered the day she got into this place, when admissions chair Mr. Glenn ported directly to their ShareSpace to give Anna the news in person, and to present her with a formal acceptance letter that she swore to keep forever.

  “Mom, I really do appreciate this.”

  “Do you?” asked Mrs. Huff. “It’s safe here.”

  “I get it. But I don’t know if I wanna be safe.”

  “Yes, you do.”

  “What do you want me to say? Do you want me to set off sparklers and have a party?”

  “No. I want you to recognize hope when you see it.”

  Anna sighed and turned back to the gate, which was flanked with Druskin’s own security guards—all of them equipped with enough firearms to raid an aircraft carrier—and had a big sign that cried out STUDENTS AND FACULTY ONLY BEYOND THIS POINT. Port marketers blew in for a last-second chance to hawk supplies, music subscriptions, and OTC stimulants to incoming students and their harr
ied families.

  There was a bin twenty yards to the left of the gate, where students were expected to drop their PortPhones off for the entirety of their stay on campus grounds. Behind the bin was a brick wall that stretched twenty feet high and ran the entire perimeter of Druskin campus, over 600 acres. It was a gorgeous structure, in its own daunting way. The bricks were spotless, like they had been scrubbed daily with a toothbrush. Druskin brochures boasted that the school’s portwall cost $1 billion and was utterly impenetrable. The physical wall itself probably cost them nothing by comparison.

  Sandy walked next to the PortPhone deposit bin. “Are you ready?”

  Anna saw other students walking to that box like they were going to view a corpse at a wake. But Anna was ready. They could take her phone, but she’d still sort out a way to go where she wanted, yes she would.

  Just then, a coterie of adults blew by the Huffs. They were dressed in fine Italian clothing, all of it custom-tailored, all of it fitting with subatomic precision. Other grownups ported in around the mob: family members, friends, even a TV cameraman or two. They were like popcorn popping, the blowback from porting jostling them all around, like they were all trapped in a scrum with a gang of invisible hooligans. Anna tried to make out the center of the mob but could only spot a sharp bob of black hair. A teenage boy holding a bouquet of tulips that each suffered from bad posture ported in and desperately tried to muscle his way into the mob, shouting, “Lara! LARA!” He seemed desperate and miserable, clutching the flowers so hard he may as well have been strangling them. Seeing that pitiful boy was the first time all day that Anna smiled.

  Once the horde reached the portwall, POP POP POP they went, leaving quick as they came with nothing but rude thunderclaps in their wake. Now Anna could see the object of their affections: a girl her age, with an ink-black bob that looked like it had been cut with a diamond laser. The girl took a look back from the gate and Anna could see her in full: all polished cheeks and green eyes. Now Anna wasn’t in such a dickish mood. She could have sworn she had seen this Lara girl before, but couldn’t quite place her. Regardless, now she wanted to go through Druskin Gate very much. She wanted to go wherever that Lara was going.