Point B (a teleportation love story)

by Drew Magary

  “Well, you wear Druskin well.” Sandy was nodding in strained enthusiasm, trying to be peppy but visibly failing.

  “Mom, what’s wrong?”

  “I’m just so happy to see you flourishing. This place is a miracle. You’re so safe here.”

  “Mom,” Anna pleaded.

  “I can’t.”

  Sandy was gripping the bars to keep from collapsing. Anna wrapped Sandy’s hands in her own.

  “There was a man who came into our ShareSpace,” Sandy confessed.

  “Oh no.”

  “It wasn’t me. He didn’t get me. There was a woman staying there, and they had broken up, but he still had the password, so he came in with a gun and…” She slid down to the ground, keeping her hands locked around the bars, a silver charm bracelet on her wrist delicately clanging against the iron. Anna slid down with her. Sandy’s jaw hung open, but she couldn’t summon the energy to scream.

  “I used to dream about places,” Sandy went on. “But you stop dreaming about them when they’re right at your fingertips. When you’ve seen what I’ve seen in those places.”

  “Mom, I love you so much.”

  “Promise me you won’t leave here.”

  “I won’t.”

  “Promise me,” Sandy begged her. “And be sincere about it.”

  “I promise.”

  “I know you’re a clever girl and I know you wanna find whoever made Sarah do what she did. But Anna? I cannot lose you.”

  “You won’t.”

  “They can heap all the work on me. All the debt. They can force me to port from one crap dishwashing job to the next and I will hold on. I know it doesn’t look it, but I swear to you I am as light and strong as bamboo.”

  “I know you are.”

  “But if you go looking for Sarah, you’ll only be wading back out into this awful shit. And you’re still my little girl.”

  “I know, Mom.”

  Anna slipped the hundred Asmi gave her from her pocket and closed Sandy’s fist tight around it.

  “What is this?” she asked Anna.

  “It’s from a friend.”

  “You don’t have to do this.”

  “Take it and get a single ShareSpace room for the night. Hell, get a SharePod and make it two nights. Get some sleep for once. You’re rotting and I can’t stick around here playing Happy Schoolgirl if I know you’re in this kind of shape.”

  “You’re right.”

  “I’m gonna take a work-study job at the dining hall.”

  “No. You focus on your classes.”

  “I can do that and still give you some relief.”

  “No. No job.”

  “What if you worked here then, Mom?”

  “Is that something you really want, Anna?”

  No. “No.”

  “I bet you don’t.”

  Sandy stood back up and wiped the tears away from her face. There were light portclaps ringing out from the countryside, but otherwise the night was calm and peaceful. No choppers. No PINE men. Only a few private armed guards on patrol. From nearby came the crisp smell of fireplace smoke piping out of a chimney.

  Sandy closed her eyes and took a big whiff. “It’s pleasant here,” she said. “Almost too pleasant.”

  “There’s a ShareSpace complex in Portsmouth with singles. Treat yourself.”

  Sandy nodded. “I know. It all sounds so nice, doesn’t it? I just wish someone had told me that when people can go anywhere, they ruin everywhere. I wish it was easier to stick to your own business, but no one ever can. At least you can here.”

  “It’s not as easy as it looks.”

  “No, but you’re anchored here. You’ll appreciate it more and more as you go along. Druskin will give you what you need. No one wants a small life anymore, but they ought to.”

  Sandy zapped away, leaving her only remaining daughter with her hands wrapped around the frozen bars of Druskin Gate. One of the guards politely tapped Anna on the shoulder, and she trudged back to Sewell as the first flurries of wintertime came swirling down on her.

  THE ACADEMY BUILDING

  She wasn’t prepared for Ethics class the next day. She hadn’t done the reading. Burton was on the other side of the table and gave her a furious topline before Father McDuff came rolling into the room, but she didn’t absorb a word of it. Meanwhile, Bamert was fondling his Druskin-issued smartphone under the table, gawking at a recent direct deposit sent to Chester Bumlee’s checking account from Asmi’s grandfather.

  “We have the scratch for the thing,” Bamert whispered to Anna.

  “I can’t go.”

  “Why not?”

  “I can’t go anywhere. We can talk about it after class.”

  “Well, this is heartrending.”

  “After. Class.”

  McDuff moseyed in, all seven feet of him. Two kids scooted over to make room for his towering frame at the round table. He smiled wide, straightened his Roman collar, and stretched out his slender arms, long enough for him to shake hands with people from across the room.

  “Good morning!” he said. The class dutifully repeated it back to him. “Now, who has thoughts on last night’s reading? Anna Huff?”

  Oh, come on.

  “Anna, what did you think of what Marcus Aurelius has to tell us?”

  “Um…” She was dead already. “Um” was big red flashing signal to the world that you hadn’t done the reading, and that your brain was devoid of working thought. Anything coming after that “um” was destined to be a grand waste of everyone’s time.

  “Father, I tried to do the reading last night but I was too upset about something.”

  Father McDuff tented his hands and gave Anna a searching gaze. “Mind if I ask what it was?”

  “All right,” Anna said. “I met my mom at Druskin Gate last night and she had just watched a man kill his wife in a ShareSpace. I couldn’t get that out of my head. It’s so messed up and awful out there, and it just makes me feel like nothing matters.”

  A bare chuckle came from the other side of the table. It was David Farris, a sophomore. He was giggling into his fist and not making much of an effort to hide it.

  “What’s so funny?” Anna asked him.

  “Nothing,” David said. “It’s just that y’all are spoiled.”

  “Excuse me? My family has no money.”

  “I ain’t talkin’ about money. I’m talkin’ about peace. Y’all are spoiled by peace.”

  “What the hell does that mean?” Anna was gonna lunge across the table and bash his head into the mahogany.

  Farris took a deep breath and rolled his shoulders. “It’s like this: you act like this kinda stuff is shocking when it’s been around you this whole time. It was just hidden from you, that’s all. Where were all the wars before porting, huh? They were in the Middle East. They were in Africa. They were in Asia. They were nice and far away, but it ain’t like that anymore. War is free now. Violence can go anywhere it likes, and that scares Americans, especially whiteass Americans, to the bone. And war is gonna stay free because ain’t no profit in peace. Y’all were fine with violence when it was in Syria or somewhere else. Now you see a person get killed next door and you go OH NO THE WORLD IS ENDING! when it’s the same shit—sorry, Father—that’s been going on everywhere else forever and ever. Y’all didn’t have to see the ugliness before, so you could just chill out and watch some prestige TV while our boys were over in some country you didn’t care about, killing folks you definitely didn’t care about. So when a bunch of those Black Shard boys—”

  “Well actually, Black Shard is a fabrication,” Burton cut in.

  “When a bunch of those Black Shard boys or whoever else come over here and tear it up, everyone freaks out and calls PINE. Then we send a bunch of Army commandos on port raids where they shoot up entire houses safely out of your line of vision. But you oughtta see ‘em do it! You oughtta see the body count PINE racks up, and you oughtta see it up close.”

  “I hate PINE,” Anna
insisted.

  “That ain’t the point. The point ain’t you. The point is America. Americans don’t say shit—sorry, Father.”

  “Thin ice, son.”

  “Sorry. Americans don’t say nothin’ when we got hate groups porting over to Afghanistan and going on shooting sprees. They only kick up a fuss when they gotta port off of South Beach because they heard a gun go off and got freaked out.”

  “Should you be able to port with a gun, though?” Anna asked him.

  “I don’t fuck with guns—double triple super sorry, Father. They gotta sort out the gun stuff. All I’m saying is that white folks were a whole lot cooler with violence when they knew where it was gonna be at.”

  Asmi, who had come in late and grabbed a seat next to Farris, began to subtly nod. There was a weight in her eyes that Anna had never seen before, and she knew in an instant that Asmi’s usual feistiness existed to beat back a very old, earned sadness.

  “He’s right,” she told Anna.

  He may be right but he still sucks. This is what you get for not doing the reading.

  “I guess you’re both right,” Anna admitted. “But David doesn’t have to be so smug about it. I was just sad a woman was murdered.”

  “Well yeah!” said Farris. “It’s sad as hell! I ain’t tryin’ to downplay that. I’m just sayin’ that I see folks out in the free zones all the time with sadass faces, actin’ like the world is ending because they saw something awful that they used to be protected from. They’re like ‘oh, nothing matters,’ and ‘oh, this world sucks,’ and blah blah blah. Sister, you can port to Tahiti! I say that’s worth making people a little more fearful and uncomfortable than they used to be. And these rich scumbags who use portwalls to keep people off of beaches and clubs and bigass country properties? I say screw those people. They deserve more danger, too. They deserve to have the world see them doing their horrible shit. I say we break in and swipe some of the Dom Perignon bottles out of their fridge.”

  “They deserve to have the world see them doing their horrible shit.” Okay David doesn’t suck anymore. He’s fucking nailed it. Anna said nothing as she filed his feedback away in a mental safe deposit box. She knew exactly who would break the silence anyway.

  Bamert pointed at Farris. “Can you teach this class?”

  Matt Raidl wasn’t having it. He waved his hand at Farris’ speech. “I think that’s all nonsense.”

  “Young man,” said McDuff, “What is that you’re wearing?” He was pointing to a cap resting in front of Raidl on the table that had a crude symbol stitched above the bill:

  “It’s just a hat,” said Raidl. “And I’m not technically wearing it right now.”

  “That’s a Conquistadors logo,” McDuff said. He wasn’t looking so jovial anymore.

  “Yeah, and?”

  “You know a fan of that site violently assaulted a girl on this campus last year, do you not?”

  “The club had nothing to do with that! Vick said we could still wear their swag!”

  “I did not agree with him on that point, nor do I now. I would ask that you leave that hat back in your dorm when you attend this class.”

  Anna did a fist pump under the table. Father McDuff knew the right side to butter his bread on.

  “It’s satire, Father,” explained Raidl. “The forums are satire. People are getting all worked up over jokes, man.”

  “That site is garbage,” said Farris.

  “Maybe you should try reading it.”

  “I have. It’s fucked up.”

  “David!”

  “Sorry, Father.”

  “I’m going to make you a shirt that says that, David. That’s one garment that won’t be banned from this class.”

  Raidl tried to change the subject. “All I know is that what David said about war was a big load.”

  “Why is that?” asked McDuff.

  “There’s gotta be order, man.”

  “Whose order?” asked Farris.

  “I dunno, just order.”

  “Why?” Farris asked him. “Why has there gotta be order? The whole of mankind’s evildoin’ comes from people trying to instill order on other people. That’s how you got slavery.”

  “Whoa whoa whoa,” Raidl said. “I wasn’t saying slavery is good. Don’t put that in my piehole. I just want people protected.”

  “Which people?”

  “Everyone!”

  “Don’t work that way, quarterback. And I don’t think you or your hilarious Conquistador buddies want everyone protected. But guess what? Y’all ain’t protected, either. Emilia Kirsch is one greedy bitch—sorry again, Father. She totally killed that Oregon lady. But at least she went over the top of all those old guys’ heads and let loose the whole damn world.”

  Okay he gave Emilia half a compliment. He half sucks again.

  “Is that worth people getting killed?” Anna asked him.

  Farris stood up. “Was it worth people getting killed before?! Look at the stats, girl. Same amount of people got killed before porting. But now it’s spread out. Beat that! They democratized war and violence. They spread out the danger that used to be just for poor folks and refugees, and now we all gotta share it. We all gotta see it. So I ain’t feeling sympathy for any Americans who act all horrified when they see an immigrant get gunned down, or when a woman gets murdered, or when a big pack of port refugees comes in from Syria hoping for food and water. That all sucks, but y’all should have had to look at this stuff your whole lives! We each get a little a taste of the suffering now, and that’s the way it should be. So, Anna Huff…”

  Anna was afraid. It was way too early in the morning to be this thoroughly owned by a smarmy bastard.

  “Anna Huff, I get why you’re sad. Now, you can let that sadness get you down. You can curl up into a teeny tinyass ball and act like everything is the worst. Or you can accept the real costs of this world, and then be free. So what you gonna do? What’s it gonna be?”

  SAN FRANCISCO

  MyClub International was the biggest of the private porting club conglomerates. The company had 50 locations worldwide, including flagships in London, Tokyo, New York, Marrakesh, and Paris, along with scouted-out locations in Patagonia, the Canadian Rockies, and French Polynesia. But the original San Francisco branch, in a building formerly occupied by another private club called The Battery, was still the largest and the swankiest one in the MyClub portfolio.

  When Anna and Bamert ported into the top floor of the club, a hostess wearing a black earpiece greeted them at a reclaimed wood desk that had been stained a deep walnut for maximum neo-rustic appeal. Anna felt terribly underdressed. Bamert, in a purple pinstripe suit and mosquito tie, had no such concerns.

  “Hello again, Mister Bamert!” the hostess said. “Would you care for a seat at the bar?”

  “Would I! Do you still have the happy hour buffet?”

  “Oh, yes! All complimentary.”

  “Splendid. Do you still have those little duck rolls, with the bacon and the jalapeno and the farmer’s cheese?”

  “We do, yes.”

  “Hot damn! That’s all I needed to hear.”

  Anna held up a picture of Sarah on her phone. “Do you remember this girl ever working here?”

  The hostess barely blinked. The staffers at MyClub were a remarkably well programmed species: superficially pleasant but impervious to actual human feeling. If they did have empathy, they would have had to scroll down a VIP list to find it.

  Brendan McClear would have made for an excellent host at this dump.

  Past the hosting station, a bartender noticed Sarah’s picture. When Anna locked in on him, he quickly looked down and went back to drying off coupe glasses.

  “I’m sorry,” said the hostess. “I don’t recognize her. Even if I did, club policy is to not discuss employees or disseminate employee information.”

  “I bet it isn’t,” Anna snapped.

  “You’ll have to pardon my friend,” Bamert told the hostess. “She takes l
ithium.” He grabbed Anna by the arm and escorted her to the bar.

  “Anna, there is a delicate waltz to this sort of thing,” he told her. It was as quiet a voice as he could muster, still loud enough to be heard from Marin County. “You can’t walk in here cold and brandish images of dead women at these people.”

  “Screw that lady,” Anna said.

  “Calm down. Let’s have an amuse-bouche and then reassess our strategy, shall we?” He leered at the buffet. “I am having so many inappropriate thoughts right now.”

  It was clear that Bamert had been savoring this jaunt for weeks, but for altogether different reasons. A waiter walked by with a tray of free champagne flutes and Bamert snatched two of them off the side of it, leaving the tray unbalanced and nearly causing the server to drop it. Then he grabbed a scalloped edge plate from the end of the Happy Hour spread and loaded up on crispy pig ears, duck rolls, miniature banh mi sandwiches, lobster tempura, and fatty slabs of raw toro arranged in a flower pattern. An older couple took too long at a hotel pan filled with gummy pasta and Bamert cruised around them, loading up on pickled red onions and potatoes fried in goose fat.

  The bartender discreetly wandered toward to Anna. He couldn’t have been more than twenty: an Indian-American man in buttoned crew neck shirt with the top button open. A small flap of the collar hung down with fashionable precision. Two other bartenders had the exact same flap. There must have been a MyClub company style guide mandating the exact angle and cut of the flap.

  “Would you like a cocktail?” the bartender asked her.

  “I’ll just have a Red Bull,” Anna said.

  “On the rocks?”

  “Uh, sure?”

  “One Red Bull on the rocks, coming up.”

  “Wait.”

  The bartender gave Anna a swift and somber shake of his head. This wasn’t the place. When he came back with her Red Bull, she shifted into loose code.

  “We were thinking about going to dinner after this,” Anna told him.

  The bartender looked over at Bamert, who was still loading up on food like he was at a mafia wedding. “Really?”

  “Yeah. My friend will still be hungry. He’s insane. You have any places you like?”