Point B (a teleportation love story)

by Drew Magary

  But you are a 17-year-old.

  She felt a breeze come over the room, maybe off of Sewell Beach, and checked the open window. It wasn’t open at all. Looming over the bed, she saw the figure of a man—a squicky man—with his hair parted down the center of his scalp, clad in khakis and a black shirt with the Conquistadors logo adorning the breast. He was holding his extremely large butcher’s knife. She could hear him breathing heavily: long, slow, deliberate exhalations, like he wanted to colonize the air of her bedroom. She felt a shiver of a whole different kind.

  “If you move,” the man whispered, twirling the knife, “this isn’t the only thing that goes in you.”

  “Go ahead and kill me,” she whispered back. “It would get me out of a physics test next week.”

  “Funny girl.”

  “Hello, Jason,” she said. The envelope. He’s here for that envelope. He knows about the screengrab, too.

  “Hello, little piggy.”

  Jason Kirsch placed the knife on Anna’s desk and spun it. Then he picked it back up and knelt down three feet from the bed, holding the knife out to the side like he was preparing to gut a newborn elephant. Anna wanted to turn on the lights and scream FIRE as loud as she could, fists clenched and mouth open wider than her own head. FIRE. FIRE. FIRE. FIRE EVERYWHERE. But Jason had the knife, and so again Anna Huff was forced to choke on her own words. They burned in her esophagus.

  “I’m gonna kill you,” she told him.

  “That’s exactly what your loser of a sister said. But she killed herself. So quickly, too. Didn’t take much encouragement. It’s a pity, you know. She was a good looking woman. Would have passed my naked test. Do you know what that is?”

  “Go fuck yourself.”

  “There’s no need for that when so many women are lined up to give me the pleasure. Now, about the test. I believe certain women look their absolute sexiest without a stitch of clothing on them. No heels or lingerie necessary. Those accessories only get in the way. Your sister had the kind of body to pass my test. You, less so. If your rotten mother hadn’t stirred the night your sister ate a bullet, I think I would have had time to indulge myself.”

  Is this sack of shit giving a launch presentation on rape?

  Anna was going to kill Jason Kirsch. There would be no nearly this time. She would kill him as surely as he killed Sarah. And he did kill Sarah, no matter who pulled the trigger that night. He was a murderer and he deserved murder. That would only be the crowning blow. First, Anna would rip his scalp off, cut off of his arms and legs, kill his children in front of him, and then burn him alive. She would visit every last bit of karmic pain upon this man, if only to get him to shut the fuck up.

  “I bet you looked up to her,” he went on. “I bet you wish she was still here, to be a big sis and give you all kinds of little piggy advice.”

  “Is this what you do?” she asked him. “Just hound people until they do whatever you tell them to do?”

  “It’s worked for me so far. Also, if they don’t do what I say, I just slit their throats. Wasn’t necessary for your Sarah though.”

  “Keep her name out of your mouth.”

  “Sarah, Sarah, Sarah,” he sang.

  Wait. Timeout. He’s not asking about the envelope. He doesn’t know you have it. Maybe he doesn’t know about the screengrab, either? He does seem stupid.

  “It’s not gonna work this time,” she told him. “You can’t make me do anything I don’t want to do.”

  “That knife and I say otherwise. I’ll be paying you more visits, so that you can understand the truth. That is my gift to you. There are things inside my head that are more coherent and visionary than the things inside anyone else’s head. You should be grateful I’m sharing that vision with you.”

  “I’m not.”

  “Here’s something I realized. When you have a mind like mine, life is enhanced in every facet. Isn’t that amazing? All the places I can go, yet there’s nowhere I can go on earth better than inside my own mind. When I’m in love, I feel that love stronger than normal people do. When I’m high, I have a better high than your average gutter junkie. If my sister ever bothered to think for herself, all that weed she smokes might be put to better use.”

  “You have no right to dump on Lara like that.”

  “I have every right to. Who are you to say otherwise? She’s as much of a waste as you Huffs are. You didn’t even know your own sister was in pain. You couldn’t stop her from killing herself when she needed you the most. These are true statements.”

  They were. Love and Druskin had managed to distract Anna from survivor’s guilt somewhat, but now Jason Kirsch was hauling it out of storage, porting her back to that night in Rockville, as she slept tenderly in her mother’s bed without any inkling of what was going on in the room next door until the gun went off. How could you not know, Anna? How could you not have been on guard, in this world? You’re an idiot for letting that happen. A nothing. She could feel the seed being sowed into her brain, along with the sickening realization that Jason Kirsch was good at this. He was good at making people suspicious of themselves.

  But perhaps Anna Huff was good at it, too.

  “When this is over,” she told Jason Kirsch, “it’s gonna be you dying by suicide. And that’s the polite way of phrasing it, you fucking eel.”

  He suppressed a giggle. “You think I secretly hate myself,” he said.

  “No one’s ever loved you. And it shows.”

  “The weak always soothe themselves by thinking the strong are miserable. Little piggy, my life is amazing, and I wouldn’t trade it for anything.”

  “I’ll have you trading it for the keys to hell.”

  “I’d keep those plans to yourself, if I were you. I think you’ve already seen what happens when you venture too far out of your comfort zone. How was Oxford?” he asked her. Son of a bitch. Jason knew it all. Orchestrated it. The Turf Tavern. The angry Conquistadors burning and looting the Naru storefront right after Anna ported in. Bamert’s house burning to the ground. His people were there. His people were everywhere. He would never, ever leave her alone.

  Jason Kirsch stood up, again asserting dominion over the room. He was bigger than he looked on video, with shoulder and thigh muscles so thick it was like he wore armor under his skin.

  “I’ll be back,” he told her. “Be a good little piggy in the meantime for me. We’ve only just started.”

  He took out his PortPhone and tipped her desk chair. Just as the chair toppled over, he ported out, the clap in exact sync with it smacking the ground. She ran to the desk and yanked out the envelope from behind it, jamming it under her pillow.

  Asmi swung open the door. “What was that?”

  “Nothing,” said Anna. “Go back to bed.”

  BANTAM, CT

  Anna ported from the stadium locker room the following night. When she reappeared in the Northwest corner of Connecticut, the wind slapped at her, demanding she go away. But she held firm, standing at the bottom of a sloped gravel driveway frozen solid with slick black ice. There was a yellow clapboard house thirty yards up the driveway, but the portwall kept her from zapping in any closer to it. The surrounding countryside was dead. No other houses or people in sight. Nothing except cold and darkness.

  Anna tried circumventing the icy gravel, walking along the withered patches of grass alongside the driveway. The skeletal fir trees poked and jabbed at her until she had no choice but to test the gravel once more. One step and she knew she’d made a terrible mistake.

  Oh shit.

  She slipped, landed hard on her poor tailbone, and then slid like a hockey puck right back down the driveway, settling at the bottom and leaving her with an incongruous, gorgeous view of the stars above.

  Hey, is that Jupiter?

  The front door of the house opened. Anna heard someone cock a shotgun.

  “Who’s out there?” a voice shouted.

  She stuck her hands up, still flat on the ground. From a distance, she looked lik
e a snowman that had melted.

  “Hello!” she shouted. “I come in peace!” Why did you say that? You’re not a fucking alien.

  “I don’t want any!” the voice cried.

  “I’m not a port marketer! I am a very nice person!”

  That didn’t satisfy the voice. The man at the front door fired at one of the trees and a large branch came falling down on the ice, all damp on the inside and slimy bark on the outside. God, everyone and their stupid guns. Anna rolled out of the way and stuck her hands up again.

  “Please don’t shoot! I’m a girl! You wouldn’t shoot a girl, right?! That would be a dick move!”

  “That’s why they always send girls.”

  “My name is Anna Huff and I’m a teenager!”

  “I don’t like teenagers.”

  “I don’t either!”

  “If you’re looking for writing advice, I’ve got an email address.”

  “I’m not here for that! I’m gonna walk to you, okay? I’m not armed! I’m just gonna walk, one foot in front of the other, super slow.”

  The man at the door held still but kept his gun on Anna. Laboring to breathe in the icy gale, she grabbed a brittle tree and propped herself up. Then, she walked up the side of the driveway again, never daring to put her feet on that cursed ice. She reached out for another tree, then another, then another. She looked like she was traversing a ropes course from one inch up in the air. When she finally reached the door, the man holding the gun looked more befuddled than angry.

  “Will you put that thing down?” she pleaded.

  “What do you want?”

  “You’re Sean Grann, the reporter?”

  “I don’t have to answer that.”

  “Oh come on man, I just had to climb up your stupid driveway. Why don’t you salt the thing? Okay, I know why you don’t have to salt the thing. Whatever.”

  “I’m Sean Grann.”

  “I need to talk to you.”

  “About what?”

  “About Dr. Ciaran Stokes.”

  CUBA

  After visiting Sean Grann and warning him, Anna had to wait a full week to port to Cuba, hiding Lara’s envelope behind a loud, farting radiator in her room. She went through the motions on campus: walking and eating and studying until her vision began to double. She could have fallen asleep in any place, in any position. As always, she frantically tried to keep up with her assignments but still felt as if she was doing the absolute bare minimum. Other kids, Burton included, had a limitless capacity for work and for extracurriculars, as if they had cloned themselves. Teachers and coaches always demanded focus, and the other Druskin kids seemed so much better than her at finding it. They compared their prospective GPAs with one another constantly. She hated all of them, Burton included. Him she hated a wee bit less than the others.

  Cuba promised to be an all-day affair, which meant that Anna had to trudge out to the stadium at 5am on a Saturday morning, port out, and then return only after it was dark again back on campus. On her way to the stadium that morning, she looked back and saw a trail of perfect footprints in the snow behind her. That wouldn’t do. She doubled back and, with her new duck boots, swept the prints away and made mad dashes in the snow to throw off anyone who might stumble on her path and grow curious.

  Once more, she cracked open the fetid locker room door and grabbed the wool blanket she had stashed over in the corner. Then she hit PORT and found herself in a darkened alley in the town of Trinidad, with nothing but the sound of crowing roosters to accompany her. She sat down with the envelope and snuck a bit of extra rest, waiting for dawn.

  When the sun finally rose, Anna slipped her little bulldog phone behind a crate of rotted oranges and walked out of the alley. The world turned pastel. Yellow sunshine. Living, light green vegetation. Rows of houses with clay tile roofs painted in light blues and pinks and oranges. The streets came to life as tourists began porting in, live spammers right alongside them. Unlike so many other cities, the streets in Cuba were still used, with refurbished American lemons lumbering down the streets as the music kicked up. That music wouldn’t stop until well after midnight.

  Anna flagged down a souped-up 1954 Hudson Hornet, a Hunter green step-down model that was the size of a barge.

  “Cuanto cuesta un paseo al Parque Natural Topes de Collantes?”

  “Un paseo?” asked the driver. He looked confused, then held up his hand and mimicked using a PortPhone.

  “No tengo un PortFono,” Anna said.

  “No?” asked the driver. “Entonces, como llegaste a Cuba?” Then how’d you get to Cuba?

  When Anna held up an American twenty, the driver ceased asking questions. He swung the door open and she sat down on a spotless tan bench seat. This was more comfortable than the Cobra. The Hornet was as wide as a house. Its dashboard was 100% steel, featuring all kinds of latches and doodads you could play with. Anna laid her hand on the glove box, looking at the driver to make sure it was okay for her to touch the interior. He nodded. He was proud of his big beauty.

  They were off. The road was rocky and uneven and the floor of the Hornet was low to the ground, but the beast cut across the terrain with ease. Smooth and silent, like a shark on the hunt. The car took care of Anna’s stomach in ways that Mrs. Ludwig’s Cobra could not. Soon they reached the entrance of the park. She got out of the Hornet and gazed at a pristine lagoon down below, a crashing waterfall feeding it. She had forgotten, entirely, the feeling of old-fashioned travel: taking the long road toward a destination and then experiencing the supreme majesty of watching that destination come into view. It was a sensation of earned awe that shouldn’t have ever gone extinct.

  The sun above blazed so hot and bright that Anna couldn’t even make out its sphere. A dip would have been nice. She held up another twenty for the driver.

  “Me puedes buscar en cuatro horas?”

  He nodded. She pocketed the twenty and walked toward the lagoon overlook. There were Americans lounging on a rocky beach alongside the lagoon, lollygagging in the coarse sand and porting back and forth to grab camping supplies before frolicking in the clean water. Anna made a beeline for the trailhead above and started the three-mile walk toward Dr. Stokes’ house. She pulled out a rough map that Grann had grudgingly given her and followed it down to the paces through the lush parkland, ignoring the hideous Western advertisements that polluted the trail: stacked ads for phones, wart creams, escorts willing to port directly to your bedroom, and mediocre streaming movies. Once she veered off the path, the branded garbage disappeared and the jungle closed in behind her, reaching around and over her until she was walking in near darkness. She could hear wildlife but couldn’t see it.

  After an hour of slogging through the muck, she came to a river fifty yards wide. There, in the center of the river, perched upon two wet logs stretching out from either end of the banks, was a single-room house with big, tinted windows on every side.

  “Oh, for crying out loud.”

  She edged closer to the banks and looked downstream, where the river picked up speed and became a white, foaming churn. Close to the horizon, the river disappeared, as if it had been lopped off with a giant cleaver. Falling into the river would be decidedly bad, but Anna hadn’t come this far not to deliver the goods. She tested the log with her boot. It was so slick as to be untouchable. No friction of any kind. When she pulled her boot away and looked at the bottom, it was greased black with pure petroleum.

  This is so typical. You finally want to walk places and this is what awaits you. Bullshit.

  A voice rang out from the forest. “INTRUSO!”

  Anna looked for the voice but only saw an endless tangle of greenery. Dr. Ciaran Stokes opened his side window open pointed a gun at her. Grann had warned Anna, “You’re gonna kill yourself doing this.” Here was proof.

  “Good morning,” Stokes said to Anna. “Feel free to test the log, but it’s long way down the waterfall when the river carries you there.”

  Anna held up the envel
ope. “I have something for you.”

  “Is that supposed to entice me?”

  “My name is Anna.”

  “So?”

  “This is an envelope taken from Emilia Kirsch’s vault by her daughter, Lara. She wanted you to have it.”

  “What’s in it?”

  “The formula for porting.”

  “And how would you know that’s what it is?”

  “Because I get straight A’s, motherfucker.”

  “A teenager who thinks she’s smart. That’s reassuring. Do you have a PortPhone on you?”

  “I left it in Trinidad,” she told him.

  “Tell you what: you can talk to me if you cross that log.”

  “Can I have a rope?”

  “You cannot.”

  Why is everyone such a gleaming penis?

  Anna stuffed the envelope into her bra and grabbed two sharp sticks. Then she straddled the log and began the long, extremely painful scoot across to the center of the river, digging the impromptu spears into the log to keep her balance. She envisioned Willamy’s dreaded X on the side of Stokes’ house, focusing on it as best she could. The oil was seeping through her pants, her underwear, her everything. After three feet, she felt choleric. Her hands did not like this big gross log, not one bit. Midway through, she lost equilibrium and had to grab onto a tiny branch to right herself. The branch dug into her saddle as she wriggled past it. She was beginning to hate the outdoors now, almost as much as she hated people with guns.

  When she reached the end of the log, Stokes didn’t bother to offer her a hand. He kept his gun on her as she pulled herself through his door and lay gasping on the ground, sore and greasy. She wiped her hands on herself, then gave him the envelope. When the doctor pulled out the notes, his eyes went buggy and he dropped the gun so fast it nearly went off on its own. Anna got up and jumped away from it.