Point B (a teleportation love story)

by Drew Magary

  “I don’t believe that to be the case,” said Bamert.

  “What do you mean?” asked Lara. “They can get past the wall here. How’d I get past the wall? How did I port here with no phone? How did Anna port here with no phone? Who are you two people? You, in the suit: aren’t you Edgar Bamert’s kid? The Pegasys guy? Is this who you gave the recipe to, Anna? You really are wild.”

  “We can address all your inquiries in due course,” said Bamert, “But allow me to make a phone call first, won’t you?”

  He called Burton and the three girls listened raptly as he rattled off a series of loud, staccato replies: “Burton, it’s me… They’re back here in Sewell… They did?… Are you sure?… And the apartment they were in? Still clear?… Good. Well, ‘good’ is relative here so I’ll just say better. What about the Guardians? Did you port them back home?… Send me the video. You’ve done exemplary work here. Go Tigers.”

  He ended the call and the girls stared at him. Just to be Bamert, he let the silence hang around a bit. He even checked his watch for a flourish. Anna grew testy.

  “What’d he say?” she asked him.

  “Ah, right! You’re both safe.”

  “And Emilia?” Lara asked. “Jason? That asshole Dean Vick? Where are they?” No one else in the room could tell if she was full of hope or dread.

  Bamert was trapped in an awkward spot now. He had never delivered news like this to anyone. He didn’t have to tell Edgar that his house burned down because the old man’s surveillance apps did that job for him. But he wasn’t gonna be able to wriggle out of similar duties now. For the first time in weeks, he felt the pull of drinking and pictured, in his humid mind, a splash of whiskey inside a crystal tumbler. No two cocktails ever looked the same. They were gorgeous that way. Bamert scratched his mop of hair and let out a grandstanding sigh before mustering up the bravery to tell them all.

  “They’re not here anymore,” he told Lara. “Burton saw everything happen in the suite after he ported you out.”

  “What do you mean?” Lara asked. “Are they dead?”

  “Yes,” Bamert told them.

  “How?” she asked.

  “What’s important is that both of you are safe now,” Bamert said, “and that they can’t hurt you anymore.”

  “You don’t understand,” said Lara. “That was my family.”

  “We’re so sorry, love,” Asmi told her.

  “No no no, not that. What’s your name again?” Lara asked Bamert.

  “J. Paul Bamert, scourge to all Yankees and, it’s true, CEO of Pegasys Industries.”

  “Bamert! You were on the bridge that night! Bamert, you told me they can’t hurt me anymore, but do you understand the hurt that my family can do?”

  “I might,” Bamert said.

  “It doesn’t go away. It doesn’t stop hurting. Those two lived their lives to hurt people. Look at what they did to me.”

  Anna, Asmi and Bamert beheld the shattered, battered body of the girl they had saved. Lara Kirsch was just a remnant of a human being. This was trauma. This was the gauntlet Lara had to pass through before coming out the other side more of an adult than when she began. Whether that adult would be good or evil was still a mystery, even to Lara herself. She shook with fright at the notion.

  “Promise me that they’re gone,” Lara told Bamert. “I need proof. I never wanna look over my shoulder again. You asked this Burton guy to send you a video, yeah?”

  “I did.”

  “Play it for me.”

  “You really wanna see it? Are you sure?”

  “Yes.”

  Bamert looked at Anna, who gave him a humble nod. He queued up video of the massacre in Singapore. “You want the sound on?” he asked Lara.

  “My eyes are all I need for this.”

  Bamert handed the phone over. Lara watched the video. Everyone else in the room watched her face as it first went numb and then cracked open. Her body trembled, like a demon was being expelled from it. Then Lara Kirsch took in a mighty breath: her first taste of air as a free woman.

  “They’re finally gone.”

  “You’re gonna be all right,” Anna told her.

  “You don’t mean that,” Lara said back.

  “I don’t.”

  “It’s okay. You didn’t have to.”

  “You didn’t rat me out this time, huh?”

  “Never. He chained me to that bed and held that knife over my head for months but I never broke. Every time I thought I might, I thought myself, ‘What would Anna do?’”

  “I don’t know the answer to that,” Anna laughed.

  “I do. I saw it with my own eyes in that hotel room. I’m sorry for everything Jason and Emilia did to you. What I did to you.”

  She’s apologizing. She loves you enough to need your approval. If she only knew how scared shitless you are, all the time.

  They joined hands. Lara’s skin remained as soft as cotton.

  “You sure you don’t need a doctor?” Asmi asked them.

  “No doctor,” said Lara. “But I do need clothes. And we do need money.”

  “I have that,” said Bamert. “I had to kill off our dear friends the Bumlees, but I think we have a new kitty to pull from over at my burgeoning conglomerate.”

  “I think I’d rather use my Mommie Dearest’s money instead, don’t you think?”

  “If it pleases you,” Bamert said. “But you have no wallet on you, dear.”

  “In my bedroom in the New York apartment, you’ll find my phone, clean clothes, plus a porting belt with money and my ID it in. Jason’s is in his bedroom. You can loot that for extra cash. Keep your head down when you go. There are cameras all over the place.”

  “Oh we know that,” said Bamert. “We may have tinkered with that system a hair. Are you sure you want me to go back?”

  Lara snorted up her tears and stiffened her spine. There was plenty of ambition still in her. She wasn’t afraid of using that ambition, especially not now. You can disown your blood but you can’t fake it. “Go. When you get back, I’ll send you the PDF of Emilia’s propaganda guidelines, and you can make that public, too.”

  Bamert looked up the apartment on his PortPhone.

  “Bamert, wait,” said Anna.

  “What?”

  Ask him. Ask him if Arthur is dead. Ask if Arthur was K15. He and Burton heard what Jason told you.

  “Be careful,” she said instead. “Be safe.”

  Bamert winked at the girls and then popped out, the clap flowing out the window, over Sewell Beach and across the quad. None of the girls in the room gave a damn.

  “The notes,” Lara said. “Where are the notes?”

  “Can you move at all, dearie?” Asmi asked her.

  “I can. Who are you?”

  “Oh! Oh, fucking Christ. I’m Asmi. I’m the new roommate, the one that Anna doesn’t”—she caught herself—“uh, have to rescue from time to time, yes! That’s the difference! Anyway, let’s visit the toilet.”

  “What?”

  Anna sprung up and, together with Asmi, helped a disheveled Lara to her feet. They staggered up to the Sewell bathroom, which was blessedly unoccupied. Anna kicked open the stall door and grabbed the Shit Memoirs off the floor. There, taped to the back of the book, was the second half of the recipe for teleportation. Someone had scrawled THE FUCK IS THIS? over the formula with a Sharpie.

  “PINE can be lazy in spots,” Anna told Lara. “We figured they’d never look in here, and they didn’t.”

  “But the notes are ruined,” Lara said.

  “Oh, Burton copied them. They’re on a hard drive.”

  “So these are worthless now?”

  “Worthless? Those notes saved you,” Anna insisted. “They saved me. They saved everything. And you gave them to me, even though you knew you’d suffer for it.”

  “I guess.”

  “Maybe you’re stronger than you realize.”

  Lara’s face crinkled into a smile. The two of them were dancing o
nce more. Asmi stepped back because she could sense a moment forming.

  Now get a laugh out of her.

  But before Anna could get that laugh, Jubilee stormed into the bathroom to brush her teeth. When she saw the three other girls perusing through the Shit Memoirs, her eyes went black.

  “What the FUCK are you girls doing here?” she demanded to know.

  “I don’t know,” Lara said. “What the fuck are you doing here?” She and Anna giggled at Jubilee. At her. So this is what it’s like to troll people by being happy.

  “Yeah. Piss off, Jujyfruit,” Asmi told her.

  Jubilee was the odd girl out in that bathroom. Jubilee was not used to being the odd girl out. She screamed “Assholes!” at them and then stormed out without bothering to brush.

  The three other girls laughed their way back to Room 24. Seconds later, a soft wind blew in and Bamert held up the goods.

  “Jackpot!” he cried out. He handed Lara a wad of fresh clothes, along with the belt. She tore apart the Velcro and inside the belt were so many thousand-dollar bills that Anna audibly gasped. A good and healthy gasp. Lara squeezed Anna’s hand tightly. During first semester, Anna had learned about atoms in Mr. Polycronis’ chemistry class. She got an A in that class, but the things she learned nagged at her. She wondered if anyone ever truly touched anything, or if there was an insidious buffer of foreign hydrogen atoms or nitrogen atoms or even smaller particles—particles the size of nonexistence—preventing two bodies from ever coming into actual contact.

  That thought didn’t nag her at the moment. Their hands were touching, the way they touched before Lara and Anna leapt off that bridge the first night of school.

  “Shit,” Lara told Bamert. “My bracelets were on that dresser, too. I should have asked you to grab them.” She wrapped her right hand around her left wrist to soothe the cuff welts.

  “I can go back,” he said. “It’s fun breaking into places. This has all been very educational.”

  “Don’t go back,” Anna said. She took off the rose pink bracelet and offered it to Lara. “Take this,” she told her.

  “Anna, I can’t. That’s yours.”

  “You gave it to me,” Anna insisted.

  “It was always yours, Roomie. Always.”

  Anna slipped it back on and felt strong again.

  “We have to disappear,” Lara told Anna. “We can’t port. We can’t go near crowds or public spaces. We have to be gone for a while, do you understand?”

  “Aren’t you sick of being gone yet?” Anna asked back.

  “All the time, but I’m not a fool.”

  “What about PortSys? I think you own it now.”

  “I don’t think I’m legally old enough to run a trillion-dollar company. I’m seventeen. I get to be irresponsible. Let’s get irresponsible. It’ll take the lawyers a zillion years to figure out who gets what and who runs what anyway. In the meantime, we have to get away. Somewhere quiet and deserted. Someplace where no one would ever bother to port, so that we can go in and out without anyone laying eyes on us.”

  For once in Anna’s life, she had the right idea, the right mood, and the right line ready all at the right time. “Oh, I know where to get away. And I know how.”

  Two minutes later, they knocked on Mrs. Ludwig’s door. She opened it up, still clad in a pink terrycloth robe and snacking on a handful of peanuts. Two cats ran out into the lobby and then ran back in. Mr. Nolan was in the living room of the apartment, his wheelchair parked next to the rarely seen Mr. Ludwig, both men sipping tea and munching on fresh pretzels. When Mrs. Ludwig saw Lara and Anna, she went bug-eyed.

  “What the shit?” she said. “You two don’t go here anymore. One of you is dead, even!”

  “Fooled you there,” said Anna. “I’m not dead, and I’m not a Nazi.”

  “Well, I am relieved to hear this. These Nazis, they are very bad.”

  “I knew you’d be a quick learner, Anna Huff,” said Nolan, beaming with pride. “I just knew it.”

  “Mrs. Ludwig,” Anna asked, “Can we buy your Cobra?”

  “It’s not for sale,” Mrs. Ludwig said, staring at the floor and shaking her head. “It’s not for sale. It’s not for sale… How much?”

  THE OPEN ROAD

  Lara Kirsch paid $20,000 in cash for the Cobra. After Mrs. Ludwig gave Lara and Anna the title and registration, they ported from Sewell Hall to the parking lot outside of school and watched from afar as U.S. armed forces—none of them PINE—stormed through Druskin Gate to seize all vital documents and administrators connected to Emilia and Jason Kirsch.

  The two girls stood next to a trash bin and held the two PortPhones Bamert had given them over it. No more porting for a while. They had both deleted their WorldGram accounts as well. They were about to be as free digitally as they were physically, no longer living a life that was all destinations and no journeys. The rest of the world couldn’t have them anymore. The Internet couldn’t, either.

  “You ready?” Lara asked Anna.

  “I’m ready.”

  Neither girl moved. They both broke down in laughter.

  “We have to do this,” Anna said.

  “This reminds me of our first day here.”

  “We still gotta do it.”

  “I know, I know. You first.”

  “Let’s do it together.”

  “Together, then. 1, 2, 3…”

  Into the trash the phones went.

  "Let's get out of here," Lara said.

  They sauntered over to their new car. Anna was tempted to slide across its hood like she was an undercover cop rushing to chase down some bad guys, but she demurred. Mrs. Ludwig walked over to personally oversee preparations for their maiden voyage, offering Anna tips (nagging, really) on how to drive the Cobra, how to maintain it, and how to keep it running for years. She even helped snap the cloth top over the car, lingering well past the tolerance.

  “Now you need to fill it with 93 octane gas,” she chided both of them. “This is the highest quality of fuel, yeah?”

  “Got it,” said Anna.

  “And watch out for these trucks. They do not see you there in the mirror. Sometimes they are asleep or taking God knows what pills. The self-driving ones, they are even more shit.”

  “Got it.”

  “And read the owner’s manual in full before you set off. This is important.”

  “Got it.” Anna had no such plans to.

  “And take my driving gloves!” Mrs. Ludwig insisted, handing them over.

  “Thanks.”

  Mrs. Ludwig unlatched the passenger door and helped a fragile Lara Kirsch into the low-slung seat, a gleaming chrome roll hoop towering behind it. Anna buckled Lara’s seat harness, brushing her hands against Lara’s waist and feeling her own cheeks get hot to the touch.

  “Do you need iced tea?” Mrs. Ludwig asked Lara and Anna. “I get you some iced tea, maybe some cookies.”

  “No!” they said together.

  “Do you want earplugs?”

  “No!” Wait, maybe you do?

  “Do you want my driving goggles?”

  “No!”

  “Oh, okay then. I’ll tell everyone you said hello, yeah?” Lara and Anna were about to scream at Mrs. Ludwig when she broke down laughing. “It’s a joke! I never saw you. Auf wiedersehen, Lara Kirsch! Auf wiedersehen, Anna Hoof!”

  Mrs. Ludwig didn’t abide by her own goodbye. She stayed on the decaying curb, still in her robe, watching intently. She might have even been crying.

  “Do you need a driver’s license to drive this thing?” Lara asked Anna.

  “No one has a driver’s license anymore. Why? You got one?”

  “I have a fake ID that says I’m twenty-six, but I’ve never needed to use it.”

  “Oh. Well anyway, I don’t need a license,” Anna said, although now she was worried they’d get pulled over and the cops would check her passport card, currently tucked inside her shirt to prevent the wind from grabbing hold of it. She slid into the drive
r’s seat, took off the Club, and playfully tugged on the black leather driving gloves. Her hands loved them. She felt like she could shoot fireballs out of her palms. They even had little peek-a-boo holes for her knuckles that made her hands look far more lethal than they actually were.

  “Wait!” Anna cried. She leapt back out of the car.

  “What are you doing?” asked Lara.

  “What the shit?” said Ludwig.

  Anna ran over to the trash bin, fished out the two discarded phones, and then tucked each one firmly under a front tire. Lara was cracking up as Anna slid back into position.

  “You’re really gonna drive over them?” Lara asked.

  “I sure as hell will.”

  “Do you know how to drive?”

  “Only one way to find out, Roomie.”

  She punched the ignition on the left-hand side of the wheel and the engine thundered to life. One turn of the key and the world became hard, grunting, hot noise. Anna was irritated that Mrs. Ludwig kept hanging around, observing them like zoo animals, but the noise quickly obliterated that angst. Now the only thing Anna could think of was the battalion of greased pistons under that glossy hood, churning at a sickening rate, the Cobra itching to take them away from Druskin as fast as possible. This car was 85% engine.

  Anna smiled at a tired Lara, mashed down on the clutch, shifted to first gear, and then the car lurched two inches before stopping. Now it was parked on top of the two phones, crushing them under its wheels. Anna gave Lara a kidding shrug. The racket inside the car had already reduced them to a form of ad hoc sign language, and would do so for the rest of the drive. But the past few months had conditioned both girls well for extensive periods of boredom.

  Anna shifted again, praying the car would get moving on this attempt. It did not. The Cobra lurched forward violently and then stopped, like it had crashed into something. The gears ground together and made a sickening noise, enough to make Mrs. Ludwig wince. Anna gave another kidding shrug to Lara, but she knew the cutesiness was wearing off. Mrs. Ludwig was still there, barely able to keep from shaking her head. The gearshift was sticky. Anna had to put real English into maneuvering it, which was a lot to ask given what she had just endured.