by Adam Felber
“That’ll be our little secret, okay?” says the kid with a wink. His finger tightens on the trigger. The President’s mind goes crazy, he’s got a couple of other ideas, he’s picturing his wife, he tries to wake up, his bladder lets go, he’s got maybe a second left.
“Wait—” he starts.
Bang.
We’ve taken our lunch outside, shaking off the morning, enjoying the glittering Charles and the occasional Frisbees flying across our field of vision, a peaceful day, all too rare lately. We get up and stroll along the ribbon of grass, passing groups of students, sunbathers on blankets, and the occasional knot of audience members around some bank-busker or another.
One such group catches our attention, for there is no music emanating from the circle’s center, and the group is particularly large and rapt. We push forward (politely, of course, but firmly), and get a better look.
We immediately wish we hadn’t. We never should have had to see this.
At the center of the crowd’s attention is a little card table laden with cheap-looking knickknacks. Nearby stands an easel on which rests an elegantly lettered placard.
It reads: “The Remarkable Dr. S.”
Behind the table stands Dr. Schrödinger, wearing a tattered black cape and an absurdly large top hat over his usual fusty ensemble. At his side, jammed into a red satin showgirl’s outfit with a matching headdress, and looking none too happy about it, is the girl from this morning, Dori. She’s haphazardly gesturing at the little table as the Remarkable Dr. S. speaks.
“Yes, the humble carbon atom, ladies and gents, the essential building block, the life-giver. Able to bond in so many ways, so extensively that it can form molecules of astounding and unprecedented size and complexity. Today, right here on the banks of the mighty Charles, I bring you the newest, most exciting molecule the world has ever known. Larger than large, bigger than big, this molecule makes the ‘buckyball’ seem like a quark by comparison. The first molecule so large that it can be seen, seen quite easily, by the human eye. Ladies and gentlemen, I give you Schrödinger’s Humdinger!”
The doctor’s Lovely and Talented Assistant pulls aside a little curtain and the crowd gasps—actually, literally gasps. We’re not even looking. How, we wonder, has this socially retarded physicist, this annoying and clingy man of science, so utterly transformed himself in a few days’ time? Why now? And why can’t we escape him? We ponder this as we walk away, the suddenly popular old prestidigitator’s voice trailing off behind us: “Yes, for a limited time, you too can own Schrödinger’s Humdinger, the world’s first MegaMolecule! Step right up….”
Over our shoulders we can see that the crowd, like our existence, is pressing in on him, spiraling slightly counterclockwise as they do so.
———
The others are still breakfasting as Grant wanders into Johnny’s grandmother’s library. He needs a couple of minutes to himself, some time to get centered, just like he always does after he spends a night away from home. He realizes that this makes him less cool.
Grant is thinking about the strange swirl of events in the past twenty-four hours, trying to compartmentalize a little bit, to separate Johnny’s Condition from Arlene and Johnny from The Eternal Deborah Question from The Feelings Called Up by Johnny’s Guitar. It’s not easy, and the divisions between them all are artificial, but Grant, being Grant, needs some structure here.
He’s idly browsing some of the books. Hundreds of them litter the library, as many off the shelf as on. After he has leafed through a few of them, an unfamiliar title catches his eye. A plain-looking but somehow evocatively titled little book. He opens it and reads:
There’s a cat in a box in Cambridge, Massachusetts. It’s about three-quarters of a mile from the firehouse in Central Square, which means that if someone launched a rescue operation now, the trucks could be there in half an hour. Or so.
Odd, thinks Grant, and leafs forward. He’s shocked to find his own name in there:
Grant couldn’t believe it—there, laid out beneath him, perfect, complete, was Deborah Johnstone, the Undiscovered Country….
Despite his profound interest in this subject matter, Grant’s a little freaked out by this. He riffles backward, seeing his friends’ names, some pseudo-science, a lot of self-referential bullshit, etc. He comes across a frighteningly familiar passage and reads:
Grant is thinking about the strange swirl of events in the past twenty-four hours, trying to compartmentalize a little bit, to separate Johnny’s Condition from Arlene and Johnny from The Eternal Deborah Question from The Feelings Called Up by Johnny’s Guitar. It’s not easy, and the divisions between them all are artificial, but Grant, being Grant, needs some structure here.
He’s idly browsing some of the books. Hundreds of them litter the library, as many off the shelf as on. After he has leafed through a few of them, an unfamiliar title catches his eye. A plain-looking but somehow evocatively titled little book. He opens it and reads:
There’s a cat in a box in Cambridge, Massachusetts. It’s about three-quarters of a mile from the firehouse in Central Square, which means that if someone launched a rescue operation now, the trucks could be there in half an hour. Or so.
Odd, thinks Grant, and leafs forward. He’s shacked to find his own name in there:
Grant couldn’t believe it—there, laid out beneath him, perfect, complete, was Deborah Johnstone, the Undiscovered Country….
Despite his profound interest in this subject matter, Grant’s a little freaked out by this. He riffles backward, seeing his friends’ names, some pseudo-science, a lot of self-referential bullshit, etc. He comes across a frighteningly familiar passage and reads:
Grant is thinking about the strange swirl of events in the past twenty-four hours, trying to compartmentalize a little bit, to separate Johnny’s Condition from Arlene and Johnny from The Eternal Deborah Question from The Feelings Called Up bye Johnny’s Guitar. It’s not easy, and the divisions between them all are artificial, but Grant, being Grant, needs some structure here.
He’s idly browsing some of the books. Hundreds of them litter the library, as many off the shelf as on. After he has leafed through a few of them, an unfamiliar title catches his eye. A plain-looking but somehow evocatively titled little book. He opens it and reads:
There’s a cat in a box in Cambridge, Massachusetts. It’s about three-quarters of a mile from the firehouse in Central Square, which means that if someone lunched a rescue operation now, the trucks could be there in half an hour. Or so.
Odd, thinks Grant, and leafs forward. He’s shacked to find his own name in there:
Grant ccouldn’t believe it—there, laid out beneath him, perfect, complete, was Deborah Johnstone, the Undiscovered Country….
Despite his profound interest in this subject matter, Grant’s a little freaked out by this. He riffles backward, seeing hip friends’ names, some pseudo-science, a lot of self-referential bullshit, etc. He comes across a fraughteningly familiar passage and reads:
AARRTTTIIIUUE090900000200030045764545 jrerhigerg 9ggfg32 Grant is thinkinggrant is thinking 000100010110 0101000010111 ARG OP SIT GLEW ffoej ffoef ffoet ffoeh., ‘:“!CRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRR Six: Six: Six: Grant is Dr. Latina Johnny is is is is is not not not is not CORE ERROR 1679: RESET Grant is thinking about the strange swirl of events in the past $$$$$$ SIGNAL 698959595 twenty-four hours, trying to compartmentalize a little bit, to separate Johnny’s Condition about the strange swirl of events in the past twenty-four hours, trying to compartmentalize a little bit, to separate Johnny’s Condition from Arlene and Johnny from The Eternal Deborah Question from The Feelings Called Up from Johnny’s Guitar. It’s not easy, and the divisions between them all are artificial, but Grant, being Grant, needs some structure here structure here structure here stricture here stricture hero strict are hero stric our hero STRUCTURE HEREEEEEEEEEEEEeoiitiyuty 93408503859483059485 573745837 435734 349834257205 748 v 9834539845 9834578934 Gran 4309850934769845 Is 4583578g67g348 thinking thin king 8945
08095830 OOOOO EEEEEEEEEE OOOOOOOOEEEEEEE 0-0-0-930930-309-30- 0-3 93094324 – 3 545904 – 2304- 04539 – 20349 – – 987598 98753498 89745 785787 7 STUS 8trte 03403094030404040 4040404040404040404040404040000000000000000000000 0000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000
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This book has crashed. Please restart this book and try again. FATAL ERROR: ch06/11
Chapter 6A
RESTART IND# 00007 RES. VER. 1.01
The others are still breakfasting as Grant wanders into Johnny’s grandmother’s library. He needs a couple of minutes to himself, some time to get centered, just like he always does after he spends a night away from home. He realizes that this makes him less cool.
Grant is thinking about the strange swirl of events in the past twenty-four hours, trying to compartmentalize a little bit, to separate Johnny’s Condition from Arlene and Johnny from The Eternal Deborah Question from The Feelings Called Up by Johnny’s Guitar. It’s not easy, and the divisions between them all are artificial, but Grant, being Grant, needs some structure here.
He’s idly browsing some of the books. Hundreds of them litter the library, as many off the shelf as on. After he has leafed through a few of them, an unfamiliar title catches his eye. A plain-looking but somehow evocatively titled little book. He DOES NOT TOUCH BOOK/LEAVES ROOM/DOES NOT RETURN/005003TXT.070167
ALT SEQ 73023-3434 FR: —walks back into the kitchen, where he hears a bustle of new activity. Over the general commotion he hears the strident, strong voice of Leonora Decaté, Johnny’s grandmother and matron of the house, and he smiles.
The scene that greets him is not unexpected but somehow iconic, a neoclassical color-saturated tableau: Johnny, seated, staring up like a supplicant at the figure in the center of the room, a wide smile on his face; in a beam of sunlight, holding forth, Leonora, clad in a multilayered free-flowing dress of white and cream, impossibly young for a young man’s grandmother; on either side of her, Arlene and Deb, their bare legs shining, offering coffee and toast, two nymphs attending an eccentric goddess; in the shadows, a uniformed figure, dark, confused, a busboy at the last supper.
At the entrance of Grant (“the Observer,” he thinks wryly), the tableau breaks.
“Grant! Dear heart! My fiancé!” exclaims Leonora. Grant is her favorite, always has been, for reasons that Grant has forgotten and probably never knew. She wraps Grant up in her arms, her slight frame at once motherly and girlish. Grant savors the hug, then holds her out at arm’s length.
“And where were you last night, young lady? You thought you could just sneak in anytime you want?”
“Sorry, Dad. Jack and I just lost track of the time, I guess….”
“Uh-huh,” says Grant, relishing the role, as always. He’s vaguely aware of the girls smiling at him, Deb in particular smiling a smile he’d like to examine and think about and read into, but he presses on. “And who’s this ‘Jack’?”
“That’s me,” says an unfamiliar voice. The newcomer steps out of the shadows. He’s a cop, and Grant notes without too much surprise that he’s handsome and about twenty years younger than Mrs. D. “Jack Kennedy. No relation. And you’re, uh, Leonora’s father and fiancé, huh?”
“We’re a very close family,” Grant says, liking Jack, suffused with the glowing bubble of goodwill that tends to surround Leonora. Leonora, now swirling back toward the center of the kitchen, is chatting excitedly.
“Jack took me to that new restaurant downtown, and Aero-smith was there—at least the boy with the lips was—and then we rented The Matrix, and you were right about that one, Johnny, and then we—but we walked back from Arlington this morning, and—oh!—look at this….”
She ecstatically reaches into her purse and withdraws a small round object, black and complex. “We got this,” continues Johnny’s grandmother, “from an adorably shabby old magician.”
Grant can’t identify the object in his hand, though it feels odd, multifaceted, dense. “It’s a molecule!” exclaims Leonora breathlessly. “Carbon. Like a beckyball but bigger!”
“‘Buckyball,’” says Grant, idly. “But this can’t be a single … A magician sold this to you? He’s out there selling molecules?”
“Or a scientist. For all I know he teaches here.” “Here,” as ever for Leonora Decaté, is Harvard, which is in fact several blocks away.
“He should call them ‘Satan’s Golf Balls,’” Arlene says. Grant agrees—he’s a little frightened by the feel of the object, and he puts it on the table. Leonora, characteristically, is already on to the next item on her ever-changing agenda.
“Johnny, dear one, you know you really could have invited the rest of your friends in last night. Jack and I had to step over them just to get in.” She sees the look of puzzlement on all the faces. Arlene is the first at the front window.
“Oh God,” she says. “Those aren’t exactly our friends….”
They all crowd around the window to see kids crowding around the house. The lawn looks like a micro-Woodstock, a
dozen or so ragged kids just arising, some with sleeping bags, some with nothing. Grant recognizes one or two faces from the night before. He attempts to explain to Leonora, but finds himself stuck on You Had to Be There. What does come across is that the visitors are uninvited. Jack, back in his element, volunteers to take care of it.
“We have an old shotgun in the basement,” says Leonora. This is a mildly shocking statement—Leonora is perhaps the most welcoming and nonviolent person Grant has ever known. But the glint in her eye tells Grant that she’d just love to see her new man striding out heroically, weapon in hand. Grant can’t help smiling as Jack jumps at the chance.
He follows Leonora’s pointing finger, heads toward the basement door, grasps the handle. Johnny yelps and collapses. Arlene screams.
Dear Diary,
Bored out of my fucking skull. Time for more of the History …
1550—A Hawaiian woman named Weeio invents the hula dance. King Fahzik of Persia orders the digging of a tunnel to Rome, and fifteen thousand Musselmen start shoveling. Everybody’s got the black plague except the Africans and the Chinese, who’d had it already.
Ivan the Terrible turns twenty and decides not to go to grad school. At this point, no one’s calling him “the Terrible.” His school nickname is “Ivan the Inky,” thanks to his penmanship problems. Meanwhile, the Mayans and Incans were emigrating off the planet in droves to get away from the Spaniards. Three whole cities got airlifted in one afternoon, including El Dorado, buildings and all.
1560—Emperor Akbar’s men, who’ve been tunneling to Japan, run into King Fahzik’s men underground, which means both of them were going the wrong way. It’s one of those rare moments in history where everybody has a good laugh.