A Ghost for a Clue

by C L R Draeco

  “They died. You can’t possibly be comparing—”

  “And what about Franco? You cried for him too. And he was just a friend, like me.”

  “He died too! What the—”

  “I cried. For you! And I couldn’t stop. But you just stood there. With that heartbreaking, lopsided grin of yours like . . . like . . . you didn’t care.”

  Like I didn’t care? Suddenly, it clicked into place. And I remembered her twelve-year-old version sobbing as I stood at the curb those many years ago, her mother beside her, my guardians behind me, waiting to take me to a far-off state on the east coast.

  “Don’t you remember?” I asked. “I was on a video call with you that very night.”

  Torula took a deep, shuddering breath. “It’s not the same. It’s never been the same.”

  “Yeah, it’s because . . . I’ve been working to make things better. To make me better.” As a kid, I’d felt both lucky and awkward talking with this smart, well-bred, and mysterious seatmate with stunning eyes. But just as things got comfortable, I became an orphan who had no choice but to get hauled off half a country away.

  She flicked aside her bangs. “You could’ve come back when you were eighteen. Or flown over for a visit. Or you could’ve invited me to come visit you anytime. Why did you have to wait for . . . all of this to happen? Now I can’t tell what made you ask. If it’s the hyperwill, you turning thirty, or just the reluctance to live the rest of your life on a spaceship full of strangers.”

  “The hyperwill is nothing. And turning thirty? What?”

  “What if Pangaea hadn’t come along? What would’ve happened? Would you have left the country for another job? Left me?”

  I struggled to find an explanation—or tell her about plans I’d made that involved her—but I had neither. I’d been biding time, maybe waiting for those astronaut credentials to come boost me into her league.

  She held the doorknob, probably struggling for a way to let me down easy. I sucked in my breath, already feeling the sting of the rejection.

  “You asked me why I didn’t ask you sooner—to go where I wanted to go. But I did.”

  “When?” she asked.

  “All these years. Since we were kids, I’ve been asking.”

  “Those weren’t serious.”

  “Says who? Do you even remember the times I asked?”

  She lifted one shoulder in a coy shrug. “Once, you said you wanted to be king of the stars.”

  “And I asked you to be my queen.”

  She smiled and lowered her gaze to the floor. “I remember.”

  The seconds ticked by in silence at her doorway, her hand on the knob, the door still closed. I reached out and took her hand. “All my life, I’ve been chasing two dreams. One involved outer space, the other involved you. For years, I thought both were out of my reach. And now, suddenly . . .”

  She looked up at me, tears sparkling in her eyes. “Oh, Bram. The Earth is so magnificent. All the people, all the cultures, all its possibilities. How could you think of leaving it all behind?”

  “Anyone can offer you a future among those people and places. But no one else can set sail across an ocean full of stars and give you a chance to discover life forms the rest of mankind would never see.” I pulled her close. “It’ll be you and me, Spore. We.”

  I smiled. She squirmed. And in that moment, I understood—she would say yes only because of me. She would never fathom the call of what was waiting out there.

  If she went with half a heart and things went wrong . . . Sweet Jesus. I wouldn’t want to look in her eyes and see sadness there. Not in outer space, with no chance of bringing her back to where her happiness lay.

  But can I go without her? The thought suddenly seemed foolish.

  With a deep breath, I said what I didn’t realize I was more than prepared to say. “If I had to choose just one dream, it would be you.”

  “I . . . what?”

  “If you want to stay on Earth, then this is where I belong too.”

  She gasped and tried to pull away. “I can’t have that on my conscience.”

  “It shouldn’t. It’s my choice.”

  “But it’s always been your dream. To be king of the stars.” Her tears fell. “I can’t be the one to take that away.”

  “I can give up the stars.” I wiped her cheeks. “As long as I still have my queen.”

  “Gosh.” She laughed softly. “You’re still as cheesy as ever.”

  “And you’re still pushing me away. But this time, I’m not going anywhere.” I folded my arms and stood my ground like a man who couldn’t be moved.

  She bit her lower lip as I held her gaze. “You could sail an ocean of stars . . . and you chose me.” She said it in such a low voice, I almost didn’t catch her words. Then, she slowly turned the doorknob. “So do you want to come in?”

  39

  The Deltoton Riddle

  Torula said yes. Even after she’d said it thrice, I still couldn’t believe it. She would leave Earth to be with me. The moment almost made me believe there was a god.

  It had been hours since she’d given her answer, but I still lay awake, watching her sleep. There was no way I could force my eyes to close, so I slipped my pants on and left the room. Mere acquaintances might have expected army-inspired interiors, but the cozy pastel atmosphere flecked with greenery was exactly how I had pictured her place to be.

  I made some coffee, grabbed pen and paper, then settled onto a kitchen stool to do some calculations. Figuring out the details of what Roy and I were working on for Eldritch was the only thing I could think of to bring back the calm.

  A floorboard creaked, and the sight of her in black panties and a white tank top obliterated all equations from my mind.

  “Coffee, at two in the morning?” She slid into the stool across from me at the kitchen nook.

  “Helped myself. I hope you don’t mind.”

  She glanced at my equations. “Tell me about ‘Coffee, slash. Slow cream, slash. Fast sugar.’”

  That was nowhere on my piece of paper. “Where did you hear that?”

  “Your sketch pad fell off the table at the workstation. It opened to that page.”

  “You looked at my notes?”

  She arched a brow. “You looked at my search engine history.”

  “I . . .” My solar plexus tightened defensively. “. . . have no excuse.”

  She smiled and bit her lower lip. “Is it related to Project Hyperwill? Those notes.”

  “No. But . . . it sort of helped me figure it out.”

  “Really? How?”

  I stiffened in my seat, convinced she’d find it petty—my exercise of solving the Deltoton riddle. “It’s nothing.” There was a huge chance she’d only find it ridiculous.

  “No matter how ridiculous it is, I promise not to laugh.”

  Jesus, how does she do that? “You want to talk about that—at this hour?”

  “At least I’d yawn rather than laugh.” She propped her chin up on her fist.

  “Good point.” If we were spending the rest of our lives together, I ought to share my way of dealing with the world. “Ever hear of Deltoton?”

  Her gaze flitted to the side as she pursed her lips. “Starr once told me a priest had warned their congregation against joining it. Are you part of it?”

  I nodded and chuckled. “It’s just a dot org with its own ideology.” I poised both hands in front of me, about to steeple my fingers to form a triangle, but changed my mind and clasped my hands instead. “Its paradigm is founded on ternions.”

  “Sets of threes?”

  “Yeah. In relation to the physical, the logical, the visceral. Body, mind, emotion. Action, vision, passion. Permutations of the same. Say, for instance . . . for anything to succeed, you need to work hard at it, think things through, and put your heart into it. Sweat, strategy, and spirit.”

  “Got it.”

  “Deltoton posed a puzzle and, I think, I gave a good answer.” A twinge
of embarrassment threatened to stop me from sharing anything more.

  “What was the puzzle?” She seemed honestly interested.

  “Something like, ‘What’s masquerading as God in the equation E=mc2?’ In other words, what’s the third element that makes our world work?”

  She pursed her lips. “Lithium?”

  “Matter. Energy. And a third one.”

  “There’s a third one?”

  “That was the question.” I scratched my temple in a moment of self-doubt. “At least, I think it was.”

  She laughed a soft, amiable laugh. It put me more at ease. “Anyway, one day, I watched some creamer drop into my coffee and thought, ‘So that’s how it works.’ That’s how the world keeps the laws in place.”

  Torula glanced at the coffee cup next to me and tilted her head. “You saw a drop of creamer in your coffee and you understood . . . God?”

  “Whoa, back up a bit. I’m just saying there’s stuff out there that fills in some blanks. But to find them, first we have to see the blanks.”

  “Blanks.” She echoed the word as though it’s all she could see as she stared at my coffee.

  I shook the cup and the liquid inside quivered. “Everything in the world jitters and vibrates, right? From virtual particles to spinning galaxies—everything is in motion. So there must be something in the universe that creates order—something that keeps those vibrations coherent and maintains the harmonic waveforms.”

  Torula crossed her arms on the table, blocking my view of her breasts beneath her shirt. The motion helped force my thoughts to stay on track.

  “Matter, energy, and the organization of living systems. Was that your answer?” she asked.

  “No. I’m talking about what imposes laws—even before life makes an appearance. From the moment of the Big Bang.” I pushed the cup towards her. “Imagine the creamer I put in here to be our universe. A few drops of meaningless energy that exploded into . . . something that surrounded every particle of it and told it how to spread in all directions until it’s one uniform thing.” I pulled the cup back towards me and pointed inside it. “The coffee in the cup. That’s the ‘blank.’ That’s the obvious thing all around us that we don’t see. Do you get it?”

  “I’m afraid not. I’m sorry.” She straightened up and ran her fingers through her bed hair, mesmerizing me with her shapeliness and silken skin. “Maybe you could try a different analogy? Coffee doesn’t work for me.”

  I paused and took in the moment. There she was, gorgeous at two in the morning, willing to talk about math, science, and theories, in her underwear, over a cup of hot coffee. Just some of the reasons why I couldn’t imagine leaving her. I glanced at the couch a few paces away.

  “Well?” she asked.

  “Well, what?”

  “Is there anything besides coffee on your mind?’ She folded her arms again, obscuring part of the temptation.

  “Ohhh, yeah.” I sighed and pushed my cup aside, along with some steamier thoughts. “Picture a raving lunatic getting tackled by female football players in lingerie and high heels.”

  Torula raised a brow.

  “It was a dream I had.”

  “Too much porn, I gather?”

  “I think my subconscious was puzzling over the things I wasn’t consciously bothering to puzzle about. And I realized . . . the raving lunatic could be the tiniest speck of matter there is.”

  “Quarks?” she asked. “String?”

  “Whichever one, it’s in constant flux. Always vibrating. The tinier the slice of matter of this universe that you observe, the wilder and more turbulent it gets. Why do you suppose that is?”

  “Because the quantum world is weird?” She put on a wry face.

  “Because the most fundamental quantum particle is a raving lunatic. A mad infinity of possibilities. The more you detach each morsel of matter from whatever it is that constrains it, the wilder it gets—the freer it moves. And as bodies get bigger, the more restrained—the more orderly they become.”

  “Isn’t that because of the natural forces? Gravitation, electromagnetism—”

  “Yes, but even those fundamental forces need to be controlled with precision.” I grabbed my pen and drew an equal sign, then a slash down its middle. “That’s where the football players come in. They block and tackle actions that violate the laws.”

  She stared at the unequal sign I’d drawn. “So these football players . . . they’re like walls of energy preventing reactions. Like a barrier of energy that needs to be surmounted before a chemical reaction can take place.”

  Anticipation bubbled inside of me. Her example would take her exactly where I wanted her to go. “What’s the barrier made of?”

  She shrugged, as though the answer were so obvious. “Activation energy.”

  “No, that’s the amount of energy you need to get over the barrier. So what makes up the barrier?”

  “Some other kind of energy.”

  “So there’s no proper name for it? In your entire Torulan vocabulary?”

  She paused in thought. “Look up the Arrhenius equation. That’s a definition you’d understand.”

  I drew an equal sign and encircled it. “It’s in an equation. Exactly.” She had arrived at my intended destination. “We can’t see the football players, only their effects. The equations prove they exist.”

  “To do what?”

  “To pile up all around us. In layers of dimensions around us to impose the laws. That’s why by the time you get to observe an atom, it looks like an orderly system—with electrons following strictly quantized orbits in a clouded space that’s never devoid of energy.”

  She was quiet for a moment, then her lips pursed as her brow furrowed. “That phalanx of football players.” She laid her hands flat on the table then leaned forward, her breasts calling attention to themselves. “Why are they in stilettos?”

  I shrugged, my inadvertent glance at her cleavage worsening the defensiveness I felt. “It’s . . . just something . . . subconscious. Nothing meaningful.”

  Her eyes narrowed into slits. “You think it’s weak.”

  “What?” I tried to look surprised, and hopefully, guiltless.

  “This . . . mysterious element. You think it’s a very weak force, which is why you need an entire football field of women to constrain one tiny lunatic of a particle.”

  I raised my hands in mock surrender. “Hey, I also said it’s the force people mistake for God. So it has almighty strength in numbers, okay?”

  She nodded, but rather slowly. “And you think those football players—that element—is what?”

  “Rembrance.” I licked my lips like a connoisseur testing the texture of the word against his tongue.

  “Rembrance? I’ve never heard of it before.”

  “That’s because I made it up.”

  Her brows raised a tiny fraction. “What does it mean?”

  “It’s sort of rooted in ‘remembrance,’ but more of the ability to make something indelible. It records accidental strokes of luck that work, so successes get to repeat themselves, and it takes note of failures so it can steer away from them. By recognizing and classifying patterns, it creates harmony over the dissonance.”

  “I see.” Her eyes sparkled as though reflecting the facets of a gem. “Remembered dissonance or resonance. I like the portmanteau.”

  I had no idea what that word meant, so I just let my lips curl into a smile.

  “So . . . what is it, exactly?” she asked.

  “A form of energy that gives the universe the capacity to create order out of chaos.”

  “How?”

  “It recruits data and puts them in uniform.”

  “What?” Her lips parted with a barely there smile, but she kept her promise of not laughing.

  “Data could just be running around in waves leading a meaningless existence—naked and raw—until it’s recruited by an observer, and it puts on a football uniform, turning it either red or black. Then, it joins the game
and jumps into formation and becomes ‘in-formation.’ Do you get it?”

  Now, she laughed. “I love your mind.”

  Flattered and somewhat flustered, I flexed my bicep. “I was hoping you’d go for my body, but—”

  She gave my arm a playful slap. “You went through all that just to make sense of hyperwills, didn’t you? You had to put some mechanism in place to make it plausible for the information that makes up consciousness to hold up over time.”

  “Maybe. But it also shatters Starr’s ideal of eternal souls. Rembrance holds the equations that determine how long it takes for something to decay, dissolve, or disintegrate in this thermodynamic world. And entropy is a value that keeps rising, making it more and more difficult for all those football players to hold up against the outcome.”

  Her gaze drifted off to the side. “Any chance you can make those almighty football players keep Thomas in the game a little longer?”

  So we’re back to talking about that again? I leaned away and sighed. “It’s never going to end, is it? Your fascination for this . . . thing.”

  “It’s a mixture of goodwill and self-interest, really. That ‘thing’ could be us someday.”

  “I doubt it. I have no desire to stick around as stale data in a standing wave.” I picked up my coffee and took a sip of my own analogy before it grew stale.

  “Maybe it’s not for you, but many people would appreciate it—if death was imminent, but you could keep their consciousness alive.”

  “It’s not alive, Spore. You can save it, like any bit of data, but it’s not alive.”

  “So you can?” Her voice rose with excitement.

  “I can what?” I froze, feeling like I’d just stepped on a Bouncing Betty.

  “Save him.”

  I was right. My own words had detonated another bad idea. “Look, saving Thomas is like trying to salvage a video game after it’s been played. It’s long been ‘game over’ for him, and we’re just grabbing the recording.”

  She arched a brow. “Did you hear what you just said? Video games make it so simple to press ‘reload’ no matter how many times you die. Who’s trying to figure out how we can do that in real life?”