Codename- Ubiquity

by Wendy Devore

  I clenched my teeth but let the “darlin’” roll off me. “That was pure hell!” I snorted, plopping into my chair. “Breckinridge gave me the third degree. It was like he couldn’t possibly believe I had any idea what I was talking about.”

  Jeff blinked hard and leaned forward in his chair. “Breckinridge was in the room?”

  “Breckinridge ran the entire interview.”

  His incredulous look spoke volumes. “For your interview?”

  My witty reply was preempted by my stomach’s loud groan.

  “I am absolutely starving.” I rooted around in my bag for my ramen.

  Jeff shook his head as he rose from his desk. “Sorry, darlin’, the grub’ll have to sit till later. There’s a gaggle of undergrads waiting for us.”

  “Shit!” I sputtered. “I totally forgot!” I grabbed my canvas bag and a pile of graded quizzes from the bottom drawer of my desk and hurried after him. Jeff and I were the teaching assistants for Dr. Daniels’s BioEngineering 204L Diagnostic Devices class, and we were going to be late.

  Nineteen students were shifting restlessly in their seats as we rushed into the room.

  A petite woman in a clingy pink sundress flipped her shoulder-length blonde hair and smiled sweetly at Jeff as we began to return the quizzes.

  “You just made it, cowboy,” she teased as he slid her paper onto her desk. “Another three minutes we’d have taken off.” She winked.

  I elbowed him as I passed. “She’s a student!” I whispered.

  No one winked at me as I returned exams.

  After the test review, I trudged up to the whiteboard to begin covering the assigned topic for the day: Intro to EEG.

  “EEG, or electroencephalogram, is a test that detects postsynaptic dendritic currents from cortical pyramidal cells in the brain using small metal electrodes placed on the scalp,” I explained. I looked up and realized that most of the students were staring intently at Jeff instead of me.

  “What Katie means…” Jeff interrupted.

  “Kate!” I growled under my breath.

  “…is that the EEG will detect and chart electrical impulses of the brain.”

  I sighed as Jeff rambled on, mansplaining the lesson. After a few minutes, it became obvious that he was going to teach the lecture without any input from me. I plunked down in a chair at the back of the room, swept my unruly hair back over my shoulders, tugged at my hemline, and pulled the peanuts from my bag. I munched through the first food I’d eaten since breakfast and resolved that tomorrow I would go back to dressing like just another one of the boys.

  The afternoon turned to evening, but there was no rest for the weary graduate student. While “the boys” headed off to the Dutch Goose, I spent hours pouring over my code until the EEG parasomnia analysis for Dr. Daniels was complete. Exhausted, I finally headed home; it was well after eight. When I arrived, Michelle was planted on the sofa, watching an episode of reality TV and singing vocal exercises as she fast-forwarded through the commercials.

  “Shell,” I admonished. “You have the voice of an angel, but the neighbors are gonna wring your neck. The walls here are like paper.”

  She flashed her most mischievous pixie grin. “Are you kidding? I have the voice of Amy Winehouse, and no one’s going to complain. It’s Friday night, live a little! The guys in 2E are having a giant bash. Matt stopped over and said we should come by. They got a keg. Don’t you have something to celebrate? How’d the interview go?”

  I kicked off my sister’s pumps and flexed my sore feet. “Not well. It was like they didn’t believe a word I said—about anything. All I want is to change into some yoga pants, pronto. You go. I’m exhausted.”

  “Mmmm-hmmm. Maybe I’ll go over there for a little while. You should come.”

  “I’m really tired. It’s been such a long day. And I don’t party. And I don’t drink…”

  “You’re going to have to get out there and interact with the rest of the world sometime. Why not tonight?”

  I pinched the bridge of my nose, hard, then pressed my fingers into my temples. Neither action relieved the sensation that my head was filled with concrete. “You know I can’t! If I stay up too late, I dream. If I drink, I dream. If I don’t meditate for an hour before bed, I dream.”

  “I wish it didn’t make you such a stick-in-the-mud,” Michelle sighed, her levity deflating into weariness. “I suppose I could just party for you.”

  I sighed and plopped next to her on our overly soft, overly beige Goodwill sofa. “Please don’t drink too much. You know I hate lying to Mom about that stuff. And Matt is kind of…well, handsy.”

  Michelle turned off the television and slipped on the kitten heels I’d so recently abandoned. “Sis,” she said, striking a pouty pose. “That’s exactly what I’m counting on.”

  “Michelle!”

  She rolled her eyes but gave me a sly smile. “Just because you can’t have anyone in your bed doesn’t mean I shouldn’t find someone to snuggle up to in mine.”

  I snorted and buried my forehead in my palm. “Oh, my God—you are such a horndog!”

  Michelle rested her hand on my shoulder, and I reached up to give it a squeeze. “Seriously, though, you just had an episode,” she said. “Are you sure you’ll be all right without me?”

  I nodded and motioned for her to go.

  She blew me a kiss as she skipped out the door.

  Without the din of the television and Michelle’s arpeggios, I could easily discern the bass pumping through the complex from our neighbor’s raging kegger. I sighed and shook my head. The truth was, I wanted to go to Matt’s party. I wanted to drink with my sister until I grew giggly and uninhibited and happy. While I didn’t need Matt in my bed, someone to hold hands with would be nice. Someone who would ask about my day, take me on an evening walk, or delight me with a homemade meal. And maybe, one day, there would be more. But what man in his right mind would choose to wake up next to a screaming lunatic who might punch him in the face because she’s having a violent night terror?

  Retreating to my bedroom, I closed the door and withdrew to the corner. A faded and badly flattened oversize patchwork pillow served as my trusty meditation mat. My mother had sewn it for me when I was ten, and I caressed its faded pink and purple calico squares before lowering myself to the floor. I crossed my legs and placed my hands in my lap, palms turned upward, and took a deep breath.

  “With this practice, may I be safe from harm,” I whispered.

  I thought, Peace. I inhaled again and added light. I paused before I added love.

  I cleared my mind and focused all my attention on the sensation of my breath. As fragments of today’s calamities arose in my mind, I gently encouraged each to wing away like a little bird into the ether. For as long as it took, I would do nothing more than simply be.

  Chapter 2

  Andrew

  September 17

  Andrew opened his eyes, then immediately clenched them as the vertigo set in. He took several deep breaths before the nausea passed.

  Lily’s shaky voice was filled with awe. “Sweet mother of God, are you seeing this?”

  And then, suddenly, he was seeing it. A moment ago, they had been reclining on hospital gurneys. Now, they were sprawled on the dirt floor of an immense warehouse, surrounded by hulking piles of scrap metal. The smell of engine oil hung heavy in the air.

  “I can’t believe this worked,” Lily whispered, hauling herself from the floor and dusting off her jeans. “We are definitely not in Kansas anymore. I can hardly believe this is still Palo Alto.” Despite the ramshackle surroundings, her astonished grin stretched from ear to ear.

  She offered Andrew her hand, and she pulled him to his feet, even though he easily outweighed her and dwarfed her by a foot. Her long, dark ponytail swung like a pendulum.

  “You never told me what Andric’s big breakthrough was. How did he work out a method for getting us this far out?” She crept around the edge of the nearest pile of junk and motioned for h
im to follow.

  “He said he acquired some EEG traces of a novel REM state,” Andrew replied, creeping after the diminutive Filipino woman. “But you know Andric—everything’s strictly ‘need to know.’” Andrew’s laugh was bitter. “Despite the fact that this is my project, he decided I didn’t need to know. Amir reverse-engineered the readings and integrated them into our signal, and here we are…wherever this is.”

  “Any idea how long it’ll be before we converge?” Lily asked.

  Andrew shook his head. “Your guess is as good as mine. This is a brave new world.”

  Lily peered down the aisle of the warehouse. Nothing but silence. She straightened and took another cautious step. “Then I suppose we should get out there and explore it.”

  It was near sunrise, but the ashen morning light was dismal and gloomy. An unpleasantly warm wind swirled the choking, smog-tinged air through the nearly deserted streets, but Andrew suspected it wouldn’t be long before the area was bustling with activity. The smog was so thick that he could barely see the outline of the adjacent building in the sprawling industrial landscape. A discarded sheet of paper flapped against a lamppost marred with graffiti, and a monstrous rat scurried around the corner. In the distance, he could hear the low rumbling of heavy morning commute traffic.

  “What is with this insane pollution?” Lily coughed. “Did we somehow land in the middle of Beijing?”

  “You know that’s not possible. No…this is Palo Alto. It’s just not our Palo Alto.”

  They wandered along the streets in the complex, dodging a flatbed as it rumbled toward the warehouse laden with scrap metal, until they reached a six-foot fence topped with razor wire. The rush of traffic grew louder. The gate that protected the compound was secured with a heavy padlocked chain, but Lily easily slid through the gap, waiting impatiently for Andrew to cram himself through.

  The broken concrete sidewalk snaked through an anemic wall of shrubs that obscured the roadway. Six lanes of traffic were clogged with bumper-to-bumper traffic. It seemed that every other vehicle was a imposing, lumbering block of metal, incongruously painted in bright primary colors. Most of them belched noxious black exhaust.

  “People here sure love their Humvees,” Lily said. “No wonder there’s so much smog—those behemoths get terrible gas mileage.”

  They trudged along the roadway for at least a mile. Andrew’s sandy blond hair stuck to the film of sweat on his forehead, and his irritated eyes watered constantly. “None of this looks familiar at all, and the fact that the smog obscures everything isn’t helping.” He’d been outdoors for only an hour, but already his voice was raspy.

  “We need to get out of this junk before we end up with contact emphysema,” Lily wheezed.

  The sidewalk dipped into an underpass beneath a wide set of train tracks, and at last downtown Palo Alto came into view.

  Andrew stopped in his tracks. Instead of familiar bistros, cafés, and trendy clothing shops, University Avenue was illuminated like a small-scale version of Times Square. Where he expected low-rise buildings, he instead found seven-story towers, their exterior faces sheathed with screens flashing a never-ending parade of brightly colored logos that illuminated the smog with an eerie, rainbow-tinged glow. The onslaught of advertising was overwhelming. And here too, like on the main thoroughfare, the traffic snarl proceeded at a crawl, generating a low-hanging cloud of fumes.

  A lone pedestrian approached them. As the figure emerged from the gloom, Andrew noted his purple-brown flared pants and short-sleeved shirt with a wide collar in a raucous pattern that reminded him of a skinned pink giraffe. The man stared openly at their tight jeans and solid-color T-shirts as he passed.

  Lily elbowed him in the ribs and snorted. “Something tells me we’re going to need to try a little harder to blend in. And I can’t wait to see you in puce bell-bottoms.”

  She pointed to the left, and they ducked through the door beneath the glowing crimson Salvation Army sign.

  On the store’s main floor, he strode casually into the men’s section. He selected the least objectionably patterned button-down shirt he could find and a rust-colored pair of slacks. He cringed at the feel of the unidentifiable synthetic fabric. With a glance over his shoulder to ensure the lone employee’s attention was elsewhere, he strolled casually into the fitting room.

  The clothes fit well enough, looked comfortably worn, and so would do nicely; but he was carrying no cash.

  He pulled the tags from his new attire and hung his old clothing, carefully sandwiching them between other items still hanging haphazardly in the fitting room. Without a glance toward the unsuspecting clerk, he strode nonchalantly out of the store. Lily was waiting for him, now sporting a checked coatdress in yellow and toast tan. Fawn vinyl boots completed the look. She slid a totally unnecessary pair of round Jackie O. sunglasses down her nose and peered over the frames.

  “You look ridiculous,” she said, chuckling.

  He gave her a playful shove. “Thanks a lot. I’m starving. Why don’t you break out your black ops training and find us something to eat?”

  “Yes, sir, mission leader, sir,” she replied in a mocking tone. “Seriously, though, a market would be perfect. Everybody needs groceries, right?”

  They roamed multiple blocks before locating a promising storefront. When Lily emerged, she had an oversize paisley-patterned hobo bag slung over her shoulder. She reached inside and handed him a sack of jerky.

  He ripped the bag open and bit into a chewy chunk with gusto. “What? No eggs Florentine?”

  “Next time I’ll infiltrate an upscale restaurant and take the sous chef hostage. But in all seriousness, there were surprisingly few options. I don’t know what these people eat if there’s next to nothing in the market. But in any case, I suggest we keep moving; someone’s likely to notice that her purse has gone missing.”

  They roamed the length of University Avenue, ducking into shops when they could. The quality of the air indoors was drastically better than outside.

  When they reached the end of the street, Lily reached into her bag and shuffled through the contents. “We’re three hours in, and we still haven’t converged. While this place is definitely polluted as hell, it doesn’t seem especially dangerous. I suggest we split up and learn as much as we can using whatever time we have left. Keep the jerky. And here…” She handed him a wad of pale-blue currency engraved with a somber portrait of J.D. Rockefeller.

  Andrew shoved the bills in his pocket.

  “Think you’ll be okay on your own?” Lily asked.

  “I can handle myself,” he scoffed.

  “Good,” she said, grinning. “If we don’t converge first, meet back here at five. We may need to make arrangements for overnight accommodations.”

  Five o’clock had long since passed. Lily glared at Andrew impatiently as he approached the rendezvous. She held out two keycards to the Cardinal Hotel.

  “You’re late. Fifteen minutes prior to fifteen minutes prior.”

  “At ease, soldier. This is a civilian operation. Leave the marines-speak at home.” He flashed his most charming grin and selected a keycard. “Thanks for taking care of this. How did you manage it?”

  Lily’s face relaxed into an impish smirk. “Justifiable appropriation. Better you don’t know the details. What have you learned?”

  Andrew pulled a folded newspaper from under his arm.

  “That’s it?” she scoffed.

  “What? You have something better?”

  “Oh, yeah.” She nodded, punching his arm and pointing toward the doorway to a modest café. “You’re gonna love this…”

  In a booth at the back of the restaurant, he flipped through a menu that was easily thirty pages long.

  “What’s the most complicated dish on this menu?” she asked.

  Andrew pointed. “The beef Wellington.”

  “Perfect. Now order it with shaved white truffles. And ask them for Kobe beef.”

  Andrew shook his head. “These
tabletops are plastic. The silverware’s mismatched. What are you trying to do? Get me thrown out?”

  Her smug smile was infuriating. When a harried waitress in a sunshine-yellow uniform arrived to take their order, Lily kicked Andrew under the table. He clenched his teeth and ordered beef Wellington, with Kobe beef, topped in shaved truffles. The waitress didn’t even bat an eye. Lily asked for the same.

  Andrew eyed Lily suspiciously. “What’s your game here?”

  “Just wait…”

  Three minutes later, the waitress returned with two plastic plates laden with puff-pastry-wrapped tenderloin, topped by thin shaves of truffle.

  Andrew took a bite. “Astonishing. This is the most tender beef I’ve ever tasted. Perfectly cooked. With fine ingredients…served in mere minutes.”

  Lily beamed. “I know, right?”

  “But how?”

  “Molecular 3-D printing. For food. It’s like a magic microwave.”

  His jaw dropped. “For food? Impossible! The technology is in its infancy. It’s capable of manufacturing a few molecules, at best. And even if it were possible to rebuild an entire meal, using it this way would be an extravagant waste of energy.”

  “Yeah, well—no one here seems to be concerned about energy use. Haven’t you noticed? The enormous cars…the choking smog…the biggest oil magnate of all time staring at us from the currency?”

  He stared thoughtfully at his meal, then took another bite.

  “So what did you find?” she asked.

  Andrew lowered his fork and raised the thick tabloid to the table. He flicked past the categorically absurd “Hedgehog with Human Head Found in Albuquerque” to the more believable “Record-breaking Wildfire Season Claims More Lives” and “Shifting Climate Extends Atlantic Hurricane Season into January.” He slid the paper toward Lily and pointed to a brief article buried in the back pages.

  PALO ALTO, Calif., Sept. 17—Psychologist Dr. Kathryn Rathman believes her study of the effects of meditation on the brain physiology of Hindu monks may hold the keys to unlocking alternate realities. Her research suggests that the monks’ ability to achieve a state of nonduality, or oneness with the universe, may correspond to multiverses as referenced in the Hindu Puranic literature.