by Tal Klein
“Now imagine that it’s not just your bus that would be disabled, Joel. By saving that person, you would destroy every bus in the world. Forever.”
I opened my mouth, unsure of what would come out, but Pema didn’t wait for an answer. “It’s a difficult problem, Joel. Kind of a Hobson’s choice.11 If the world finds out what you’re about to hear, teleportation is probably done, closed for business forever. Clearing you is the alternative. Everything remains as is, the status quo unchanged.”
“Wait, so clearing myself means killing myself?”
“I didn’t say that.”
“Look,” I said, hoping to reason with her. “All I did was miss a very important date with my wife, because of a situation I had no control of. And she’s probably worried sick about me, but I can’t tell her I’m okay because my comms aren’t working. I don’t know shit, and I’m stuck in a room with a woman who basically told me to run over myself with a bus!”
“I’m sorry, but we have no time left.” She tapped impatiently on the table. “But remember, you have a choice now. Should you decide not to clear yourself, you need to say the words Karma Chameleon.”
“Say what?”
“Karma. Chameleon.”
Where the hell did she come up with Culture Club? This can’t be an arbitrary cosmic coincidence. Was IT spying on my comms right before I got here?
“Like the 1980s song?” I asked suspiciously.
“Yes, I think”—she hesitated—“it’s definitely a song. One that you …” She shook her head, apparently unsure how to finish her thought.
“Yeah, but how do you know it?” I insisted. “Nobody knows Culture Club.”
“It doesn’t matter. Just say those words if you want to leave. Got it?”
“I guess,” I said. “So, if I don’t want to be cleared, I just utter Karma Cham—”
“Don’t say it now!” she cautioned me.
“Why not? And how will saying it save me? And why should I trust you?”
Another sigh. This time accentuated by an ugh of frustration.
Now might be a good time to mention that Sylvia and my mother are unique among women, in that they happily put up with my—shall we say—special snowflake charm? Pema, however, was clearly not a fan.
“You don’t have to. You don’t have to say the words. You don’t even have to be here right now. Go ahead and run out that door. I suspect you already know what you’ll find on the other side. However, if you do say those words, then those nanos that held you down earlier will restrain Bill and me,” Pema explained. “You’ll probably have two, maybe three minutes before someone resets them. You’re lucky that they all but emptied the floor to deal with you and security is down in the lobby.”
Don’t want to run into any more of them.
“Your best bet is to take the stairs,” she continued. “Make a left at the door. Count four doors on your right. The exit is a green door. Take the stairs up. We’re on the ninth floor—”
“Wait, you want me to escape by going up?” I interrupted.
“Shut up and listen! Yes, your natural instinct will be to go down the stairs, but the lobby is crawling with security. Your only chance of survival is to go up to the thirteenth floor.”
Thirteenth floor? Not the roof?
Pema’s words were faster than my train of thought. “Getting them to open the door is going to be your problem. I can’t help you there.”
“Who is ‘them’?”
She leaned forward, her eyes locked on mine. “Please understand, Joel: I am not your accomplice. Nor am I your ally. I’m simply here to give you a choice you would have otherwise not had. This is all the help I can offer you. I will be equally incapacitated if you say those magic words—”
“Karma Chamel—”
“Stop!” She was getting flustered. “For the last time, don’t say them now, or ever again in this room unless you opt to flee. They are active now.”
“Okay, okay,” I said. “So, what do we do now?”
“Do not turn to me for help from here on out. Outing me will only make things worse for us both.” She looked toward the door. “I’m going to go through the motions with Corina, but she will have likely already made up her mind. And as I said, they have a good point. You may even find yourself agreeing with them.”
“Agree to clear myself?” I said in disbelief. “Good luck with that.”
She nodded, a hint of sadness in her eyes. “It’s the absence of choice I disagree with. But please, act surprised when they tell you. I don’t want her thinking I fed you any details.”
“Don’t worry—you didn’t.”
“Gong-da, Joel,” she said solemnly, completely missing my sarcasm. I didn’t need working comms to know she was apologizing. “I know it is confusing, but now is not the time to pity yourself. Now is the time to be wise. It’s hard to talk to you like this, because you don’t know anything. There’s really no good choice for you or Sylvia. What she’s been through, I just can’t—” Her voice cracked. She stopped talking as tears welled in her eyes. A few wound their way down over her angular cheeks.
I realized then that I barely knew anything about Sylvia’s work life. Sure, she complained about “Bill” and shared the occasional “funny coworker” moment, but I didn’t really know who was in her social circle at IT. Maybe this Pema was one of Sylvia’s closest friends. She certainly seemed to know me pretty well. But still, it was weird that she was acting like she was at my funeral when I was sitting right in front of her.
Footsteps sounded outside the room. Pema quickly wiped her face and made her expression impassive.
The door opened and Bill Taraval entered the room. The top of his head seemed more bereft of hair in person, but otherwise he looked just like his projection from earlier.
“Mr. Byram,” he said, breathing heavily. “A thousand and one apologies.” He exhaled. “Welcome to International Transport.” He greeted my pseudo-savior with barely disguised distaste. “Pema.”
“Bill.” She was all business now, cold and haughty. “Would you care to explain why a man with no comms claiming to be Sylvia Byram’s husband is being held hostage in a conference room on an R&D floor? Where is security?”
“A moment, Pema,” Taraval spoke softly. Then, turning to me, he said, “You’re a difficult man to pin down. First you escape the Escrow chamber, then the car I sent—”
“I had other things on my mind,” I said. “Like, why am I here instead of Costa Rica?”
“Ah yes. Well, the situation has—shall we say—evolved. Thankfully, you inveigled your way inside the building. In here, on this floor, you are under our jurisdiction. Our headquarters is sovereign International Transport territory.” Pema pursed her lips, but said nothing. Taraval coughed, then continued, “Do you know what an ayah is, Mr. Byram?”
“No idea.”
“It’s what the Gehinnomites would call you. You would be their perfect ayah, if they knew you existed.” He paused again, I imagine for gravitas. “Before the Last War, the Muslims regarded their holy book, the Qur’an, as an ayah. It exemplified what they believed were Allah’s spiritual messages to mankind. And just as the Muslims believe that every ayah is a sign from Allah, the word ayah in the lexicon of the Gehinnomites has similar meanings: ‘evidence,’ ‘sign,’ and ‘miracle.’ You saw their message to the world on the way over here, I’m sure. Their inclusion of the phrase ‘We will show you Our signs in the horizons until it becomes clear to you that they are the Truth’ was most telling. They’re looking for proof, Joel. Irrefutable evidence from God that teleportation is a sin. And you, I’m afraid, would be that proof.”
What the fuck is he talking about?
He pressed his fingertips together a few times. “You see, Joel—in a technical sense—you should not exist.”
11 Thomas Hobson rented horses to people around the beginning of the seventeenth century. Since his customers always wanted to ride their favorite mounts, a few of his horses became over
worked. So the enterprising liveryman began a rotation system, giving renters the horse closest to the stable door, or none at all. Hobson’s choice eventually became a catch-all for any decision between two or more equally objectionable alternatives.
SHE BLINDED ME WITH SCIENCE
THERE WAS AN AWKWARD SILENCE in the conference room. Per usual, I was the one to break it.
“You mean because my comms are disabled?”
“No. Disabling comms is a crime itself, not evidence there-of. And anyway, we didn’t disable your comms. You did.”
“That’s crazy! Why would I disable my own comms?”
“If you would allow me to explain, I believe we’ll soon find common ground. I consider myself not only a peer to your wife, but also a friend. My role here is to aid the both of you.”
I nodded, making sure to put on my “serious listening” face. It’s one I developed in childhood, honed during my teenage years, and perfected through lots of trial and error in my marriage. It’s proven fairly reliable.
“These Gehinnomites, they’ve convinced many a Bible-thumper to unite against teleportation, claiming it is a direct route to Gehinnom, or Hell. They don’t care which particular version of God delivers the evidence that teleportation is evil, and over the years they’ve been covering all their bases—the Tower of Babel in the Old Testament, the Fifth Seal in the New Testament, and the Day of Resurrection in the Qur’an.”
Pema snorted. “Get over yourself, Bill.”
“Pema,” he said in a barely restrained tone, “we can discuss our differences later. Our objective now is to clean up this mess.”
“That’s not our objective, Bill. It’s your objective.” Making a few comms-like movements with her fingers, she added, “I assume you’ve cleared this with Corina?”
Taraval’s eyes narrowed in suspicion. “Did she send you here, Pema? To babysit me?”
She responded with a hand gesture. The holographic likeness of an older woman appeared in one of the empty chairs. She wore a lab coat over an elegant business suit, and a string of pearls around her neck. Her very essence screamed “maternal.” I knew her face well, as a portrait of it hung in every TC in the world.
“I’m quite capable of doing that myself, Bill,” said Corina Shafer. She then turned to me. “Hello, Joel. We’ve actually met in person before, albeit briefly. Do you remember?”
Unfortunately, I did. Sylvia had just been promoted and wanted me to make a good impression at a company party. I tended to get a bit claustrophobic when surrounded by executive types, so I got too drunk too fast. When Sylvia introduced me to one of the world’s most powerful individuals, I remembered being surprised by her approachability and warmth. It made me comfortable. So comfortable I had felt I could speak my mind. Which, I should have known by then, never went well.
“Yes, Ms. Shafer. It was at IT’s holiday gala last January. I, uh, made a joke to you about how the world’s richest company could manage to skimp on their holiday party. Sylvia reamed me out for that one.”
Her smile didn’t waver. She was so affable, I thought maybe I might get out of there without summoning Culture Club. “That’s quite all right. Your demeanor may have been coarse, but you were, in essence, correct. It would have been more expensive to throw a holiday party in December. However, my guidance to our event planners was not to save chits, but to find a date and time when the greatest number of employees and their families could attend.”
I blushed. It felt strange to feel embarrassed because, technically, she was holding me against my will, but she seemed more like a concerned aunt than a cutthroat captain of industry.
“Look, Ms. Shafer—”
“Please, Joel. Call me Corina.”
“Okay, Corina. I’ve been thinking a lot about this. About why I’m here. And I think this is all just one big misunderstanding.” I took a deep breath. I wanted to sound cool, collected. “So this Joan Whatever-Her-Face lady, the one who blew up the TC? She was in front of me in the Greenwich line. So you guys saw the security feeds, brought me here, and disabled my comms because you think I’m somehow affiliated with her and the Gehinnomites. Is that it?”
Corina looked at me wistfully, in as much as a projected hologram could convey wistfulness. “No, Joel. That’s not it.” She folded her fingers together. “As you know, there was a malfunction in the Greenwich TC, owing to the explosion on the other side.” Her eyes looked off somewhere past my shoulder, as if she were reading a speech. “For all the damage, destruction, and death these terrorists wrought, the truth is it could have been much worse had they chosen a more populous destination. Yet there was one consequence worse than anything we could have anticipated. It’s unimaginable, or it was unimaginable….” Her lip trembled. “Joel, I don’t know how to say this.”
Silence.
Just utter silence as three people, two real, one projected, stared at me. The hum of the lights or the room’s nanites or the universe was deafening. It felt like it went on forever.
“When the San José TC blew up, your state was—ambiguous. The teleportation process had begun. Your luggage had already made it and been cleared.” A pause—one that seemed real, not just for dramatic effect. “Joel, the Punch Escrow protocol features many redundancies. However, these redundancies are only supposed to kick in when—”
She broke off and turned around. Someone else in the room she was physically occupying put an arm around her. I couldn’t tell who, because the hologram only projected her self-image. All I could see was the shadow of arms and hands around her.
This is beyond weird. I’m the one out of sorts here, but some-how I feel bad for her.
Taraval rose from his chair, walked to me, and put an awkward, sweaty hand on my shoulder. “Joel, this is a delicate matter.”
Oh my God. “Will you guys just get to the fucking point already?” I said loudly. “What happened to me? Am I in purgatory or something?”
“A very interesting analogy, Joel,” he said. “You know, the Catholics—”
What the fuck is it with this guy and religion?
“Enough, Bill,” Corina said, having turned around and recomposed herself. “I should tell him. I have to be the one.”
“Very well,” Taraval said stiffly, and took a step back.
Corina looked right at me this time. “I’m going to give it to you straight, Joel. Because of the explosions at the TC and the power plant, all the systems in Costa Rica went offline. We did our best to track you, but your status was stuck in progress. None of our systems could confirm whether you’d successfully arrived at the San José vestibule or not, so the Greenwich foyer was never cleared, and the conductor there did what he was supposed to: he escalated. The matter quickly reached Bill here. Without definitive knowledge of your arrival, and with all the commotion, no one had taken into account that you might find your own way out of the Greenwich foyer. You shouldn’t have been able to leave that room until your status changed to unsuccessful. But somehow, an error cascading from the issues in Costa Rica reset the room. That’s when you first spoke with Bill today. He concluded there was no harm in releasing you out of the Escrow in Greenwich and bringing you here so you could port to Costa Rica and be with Sylvia.”
Pema nervously began to nibble on her left thumbnail.
“Regrettably,” Corina said, and sighed, “once the San José systems came back online, your local status was reported as arrived. Sylvia believed you had teleported successfully and then died in the blast. She panicked and did the unthinkable.” She paused, looking at both Pema and Taraval before bringing her kind eyes back to me. “She brought you to Costa Rica.”
IT’S MY LIFE
Depersonalization-derealization disorder (DDPD) is thought to be caused largely by severe traumatic lifetime events.
The core symptom of DDPD is the subjective experience of “unreality in one’s sense of self” or detachment from one’s surroundings. People who are diagnosed with DDPD experience an urge to question and think
critically about the nature of reality and existence. They may feel divorced from their own personal physicality by sensing their body sensations, feelings, emotions, and behaviors as not belonging to themselves. As such, a recognition of one’s self breaks down.
—Excerpt from the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders entry on depersonalization-derealization disorder
“DID YOU KNOW Corina Shafer’s not even a scientist?”
It was about fourteen months before I’d find myself held prisoner in an IT conference room. Sylvia and I were drinking at the Mandolin, celebrating the possibility of her promotion into the upper echelon of IT. She had just come from her final-round interview, during which she’d met the woman credited with solving the human teleportation problem, and my wife was buzzing with adrenaline.
“She’s not?” I said in surprise. “Then why the lab coat?” In every photo I’d seen of Corina Shafer, she was always wearing one, so I had assumed she was an egghead.
“I don’t know; it inspires trust or something. But no—she was an actuary.”
“You’re kidding me. The folks who set insurance premiums?”
“Yep. She says her philosophy is to hire the brightest scientists and engineers so that she gets smarter by proximity. One of whom is William Taraval. He’s, like, the godfather of quantum microscopy! If I get this gig, he’ll be my boss!”12
“Never heard of him. That’s funny about Corina, though. I always assumed she was a nerd of some kind.”
“Nope. You should hear the two of them talk about the future of teleportation. The possibilities. I mean, imagine if IT had been around during the Last War.”
“You mean, we could have teleported weapons or something?”
“I mean, we could have saved people. Thousands. Millions!” Her eyes were glowing with passion. The Last War was a touchy subject with Sylvia because her grandfather had died shortly before it ended. He was a medic, fresh off his residency when he was commissioned. A medical tent he was working in on the outskirts of the Mediterranean got hit with a drone missile and, although he was rescued, he died en route to the hospital. Her dad had been nine years old back then, and as my wife had said many times, Granddad was gone in a moment, but his loss hovered over her family for decades. It was, in her view, the primary reason her parents were so emotionally distant. “Imagine if there had been a TC at every field hospital. Soldiers with life-threatening injuries, immediately ported—televac’d—back to hospitals in London or Dubai. I would have known my grandfather. My father wouldn’t be so…” She shook away whatever unkind-but-no-doubt-true adjective she had in mind. “Anyway. That’s why this technology is so important. We can literally save lives. Hell, we can save humanity.”