Smoke, Mirrors and Deep Space

by Mary Quijano

  “The most recent evidence points to a universe that will keep expanding outward forever… But even if it doesn’t, the other alternative is that it will collapse into a singularity and big bang all over again…and again.”

  “Thus, either way, no end.” Uriel smiled, folding his hands together.

  “So much for science, whose only purpose, by the way, is to dissect the infinite into finite pieces small enough for small minds to grasp…and to thereby entrap them within its limited view of the truth…but I digress.”

  “’S’ okay,” Alex said, fascinated.

  “So,” Uriel went on, “if we were to picture this infinite universe as a highway continuing forever, a roadway of endless space across a track of endless time, how much relative time along this track would a single human lifetime occupy?”

  As the two men in the center of the little stage debated infinity, and Uriel posed this last question, the images of the holographic universe around them began to shift and move, making it appear as if Uriel and Alex were now flying outward along a glowing golden monorail of light, moving through time, through clusters of stars and galaxies at breathtaking speed, while the glow from the big bang receded further and further behind them.

  “None,” Alex answered, his mouth agape as the universe unfolded around him. “A single human life would occupy no time at all. Well, virtually none.”

  “Then what about the entire recorded history of man? What is that, some ten or fifteen thousand years? How much relative time would the whole of mankind’s civilized history on Earth occupy against this span of infinite time?”

  Alex shrugged. “Again, so minute as to be meaningless, dimensionless.” Then his face changed. “Oh….”

  “Exactly! In the face of infinity, all finite time becomes dimensionless. Can you see that? In the face of infinity, of on and on and on, there is no time at all. One second, one lifetime, one billion lifetimes…they’re all the same. Time has no real meaning in relativistic terms; no past, no future… it’s all just now.”

  “And space?” Alex asked. “Being infinite, it too is all just…”

  The 3D image of the universe around them faded. There was just the empty stage.

  “Here,” Uriel finished Alex’s thought. “Here and now, that’s the only true reality. Everything else is just part of the illusion, part of the game.”

  “It’s all just illusion? Everything?”

  “Pretty much,” Uriel told him. “Thus you can play any role that’s ever been played in any time period, and do it as many times as you like. Also,” he smiled, “despite science fiction caveats against it, you can change the past—and thus the future—by playing the role a little differently every time you do it.”

  “But wouldn’t that screw everything up?”

  “On the contrary, we encourage change, the making of different choices, taking different paths, especially at the pivotal points. When you alter the future for one role, it changes it for many others as well, making the whole game infinitely more complex and interesting, don’t you see?”

  “Yeah, but why?”

  “Why? Well, say you choose the life of someone who previously was destined to become an alcoholic bum on skid row, but the next time you play that role, you make a few critical life choices differently, and turn your destiny into that of a billionaire industrialist, or a medical researcher who—”

  “No, no,” Alex interrupted, “I meant why play the game at all?”

  Uriel laughed aloud. “What else is there? We have nothing to do, and all of eternity to do it in!”

  “So you create time?” Alex suggested.

  “We create games. The games create time.”

  “To stave off boredom?!” Alex continued.

  “Exactly. Which leads to my next question. Are you ready to play again?”

  Alex looked at him for a long moment before slowly shaking his head.

  “No…no, I don’t think so.”

  “No?” Uriel repeated, genuinely surprised.

  “You know all those bad choices I made in my life?” Alex asked.

  “Yes?”

  “I think the common thread, the one single ‘fatal flaw’ that I saw running through every one of my pivotal mistakes, was impulsiveness. I didn’t take the time to think things through carefully before acting…or, for that matter, speaking. I don’t want to start my new life on that same mistake.”

  Uriel nodded, smiling. “Very good. Then take all the time you need.” He turned and began to walk out of the auditorium.

  “Hey! Hey wait!” Alex called after him.

  The tall, robed bald man stopped and turned. For just a moment he looked like G. Gordon Liddy without the mustache. “Yes?”

  “Do I have to stay inside here while I think about it?”

  “No, of course not. Choose any exit, wander at will; mi casa es su casa… I’ll check back with you later,” he concluded with a little bow, then exited.

  * * *

  29. Whatever Happened to Baby Alex?

  ALEX WANDERED AIMLESSLY out onto the grounds of the compound, his mind clambering back over the terrain of his life, trying to see not just the brightly lit high ground, but the dark places, the crevasses and ravines, the pits into which he’d most certainly fallen from time to time. Those were the hard parts to recall. He had a feeling they were, for that very reason, important. Especially the things that had happened when he was a kid…for he could barely remember life before age ten at all.

  He stopped in almost the exact center of the great courtyard, taking it all in: the glowing white walls, the great hulking mass of Jupiter with its orange and cream striped mass taking up a sizable corner of the sky on the left, the distant rising sun casting a pale glow across the compound from the right, causing a thin stream of vapor to trail up from the tops of the high ice walls like wispy ghosts.

  Ghosts.

  * * *

  Alex looked up at his father, eyes shining. Dad looked down from his enormous height, gave the boy a wink and a smile, and squeezed his hand a bit harder as they walked up the stone steps. Alex stretched his gait to match his father’s long stride. They walked into the aging stone precinct building and up to the front desk like they owned the place.

  The officer manning the desk—a middle-aged black man in a gut-tight uniform—looked up and grinned.

  “Ah, good mornin’, Detective McCormick. See you got a dangerous suspect in custody there. You want me to cuff him for you?”

  “Would you, Officer Smits?” Alex’s daddy smiled. “He’s a wild one; I can barely hold him back.”

  Alex giggled.

  The desk officer brought out a pair of handcuffs from his desk drawer and snapped the oversized metal hasps around Alex’s scrawny wrists.

  “Cool,” the boy said happily; then after a moment: “Where’s the key?”

  “Key?” Officer Smits said.

  “Key?” Alex’s dad said.

  “Da-ad!” the boy cried, almost worried.

  The men laughed until their eyes watered; then the desk officer produced a key and freed the boy.

  “It’s my son’s ninth birthday today,” Alex’s dad told the man. “I thought I’d bring him in and show him around, let him meet the guys; then maybe take him to the shooting range and teach him how to handle a twenty-two.”

  “Cool,” Officer Smits said, giving Alex two thumbs up.

  “Yeah, cool,” Alex agreed, returning the thumbs up sign.

  Alex was proud of the way everyone in the police station seemed to know his dad, the way they all greeted him with big smiles and jokes, like he was their best friend. And he liked how they shook his own hand, making him feel important just for being Detective McCormick’s son.

  Dad took him to the vending machines near the restrooms to get a package of donuts and a little carton of chocolate milk, then let him sit in his office chair with his feet up on the desk eating them while Dad made a few important phone calls that Alex didn’t really understand. Af
ter that, they went to the shooting gallery. Dad signed him out for protective headgear, gloves, and a gun that was twice as big as his hand.

  “Of course he’s twelve,” Dad told the officer in charge, and the man never even argued with him.

  His dad fired his own gun first to show him how it was done. After 12 rounds, he pushed the button to advance the target and inspect his aim. There was no head or upper chest left on the paper target’s figure. Then it was Alex’s turn.

  His heart beat hard, but he felt better when his dad stood behind him, enclosing Alex’s smaller hands with his big ones to control and aim the big revolver. He helped him to align the gun’s sight with the target, then his finger squeezed Alex’s slowly against the trigger until it hit the firing pin.

  Alex was amazed and a little frightened by how hard the gun bucked, throwing his arms back over his head even with his dad holding onto them. The explosion was so loud and so close, that the force of the sound waves on his eardrums made them ring for hours after, despite the protective headgear.

  But when his dad said, “That was great son,” Alex had grinned up at him. And when he said, “Do you want to try it again?” Alex had nodded eagerly.

  When they got home, Mama was elbow deep in the birthday dinner preparations. Pots of water and marinara sauce simmered on the stove, a big sheet cake cooled on the counter. The kitchen was warm and redolent with the smells of garlic and chocolate, sautéed onion and butter cream frosting.

  “Hi, honey,” Dad said, kissing Mama on the cheek.

  “Hi, babe…Alex, get your finger out of the frosting and go blow up those balloons on the kitchen table.”

  Alex took one more finger load from the bowl of chocolate fudge frosting before complying.

  “Can you set these hors d’oeuvres on the coffee table in the living room?” Mama asked Dad, handing him a hollowed out loaf of sourdough filled with spinach dip, a tray of cheese and crackers.

  As he carried the snacks into the other room, he called back over his shoulder, “I can’t stay.”

  Alex cringed. He could tell by the way Dad was trying to sound so off hand about it, there was a good chance Mom would go postal. The explosion came almost instantly.

  “You what!? Oh, Ronald, not again! It’s Alex’s birthday for chrissake! I got everyone coming over: Mama, my sisters and their kids, that neighbor whassername across the street. What am I supposed to tell them?”

  Daddy came up and put his big hands on her shoulders, almost as if he were keeping her from flying up into the air in her rage. Her eyes were wet with frustration and disappointment.

  “You tell them that your husband’s a detective, that he’s working on a real important case…”

  “It can’t wait?”

  “They got a new lead; they’re picking up a ‘person of interest’ even as we speak. We had to grab him before he got wind and went underground,” Daddy explained. “But we can only hold him a couple of hours without more evidence.”

  “So?”

  “So I’ve got to interview him now, before they cut him loose.”

  “There’s no one else in the entire 56th precinct detective bureau that can interview a goddam suspect?”

  “Carol, it’s my case,” he told her, dropping his hands from her shoulders. “I gotta go.”

  “Go then,” she sniffed, turning her face away as he bent to give her a kiss.

  He straightened up, looked at her with regret, then turned and walked over to Alex, who was pretending to still blow up the balloons.

  “Sorry to miss your party, kiddo,” he said, ruffling the boy’s hair.

  “S’okay, Dad… I had a great time today.”

  “Me too, son,” Dad said. “Save me a piece of cake, okay?”

  * * *

  In the living room, Alex and his cousins, with some kibitzing from the neighbor kids, were assembling the tracks for his new hot wheels racing set.

  The mothers sat on the sectional sofa nearby, drinking beer and bitching; their husbands had wisely retreated into the den to watch a basketball game on the big screen TV. From their conversation, “children”, thought Alex, apparently were believed to be deaf or ’tards.

  “I don’t know how you put up with it,” Aunt Margie sneered. “The hours are terrible, he’s never home….”

  “You sure he hasn’t got somethin’ goin’ on the side, sweetie?” Grandma interjected, pretending to care.

  “No, Mother,” Alex’s mama told her, “I know he isn’t fooling around. He really loves me and baby Alex…believe it or not.”

  Good goin’, Mom, Alex said in his mind, giving her a quick glance. Only I could do without the ‘baby Alex’ thing.

  “Whatever,” Grandma sniffed, reaching for another piece of spinach dip sourdough, even though she’d already consumed a huge plate of spaghetti and two slices of chocolate cake.

  Guess she saved some room by passing on the salad, Alex snickered, as he fit the last two pieces of flexible plastic track together.

  “I don’t care if he’s the sweetest guy on Earth,” Aunt Karla interjected, “I still think you need to put your foot down. It’s just too dangerous on the streets these days. Doesn’t he ever think about you and Alex…I mean, what would you do if—God forbid—something happened?”

  “It gets worse,” Mama sighed, finishing off her beer in a long swallow and getting up. “I need another. Anyone?”

  “Yeah, I could use a fresh one.”

  “Me too.”

  “Not me, I’m driving.”

  “What do you mean ‘It gets worse’?” Grandma demanded.

  “He’s volunteered to join the drug task force,” Mama shouted from the kitchen. “It’s an undercover assignment.”

  “You’re not going to let him do it, are you?” Aunt Margie shouted back over her shoulder.

  “That’s just too dangerous!”

  “ What if there’s Mexican mafia involved; they could come after you and the boy!” Aunt Karla

  added.

  “She wouldn’t even be able to go out with him in public anymore, if he’s undercover,” the neighbor added. “Or, at least, that’s what I heard.”

  Alex, still eavesdropping, wondered what undercover meant if everyone on the block knew about it.

  “I doubt it would get to that,” Mama said as she returned with the beers.

  “You probably wouldn’t want to be seen in public with him anyway,” Aunt Karla sniggered, “not if his hair’s long and straggly and he grows a beard or something.”

  “Jeez, you make him sound like Tom Cruise in Born on the Fourth of July,” Mama laughed, handing a beer to Margie, another to the neighbor.

  “Well, isn’t that how they have to look to fit in with the drug culture?” Karla defended.

  “I…I don’t know, I hadn’t really thought about that part of it,” Mama admitted.

  “Well, you better just tell him to forget about it,” Grandma ordered.

  “I will, Mom, I will,” Alex’s mama said, patting her mother on the knee as she sat back down on the sofa with her beer.

  “So,” Grandma said, turning to her girls, “is everyone coming to Easter dinner at my house next Sunday, or what?”

  * * *

  It was nearly bedtime. The promise of spring had been kept, summer had held onto her sultry reign as long as she could, but finally the nights had begun to cool, and Halloween costumes to appear in all the drug and department stores in town.

  Alex was cuddled under a fleece throw with his mom, watching a rerun of The Simpsons, when Daddy came home at last.

  At first they both jumped, clinging to each other in startled confusion, Mama and he; partly because they hadn’t heard him come in and weren’t expecting him—suddenly he was just there, flopping down in the easy chair across from them with a beer in his hand—and partly because of his appearance.

  Unbelievably, Aunt Karla had been right: he looked like a bum, barely recognizable under the mop of unkempt, shoulder-length brown hair an
d straggly beard. Even his eyebrows looked thicker. Then Alex saw the blue eyes that still sparkled when he looked over at his son from beneath the mass of facial hair.

  “Hi, son,” his dad said softly.

  “Daddy!” Alex cried, jumping out of his mom’s grasp to run to his dad, giving him a hug which was returned long and hard, as if his dad would never let him go.

  “Sorry I haven’t been home in a while,” he murmured into his son’s hair, his eyes on his wife.

  “Almost seven weeks, this time. We thought you might be dead.”

  “You’d get a call,” he reminded her.

  “That’s not good enough, Ronnie.”

  “It won’t be much longer, I promise. We’re closing in on the big fish…I’m going deep, real deep. That’s what I came home to tell you.”