Six Bits

by Laurence Dahners

  “OK.” Allie got off the bed, wiped her nose and went over to sit at her desk. She picked at her food for a while, but didn’t eat much.

  “Are you done?” Her dad asked, nodding at her plate.

  “Yes.” She said in a small voice.

  He picked up both of their plates and took them down to put in the dishwasher. Shortly, he appeared back in her door with two bowls of ice cream. She raised her eyebrows. “But I didn’t eat all my dinner?”

  “I know.” He gave her a little grin, “Some rules have to be broken occasionally.”

  They ate their ice cream in silence. When it was gone Al asked, “Ready to make me a ‘tunnel’?” Allie nodded, rubbing her wrist under her nose again. He heard a spraying sound and looked down in astonishment to see a tiny jet of water shooting into the bottom of his ice cream bowl. Though his initial reaction was to shout, he managed to restrain himself to an almost calm, “What the hell!?” He looked back up at Allie who was watching the spray too. He swallowed the storm of questions exploding in his brain to say simply, “Where is that tunnel coming from?”

  “The pipe in the wall there.” She pointed over his shoulder with her chin. The spray stopped.

  “How did you know there was a pipe in the wall?”

  “I sorta feel them… Don’t you?”

  Her dad made a choking sound, “No... I don’t think anybody can… ‘cept maybe you.” He began asking a seemingly endless list of questions, most of which Allie couldn’t answer. She dribbled water out of glasses and sprayed it out of pipes. After a while she developed a headache and became unable to create more than a tiny tunnel. Still he wanted her to do more.

  Finally her mother came in and watched what was going on with growing astonishment. After a while though, she said, “Al, she needs to rest. It’s past her bedtime.”

  He turned to snap at his wife, then looked back at Allie, all droopy around the edges. “OK, Sarah.” He turned back to his daughter, “Allie, we’ll go into my lab tomorrow and learn more about what you can do, okay?”

  Allie sighed and put on her pajamas. She wasn’t looking forward to it. Tomorrow she and Mindy had been going to hang out at the pool. Her head was throbbing. Her mom got her a Tylenol and she curled up to sleep with her cat, Oscar.

  Her dad spent hours on the internet trying to find credible evidence of teleportation or whatever the hell this phenomenon was. Not even a “less than credible” claim of the same phenomenon was to be found.

  The next morning Allie’s dad got her up early to take her in to his lab in the physics department at the University. He ignored her protests about going swimming with Mindy. When her mother said something about it, he just told her to let Aunt Stella know that Allie was “busy.” At the lab, they did measurements until Allie’s head was splitting again. Her eyes would hardly stay open. They rested over lunch at Burger King, then started again.

  Dr. Dans’ magnetic and electrical field measurements around Allie showed nothing different from those about his own head. Measurements around the ports found oddly “swirling” fields. Samples of distilled water and some organic solvents that had been through ports were put aside for assay by a friend in the chemistry department. Later Al learned that there were no detectable changes from the control specimens that hadn’t been “ported.” Bacteria and yeast that had been ported continued to live.

  When Allie got too tired to make ports again, her dad spent time on the phone with a friend at the medical school trying to arrange an MRI of her head, “To see if there were any unusual structures.”

  Other than the friend at the medical school whom her dad only told that she had “an unusual ability,” no one else was told that Allie was the center of a new research program.

  When the MRI was finished no one could find any recognizable difference between her brain and the brains of ordinary people.

  Dr. Dans’ grad student kept working on Dans’ grant funded research project, getting barked at when he interrupted the “Allie research” with questions about their funded study. Everyone that came into the lab was told that Allie was there to “keep her out of her Mom’s hair” or to “learn how science worked.” Her dad strictly forbade her to tell any of her friends about her new ability or to do any tricks for anyone except him. Videos he made of the effect in action carefully excluded Allie from the field of view.

  Needing her cooperation, Al was very pleasant to her, ordering out lunch from all her favorite restaurants and setting up a computer for her to use between testing episodes. But, she was there in the lab all day almost every day! Even most weekends!

  The rest of Allie’s summer was ruined with 12-hour days at the lab. She soon began to look forward to the start of school; simply because it would provide a break from her dad. Her mother and father had started to argue about it; out of her presence, but she could hear them fighting through the walls.

  At the end of her first day back at school Allie was dismayed to see her dad’s car parked in front of the school. She opened the door, “Dad! I’ve got homework!”

  Distractedly he looked up from the paper he’d been reading and smiled at her, “I know, Kiddo. It’ll just be for an hour. Besides you can do your homework during my setup time between the first and second experiments.” He blinked, “Your new clothes look really nice!”

  Sullenly, Allie got in the car. As she expected, one hour turned into two. An angry call from her mother was needed to get them home for dinner.

  Her dad became more and more frustrated as test after test demonstrated odd, but miniscule physical phenomena around the port area at both entrance and exit. There was a tiny rotating electrical field, fluctuating magnetic phenomena and a slight attractive force, possibly gravitational, around the “ports.” The electromagnetic and possible gravitational fields were so tiny they were at the limits of detection for the most sensitive measuring devices he had available. Worse, the measurements would be different from one repetition of a port setup to the next! He worried that all he had detected was the “noise” in the measurements.

  Dans determined that materials only flowed through the ports like they would through a hose, from high pressure to low pressure. Interestingly, Allie was able to open ports over a longer distance when the flow of material through the port was energetic. Thus a port from a high pressure pipe could be opened over a much greater distance than a port from a glass of water. When it was opened over a long distance, the water sprayed out with little pressure, as if the energy of that pressure was being used to cross the distance. When Allie was fresh, she could open a port as big as 3mm in diameter, but the diameter dropped off quickly as she got tired.

  Her dad had no handle on the phenomenon, and therefore could not reproduce it; much less magnify the effect as he’d hoped. He became more and more irritated and, though it seemed impossible, even more absent-minded. Allie’s parents started to fight. Her mother threatened divorce if he didn’t let Allie have time to “be a kid.”

  He finally agreed to no more than ten hours of testing per week.

  Then, Thanksgiving weekend came and Allie got sick. High fevers and a cough, the doctor diagnosed “that flu that’s going around” and prescribed “rest and fluids.” He said, “Don’t worry, it’ll get better.”

  While she was sick, Allie discovered that she couldn’t make a port. To her dad’s great dismay, when the flu resolved, she didn’t recover the ability. He checked her morning and evening, first in dismay, then in frustration, then in anger, accusing her of simply refusing to make ports.

  But, as the weeks and then months passed, it seemed that the startling physical phenomenon/ability was likely gone forever.

  Allie hadn’t liked her dad’s constant queries about her ability. They’d rapidly gone from exciting, to irritating, to maddening.

  She’d begun to dislike him.

  Then she started puberty.

  Allie was a sullen teenager. Sullen and angry about everything, and especially about her lost ability. She locke
d herself in her room for hours on end, playing electric guitar into headphones. Sarah offered to pay for lessons. Allie didn’t want them, preferring to teach herself by watching YouTube videos.

  Years passed.

  Her parents had no idea just how good Allie had become on the guitar because they couldn’t hear the sound in her headphones, and she balefully refused to let them listen. If they insisted, she hooked up her amp and thrashed loud distorted pieces with dissonant chords.

  They learned not to ask.

  Dr. Dans spent long hours going over and over the data that he’d accumulated, trying to find something that he had missed that could explain the phenomenon. He spent endless hours searching the literature and the Internet for someone else who may have made similar observations. He felt certain that there must be some physical way to reproduce what his daughter had been able to do for those few fleeting months, though sometimes he wondered if he’d imagined it. When Sarah questioned him, he admitted that there seemed to be little practical use for a port no bigger than 3mm over distances of no more than 20-30 feet, but, if the phenomenon could just be understood, he hoped it could be scaled up.

  Allie’s mother gradually forgave her husband for his earlier behavior, but when he occasionally stopped by Allie’s room to ask her to “try to create a port” again, he could count on Sarah being there to tell him to “stop badgering the girl.”

  “Surely,” she’d say, “Allie will let you know if she starts to be able to do it again.”

  Allie’s teenage years passed slowly and morosely. Though she never seemed to study, her parents couldn’t complain because she got excellent grades. She joined a band and spent long hours at practice with them. They played a few gigs, but parents were never invited, either to practices, or to their very occasional gigs. In fact, they were actively discouraged from attending.

  Then, in her senior year of high school, her mother knocked on Allie’s constantly closed bedroom door, first lightly, then loudly. Finally she pounded on it.

  Sarah heard her daughter’s angry voice, “Come in.”

  Wondering how to fix the yawning chasm between her and her daughter, Sarah opened the door. Guitar on her lap, Allie sat on the floor in baggy jeans, and a ripped t-shirt. She’d apparently cut her hair to a ragged inch long and dyed it black since her mother saw her going out the door that morning. As usual her room was a disaster, clothes strewn everywhere. Gritting her teeth, Sarah ignored the mess. She tried to sound chipper and upbeat, “Hey Allie, I’m hoping that we can plan a trip to visit some of the colleges you’re interested in?”

  “I’m not going to college.”

  Startled, “What?!?!”

  Grimly, “Not going.”

  “Of course you’re going, what did you think you were going to do?”

  “Band’s going on the road.”

  “You can’t do that! We won’t allow it.”

  “I’m eighteen, you can’t tell me what to do anymore… Well you could make me move out now, I guess. Do you want me to?” Allie raised an eyebrow.

  “What!? Where do you think you’d live?”

  “Friends, or the homeless shelter.” She shrugged, “I’d have to work it out, so I hope you’ll give me a little warning if you’re tossing me.”

  A tear formed and ran down her mother’s cheek. “Never,” she croaked. She turned suddenly and left.

  “Close my damned door!” Allie shouted after her. Then after a minute, she got up and closed it herself. She wondered if “never” had referred to the homeless shelter, or to going on the road?

  Months of shouting, pleading, arguments and long glowering silences passed without any change in Allie’s resolution. She was a musician, she wasn’t going to college. She might go to college if music didn’t work out, but she was sure she was going to have a career in music. Her mother got little support in the battle from Allie’s dad, who, as usual, seemed too distracted to get very involved in the argument.

  The morning after Allie’s high school graduation Sarah Dans knocked on her door to ask what she’d like for breakfast, but there was no answer. When she opened the door she was astonished to see that Allie’s room had been straightened up. Not great, but better than it had been in years. Then, with a sinking heart she saw that the guitar and amp were gone.

  There was a note on the bed. “We’ve got gigs in Atlanta.”

  No “goodbye,” no mention of when she’d be back, no mention of where in Atlanta.

  Sarah Dans sank down on Allie’s bed and had a good long cry. When she had herself in control she called Allie’s cell phone, but it went straight to message. Sarah hung up and tried again. This time when it went to message, in a trembling voice Sarah said, “Sorry we didn’t get to see you this morning. Wish you all the luck in the world.” Her voice broke, “Call if you need anything.”

  Sarah cried for a while longer.

  Several days passed before Albert Dans noticed that his daughter was missing. He asked Sarah about it and, when Sarah said that she was on the road, doing her music, he nodded distractedly and went back to the paper he was reading on wormhole theory. Sarah didn’t think he’d actually comprehended the calamity that had befallen their little family.

  In actual fact, Allie’s dad had given up on understanding the port phenomenon for a couple of years, but then recently had awakened in the middle of the night with an idea regarding quantum tunneling and how very low-power electromagnetic fields, such as a brain could generate, might allow particles to appear at a new location. So his port research was back on, full speed ahead. He spent every waking moment thinking about it.

  ***

  The band was on break and Allie walked out behind the bar to hang out with her bandmates. She sat at the corner of a little deck looking up at the stars while the three guys shared a cigarette over by the door. She knew they smoked dope too, because she could smell it on their clothes, but they knew better than to smoke it around her. They bought what they used in each town and never kept a stash in their van.

  Allie’d laid down the law. They didn’t drink more than one beer during a set either. Joe arranged their gigs, ran their finances and was their nominal “leader,” but Allie was by far their best musician. Her guitar licks and eerie vocals were what commanded the substantial fan following they’d developed so far. They all knew that the band would be just another bunch of “wannabes” without her. So, when she made a rule, they followed it.

  The back door of the bar slammed open and a large, obviously drunk man stumbled out. “Where’s Eva?” he slurred.

  Eva was Allie’s stage name, but she didn’t like talking to drunks so she turned back to continue looking up into the sky.

  “Where’s Eva?!” the man said with some irritation.

  Out of the corner of her eye, Allie saw the big guy tap forcefully on Joe’s shoulder. It looked like the guys had been trying to ignore the drunk too. Joe looked up at him.

  “Where’s Eva?!”

  Joe shrugged and turned back to reach for the cig. The big guy shoved him and said ominously, “You know where she is!”

  Allie sighed, then said, “I’m over here. Are you a fan?”

  “Of you babe! Not the rest of these losers… only you.” He waved a deprecating hand at the rest of the band as he lurched her way.

  Allie wrinkled her nose, “We’re a band, not a one person show.”

  The man came too close, invading her personal space. His breath stank of beer and garlic. “Hey, I can set you up wi’ shum real musicians! You could really be on your way.” He grasped her elbow.

  She looked down at his hand. “Please let go of me.”

  “Aw, I’m jes’ bein’ friendly.” His hand stayed put.

  She looked up into his unfocused eyes. “Please, let, go!” The other band members were shuffling her way. Obviously, they wanted to help her get rid of this guy, but he was huge. Forcing him to let her go would be a pretty dangerous endeavor and they hadn’t joined a band because they liked to figh
t. Joe turned and trotted back to the bar, presumably looking for a bouncer.

  The big guy pulled on her arm, “Lesh go shumwhere an’ talk.” He peered at her. “Heeyy, you’re really beautiful, ya’ know?” His eyebrows went up as if she should be astonished at this revelation. “Why d’ you wear such ugly clothes?”

  Allie resisted the pull on her elbow, but it inexorably pulled her up off the bench she’d been on. She took a few reluctant steps with him. His grip on her arm hurt. Startled she realized that this guy could be a real problem. Not just an annoyance, but a real honest to god problem. She jerked and twisted on her arm, trying to break it loose. He was pulling her out toward the parking lot!

  He said, “Heeyy, don’ be sush a downer, we’re jus’ gonna go si’ in my car and talk about your career.”

  He seemed oblivious to the fact that Allie was pulling as hard as she possibly could to go the other way. Her feet were sliding on the pavement, and her struggles slowed him not at all. Allie’s heightened senses were focused on the big man including the sense only she had. The one that allowed her to feel the pressure of the blood flowing through his arteries.

  Although her ability to make ports had actually returned the week after that Thanksgiving years ago, Allie had carefully kept the secret completely to herself. She certainly hadn’t wanted her dad to know about it! Allie hadn’t made a port in a couple years because they seemed useless except as “party tricks” and she was worried that such a “party trick” would somehow come to the attention of her dad or some other scientist who’d be all over her for more testing.

  She thought again of letting blood out of an artery in the big man in an effort to stop him. She had thought of this “weapon” aspect years ago, but “back of napkin” calculations had determined that she couldn’t hold a port open long enough to even weaken a big man like this from blood loss. Maybe if I make him think he has a bloody nose he’ll let me go?