The Abyss Above Us 1

by Ryan Notch

  “Ah fuck him,” said Alex. He put his arm around Noel’s shoulders, spilling a little bit of his beer in the process. A muscle in Collin’s eye twitched involuntarily. Having watched it happen in the mirror so to better control his expressions, he knew no one would notice.

  Alex and Noel made a contrasting pair, him being so dark and her being so pale. They even dressed the part tonight, him in black leather jacket and dark blue jeans, with her wearing a white sundress with little bits of lace at the neck and sleeves.

  Noel had come from Russia when she was 10 years old, and looked the part. She had the ethereal look of certain Russian models. Long feathery blond hair, skin delicate almost to the point of translucency. Tall (in fact a little taller than Collin), with long legs and pale pale blue eyes. She had a kind of beauty that snuck up on you. The more time you spent with her the prettier she got.

  Collin had to force himself not to stare at her. Or at least pretend not to when Alex was around. It was OK; he was getting used to pretending.

  “Hey guys,” said Sophia, whom Collin hadn’t even seen come in. She was the thirty something improv comedian from next door. Collin’s guard went up, though he didn’t let it show. How fun Sophia was to be around was inversely proportional to how fun she was trying to be around. The moment she dropped the improv routines she actually became a decent person to be at a party with. Collin could only imagine what her shows must be like.

  “Anything new in the exciting and zany land of math,” she asked a little too loud. Collin inwardly winced at this indication that it was to be an “improv Sophia” night. But he took the bait anyway, having been looking for an opening to tell Alex and Noel his big news.

  “Actually I got a new job,” he said more to Alex and Noel than Sophia.

  “Oh cool,” Noel said. “What is it?”

  “Decoding bubble chamber impacts for the W. Dyer Research Group.”

  “Well there you go,” said Alex. “I always said you were perfect for bubble chamber decoding. You know, whatever that is…”

  “So how did this happen,” asked Noel.

  Collin explained the events with the kind of animated and excited tone he knew would grab their attention. But with reverence as well, something he applied to math alone.

  “Well, let me start a little ways back. So a couple years ago the W. Dyer Research Group, a team of particle physicists, set up a research center at the bottom of an abandoned mine. They used a time honored device known as a bubble chamber, which identifies subatomic particles by the patterns they make as they speed through a massive tank of liquid. Sometimes they use dry cleaning fluid, but in this case they were using super purified water.”

  “Wait,” said Noel. “So is this a uranium mine or something? Like is this how they test if it’s safe?”

  “No, the idea isn’t that they’re trying to detect things from the Earth. In a way this bubble chamber is actually a kind of telescope, meant to detect particles from space.”

  “So why put it in a mine,” asked Alex. “Is it darker at the bottom of a shaft or something? I heard you’re supposed to be able to see stars in daytime from the bottom of a well.”

  “No, but that’s not too far off,” said Collin. “In fact the millions of tons of Earth and rock above them help to block out most of the interference. The only things they want getting into that bubble chamber are the most intangible of cosmic rays. The kind of particles that could slip through a mile of lead without hitting a single atom of it. In fact, theoretically billions of particles of it would pass through the bubble chamber every second, with only a very few impacting molecules of water. By the patterns of those few they would determine the nature of this tricky little devil.”

  “So what exactly were they looking for,” asked Sophia.

  “The name of their quarry is dark matter,” Collin continued. “Supposedly it is all over the place, only despite spending millions they didn’t find any. Not for years. Then one day a few months ago their detection board lit up like a Christmas tree. They were getting so many hits the bubble chamber was practically foaming. It was completely unprecedented. Since then the activity has been almost constant. But the trouble is they can’t make any sense of it. They need someone to work out the pattern.

  “Ah I get it,” said Alex while patting Collin’s shoulder with his free hand. “They need a fine young mind like my boy Collin here to search through the fishing net and see what they’ve caught.”

  “You got it in one kid,” replied Collin with one of the expressions they shared. “If it is what it looks like, this could be really big. Perfect for an ace young mathematician like myself.”

  “Wow Collin that sounds pretty awesome,” said Noel. “I know you can figure it out.”

  Collin would have probably blushed had he been able to. It wasn’t a far stretch to suggest that Noel’s opinion was the only one he really cared about.

  “You better,” said Alex. “Considering you’re always complaining that only older more established professors got gigs like that and then they just made grad students like you do all the work.”

  “Yeah that’s generally true,” said Collin.

  “And that since you told off every professor in the field you were basically blacklisted.”

  “Also sadly true.”

  “So who died for you to get the job,” asked Alex.

  “Well...actually, the previous analyst they had was Professor Marx at Meresin University.”

  “Ohhhh,” said Alex, Noel, and Sophia at the same time.

  “That’s kind of ghoulish,” said Noel.

  “Yeah man,” said Alex mockingly. “Profiting off the death of another is bad karma. Profiting off the death of an entire university will send ya right to hell. You should be ashamed of yourself.”

  “I know it’s a tragedy what happened to all those people at Meresin, but it’s not like I killed them. And even though Professor Marx was a genuine dick and largely the reason I got blacklisted there, he was a human being and his death was a terrible thing. Really, I’m absolutely broke up about it.”

  Collin could not suppress a smile at this obvious lie. Alex, who shared Collin’s twisted sense of humor, started laughing.

  “Well I’m happy for you,” said Noel. “Even if you are a bad person.”

  And Collin knew she meant what she said about being happy for him. She always meant it. The whole thing was perfect. But his momentary happiness was overshadowed, as everything in his life was, by the enormity of feelings for her. By the constant realization that being around her was making him into everything he hated.

  Collin Althaus. So smart, so in control, he thought with disdain. Doing something as pitiful as falling in love with his best friend’s wife.

  Chapter 7

  ********************

  Shaw had been in the asylum for two months, roughly. He was sitting in the main room next to Walter. Walter had been in the asylum for three years, roughly. They were sitting in the main room watching a giant Native American man. He was wearing full war leathers with the exception of the head dress, which had been replaced by a Sony Walkman with earphones.

  “Well it only makes sense that it would be chanting. Something traditional you know?”

  “No way,” Walter replied. “I swear I got close enough to hear it one day. Bruce Springsteen. No mistaking it.”

  “We’re gonna have to adjust your meds again, because there is no way you get dressed up like that in the morning just to listen to The Boss. For The Boss you wear jeans, that’s all there is too it.”

  For Shaw, the hardest adjustment to life in Saint Severinus Asylum wasn’t the drugs or the confinement or even the group therapy, it was the boredom. Books and TV were in abundance, but for a man used to ten hour work days it wasn’t enough. Of course there was also the rec-room with its computers, but Shaw stayed away from those.

  Shaw did not know why Walter was here, locked up with him away from society. Of course the doctors wouldn’t tell him and t
he inmates all told the same story as Walter. Walter said he was there because he was rich, but no one believed him. Which Shaw didn’t believe not because he thought Walter really was rich (which he didn’t, Walter just didn’t act with that sense of entitlement of the rich). But rather because he didn’t think that was enough to get you into a place like this. This place was for the bad ones. The violent ones.

  Not that Shaw had ever seen Walter get the least bit violent. In fact Walter’s easy going nature was legendary and he was one of the most well liked guys in the whole place. Of course Shaw hadn’t gotten violent since he’d been here either. But he’d been violent before, when he murdered Brock. That’s what they told him, and that’s what he believed. They told him that and nothing else. He’d asked about the other people at Meresin University, and about the machines. About the signal. But they wouldn’t tell him anything. They insisted it was up to him to tell them. So he told them what he knew, and what he thought. And he took his meds and he talked in therapy and watched TV and played checkers. But mostly he just did this, sat around and gossiped about the inmates and doctors and nurses with his only remaining friend in the world, Walter.

  Walter seemed completely sane. Which was how Shaw knew that he himself, was insane. The logic being that they wouldn’t lock up a bunch of sane people. So if Walter thought he was sane, then it was possible to feel that way and still be insane. Just like Shaw.

  “You see Valentine Joey over there chatting with Nurse Marilyn,” asked Walter.

  Shaw followed his gaze to the blond bombshell every one called Nurse Marilyn. Every guy in there had a crush on her to some extent. And while Shaw was pretty sure out amongst normal people she would be considered just slightly pretty, in amongst the sealed walls of the Sanitarium with little else to compare her too, she looked just like Marilyn Monroe. She was smiling and talking to a midget about half her height.

  “Yeah.”

  “See how she seems totally into him?

  “I guess,” replied Shaw.

  “You know he’s been married six times.”

  “No way, where’d you hear that?”

  “Just people talking,” said Walter.

  “Well that just makes it a rumor.”

  “Don’t you know man? Around here every rumor is true.”

  And so it went.

  Shaw spent his nights in the depth of nightmares he could not remember. He supposed he could thank the drugs for that. That and little else. They made his mind dull, whisked away his thoughts and colored the world emotionally gray. And though they blocked the anxiety, he could still tell it was there somewhere. Talking to his stomach if not his brain, tying it up in knots. He woke up, invariably, in a panic because he didn’t know where he was. Sometimes not even knowing who he was. The spell wouldn’t break until he turned on the light and it all came flooding back. A process which didn’t sit well with his roommate. Of course Shaw didn’t like that the guy spent his days either drooling while rocking himself back and forth or screaming about the Jew conspiracy. In fact, Shaw didn’t like having a roommate at all. Had never liked having one.

  He told his doctor about it in therapy. That’s the kind of stuff you told your psychiatrist after the first thirty sessions or so. After you had told them everything you thought they wanted to hear, then everything you thought they didn’t want to hear, then everything else that had ever happened to you. After that you just talked about random stuff anyone else would have been too uninterested to listen to. At first the process was stressful, digging out all those painful memories. Then it was comforting, knowing you could say whatever you wanted. But after long enough you just got tired of hearing your own voice. It was boring. For Shaw everything was boring if you had to do it for very long. That’s why he’d done contract work. Always new. And when you’re done you’re done. In therapy you’re never done, you’re just “out of time for today.”

  Group therapy was little better. In there you were up close and personal with people you would have been afraid to walk by on the street. Gibbering, rambling, maniacs. Or assholes or bigots or self-centered jerks. The majority just were not pleasant people. And the ones who were, well, they were just scary. Because you knew they could be completely polite one minute, then you accidentally grab their spoon during lunch and they are trying to jab their thumbs into your eyes. Such a thing had almost happened to him, only the ever-alert Walter had pulled him out of the way before the guy could get his hands on Shaw. Walter was like that, always paying attention to what was going on with the people around him. Not like Shaw, who was always trying not to.

  He didn’t harbor any ideas that mentally ill people were assholes as a rule, but this was after all a hospital for the criminally insane. Although the real truth of it was that the inmates weren’t scary because they were violent. They were scary because they were random. Shaw’s only comfort in the outside world had come from learning how to anticipate people as best he could, to not be surprised by them. To plan out conversations and encounters in advance. But down here, you didn’t have a chance.

  Today in group therapy Bobby Scott held the floor. A man whose voice was a dead ringer for Charlie Manson, but who looked more like Don Rickles.

  “Those computers monitor us man. Every one of us. They record every thing we do for later upload to CIA central. Everyone knows that.”

  Shaw, against his better judgment, couldn’t help himself here. “Actually it’s not really feasible for them to record everything we do. The recording process itself would take up enough RAM for you to notice the slowdown, not to mention recording activities involving any kind of video or audio would quickly fill up your hard drive. And the bandwidth it would take to be received constantly by the CIA would exceed even the best fiber optic technology. Not to mention how many people it would take to actually review the data…”

  “Oh what the fuck do you know?!” Bobby Scott interrupted. “You already got flown in here by the pigs once, and you was cryin' in your bed. You’re just a dumb motherfucker fuck.”

  “Bobby we don’t call each other names here, you know that,” interjected the therapist running the session.

  “Yea,” said Theresa, a woman who was always defending people. “And he’s not a motherfucker. I bet he never fucked his mother no one fucks their mother do they doctor?”

  “But he is a motherfucker fuck,” said Jimmy. (Jimmy had the misfortune to have a disease that manifested a childlike mental retardation along with violent outbursts - something to do with his metabolism creating holes in his brain.) “Motherfucker fuck motherfucker fuck motherfucker fuck,” he said laughing and clapping.

  Shaw knew he should stop here. He knew that if some lunatic bum on the streets had come up to him arguing that the CIA was watching everyone through their computers he would have just walked right on by, barely paid it any mind. But you put that lunatic in a circle of chairs with someone and tell them they are supposed to have a conversation with him, well then it changes everything. It puts you on the same level as them. And as he kept having to remind himself, he was on the same level as them. Not a one amongst them had anything stranger to say than what Shaw thought he had seen at the university.

  “Look, Bobby, all I’m saying is that computers have a limited storage capacity. Even if there was some super top secret way to store a nearly unlimited amount of information on a chip - which there isn’t - the logistics of putting those chips into all the computers without all the computer engineers finding out about it is ridiculous. I mean the bus space alone…”

  “What the fuck are you even saying, man,” interrupted Bobby, incredulously. “There ain’t no bus that can hold off the truth. Pieces of the sky fall down upon you you’re gonna be able to make it read whatever you want, that’s how the G-Man does it. Man everyone knows that, what the fuck is wrong with you?”

  “Well fine, whatever that is is a given, I guess. But I just want you to admit here that there are certain limitations to the average household desktop computer. I
mean I’m basically making an appeal to you here based on the fact that I know a little more about these things than you given my job experience.”

  “Shaw we don’t place ourselves above each other in this circle,” said the therapist.

  “What?! I don’t think I’m putting myself above anyone when I state that there are certain areas of conflicting expertise here…”

  “We’re all in a circle, Shaw. That’s because it’s round and round,” interrupted Jimmy, definitely using what the nurses would have called his “outside voice”.

  “Jimmy you’re not really helping here,” said Shaw trying his best not to yell at the guy.

  “Jimmy’s is helping, Jimmy always helps,” said Theresa.

  “I know all about computers man,” said Bobby. “They teach you all about that shit when they take you up on the ships, everyone knows that dumbfuck.”

  “I need everyone to calm down some here,” said the therapist. Shaw was beyond the reason of the request. He too, was now using his “outside voice.”

  “Since when do alien ships hold community college classes in high-tech computer hardware?! This is the first you’ve ever mentioned of any of that. Jesus Christ Bobby I’m beginning to think you’re just making this stuff up as you go along!”

  “Bobby never makes stuff up, he always tells the truth,” said Theresa.

  Whatever Shaw’s reply was going to be, it was interrupted by an orderly opening the door. Something which was strictly forbidden in group therapy and stopped them all in their tracks.

  “Shaw,” he said. “There’s someone here to see you. Come with me.”

  Shaw drew a blank at this. Nearly everyone Shaw knew in the world was dead. So who did that leave to come to see him? The question filled him with a vague dread, though no answer to explain why presented itself.

  “Go on, Shaw,” prompted the therapist.

  Shaw slowly got up and walked across the room and through the door. Just as he was about to leave Bobby shot at his back, “Yeah, go on Shaw. And take the shadows you brought with you.”