by Nolan Edrik
Windstrom notices him from a few paces away and startles like he’s been awakened from a nap. The professor is a thoroughly rumpled man. His suit jacket is too small, leaving half of his forearms protruding. The top of his head is bald and freckled, and tufts of his remaining hair shoot out from his head in random directions. His thick glasses are cloudy and slide down his ruddy, porous nose.
“Professor Windstrom?” Tyler asks.
He looks Tyler up and down, trying to suppress his alarm behind a set jaw and narrowed eyes.
“Can I help you?” The professor’s voice is raspy and unmodulated, like he’s not used to talking to people.
Tyler sits across from him and sets his bag on the table.
“I think I have a package of yours.” He slides the box out of his bag.
The professor’s eyes widen.
“Where did you get this? Why wasn’t it delivered?” He seems more bewildered than angry. “What’s the meaning of this?”
“You tell me, doc. This thing’s been acting funny ever since it landed in my delivery sack.”
“What do you mean?”
“I’m not up for telling the story. Suffice it to say that the delivery didn’t go as planned. So I’m returning this to you so you can take your business elsewhere.”
Tyler pulls out his signature pad and sets it on the table.
“I just need you to sign here to confirm that your package has been returned to you. Your delivery fee will be debited back to your account within the hour.”
“OK, OK. Let me get out my pen.” He reaches down into a bag on the bench next to him. Tyler begins to tell the fossil that there’s already a pen attached to the pad but stops when he sees the pistol pointed at his chest.
*
Windstrom’s office is underground, like a rat’s burrow. Papers spill off of sagging bookshelves, and stacks of reports and scholarly journals rise to Tyler’s waist.
The barrel of the pistol jabs him in the back, and he walks into the nerd nest with his hands in the air.
“All the way to the back,” the professor says.
Tyler maneuvers around a desk, stops at the cinder block wall, and swivels around. The professor is standing ten feet away at the door, the gun shaking in his hand, and Tyler can’t tell whether it’s from infirmity or anger.
“What happened to this box? Why wasn’t it delivered as planned?”
Sensing he has no other option, Tyler tells Windstrom about the missing building, the apparent disappearance from his apartment, opening the package, and how he traced it back to the professor.
The professor’s eyes widen as Tyler relays the story. When he finishes speaking, Windstrom’s face is inflamed with astonishment and dread.
“This other courier, Jax, the one who saw the device, is Jax his real name or a nickname?”
Tyler glances at the gun’s trembling barrel.
“Why? What are you going to do him? What are you going to do to me?”
Windstrom backs up and closes the door behind him, keeping his eyes and aim on Tyler.
“Regrettably, it appears I’ll have to dispose of you both. You’ve seen too much.”
“Look gramps, all I’ve seen is a weird gizmo with a dead rat. I see weirder shit every week, and I forget all of it. Hell, I even forget my own address sometimes. Just sign the pad, let me go, and we can pretend this never happened.”
“I’m afraid that’s not possible. And I sincerely regret this turn of events. You may even a good person, but I can’t let you stand in my way. One word from you could bring my whole project crashing down. No one can know about it until it’s ready.”
“Well then you probably want me to delete the pictures I took of it from my wall, right?” Tyler says.
“The what? You’ve taken pictures?” The professor’s face reddens.
“When I was trying to track you down, I put some pictures of your little toy up on the Net in case anyone knew what it was. I’m not sure if anyone’s looked yet, but you can bet they will if I go missing.”
“You put pictures of it on the Internet? How could you do that?” His pistol hand shakes violently. “Give me your phone. Right now!”
“OK,” Tyler says. “Take it easy. I’m reaching in my pocket now.”
He pulls out his phone and extends his arm.
“Stay right there,” Windstrom says. “Throw it to me.”
This is not what Tyler had in mind, but it will work, too. He pulls back his arm like he’s about to toss a frisbee, chucks the phone hard at the professor’s face, and leaps over the desk. The gun goes off into the ceiling as Tyler tackles the old man. He flips him over, presses his face into the ground, and wrests the pistol from his control.
“Looks like the tables have turned, Professor Assface. Now you’re going to sign for the damn package or I’m going to put a hole in your head and make it look like a suicide. We clear?”
The professor grunts and struggles to break free.
“And because you’ve pissed me off, you’re going to tell me what this thing is, too. You’ve wasted a whole day of my life, and I’m at least getting a good story for the guys at the bar out of this.”
“Never,” Windstrom says, snot and spit leaking out of his face onto the tile floor.
“Are you really going to make me shoot you?”
“Go ahead.”
“OK, but first let’s get rid of this piece of crap.” Tyler points the gun at the box.
“No, no, wait. You can’t.”
“Then spill it.”
Windstrom squirms again to break free, and Tyler presses him harder against the floor. He pulls back the pistol’s hammer. Where did the guy even find this museum piece of a gun?
“Stop.” The professor goes limp. “I’ll tell you everything. I’ll sign your pad. But I’m warning you that knowing anything more about this is to your detriment.”
“The past twenty-four hours have been to my detriment.”
*
Where the professor’s office was an irredeemable mess, his lab is a marvel of order and cleanliness. The room is lined with glass cabinets filled with bins of electronics components that Tyler doesn’t even recognize. In the middle are rubberized tables laden with rows of contraptions and tools arranged as neatly as the implements on a surgeon’s tray. In the far corner sits a squat steel box with a wheeled hatch like an old-time bank safe.
“Nice shop,” Tyler says, appreciating the meticulousness of a tinkerer like himself.
“Thank you.”
“What’s it all for?”
The professor looks at Tyler again, trying to find some reason to trust him. Tyler wags the gun in the air, reminding him that he has no choice.
Windstrom clears his throat.
“As you apparently already know, I’ve been studying a procedure called boson tunneling. I’ll spare you the technical details, but try to imagine the physical universe as a cloud. Imagine that every atom that exists is but a droplet of water vapor in this cloud. Your body, the stones in this building, the nitrogen in the air, all of it is cloud. Different densities here and there, to be sure, but still all cloud.”
Tyler nods to show he understands.
“Now imagine that inside of this cloud is a network of magnetic or electrical currents, in an orderly grid-shaped pattern. These currents are not made of matter, completely immaterial, and they’re not actually electric or magnetic either. But they serve as an extradimensional scaffolding for many of the forces that affect our physical world. Do you follow?”
“I think so. Keep going.”
“These currents run throughout the material world and simply move around the atoms as if they weren’t there, somewhat like how I imagine you weave through lanes of traffic on your bike. There are a number of other scientists who have theorized and observed this extradimensional lattice, but for years I’ve been the only one trying to find a way to stuff physical matter into it.”
“And have you?”
“Yes. A
long time ago. But that was only the start. The science, while fascinating, is of no use if you can’t control where the currents take the matter, or if you can’t get the matter back out. Now, if you can do that, you have…”
“Teleportation?”
“Exactly.”
Tyler lets this sink in.
“If what you’ve told me today is true, then I’m close, just a little bit off,” the professor says.
Tyler scratches his chin.
“You’re telling me that box back in your office is a teleportation machine?”
“Not a very good one, apparently.” He chuckles as heartily as anyone can at gunpoint. “I’d programmed it so that the rat inside the device would teleport from the dropoff location – that vacant lot on Mellon – back into my lab.”
Tyler laughs too. His brain strains to comprehend what he’s hearing.
“Why did you try to send a rat back here from way across town? Why not zap it from one end of the lab to the other?”
“Good question. The whole system right now works on relative location. For example, I can’t tell the box to move the rat from Point A to Point B. But I can tell it to go from Point A to ten miles north of Point A. Get it?”
“Yeah.”
“And I have to set farther distances because the technology is so crude still. That five-mile span across town is as fine as I can tune it now.”
“I see. But why didn’t it work? And why did the whole box disappear from my apartment, not just the rat?”
“Because it sucks, as you kids like to say. All of it. The cardboard box has a charged, treated plasma lining that’s supposed to insulate against it getting sucked into the currents. And all of the components of the box have that material infused in them as well, so they’re all supposed to stay put. Only the item in the clear cube is supposed to move. I must have messed up something in my most recent batch of plasma. Thought I had that problem licked. Guess I’m going back to the drawing board.”
Even while the professor is vexed by his machine’s malfunctions, Tyler can tell he’s relieved to unburden himself of his frustrations.
“You haven’t told anyone about this yet, have you?” Tyler asks.
The professor laughs.
“I tried once. Years back. They laughed me out of the conference, and I never brought it up again. I needed to keep my job here, needed to feed my kids. Universities these days don’t have much tolerance for crackpots.”
Tyler marvels again at the workspace and tumbles Windstrom’s confession around in his head. After years as a science-fiction pipedream, teleportation was nearing reality.
“Please don’t tell anyone,” the professor says. “You know what would happen if anyone learns about this. If the government finds out, I’ll disappear and things will suddenly start to go very well for the U.S. military. If the cartels find out, they’ll be shipping pallets of heroin from Caracas like they’re sending e-mails. And if the Nativists get it,” the professor shudders, “well, let’s kiss the Statue of Liberty goodbye.”
“How old are you?” Tyler asks. “Are you healthy?”
“Sixty-four,” the professor says. “And I’m in great health, despite my appearance. I even ran a 10K in Bloomfield last weekend.”
The professor is going to get this done, Tyler realizes. Teleportation is going to be a reality within his lifetime. What is the world going to look like then? The cartels, the Nativists, the government, they’ll all get their hands on it sooner or later. And airlines and railroads, as well as the trucking companies that only a few decades ago fired all their drivers, all of them are going to go out of business. Courier services too.
“Huh. Well, sign here.” Tyler sets the pad on a table. The professor scribbles his name.
Tyler stuffs the pad in his bag and backs out of the door with the pistol still aimed at the professor, in case he’s got a laser gun or some other magic device hiding around his lab.
“You didn’t answer me,” the professor says. “Are you going to tell anyone? I obviously can’t stop you, but I’d like to know if I should expect any midnight visitors.”
“I won’t tell anyone,” Tyler says, “as long as you promise to be a reference for me when I look for a new job.”
*
With the morning and afternoon rushes already over, the workday’s basically shot, so Tyler skips town.
He cruises out on I-96 past Farmington, past Novi, past Brighton, until the strip malls and subdivisions give way to trees and lakes.
In a few years, he’ll be able to get here in seconds, he knows. How will it feel to zap himself over miles of countryside? Will it be a rush like acceleration? Nauseating like riding a boat? Or will it feel like nothing at all? Like a blink and he’s somewhere else.
He steers onto a back-country road, giant oaks and maples forming a tunnel high overhead. 80 mph. He cranks back the throttle. 100 mph. 150 mph. The dying leaves smear into a brown-orange blur. 190 mph. 220 mph.
The speed feels pleasant enough. For now.
Splunking on Kepler 42
Becky told me I had to meet her friend Orynna at the dinner welcoming us to Kepler Station 42. She said she knew we’d hit it off, despite the species difference, and that I was welcome to send a bottle of Sagittarian wine as thanks any time I wanted.
It was nice of Becky to think of me, and it had been a disconcertingly long time since I’d had a girlfriend of any species. But as I sat in my room, waiting to head down to the event, I mostly felt relieved that I would have an easy way to start a conversation with at least one person. I wouldn’t have to spend the whole evening wandering the room, trying to muster small talk with brilliant physicists and daring defense officers that I had nothing in common with.
On the romance front, though, I didn’t expect much. Becky had set me up before, and it had never worked out.
Back at university, she’d introduced me to her friend Ghita from propulsion class. I’ll never forget the disappointment on her face when she met me, the pained smile – all mouth, no eyes – and the limp handshake.
Then after we’d graduated and worked on Copernicus 5, Becky figured I’d be a good match for her coworker Syren. I don’t know why Becky thought Syren would have any interest in me. She was a Moirana, like the friend I’d be meeting tonight, and she was the Moirana ideal, the one they’d pattern their dolls after if the Moirana messed around with frivolities such as dolls. She was tall, thin, and pale, with snow blond hair and the tiniest, most delicate features, a full evolutionary step ahead of her planetmates.
When Syren met me, she straight-up laughed, slapped Becky on the back like “Ha ha, good one, sister,” and walked away. The Moirana do not coddle your feelings.
But most of the girls Becky had set me up with acted polite, and we’d all have a pleasant night at the station bar or wherever. Then when we were ready to leave, I’d see them talking to Becky and mouthing, “He’s nice, but…”
So right before leaving, I logged on to my room terminal and messaged Becky for last-minute pointers on how not to embarrass myself.
“Hey, I’m about to head out to the dinner. Any sage advice about how to avoid bumming out your friend?”
The response came back instantly, as if she’d been waiting for me.
“Have fun! Remember, as I’ve mentioned to you before, whatever your instincts tell you to do, do the opposite.”
*
My first order of business at the reception was to find the bar cart. Of course, it was in the far corner, so I had to cross the whole chattering, clinking room while nodding and smiling at a sea of unfamiliar faces.
“What can I get you?” the bartender said. He was short and pudgy, with a mop of black hair and a puffy beard. His tag said his name was Jay and that he worked in vital functions, like me.
“Beer.”
He handed me a bottle. I tipped him a credit and stepped to the side to scan the Moirana in the crowd. I know this is impolite to say, but they do all look the same at first.
“You’re vitals too?” Jay said from beside me. The drinks station had no line, and he was leaning forward, elbows on the table.
“Gas management. You?”
He chuckled. This was a common reaction to my title.
“Plumbing.”
“I figured you’d be commissary.”
“This?” He patted the bar cart. “I volunteered for this. Nice way to meet people. Especially the new female arrivals.” He grinned and bounced his eyebrows in a way that was too corny to be creepy.
We introduced ourselves, and I was about to ask him if he’d met a researcher named Orynna, when a voice over the room’s speakers told us to take our seats. I said goodbye to Jay, checked my invitation, and walked to table 21.
As luck would have it, Orynna was seated there too. Or maybe it wasn’t luck. I didn’t doubt that Becky would have used her ansible time to arrange this with her colleagues in personnel management.
Anyway. I’m sorry, I know this part is supposed to be cute, like Orynna and I introduced ourselves at the same time and giggled, or I spilled a drink on her and wiped it off before realizing I’d touched her breast, or she broke the ice with a witty quip indicative of her character. But all that happened was that I sat down, and we talked.
While everyone took their seats, we exchanged information we both knew Becky had told us about each other. Yes, this felt awkward, but less so than jumping past the whole introductory dance that sentient beings are accustomed to. And Orynna was easy to talk to, friendlier than most Moirana, and she didn’t snicker when I told her I managed the station’s gases. Perhaps that was because she researched gas giant planets and had often received the same reaction.
Before long, the assistant station director took her place at the front of the room. She welcomed us to Kepler 42 and thanked us for our service. She told us we’d be receiving an update to the security portion of our station manual because of the recent skirmishes with the Rexnari. She ended on a joke about how this was the best meal we’d have during our stay so we’d better chew slowly and enjoy it.
The room dissolved back into chatter, and soon the rest of our tablemates drifted away to talk to acquaintances from previous station assignments, leaving me and Orynna alone at the table. With all of the easy topics exhausted, I had no clue how to rekindle the conversation. But I knew I had to speak soon before the silence grew insurmountable and she left.