by Landon Wark
He picked up the empty shell and put it down again. He picked up the toothbrush and put it down again.
“Don't argue with the data,” he said to the empty room.
His lips curled up and he sat down in the chair, eyes firmly fixed on the abomination of nature on the table. There was a sneer on his face and defiance in his voice as he took another deep breath and...
He stumbled wearily out of the apartment building, shielding his eyes from the sun.
His first class was long since over and he saw little point in going anywhere, but there was no way he could stay in that apartment any longer. Not with all the pens cluttering it up.
His mind was shot, partly from lack of sleep and partly from astonishment. His mouth was dry and his throat was raw, and yet he felt strangely good. In this state his body operated on autopilot, making his way down the black ice covered sidewalk towards the familiar bus stop with almost gleefully, uncoordinated mosey. The air didn't seem quite as cold as it usually did and the sun didn't seem as bright anymore. There was electricity in the air as he staggered into the bus stop. He smiled at the people who crowded into the shelter and looked around at the sparkle of light off the snow. The bus arrived on time and there was no one at the head of the line counting out change. He managed a seat and stared out the window with a strange satisfaction.
He sat in the stairway at the back of organic chemistry and stared straight ahead, absently taking notes without much attention, his hand moving through force of habit more than any interest.
When his pen ran out of ink he was asked to leave the classroom; his laughter was interrupting the rest of the class.
He ate lunch alone in the corner of the cafeteria in a haze, his mind such a blur of thought that it was impossible to pick out any one from the rest, they moved faster than any thoughts he had ever had before, buzzing around like mosquitoes that refused to be swatted.
The same arguments for skipping the rest of his classes existed in his head, only now they were buttressed by a concrete reason far beyond merely exhaustion and far greater than simply not wanting to go. There were ideas rushing through his mind beyond those of his usual daydreams, ideas that demanded immediate attention.
How large an object will it work on?
Does material make the difference?
Can more than one be made at a time?
There were hypotheses to test, data to collect. His scientific brain quickly dissected the miracle that he had beheld the night before and translated it into quantifiable predictions and was already running experiments.
Sitting alone on the bench, eating the soggy sandwich he had dared to buy for lunch he suppressed a smile.
Jonah McAllister Has an Epiphany
He tapped his pen on the edge of his desk as he looked around at the remaining grad students, two in all, as they bustled around the benches, throwing this solution or that on top of slides or pipetting markers into agarose assays. He bit his tongue impatiently, waiting for them to leave. The one time he wanted them gone...
The anticipation was becoming almost too much to bear as his tapping of the pen and his chewing of his tongue continued apace.
They began whispering between the two of them and he had a brief flash that they knew what he was going to do once they were gone. A pang of worry lasted long enough for him to seriously consider walking out the main door and rushing back to his cramped apartment with its full complement of pens. But there were things he needed to do that could only be done in the lab.
He needed to figure out exactly what had happened to the plants on that first day.
Over the past day he had grown more and more confident with his control over the sounds that had made all of the pens, or at least the outer shells of a pen, in his apartment. He was beginning to suspect the reason he was unable to make the inkwells to go along with them, but he wanted to run some tests on the plants in the greenhouse first. The ability to make plastic knickknacks out of thin air was impressive, but a plant was a living thing and he needed to know how they were being affected before he continued on. There was no telling what could be happening to him every time he did this. He had not grown any taller yet, but who knew what was going on?
The two grad students, Sara Something and the one who called him Josh, were arguing heatedly over the centrifuge, about procedures or something. Jonah tapped his pen harder against the notebook and then stood up, gripped by a sudden urge for a drink from the soda machine down the hall.
“Josh!” the call grated on his nerves. The older student, his face disturbingly close shaven, ran the last couple of steps to catch up before the door closed between them. “Hey, man, thanks for the slides. They look good.”
“Good.” Jonah continued walking.
“So, I said I owe you one. I'm not supposed to mention this to you, but the other grad students are having like—this Christmas thing. I figured you've got the student part down, right?”
Jonah frowned, his impatience barely held in check. “Uh, no thanks.”
The grad student looked him uncomfortably square in the eye. “You know that brunette from the lab down the hall is going to be there,” he whispered.
His pulse quickened momentarily and then slowed once again.
“Come on, man, every single undergrad that comes through here has a thing for her. Look, normally I don't get involved, but you seem like a nice guy. Bit high strung maybe, but... You'll stain a friend's slides in an emergency, right?”
Jonah mused for a moment, thoughts of getting into the greenhouse drifted away. If there had been no reaction to the invitation there was now a growing curiosity. He managed a brief exhale.
Sensing submission the grad student pushed him by the shoulder, nearly sending him back into the seamless windows that lined the hall. “All right, man. It's about two weeks from now at the Fort hotel. All you need is fifty bucks to chip in for booze.”
Jonah's heart sank. “Fifty bucks?”
“Yeah. I'll look into getting you an invite.” He threw open the door and dashed back down the hall into a world that Jonah had no possible way to reach.
“Fifty bucks...” the last part of the sentence drifted off into a string of mutterings.
The grad students had left for the evening and he had collected his samples in secret, though they had receded into the back of his mind for the moment. There was nothing wrong with them, they had just grown a little faster than the rest was all. He had pointed the sounds at them and they had tried to replicate like the pens and toothbrush, but like the bristles and the inkwells there were too many parts of the plants, too much complexity to make a complete copy, or even to make them grow more than a few millimeters at a time. Maybe he had managed to increase the sugar stores in the plant cells.
That was his interpretation anyway.
“So, we can make simple things out of thin air...” he trailed off dreamily. “What did you do today, Jonah? Nothing much. Just put China out of business.”
He tapped his pen on the paper. As excited as he should have been, he was still in a dire mood. No matter how he sliced his budget. No matter how many calls home he missed or how many grocery runs he skipped out on, there was no way to shave fifty dollars from his budget. For the fifth time that evening he got up from his chair and walked across the hall, daring to stare in at the dark, empty lab across from his own. His pulse raced as he passed it.
He sighed. He should have been ecstatic, but instead he was worrying about some stupid social function.
“Why couldn't you have just kept your mouth shut?” he cursed at the non-existent student.
Suddenly desperate for caffeine, he realized he had never gotten the soda from the machine.
At least he had an excuse for not going. In his experience these things were good for nothing except sitting alone on the edge of the room, trying to think of something to say. He had been invited to exactly zero parties all throughout high school, but the weddings of relatives had gone thusly. And he hated stayin
g out that late anyway. All that ever came of it was a desperate need to get back home where it was safe. Fifty dollars was a lot of money to spend doing something he hated. He tapped his fingers on the windowsills as he marched down the hall.
But still...
How did everyone else make it seem so effortless? How could they talk through an entire chemistry class about how much they had to drink the night before and he could barely pay his rent? How was it that Sara Something and Josh Man could hold down study and party and work?
Jonah shook his head, slipping his hands through his hair and noting the few strands that came away between his fingers.
Absently he kicked the wall. How did they do it? It seemed to him that if he could just analyze it, if he could just see them in action maybe he could figure it out. He had managed to figure out quite a few things just by studying them. If he could look and listen and then maybe come up with an idea...
He pictured what it would be like to be talking through a whole chemistry class about a Christmas party, maybe have something to talk about other than plant growth rates or gene transcription rates, and maybe have someone want to listen.
His mouth turned up into a slight smile.
Then it turned back down.
“I still don't have fifty dollars,” he muttered as he took out his wallet in the looming shadow of the soda machine, half to get the necessary quarters, half to verify its cavernous folds. Inside there was the lone ten-dollar bill that was supposed to last him the rest of the week. “How am I supposed to get fifty dol—”
The question stuck in his throat along with his breath.
Were he a different person with different priorities and different thoughts he might have come upon this combination of question and answer days earlier, if not right away. The thoughts of the ten-dollar bill overlapped instantly with the mountain of pens that were cluttering up his apartment and he could hear the sound of some cosmic key turning within a cosmic lock. Tumblers aligned and a door opened onto a bright shining vista. Momentarily it was obscured by several inconsequential details and then he found himself staring into the Promised Land.
His hands shook as he took hold of the soda machine to keep his balance, his breathing was now heavy and laboured and the slight smile returned to his face, growing ever wider with each passing second.
Were anyone else working late into the night they may have been deeply disturbed by the sound of Jonah McAllister laughing like a maniac.
Jonah McAllister Breaks the Law
Jonah McAllister stood, pacing, outside of the pawnshop for nearly half an hour. When he turned toward the window he could see the broker behind the fencing wire staring back at him. There was a mixture of fear and anger in those eyes, most likely caused by the fact that he was certain the stranger marching back and forth in front of the store had robbery on his mind. That or the fact that no one had gone in all afternoon with Jonah patrolling outside.
“Let him think what he wants,” Jonah muttered, unable to restrain himself. He had become more and more careful over the past few days with his nervous habits, now acutely aware of what they could do if not held in check.
He was almost as aware of the bulge in his front pocket and though he slumped in an attempt to hide it he knew that anyone walking by would notice it too. He doubted anyone would try anything, not in broad daylight on such a busy street, but anyone might mark him as worth watching… for later. With the economy the way it was there was no telling what people would stoop to. He should get in there, complete his transaction and then get out, but the sweat on his palms gave him pause.
The knowledge that what he was about to do was wrong lingered in the peripheries of his brain.
Finally he drew a sharp breath through his teeth and grasped the tarnished brass handle on the chipped door.
“What do you want?” The question was simultaneous with the ringing of the bell above the door.
Jonah nearly jumped clear of his skin at the harshness of it, but he found composure in the fact that he had not been into the laboratory in nearly a week and would not be paid for the time he missed. He fished around in his front pocket, coming up with a slick of bills that he held in his clammy, sweating hand. They were all crisp, brand new, bound with a clean rubber band, bought especially for the occasion. In all there had to be fifty bills, the entire contents of his bank account, meant to pay his phone and internet bills and last him for the rest of a month of groceries. It was all tens and from where he stood Jonah could see the man behind the fencing wire salivating.
“Change?” Jonah asked nervously.
The man looked at his face, gauging.
“There’s a… ten percent surcharge,” he said.
Jonah reached into his other pocket and pulled out an identical stack.
“Fif-fifteen,” the broker stammered. “It just went up to fifteen the other day.”
“That’s fine,” Jonah breathed, scarcely daring to believe that something so foolish might actually work. One false move and he could go to jail for a long, long time.
He walked up to where the man sat behind the wire, not daring to look at the banjos and tennis rackets that lined the walls and the vacuum cleaners that lined the floors. Below the wiring and glass was a solid wall; a slot separated the two through which items and money could be passed. Jonah placed the two stacks on the counter and slid one into the slot. The man took it eagerly and ran it along his thumb. Jonah licked his lips and tried to keep the sweat from dripping down his brow.
“Gotta check it,” he said and Jonah froze.
The man pulled out a single bill from the middle of the stack and held it under what looked like an ultraviolet lamp. The man bit on his lip and turned the bill over, holding it there for an eternity before scowling and flicking it a little The sweat built on Jonah’s brow, threatening to become a torrent and drown him.
“Ummmm.”
He was prepared for the call to the police at any moment. His legs were coiled to run.
“All right,” the man said at last. “Looks good. So that’s…” He eyed the other stack of bills. Jonah slipped them through the slot. “One thousand dollars in tens, minus te-fifteen percent, is eight hundred fifty dollars. How you want it?”
“Hundreds,” Jonah’s reply was almost instantaneous.
“And the fifty?”
“Huhn?” The disruption in the flow was almost disorienting.
“You got fifty left over, man.”
"I..."
"Why didn't you just go to the bank, kid?" the man asked. "They ask a few too many questions?"
Jonah cast his eyes around the shop, desperate to get out as soon as possible. The constant beads of sweat expanded into droplets. What reason was there to pay this guy fifteen percent for cash instead of going into a bank? His brain seized on something his father had mentioned in passing while driving him to the mall to get a pair of boots one Thursday afternoon, a wad of bills similar to the one Jonah had just shoved through the slot sitting on the seat beside him.
"I-I don't want the government knowing about any more of my money than I have to."
The broker pursed his lips and then nodded slowly. "Smart kid. Damn government would tax my piss if they could. And my bank would watch me on the can writing down how much went in there."
Jonah exhaled as the pawnbroker counted off eight hundred dollar bills and shoved them through the slot as if resentful of having to give them up. Jonah relished a smile as he heard the bills shuffled and placed in a drawer. Jonah made certain to stuff the hundreds into his front pocket so they could not be seen.
"Wouldn't mind so much if they didn't insist on giving it all to the Indians."
Jonah's relieved expression evaporated.
"So, you just want a fifty? Maybe there's something in the shop that caught your eye."
"You know what? You can keep it," Jonah said with a flat disdain, turning on his heel away from the glass.
As he slipped on his gloves so his hands would no
t freeze he wondered what would happen when the pawnbroker realized that serial numbers on the ten-dollar bills in the stacks, though different than their neighbours were the same as their counterparts in the other stack.
Jonah McAllister had just doubled his money.
Jonah McAllister Goes Shopping
With the fast approach of the holiday season the malls were packed to brimming with people; a hot ocean of bodies and overcoats, worry and frustration and bleary-eyed consumerism. Even with a recession in full swing there was a sense of grasping, clutching hunger in the air, the overwhelming sense of obligation and forced cheer was nearly stifling. And yet Jonah found himself to be in a mood that he had a hard time placing, mostly because he had never felt it before. It was a complete lack of worry and obligation, the antithesis of the world that buzzed and hummed around him with breakneck speed.
He tested the weight of the coat skeptically, shifting inside of it and feeling it move with him. In all of his life he had never had a winter coat that met with his satisfaction. Mostly he ended up with hollow-feeling plastic affairs that caused him to bristle whenever his bare skin rubbed against their frigid sleeves or sometimes with nylon fibre lined things whose sleeves were too short, making his wrists chafe in the exposed space between his cuffs and his gloves.
This one was lined with some kind of woollen fibre, a little itchy, but tolerable. Its outside was made of a thick black wool that he was certain was woven so tightly that it would laugh off even the most grotesque of winds. But most important it was heavy, something he had decided was the key to a winter coat: stoutness. He looked carefully at the price tag and marvelled at the strange feeling of not being instantly repulsed. It was an alien sensation, but not an unpleasant one.
He threw the coat over his arm and made for the aisle, grasping a pair of leather gloves without regard for the tag. A sudden giddiness gripped him and he believed that he was beginning to understand the bustling masses around him as they scrambled for gifts among the shelves. It was an intense feeling.