Point B (a teleportation love story)

by Drew Magary

“You’re Bamert,” Asmi said. “I’ve seen you out in the quad, off your tits. Lucky bastard.”

  “I’ll take that as a compliment before you elaborate further. Your dress is stunning, my dear.”

  “Oh you’re double funny. Fuck off already.” Asmi was giggling now. It was almost as if she found Bamert charming. Handsome, even?

  “Are you flirting with her?” Anna asked Bamert. “Stop doing that.”

  “But I’m a free agent!” he cried. “You said so yourself! Jealousy is not a good look on you. That is it between us, my sweet little buttercup!”

  “What were you lot doing in here?” Asmi asked them.

  Anna and Bamert answered simultaneously and the combined reply sounded something like hang-udying out.

  Asmi pointed to the battery in Anna’s hand. “What’s that then?”

  “It’s a PortPhone battery,” Anna deadpanned. “We stole it from Vick and we’re gonna build a PortPhone of our own.”

  Bamert played along. “It’s true. Then we’re all gonna whizz out to a Clemson tailgate for Bojangles and fruity drinks.”

  There was a breathless moment before Asmi burst into laughter. “AHAHAHAHAHA, aren’t you the cheeky pair. Where did you find this boy, Anna?”

  “In the toilet.”

  “Does he wanna sniff some glue?”

  “Do I what?” Bamert asked.

  “He doesn’t want any,” Anna said to Asmi.

  “How do you know I don’t?”

  “You don’t.”

  “Prude. Anyway, Miss Asmi, we’re starting a business,” said Bamert.

  “What kind of business?” Asmi asked.

  “We haven’t actually gotten that far yet,” he told her. “But we are extremely into business. Supplies, demands, shipping, things of that nature.”

  “Have either of you dickheads ever run a business?” Asmi asked them.

  They answered simultaneously once more, but this time in cohesion: “No.”

  “Well, I have. I ran three of my dad’s kebab vans in Oxford. You won’t have time. Look at you, Anna: you’re so knackered you can barely stand.”

  This was true. Anna was shot through with fatigue. Her face felt like was in her neck. Her bones were cheap bendy straws. Her feet were dead clumps. Every time she looked into a mirror, she expected it to crack.

  “So your dad has a business,” Bamert said to Asmi.

  “A good one. His vans are the best in England. I used to work them every night work till 5am and serve a bunch of drunken wankers. They’d call me a Black Shard terrorist, Black Shard doesn’t even exist! Then I’d hand them a tray of food, and then they’d call me a goddess. Did my fucking head in. British boys are the absolute strangest assholes. Learned all their racism from the Kirsches, I figure.”

  “Where’s your dad’s business based?” Bamert asked.

  “I told you: Oxford.”

  Bamert shook his head. “No no no, I mean where’s it really based? Where’s the money get dumped? Come on now.”

  “Why should I tell you, you madhead?”

  “Because life is better when the beautiful people tell each other their secrets. Tell me I’m wrong.”

  Asmi hesitated for a second. “You tell anyone and I’ll have you, geezer. You’re big but I’ll use your face as my fucking welcome mat if you do me wrong.”

  “Please do that. Fuck me up, Asmi.”

  “Not a word, dickhead. I mean it.”

  Bamert ran a finger zipper across his lips.

  “Pakistan. That’s where me dad is from. That’s where I was born before we fled the war. We round up the kitty from the night’s business, we port to Kandahar, we leave the cash with my na, and then we port back to England. If the bobbies ever pop by a van, we have a stash of money on hand to make it look like we’re on the up and up. They usually swipe half of it anyway: a tribute we gotta pay for them to leave us alone. Bastards. Again, tell anyone and it’ll be you roasting on my dad’s spit.”

  “You make that sound like a threat but I would be delectable,” Bamert boasted. “I think it’s a nifty bit of corruption your family has going and I salute you and your elders for it. If Emilia Kirsch doesn’t have to pay taxes, why should you?”

  “Bollocks to that thieving old hag,” Asmi said.

  “God, British profanity is so much better than our own.”

  “You two should get a room,” Anna told them.

  “We have one!” Bamert said. “We have a room and we’re literally in it. And so, while we’ve got our little room together, let me ask you something, Asmi.”

  “What’s that?”

  Bamert stiffened his spine and tugged on his sport coat. Anna could tell his genius was booting up. You could see it in his eyes. His brain was a fickle, inconsistent organ. But when Bamert sensed a wave approaching, he knew when it was time to begin paddling furiously. The idea was coming to him now: every step of the plan emerging in full, from conception to execution. And it would all begin with a simple question to Anna’s new, exquisite roommate:

  “Is your father looking for investors?”

  From The Account Of @KandyRichards

  Thoroughly down this wormhole

  Posted from 2:34am to 3:01am EST, 10/01/30

  Okay this is my THIRD time setting up my account again because PortSys had me BANNED from this site the other two times. Because they own everything now, so why not?! But you cannot hold a good girl down! 1/

  Now look at this: Here’s a photo of Jason Kirsch, head of design for PortSys and Emilia’s shit-for-brains son, leaving a hotel with Vietnamese premier Tuy Xuan Phan. Now what is the guy supposedly in charge of designing PortPhones doing meeting with HEADS OF STATE? 2/

  Well, this isn’t the first meeting he’s had with foreign dignitaries! We know from @MeyerLemonParty’s feed that he also met with officials from Thailand, Costa Rica, and Italy. Now what do those countries have in common? I’LL TELL YOU! 3/

  They’ve ALL had violent crimes committed on their soil by American port tourists, and they’ve all had CIVIL demonstrations to keep Americans from porting in and out of their countries. 4/

  Then Jason Kirsch visits and guess what happens? The government keeps the port border open to Americans. Even when we SHOOT their tourists dead for coming HERE! 5/

  They also pay off opposition candidates to go away and/or rig elections against them to keep those port borders FREE and OPEN to Americans. And what do those Americans do? They build HOUSES, and RESORTS, and they put big portwalls around them so that they have control over the most desirable areas of those countries. They are gentrifying everything they can gentrify! 6/

  This is Colonialism all over again. Go ahead and ask the North Sentinalese. Oh wait you can’t because they GONE now. The haves get their oasises (that a word?) and the have-nots get to ROT in the free zones! 7/

  If you think this is just about MONEY, yeah it’s definitely that, but I wanna show you something ELSE! 8/

  Here’s a screenshot from the r/Conquistadors forum, where a dude named K15 goes on longwinded rants ALL THE TIME. And he believes some truly WILD SHIT! 9/

  K15 believes women assaulted by port stalkers should accept it as the COST OF DOING BUSINESS and “move on” after being attacked instead of “branding themselves as martyrs”. He also believes that porting is the “ideal Trojan Horse” to bring “White European cultures and values” to the rest of the world. 10/

  He’s glad public schools have basically died, and he’s glad the health care system here fell apart because now it’s a “truly global” marketplace. This is SICK! 11/

  Now I have no definitive proof that K15 is Jason Kirsch, but you damn well better believe that @MeyerLemonParty and @RedSauce have been on his ass from DAY ONE. This is him. End of story. 12/

  PortSys keeps talking about “port neutrality” and “true globalism.” Meanwhile they give money to PINE to shoot people at will, then they turn around and lobby the government to conduct light infantry raids on ANY country that gives th
em trouble. 13/

  The end goal isn’t to create a global community. The goal is absolute DOMINION of the best parts of the world. 14/

  That’s why they’ve shut my accounts down TWICE. I have had people in my mentions tell me I’m “too close”. It brings me no pleasure to endanger myself saying this, but the Kirsch family must be DESTROYED! 15/

  Watch them deactivate this account in 3, 2, 1…

  GOULD HOUSE/CRATER

  It took Burton’s non-girlfriend girlfriend a week to smuggle all the parts. Somehow they ended up costing Bamert more than a fully assembled PortPhone out of the store—considerably more—but that was of no concern to Bamert and his daddy’s credit card. Using Anna’s VPN, he loaded up at PortDirect on chips, flex cables, taptic engine vibrators, an LCD screen, and more. Then he ordered a two-gallon drum of Cheez Balls delivered to the Goren Hall mailroom just because he could.

  Again, Anna had to watch more tutorials featuring more nasty close-ups of pizza hands. The extra time was cutting into her already meager sleepload. She was running on less than three hours a night and it was deadening her body and mind. She had become a rock tied to a heavy rope, dragged around and across campus without end, leaving a trail of dull white chalk behind her.

  They met in Burton’s room in Gould House on a late Saturday afternoon to assemble the phone. The place was spotless. Burton made his bed with military precision every morning. He kept a small row of herb plants on the windowsill and fastidiously tended to them with a pair of shears and a spray bottle filled with distilled water from the cafeteria. Like a good nerd, he had all of his notebooks and papers color-coded and arranged in a perfect stack. He even vacuumed the floor twice a week. Bamert was openly disgusted with how immaculate the place was.

  Anna laid out all the parts on Burton’s bedspread and got to work, carefully tucking the circuit boards into the 3D-printed casing and packing the wires tight so that no interior space was wasted. Again, Anna was left to toil away with the pentalobe screwdriver. Her wrist ached as Bamert loomed over the assembly, contributing nothing while calmly perusing scores from the AP Top 25. He stroked one of Burton’s chive plants.

  “Don’t do that,” Burton told him.

  “Why not?” asked Bamert. “Are you presenting these at some sort of garden show?”

  “Yes.”

  “Wait, you are? I guess I should have expected that answer.”

  “I think I got it,” Anna told them both. The boys huddled around the bed and gazed in wide wonder at the dull gray box before them.

  “It’s ugly as hell,” Bamert said.

  “Bamert,” said Anna. “I will kill you with my bare hands.”

  “My apologies.”

  She slipped her bulldog cover over the phone.

  “A bulldog?” Burton asked.

  “I have my reasons,” Anna said.

  They sat in reverent silence around the homemade phone for a few minutes, praying it would come to life when they hit the Power button but dreading the potential letdown; that awful, distinctly 21st century sensation when a piece of technology fails and crushes your spirit for the day. Finally, Anna slipped her hand under the pebbly casing and pressed down firmly. A single agonizing second, and then the screen came alive.

  “Oh my God, it works,” Anna said.

  “Well, it works, but does it work work?” Burton asked.

  There was only one way to find out. Bamert had already done the legwork of hopping online and creating an entirely fictional businessman that he christened Chester Bumlee. From there, he took a demented glee in rounding out Chester Bumlee’s resume. Bumlee was a 37-year-old barrister, single with one child, and living comfortably in an apartment complex in Oxford, England. His parents were deceased: killed, according to Bamert, in a tragic locomotive collision. Chester collected vintage mustard bottles and played in a bluegrass band called The Desired Effect. His profile photo was a Shutterstock image of a man in a seersucker suit holding a parrot.

  PortSys demanded a social security number for any new American customer. UK residents, like Bumlee and his manufactured child, were under no such obligation. All he needed was a proof of address. The forwarding service Bamert set up for Bumlee sent all his snail mail, hand-delivered by PortSys-approved couriers, directly to Bamert’s cubby in Goren Hall. Once he had opened up Bumlee’s own personal credit card account (billed, again, to an address in New Hampshire), a PortSys account in his name and his daughter Sarah’s name were both approved and active. Chester Bumlee matched Bamert’s height and weight exactly. Ditto for Anna and Chester’s daughter.

  Leaving Burton behind in his room, Anna and Bamert ran out of Gould House with the phone and a weighted blanket that Bamert had ordered the week before, explicitly for their clandestine porting mission. When the blanket arrived at Goren Hall, Bamert ended up using it as his personal comforter because he liked sleeping with it so much.

  It was getting dark enough now to provide Anna and Bamert with a bit of cover, but not so dark and late as to have security roaming around with Mag-Lites. Behind the Druskin infirmary there was a decent-sized patch of woods where kids would go to get high and drink hard soda. They called it The Crater.

  “We shouldn’t do it right in this spot,” Anna said when they arrived. “It needs to be offset a little.”

  “I concur.”

  They walked another ten yards west and then turned south, following the towering Harkness Wall, stepping over and around felled trees that had been euthanized after emerald ash borers had snuck through the perimeter. Autumn was coming on strong now, every step they took causing the dead leaves to crackle and snap. The wind grew hostile. Anna got dizzy from looking around so much to make sure they were alone and unseen. She needed eight more sets of eyes to feel secure.

  “Here,” she said, stopping next to a thick oak tree. Bamert hung the blanket on one of the branches and she slipped underneath. The branch broke and the fifteen-pound blanket tackled her like an oncoming linebacker.

  “Are you okay?” Bamert asked.

  “I’m fine. This is fine.”

  They hung the blanket on a studier branch this time. She ducked underneath, opened up the map, zoomed in on her location, and chose a pin two feet away from where she was currently standing. A fly landed on her shoulder. She laughed out loud before shooing it away.

  She hit PORT, took a step, and felt the shiver. Now this was proper porting. No burning. No needles. She had never been so happy to feel so cold. She took her step into the hole and, for a fraction of a fraction of a second, the cold encased her. You didn’t pass through spacetime so much as spacetime passed through you. It was like a sneeze: a strange reflex that sealed your eyes shut and would probably kill you if lasted any longer than it did.

  The great vacuum of air created by her exit from this plane sucked the blanket toward the void and left it stick–straight for a millisecond before it flared back out and plummeted to the ground. That heavy covering was enough to keep the port clap from echoing beyond the woods.

  Anna appeared again right next to the blanket, the gust from her reappearance blowing Bamert’s tie over his shoulder. He covered his face to keep from squealing with delight.

  “It works!” he whispered.

  “It works.”

  They looked up at the Harkness Wall, its battlements blocking out the coming moonlight.

  “Think we’ll get past it?” Anna asked him.

  “As sure as sunlight, we will.”

  Body Identified At Bettendorff Beach As Local Woman

  AP

  10/1/2030

  (COOS BAY, OR) — State Medical Examiner Dr. Carmen Headley confirmed today that the body of a previously unidentified woman that washed up along Bettendorff Beach on September 27th matched the fingerprints and dental records of anti-porting activist Melanie Greenberg. Official cause of death was listed as drowning. No foul play is suspected. Her body was found, unclothed, by a group of port surfers four days ago. No PortPhone was fou
nd on her person at the time. Toxicology reports showed massive amounts of alcohol and sleep medication in her blood at the time of death.

  Greenberg, who gained some mild renown when her son died porting to the top of Mount Everest, leaves behind no surviving family or legal will. Her remains will be cremated and stored at the Coos County Sheriff’s Office for a predetermined period of time before being remanded to Bay Area Public Cemetery for formal interment.

  ROUTE 101

  The next morning, Anna chugged three energy drinks in a row and knocked on Mrs. Ludwig’s door. When no one answered, she knocked more forcefully. A cop knock. Mrs. Ludwig came to the door in hair curlers. Anna was admiring her fluffy white slippers before realizing that they weren’t slippers; they were actually two cats sitting at her feet.

  “Yes?”

  “I’d like to take a ride, Mrs. Ludwig.”

  “Oh. Oh, really?” she said archly. Anna didn’t know what she was in for.

  “Hell yeah, I would. Let’s go fast.”

  “I’ll get my coat. This will be verrrrrrrrry interesting.”

  Within fifteen minutes, Anna was passing through Druskin Gate for the first time in over a month, her passport hanging dutifully around her neck. For so long, Anna had schemed to outwit that stupid wall. Now she could just prance right through it, if only for a moment. The five-week baptism into Druskin life had cleansed her mind fully of what the rest of the United States was currently like. Now it was all coming back. The small roads were bloodshot with dying vegetation. The sidewalks were crumbling. The crosswalks had faded away to stencils. Old, abandoned cars rotted in front of colonial houses. Spent shell casings were ready to ambush unsuspecting pedestrians anywhere they stepped.

  Loud bangs went off all over town: a handful of remaining Druskin town residents taking their Sunday morning to venture places far more exotic. A few leafpeepers came popping in to gawk at the foliage and exited quickly after they had gotten their fill. A couple of PINE agents wandered around the sidewalk, bored but still fingering their trigger guards.