by Exurb1a
He smiled. “No thank you, Dr. Hare. Your word is good enough for me.”
He finished his tea and looked out the window again for a while. It was only then that I noticed the clean patches on the otherwise dusty desk. I asked if any of your documents had been confiscated.
“Nothing of Dr. Hare's has been confiscated,” he said.
“Did you take anything of Polly's from her office?” I tried again.
“No property of Dr. Hare’s was removed from her office.”
Jesus fucking Christ, these Oxbridge types. “Have you removed, taken, or otherwise relocated anything from the office we’re currently sat in, and if so, what?”
“Documents which fell under the umbrella of the Official Secrets Act or possibly were tangentially related have been appropriated by the British government for further investigation.”
“Her computer too?”
Mr. Hayden nodded.
I asked what your current status was, as considered by the government. He answered very diplomatically that they had a number of questions for you, but were ultimately more concerned about your psychological wellbeing than anything.
“Well,” he said and smiled with all-white teeth. “I am terribly sorry about your wife’s disappearance. Thanks for indulging me today. We’ll let you know if there are any developments.”
I stood up and tried to initiate one of those joint-stares men do when they’re being serious, the kind that engenders honesty. If he knew your whereabouts, would he tell me, I asked.
On the condition that I was willing to extend the same courtesy, he answered.
I did some top-quality shouting then, tears and all. I’ll spare you the details but I said fuck a lot and made it clear that humans were usually a bit put out when their spouses went missing and if some jumped up toff prick in a suit thought it was fun to try and intimidate me after my lover had just done a vanishing act then he had another thing coming and I’d see to it personally that the Official Secrets Act was signed and stuffed so far up his arse it would come wiggling out of his mouth like a little paper tongue.
He smiled like I’d just wished him a wonderful day and said, “We’ll let you know if there are any developments,” and left.
I sat in your chair for ages after that and stroked the armrests. Your butt had been on this thing for years wearing it in. You told me once that all of time was ‘simultaneous’, mathematically speaking, that as far as the universe was concerned, everything was happening all at once. I’m still not sure I understand what that means, but I tried to feel you in that chair.
We were separated by time. Your body was elsewhere, but it had been in the chair for a long time before. Now my body was there.
All those nights in bed, all those hours asleep with the two of us coiled around each other like tree roots. Where are you sleeping these nights? With someone else? Or with a bundle of stolen secrets under your pillow?
I don’t think this strange Oxbridge dick would kill you, but he’d see to it you get locked up if whatever you’ve done is bad enough. What have you gotten yourself into? Would you just let me get you out of it?
If you were here, I’d hold you. Paradoxically it’s nice that you’re not here because you’d get irritated and call it soppy. Actually what’s up with that while we’re on the subject? Screwing: fine. Surprise presents for no reason: fine. Keeping pictures of me sleeping in your desk drawer: fine. Actual spoken verification of how your husband might unconditionally adore you: disgusting and unacceptable show of weakness.
It’s one in the morning now. The cat is on my lap. (She misses you.) If you’re not dead, which I suspect you aren’t, then you’re probably sleeping somewhere. Maybe in this country, maybe not, but somewhere on the planet certainly. There are coordinates that could define your location, and if I had them, I could drive or fly straight to you. You are still an objective thing in the world, like this paper, like the cat. In the morning you will get up and piss and brush your teeth and look your face over for pimples. You will put on pants and slide your boobs into your bra and close the clasp. You will eat, then probably drink a bucket of coffee. You will talk with people. You will walk about. You will be a fact.
I thought I’d start reading some of your books. That’s how bad this all is right now. I avoided all the maths crap and the political crap and the postmodern crap and found a little volume of Einstein’s letters. Here’s one passage I liked. I guess you liked it too because you marked the page with a pink post-it.
After Einstein’s friend Besso died, Einstein wrote to Besso’s family:
“Now he has departed from this strange world a little ahead of me. That means nothing. People like us, who believe in physics, know that the distinction between past, present, and future is only a stubbornly persistent illusion.”
An empty comfort, Albert. Thanks anyway.
In some corner of time a young and arrogant British archaeologist is boarding a plane for Eastern Europe and dreading his first visit there. He does not know many more will follow, and soon, instead, he’ll look forward to them. In another corner of time a young and arrogant Bulgarian mathematician takes a photo of the young and arrogant archaeologist sleeping and hides it away for safekeeping.
Every argument happens at once in infinity: in the kitchen, in the living room, in the bedroom. It’s deafening. Every intimate moment spreads across spacetime like warm butter; ten thousand, a hundred thousand, a million kisses all at once. The moments stack on top of each other, a great jar of pickled time: your voice, my voice, all the fucking, all the arguments, all the things we said and never said, every evening we drank away, every time we quietly wished we weren’t married, every gripe and grievance, every saving grace, it screams. The thing takes a shape in time and expands to encompass the past, present, and future, and swallows everything we ever did, sums it all up on a single plane. And just when you think it might burst, just when whatever we've built feels like it might burst, it collapses right back down.
To one moment.
To this moment.
To the cat on my lap at one in the morning. I am here and my wife is not. At some point in the future perhaps I’ll know where she’s gone. For now I do not and the cat and I are prisoners, with time as a shackle and space as a jailor.
I’m pretty certain love is an evolutionary trick to convince a species with exceptionally dumb infants to stay together long enough for those infants to grow up. I’m pretty certain whatever chemical cocktail I’m still riding off of will be accounted for in labs one day, molecule by molecule. I’m pretty certain you and I are terribly matched in terms of personality and temperament.
Well I couldn’t give less of a shit.
I love you Polly, and I’m old enough to know better.
And on that note I think I might go to bed.
Goodnight. I hope you’re sleeping somewhere nice.
B x
6.
“What’s the belly all about?” Argie said.
“What belly?” The Navigator said.
“Exactly.”
They rounded a cobbled path and walked along a plateau for a while. Below them stretched the muddled districts of the Ape Cellar. Some of it belched smoke. Other sectors, far off in the distance and squirrelled away behind a huge blue forest, were chrome and gleaming under the moons.
“We'll reach the tier bridge soon. Best you worry about more pressing matters,” The Navigator said.
“Okay. So what’s the belly thing all about?” Argie had been staring right through his torso for most of the climb up. Denizens often modified their bodies down in the Ape Cellar, but rarely did they remove whole sections.
“It’s complicated,” The Navigator muttered.
“I’m a clever girl.”
Argie squinted up at the mountain’s peak. A great purple vortex waited on its tip, extending up out of sight. From their distance they could hear its song now, a gentle call in grating flats and sharps.
“My work does not come wi
thout hazards,” The Navigator said finally.
“Wait, you got that crossing between tiers?”
“In a sense.”
“We’re about to cross tiers. What if I end up in Lemuria without a foot or a head?”
“That’s fine. By the time we get to Indigo no one will notice. They don’t have feet or heads there.”
“God damn it, why didn’t you mention this earlier?”
The Navigator whirled around. “Do you want me to guide you or not?”
“Of course, but not if we come out the other end mutilated.”
“We won’t. I know what I’m doing.”
Argie stuck her hand straight through his torso and out the other side, wiggled her fingers. “Really? So what’s this – a fashion statement?”
The Navigator lit a cigarette. “You’re like everyone down here. You understand a hundredth of the truth and think you've got it licked.”
“Educate me then.”
He rolled his eyes. “Last time I left Lemuria I did it in a hurry. I’m not the most popular of denizens at present. A speedy exit makes for…complications.” He nodded down at his missing stomach. “Given the haste, I didn’t assign all of my selfsense in the transport request. Parts were left behind.”
“What happened to whoever you were travelling with?”
“Luckily he’s not picky about how many ears he wanted throughout his life.”
“Oh come on.”
The Navigator pointed accusingly with his cane. “Should we get into a spot of bother, I’ll leave you behind. Don’t you worry about that.”
“Suits me.”
They continued walking, the old man hunched and ambling. The vortex sung louder as they neared. “Some ground rules.” The Navigator raised his voice over the vortex’s hum. “If I say run, you run. If I say stay, you stay. I’ll try my hardest not to get you hurt, all right?”
“All right.”
“And no wandering off. Some girl did that a few cycles ago. Couldn’t find her after that. Last thing I heard she ended up in a zoo.”
“A what?”
“Oh, a few Lemurians collect you lot, put them in little enclosures. It’s fun for them, you see. Like keeping a pet.”
“What do they do to them?”
“Whatever they like, I suppose.”
“That’s barbaric…”
“No more barbaric than you and your infant.”
“That’s not the same at all,” Argie barked.
“What, creating life just out of boredom? I’d say it’s worse actually. At least the Lemurians are doing it for a reason, even if it’s sadistic. You just did it for fun. Quite a thing to create a life for, no?”
“What the hell would you know about it?”
The Navigator only chuckled and led them further up the mountain. The cobbled path twisted around again and brought them out over a great desert. In the distance, Ape Cellar denizens raced each other across the sand on enormous steam engines, thousands of tracks all in parallel. Beyond that the sky was filled with equations etched in brilliant white light: Newton and Maxwell’s better-known discoveries, and some string mathematics Argie wasn’t familiar with.
“Was it Hare?” The Navigator said shrewdly.
“What?”
“Was it Benjamin Hare that made you so sapien-friendly? You’re all down here for one reason or another. You’re clever and you seem to know a fair bit about sapien history. I’ll bet it was Hare that did it.”
“What’s it to you?”
“That’s a yes then. I’m not an idiot myself. I know my history. I’ve read some of his letters. Look, I get it. Really I do. It’s a stupid reason to hold all the sapiens on a pedestal, but I get it.”
Argie squinted up at the vortex. “If you must know, yes. It was Hare. To begin with anyway.”
“Not much of a writer, was he?”
“You’re not going to bait me, if that’s what you’re trying to do.”
The Navigator turned back for a moment and winked. “Wasn’t my intention. He just isn’t a god, but it seems to me that’s what you lot are trying to make him.”
“You lot?”
“Whatever you call yourselves. Ape-fuckers, we used to say in Indigo.”
“Just stick to your court and I’ll stick to mine. How about that?”
The Navigator grunted.
“Why don’t you just grow it back?” Argie said then.
“Huh?”
“Your belly. Why don’t you just grow it back?”
“Complications.”
She thought this over. “You can’t. They put limitations on your selfsense didn’t they – when you were exiled. That’s why your stomach’s missing.”
“Something like that.”
“Then why are you still risking guiding people up tiers? What if you lose something important next time?”
“Why did you have your daughter?” The Navigator asked dully.
“I was asking about-”
“I know, but just answer the question.”
Argie considered this a moment. “I’m not sure. It was just an impulse.”
“Right, and if you hadn’t had her, you’d never really have felt fulfilled, would you?”
“I suppose not.”
“Then we’re not so different. I used to spend my time up in heaven. Now I’m stuck down here in the gutter. Few things light me up of late. Shepherding you ape-fuckers through the tiers is just risky enough to bring back the spark on a good day, and at least kill the boredom on a bad one.”
They continued to ascend. The landscape below was a child’s toy now, the steam engines still careening across the desert, smoke pouring from great glass funnels.
Argie split her selfsense into parts, one keeping an eye on the route ahead, the other researching The Navigator via Arcadia’s interface. Stories of a navigator turned up in obscure conspiracy circles. There was also a classified listing:
WILL SHEPHERD BETWEEN TIERS. TWO PROOFS MINIMUM PAYMENT.
“Why don’t you expect me to pay?” Argie said.
The Navigator didn’t reply and only mashed his cane into the dirt and when she almost thought he was ignoring her he said, “I reckon you’ve paid enough already.”
“Oh how cryptic.”
The vortex was loud enough to almost drown out speech now.
“I told you. You won’t like what you find,” he said.
“Is my daughter dead?” Argie said quietly, thinking maybe the noise had eaten her words.
“Worse, I expect.”
Kaluza had learned fast, both about the rules of Arcadia and the rules of her mother. She walked a fine line in between. She still created bizarre shapes when her mother was asleep, but kept them limited to only a few metres across as per her mother’s instruction. Argie gave the infant burrow-rights and the infant got to work redesigning the place, shrinking the beach, changing the hue of the sky, conjuring land animals that dwelled both in four and five dimensions; disappearing into the cliffs and reemerging out the other side of the island.
Kaluza stopped using the interfaces entirely and began learning solely by intuition from Arcadia. Argie would mention some obscure subject to her and the child would seem ignorant, then enlightened only a few minutes later, able to lecture her mother on all aspects of it.
“What did you do before?” Kaluza asked one day.
“Before what?”
“Before me.”
“I worked in horology.”
“What’s that?”
“The study of time, I suppose.”
The infant wrinkled her nose and stared off into the distance with vacant eyes, obviously looking into the matter herself with the help of Arcadia. Finally she said, “I still don’t understand why you’d want to.”
“Time moves differently depending on which tier one is on,” Argie said. “Down here, time moves very slowly indeed. In Lemuria, time moves at maybe twice the speed. In Indigo, even faster.”
“How fast?”
“We’re not sure. Things are a bit more slippery up there. Events precede their causes sometimes.”
The infant scoffed. “How’s that possible?”
“Well, imagine it like this. If you knew every position of every atom and all of their velocities, you could predict where they’d all go, couldn’t you?”
“Isn't that impossible, to know both at the same time?”
“Don't be stupid, that was a sapien physics-myth. We solved it cycles ago now. Anyway, Indigos might be very clever and very alien, but they’re still part of a closed system. Indigo tier itself knows what the denizens are going to do, even if the denizens don’t. Sometimes Indigo allows denizens to step into their own future, or lean back into their own history.”
The infant’s eyes grew wide. Argie immediately regretted indulging the child.
“Can they relive the same day over and over?” the infant said.
“Maybe, I don’t know.”
“But you said that’s what you studied.”
“From down here, yes. It’s a pastime for some of us in the Ape Cellar. We don’t often get to see the tiers above, so we learn what we can about them with our instruments. For example, every now and then a Lemurian or an Indigo comes down here to visit, then goes back home. When they come down again we can read their tags to see how much they’ve aged. If it’s, say, a thousand cycles but only a few cycles have passed for us, then we know they’re getting better at manipulating time. You understand?”
“I think so.”
“It’s not a good thing, you know. Meddling with time I mean. All sorts of things can go wrong. Your selfsense can be broken apart by a paradox, or you can go mad.”
“How do you know?”
“There are plenty of clever denizens down here. We know enough to work out some of the rules in the tiers above.”
“But you’ve never been there…”
“No.”
“Will you take me?”
“Maybe one day.”
“Tomorrow?”
“Not tomorrow, no.”
“Then when?”
“Look, the world is very complicated.”
“You said that before.”