This Location of Unknown Possibilities (33 page)

Marta, wondering about the man's sudden volubility, noticed the tall drink in his grasp.

“We're on the same page there.”

“I'm heading to the bar for a refill. Can I get you anything?”

“Thanks, but no. I think I'm going to make my way back to the banquet room.”

“Alright. Cheers.”

6
.

T
ipping his glass, Jake caught Marta's eyes as she mimed a raised glass in reply.
Self-righteous goody two-shoes
, he thought.

One last vodka and tonic; he figured handling that would be no problem. He'd toss a double back and beg off, tell Lora that he'd done his part and that a headache demanded a quiet room.

Trailer park Xtina and the bush codgers tumbled into Jake's consciousness as he strode toward the bar, insistent, like those
Night of the Living Dead
zombies once they've caught sight of living flesh. He swept the images aside, focussing on the drive ahead and the details of the morning's flight.

7
.

C
haz gnawed on a rib as Marta approached. “Hi Fido, how's the grub?”

“Woof. You weren't lying about five minutes, wow. It's good, actually. I'm surprised. Buffets are wall-to-wall crapfests usually. So, was mini-Vegas really mini-Reno?”

“I'm not a great judge of character. You might like it, but it's not my cup of tea.”

“I'll check it out in a bit.”

“Okay.” Marta recognized the contribution of words intended to pad a conversation thinning out.

“Are you planning on staying at this shindig for long?”

“I don't think so. Do they usually last long?”

“Depends. I figure with the casino and bar within spitting distance of each other, some hardcore crew will be letting off steam for quite a while yet. A couple of teamsters dropped by the office earlier, though. They're already loaded up and ready to hit the road.”

Marta stepped back from Chaz and looked around the room. “I'm not far behind them.”

“I could go back with you. If you'd like.”

“I'm fine, really. The quiet will do me good.” She wanted to say little else; she'd sound neurotic or silly growing serious and questioning as Chaz blithely chewed. “Enjoy yourself here. I'm planning to get up early anyway.”

“Okay, that's cool.” Chaz reached out the plate as a waiter passed by. “Thanks, man. Hey, if I get back early enough I'll drop by to say Hi. Maybe I'll be loaded down with booty if Lady Luck's good to me in the casino.
You like mink?” Marta imagined the smiling ghost of Frank Sinatra watching over the scene.

“Gold bullion has some appeal, actually. Good luck then.” In lieu of an embrace she waved; slumbering, intuition hastened her in no direction.

8
.

“T
ime for me to cut out,” Jake said. Antsy from shop talk and logistics with Lora and tired of Nicos crowding in, bleating about “inebriates” like a Prohibition-days do-gooder, or pointing out the endless faults of
“this puny dime store Reno,” he craved a radical break. Also, the remaining advertised sources of entertainment looked verboten—
Dallas
-wannabe locals in tight Wranglers, their mates in satin blouses over push-up bras—exhausted, or never promising to begin with.
“Should get back to my room and pack.
The flight is at some godawful time in the morning.”

“Want me to track down Nicos?” Lora surveyed the crew clusters. “He's sober as a judge and you've been putting back a few, I think.”

“I'm fine, mother.”

“Okay, you're the boss. Just don't expect me to haul your ass out of jail or identify remains later tonight. I need my beauty sleep.
The phone will be shut off.”

“You're all heart.” He swallowed the vodka and tonic—definitely the final one of the evening—in a gulp, and made for the casino exit.

“Give me a call from the airport, alright?”

“Of course, dear. Don't stay out too late.”

9
.

M
arta smoothed the floral quilt until it stretched perfectly across the bed. Standing back, she judged the effect to be wrong—too neat—and produced the asymmetry of use with a swift tug. She'd like to be regarded as a respectful guest and, unaccountably, wanted Mrs. Simms to have evidence that she'd slept in the room. With the bed's appearance for the morning departure set, Marta opened the front door and watched ungraceful moths fluttering near a fluorescent tube above.

In no rush to arrive home, she charted tomorrow's drive as leisurely, even whimsical. She'd pull over whenever a roadside attraction proved alluring: the lake with the unearthly mineral crust, the Depression-era covered bridge painted an eye-searing orange, the riverside picnicking area opposite a gigantic rock from which risk-takers dove in summer months.

The nervous anticipation she'd carried in her midriff while driving into the Interior would have long since dispersed. Embarking on the inevitable katabasis, she'd signal right just past the Husky and see the fledgling orchards, once home to the Silver Sage Drive-In; perhaps she'd stop at the first look-out at the crest of the inaugural climb. Not expecting to return soon, she'd want to have the valley's geography gel, to reset images held so long by imperfect memory that the edges had become blurred, the details scant or absent. Surveying the vista she'd breathe in an incense current of dust and withering vegetation; she might step over the guardrail and crouch to snap off sprigs from nearby sagebrush that would later perfume the car.

Leaning against the warm red surface of
#10
's door, Marta envisioned the gradual change in landscape—from low-density single story outposts, valley-wide orchard swathes, and steep needle-thatched hills of pine to voracious, pulsating, multitudinous city: expanding grids of glass towers and invasive growth of rooftops from numberless residences, freeways of single-occupant vehicles barreling toward clogged overpasses and arterial roadways, pooling autumnal, then wintery rains preceded by urgent multimedia alerts—beware, beware—about incoming low-pressure systems and diluvian rainfall, competing herded black umbrellas with metal ribs delivering sharp pokes and bracing trickles of water, and crammed superheated buses of Bangkokian humidity to and from classrooms filled with slouched, keen, and indifferent students—their cell phones never out of reach—who would sit mutely, check Facebook statuses, or ask questions that could intrigue, challenge, exasperate, or infuriate.

The inordinate volume, strength, and velocity of the visual torrent was dizzying, overwhelming. In centuries past it might be called a sign from God, but despite the attractiveness of the idea Marta had no real faith in visions—if pressed for an explanation, she'd propose that Jean d'Arc had suffered from schizophrenia—and decided she preferred
montage
instead.

She paused, pensive, moths still on erratic orbits above.

Watching
Koyaanisqatsi
decades ago she'd been enraptured, convinced that the bombastic score and manic procession of slow-motion and time-lapse imagery declared something profound, ideas that could be keenly sensed but never adequately translated into mere words. Ineffable.

As another RV came into Marta's field of vision, she marveled at the strange workings of the mind. How simple. Apparently she'd developed a smidgen of anxiousness about returning home. Eager to bring that to attention, one brain compartment had colluded with another, seizing on a vintage memory and casting it with relevant local details.
Repurposing
, she thought,
that's the word
.

III

GASTOWN TO CHANAKYAPURI

With these facts bearing upon the behavior during the establishment of orientation before us, we may now well ask the question:
how does the rat attain orientation?

—Harvey Carr and John B. Watson,

Orientation in the White Rat
(
1907
)

POST-PRODUCTION

1.

E
arth, the first projected image, floated colloidally in the infinite substance of space. Its frozen poles nudged the frame of the screen.

“Credits and other shit will be added later,” Chaz whispered to Marta. “This workprint isn't the rough cut technically, but it's not much past that stage.”

Jagged scars and scorch marks blemished the planet's life-breeding hues. The camera zoomed in, passing through dingy clouds and ominous drifts of smoke before quickly cataloguing tourism brochure vistas from India, France, China, Russia, and the United States. A generic image procession—burned and crumpled architectural icons, miserable lines of refugees trudging blindly toward the mirage of safety, CGI blast craters, exploded military vehicles—hinted at battles fought and lost. Vignettes of hopelessness, the gloomy scenes announced a foolish wager in favour of humanity's continued existence.

Marta chewed inside her lower lip. These dystopian vistas came from a lazy hand—not homage, not derivative, but virtual plagiarism, a compendium of notions shoplifted from a warehouse of historical film reels.

The title, in
Star Wars
yellow, replaced the camera's dolorous globetrotting:
Alien Advance
. A second later, the final half materialized:
Desert Assault
.

A scrolling legend replaced the fading title—

CAMBRIDGE, ENGLAND 2091 AD

THE GLOBAL WAR BETWEEN HUMANITY AND THE KREPLON IMPERIUM HAS BEEN RAGING FOR DECADES, THE COST DEVASTATING. RIVERS AND SEAS POISONED, ENTIRE CITIES DEMOLISHED, AND HUMAN POPULATIONS DECIMATED, CIVILIZATION NOW STANDS ON THE BRINK OF A NEW DARK AGE.

DESPITE HEROIC EFFORTS, THE BEST MILITARY AND SCIENTIFIC MINDS HAVE PROVEN NO MATCH FOR THE TECHNOLOGICAL SUPERIORITY OF THE KREPLON FORCE. FOR THE REMAINING HUMANS A SINGLE HOPE REMAINS: TO LOCATE AND DESTROY THE KREPLON PRIME NEST, THE PLACE WHERE THE KREPLON QUEEN ONCE DEPOSITED HER EGGS.

HAVING RISKED THEIR LIVES TO STUDY KREPLON REPRODUCTION SCIENTISTS BELIEVE THAT THE ENTIRE ALIEN ARMY WAS LAID BY A SINGLE QUEEN, WHO HAD ARRIVED SOMEWHERE ON EARTH CENTURIES BEFORE.

IF THE PRIME NEST CAN BE ELIMINATED, THE KREPLONS WILL HAVE NO MEANS TO REPLENISH THEIR NUMBERS, AND THE TIDE OF WAR WILL AT LAST TURN TO SAVE HUMANITY.

“What is this,” Marta whispered. “
‘Kreplon Imperium?'”

“They've made some changes.”

“Oh, really, I hadn't noticed.”

“I'll explain later.”

The next scene depicted a litter-strewn pebbled walkway. As wind blew, the camera panned to a sign in front of a formerly august building, now smoke-streaked and fortified by razor wire, spiked metal barricades, and boarded-over windows: Cambridge University Main Library.

Marta recognized the facade. Belonging to a venerable library on campus and a two-minute walk from her office, the strangely hyperreal building had proven a versatile godsend to generations of production companies with specific exterior shot requirements, not to mention the university division responsible for come-study-here promotional materials. During Marta's tenure, the library had played a posh Ivy League faculty club, the backdrop for athletic cheerleading practices at a state university in Memphis, laboratories specializing in misguided research (of the usual kinds: genetics, cybernetics, robotics, exobiology, virtual reality), and head offices of nefarious high-tech American corporations operating above the law. Marta felt confident that it had also served in dozens of feature films and television broadcasts she'd missed.

Marta puzzled over the dire scrolling legend. With the exception of battle strategy and weaponry design classes, choosing a major and fulfilling degree requirements while hostile extraterrestrials marauded—never mind running an entire university with the human race shuffling toward extinction—seemed counterintuitive. Where would the operating budget come from? What would anybody study and why? Surely seminar discussions of Jane Austen's juvenilia and Plato's cave allegory at a time of mass extinction would be decadently pointless activities, not to mention suicidal.

Inside the library, a young woman seated at a long wooden table read in an otherwise empty room, low stacks of leather-bound books the objects of her scrutiny. Marta noticed that even though the woman wore an improbable white lab coat, she handled the antique volumes with bare hands, turning the pages without care as though slouched in a salon and impatiently flipping through a ratty copy of
People
as the technician dabbed at unsightly roots with viscous dye. For the graduate student—a beautiful, flat-ironed blonde—production had hired a strikingly athletic actress recently spotted on campus and watched by a steadily dwindling audience on a short-lived TV series targeting the teen demographic. There, as Cyd—a sexy but curly blonde—she'd played a reluctant Tennessee cheerleader from the wrong side of the tracks.

Running an index finger along a page, the student reacted with mounting excitement and jotted down notes. She slammed one volume shut, and grabbed it, a pair of stuffed accordian folders, and a spiral notebook, and began a purposeful arc toward the study hall's exit.

A nondescript librarian wearing a cardigan the exact shade of porridge raised a hand, glaring over low-slung reading glasses to explain that rare books must never leave the building. “Rules are rules, young lady.”
Suspension of disbelief required
, Marta thought. Perhaps a century of warfare had retarded the digitization of books and snuffed out the cycling of fashion.
The man's professional dedication at an hour of global extinction, however, baffled her.

“It's a matter of life and death, for all of humanity.” The student's whisper grew hoarse. “Please,” she said, leaning toward the clerk while removing her glasses, the unencumbered eye contact promissory. “Just this once, alright?” Marta smiled as the nameless functionary's posture stiffened. What bureaucrat could resist a meal of life-and-death urgency served on a platter of raw carnality?

With an editing cut, the student ran down a lengthy dark-paneled hallway, high heeled boots echoing. She approached and knocked on a heavy door decorated with a carved wooden frieze. The opening door revealed a professor's office furnished with shelves bowed by innumerable volumes. A lean elderly man with sunken cheeks sat behind a colossal oak desk.

All that's missing is the Droeshout portrait of Shakespeare
, Marta thought,
our holiest relic
. Her eyes settled on the scholar's herringbone jacket and club tie, the delicate floral pattern tea cup and saucer amongst the clutter of books, and the terminal antiquarian air of the office.

“Professor Highsmith, I need you to contact the military command centre,” the student said.

“Sit, my dear child,” the man said with a magisterial English accent that evoked afternoon Darjeeling, crustless cucumber sandwiches, and triumphant canal rowers. “Please take a deep breath and then explain yourself. This is certainly no time for hysterics. May I pour you tea?” He polished his glasses, as though wearied by student self-importance and impatient to return to studying
Samson Agonistes
, a daft tweedy Nero fiddling as Rome burns.

“It's all here, plain as day.”

“Yes?”

“It's one of the journals of Lady Harriet Swinburne.” The Californian vowels of the accent were pronounced, Marta noticed, evidently a foreshadowing: New World ingenuity would soon make a hash of the professor's British backwards-glancing unworldliness, the impotent fuddy-duddy snobbery.
Hitler woulda kicked your asses if we hadn't stepped in
the implication of her every word.

“Just listen to this, okay?”

“Of course. Please do go on.”

The student began to read:

“‘May
22
,
1825
. Within the last fortnight, a dark and dreadful cloud has settled over the land. There are whispers of livestock torn asunder. Lizzie, unrepentant gossiping maid that she has become, reports that two entire families in a nearby settlement have vanished overnight. From dawn 'til dusk mothers arrive with infants, both suffering from a malady I do not recognize and for which I can offer no curative. . . .'

“‘May
24
,
1825
.
The troubles grow worse. . . .'” At the professor's throat clearing, she stopped.

“It is base conjecture, no more. The evidence is circumstantial at best. Someone with my reputation would become a laughingstock if presenting this fantasy of yours as fact.”

“There's more.”

“Of that I am certain, my dear. Your imagination rivals that of Louis Carroll and C.S. Lewis combined.” The professor's eyes twinkled.

“Perhaps you're right, Professor. I've been working so hard on my thesis, it must be getting to me.”

“Don't give the matter a second thought, young lady. Indeed, I've already forgotten the whole unseemly episode.
Good day.”

That's got to be a set
, Marta thought,
no one has an office that palatial
.

Standing at the steps in front of the library, the student said, “Asshole,” and withdrew a clamshell phone from a purse fold. “Military Command, please. It's urgent.”
The creation of future telecom technology was another item not included in
Desert Assault
's budget, Marta surmised.

“That'll get dubbed with ‘ass' or something when the network broadcasts it,” Chaz whispered. “Psy/Fi's family entertainment and doesn't use bleeps.”

“She wasn't carrying a purse when she left the library,” Marta whispered in reply.

“Yeah, continuity's a bitch. But no biggie, it's not like any guy will notice that kind of thing.”

2
.

Y
ellow words appeared, explaining the change of scene to stock footage of a submarine descending into dark choppy water:
NATO MILITARY COMMAND VESSEL ANACONDA, NORTH ATLANTIC OCEAN. 1130 HOURS.

A second later
Desert Assault
dissolved to an oval table—cluttered with papers, maps, and coffee mugs—bolted to the metal floor of a cramped room. Not a touch screen could be seen. Marta guessed that the rust-specked walls and World War Two equipment of the vintage submarine's cabin had been chosen as reminders about the losing side of the war.

At the head of the table, Cambridge's intrepid graduate student, dressed in a snug black nylon paratrooper's jumpsuit, paced as she lectured; she'd gathered the abundant locks into a no-nonsense ponytail.

“No, gentlemen, the evidence is not, as General McBride says, ‘a pipe dream.'” The aggrieved student swept off her glasses. “An exceptional gift has fallen onto our laps. In fact, it's the only real opportunity we've been given in nearly a century of warfare to exterminate the Kreplon force.” The camera zoomed back. Arms crossed, she stood in front of a whiteboard filled with the symbols and numbers of an ersatz mathematical ­equation.

Four men in military uniforms sat opposite, their collective mien adversarial. They began talking at once; the General, gesturing angrily, muttered “wild goose chase” and “preposterous.”

“Gentlemen, please. Let me walk you through this one more time from the start. It's a matter of life and death.”
The student slammed a book on the table.

“Simmer down, missy,” the General said. “Don't get your panties in a bunch.” The other men laughed.

“I'll outline it simply. ‘May
22
,
1825
. A scouting expedition is planned for before the sun sets. Perhaps then we shall uncover the origin of the maladies.'

“Next. ‘May
23
,
1825.
Words fail me. Following many minutes of vexatious conversation, the Doctor and I have come to share a momentous conclusion. A great machine, a leviathan of its kind and blacker than the pits of Hell, has plummeted from the stars. Cold to the touch and as impenetrable as Mongol fortresses, we cannot fathom its utility. It has caused grave misgivings. . . .'
Okay, you can see where this is heading.”

“Yeah, yeah, we get it,” a younger man seated next to General McBride said. “Some old broad thinks she found something in the desert back in the day.”

“The next entry, a few days later—”

“Right,” the young man continued, “so some whack job blue blood that probably breathed in too much lead paint in her nursery loses it after years of solitary confinement in the desert eating goat stew. And you expect us to deploy troops?”

“Our resources are already stretched to the limit, young woman.” With a sweeping motion the General surveyed a map. “We can't go off on a wild goose chase without better evidence.”

“And how are your other strategies working out, gentlemen? So, let's take this from the top. . . .”