1 #7
Our calculus was that if we could teleport ourselves, and we had it on video, we’d be disciplined but probably only lightly, in a symbolic way, because we’d have made history.
And helped the State. We’d discussed it in secret, in person, mostly while walking outdoors on city streets, where the sound quality on Service recording devices is lowest. We knew that our being seen together in public would raise no suspicions.
We’d all worked together for years by then.
You were subverting the State, in order to serve the State.
I know what that sounds like, but yes, we actually were. Our calculus was that we could either wait through a decade of bureaucracy, or we could bring our innovation to the State now.
We’ll return to that later. So you worked together for years, you developed the technology, and then you set a date for the experiment.
Yes. We told Nico’s parents it was a date night, and asked them to take the kids for an overnight.
We figured the experiment would be a success and then we’d want to stay out late celebrating.
So we said good night to Samir and Marlowe, and then that evening, we went to the lab.
I kissed my wife and we hugged Saraya, and the three of us stepped up onto the platforms.
Describe your state of mind?
Jubilant. We were making history. I remember just thinking, I’ve worked so hard to get here.
Is that what you were thinking about, in those last minutes? How hard you’d worked to get there?
I was thinking about fame, Ibari, if we’re being honest here.
No, not exactly fame. I was thinking about immortality.
I remember thinking that starting tomorrow, my life was going to be different.
I was going to be really, really famous.
But then I looked at Nico’s face during the last few seconds, and saw something I didn’t understand.
She looked . . . she looked faraway. Like I couldn’t even guess her thoughts.
You were married once, Ibari, weren’t you?
No. I lived with someone briefly. You met her once.
How briefly?
Two years.
Do you regret it?
Not at all. I’m not sorry I met her, and not sorry it’s over. But what is it about partnership, or about Nico, that you’re thinking about here?
I’m thinking about the way the person you’re closest to can feel like a stranger.
In a marriage, or I guess any long relationship, you know the other person so well that you develop a kind of .
. . I don’t want to say you don’t see them anymore.
Of course you do. Or if you don’t, you know you’re supposed to.
But there are rare instances when you look at them and you see something so totally unfamiliar in that face that it’s like looking at a stranger, and if we can be honest here, there’s fear in that.
In realizing that you live with a stranger.
In feeling like you might not know her at all. I looked at Nico, and I almost didn’t recognize her for a second. It was the strangest thing. I realized I didn’t know what she was thinking, or what she wanted. She was absolutely foreign to me.
Okay. So you’re there, you’re ready to commence the experiment. Did you have any fears?
Of course. I was afraid the experiment might fail. But I was thinking in terms of, well, of humiliation. I was afraid the experiment would fail and I’d be personally humiliated, and I thought that was the worst-case scenario. I never would have imagined what happened.
Do you understand what happened?
I was humiliated. I was humiliated and now my wife’s gone.
No, that’s not what I . . . I wasn’t asking about your feelings. I mean technically. The science. Do you understand what went wrong in the experiment?
No. Not at all. It’s inexplicable to me.
What else did you fear?
I don’t know if I should admit this to you.
Why not?
Because you’re Service.
Tell me.
I was afraid of becoming a ghost.
You mean a person who’s lost the rights normally accorded to a State citizen.
Yeah, like I said.
That’s a normal thing to fear.
This is . . . I’m sorry. This feels surreal. I can’t believe I’m being interrogated by my wife’s friend.
You’re being interrogated by a Service agent.
Right. Sorry. Of course.
Let’s return to the experiment. It’s the day of the experiment. You’re ready to begin. You have fears, but you’ve decided to proceed regardless. Then what?
Well, we were ready. The three of us—me, Saraya, and Nico—we were standing on the A platforms, ready to go.
We were going to disappear from those platforms, and reappear instantaneously on the B platforms on the other side of the room.
To make this extraordinary, historical thing happen, my colleague Len, who wasn’t teleporting, he just had to hit a sequence of switches on a control board.
But on the other hand, we were doing something momentous, and, well, we wanted some kind of ceremony, I guess.
So when we were ready, we stood there for a few seconds, just looking at each other, like we were unsure of how to begin.
Then Len said, “How should we do this, friends? Count down from ten, or just surprise you?”
So I said, “Surprise me,” at the same time as Saraya said, “Count us down. We’re making history.” Then Nico said, “Wait, should we do this in groups? In case something goes wrong?”
I asked, “Why would anything go wrong?” and Nico said, “The extra mouse.”
What did she mean by that?
We did countless animal experiments. They were impeccable. One time, and one time only, we sent three mice across the room and four arrived on the other side. But I actually don’t think that’s what happened. I actually think we were just careless and miscounted.
You think that, or you want to think that?
Both? Can both things be true? The point is, Nico and I disagreed.
She was adamant that she’d only put three mice on the platforms. None of the rest of us could be absolutely certain.
It felt notable that that was an experiment we performed at the end of a very, very long day.
It would’ve been very easy to miscount, that’s all I’m saying.
That night when we’d run the experiment, when Nico thought there was an extra mouse, well, none of us were at our sharpest.
Go on.
We were all awkward for a moment, because Nico had gone on and on about the mouse, and none of the rest of us really wanted to argue with her again.
We all thought she’d just miscounted, because we’d run the experiment a hundred times before and a hundred times after, so that was the most logical explanation.
But finally Len said, “Well, why not? We can do this twice.”
Then what?
I stepped down off the platform. I didn’t even think twice. I didn’t want to go first. Nico glanced at me, and I felt . . . it was like she was done with me, in that moment, just like that. She could see I was a coward.
Do you need to take a moment to compose yourself?
No, I want to get this over with. I hate talking about this.
I stepped off the platform, Len did the sequence, and they were gone.
That’s it. Like they’d never been there.
We stared at the B platforms, for like an impossibly long time, well past the point where they would’ve reappeared, and then I looked back at Len and he was crying.
I told him to check the settings. I felt unhinged.
My voice was an octave higher than it should’ve been.
We checked the settings together, and they were perfect.
Everything was exactly the way it was supposed to be, but Nico and Saraya were just gone.
Finally Len said, “Let’s try an object.”
I grabbed a painting off the wall. I don’t know why, it was just in my line of vision.
What was the painting?
Does it matter?
Candidly, we don’t know what matters and what doesn’t at this point. Please continue.
Okay, it wasn’t just any painting. It was this painting called Swan Dive.
It had belonged to my uncle, and he’d given it to me when I graduated college.
It had been painted by a friend of his, or so the story went, and my uncle had taken it from a studio after the friend died of a heroin overdose.
Dark story, but it’s a beautiful painting.
Nico loved it, so I gave it to her as an anniversary gift, and she hung it in the lab.
Anyway, I put it on the A platform. We ran the sequence again, and the painting appeared on platform B, absolutely fucking instantaneously, like some kind of sick joke.
It worked perfectly. Len said, “Let’s try something living. ”
We didn’t have any mice on hand. So I went outside, and I remember everything was wrong.
Like nothing had changed in the world, but the neighbourhood felt sinister to me all of a sudden.
All I could think about was my missing wife.
I’d seen lizards out on the steps earlier, and a couple of them were still there.
I captured two of them, and brought them back to the room, squirming around in my hands.
I put them in an empty yogurt container, placed the container on an A platform.
Len and I couldn’t look at each other. It felt .
. . it feels like a nightmare. I kept thinking that maybe the two missing women would just reappear on the B platforms, like there’d just been some kind of inexplicable delay, and I kept staring and staring at the empty air.
We tried with the lizards, and it worked perfectly.
Then Len said, “We could still salvage the experiment.”
What did he mean by that?
He meant that I could still go. He was never going to go. He’d been very clear about that, that was actually the condition of his involvement in the project. A long time had passed by now. Well over an hour.
I had this illogical feeling like if I waited any longer, the trail would grow cold and it would be harder to reach my wife. Like I was tracking her through a dark forest. I was desperate to see her again. I wanted to go after her. I wasn’t thinking rationally.