6
A notification appeared at the top of Ethan’s thread with the unknown number.
Aaron Forster (Maybe)—Create New Contact?
He ignored the prompt for the moment and opened a search tab.
A query for the Galactica writer’s name in JSTOR and a few other digital libraries returned no academic papers or books attributed to Aaron Forster. Public accounts on social media sites were uninformative. No useful results populated from a more general web scan. Yes, an Aaron Forester had fought in World War II, but the odds of that centenarian and the author of “Pandora Rising”
being the same person were slim. No criminal records were listed for the name, either. In fact, the only result anywhere online for Aaron Forster came from Galactica Magazine’s June contributor credits.
Maybe Forster was just private with his digital life.
Or maybe he also wrote under a pseudonym?
Ethan had chosen “Bannister”
during a required undergraduate humanities course at Berkeley: History of American Art, 1700– 1900. The pastoral livestock scenes weren’t to his taste. He’d preferred the psychological work of later artists like Sigmund Abeles and the sharp, monochromatic photographs of Ansel Adams. But the class had introduced him to Edward Mitchell Bannister, an oil painter of the American Barbizon school who shared his E.M. initials.
Bannister had seemed a convenient choice for an alias, obtuse enough for anonymity and also self-referential…
Create New Contact?
Yes.
Forster’s number began with a 50, he noticed now. It was an area code specific to the San Mateo and Santa Clara counties, divisions along the peninsula that ran south from San Francisco to the urban sprawl of San Jose. Maybe Forster was based in the Bay Area, or had attended college here? However, given how frequently people moved in and out of Silicon Valley, a 50 code was no guarantee that the writer still lived in the region.
Not that it mattered—Aaron Forster was a stranger.
But his message thread was also the only conversation not related to SVLAC or from the Meyer family on Ethan’s phone, and it was past eleven o’clock on a Friday. Even if Redwood City’s pedestrian street of restaurants and movie theaters in the town center was still active, its industrial sector had powered down for the night. His neighbors were quiet, doors closed and water off. Bunsen was snoring across his feet in front of the couch, drooling on his socks and twitching with dreams of frisbees. He had to admit that he’d reached his limit for working on the Eischer-Langhoff application, too. He’d never been a great writer, but he’d articulated his funding requirements coherently and his data was perfect. An exhale and a click sent his twice-revised draft to Dr. Kramer for review.
He closed his computer and picked up his phone again.
A typing notification had appeared on the screen.
Wherever and whoever Aaron Forster was, he was awake and writing to Bannister about his art—and not just to make a print order from his website, either. Not that he’d had many. Several earlier magazines had rejected his work, praising his technical skills while claiming that his visuals made viewers uncomfortable. Only Galactica had been niche or desperate enough to publish “Hunger.”
But this exchange wasn’t a transaction, or a rejection, or a last resort acceptance. Forster had felt so strongly—strongly, and positively—about “Hunger”
that he’d reached out to Ethan directly. Forster, the mastermind behind “Pandora Rising,” who wrote both imaginatively and surprisingly accurately about astrophysics.
He’d read enough science fiction to know when a writer was bullshitting through explanations about time travel or quantum tunneling. Most did. He couldn’t even blame them for web-searching their way to plausible expertise. Physics was beautifully, brutally difficult.
Forster, though?
Forster knew his subject matter well enough to write simply. He understood his science—and Ethan’s art.
Ping.
Forster
Have you read any Ted Chiang? Your art reminds me of how he dissects mind and matter in Exhalation. Also, the symmetry from Story of Your Life.
Chiang’s story collection was bookmarked on his nightstand.
Of course, Forster read science fiction. That he’d name-dropped Ted Chiang wasn’t odd either, since Chiang was a prominent writer in the genre, and had won multiple Nebula, Hugo, and Locus Awards. His novella Arrival had even inspired a major Hollywood film. So the coincidence of Forster mentioning Chiang just when Ethan was reading Exhalation: Stories was easily explained by extant data.
But logic couldn’t quell the excitement simmering in his stomach.
Ethan
Yes. I’m reading his 2019 collection.
Edging his feet out from under Bunsen’s jowls, he retrieved Chiang’s book, thumbing past its minimalist black cover while another typing notification popped onto his screen.
Forster
That collection has my favorite of his stories. Where are you in the lineup?
He checked his bookmark.
Ethan
I just finished What’s Expected of Us.
Forster
The one with the Predictor device?
Ethan
Yes. Where humanity learns that free will is a myth.
Forster
That was bleak. I liked The Truth of Fact, the Truth of Feeling much better.
Pages flicked under his fingers. He skipped past “The Lifecycle of Software Objects”
and “Dacey’s Patent Automatic Nanny,”
and another message from the writer appeared as he repositioned his bookmark to stake out the story. He usually read articles and book series in order, building sequential timelines of logic for a reveal of the authors’ data conclusions or puzzle box answers. There was a neatness to understanding and then executing one complete task before moving ahead to the next.
But tonight?
Forster
Let me know how you like it.
Erin
Let me know how you like it.
Propped against her headboard, pillows squashed behind her back, her bare feet tucked under the blankets—even in June, California’s heat dissipated after sunset when Karl the San Francisco fog drifted down the Peninsula—and with Galactica Magazine spread across her lap, Ted Chiang’s dog-eared short story collection flopped open to “The Truth of Fact, the Truth of Feeling,”
Erin watched for Bannister’s response. But as the seconds passed without a notification from the artist on her screen, the nervous jigging of her legs brought her knees up to her chest.
She hadn’t politely asked Bannister if they’d share their thoughts with her.
She’d demanded it.
She’d demanded that the artist continue a late-night conversation with a stranger—demanded it of a person whose work spoke to her with wondrous ferocity. They were likely someone who had hundreds of other rapt fans eager for their notice, as well, because who could look at their work and not feel that world-tilting compulsion toward awe?
On a Friday, too.
Maybe Bannister was at a gallery show tonight. Somewhere with flashing cameras, chilled champagne, and canapes. An after-hours event for connoisseurs at Soho Mod Art? Adrian had taken her during a visit to Manhattan. He’d talked about solar cooling for the gallery’s skylights with the proprietor while she’d wandered along the walls, staring for too long at a white canvas and trying to determine whether it was patching a hole in the structural plaster, or whether it was supposed to be conceptual art in its own right. She had no eye for modern design…
Whether Bannister was at a gallery show or working in a studio, however, she was probably an interruption to their night. Biting her lip, she reached for her phone to turn it over, hiding the screen from her temptation to watch it for the scroll of a typing ellipsis, and—
Ping.
Bannister
(New Photo Message)
Fortitude went out the window.
She clicked into the image: the first page from “The Truth of Fact, the Truth of Feeling.”
Chiang’s familiar collection splayed open around a bookmark beside a utilitarian digital clock and a glass of water on a nightstand. A taut gray bedspread and a single pillow were just visible in the background.
Digital clock.
No lipstick on the glass.
Gray bedding.
One pillow.
A book of science fiction stories.
The data—fallible, but statistically likely—suggested that Bannister was a man.
Another message chirped onto her screen. Her repeated rush to read it was embarrassingly Pavlovian.
Bannister
I will.
She resisted the urge to respond. The artist—he—would continue their conversation if he wanted to. Which would hopefully be the instant that he’d finished “The Truth of Fact, the Truth of Feeling.”
It shouldn’t be too long, if he started the story now. He clearly wasn’t in a painter’s studio or at a New York gallery show, so maybe he would.
His clock had read 11:25 p.m. He was on Pacific time.
West Coast time.
Not that it mattered.
She toggled back to the Monaghan chat. The thread had continued to fill without her, despite the hour; her childhood dinners and road trips had always been noisy, and distance and adulthood hadn’t dampened the Monaghans’ ability to argue, laugh, and participate in ten conversations at once. Now she scrolled up to track the subject of their current discussion. Her family was reviewing Wes’s extensive Galápagos photo roll: lumbering tortoises, marine iguanas, blue-footed boobies perched on rocks crusted with algae and salt spray, short-eared owls, and Darwin’s famous finches.
She sometimes scared away urban racoons from the garbage cans outside her apartment.
Wes
I got this shot of a penguin colony off Fernandina Island earlier today.
Adrian
How the hell do penguins survive living in the tropics? Aren’t the Galápagos Islands humid?
Wes
I’d be suffering if I didn’t spend most of my time in the water, yeah. But the Humboldt and Cromwell sea currents keep things cooler for them offshore.
Mom
Are you wearing enough sunscreen?
Adrian
Look at his nose in that glamor shot he took of himself with the tortoise. He’s obviously not.
Wes’s typing notification flickered while he equally obviously tried to avert their mother’s tirade on the importance of sun protection.
Erin jumped into the fray.
Erin
Glad to see that someone else is going to get the aloe vera talk. I still have grease behind my ears from that trip we took to see the University of Miami’s marine biology program when Wes was choosing colleges.
Wes
Not helping, Frizzy!
She was, actually; Lori switched the topic back to her writing.
Mom
Have you read your story in the magazine yet, sweetheart?
Erin
Yes! Now I want to publish another one. But first, I need to finalize a concept… and write it.
Dad
What about trains in space?
Mom
Like that Magic School Bus episode where Ms. Frizzle and the class get lost in zero gravity, but with trains?
Dad
It could work.
Wes
Especially since, for the Halloween that Adrian and I were Ian Malcolm and Alan Grant from Jurassic Park, Mom made you a Frizzle costume.
Adrian
You refused to take it off afterward. You wore it to school for—what? Two weeks?
Mom
You looked adorable.
Erin
Better Ms. Frizzle than some pseudo-scientists participating in an ecological disaster! You’d both better hope that those pictures never come to light.
Adrian
Is that a threat?
Erin
I don’t know. Is it?
Dad
But you couldn’t use Ms. Frizzle in the story, kiddo. Copyright issues.
Mom
Anyway, we’re immensely proud of you.
Wes
Will you be insufferable when you win a Nobel Prize?
Erin
Given how you wouldn’t stop squawking about your National Geographic win last year? Absolutely.
She snickered as both of her brothers’ responding ellipses zipped under her message. She smiled at her family’s excitement for her success, too. It was gratifying. Really. But she doubted whether her parents and brothers had been able to read “Pandora Rising”
yet—not when Galactica promoted itself as trendy in the way that polaroids had become: offline and proud of it, with no digital readership available and print copies provided only with a subscription. She’d appreciated that when she’d submitted her interstellar tale, certain that the line between her professional scientific life and her personal creative one would remain intact. Who could possibly link Dr. Erin Monaghan, sole author of “Investigating the Impact of Tidal Disruption Events on the Axis Rotation of Galaxies Proximal to Black Holes,”
with Aaron Forster and “Pandora Rising”?
While she welcomed her family’s praise, the congratulations lacked a knowledgeable basis in fact. In Lori Monaghan’s words, the Monaghans were proud of their daughter and sister. They weren’t necessarily impressed with her writing. After a day spent wrangling first graders, her mother enjoyed cozy murder mysteries. Adrian and Wes—who’d chosen to go into photography rather than biology—had inherited their father’s taste for nonfiction. None of them read enough sci-fi to objectively judge the merits of “Pandora Rising.”
Which was fine, but…
She’d lost track of time with her thoughts when the apartment’s front door thudded open. Midnight. Someone fumbled through the entryway, clumsy in the dark. Two someones: a man’s deep laughter and a woman’s giggling response. Ashley, by the pitch. Busy at SVLAC with the grant application, collecting data, and avoiding Ethan, she’d only seen her roommates in passing all week. Did Ashley have a new partner?
“Shhh—you’ll wake people up!”
“But didn’t Kai go home with that girl from the bar at the British Bankers Club?”
“My other roommate’s probably here. Erin.”
“On a Friday night?”
“Well, all she ever does is work and—shit!”
“What?”
“Stubbed my toe on the couch.”
“Oh. Okay.”
A weighted pause. Then, “Come here. I’ll carry you. Which door?”
A resurgence of Ashley’s giggles seemed to distract the pair from stubbed toes and whatever she’d been saying about her second roommate. Erin pushed in her earbuds. She mostly didn’t mind sharing an apartment with Kai and Ashley. She liked them in the abstract: women in STEM making Silicon Valley life work, defiant and smart. She didn’t know them well, but that was part of what made their crowded household functional. They were friendly, and also a little distant to preserve an illusion of privacy—she’d thought. Except that her roommates commuted together, sometimes they had dinner, and apparently they also went out to bars on Fridays.
My other roommate’s probably here.
A bedstead squealed.
Wincing, she upped the volume on Phoebe Bridgers’ vocals. She snapped pictures of Galactica’s cover and the first page of “Pandora Rising”
with Aaron Forster’s author credit, sending them to Martina beside a line of exclamation points—which Martina answered in kind. Then, closing their thread, she took another photo: “Hunger.”
But this time, the click of her camera was furtive. She left her phone on her bedside table against an urge to watch its screen, checked the security of her earbuds, increased their volume one more time while she swapped out her loungewear for pajamas, and padded to the bathroom in fuzzy socks and a Stanford sweatshirt. With Bridgers’ track resonating through her head, she couldn’t hear the faucet running in the sink as she brushed her teeth, washed her face, dabbed on moisturizer, eye cream, and lip balm—no smears around Bannister’s glass—and braided her hair. Mercifully, she also couldn’t hear anything from behind Ashley’s door.
As a precautionary measure, though, she kept her earbuds in after she’d returned to her room, switching her music to the soothing Norah Jones melody from Left Bank while she tossed her sweatshirt over a chair, kicked off her socks, and returned to her tangle of blankets. A notebook for jotting down midnight brainwaves, a sudoku booklet, and a pile of new novels waited with her phone on the nightstand. She ignored them and snuggled down into her sheets with Exhalation in hand.
Maybe Bannister was reading “The Truth of Fact, the Truth of Feeling”
right now.
Unprompted, Chiang’s book fell open to the chapter. She slipped again into the author’s examination of Remem—a futuristic technology that granted its users eidetic memory—and Chiang’s meditation on whether a perfect recollection of the past was worth its cost. Could humans’ inability to accurately remember their yesterday be a biological kindness? It was a compelling, technically elegant piece, a treatise on forgiveness and narcissism; she only resurfaced to check her SVLAC email and scan STEMinist Online’s trending posts around one o’clock, before turning out her light.
No urgent flags in her inbox demanded attention.
No breaking news in the forums required SnarkyQuark4’s commentary.
But a new message from Bannister was waiting on her phone.
Bannister
The difference that Chiang explores between practical, exact truth and emotional, functional truth in the story is interesting. It reminds me of the Black Mirror anthology series.
He was right.
Erin
The Remem tech feels dystopian, doesn’t it?
Bannister
If you had the chance, would you use it?
Erin
…maybe? Though I don’t know what that says about me, if I can call it dystopian and still want to use it for work.
Bannister
What does it say about me, if I agree with you?
Erin
Do you?
Bannister
Yes.
Bannister
Speaking of dystopian fiction, have you read anything by Martha Wells?
She had.
Erin flopped back onto her pillows, smiling at the ceiling.