The Traveler's Companion (15 page)

“I’m sorry to hear that.”

“The one time wasn’t even that good. It was awkward and weird.”

“Maybe you were with the wrong woman.”

“We didn’t go out again after that. Truth is, after my wife died, I had a hard time imagining myself with anyone else. Felt like cheating.”

“Ah, now I understand. God is lonely.”

The drunkenness had dissolved his defenses and he couldn’t mask the effect her words had on him. He suddenly felt the supermassive black hole of loneliness eating away at him, made larger over the years by denying it, by trying to fill it with work.

“You’re a good listener, Cassie. I should have manifested you a long time ago.”

“Manifested me? What does that mean?”

“Met you. I meant ‘met you’ a long time ago,” Iverson said, trying to backpedal.

“If you manifested me, you certainly would be god-like.”

Iverson pushed away the plate of food and reached into his pocket for a cigarette.

“They won’t let you smoke in here,” she said.

“A supreme being can’t even smoke in his own universe? Outrageous.” Iverson stood from the stool. “I’ll be right back.”

“I’ll keep an eye on the wine,” she said.

“I bet you will,” Iverson joked.

He stepped out onto the patio and chose a black metal table as far from other people as possible. It was warm and nice out and people were walking under a prism of electric light. For a moment he was enjoying himself. It got better when Cassie showed up with both glasses of wine, refreshed.

“Thought I’d join you,” she said. “It’s a beautiful night.”

They clinked glasses again and drank.

As Iverson drank his wine, he was captivated by the low cut of her dress. Her skin was spotted with freckles, and a gold necklace with a heart shaped pendant hovered above her cleavage. Her fair colored hair was highlighted by the electric light.

She was cupping the glass by the bowl, sipping daintily, and smiling at him over the rim. Iverson knew enough about inveiglement to know that he was being played. He was nothing more than a target to her. He almost wished that this wasn’t the case; it would have made this night something special.

Iverson flicked the cigarette into the gutter and took out another.

“Mind if I have one more?”

“Don’t mind at all,” she said. “I could stay out here forever.”

“Forever’s not very long around here.”

“That’s an odd thing to say,” she said. “You really are drunk.”

“Yes, I’ve had a little too much to drink,” Iverson said, laughing.

The alcohol suddenly hit him all at once and the woman sitting across from him turned into a red blur surrounded by swirls of dancing electric light.

“We could go to my place. I just live up the street. I have just the thing to sober you up,” she said.

“Check please.”

Iverson paid the bill and left a generous tip. Cassie had to help him out of the restaurant and across the street. As drunk as he was, he would have walked straight into traffic. She couldn’t do much for him when they got to the steep hill on the way to her apartment. “You weren’t kidding when you said you live
up
the street!” At one point Iverson became so out of breath that he had to sit down on the sidewalk. For several minutes he talked about cloning vectors until he felt fit enough to continue. It was the second time in twenty-five years he had a chance at getting laid, and he was talking about work.

When they finally arrived at her building, Iverson marveled at the architecture. It was a three story Queen Anne building with a rounded tower and pointed roof.

On their way up the stairs, she told him that she had the entire third floor. It was well-appointed and sophisticated inside, and Iverson had the feeling he had just stepped into her web. Large pillows were arranged on a mink throw rug near the fireplace. She lit some candles and turned on soft music.

She invited him to have a seat on the leather couch, but instead he staggered over to the bookshelves to peruse the titles. There were several books on Buddhist philosophy. He took one from the shelf and opened it to a random page. It took him a moment to focus on the page, but the passage read:

“There is only one path; one true way. It is the path of compassion.”

Iverson shut the book.

“Are you interested in Buddhist philosophy, Cassie?”

“I’m not sure,” she said.

“You’re not sure?”

“To be honest, Ryan, I have no idea who I am or where I come from. I brought you back here because I hoped you could tell me.” She sat down on the couch. “There’s something going on in this city. Something strange. I’m afraid.”

“What are you afraid of?”

“Earlier today I found myself in this apartment. I knew what I was, a call girl, as you so quickly deduced, but I didn’t know how I had gotten here. I knew I was supposed to go out and find someone to bring home, but I didn’t know why. I knew that I should have parents, but I couldn’t remember who they were. I couldn’t remember where I was born, where I grew up, where I was yesterday. The idea of yesterday is only a concept to me. I can’t remember it, but I know that I should. Do you know what I mean? Can you explain any of this?”

Iverson hid his face from her, her words reproaching him. Was he responsible for this woman’s existential plight? Wasn’t it he who had begun this bizarre experiment? Somehow he had given these people the intellectual understanding of what life was supposed to be, but hadn’t given them a natural role in it. With no personal history, they had no identity. It seemed cruel beyond imagining. Mr. Go’s intention to use the Zone as a vacation destination was going to have tragic results.

Unable to think of anything else to say to her, he forced a smile and said, “Everything’s going to be fine.”

She smiled back at him with childlike relief. “For some reason I believe you.”

The walk hadn’t helped him sober up. He wanted to splash some water on his face, so he asked her the direction of the bathroom.

“It’s down the hall and to the left. I’m going to change into something more comfortable,” she said.

“Okay.”

As he looked at his tired and pale image in the mirror, he wondered how he should proceed. He was in no shape to be romantic, but she was vulnerable and he didn’t want to hurt her by rejecting her. He was also her creator. The whole thing felt wrong. For the first time in his life he wished he was type who could discard morality to entertain a fantasy.

As he dried his face with a towel, he decided the right thing to do was to tell her that their night together had come to an end.

A scream came from the other room. He ran out into the living room, but she wasn’t there. He spotted her through the crack in the bedroom door. He quickly went to her, throwing the door open. She was standing before a full length mirror, nude from the waist up. A red and gold kimono was laid out on the bed behind her. She turned to face him. Her left arm was gone. It had vanished from her body as if erased.

“Help me,” she said.

She dissolved before he could save her.

His heart was pounding. It almost felt as if someone had died in front of him. The expression on her face was burned into his mind. It was not only a look of terror, but of astonishment. She had no idea what was happening to her.

He felt at any minute he could get sick. As his mouth started to water and his stomach began to turn, he teleported himself home.

As soon as he was back in his living room, he darted for the bathroom.

Vomiting into the toilet, his stomach muscles taut, his eyes watering, he found it a cruel irony that eating in the Zone was totally unnecessary and after a few hours any food would have vanished from his system completely. Exhausted, he fell to the floor. He clung to the toilet bowl like a shipwreck survivor to a life preserver.

This was the strangest night he had ever experienced. When it came to romance, he was the most unlucky person he knew. As he felt the ring in his pocket poking at his thigh, he thought of his wife. If only she were still alive, none of this would have happened. He reached into his pocket and took out the ring.

How had it lasted so long? he wondered, holding it with thumb and forefinger, trying to focus his drunken senses.

He clumsily put it on his finger. He felt a rush of nostalgia and sadness, and then he passed out on the linoleum floor.

CHAPTER 10

He awoke in bed to the smell of bacon wafting in from the kitchen. His clothes were neatly folded on top of the dresser. His shoes were lined up on the floor. He brought his hand up to rub his eyes and saw that the gold band was still around his ring finger.

After a few curse words, he got out of bed and got dressed. He expected to find Angela and Gibbons waiting for him in the other room, but it was Beth. She was sitting on the couch, her legs curled up under her, her face buried in a book. Her blonde hair was up in a bun, a chopstick stabbed through it. She was exactly as he had remembered her at thirty years old, a year before she had died.

When she heard him enter the room, she looked up from the book and smiled. “Breakfast is ready.”

He flashed on last night, clinging to the toilet, crying out for her helplessly. She had appeared . . . had she tucked him into bed like a child?

“You’re not real,” he said, more for his benefit than hers.

After a moment she said, “You explained that to me last night.”

“Sorry.”

“You said that last night, as well,” she said, smiling mechanically.

“I don’t remember last night.”

Suddenly overwhelmed, he retreated to the kitchen. He paced the room. “Fuck. Fuck. Fuck. What have I done?” He pounded on the kitchen counter. “Stupid!”

A plate of food was on the kitchen island, obviously made for him. Two poached eggs, two slices of bacon, and a piece of toast lightly buttered and cut into two triangles. It was exactly what he would have ordered in a restaurant. He was not even remotely hungry.

He was in shock. His dead wife was in the next room reading poetry. He had to resist her. For the sake of the mission, he had to remember this wasn’t Beth. The mind would sever any emotional connection if it knew she wasn’t real. As long as he kept her at a distance, intellect could trump emotions. He almost wanted to write it on his hand as a reminder: Beth not real.

Once back in the dining room, he stood staring at her stupidly. What was he supposed to say? “Hello. You’ve been dead for twenty-five years, but I got drunk and reincarnated you with my mind.”

She began to read: “ ‘Who knows if the moon’s a balloon, coming out of a keen city in the sky, filled with pretty people? And if you and I should get into it, if they should take me and take you into their balloon, why then we’d go up higher with all the pretty people than houses and steeples and clouds, go sailing away and away sailing into a keen city which nobody’s ever visited, where always it’s spring and everyone’s in love and flowers pick themselves.’ ”

Wasn’t it exactly like Beth to read him poetry? Back from the dead less than a day and already wanting romance. When she had been alive, he would come home from work to find candles lit in every room, soft music playing, and the sound of a cork popping drawing him into the bedroom. She loved romance. It used to baffle him that she had married a scientist. Sooner or later she would leave him for Fabio, he had joked. But she wanted him and he knew that. He used to enjoy that she brought out the romantic part of his personality, but now, twenty-five years after her death, it was torturing him.

“Who wrote that?” Iverson asked, still standing.

“E.E. Cummings,” she said. “Do you know what it means?”

“It’s a metaphor, isn’t it?”

“You think? For what?”

He shrugged. “I don’t know . . . love?”

This is a huge mistake, he thought. I shouldn’t drink.

She took off the glasses and set them on the arm of the couch. “You look terrible. Would you like some coffee?”

She would dissolve soon enough, he thought . . . hoped. A few hours. A day at the most. The wedding ring had lasted two days now, but there was no way she would last that long. It was only a matter of time. Why should he feel guilty for these thoughts? It wasn’t really her!

“Ryan?” Beth asked.

“Yes?”

“Coffee?”

“Oh . . . sure.”

After a few minutes in the kitchen, she brought him a cup of coffee. When he took it from her, his hand shook so badly that it made the cup rattle on the saucer.

“Not hungry?” she asked.

“There’s no need to eat in the Zone,” he said.

“Just because there’s no need, doesn’t mean you wouldn’t enjoy it.”

She sat back down, gracefully curling her legs up on the couch.

“I’m sorry,” he said.

She peered over the rim of her glasses to look at him. “For what?”

“For everything. For bringing you here.”

“I’ve been thinking about that. You told me that I was just a manifestation, a mental image. But I can think and feel. Doesn’t that make me human?”

“I don’t know. That’s a good question. I forgot you were so smart. Smarter than me, probably. I’m just a human calculator. You’re the one who understood all . . . this.”

“All what?”

“Life. People. Relationships. I can’t make heads or tails of any of it.”

“All I know is that life is precious and shouldn’t be squandered.”

“You’re right. I’m sorry.”

“Stop apologizing, Ryan. Have a seat.”

Iverson went over to the club chair near the couch, put the coffee on the table, and sat down. When he crossed his legs he saw that one leg was bouncing nervously. He put both feet on the floor.

He pulled his scientific persona out of the emotional sludge and asked, “Do you know who you are?”

“I’m your wife.”

“Not exactly.”

“I’m Beth Iverson.”

“I’m not so sure about that either.”

“That’s my name.”

“How do you know that?” he asked.

“You told me last night.”

“You didn’t know it before I told you?”

She shrugged.

“Do you know who I am? Do you have memories of us?” he asked.

“I remember last night. You were on the floor in the bathroom. You were crying—”

“I mean memories of your past? Do you remember your parents, Jonathan and Mary? Do you remember growing up in upstate New York, attending Harvard, being a teacher?”

“No, Ryan. I don’t remember any of that. All I know is that I’m your wife and we are in love.”

“Your only memory is of last night?”

“That’s right. Why don’t you come and sit next to me?” she asked, patting the couch cushion beside her.

“I think you should understand what’s happening.”

“Okay, Ryan. Tell me what’s going on,” she said sourly.

He didn’t like it when she called him Ryan, but what other option was there? Dr. Iverson?

“This is not where people come from,” he said.

“Are you going to tell me where babies come from?” she asked giddily. “Why don’t you show me instead?”

“Where I’m from people are born infants and take many years to mat—”

“Are you trying to tell me we aren’t from the same place? Because you already told me all this last night: you’re my creator, my life is fleeting, and I’m not really your wife. All of this was covered in last night’s lecture.”

“Unfortunately I don’t remember a lot about last night,” Iverson said.

“You carried on about the nature of reality. You said something about the Zone being a system that converts energy into matter.”

“I did?” Iverson asked, stunned. Was it just drunken postulating, or had he stumbled onto something? The brain was nothing more than a command center that issued its instructions with electrical impulses; maybe the Zone intercepted them and converted them into matter. The mind may become part of the Zone, going beyond the borders of the body. It was a promising theory. But who was this woman before him? She had the real Beth’s wit and romantic sensibilities, but none of her experiences.

“Did I happen to mention how you’re able to act just like my wife, except you don’t have her memories? And how is it you can speak English? You were born yesterday, how did you master spoken language so quickly?” Iverson sighed reproachfully. He had spoken without thinking. His emotions had taken over for a moment. He took a breath and said, “Sorry, I didn’t mean to put it that way.”

“Put what what way?”

“Born yesterday is an insult where I come from, but I didn’t mean it as one.”

She looked hurt and he suddenly wished he had kept his mouth shut.

“Born yesterday, dead tomorrow, what’s the difference? Shouldn’t we enjoy ourselves while we can?” she asked.

“I need to understand who you are. I need to understand this place. A man is going to bring people from my world here and it could be dangerous.”

“I see,” she said. “Do you feel like you’re in danger now?”

“Yes. I do.”

“Are you afraid of me?” she asked.

“Terrified.”

“Little ol’ me?”

“Yes. Especially when you say things like that. I don’t understand how you know how to do that.”

“Do what?”

“Be charming. She was like that.”

“Beth?”

“Yes. She was likeable.”

“Sounds like she was a lovely person.”

“She was,” he said.

“Maybe I’m her, just in another form.”

“What do you mean?”

She shrugged.

“You mean like a clone?”

“Science again? You have a one track mind, you know that?” she said, smiling.

“A clone wouldn’t act like its original. It would look the same, but it wouldn’t have the same personality. Factors that shape a person’s character are only marginally influenced by their physiology. Experience and social standing are more significant, among other things.”

“What if experience and social standing are less important than you think?”

“The data suggests—”

“What if someone created your Beth just to be Beth, not a girl who was the result of a certain childhood or education? What if his intention was to create a woman whose experience might give her a certain understanding of life, but who would always be the same person regardless? He created Beth for the same reason you did? Just to be Beth,” she said.

The idea filled him with emotion, though he didn’t know why. It was so simple, so elegant an idea. In the Zone,
why
was just as important as
how
. Was this how he had created an entire city with buildings and homes that had working amenities, cars that had engines and fuel, and people that had distinct personalities and goals? What did he know about civil engineering, automobile maintenance, or San Franciscans? In the Zone, there was no need to know. To create a home one simply needed to picture it and have an understanding of its utility. Have something to say and a telephone will appear. The need for transportation will hail a cab. The Zone was willing to take care of the messy mechanics of an object if only one grasped the intention behind it. That was why fantasy items wouldn’t manifest; there was no need for them.

Why was more important than how.

But people weren’t created for their utility. They did, however, have influence. Iverson knew Beth from the pull she had on his heart, could measure her by the hole in it after she had died. Like the discovery of dark matter, was personality detectable because of its effects on visible matter?

Or maybe every word he had heard Beth speak or every altruistic act he had observed from her in real life contained within it her entire personality, like DNA in a microscopic skin cell. Maybe that was how he had manifested a woman who acted exactly like Beth, responded the way she would, and thought the way she had.

Like DNA, a personality, at its core, was always the same regardless of outside stimuli. In the Zone, education could be added to the personality like software to a computer. It was the core processor that mattered, not its applications.

The Zone was an intuitive system, activated by ideas and intention. Saying a name, thinking of a city, craving a certain food was like selecting the icon on a computer; it gave the Zone access to all subconscious knowledge.

“I don’t really feel like talking about this anymore,” she said. She stood up, went over to him, and sat in his lap. She put an arm around him and was about to kiss him when there was a knock at the door. It nearly caused him to launch her off him. “Were you expecting company?” she asked, jumping off his lap.

He took her by the arm and quickly escorted her down the hall.

“Good idea. Let’s go hide in the bedroom,” she said, giggling.

Gently but firmly he guided her into the bedroom and shut the door on her.

“Hey!”

He went to the foyer, took a breath to compose himself, and opened the front door. A young man stormed in with Angela in tow.

“We need to talk, Iverson,” the young man said.

The voice was recognizable, but not the person. Iverson followed him into the living room, studying his features. “Mark? For God’s sake, you get younger looking every time I see you.”