Mathématique: Chapter 48

Mid-September in Harvard Square was a terrible time to embark on a career as an aspiring, amnestic, hipster barista.

Chapter warnings: Stressors of all kinds. Grief. Physical injuries. Mental health challenges. Memory loss.

Text iteration: Midnight.

Additional notes: None.

Chapter 48

The afternoon sun was bright, reflecting off windows, passing cars, computer screens, and the polished metal surfaces of refrigerators and espresso machines. Something inane and low-fi played overhead on invisible speakers.

Rush shifted his grip on a cardboard cup as he burned his hand on the figuratively but not (yet) literally bloody milk frother for the fourth time that week.

He shook out his hand and glared at the milk frother.

Mid-September in Harvard Square was a terrible time to embark on a career as an aspiring, amnestic, hipster barista.

Fortunately, since he couldn’t remember his life, he couldn’t be certain that verbal harassment for imperfectly patterned latte art was a personal low. He suspected though, given he’d been the recipient of a Fields Medal and had solved a Millennium Prize Problem, that this was, psychologically speaking, at least a local minimum in the function of his existence.

Then again, as he considered the (extremely acceptable) rosetta he was pouring, he’d improved in the latte art department. The learning curve was steep at Rational Grounds, a coffee shop doubling as a post-modern salon in the intellectual tradition of Denis Diderot, where the American Intelligentsia came to drink coffee and pretend to be socialists.

(They were not actually socialists.)

“One straight cappuccino, one Engels Espresso,” Jennifer called in his direction.

Rush couldn’t describe himself as committed to his incipient career in the coffee industry. However, as Eli had pointed out, winter in Boston was not to be taken lightly, especially by someone who was, in the technical sense of the word, homeless.

He measured an ounce of espresso grounds, deposited them into the portafilter, then tamped them down.

Rush had vacillated for the span of a week before taking material steps toward creating a semi-sustainable existence. On multiple occasions he’d convinced himself to call the Air Force, but when faced with the reality of doing so, he’d never been able to go through with it, as there was a low, but non-zero probability that turning himself over to the United States Military might result in an unfortunate outcome. For him. And, possibly, for Eli.

He finished the Engels Espresso with a few drops of bitters and a twist of orange rind, then started on the cappuccino.

As it seemed a trip to the undergraduate E&M lab space at MIT was in the offing, and as it also seemed that such a trip had the prospect of revealing at least some information about the devices attached to his head, he’d decided he’d continue to try his luck in Cambridge. This meant he needed a job so he could acquire an apartment before the temperatures dropped to the point that he’d freeze to death from exposure.

(Not ideal.)

He measured out another ounce of espresso, loaded it into the machine, and narrowed his eyes at the steam wand.

It’d been Eli who’d suggested Rational Grounds, because of its reputation for paying part-time employees in cash and its literary as opposed to quantitative leanings, making it less likely he’d be recognized. The coffee shop was winningly pretentious, offering “classic” forms of caffeine-laced beverages along with edgier equivalents named for dead authors and philosophers, whose memorable quotes were chalked on the walls for perusal by the bored and bookless.

He frothed the milk, pulled the espresso, let it run for half a minute, then poured foamed milk over the shot.

“Straight iced coffee,” Jennifer called.

He finished the pour and studied it critically. Not bad: symmetrical, well-defined, slightly off center.

“Nice shirt.” He looked up at the familiar voice and saw Eli standing at the counter. The young man pulled down his shades. “Though, probably not the best choice for a guy in a service profession?”

Rush shot him a look over the tops of his glasses, handed the cappuccino he’d crafted to a twenty-something with no interest in latte art, and looked down at his recently acquired T-shirt.

(It was black. The word “no” was printed across the chest in white, sans-serif font.)

“Found it at a thrift store,” he said.

“Strong work. Now you just need skinny jeans, giant headphones, a MacBook Air, a shitty band, and a half finished novel. Only then will your journey toward the Dark Side be complete.” Eli dropped his voice theatrically, no doubt quoting a film Rush had never seen.

“For all that, I’ll need a second job.” He pulled a plastic cup from a stack behind the counter.

“Nah. In this town? We can find you free skinny jeans. For sure. There’s a clothing co-op table on the other side of the square, next to the book exchange table. Maybe—”

“Fascinating.” Rush filled the cup with ice.

“Is that for my coffee?” Eli asked. “I could use less ice.”

Rush shot him a pointed look. “I am working,” he said. “You are interfering. Shouldn’t y’be doing something useful? Tutoring shiftless young people? Reapplying t’university?”

“I got you this job,” Eli grumbled. “Basically. There’s no need to insult my life choices.”

“Kafkaesque Cappuccino.” Jennifer favored him with an irked swish of hair.

“Y’didn’t ‘get me this job’,” Rush countered, lowering his voice. He discarded a modest portion of the ice Eli found so objectionable, opened a fridge, pulled out the (obscenely expensive) drip coffee, and poured it into the plastic cup.

“I was the one who told you to pretend you were an aspiring novelist,” Eli whispered, eyeing Jennifer with equal parts interest and fear. “They love that kind of thing here. Though, if you want to keep up appearances, you should probably stop chalking the walls with Sagan quotes.”

“Carl Sagan wrote a novel,” Rush said pointedly.

“I pay you for coffee, not for sass.”

“The sass comes gratis when you fail to tip.” Rush snapped a lid onto Eli’s coffee.

“Touché, Dave. Too freakin’ shay.”

“Is there a reason you’re here?”

“My mom’s working the midnight to 8 AM shift, which means it’s alien game night.”

“Wonderful,” Rush replied.

“See you then?” Eli said.

“Yes yes,” Rush replied, trying to remember what went into the Kafkaesque Cappuccino. He began adding Kahlua, realized that was a terrible idea from a liability standpoint, aborted mid pour, and course-corrected with a shot of chocolate instead. Anyone who ordered a “Kafkaesque Cappuccino” deserved some unpredictability in his or her beverage, no?

(That, or an insect.)

He sighed, shook his hair out of his eyes, and glanced at the chalked menu on the wall behind him for a refresher. The board read: cinnamon, chocolate, bureaucratic despair.

Yes well. Who was he to say what ‘bureaucratic despair’ tasted like? Probably, it tasted something like half a shot of Kahlua.

He dusted the finished drink with an artful application of cinnamon.

He could call the Air Force at any time.

Any time.

Rush spent his late-night bus ride contemplating the bright duplication of the vehicle’s illuminated interior, reflected in paned glass backed by a dark and changing cityscape.

Examining his own reflection felt like examining a stranger, uncomfortable and anticipatory, as if his doppelgänger might do something unexpected and beyond his control. Despite the fascination and unease that considering his own image held, he found it difficult not to fall asleep, as he was exhausted; difficult not to touch the things attached to his head, as he seemed to be a masochist—scratch that, in his case, schadenfreudist was certainly the more appropriate term; and difficult to resist pulling out his wallet to examine the drawing by “J Shep.”

He’d become insatiably curious about the thing.

At night, he dreamed of a silver city on a calm sea. Of writing on glass with a light pen in a room full of scientists. In his dreams, he was constantly conscious of the devices at his temples. They bothered him. Dragged on his mind. Stood between him and something he desperately wanted.

Just last night, he’d perched in a silver-gilt window, watching sea and sky, doodling on a well-used pad stamped CLASSIFIED across the top. His hands hadn’t been his own. His handwriting had matched the drawing by “J Shep.”

(Troubling.)

He pulled out his wallet and looked again at the paper.

As soon as Rush had realized the stylized drawing was accompanied by Ancient text, he’d translated it the same night in the privacy of the pink and white bathroom of the Wallace household.

A word in the leftmost box said “you.”  An arrow connected that box to the next, in which there was a phonetic spelling of the English word “server.”  The following arrow was labeled with “dialing” and cut through a circle to point at a castle shape box labeled, “City of Awesome.” The final box said “me.”

Beneath the drawing was a prefix that looked like it belonged in an SMTP header, followed by a numeric code. At the very bottom was written, “so call me maybe” in Ancient. Like a caption.

The thing could be a coded message, meant for him to find in his current state, but he doubted it. There was something cavalier and intimate in the blocky lines of the castle city. It looked more like a flirting attempt that he’d kept because it was interesting, or charming, or because J Shep had meant something to him.

Maybe he’d meant to use the information it contained.

That last possibility seemed the most likely.

Contacting J Shep was risky. Orders of magnitude more risky than picking up the phone and calling Colonel Telford. He’d need to do it in such a way that he couldn’t be traced, meaning he’d need to make use of proxy servers and coordinate PGP encryption with J Shep before any information was exchanged. Even that might not be sufficient. For all he knew, J Shep could be another Air Force colonel, with the resources and backing of the military at his disposal.

But—he doubted it. 

It was hard to picture an Air Force colonel as the type who’d draw and annotate a witty representation of SMTP Authentication and use that as a vehicle for flirting.

Rush rolled his eyes at himself and replaced the drawing in his wallet.

He’d been wandering around without a clear picture of who he was for three weeks, without contact or incident. Unless he was part of a social experiment in selective amnesia, which seemed like a disappointingly short-sighted waste of his intellectual resources, he’d been left on his own.

No solution to his predicament had appeared. It was time, therefore, to take action.

J Shep’s note and the things attached to his head seemed likely starting points.

Rush stepped off the bus and into the warm night air. Already, he’d noticed the days turning shorter. He estimated he had maybe a week or so before he’d need to make a serious effort to find a housing solution beyond sleeping on Eli’s mother’s couch whenever she was on shift.

He knocked quietly on Eli’s front door.

Eli opened the thing, wearing a blue T-shirt that said, FICTIONAL CHARACTER, in bold white lettering.

“Nice shirt,” Rush said.

“Can you teach me how to do that?” Eli swung the door wide.

“Do what?”

“Turn a compliment into an insult without employing obvious sarcasm.”

“Yes,” Rush said. “Nothing easier. Pull a double shift in a service profession, then say anything. Anything at all. The effect you’re looking for will manifest without effort.”

“Sixteen hours?” Eli said. “Sounds boring.”

“Lethally,” Rush confirmed. He followed Eli inside, toward the bright kitchen.

“I ordered pizza,” Eli said. “Pineapple and pepperoni.”

“Hmm,” Rush said, going for casual rather than ravenous. “How’s the—” he waved a hand, “—Temporal Shrine these days?”

“Ugh,” Eli groaned, disgusted. “You sound like my mom.”

Rush shrugged. “Away an’ play in traffic.” He pulled a slice of lukewarm pizza from the box on the kitchen table.

“There ya go,” Eli said. “Be who you are, man. Approximately. Well, do your best. Speaking of which, you figure out anything else?” He dropped into a chair.

“I’m surprisingly well-read for a mathematician,” Rush listed, “I’m leveraging above average manual dexterity into an evolving gift for latte art, I know more than I expected about coffee, I don’t speak Spanish.”

“Well,” Eli said philosophically, “no one’s perfect.”

“I need t’send an email,” Rush said.

“To whom?” Eli asked.

Instead of answering, Rush pulled J Shep’s illustration out of his wallet and passed it to Eli.

Eli studied it while Rush set to work consuming the pizza. He hadn’t eaten since the previous night, when Jennifer had given him some day-old muffins at closing.

“I wanna meet this guy,” Eli said. “‘Call me maybe?’ In Promethean? What a complete baller. But, like, in a cute way.”

“What makes you think J Shep is a ‘guy’?” Rush asked.

“Well, if he’s a girl I DEFINITELY want to meet him,” Eli said. “It just looks like a dude’s handwriting. I could be wrong. Seriously though, you’ve had this in your wallet the whole time?”

“Yes.”

“And you’re just showing it to me now?” Eli said.

“I’ve decided to act on the information it contains,” Rush admitted. He took another bite of pizza.

“Yeeeaaaah,” Eli said, still focused on the drawing, “Look, as much as this artwork appeals to my inner nerd, I don’t like the idea of you cold emailing this J Shep character. Who is this guy? Can he be trusted? Is he as adorable as his—” he broke off.

Rush continued attacking his pizza, waiting for the inevitable flow of partial coherence that was, no doubt, in the offing.

“Wait. Wait wait wait wait WAIT. This says ‘dialing!’ There’s an arrow through a circle! Oh man.” Eli paused. “You don’t think—I mean, you don’t think that—” He looked up at Rush.

Rush raised his eyebrows and took another bite of pizza.

“What if the portae are real,” Eli whispered. “Even if they’re not physically real, they could represent something in real life? Maybe people can pass through them, maybe they can’t, either way, even if—”

“Eli,” Rush said. “Please make an effort to communicate complete thoughts?”

A rhetorician, the lad was not, but Rush could see the point his confused monologue was converging upon. He didn’t like it.

“What if you’re not the alien,” Eli continued, “but this ‘J Shep’ character is? This circle? Cut by an arrow that says ‘dialing’? That’s a clear reference to Astria Porta. You have to dial the portals! In the game you do. What if there’s a real world equivalent? What if J Shep is telling you how to tag your message for, like, the stars?”

“It’s a stylized SMTP header, Eli.” Rush couldn’t wholly hide his uncertainty; the association linking the words ‘astria porta’ with a dark, circular, rotating arch were as strong as any other connection in his unmoored mind.

And then, of course, there were his dreams of a silver city, floating on a sea.

“Yeah dude, the header flags your message to a server that dials the freaking ‘City of Awesome’. I take back everything I said. We’re so doing this. It’s going to be worth it. To the max. Also? I vote we start calling this guy J’Shep. Like a Vulcan.”

“No.”

“J’Shep,” Eli said, with evident relish. “You’re gonna need a kickass VPN. And you’re going to need some sort of encryption protocol that—”

Rush raised his eyebrows.

“Ugh, fine, this is kinda like me explaining freedom to George Washington, isn’t it.”

“I am a cryptographer,” Rush said.

“More like THE cryptographer,” Eli muttered.

Rush shrugged with fluid nonchalance. “If you insist.”

“And so modest,” Eli said.

“It seems modesty isn’t one of my strengths.” Rush finished his slice of pizza and eyed the next. 

“Noooooo.” Eli passed J Shep’s note back to him. “Really?”

“The question is,” Rush said, abandoning his dinner long enough to re-pocket the note, “what am I going to say to this J Shep person.”

“Duh,” Eli said. “I’ll tell you exactly what you say. You say: ‘Hey. I just met you, and this is crazy, but here’s my PGP key, so encrypted message me, maybe’.”

“No. I’m not saying that.”

“Yes you are,” Eli said. “It’s perfect. What the heck are you gonna come up with that’s better? ‘I have the highest IQ-to-income ratio on the Eastern Seaboard, so, tell me about myself, alien pen-pal, because I have selective amnesia’?”

Rush leveled a stare at Eli over the rims of his glasses.

“Think about it,” Eli said. “Also, that look only works if you wield power over someone’s GPA.”

“I’m sure I’ll come up with something appropriate,” Rush said.

Eli sighed. “Appropriate? Probably. Awesome? No. ‘Address to impress’, as my mom says.”

“And how’s that worked out for ya?”

“Awesome, thanks for asking. Just awesome. Seriously though, can you tell me when you message this guy? And also what he says? I’m invested now. I also really wanna know if J’Shep is an alien.” 

“I’ll keep you apprised.”

“Sweet,” Eli said. “Also, are you eating? Like, regularly? Because I cannot help noticing that every time I feed you, you destroy whatever gets put in front of you. I think you’ve lost weight.”

“I get paid at the end of the week.”

“Aw man,” Eli said. “In a hundred years, when someone writes your biography, I’ll be the inattentive Millennial that let the dispossessed mathematical rockstar starve while he was separated from his alien buddy, J’Shep.”

“If that is, indeed, your greatest accomplishment I’ll be posthumously disappointed,” Rush replied.

“That might be the nicest thing you’ve said to me.” Eli grinned at him.

“Yeah well, I’m sure y’deserved it. Go to graduate school, why don’t you?”

“I think I have to go to ‘undergraduate school’ first,” Eli said.

“Best crash ahead then,” Rush replied.

“We’ll see. Hey, wanna consult on the whole ‘locating the Temporal Shrine’ problem? Rob’s waiting.”

“Oh,” Rush said, “well, why didn’t you say so. Rob. How could we possibly have kept Rob waiting while we—”

“Rob,” Eli said archly, “also known as Robyn Fretboard, Lord of Chords, just replaced an overwhelmed TA in MIT’s Physics 8.01.”

“Good for him,” Rush said.

“Sister class to its spring semester counterpart, Physics 8.02,” Eli continued, “also known as Electricity and Magnetism, which is taught in the same lab space. To which he has a key.”

“Ah.” Rush quirked an expectant eyebrow.

“And now how do you feel about Rob.”

“Significantly more interested,” Rush admitted.

“Let’s go put him in our debt,” Eli said. “Bring the pizza.”

On the first of October, Rush stood in the center of Killian Court, his hands in his pockets, contemplating the illuminated colonnade of MIT’s Building 10. Students passed him, singly or in small clusters, their silhouettes ill-defined in the dark. Above, the night sky was clear. He studied the faint and scattered stars, dimmed by ambient light pollution. The wind stripped the occasional leaf from the trees on either side of the open court. It was the back of nine in the evening.

Eli was late.

As usual.

Rush pulled his black jacket (a recent thrift store acquisition) close around his shoulders, adjusted his glasses, and gingerly ran his fingers over the piece of metal attached to his temple.

He hadn’t awoken with expectations of any kind, either about himself, or the life he’d left behind, but over the intervening weeks, expectations had coalesced out of the personality he was still mapping. Whatever had brought him from Berkeley to Cheyenne Mountain, and from Cheyenne Mountain to Massachusetts, had abandoned him on the shores of the Charles River.

He’d been deserted.

Implicit in the idea of “desertion,” was the idea of betrayal.

Betrayal must have played a role in whatever’d happened.

One didn’t expect betrayal. If one expected betrayal, one could take steps to mitigate the consequences, and he’d taken no steps, no steps at all, to prepare for waking up next to the Charles River without any memory of who he was.

And, apparently, the rest of the world was proceeding along quite well in the absence of Nicholas Rush.

Apparently, no one he’d known was concerned enough to raise any kind of alarm. To file a missing persons report. He’d been a public figure. Sort of. Shouldn’t the unexplained disappearance of a relatively famous mathematician be noticed by the popular press? 

Was no one looking for him?

Perhaps it wasn’t so mysterious. He’d certainly had some kind of chip on his shoulder, circa eighteen months ago. Did he still have one? A phantom shoulder chip, the mental equivalent of phantom limb pain? He thought yes, given the ease with which he could pull the struts from Eli’s exuberant monologues.

(He tried not to do it more than necessary.)

Eli kept evincing an improbable willingness to help him; Jennifer seemed to’ve developed something of a soft spot for him; J Shep had, presumably, handed him a charming little illustration; and a bit more internet searching had turned up that he’d been married to a quite lovely concert violinist, now deceased.

He couldn’t be entirely repellant.

Right?

He sighed and swept his hair out of his eyes.

This train of thought was unproductive, pointless, and more than a little depressing. It was better, by far, to focus on acquiring knowledge. To that end, he’d secured an apartment, and, if he could continue to subsist on his diet of day-old baked goods, in roughly two weeks he’d be able to afford the hardware required for his secure attempt to contact J Shep.

At that point, maybe, he’d find some answers.

“Hey!” Eli’s voice carried over the rush of the wind in the trees. “Dave!”

Rush turned.

Eli waved. The lad had a backpack slung over one shoulder, distorting the dark outline he cut against the lights of Killian Court. He was accompanied by another young man with an instrument case slung across his back.

Presumably, this was “Rob.”

“Hello,” Rush replied.

“Dave, Rob. Rob, Dave,” Eli said.

He couldn’t see Rob’s features in the dark, but his grip was strong and his hand was damp. “Hey man,” Rob said, “I’ve heard a lot about you.”

“Ah,” Rush said. 

“Is it true you made a solo descent into the Lair Serpentis, equipped only with the Shuriken of Sadness?” Rob challenged.

“Yes?” Rush tried.

Eli kicked him.

“No,” Rush said, more definitive this time.

Eli stepped on his foot. Hard.

Realizing he needed to come up with some measure of damage control, he said, “I don’t answer questions.”

They stared at him.

“And yet,” he said, course-correcting into what was, hopefully, a wizardly vector, “I answer all of them.”

Eli forced a laugh. “Sooo,” he said, addressing Rob, “Dave’s a little quirky. A lot quirky. Did maybe too much LSD back in the sixties?”

“Hey,” Rush said, affronted.

“But his math and linguistics are sick as hell,” Eli continued. “He’s the reason we have a definitive translation on the hidden panel in the Promethean Hall of Records. We owe him. And you owe me, because your Mace of the Mind should be mine. It’s a top-tier Librarian Weapon, everyone knows that.”

“You don’t have the strength modifier to lift it.”

Eli ignored this and said, “Do us a solid, and the tally sheet will be even.”

Rob hesitated, snapping his ID card against his palm. “You guys aren’t gonna do anything—weird, right?”

“Weird?” Eli said. “No dude. Like, what weird thing would we even do? I just need to interrogate my custom circuit board.” He pulled an object from his pocket and switched on his phone light to illuminate a series of likely looking chips and wires soldered to a board. “Dave’s super handy with this kind of thing. I mean, he’s Scottish.”

“Aye, nae bother, eh?” Rush said, in arid agreement.  

The circuit and the Scotticism seemed to reassure Rob. “Come back to college already,” he said, handing over his ID.

“Yeah yeah,” Eli replied. “I’ll swing by your rehearsal and drop off the card and key. You guys still practice in the same space?”

“Yup,” Rob said. “We’ll go until ten or eleven. After that, I’ll be back in my room.”

“This shouldn’t take more than an hour. I’ll swing by practice if we get done early. Say hi to my nemesis!”

“An hour tops,” Rob said skeptically. “Every fifteen minutes past midnight, you owe me fifty gold. And do NOT crash practice; we’re supposed to be learning a new song, not hosting Nerd-on-Nerd Power Hour. You know how he gets.”

Eli sighed. “Fiiiiiiiiine. Now, hand over the key.”

Rob unthreaded a heavy key from his key ring and passed it to Eli before retreating back into the darkness, presumably in the direction of band practice.

“Ugh,” Eli said, as they crossed Killian Court, the wind tearing at their hair. “As if there’d be a Shuriken of Sadness in play during the High Serpentis Era. C’mon. I expect better. He was testing you!”

Rush ignored this. “Did I hear correctly that you have a nemesis?” He asked as they climbed the stone steps leading to the lab.

“Yes.” Eli held Rob’s ID to the RFID reader, and the locking mechanism disengaged with an audible click. “We do not speak his name. Unless we have to.”

“Why?”

“Oh y’know. Tradition. Builds the mythos. He defeated me in an epic battle of grades. He was giving them, I was getting them; it wasn’t going well for me. Now I’m biding time before my inevitable comeback and ascendency. Speaking of mythos, nice jacket, by the way. You’re looking more like a film noir hipster barista every day.”

“You brough’ an actual circuit,” Rush said, resolutely ignoring commentary on his deteriorating and limited wardrobe. “Commendable initiative.”

“Thanks. But this is here for more than commitment to the bit, because we need something to do a test run on, man. I’m thinking we should try not to break the only thing standing between you and your modern-day impersonation of Robert Schumann?”

“Witty,” Rush murmured, surprised by the number and quality of associations that Schumann’s name dragged with it.

(A minor. A minor, with a savage descent following strings and the timpani. A piano concerto?)

“Hey, I get around.” Eli opened the door to a lit stairwell.

Schumann’s Piano Concerto in A Minor was making itself available to him. So clear in his mind that it was almost disturbing.

Odd.

As usual, he failed to extract anything from it other than facts about its structure and composition.

After half a staircase, he gave up trying to wrest anything experiential from beyond a dark mnemonic walll

“Y’know where we’re headed, I take it?”

“I did go here,” Eli said. “And I did take Intro Physics and the corresponding lab.”

“What happened?” Rush asked.

“Little balls got rolled down ramps. Periods of pendulums were precisely timed using photosensitive detectors. Springs were compressed—”

“I mean,” Rush said, with an over-the-glasses stare that was wasted on the back of Eli’s gray sweatshirt, “why didn’t you continue with your studies?”

“I don’t pry into your personal life,” Eli said.

“Yes,” Rush replied, “you do. Constantly.”

“Well if you don’t remember it,” Eli said, “then it doesn’t count as prying.”

“It absolutely counts as prying. I’ll grant you that it may no’ count as ‘personal’.”

“It’s gonna get personal.” Eli held the door as they emerged onto the second floor. “At some point. I mean, hopefully?” He shot Rush a look of unveiled sympathy.

Rush averted his eyes.

“Maybe even tonight,” Eli said.

“Possibly,” Rush admitted.

They passed along a deserted hall, motion sensitive lights flicking on at their approach.

Eli stopped at an unassuming door opposite a bank of windows and slid Rob’s key into the lock. He turned on the light to reveal an expansive room scored by rows of black lab benches. The walls were lined with cabinets and shelved equipment.

Eli pulled off his backpack and dumped it on the nearest bench. He unzipped it, pulled out an oversized laptop, then moved to the nearest wall, scanning the shelved equipment.

Rush joined him.

“Rob said it was a benchtop model.” Eli opened a cabinet. “So it should be, like, roughly the size of a breadbox. How big is your typical breadbox, actually? I have no idea. My mom freezes extra bread.”

“I’d be surprised if it weighed more than fifteen kilograms.” Rush paused, one hand on an open cabinet door as he considered a mysterious instrument in front of him.

“Jackpot.” Eli slid what was, unmistakably, a spectrum analyzer out of a bottom cabinet and headed to the nearest lab bench. “Grab my laptop, will you? There’s an outlet in the floor here.” 

Rush returned to the bench near the door and retrieved Eli’s oversized, underpowered, aging laptop.

“And my bag!” Eli called after him.

With a subtle eye roll, Rush shouldered Eli’s bag. It was quite a bit heavier than expected.

Eli plugged in the instrument, flipped it on, and the digital menu lit up. “Excellent,” he said. “Now there’s gotta be a port here somewhere. I brought every adaptor I had, but I’m hoping it’s either something straightforward, or the cable is already included—” he broke off, his fingers running a perimeter at the base of the device. “Sweetness.” He stopped at a point on the left side of the analyzer, then pulled a cable from his bag.

“You have a software interface that can interpret the output, I take it?” Rush asked.

“Yup, Rob hooked me up with le’software last week when I set up this raid. You may begin praising me at any point. Actually, maybe you should hold off on that until we’re sure I’m not going to break your swag. Or this little guy here.” Eli ran a thumb over the sticker indicating the maximum RF the machine would tolerate. “So. Do you think your swag has any DC voltage?”

“How would I know?” Rush replied, watching Eli position his test circuit.

“Well, you know lots of stuff,” Eli said. “Promethean, trig, fun stories about dead mathematicians and the different ways they went insane that you seem to think are motivating? Hopefully you see my point here, so I’ll say again: ‘does your swag have any DC voltage,’ and you’ll say…” he pulled out the final word like he’d hit a wall of infinite verbal potential.

“I have no idea,” Rush said.

Eli sighed. “Well, it was worth a shot. Whatevs, man, I brought a coaxial DC block for the input so we don’t fry the crap out of our analyzer. Even so, there’s somewhere between a seventy and one hundred percent chance that we screw up the mixer in this thing before we’re done. But let’s be real. I’m sure some idiot undergrad has done the same thing with much less excuse.”

“Undoubtedly,” Rush said, his eyebrows lifting as he watched Eli set up the machine. “Y’seem t’have learned an unexpected amount in a single semester at college.”

“I feel like you think that was a compliment,” Eli said.

“Wasn’t it?” Rush asked.

“Eh,” Eli said. “I’ve had better. I’ve even had better from you. Now. Let’s make sure this thing works.” He flipped a switch on his circuit board. “My test circuit should be transmitting smack in the middle of the unlicensed ISM band.”

Rush examined the output of the spectrum analyzer, which displayed a single peak in the center of the swath of frequencies Eli had selected for his initial sweep.

“I am the Master of Circuits,” Eli proclaimed. “I am the Viscount of Voltage.”

“You’ll need to widen your sweep, when we interrogate the actual device,” Rush said.

“I know. My plan was to do serial sweeps with overlapping windows. I’m guessing your swag is gonna be broadcasting in one of the restricted bandwidths, if it’s even radio. It’s almost gottta be though, because I mean, it’s not like you’re going to have anything ionizing strapped to your head, right? Right. Ugh, I mean, let’s hope not. I’m thinking we start low frequency, go as high as we can, and hope we get lucky,” Eli said.

“Seems reasonable,” Rush replied.

They looked at each other.

“Want me to, uh—” Eli began.

Rush swept his hair out of the way and angled his head, giving Eli as much access as he could to the device at his temple without actually removing it. Eli wasted no time in peeling off the black electrical tape that they’d coated the devices with. He stuck the tape on the edge of the bench for later reapplication.

“So I know you’re on the fence about this, but I really don’t like the idea of you wearing your swag while we do this,” Eli said. “It’ll go faster, the interference will be less, and it’ll be less risky if you can tolerate having it off.”

“It’s a spectrum analyzer,” Rush said. “It should be perfectly benign.”

“Says the guy with no personal memories who’s got crystal tech glued to his head.”

Rush looked at him, undecided.

“Come on,” Eli said. “Give it a shot. You said it was worse when they were both off. I only need one. Worst-case scenario, we put it back on and do it the hard way. Even if we get halfway through sweeping the spectrum, that would be helpful. Even if I can hook the thing up with a little more freedom of movement, that would cut down on the total time required.”

“All right,” Rush said. 

“Awesome,” Eli replied. “Go when ready.”

Rush pressed against the small metal pieces at the borders of the device and felt it release from his skin with a sickening sensation of deep withdrawal. It came free in his hand. He passed the device to Eli and pressed his fingers to his temple where it had been.

For a moment, he heard nothing.

Then—a low chord, quiet and coming from behind.

“You okay?” Eli asked.

“Just get started.” Rush couldn’t prevent himself from looking over his shoulder.

(Of course, there was nothing there.)

“You’re hearing it?” Eli asked, his expression uncertain.

“Yes, I’m hearing it. I told you I’d hear it. Get started.”

“We could abort—” Eli began.

“Start,” Rush said.

“Okay. Starting. You just look a little more freaked than I was expecting, that’s all.”

“I’m fine.”

Rush watched Eli set up the inputs, using jeweler’s pliers to twirl a slender wire around something on the interior of the device before—

(D minor.)

He’d ignore it. The chord.

What had he been thinking of? His thoughts weren’t holding up well to building tonal pressure. Even so, he could ignore it, he could filter out a chord, continuous and loud and long, he could filter it out, of course he could. Anyone could.

He watched Eli connect the device to a coaxial DC block before interfacing with the input port on the spectrum analyzer.

It was getting louder.

The (D minor) chord.

“Hey,” Eli said.

Thinking was difficult, speaking was (ah fuck) unworkable, so he nodded, made a sweeping gesture at the spectrum analyzer, then pressed his fingers back to his temple.

It was a triad. It was a triad formed on a tonic at once alien and familiar. A minor third on F, three semitones above the root. A perfect fifth on A, seven semitones above the root.

D-minor. He was ignoring it. D-minor. Or was it—

“Okaaaay,” Eli said, “nothing yet, and I’m through the MF band.”

Was it D-minor?

(No.)

Almost D-minor. Alternate D-minor. Variant D-minor? It was changing. (A minor sixth? Not quite.)

“Through the VHF band,” Eli said. “Still nothing. You doing okay, dude?”

Rush closed his fingers around the edge of the bench.

“Nothing in the HF band,” Eli said.

He shut his eyes, trying to hold something off he couldn’t identify.

“Hang in there, Eli said. “Nothing in the VHF band.”

He had to sit. He yielded in the direction of gravity, struggling against the slowly progressing tone in his mind.

“Dave?”

The floor felt very hard.

“UHF,” Eli snapped. “It’s UHF. It’s in the military allocation band. No surprises there, but—oh crap, I think I’m jacking the signal. Yeah, yeah I’m boosting it, I’m boosting it, crap, or it’s boosting itself. No idea. Thiiis isn’t good; I hope no one’s scanning for you right now, damn it. Okay, definitely time to shut this—uh. Dave? Hang on. One second. Don’t pass out. How does this thing even—oh yikes.”

He couldn’t see. The world was a decomposing wall of line and color.

“Dave?” Eli said. “Nick, maybe? Hey. Hi? You okay?”

Blind to the room, Rush nodded.

“Nope,” Eli said, loud and close. “That’s not an ‘okay’ face. Move your hand. Yeah, or don’t, I can work with this.”

Rush felt his hand pried away from his temple, a cool press, a sickening reattach, and—

The chord faded. The wall of blinding color turned, again, into the room it’d always been.

He was on the floor, his back pressed against a cabinet built into the base of the lab bench.

Eli knelt in front of him. “Holy crap,” he whispered, his face pale, his eyes excited.

Rush nodded.

“Are you okay?” Eli asked.

Rush nodded.

“Your swag is broadcasting in the UHF band, but as soon as we hit its frequency with our sweep, it jacked the signal up. It was about ten seconds. It got super bright and shorted out our whole setup? I am really glad it wasn’t attached to your head when we did that. Also? You were not joking about that whole I-hear-a-disembodied-chord thing being messed up.”

“What?” Rush asked vaguely.

“Yeah okay, this can wait,” Eli said, speaking slowly. “We gotta get out of here. Like, right now. We just advertised your location, and it’s a clear night.”

“A clear night?” Rush repeated.

“Ohhhhh crap. I hope I didn’t fry your brain. That would be a crime against math. Say something intelligent.”

“Eli.” Rush aimed for something in range of a reprimand but fell far short.

“Poor showing, dude, but I’ll interpret it as a compliment. Anyway, the frequency of the EM signal transmitted by your swag is particularly susceptible to atmospheric—you know what? Never mind. Let’s talk about this later when your brain is online, and we’re not AT the coordinates where we straight up broadcasted on a restricted military band.” Eli grabbed Rush by his elbows and drew him up. “Not too fast. Now sit.” He pushed Rush onto a stool.

Rush leaned forward, his elbows resting on the dark bench in front of him, his hands bridged over his eyes. His thoughts had the consistency of sludge. He couldn’t—

“Hey, man.” Gently, Eli took his elbow. “I’m done packing up. Let’s get outta here and find you some food. And some coffee. And maybe a nap.”

After a triple espresso at their usual diner, his brain reengaged. He had a headache. He felt like his mind had been wrung out and left a painful mess behind his eyes.

“Feeling better?” Eli asked. “At all?”

“Yeah,” Rush said. “Somewhat.”

“So you were not kidding about that tonal thing being intense.”

“No.”

“But you feel normal now?”

“Well.” Rush dug the heel of his hand into his eye. “I don’t hear anything, but I’m pure—” Tangled in a snarl of sentence endings, he decided to stop speaking.

“Oh my god,” Eli whispered. “You look freakin’ terrible. Did it hurt?”

“Mgh.”

“Like, for real, you gotta talk to me.”

“Not as such. It was more akin to sensory overload in the absence of sensory input? Now it hurts.”

“Okay,” Eli said. “Better. Use words. You want some Tylenol? We’ll make a CVS run after this.”

Rush nodded.

“Correct me if I’m wrong, but I think it’s safe to say your tech is NOT causing your memory loss. At first, I figured it was, y’know? It made sense, Occam’s Razor style. But—your swag is helping you. That’s pretty clear.”

“True.” Rush rested his chin on his hand. “But I don’ think w’can assume ‘helping me’ is its sole function.”

“Agreed.” Eli dropped his voice as a waitress walked past. “I got a pretty good look at the structure of these things.” The lad glanced at the re-camouflaged metal at Rush’s temples. “I’m not sure how well you’ve been able to examine them, due to, like, getting punched in the face with a mystery auditory phenomenon every time you take them off? But their design is probably a little freakier than you were imagining.”

“Wonderful.”

“Below the tape, there’s the opening with the glowing crystal. The open stuff sits on top of a closed panel of circuitry about an eighth of an inch thick. Most of the business end of the thing is packed into there, I’d bet. If I were to guess, I’d say whoever designed it put the crystal in a separate casing because a) it gives off a little bit of heat, and b) it’s not as compact. Are you following me, man? Because you look like you’re about to pass out.”

“Proceed,” Rush said.

“Okay, so to sum up, we’ve got the casing,” Eli said, tracing a box in the air, “with the crystal compartment sitting on top and under the crystal is a whole mess of waterproof, element-proof, college student-proof electronics. Like if it’s a sandwich? That’s the middle.”

“Eli,” Rush said, “I understood you the first time. Proceed.”

“Okay well no offense, man, but you look kinda confused and semiconscious.”

“Tha’s not the case. Please continue.”

“Yeah. Sure. Okay so, I’m guessing about the concealed, like, ‘meat’ of the sandwich? Because I couldn’t see that layer. But it’s the bottom bread layer that’s really, really freaky.”

Rush raised his eyebrows.

“The bottom layer,” Eli said, “is the—um, crap, let’s call it the human-interface layer? And that layer has two extremely small holes in it. And when you hold down those panels on the side of the device, guess what comes out of those holes.”

Rush opened a hand. “A chthonic vengeance deity out of HP Lovecraft,” he said dryly.

“Poetic,” Eli said. “More awake than I was expecting. And actually? Kinda close.”

“Eli.”

“Electrodes. Four of them. Two pairs of two, made of a super ductile metal that kinda—unfurls, tentacle style? The two pairs are angled away from one another, and neither enters your skin at a ninety degree angle.”

“Ugh,” Rush said, viscerally unsettled.

“Yeah. That creeped-out face you’re making right now is a toned down version of the creeped-out face I made when I saw it, and a really toned down version of the creeped-out face I made when I stuck it back on your head.” His voice dropped to an emphatic whisper.

“Cheers,” Rush said.

“While you were busy not passing out, I got two pieces of information from the signal analyzer. One—your swag is, for sure, transmitting a signal in the Ultra High Frequency Radio band, in the Hertz range used by the military. Maybe not that surprising. The other thing I determined is that it doesn’t like being screwed around with, because it built up a pretty impressive voltage differential and discharged, which shorted out our little system. So, two—it’s capable of building and maintaining a charge.”

Rush nodded.

“Make some kind of legit observation, please, so I know you’re taking this in,” Eli said.

“Its activity likely depends on system input.” Rush paused as their waitress set their plates in front of them, then started in on his club sandwich.

“Yeah, okay, true. Yes. Which is good, because that means it probably won’t electrocute you if it’s taking input from your brain, which I’m gonna bet is exactly what it’s doing.” Eli hissed, his plate of onion rings going ignored in front of him. “Together, these two devices set up four terminals, two electrodes each. You’ve got an anode and a cathode pair at four different points on your skull. Does that suggest anything to you?”

“It suggests the establishment of an electric field that can vary with time. Applied across my head,” Rush said.

“Yes,” Eli replied, low and quiet. “Combine that with your UHF band signal, and you’ve got a system that’s affecting your brain and very possibly remotely modulatable.”

Rush sighed, dropped his sandwich, and pressed the heel of one hand against his eye socket.

“With UHF, they’d probably have to be line-of-sight to influence you, and, let’s be real, hopefully there’s security built into this thing. But, my personal opinion? I don’t wanna be messing around trying to hack the thing attached to your brain with literal, creepy electrodes.”

Rush said nothing. It wasn’t that he hadn’t expected to hear something along these lines. He had. He just—felt extremely tired. And somewhat sick. It was difficult to take a deep breath. He couldn’t feel his fingertips.

“Don’t panic,” Eli said.

“I’m not panicking.”

“Well you look like you’re panicking,” Eli said. “I get it. I do. I’d panic too, if I were you. I’m borderline panicking for you over here. Sympathy panic?”

Rush tried to take a deep breath. Failed. He clenched his hands. Opened them again.

“Drink some water, maybe?” Eli suggested? “You almost passed out, then downed three shots of espresso, and you don’t eat regularly, so your blood sugar’s probably super low. Really, if you think about it, this is worst case scenario for panic. I mean, no one wants to find out they’re hackable, but you definitely don’t want to find out about it when you’re hypoglycemic, overcaffeinated, and coming down off an Unfortunate Mental Event; I’m not even sure what to call whatever happened in that lab.”

Rush sipped his water. “I’m not panicking,” he said again.

“Nope,” Eli agreed. “Nope, no panicking here. You are taking this like a champ. Onion ring?”

Rush shook his head.

“Yeah, you’re not a stress eater. Anyone can see that.” Eli crunched down on the onion ring he’d offered Rush.

Rush took another sip of water. “What d’ye think,” he finally managed, “the purpose of this might be?”

“Well,” Eli said, “seeing you’re not being actively pursued by anyone and, for all we can tell, you’re wandering around Cambridge, memoryless, hackable—”

“Can we not use that term?”

“Okay sorry. Memoryless, ports open, and left to your own (alien, ha) devices, I can’t say this makes any kind of rational sense to me. Maybe this is an experiment? But, like, first of all: rude. Second of all: if I were gonna choose someone to do a mysterious social experiment on? I wouldn’t choose a well-known Fields Medalist and turn him loose in Boston, of all places.” Eli paused to contemplatively chew an onion ring, “Without your swag, it seems like you’d be screwed. Pretty much immediately. I mean, within minutes. What do you think would happen if you took those devices off and left them off?”

Rush shrugged.

“Well, as an outside observer, I’d say you were on the verge of losing consciousness when I reattached that little guy.” He glanced darkly at Rush’s temple. “You were also shaking.”

“Was I?” Rush asked. “Don’t remember that.”

“Yeah, not much, but you were, like, tightening up,” Eli said.

Rush shut his eyes and shook his head.

“I don’t want to freak you out any more than you’re already freaking out, but I think it’s possible you might run the risk of death without your swag,” Eli said.

“Yes,” Rush breathed. “I think you may be right about that.”

“You should eat,” Eli said.

Rush nodded. “You said something in the lab,” he murmured, “about boosting the UHF signal?”

“Yeah,” Eli said. “I increased the amplitude of the thing about eighty fold, unfortunately. I think it was transient.”

“You think?” Rush looked at him sharply.

“Well, I wasn’t gonna sweep the UHF band, again, while you were, like, dying on the floor, was I?” Eli shot back. “Power consumption visibly increased, as measured by, er, crystal glow brightness? If someone is looking for you and they picked up that UHF emission, they’ll be able to trace your location. Fortunately, Boston is a big city. I’m not sure what the maximum detectable range is for your swag on its standard settings, but it’s not gonna be super far, and it’ll depend on atmospheric conditions, so hope for lots of thunderstorms, I guess?”

Rush nodded.

“We should keep an eye on what happens at that lab though,” Eli said. “And by ‘we’ I mean ‘me.’ And by ‘me’ I mean ‘Rob’. And by ‘what happens’, I mean whether or not the Air Force shows up.”

Rush nodded.

“You look awful,” Eli said. “Eat your sandwich.”

“Don’t think that’ll solve anything,” Rush said glumly.

“Neither do I. But it’s kinda necessary. You have an apartment now, right?” Eli asked.

“Yes,” Rush said. “Though, truth be told, it’s a room with a locking door in what I’m told is a former crack house.”

“Uh, yeah, maybe you should sleep at my place.”

“No,” Rush said flatly. “I could still be broadcasting a boosted signal.”

“Yeah, but you’re probably not,” Eli said.

“I’ll not go t’your house,” Rush said. “Not tonight. Not anymore.”

Eli sighed. “I knew you cared. Too bad it’s manifesting in the most annoying way possible.”

“Speaking of terrible living situations, would you mind holding some cash for me?” Rush asked.

Eli grimaced. “So when you get mugged, you won’t lose all your resources?”

“Precisely.”

Rush passed Eli a stack of banknotes.

“You could afford a better place,” Eli said, “if you’re investing this much in the Bank of Wallace.”

“I’m trading physical safety for the prospect of hardware.”

“You want a computer,” Eli translated.

“No,” Rush replied. “I need a computer. Among other things.”

“I identify with that need,” Eli replied. “Is this for purposes of contacting J’Shep? Because you can use my laptop.”

“Absolutely not.”

“You’re inconveniently principled.” Eli grumbled. “But fine. Play it cool, slave away at your latte art, and we’ll see what, if anything, comes from our little broadcast. In the meantime, I have an angle we can work.”

“An angle?” Rush repeated.

“My nemesis,” Eli sighed.

Rush quirked an eyebrow. “He of the unspoken name?”

“Yeah,” Eli said dolefully. “He’s wicked smart. I mean, to be clear, not Eli Wallace Smart, but almost. He’s into neural robotics, ugh, to the extent that’s a thing, which it’s not, really. Like, check back in twenty years, am I right? Anyway, this is the Nerd Prince we need. The only problem is that he’s maybe a little too much of a full-blooded academic for us to get away with garden variety bullshit. We’ll have to come up with something good.”

“That may be difficult,” Rush said. “Frankly, I’m perpetually astounded you gave any credence to my story. T’me, it sounds preposterous.”

“That’s what saves it,” Eli replied. “Real life is always ridiculous. I mean, have you lived in the world?”

“Theoretically, yes,” Rush said. “Experientially, no.”

“Good point, Dave.” Eli crunched down on another onion ring. “Good freakin’ point.”