Lurkers Page 15

  She rolled her eyes again.

  ‘Weird,’ I said, having AltTabbed over to Untitled2009.doc, ‘I’m on page one twenty-seven in the alienbook. And one from two plus seven is eight, you know.’

  ‘Spooky,’ Leslie said, letting Chuck out of the booth for a cigarette.

  ‘You know that Lincoln and Kennedy have the same number of letters in their name?’ HippyGuy asked.

  ‘You know that “dumbass” has the same number of letters, too?’ I counterasked, ‘It’s also the same number of letters in “silence”. And, counting spaces, it’s the same number of characters in “go away”.’

  ‘Eight plus eight plus nine is twenty-five,’ George said, ‘Six plus eight is fourteen. Two plus five is seven; one plus four is five; seven minus five is two. Twenty-five minus fourteen is eleven; one plus one is two. Two of them. Six, eight, eight, eight, nine.’

  ‘Where’d the six come from,’ Leslie asked me.

  ‘How should I—oh: six in the morning, maybe. From one twenty-seven plus whatever it was...four hours and forty-one minutes would be six something. I dunno...one, five; and then twenty-seven and forty-one is, what, sixty-eight? Oh. Twenty...thirty-three to two, plus four hours is six; and forty-one minus thirty-three is eight. So eight after six, I guess.

  ‘About when the sun’s coming up,’ she said.

  ‘Uh...maybe. Hang on....’ I checked online for sunrise for 8th August 2009: 6.06AM. ‘Pretty close,’ I said.

  ‘So we’ll probably still be here,’ she reiterated.

  ‘It’s possible,’ I allowed, getting up to go out for a cigarette again.

  SEVENTEEN

  Chuck was finishing his cigarette as I got outside. ‘You left Leslie alone in there with Hutch?’

  ‘Whatever she does to him,’ I said, lighting a cigarette, ‘I’m not gonna feel bad about it.’

  ‘Good point.’

  I looked up at the moon, unable to see the stars behind it. ‘What’s the closest known planet,’ I said.

  ‘Alpha Centauri, I guess.’

  ‘That’s a star. Or two.’

  ‘Well, yeah: if there are planets there—and there probably are—I’m not sure we’ve seen them yet.’

  ‘There was a planet discovered a few years ago,’ I said, ‘That was something like twenty lightyears from here. I wonder why we haven’t seen planets in Alpha Centauri, if that’s only four.’

  ‘Maybe we have.’

  ‘Maybe. Something to look up sometime.’

  ‘For the alienbook?’

  ‘I dunno. That’s still bugging me. Even if there were a planet four point whatever lightyears from here, that’s still over a parsec.’

  ‘Your aliens can’t move faster than light?’

  ‘They’d have to. But there’s still that problem with how they’d even know about Earth. If we can’t see planets in Alpha Centauri, how can planets there see us.’

  ‘Maybe we can see them,’ Chuck said, ‘And, if we can’t, that doesn’t prevent them from seeing us.’

  ‘If there are planets there,’ I said, ‘And if there are aliens on those planets.’

  ‘Did you say the aliens were from Alpha Centauri?’

  ‘I never gave them a planet. I just have them invading. I figure with a good thirty years of broadcasting abject stupidity in ways other planets could potentially get a feed, that’s a decent radius at lightspeed. Of course, if they can only travel at the speed of light or less, that changes the sphere of influence a bit.’

  ‘At least, for once, it’s really a sphere,’ Chuck said.

  ‘There’s that.’

  ‘Think anyone’ll show up here tonight?’

  ‘Like, someone we know? Or, really, that I know: you know everyone.’

  ‘Like when the bars close, I mean.’

  ‘Dunno,’ I said, ‘Maybe. Full moon on a Friday. If there’s ever gonna be a rush in a smokefree restaurant, it’ll be tonight. It’s warm out, so there’s no snow on the roads; they might even make it here alive.’ I looked at my watch. ‘One thirty now; if there’s a rush, it’ll probably start in fifteen minutes to half an hour. If memory serves.’

  ‘The bars close at one forty-five,’ Chuck said, ‘That usually has people showing up here at about two.’

  ‘So I’ve probably got half an hour to write something, while I’m not sure what to write, or really even whether I want to write it anymore.’

  ‘Up to you, I guess.’

  ‘Yeah. Except not entirely. If I drop it now, I’ll keep hearing about it—that book I gave up on, which was so good and—am I really the only one who gets that these things are stupid?’

  ‘Probably,’ Chuck said, ‘Someone reading along all at once, except maybe someone trying to see what’s stupid, would just be reading the story. If you never mention where the aliens came from, or even how they got here, I doubt anyone’ll really care. So why worry about it.’

  ‘Because I hate it when stories try to hide the impossible parts by neglecting to mention them.’

  ‘So mention it. Have characters talking about how it’s even possible. If there’s no answer, have them come to the conclusion that they can’t figure it out. How many livingdead films are there now, and they keep dealing with how the zombies could come back to life not by explaining it, but by having characters guess how it happened.’

  ‘I suppose,’ I said.

  ‘Does anyone really care how aliens get from planet to planet in “Star Wars”? It’s not really about that.’

  ‘I care, actually,’ I said, ‘How far was Bespin from Hoth: apparently, Hoth wasn’t a planet but a starsystem; same for Bespin; Hoth was some outer rim thing no one would ever look at from, like, Coruscant; Bespin wasn’t really in the downtown area of the galaxy, but it didn’t seem like it was really on the edge, either. So, they get from the star of Hoth to the star of Bespin, without a hyperdrive, at sublight speeds, in, what, the time it took Skywalker to sit on Dagobah talking to Yoda? How many years are we talking about. And all while Vader’s looking for them in a destroyer? At lightspeed, it would take us close to five years to reach the nearest star; I could see Skywalker training for five years; I can’t see Solo flying to Bespin for five years, or an armada chasing him all that time.’

  ‘It’s a movie,’ Chuck said, ‘You’re the only one who’d think this far into it. Goodguys and badguys fight to control the universe, or bring balance to the force, or whatever the whole point was. So, yeah: it was stupid; but it was fun—people liked it.’

  ‘People are morons,’ I said.

  ‘Cool. Keep that in mind, and write a book morons’ll like.’

  ‘Boring.’

  ‘It’s that or find a way to write a book with zero plotholes which is so perfect that nobody can follow along. Of course, usually, books like that are in the nonfiction section.’

  ‘Also boring,’ I said.

  Chuck shrugged, heading back inside.

  Jessica caught the door and came out. ‘Full moon,’ she said.

  ‘Yeah,’ I acknowledged

  ‘Fuck. And on a Friday night. This won’t make my job any easier.’

  ‘If anyone even shows up.’

  Having lit a cigarette, she exhaled slowly. ‘They’ll show up. Last Friday was kinda busy—I guess you weren’t here. Full moon plus Friday plus getting toward the end of the summer: this is when everyone runs to the restaurants before it starts getting too cold to go out at night.’

  ‘Maybe,’ I said, ‘But, with four tables in there out of, what, thirty-five? Maybe it’s just that no one does this anymore.’

  ‘Last Friday I had something like six hundred tables overnight,’ she said, ‘I’m just glad I have Saturday off.’

  ‘They let you do that?’

  She exhaled smoke. ‘I told them I’ve got church on Sunday, so I can’t be in here all night the night before.’

  ‘You actually go to church?’

  She laughed. ‘No. But, if that’s my excuse, they can’t really force me to come
in here: I could sue them.’

  ‘Theists aren’t a protected class,’ I said.

  ‘Dunno. That’s just what I told them when I said I needed Saturdays off. And they let me do it without arguing. Not that they could really push me to, like, go to a church on some other day, or anything.’

  ‘It’s clever,’ I agreed.

  ‘Well, so far,’ she said, ‘On the other hand, if there’s a god, it’ll probably get pissed at me for this.’

  ‘Depends which one it was,’ I said, ‘If it were Jehovah, it would be pissed that you’re here on the sabbath.’

  ‘It’s Friday.’

  ‘The sabbath is sundown Friday to sundown Saturday,’ I said, ‘even if stupid people think it’s just dawn to dusk on Sunday.’

  ‘Weird.’

  ‘That would be religion,’ I said, ‘Weird.’

  ‘Speaking of weird,’ she said, ‘Is it cool that I let you know I was into you, or are you gonna, like, stop coming here now.’

  ‘Why would I stop coming here.’

  ‘I dunno. It’s just me, I guess. Like, if I like a guy, I don’t really tell him that. I guess I doubt he’ll like me back. And, if he didn’t like me back, it would be weird if he still had to be around me. I dunno: nevermind.’

  ‘Oh,’ I said, ‘Because you’re all icky, you mean.’

  She shrugged, looking mostly at the ground.

  ‘I’ll still be here,’ I said, ‘The advantage to not caring is that I don’t care either way. And you’re not icky.’

  ‘I’m not?’

  ‘Who said you were.’

  She shrugged. ‘No one, I guess. Except it’s not like I ever asked. People probably think I’m icky anyway.’

  ‘Fallacy,’ I said.

  ‘Like a lie?’

  ‘Like faulty logic: absence of evidence.’

  ‘Oh.’

  ‘You’re presupposing that people don’t tell you that you’re icky because you are icky; if you weren’t icky, they still wouldn’t tell you that you were.’

  ‘I guess so.’ She took another drag. ‘So, you don’t think I’m icky?’

  ‘Not really.’

  ‘So that’s one, anyway.’

  ‘Yeah.’ My cigarette was about gone. ‘I wouldn’t worry about it much. At a guess, Hutch is totally after you.’

  ‘Ew.’

  ‘Still: that’s two.’ I threw my cigarette into the carpark and grabbed the doorhandle.

  ‘Thanks,’ she said, not really sarcastically.

  I was already in the building when I saw Leslie heading out for a cigarette. I didn’t double back to watch the two chicks talk to each other.

  ‘Chuck’s at the table,’ Leslie said.

  ‘I know.’

  ‘I’ll be back in after this.’ She lit her cigarette as she walked out the door.

  I got to the table and sat down.

  ‘Leslie went for a cigarette,’ Chuck said.

  ‘Yeah: there’s one door.’

  ‘Oh,’ he said, laughing, ‘Yeah.’

  ‘Four hours and thirty-five minutes,’ George called.

  Chuck rolled his eyes. ‘Apparently, George is calling out the time until they get here. Whoever they are.’

  ‘Every minute?’

  ‘That’s what Leslie said, anyway. When he told us it was four hours and thirty-six minutes.’

  ‘So, this should be fun,’ I said.

  Chuck nodded severely.

  ‘Oh hell,’ I said, ‘Jessica thinks there’ll actually be a rush tonight.’

  ‘Could be,’ Chuck said, ‘There was one last week.’

  ‘She mentioned that.’

  ‘Oh yeah: you weren’t here last week.’

  ‘Got a new videogame,’ I said, ‘So, what happens if we get a bunch of drunk morons in here, and George is screaming out the time every...he’s really doing this once a minute?’

  ‘Wait and see,’ Chuck said.

  I did, watching George, glancing down at the clock on the laptop every few seconds.

  At the instant the clock went from 1.33 to 1.34: ‘Four hours and thirty-four minutes!’

  ‘So, I’m not writing anything else tonight,’ I said.

  ‘Is he right?’ Chuck asked, looking at his watch.

  ‘To the second,’ I said, ‘And according to the atomic clock.’

  ‘Weird,’ Chuck said, looking back at George.

  I shrugged. ‘I’ve known people who could wake up at a precise minute, regardless what time they’d gone to sleep. People seem to keep track of time internally, possibly to the second. And George is a bit strange anyway. If anyone could keep perfect track of atomic time, it might as well be him.’

  I went back to the laptop, AltTabbing a bit between lizardpeople.doc and untitled2009.doc, seeing nothing I could really do to either of them.

  The problem with writing a book, which people who don’t write books never understand, is that it’s not a simple, mechanical process. Mechanics are involved: at some point, there’s the simple typing, simpler now that we have Backspace Keys in easier reach than the Liquid Paper once used to undo mistakes on typewriters; but writing isn’t routine—there may after years be muscular memory to banging the keys in sequence to produce the more commonly used words, but there’s still thought behind it. Writing a book isn’t the automated process of sawing through a board or assembling preforged pieces into a machine: the kilocalories burned in the physical practise are negligible against the energy expended in the neurological act of thinking what to write.

  That most people think of writing as the instance of marking down I Will Not Waste Chalk over and over on a blackboard, or possibly spitting out picayune bullshit in EMails—article, noun, adverb, verb, article, noun, comma, preposition, article, noun, comma, blather, babble, blah—allows them to makebelieve that, if your job is writing books, your process is tantamount to their process of taking the hamburger off the grille when the timer runs out. When in fact, to the extent that nearly any job can be done not by robots but by simple, springactuated clockworks, writing is less manual, menial, replicable a science, supposing that it constitutes a science at all.

  At the risk of sounding like some emotastic primadonna, writing relies most heavily on the correct mood, far beyond vocabulary and education and even creativity; deadlines imposed by those who can’t write [or why would they be giving others a deadline] tend to cause a paradoxical reaction, sending writers into something of a tailspin of clockwatching.

  Never give a writer a deadline. And never tell him the time.

  ‘Four hours and thirty-three minutes!’ George called. And I AltTabbed between unwritable documents, no longer thinking even about general ideas, let alone specific words.

  ‘What are you doing,’ Leslie asked—entirely the wrong thing to say.

  ‘Trying to think,’ I told her.

  ‘Are you gonna be able to work on it anymore tonight?’

  I didn’t look at her. ‘Why do you ask me these stupid questions. Ask me when I’m done. Ask me how many months it wound up taking me to write a few hundred pages.’

  ‘I didn’t mean—’

  ‘You meant “how long does it take to write a hundred thousand words or so”,’ I said, ‘And the answer is “maybe”. Which hundred thousand words, in what order, between what interruptions while I’m trying to think. That’s the question.’

  ‘It just seems like we’re sitting here not doing anything, watching you sitting here not doing anything.’

  ‘It does, doesn’t it,’ I said, ‘And you’re painfully wrong. I’m thinking. Which is doing something. I’d hazard that an FMRI would show that I’m doing more than most people in the zipcode. Except at the moment, when I’m merely addressing your meaningless and inaccurate observation.’

  She said nothing for a few seconds. Then: ‘Sorry.’

  I disacknowledged it, simply staring at the laptop. What: I’m evil, which will always triumph, because good is dumb. And I held down Alt, thumping Tab in cardiac time,
not watching or caring which iconic sheet of paper with the W in the upper left was which; the binary roulette wheel stopped on the alienbook, and I simply started typing:

  Back at SETI, Hamilton paused to run his fingers back through his chaotic hair. It felt about ten inches long now; he should probably look into getting it cut the next time he had exactly nothing better to do on the planet.

  ‘I can’t find it,’ he said—not a declaration, but a surrender.

  ‘You’re still working on it?’ Brewster asked, not looking up from his own screen, ‘What’s the point.’

  ‘I just want to understand where the hell they came from. If I ever get that, I’ll wonder how they knew about us, how they got here, and maybe even why.’

  ‘It’s academic,’ Brewster said, ‘Getting the answer won’t change anything.’

  ‘It’ll change the part where I don’t understand,’ Hamilton said.

  ‘Lofty expectations.’

  ‘You know how big just this galaxy is?’ A rhetorical question: Brewster knew as well as he did. ‘Let alone the universe, supposing there’s any measurement but “infinite”. But, wherever they were, they found us. I want to understand how they cheated the math and got that done in the first fourteen billion years.’

  ‘Thirteen point seven,’ Brewster said.

  ‘But I’m the one being academic,’ Hamilton muttered.

  ‘Four hours and thirty-two minutes!’ George called, ending my typing. I looked at Leslie.

  ‘So you’re still working,’ she said.

  I rolled my eyes toward the crown of my head, letting my eyelids flutter; it took less words.

  EIGHTEEN

  Wanting more smoke and less noise, I’d disconnected the modular powercord from the laptop and gone out front, sitting with my back against the window beside the door, one ankle atop the other, the computer on my thighs, a cigarette at the corner of my mouth. Therefore:

  Taylor Cleveland backed away from the door in thoughtless horror before thinking to step forward and twist the deadbolt into the frame. A moment to breathe, and she pushed the couch across the doorway as well.