“Do what you have to do,” she said.
She accelerated backward in a lurch out of the driveway, then shifted and sped away, leaving me standing there, less doormat or doorman than door, slammed.
33
I went inside and called Soft. I told him that I’d found Alice, that she was fine, and that she’d only accidentally cut herself in the chamber. I spread apologies like margarine. Soft seemed mollified. I hung up and went into the bathroom to shower and shave, to reorganize a presentable, inhabitable self. By the time I was done it was five-thirty. The day had leaked away. I heated a can of bean-and-bacon soup on the stove and ate it in silence, my mind vacant like a chewing cow’s.
Then I found a dusty bottle of scotch, and poured myself a glass.
Two hours later I knocked on the door of the Melinda Fenderman Memorial Guest Apartment, where Braxia was staying. Students were partying in anarchic clusters, and the campus was like a darkened landscape lit by tribal bonfires.
Braxia opened the door.
“May I come in?” I said.
“Of course,” said Braxia.
The Apartment was clean. The walls were all oak paneling, with a row of plaques noting the previous occupants. Braxia’s was surely in preparation. His baggage was heaped in the foyer. I smelled bleach. The Italian physicist must have been scrubbing the fixtures when I knocked.
“I was just walking, and I saw the light on,” I said.
“Welcome,” he said.
Braxia was dressed in a white shirt, and black suit pants. The jacket was draped over the back of a chair in the living room. Every light in the apartment was on. Suddenly he looked like Manhattan Project newsreel footage. I saw him in black and white.
“You’re packed,” I said stupidly.
“My plane is tonight.”
“What? You’re missing the Christmas party?”
“I suppose. You? Or have you been there already?”
Did my breath stink of the scotch I’d been drinking? “I don’t know if I’ll go, actually. I was just out walking. The last night, you know. I like to feel it. Soak it up. And I wanted to talk to you.”
Braxia smiled to himself, and led me into the middle of the tiny apartment. He sat on the couch and crossed his legs. I stood leaning against the back of an easy chair. The room was so bare I wondered if Braxia had packed up a few of the furnishings.
“Talk,” said Braxia.
“You can’t just go, like this,” I said, surprising myself. “Soft isn’t man enough to call you on it, but I am. What did you learn? Why are you leaving early? I’ll pay your cab to wait while you talk to me. But I’m not leaving without some answers.”
“About Lack. You think I have some answers for you.”
“Yes.”
He smiled again, demurely. “Okay, Mr. Engstrand. We will talk about Lack. What do you want to know?”
“How. Why. You said you’d solve it. You said you’d give me Alice back.”
“Sit down, my dear fellow. You are making me nervous. I found out what I could from Lack. Lack is nothing. I am working on a larger problem now. I am sorry if I was no help with your Professor Alice. I forgot.”
“That’s your big theory? ‘Lack is nothing’?”
He looked at me warily. “Okay, Mr. Engstrand. Sit down. You have an advantage over me: You have had a drink, and I have not. Now I will have a drink too. You want a drink? Have a drink with me, Mr. Engstrand.”
I sat on the chair. Braxia went into the kitchen. I heard him easing ice cubes out of a tray. A minute later he reappeared with a pair of tall glasses, filled with orange juice.
“Vodka, you know, has the fewest impurities,” he said. “And some vitamin C. Good for you.”
I took a glass. He guzzled, I sipped.
“Okay,” he said, smacking his lips. “A drink is good, for big talking. To talk to you about Lack I first have to talk to you about observer-triggered reality. Okay?”
I nodded.
“This is my life’s work, Mr. Engstrand. Ah, I wish you spoke Italian. It’s like this. Consciousness creates reality. Only when there is a mind to consider the world is there a world. Nothing before, except potential. Potential this, potential that. The creation event, the big bang—it was the creation of enormous potential, nothing more.”
I was already lost. “You’re saying there’s no world where there isn’t a mentality to consider a world.”
“Yes.”
“There’s just a gap,” I suggested. “A lack.”
“Hah! Very good. Yes. A lack, exactly. A potential event horizon. Everything is only potential until consciousness wakes up and says, let me have a look. Take for example the big bang. We explore the history of the creation of our universe, so the big bang becomes real. But only because we investigate. Another example: There are subatomic particles as far as we are willing to look. We create them. Consciousness writes reality, in any direction it looks—past, future, big, small. Wherever we look we find reality forming in response.”
“Why?”
“Ah, why. This is my life’s work, Mr. Engstrand. I think there is a principle of conservation of reality. Reality is unwilling to fully exist without an observer. It can’t be bothered. Why should it?”
“I can relate to that,” I said.
“So, it’s no simple thing, then, the creation of a universe. If consciousness is required to confirm the new reality, you have to provide the consciousness too. You can’t make just a whole new universe full of reality, without making the commitment to look at it. You’ve done only half the job. That, my dear fellow, was Soft’s mistake.”
“Lack, you mean.”
“Lack. My theory is the first good explanation for Lack. Listen. Soft creates a new universe, of potential reality. But no intelligence to fill it up. Fine, it collapses into nonreality. Perhaps someday consciousness will evolve, like here, and it will become real. A long slow road.”
“Every universe has to wait for observers to evolve, you’re saying.”
“That’s right. Except for Soft’s. Soft’s had a shortcut. Because it was created in Soft’s lab. It is attached, it finds out, to a gigantic reservoir of nearby consciousness. Us. It thinks, I could exist if I hold on to this, you see? So it refuses to part with the mother universe. It is drawn to us, moth-to-flame-like. That is why it would not detach. That is how Lack was formed.”
“So Lack is hungry for meaning. Awareness. It’s his only hope.”
“You could say that. He could wait for evolution, but that is a long time. Some more?” He pointed at his empty glass.
I looked down. My glass was empty too. Braxia took them and went into the kitchen. In another minute he was back with more.
“But what about the effects?” I said. “Lack’s personality. His choosiness.”
“Ah.” He smiled into his glass.
“What do you mean, ah?”
“I lied to you just now, my dear fellow.”
“Lied?”
“I did not forget about your friend Alice. She is central to my problems. She is the reason I have to pack up my team and—” He moved his arms, imitating airplane takeoff.
“What do you mean?” Was he about to reveal his own love for Alice? A passion that was driving him from the continent?
“It is hard to explain. Another theory.”
“Tell me.”
“Lack, in his hunger for consciousness, grabbed on too strong to one that was near by. Professor Alice, I think, was the one. Lack borrows her opinions and tastes. They make him imbalanced.”
“What?”
He sighed and closed his eyes, as if he had to remember to be patient with me. “You see, Lack should be impartially hungry. But no. Instead he is making his stupid selections. Based on Professor Coombs, I think. Very unfortunate.”