But I do now.
JOURNEY
THIRTY
Larry Adams had always known he was special. When he was eight years old, during one of his father’s nightly visits, he asked:
“Daddy, what is dark?”
His father, distracted, hadn’t answered. But when Larry asked again later, he was given this uninspired observation:
“Dark is the absence of light.”
And that was true, anyone could say so, but it wasn’t really an answer. You could see dark in outer space, too. Was the dark between planets and stars the same as the dark in his bedroom, late at night, when his father turned off the night light and shut the drapes? Was dark the absence of anything? That couldn’t be right, because even when his room was completely dark, the dresser was still there, the bed was still there, his father was still there. His hands could feel in the dark. His ears could hear. What if dark to your eyes was the same as silence to your ears?
In high school physics he finally learned the answer, or the beginning of the answer. Light and dark weren’t just about seeing or not seeing. Light itself was made of stuff, of particles called photons, and the way you saw an object was to bounce photons off it in order to ricochet some of them into your eyes. And the crazy thing was, all the photons that didn’t travel directly into your eyes were invisible. Invisible! They flew right past your nose at the speed of, you know, light, but unless they struck your retina they might as well be dark.
That was it. Larry was hooked. And though math had never been his favorite subject, he immersed himself in standard calculus and tensor calculus and differential equations and differential geometry. In vector spaces and function spaces and Fourier analysis. Partly because he couldn’t get answers to big questions without mastering the proper tool set, and partly because losing himself in the labyrinth of mathematics helped him forget the social failures of high school. Helped him forget Jillian’s cruelty, forget how the other high school starlets ignored him, how they looked upon him the way Larry might look upon an ant. Eventually he moved on to higher education, to important work at Fermilab and the NTSSC, and he almost never thought about Jillian’s 10th grade note, which Larry had opened with such hope but instead left him shattered. Stop staring at me all the time. My boyfriend says you are a FUCKFACE. PS. Don’t W/B!
But during his last weeks in Olney, when stress and alcohol had gotten the better of him, Jillian’s note was all Larry could think about. He lost his grip on reality and sent those terrible messages to the news anchor. He resented celebrity, the idea that certain, lucky people were elevated to royalty for nothing more than an accident of genetics. None of them seemed to understand that he was special, that if anyone should be considered royalty, it was him.
After the supercollider was destroyed he fled to California, specifically Barstow, where he installed himself in a cheap hotel room and waited for law enforcement to come calling. But law enforcement never arrived. Eventually Larry found his way to L.A., where he frequented hotel bars like the Andaz and the Marquis and Chateau Marmont, hoping to meet a beautiful actress, a real-world starlet. That never happened, but one fateful afternoon he found himself in a conversation with Lynda Obst, a powerful producer who hired him not once but three times to offer advice on high-budget science thrillers. On the sets of these films he was sometimes within shouting distance of female leads like Natalie Portman and Emma Stone and Jennifer Lawrence, which on its face was a dream come true, but in practice was profoundly disappointing. Because the actors never spoke to him and the directors never listened to him. No one listened to him. Even Ms. Obst, who respected his technical expertise, picked dramatic license over scientific accuracy every time. Larry couldn’t understand what was so boring about reality. Reality was spectacular and mesmerizing and, he believed, a story worth telling. The double-helix structure of DNA, the core code of life on earth, was by itself more fascinating than anything Hollywood could produce. But no one seemed to care.
He would have quit after the Obst films if the money wasn’t so good. Instead, he began “advising” for other producers, and when he wasn’t working he drove up and down Sunset in his convertible Bimmer, until one day the last fleck of glitter fell away and suddenly he was sick of L.A. Sick of everyone preening, of looking for just the right angle, sick of ground-floor celebrities soaking up Instagram likes and retweets of their clever turns of phrase while cobwebs gathered on Larry’s own Twitter feed. He returned to Texas, built himself a large house on a lake, and pretended to consult for a fictional German manufacturer. But there was no work. Just the slow, measured descent of a man who discovered that his wildest dreams were less rewarding than whatever darkness lived at the bottom of a bottle of scotch.
But the supernova had made things interesting again. Now, all the shallow people who over the years had wronged him were going to die. For that matter, Larry himself would probably die, which would have been fine if not for the miraculous appearance of Skylar Stover in the house next door. The idea that Thomas Phillips, of all people, was holding court with such a lovely woman was enough to drive Larry bonkers. Even worse, when he dropped by to say hello, Thomas wouldn’t let him through the door.
Larry was not a superstitious man, but he didn’t see how Skylar’s appearance could be a coincidence. It had to have been arranged. Sometimes he imagined a great wheel in the sky, as if the universe was a game of roulette that turned and turned until one day the ball landed on you. Larry had been waiting all his life for a chance to win. He wondered if today was finally that day.
On Monday night, after Thomas refused to let him in, Larry had walked home and poured himself a stiff scotch. He simmered in failure and looked for Skylar in old celebrity magazines and masturbated furiously. The next morning he was awakened by a headache so powerful it rang like a bell between his ears. He made more instant pancakes and saturated them with real maple syrup and downed a breakfast shot of Bailey’s. He sat on his back porch and stared at the green water of his swimming pool. He wondered about the plan Blaise had proposed. It was a long walk, fraught with danger, but what other choice did he have?
Larry imagined himself on the road, strolling beside Skylar. Their arms, beaded with sweat, sometimes brushed against each other, electrifying him, electrifying her. He realized he was getting hard again and went inside to relieve the pressure. Afterward he inspected the empty shelves of his pantry and finally his mind was made up.
Even so, it took several more hours and fingers of scotch before he summoned the nerve to walk down the street and talk to Matt Bernhardt. Matt was a thick-headed redneck who already had canvassed the neighborhood looking for food, and who resented the success of others. He had been sitting in his back yard, tending to a bed of coals, cooking something that looked like a dog (but couldn’t possibly be a dog). When he heard about Skylar and the family Thomas was hosting, Matt replied by clapping Larry on the shoulder and smiling a ghoulish smile.
“You done good, Professor. Want to come along when we liquidate his stock?”
Larry had shaken his head violently. Just because he despised Thomas didn’t mean he wanted to physically steal from him.
“No problem at all,” said Matt amiably. “Me and my men will go in after midnight. Feel free to stop here in the morning for breakfast, assuming there’s as much food as you say.”
Matt noticed Larry looking at the fire.