Carlos’s lab was helpfully labeled with a simple illuminated yellow and black LAB sign and a handwritten
WE ARE “OPEN”!
sign in the front window. The door was unlocked, and led first into a small waiting room, like a doctor’s office but with fewer deadly traps. She passed through it into the lab itself.
Carlos and his team of five scientists were huddled around a table. There were rows of beakers around them, all bubbling, and a chalkboard covered in numbers and also the word science! in different fancy cursives. Some of the iterations had pink chalk hearts around them. It was much like any university-level science lab.
“Excuse me,” Jackie said.
None of the scientists noticed her. They were all writing busily on clipboards and wearing lab coats. This is called “doing an experiment.”
She walked up to see what they were experimenting on. Under some work lights was a pink plastic flamingo.
“Careful now,” Carlos was saying. “We don’t know what this or anything else does.”
The scientists nodded in unison and scribbled on their clipboards.
“We understand very little.”
More nodding, more scribbling.
“Excuse me, Carlos?” she said. He turned. There really was something blindingly handsome about him. His hair maybe. Or his demeanor. People are beautiful when they do beautiful things. Perhaps he had spent most of his life doing beautiful things and it had really stuck. He smiled. He had teeth like a military cemetery.
“Jackie, hello. I’m sorry, I was doing science.” He waved over at the flamingo. “This is all very sciency stuff. Just here is an equation,” he said, indicating some numbers on the chalkboard. “It’s important to have equations.”
“I see that. How’s Cecil?”
“Overenthusiastic, consumed with his work, has very little understanding of science. I love him a lot. The usual.”
The scientists nodded and wrote on their clipboards. All information was important information, even if the reasons were not immediately apparent. The reason for anything was rarely immediately or even eventually apparent, but it existed somewhere, like a moon that had escaped orbit and was no longer a moon but just a piece of something that once was, spinning off into the nothing. The scientists were just then writing down that very metaphor. Metaphors are a big part of science.
“I need your help, Carlos.”
“Jackie, there’s little I love more than helping people. Science and Cecil are about it. But I’m in the middle of an important experiment, and I think if we just push through we might figure out why the experiment is important. Finding out why we are doing what we already were doing is an exciting moment, and I believe we may be almost there.”
“All right, dude, but—”
“Besides, Josie asked us to look at this, and I owe her a few. More than a few. I owe her, I don’t know, a high number. I would express it as an equation, but it’s all figurative and figurative math is really tricky.”
“Carlos, look.”
She held up her left hand. The scientists all waited with pencils hovering, unsure of what observations they should be making at that moment. She did all her tricks with the slip of paper. She tossed it on the ground, tore it into pieces, flung it onto a Bunsen burner. Hell, she ate it. Why not?
Each trick ended the same way, with her holding the uncreased paper back in her left hand, where it had never really left.
Carlos dropped his clipboard.
“You too?” he said.
“Me too?”
“Let me see that.”
He took the slip of paper and examined it closely. When he let go it was back in her hand. The scientists were staring, mouths open. Their clipboards were at their sides. One of them appeared to have overloaded and shut down completely.
Carlos rushed around the lab, turning on and off burners, and throwing switches frantically. The other scientists helped the one scientist reboot.
“We start immediately,” Carlos shouted.
“Oh, good,” she shouted back. “Why are we shouting?”
Chapter 12
“Here is what we know so far. The composition of the graphite is what you would expect to find in graphite. The composition of the paper is exactly what you would expect in paper. All the parts are as we suspected, even as the whole astonishes.
“It does not appear to be physically dangerous. Mentally it exerts a hold stronger than even the fascination with its properties could explain. After all, and I speak as someone who came here for what was supposed to be only a short research fellowship with the local community college, this town is mostly made of the unexplained.
“Sorry, I’m getting distracted. Also, can you stop throwing the paper at me? I know it never actually reaches me, but it’s still unnerving, and I’m helping you out here. Thank you. I’m sorry if I snapped. It’s okay to say I did. No, it’s okay.
“King City is a small town of a little over ten thousand people in Monterey County. You can see pictures of it online. Just search any phrase at all in image search and a picture of it will always be the first result. There doesn’t appear to be anything unusual about it, any more than any other place where people live their unusual lives.
“You are not the first I’ve seen with these slips of paper. It’s not important who else. It’s important to them, but not to you. I haven’t thought much about it, so I guess not important to me either. I just assumed it was another passing strangeness that would take care of itself before Cecil even finished the broadcast day of reporting on it. But it’s been a few weeks now. And I didn’t realize the paper did that. I wonder what else it does.
“You’ve reported feeling like your life is different since getting the paper. Like you are not yourself anymore, and the past is not your past, and the future you planned is now impossible. This is a common feeling, usually felt when we first wake up or when we receive thoughts that do not seem to be our own while showering. But with that feeling sustained as long as it has been, and the start of it aligning exactly with your receiving of the paper, it is safe to say that the two are connected.
“Here, look at this equation. I have no idea what it means. It’s really long though. I’m going to add a couple more variables. Great, that looks really great. Nilanjana, please add that to the chalkboard.
“The next obvious step would be to go visit King City itself. See if all of this can be explained through simple physical proximity, or even if the slip of paper will react differently when it is proclaiming location rather than destination.
“Oh, and Nilanjana? Draw another ‘Science’ with a heart around it please. Put that next to the new equation. Thank you, Nils.
“But getting to King City is not as easy. Getting anywhere from Night Vale is a little tricky, as we have a vast desert around us and our reality does not seem to align exactly with the reality of the rest of the world, but King City is an especially difficult case.
“Look at this map. Stan, can you please put the map up on the projector? No, wrong slide. That’s the picture of a bee with a label saying ‘Blood Oath.’ That goes with the apiology project. Yes, the next three slides as well. They’re some free-writing I did about bees. That’s why they’re labeled ‘Research Notes.’
“Okay, yes, good. There’s the map. So this is a map of our region, with all roads and highways, and I want to show you all something. Let’s start here with a laser pointer and try to make our way from Night Vale to King City. Head out on Route 800 and then turn here, and merge with this— But oops, we missed it. So we go back, maybe try cutting across on this little mountain road. You believe in mountains, right? Not everyone does. Either way, we end up miles away. You see? None of the roads connect. It is like they are two entirely different road systems that seem like they should connect but never do.