Dinner With Andrei
-
Upload
joshua-allen -
Category
Documents
-
view
213 -
download
0
Transcript of Dinner With Andrei
-
8/14/2019 Dinner With Andrei
1/23
Dinner with Andrei
by Joshua Allen
My stomach twisted a little when I saw Andrei enter the
restaurant. I had been hoping, quite to my own embarrassment,
frankly, that he would not show up. He'd been acting erratically
even before his sabbatical, and just my brief run-in with him
the previous morning set me on edge. He'd approached me out of
the blue. I hadn't even known he was back in town. His clothes
were unkempt. His hair frolicked aimlessly on his head. His
wedding ring was gone. I hardly recognized the unkempt beast
before me. But I had been fighting with Kitty over money lately,
and damned if I didn't need a break, however weird, so I agreed
to meet him.
I didn't rise as he made his way toward the table. He was
clean now, at least. I rose to shake his hand at the last
possible second. Before he even opened his mouth, I wished I had
just called Kitty and apologized for our stupid fight. It was my
fault, anyway. I had only been too selfish to admit it. She's
usually right, and I mean that sincerely. For some reason in
private quarters I turn into a selfish child. Too late for what
if 's now, Andrei opened his mouth and spoke, his voice sounding
more baritone than I remembered, as though it had become as
tanned as his leather face.
-
8/14/2019 Dinner With Andrei
2/23
Weirdest of all was his accent. Always before it had had a
hint of his native Russia. Now it was almost British. Just an
inflection here and there, probably not noticeable to anyone but
me, who grew up hearing it in my English-transplanted-to-Canada
household.
We exchanged pleasantries and the usual catch-up stuff. I
was happy when he opened the menu and took the focus of his eyes
off me. They looked tanned too. My old friend made me
uncomfortable for reasons I couldn't understand. I thought my
discomfort must have just been the long stretch of time that had
passed since our last meeting. He ordered briskly. I stuttered
something out.
He turned his eyes back to me.
"Do you think that everything has a rational explanation,
even if that explanation is beyond the usual?"
I smiled politely. Bee-oond he had said, in that slow, drawn
out way of the English. Or was it my imagination? I felt a
violation, I was the one with the English accent. Here in Iowa,
that set me apart, gave me a sense of identity amidst the masses.
I searched his face for some trace of derision, but found
none. The waiter appeared before I could compose an answer,
bearing wine. I was thankful. The wine poured, I said, "Yes, in
answer to your question. I think that is a fundamental belief
Allen - Dinner - 2
-
8/14/2019 Dinner With Andrei
3/23
that all scientists must have. I must believe in natural
explanations. Eliminate the impossible and so forth."
Andrei considered my answer. I sensed now a hesitation. I
had the strangest premonition that he was about to tell me he
had joined a cult.
"I started having nightmares about five years ago, Robert.
Really vivid stuff. But you know how most times you get
nightmares and then later you can't remember what was so
terrifying about blue cows in the first place."
I inserted a smile when I caught him looking at me. To be
honest, I have never had a so-called vivid dream; though of
course as an educated man, I knew of them. However, I was always
most mentally active while awake.
He paused so long, collecting his thoughts that the food
arrived. I hoped that whatever else he had to say could wait
until after the meal. I ordered the lobster bisque with
something like rolls and vegetables on the side. He ordered
something I couldn't identify, noodles perhaps, and definitely
some beef. The restaurant apparently was fond of fresh fruit.
There was a basket of it in the middle of the table.
I turned the first spoonful of my bisque mouthbound, and he
spoke again. "I left Yelena when the dreams started to get
especially vivid."
Allen - Dinner - 3
-
8/14/2019 Dinner With Andrei
4/23
"You left your wife?" Normally I'm unflappable. But I nearly
shouted this question across the table. I instantly lowered my
voice and pressed on. "When did this happen?"
"Two years ago."
I flinched. Had I crawled up under a hole? I realized I
hadn't seen her at any functions, and not just since Andrei had
gone on sabbatical, but long before that. I could only shake my
head at my own solipsism. I get so caught up in my goddamn work.
"No one noticed, Robert. Don't feel down."
"Listen, if you had only talked to me..."
Andrei downed half a glass of thick red wine. "I don't want
you to trouble yourself about it. Please. I only tell you now in
passing. It was the dreams, you know? The dreams made life
unbearable."
"Explain." I said this because I wanted to know how. I
wanted to know why. In that moment, I realized I was and had
been considering leaving Kitty.
"I would wake up unable to shake them. They grew to be more
vivid awake than asleep. I yearned to return to slumber so they
would quit torturing me. Do you see my meaning?"
"I think so." I took a bite of food, digesting words and
sustenance simultaneously. I thought about Kitty. Sometimes, I
Allen - Dinner - 4
-
8/14/2019 Dinner With Andrei
5/23
dreaded going home. Knowing I had gone wrong again, that I was
probably in for another fight about one thing or another.
"Was it the same dream over and over?" I asked.
"It was different dreams. But even though they were
different, there was one commonality with a repeated dream, each
night the dreams got more and more clear, as though they were
all building toward something I couldn't identify."
It was a lot to take in all at once. I was stunned, but
hungry. So I ate. "What were these dreams? What would make you
leave Yelena?"
He reacted to this. I could tell I'd upset him. I could see
on his face that he hadn't really wanted to talk about Yelena at
all. "Maybe saying I left her was too strong. It wasn't out of
malice or spite or anything--not the usual man-woman bullshit."
I laughed as though I were in on the joke.
"Surely you get that? I simply was making more time alone
than together with her. We didn't really talk about it. Maybe I
messed up in that regard. I didn't mean to leave her, I'm trying
to say"
"You still love her?"
"No." He ate. "She probably thought it was the work putting
distance between us."
Allen - Dinner - 5
-
8/14/2019 Dinner With Andrei
6/23
Yes, the work. Kitty likes to say that when I am there,
there is no getting to me, except to incur my wrath for
trespassing. That's why so many famous scientists have horrible
numerous and failed marriages. The business of things smaller
than an atom has a way of possessing you, filling up the space
in your brain billions of times more than its size should allow.
"I moved into a hotel. I was living there even before my
sabbatical." I could tell I had distracted him, asking about
Yelena. It was just such a shock. "She divorced me at some point
when I was away." Another shock. My spoon splashed into my
bisque, sending cream down my tie.
Divorce.
Such an ugly word. Unbearable, really, and tedious.
I decided to try to redirect. Get him talking about the
subject at hand. Thinking of it made me think of Kitty, and that
only depressed me. "You still haven't told me what your dreams
were," I said.
"Robert, the MBA." A little running joke. I earned the
epithet because of my reputation of getting down to business.
"Yes. The dreams." He ate his food and peered at me. "They were
vivid," he began. "They were of a very specific topic."
"The same topic?" I asked.
"Always. I was seeing the birth of our universe."
Allen - Dinner - 6
-
8/14/2019 Dinner With Andrei
7/23
The language of this statement was what struck me as off at
first. Our universe. We had always ever talked about the birth
of the universe. Otherwise, I couldn't figure out what he meant.
Between the two of us, we combined for more than 50 years
studying that singular event: the birth of the universe, the Big
Bang, high-energy physics, the Theory of Everything. Why should
it be surprising that this would have infected his dreams? I
picked through this mystery, and he let me have my moments of
silence.
"I know. Birth of our universe. Doesn't seem so unusual to
you. But I was seeing it more vividly than we had ever seen it
in the lab, Oppy. I mean, I was seeing the zero point, the point
where it all began, the point we've been trying to reach for our
entire careers. And I was seeing more. The negative-one point,
the stuff leading up. There was stuff leading up, you see."
A controversial theory and a philosophical point. Could
there be anything before there was anything? We had always
avoided the question before.
"At first I thought it was work. I thought my brain was
finally doing what we could never do in the lab. I thought I was
finally putting the pieces together."
"But you weren't?" I ate slowly now.
Allen - Dinner - 7
-
8/14/2019 Dinner With Andrei
8/23
"It was all wrong, you see. Particles were there that
shouldn't be. Smaller things. Smaller and smaller...but...."
"What, Andrei? What was it?"
"Consciousness. Those things I saw had intention."
I put my fork down, my appetite gone. "Did you get yourself
checked by a psychiatrist."
"No."
"Come off it, then, Andrei. You left Yelena for some fantasy
dream?" I was deliberate in bringing her up again, meaning to
sting him.
"I can't explain it, Oppy. I knew what I was seeing was
consciousness. And at the same time, I knew it wasn't real, that
it was dream knowledge, analogous to fearing that purple cow in
a nightmare. It only made sense asleep. At first."
"Then your dreams were more vivid when you were awake."
Andrei nodded. "I started to go mad, Oppy. There, I said
it."
"Look, Andrei. So you went away to a convalescent home? The
mystery is solved then. I'm sorry for your pain, Andrei." I
looked for the waiter. Had he gone home for the day? "At least
you're feeling better now."
"I still believe my dreams were true."
Allen - Dinner - 8
-
8/14/2019 Dinner With Andrei
9/23
I leaned back, sighing. The waiter had apparently slipped
through a wormhole in one of the fresh-baked deserts the
restaurant was famous for.
"OK, let's back up. You're right. I did try to convalesce,
but you know how I feel about psychiatry. I went to England to
recuperate on my own."
"It didn't work?"
He shook his head. "Things only grew more strange. I rented
a flat in London, seemingly at random. But the next thing I knew
I had three neighbors, all physicists. Older men, mostly, like
me. You know them, but I don't want to tell you who they are.
They have their own privacy. It's not my prerogative to drag
their names through the mud."
"So what? It's not unusual for scientists to cluster. Lord
knows we've seen it. I mean, you were probably near the
university, am I right?"
"No. What's more, none of these physicists were English. One
was German. Two Americans. A Swede joined the cabal before too
long. We all noticed each other, recognized each other from
conferences et cetera, but we didn't speak. The next thing I
knew, there were more than a dozen of us in the building."
This was perplexing. At first I thought that someone would
notice that the building next door was chock full of famous
Allen - Dinner - 9
-
8/14/2019 Dinner With Andrei
10/23
scientists, but then I realized how foolish I was being. What
average person on the street knew us or our faces? Maybe you'd
find a few for whom our names would ring a vague bell, one or
two average Joes might even be able to pinpoint a scientist by
name alone, but who among them would recognize our faces? None
of us is Brian Greene, that's for sure. So, yes, it was entirely
possible that such a strange occurrence could have gone
unnoticed."
"Surely you weren't all able to stay silent too long. You
must have talked shop."
"Eventually. Eventually we did talk, yes. But not shop..."
It took me a moment to get what he was saying. "You don't
mean?"
"Yes. Once one of us--I don't remember who--started the
conversation, it opened the gates. Word spread quickly through
the building. We realized that we were all having the same
dream. All of us. We began to meet and do what we do: map out
the details, hypothesize."
I had no response. The waiter appeared and I shooed him off.
"It was frightening," Andrei said. "None of us understood or
liked what we were seeing or this shared vision. We thought--as
you must be thinking now--that it violated what we believed,
everything we stood for as scientists."
Allen - Dinner - 10
-
8/14/2019 Dinner With Andrei
11/23
"Gods, you mean?" I asked.
He frowned. "I suppose. Gods maybe. Almost infinitely small
ones. But these were no mythical creatures from ancient books.
The high energy had created them as surely as our prehistoric
soup created us--or the things that eventually evolved into us.
The point is that whatever these bits of consciousness were, we
were capable of understanding them, or at least forming
hypotheses. We were consumed, all of us, with the same thing we
had always been consumed with. A will to understand. I mean,
what could live in such a vacuum, in such an inhospitable
environment. What role had those things played in how the
universe came out?"
"It would be interesting to learn about such a thing, if it
existed. But Andrei, you are scientists. How could you have
possibly proceeded based purely on dreams?" I asked.
"Well, of course it was the fact of the shared dream. The
details that were so alike. This is what got us thinking there
was more than just dream. I make us sound so rational. Truth is,
for the first three months, all any of us felt was fear."
"I can well imagine," I said.
"Just as you suspect, we thought we must be suffering from
mass hysteria. We were terrified of word getting out. Of our
careers being ended by this simple fact of a shared dream. From
Allen - Dinner - 11
-
8/14/2019 Dinner With Andrei
12/23
fear, of course, came worship," Andrei said, stopping to wet his
mouth.
I nodded as though I understood, though my stomach told me I
didn't understand, didn't like it.
"We started doing the things penitents do. We prayed, in a
way. We called it trying to establish communication , but in
retrospect, it wasn't much different from prayer. We tried to
direct our dreams, to interact. This led to different forms of
revelry. There were elaborate orgies, drugs, whatever we could
think of. We needed to test these dreams, as you said. And how
do you test a dream?"
I had no suggestions. They were all clearly mad. Why not add
sex and drugs to the mix? Madness was easier to take high and in
the midst of coitus; ask any artist.
"That went on for a while. Too long, admittedly. With shame
I admit, too, that it wasn't me that ended it. I wish it had
been. No, it was another man who finally stepped up and bade us
all to stop. We did. We stopped and listened because we were
afraid and finally someone had a theory."
"What was his theory?"
"The dream, he said, wasn't an event. This wasn't something
we could influence or manipulate. The Originators, he called
them, couldn't be influenced. They had already done their work.
Allen - Dinner - 12
-
8/14/2019 Dinner With Andrei
13/23
We were a byproduct of that work, nothing more--as we have
always known we were. Byproducts of the natural processes of the
universe.
"No, what we were receiving, he postulated, was a
transmission. This was a cinema. But the real ground breaker
took another week of quiet discussion to form. This time it was
I who put it into words," Andrei sound with quiet pride. "What
if we were only receiving a small bit of that transmission."
"A transmission must have a source," I said, acting bored,
unable to admit to myself that I was interested in hearing this
through. The check came. We ignored it.
"That's right, Robert. A transmitter. And we wanted to hear
the message. We decided we wanted to try to receive the entire
thing."
"But how?"
"How is a good question. We didn't know. We did what you or
any of our colleagues would have done. We simply started to
systematically try anything that seemed reasonable. What else do
you do when you have a hypothesis you must test and no obvious
test?"
I mulled this over. I could see the truth of this. We poked
and prodded, sometimes for years, before we figured out what the
right approach was to solving a particular problem. Asking the
Allen - Dinner - 13
-
8/14/2019 Dinner With Andrei
14/23
right question was always the first step, but the rest of it was
Edison's 99% perspiration. "So what worked?"
"Well, what we tried was first born from our orgies,
embarrassingly enough. I mean, we are human beings, rutting apes
with slightly enlarged brains--sometimes I think maybe too
large. So we tried to open ourselves to dreams. We thought maybe
our revelry was in fact the start of our receiving
transmissions. But it didn't work and we grew tired of the
antics. So we tried stupid stuff. Science fiction book stuff. We
made tinfoil hats. We constructed a giant antenna with wire
veins going into each room and held the wires as we slept. Other
things. Plays. We acted out the drama, trying to become human
Ouija boards or something. I don't even want to tell you half
the stupid stuff we tried. I mean, you'd laugh if you looked at
some of Edison's early sketches, I bet."
I let the pause in the conversation stretch, looking for
some glimmer in Andrei's eye, but saw nothing. "So what worked?
Surely you wouldn't be here talking to me if you didn't know.
You'd be there trying to figure it out even to this day."
"Your suspicion is correct." Andrei leaned back. He looked
at the check and laid a credit card inside the leather case.
"You know what's funny? It ended up being closely related to
something we tried early on. One of the first things we did was
Allen - Dinner - 14
-
8/14/2019 Dinner With Andrei
15/23
construct an antenna. Well, we had the right idea, but we should
have suspected then that a hunk of metal wires wasn't the
answer. You see, we were the antennae. It wasn't the proper
alignment of metal bars that would receive the transmission
fully, but a proper alignment of us."
"I'm having an image of a hundred scientists on the roof of
a building laying all crisscross in geometric shapes."
"No, not at all. It was the orgies, of course. We were
having social problems. Jealousy, rage, people switching
alliances. Constant movement. And one day the dreams simply
started to intensify. We saw answers in these new versions of
the dream, Oppy. Amazing things about the origin, the Big Bang.
I know, just from those glimpses, infinitely more than I ever
did before.
"We all felt it as soon as it happened. Immediately, we
isolated the various projects made minute adjustments to each
and tried to figure out by elimination which one was causing the
change. But none of the various experiments seemed to be the
solution. I broke the code, however. I suggested we let our
control up, to see what factors varied. Within a day or two, we
noticed more intensity in the dreams. Then it hit me that it
wasn't the projects, but the movement of people. We had stopped
moving around so much to focus our attention on our projects. As
Allen - Dinner - 15
-
8/14/2019 Dinner With Andrei
16/23
soon as we started up again, the transmission strengthened. I
suggested what we needed was an optimal configuration."
"Within the building, you mean. Within the building there
had to be the proper configuration of people." I wanted to
understand, for pure curiosity's sake if nothing else.
"Precisely, Robert. It was three-dimensional. We
experimented with different static arrangements and got lots of
positive results. Then it was another man--the one we thought of
as Leader, the one I told you about earlier--who wanted us to
try having people in motion while others slept. That was the
key. It took a long time to get to that point, but once we were
there, it was simply a matter of combinatorics, trying different
movements and configurations until we found the one that worked
best. When we made a right move, we all knew it right away. More
details. We witnessed the explosion, the energy, the everything
as it exploded into what we know. We could see the beautiful
motion of the strings."
"String theory! I knew it as true!"
Andrei laughed. "Only the beginning, Oppy. A little tiny tip
to a very, very deep iceberg. We were all excited. We wrote our
findings during the day and tuned them in at night, sleeping and
adjusting in shifts. The ones who hadn't gotten to sleep would
read the findings the next day and would be ready for their
Allen - Dinner - 16
-
8/14/2019 Dinner With Andrei
17/23
shift that night. Then we found the perfect configuration and
there was a...I don't know what to call it. A paradigm shift. A
blue shift. Red to blue, just like the beginning of the end. We
received the message in full. All of us, at once. Awake and
asleep."
"And it made an impression," I asked.
"It was beyond anything we could have expected."
He stopped talking. He merely looked over his food.
"...and?" I asked. I was leaning forward now. Caught up in
the drama of the hunt, if slightly bemused by the revelation.
Science wasn't revelations and epiphanies, it was a slow grind
toward truth. What Andrei had was a religious experience. I
wondered if he would tell more people. If so, his career would
be over.
Andrei rubbed his chin and sighed. "I can't tell you,
Robert."
"Of course not," I said. "that's how religions work, right?
You must hold the magic words to have access to the secret
knowledge. "
Andrei picked up a fork and picked at his food, which had
started to stale, virtually untouched. He put some in his mouth.
He stabbed another wad with his fork and offered it to me.
"Taste."
Allen - Dinner - 17
-
8/14/2019 Dinner With Andrei
18/23
I flinched, disturbed by this sudden change in disposition.
"What?"
"I can't tell you, but you can know," Andrei said.
"Stop messing around. Was this a joke from the start?" I
demanded.
Andrei turned the fork toward himself after a moment. He ate
the food. He stared at me, eyes fixed. He didn't blink. My heart
stopped and my hands turned cold.
His eyes had changed color.
They were still a kind of blue, as they had always been
(Christ, how I had fallen into something like love when I had
first peered into those strong blue Russian eyes), but a
different king of blue completely. Gone was the pupil, gone the
white sclera, a blue light shined there now. Shined under its
own illumination as vividly, but distantly, as a deep blue star.
The color modulated and fluxed within the eye socket, like the
surface of the sea.
Andrei picked up a load of food with his fork. He offered it
to me.
"Eat, Robert," he whispered.
I pushed my chair away from the table.
Now I could see the fork was starting to glow blue as well,
very faintly, like the surface of skim milk. Then the fork began
Allen - Dinner - 18
-
8/14/2019 Dinner With Andrei
19/23
to vibrate and shake in his hand. The tines of the fork curled
down, flattening, drooping. It was turning to a liquid. I looked
around desperately, but no one else seemed to notice what was
happening. Could they see it, or was this my own insanity?
"Eat," he said between clenched teeth.
I couldn't. Nor did I dare to push his hand away or touch
the fork. "Tell me what this is, Andrei."
He opened his lips. Blue lights slipped out, almost an
apology of light. I don't know what the thing was across from
me, but my friend Andrei was gone. Long gone.
"We were wrong, Oppy, to think the message was coming
from"--he made a gesture--"out there."
The voice was no longer Andrei's. It was not human, or
specifically, it was not a single human, but many all at once.
"They're here, Oppy. They have always been here. We have
always been here. Eat." He moved the fork my direction, slowly.
Insistently.
I ran. Jesus, I could have won an Olympic event that day. I
ran and ran until I got home. Kitty was gone. Apparently, she'd
decided to take a night off of me, as I had done from her. Or
had she simply grown bored waiting for me? Perhaps she was
having an affair. I wouldn't blame her. For a little while, I
sat in my living room alone, thinking I was safe.
Allen - Dinner - 19
-
8/14/2019 Dinner With Andrei
20/23
A few hours passed and I started seeing strange things out
the window. Movement I couldn't explain. I would see things and
look and nothing would be there. I would fix on a spot, but the
movement seemed always to find a way to avoid my gaze, like a
shy liquid, a xenophobic shadow. There were things there. The
shadows were tinged in blue.
My house wasn't safe. How could it be? Andrei knew where I
lived. How many times had he and Yelena been here for supper? I
left, without waiting for Kitty to come back. I left and drove
away until I found a secluded motel. Kitty would be fine, I
reasoned. It was me they wanted. For whatever reason. For their
cult I guess.
It seemed to work too. The movements stopped. I didn't dare
call Kitty. I didn't want to know if they had already gotten to
her. I had a paranoid vision of Kitty and Yelena sharing supper
at the same time Andrei and I had. Perhaps in the same
restaurant, even. In my mind, Kitty would not be able to resist
the food when it was offered. She would eat. She was so damn
weak. I pushed that thought aside. It was paranoia, nothing
more. Still, they could follow her. I didn't want her to
inadvertently lead them to me. So I stayed here, all but
disappearing.
Allen - Dinner - 20
-
8/14/2019 Dinner With Andrei
21/23
The news, to my surprise, actually covered the disappearance
of my colleagues. Not Andrei. He was never mentioned and might
as well have never existed. But the others. After I hid out they
started disappearing all over the country. All over the globe.
Hundreds of scientists. First the physicists, then chemists,
astronomers, doctors, all of them. Going no one knew where.
Abandoning home and families for what? No one could explain
it. I was mentioned on two newscasts, but not on the other three
that I followed during that time. I hoped Kitty knew that I was
safe. I hoped she figured out I had gone into hiding. I hoped
she knew that I wasn't a part of whatever it was happening. I
hoped she was telling the news people that I was not a part of
any insanity such as this and that was why my name refused to
appear on those three stations.
Then, yesterday, I saw her name appear on the list. Missing
for three months, they said. Dating back to the day I holed up
in this motel. No mention of the fact that she was a mere
science teacher on a list of renowned scientists. It didn't seem
to matter. Strangely enough, I was not on the list with my wife.
I still can't figure that out. Maybe it's a message to me. Maybe
it's their way of telling me that they are still after me, and
that they will find me.
Allen - Dinner - 21
-
8/14/2019 Dinner With Andrei
22/23
I sleep often. Every night since my dinner with Andrei, I
sleep. I am trying to dream, I think. I don't know what I am
trying to dream. Maybe I want to dream another dream, a dream of
something out there , as Andrei had said. Something out there
that could come here and save us. Maybe if I dreamed hard enough
I could bring in the antidote to the blue shift, the liquid blue
light I'd seen in Andrei's eyes.
Soon, I will have a dream, but not the one I want. It will
be their dream. They will come and take me and I will dream
their dream and never wake up. The transmission will be
complete. Message received, Captain.
But by the time I finish the dream, I will be gone. Sucked
away.
That's my theory. This was no dream, but a virus of the
mind. What I saw in that restaurant wasn't my friend Andrei, but
something else that had devoured him from the inside out,
destroying the clicks and buzzes inside him that had once made
him simple old Andrei, a guy who liked to drink too much at
company parties and who one time propositioned me in a bathroom.
Meat and bones and animal Andrei. Something had eaten him and
was walking around in his skin.
I don't know, but I know my time is running out. I will put
my pen down now and take these pills. I hope that when I fall
Allen - Dinner - 22
-
8/14/2019 Dinner With Andrei
23/23
asleep, I have a vivid dream, unlike every other night. I want
that dream. That good, red dream that counters the liquid blue.
It will be my one last dream. Our one last hope. But I'm afraid,
because lately when I close my eyes, all I see is blackness.
Blackness tinged with blue.
THE END