Indeterminate State Read online

INDETERMINATE STATE

  By Keith Gapinski

  Copyright 2011 Keith Gapinski

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  This book is a work of fiction and any resemblance to persons, living or dead, or places, events or locales is purely coincidental. The characters are productions of the author’s imagination and used fictitiously.

  *****

  Victor trailed Morgan up the subway stairs into the miserable curtain of chilly rain currently pelting the coffee shops and wine bars of the east village. Morgan looked back at him and she shrugged with an awkward smile about the rain. She pulled the flaps of her coat collar tight.

  “Come on!” She plunged off down the street. Victor plodded along behind, hunched and bundled in his trench coat, cursing to himself and sniffling.

  Morgan paused in front of a donut shop, staring at a banner strung across a fire escape above it. “Psychic Readings” it declared in large, friendly letters, followed by a phone number and surrounded by a motley collage of what were evidently mystic symbols.

  “I guess everyone needs good marketing,” Victor quipped.

  Morgan struggled to laugh, winded from the brisk walk through the rain. “Is it working on you?”

  Victor shook his head. “Not the sign, but the donuts,” he took an exaggerated breath of the warm caramel air. He nodded towards the shop. “We could get donuts, instead.”

  Morgan sniffed at the donut shop. “We had donuts at the lab this morning. Besides, this is supposed to be a voyage of discovery, not dunking.”

  “Discovery usually involves rigorous experimentation in a controlled environment, not traipsing through the rain halfway across town to some crazy psychic thing.”

  “I thought you wanted to come?”

  “You made me promise I’d come with you in exchange for finishing up those metallurgy reports for the board. Where a looming deadline with the board is concerned, I will promise anything to anyone.”

  Morgan frowned at him. She considered him with the narrowed eyes that always made Victor feel like she was scanning him, like some experiment where she had expected the least likely result, and was instead disappointed yet again by the well-documented conclusion staring up at her from the petri dish.

  Her eyes softened. “I suppose I should be happy to have someone come with me. Otherwise I’d be at home with a quart of pumpkin ice cream right now.”

  “Pumpkin?” It was Victor’s turn to make a face.

  “It’s a Halloween, thing,” she said, leading him into the hallway of the apartment building. She puzzled out the correct bell and rang it. “My mom used to make it fresh, back in Connecticut.”

  They were buzzed in to a fashionably white deco hallway, with a laser-printed sign taped to the bannister that read “Séance, 2nd floor”.

  “So, ever been to a séance before?” Victor asked as they climbed the stairs. “Is it a Halloween thing, too? You and your family, gathered around the Ouija board? Maybe some extra little plates of pumpkin ice cream for whatever undead show up?”

  Morgan paused and looked back at him. “I’ve never heard you jabber so much. Are you scared, Victor?”

  “No,” he said. “Just curious what you see in this phony baloney. I mean, as a scientist.”

  “You know, nothing in physics actually precludes these things being true,” Morgan said.

  Victor huffed loudly.

  She turned at the top of the stairs to face him. “I tell you what, if it’s all a big, obvious fake, I’ll buy you donuts afterwards. But…if a big scary ghost comes out,” she put her hand on his shoulder in mock reassurance, “I’ll protect you.” She winked at him.

  He looked up at her, frustrated with his own discomfort. “You realize that because you dragged me out here, the world is just that much farther from better non-stick cookware and satellite radio?”

  Morgan laughed, but paused when Victor didn’t smile back. She shook her head, “I just don’t know about you. Sometimes I think you’re composed of atoms of pure sarcasm.”

  “It helps me get out of bed every day.”

  “Keep the fires of irony burning if it will get you through the evening. You’ll thank me, eventually, for getting you out of the lab for once. You’ll get gout or something, if you just keep going from bed to lab bench.”

  She turned and knocked on the door to the apartment.

  “Or change my name to Von Doom and start creating a death ray?”

  “That would be funny if it wasn’t almost true.”

  Suddenly, the door to the apartment behind Morgan flew open, releasing a curvy Hispanic woman in a hurricane of squeals, patchouli, and floating bits of crinoline.

  “Welcome, welcome, welcome!” she sang to Morgan, then she paused, and her eyes narrowed as she focused past Morgan at Victor.

  “Victor?” The woman squealed as she brushed past Morgan and smothered Victor in a hug. “Victor! It is you! It’s been so long!” She gave Victor a huge kiss on the cheek and a long smiling look.

  Victor felt a quick shot of panic, followed by a jolt of recognition as he looked down into the woman’s stunning blue eyes. “Rosa?”

  “What, a few pounds and you don’t recognize me?”

  Rosa’s eyes were bright blue, sparkling against the deep rosewood of her skin. They were unreal, like the painted eyes of a doll, and they were hard to look away from. Rosa hadn’t changed a bit in the years since Victor had seen her. Short and voluptuous, she seemed to spill out of the space the universe had allotted to contain her.

  “H-hi, Rosa,” Victor stuttered. He felt the pieces of a smile along with a dozen other emotions play out over his face. “Good to see you, too.”

  Morgan’s eyes were wide and questioning.

  “Rosa and I knew each other in college,” Victor said.

  “Fun times, Vic!” Rosa said, bumping her hip into Victor’s.

  “Come! Come inside you two! Let me take your coats and get you something to drink.” She shooed them both into her apartment.

  Candles flickered here and there, casting an undulating amber glow through the living room. Ten or so other attendees were scattered about the room on chairs and couches, chatting and sipping drinks. The furniture was arranged around a carpeted area in the center, spotlighted like a stage. Rosa took their coats and drink orders and bustled off through a door into another room.

  Morgan settled on an overstuffed chair near the back of the room. Victor sat behind her, on a wooden chair pressed close to the shelves that covered the walls of the apartment. He looked up at the books and knickknacks arranged haphazardly on the shelves – skulls, crystal balls, and even what appeared to be a stuffed white cat, its face locked in a demonic, yellow-eyed gaze.

  “Nice kitty,” he said with a chuckle, nodding at it to Morgan.

  He jumped when the cat pawed his ear.

  “Daphne likes to surprise people,” Rosa said, arriving with a cup of tea for Victor and a glass of wine for Morgan.

  “It really is good we got him out of the lab,” Morgan said with a tiny, impish smile. “If he can’t tell a dead cat from a live one.”

  “Schrödinger couldn’t either,” Victor said.

  “Who?” Rosa asked.

  “You’ve never heard of Schrödinger’s Cat?” Victor asked. “Where is the education system in this country going to if a professional psychic has not even a passing knowledge of important thought experiments.”

  “Was Schrö
dinger the skeleton they had to shovel out of your lab before you moved in?” Morgan asked.

  He frowned over a sip of tea.

  “I didn’t picture you for the type to own a tea set,” Victor said to Rosa. “From what I remember you were more a cheap wine kind of girl.”

  “It gives me something to read,” Rosa answered.

  Daphne hopped up into Victor’s lap. He stroked her gently as she sprawled across him, purring.

  “Victor said you knew him in college?” Morgan asked.

  “Yes, we studied at university together,” she agreed, settling on the arm of Morgan’s chair.

  “Well, I studied,” Victor corrected. “I believe you were just there for the parties.”

  Morgan persisted. “Did you meet him at a lab party, or was that before he began his pursuit of cyborg overlord status?”

  “Victor?” Rosa looked just a bit confused at Rosa’s characterization of Victor. “He was quite fun back then. Well, at least after we met. I don’t know if it was my influence on him or not.”

  “So you and Victor were…?” Morgan waggled her eyebrows.

  Victor almost spit tea everywhere. He saw Rosa do a similar double-take. She looked at him with a smile and eyebrows up in a question. He shrugged. He had no idea where Morgan would have gotten that impression.

  “Ha! No…not…no…,” Rosa started. “I would have had to go through Helen to…” she trailed off, looked at Victor suddenly.

  “Helen?” Morgan asked.

  Victor was waiting for this moment. He shrugged at Rosa, glad it had