Six Bits Read online

  Allie sensed the vessels in the man’s head. There was a big one in his neck right next to his windpipe!

  He suddenly started to cough. At first it was just a little; then big wracking coughs doubled him over. Her bandmates were startled to see blood on the hand he’d used to cover his mouth. He let go of Allie’s arm and she patted him on the back. “That’s a bad sounding cough. Probably ought to go to the ER and have it checked out. Especially coughing up blood like that.” Her tone fairly dripped with false concern.

  A bouncer trotted up, Joe behind him. “What’s going on?” he said with authority. Then he stepped back, looking a little apprehensively at the coughing man-mountain who’d just stood to his full height and taken a long gasping breath.

  Allie smiled up at him. “I’m not sure, but this fellow has suddenly developed a terrible cough and he’s bringing up blood. Can you help him get some medical attention? We’ve got to get back for another set.” She grabbed Joe by the elbow and tugged, “Let’s go guys.” Shaking their heads the band started back into the bar, turning occasionally to look back at the big fellow who was bent over again, hands on his knees. The coughing had cut back to an occasional wet hack. Just as they went in the door he threw up a large quantity of foul smelling bloody beer.

  The next day, Joe bought each of them a can of Mace. Allie’s was a little pink cartridge to go on a keychain. She never carried a purse, but she started carrying the Mace in the front pocket of her trademark saggy jeans.

  ***

  Despairing of understanding the port phenomenon alone, Dans had recently decided to try collaboration. He’d spent months going over the data he had from the past in light of his quantum tunneling idea. Such tunneling over a distance, aided by fields, still seemed promising, but he hadn’t been able to develop any hardware that would make it happen. He started wondering if a fresh viewpoint on his data would shake something loose.

  The question soon became, not whether, but who to collaborate with.

  The other academics in his department were too fusty to be interested. Besides, they were all specialized in their own small areas that seemed unlikely to be related to the porting phenomenon.

  People from other universities would be too far away for the kind of intense collaboration that he envisioned. Academics also would want to see the phenomenon reproduced, a first principle in science, before they would be interested. However, Randall Forst, one of Dans’ old graduate students, had established a thriving private enterprise right there in the city. As a grad student, he’d always been better at the engineering than the theory side of physics. He’d demonstrated a real talent for turning out excellent research equipment and was making a very good living doing just that. The man had a phenomenal talent for producing devices no one else had been able to concoct and had written a string of lucrative patents.

  Albert made an appointment with Forst and then spent several entire evenings going over the literature that he had accumulated that might be relevant. He wanted everything fresh in his mind for this meeting.

  ***

  “Eve of Destruction” had become an east coast phenomenon. The crowds at their gigs had gotten so big that they were now being booked into small to medium concert halls instead of the bars they’d started out in. Joe had been interviewing “managers” and they’d moved from their van into a bus.

  This morning they’d all gathered in a coffee shop to talk to one of the manager candidates. Allie came back from the restroom to find him at the table with the other band members. Immediately she thought that he didn’t fit their image. He seemed much too slick. He wasn’t wearing a suit, but looked like he was. When she sat down across from him he looked mildly startled. “Holy shit! Eva, you’re gorgeous! Why don’t you dress like this for your shows?”

  Allie glanced down at herself. She was wearing a snug midriff t-shirt, cutoffs and sandals. “Doesn’t fit our music.”

  Joe said, “Give it up Steve. Yes, she’s beautiful, but she wants us to succeed on the music, not her sex appeal.”

  “Come on! It’s hard enough to make it in this business. For God’s sake, you’ve gotta play every card you’re dealt!”

  Allie got up from the table. “Joe, let me know when you’ve got someone else for us to talk to?”

  They all watched wistfully as she walked out the door. The guy they’d been interviewing said, “Joe, you’ve got to talk some sense into her! Are you the leader of this band or what?”

  “Yeah,” he chuckled ruefully, “I’m the ‘leader,’ but I do exactly what she says, just like the rest of the guys.”

  ***

  Dans and Forst had just watched a split screen video with two views at right angles of absolutely nothing but a black background. The start of the video showed the setup of the two cameras and the black background cards and the lights. The split screen views showed the black background for 20 seconds, then, suddenly a spray of water erupted in the middle of the space, shooting upward out of nothingness. For that video Allie had opened a port from a cold water pipe in the lab to the spot at the focal point of the cameras.

  Forst’s head jerked back, eyes wide. “What just happened?”

  Dans looked at him intently, “Something like a wormhole was just opened from a vessel containing pressurized water to the viewing area. The vessel was about 15 feet from the visible opening you saw on the video.” Dans didn’t want to say it just came from a water pipe in the wall. Didn’t sound sophisticated enough.

  Forst raised an eyebrow, “This is real?”

  “Absolutely.”

  “Because it’d be pretty easy to fake with a good video editing program…” He trailed off tentatively.

  Grimly, Albert said, “That video has not been manipulated at all. Not even an adjustment of brightness or contrast.” He ran the same segment, and then others, running them repeatedly to let Forst look for video editing artifacts.

  Forst turned to Dans, “Wow! Amazing. Can you bring the equipment here? Or do I need to go to your lab to look at it? Will the University let you sell me the manufacturing rights?”

  Albert looked down at the table. His jaw bunched and he muttered, “I can no longer reproduce the phenomenon.”

  “What?” Forst guffawed and slapped his knee. “‘If you can’t reproduce it, it ain’t real.’ I’m pretty sure I’m quoting you correctly on that one!”

  “It was reproduced hundreds of times and I collected reams of data!” Dans said hotly, “I just can’t reproduce it anymore…” He trailed off.

  Forst leaned back in his chair, “You have got to be shitting me!”

  “I’m looking for a collaborator that can go over the data I obtained, see what I’ve missed and help me figure out how to do it again. And to do it bigger and better.”

  Forst looked up at the ceiling. An irreproducible phenomenon would be worthless. On the other hand, if he could figure out what had gone wrong with the equipment, which was kind of his specialty, and they could scale it up - the possibilities seemed tremendous! They started to talk over rights, how they would share them and the University’s inevitable piece of the pie since Dans was employed by them.

  ***

  Thunder rolled off Joe’s fingertips as they drummed on the low string of his electric bass. A spotlight gradually illuminated him, dressed entirely in black, standing in the center of the stage, back slightly arched and legs spread a little more than shoulder width. The crowd, which had been gathering excitement during the agonizingly long bass note, started to whoop, holler and whistle. Shan kicked the bass drum once to produce a powerful thump that echoed back and forth across the packed medium sized arena. Another thump, then the crack of a snare lit a spot on the snare drum. That spot gradually enlarged to encompass the entire drum set as Shan established a simple, solid beat. Joe’s rolling bass thunder developed punctuations to match the beat established on the drums and then a spot faded in on their big Leslie speaker. The rotor spun up and a Hammond organ chord filled gradually in over the beat
as another spot came up on Davis at the keyboards. The crowd, frenzied now, began to chant, “E-va! E-va! E-va!”

  The unmistakable evanescent sound of Allie’s guitar faded slowly into the mix adding to the pulse of the sound, but still carrying that first chord. A chord which had now been sustained for so long that the listeners were anxiously waiting for a change. The pulse sped gradually and Allie and Davis added some higher notes to the chord, but the listeners’ anxiety for a chord change simply built, and built, and built.

  When Joe raised the long neck of his bass guitar and chopped down with it, the next chord finally blossomed, and another spot lit Allie. It was hard to tell how slender and tall she was in her trademark ripped baggy jeans and heavy vest festooned with charms. Spiky black hair stuck up out of a visor that shaded her face. The crowd went wild as she leaned to the mike from a wide stance,

  “Another may be

  The master of my fate

  But I will be

  The captain of my soul

  Over deep seas

  I’ll sail this soul

  Against the breeze

  And through those shoals”

  The crowd rocked slowly back and forth as if in a trance. Her eerie vocal blended perfectly with Davis’s simple baritone harmony. Some ecstatic fans fainted and were carried out of the arena. Hundreds of others had been turned away from the sold out concert.

  ***

  Forst was appalled. Dans had provided him with data out the wazoo, but claimed that the apparatus that had created the ports had been destroyed. When asked for the remnants of the destroyed apparatus, Dans said that it “had been completely demolished in one of the tests and had been put in the trash.” Construction notes and diagrams? Didn’t exist! It had been “an accidental side effect of a couple of unrelated pieces of equipment purchased for something else and misconnected.”

  Photographs of the effect were abundant. Pictures of the device creating the effect? Nonexistent! Forst wasn’t just appalled, he was pissed. Dans was obviously hiding something about the apparatus. This could be huge! He was sure he could make another device and that he could make it work, but Dans wouldn’t give him any idea how the first one had been constructed. Dans wanted them to “try to figure out another way to create the same fields.”

  What a crock of shit! If you’d built one working airplane, you wouldn’t send an engineer into a closet to “build something that flies” with no more guidance than “it’s been done before” would you? Forst felt a band tightening around his head and knew that his blood pressure was up again.

  Dans was coming over and they were going to have a serious talk!

  Al Dans knocked on Forst’s office door, hoping that Forst had finally been able to produce some kind of prototype that could generate the funny twisting electric field effects that he’d measured around Allie’s ports. Forst had been getting really uptight and demanding, though. Al had begun strongly thinking of looking for a different collaborator. Nonetheless, he was genuinely surprised to see the bright red fury on Forst’s face when he stepped into the room. “What’s the matter?” he began.

  Forst exploded. “What’s the matter? What’s the matter! For Chrissakes! You’ve got me wasting hundreds of thousands of dollars on an important project with both of my hands tied behind my back! That’s what’s the matter! What’s the matter is that you need to tell me how your first goddamned machine worked! I’m not spending another dime on this piece of shit project while you pretend you don’t have any idea how the original device was constructed.”

  Dans rocked back in astonishment. Even when Forst had been a grad student, Al had seen the man get pretty irritated when devices didn’t work as expected. But Dans had never seen this much rage before. And never directed at himself! He swallowed and shrugged, “Well, OK, let’s just give up on it then.” To himself, he thought, I certainly don’t want to continue working with someone who has such a temper. I guess I’ll just have to find another collaborator.

  Forst’s eyebrows shot up his crimson forehead. “Give up? Give up! I’m the one with hundreds of thousands invested! We are not giving up! You are going to tell me how the first damned model worked!”

  Dans made placating motions with his hands, “Randy, I’ve told you, I don’t know how it worked.”

  “That’s a load of crap!” Forst hurled a vase off his desk and it exploded against the wall behind Dans. “You’re going to tell me! And you’re gonna to tell me now!”

  Flinching in startlement from the vase, Dans turned quickly to the door. To his surprise he found the exit blocked by a large man with a goatee. Al turned back to Forst, “Let’s talk about this some more when you’ve calmed down.”

  His face dark, Forst ground out, “I’m not going to calm down. YOU, on the other hand, are going to provide some answers today. NOT after I’ve calmed down. Today, dammit!”

  ***

  After signing autographs until their fingers ached, Eve of Destruction stumbled out to their tour bus. Allie turned on her phone and plugged it in. It immediately started chirping. She pulled off her shirt and peered blearily at the screen. It listed scores of calls and messages from her mother. There were almost always a few, but this was way more than usual. She virtually never listened to any of them, though recently the cold attitude she’d held toward her parents had started to melt.

  Then Allie saw there was a text from her little brother Stephen. That was unusual. Her heart skipped a beat as she touched the icon. “Sis, pls call home. Dad missing for three days. Mom going crazy.”

  A chill ran down Allie’s spine. She leaned her head back against the wall. Missing!? Could he have run off with a girlfriend or something? Somehow she knew that wasn’t true. It just didn’t fit with her dad’s dreamy eyed focus on physics. Damn! It’s the middle of the night. I’ll call in the morning and he’ll probably be home by then. It’ll save a lot of trouble. She pulled off her jeans and crawled under the sheet, but then lay staring at the roof of the bus. Finally, with a sigh, she got up, hit the shower and started washing the black crap out of her hair. They didn’t have another concert for four days and it was only a two hour drive home from here.

  ***

  The doorbell rang and Sarah Dans nearly dropped her coffee. Her heart thumped in her chest. Since Al had gone missing she feared every ring for the potential bad news it might bring. She took a deep breath and went to the door. Is it the police? No, it’s a young woman. With despair, she thought, Oh no, probably some chipper door to door sales girl! Sarah had just decided to pretend she wasn’t home, when the young woman simply opened the door and stepped inside!

  Allie!

  Sarah threw her arms around the daughter she hadn’t seen for a year and a half, sobbing uncontrollably. “You got my messages!”

  Allie hugged her mom, reluctant to say that she wouldn’t have listened to the messages if it hadn’t been for Stephen. On the other hand, she wondered, why not? What had this plump, pleasant, woman ever done to deserve the disdain Allie had held her in for the past eight or so years? She held her mom tighter, suddenly crying herself. “Have you heard anything?”

  Her mom leaned back, looking into Allie’s eyes and shaking her head. Allie found her heart sinking. All the way home she’d been thinking that she’d get home, and her dad would have showed up, and she’d be pissed. Now, confronted with the reality that he was still gone, she found herself thinking wistfully of the good times they’d had as a family. All the things that had irritated her so… seemed so trivial now.

  Allie and her mom went in and sat at the breakfast table. Sarah jumped back up, “Let me get you something to eat!”

  “No! I’m fine. Sit. Tell me what happened.”

  Instead, Sarah went to the stairs and yelled up, “Steve, Allie’s home! Come on down!” She returned to the table and just sat staring at her daughter for a moment. Finally, she began, “Your dad just didn’t come home Friday. Nobody at the University saw him after lunchtime. He left his office at the U and n
ever showed up for an appointment at Forst Enterprises. The police wouldn’t really start looking the first day or so. I’m not sure they’re very serious about it yet. They keep asking if he might have had a girlfriend!”

  “Forst Enterprises?”

  “Randall Forst was one of your dad’s grad students years ago. He’s started a very successful company making physics equipment and your dad has been working with him on some new idea of his.”

  Stephen stumbled sleepily down the stairs in a t-shirt and ragged shorts. He’d gotten tall! He sat down across from Allie. Then he rocked back, a stunned look on his face. “You’re Eva!” Goosebumps stood up on his arms.

  “No Steve, this is your sister Allie! Don’t you even recognize her?”

  “Your band’s Eve of Destruction?”

  Allie bit her lip and nodded. She hadn’t considered the possibility that she might have a fan at home.

  Sarah Dans looked back and forth between her two children. “Eve of Destruction?”

  Allie nodded.

  “Eva?”

  “My stage name.”

  Stephen threw his head back and stared up at the ceiling. “Oh. My. GOD!” He looked back at Allie. “I must’ve seen your picture a million times! I can’t believe that black hair fooled me!”

  Sarah looked in wonderment at her daughter. “Even I’ve heard of Eve of Destruction! Why didn’t you tell us you were doing well? All those calls I made offering to send you money!” She shook her head ruefully. “You really are doing OK?”

  Allie grinned sheepishly and then nodded minutely.

  “I guess you won’t be throwing it in and coming home with your tail between your legs, to beg to go to college after all?”

  Allie shrugged and shook her head.