Reckless Faith Page 3

  “Deeper than the Marinaras Trench.”

  John smiled. “Sometimes, Ray. Sometimes.”

  Thirty minutes later, John and Ray had finished their meal. Their conversation during that time had consisted mostly of meaningless banter and slightly more meaningful reminiscing. John was reminded of the friend he had in Ray, which only made him feel worse about being apart for so long. Ray had kept changing the subject when he asked him about work, though. He was definitely holding something back. John considered the other man as he picked at the remnants of his food.

  “You know what we should do?” John asked. “We should all go up to your parent’s cabin again, like we used to.”

  “That’s not a horrible idea, but for a first visit in over a year, don’t you think it’s too much?”

  “Maybe. Well, maybe if we get together a few times first, we can go up later. I just loved going up there for the weekend.”

  “Me, too. Come to think of it, I haven’t been up there since graduation. My parents made some improvements to the building and I haven’t even seen it yet. They added a whole new bedroom.”

  “Nice. Here’s what I think we should do. I’ll call Ari, or e-mail her. I’ll invite her for something casual and I’ll meet with her. If she’s interested in hanging out as a group, we can plan for something casual for all three of us. Strictly speaking, we should go to the cabin whether or not Ari wants to go. She’s hardly the lynch pin.”

  “Of course.”

  “Then it’s settled.”

  It took John about twenty minutes get home after dinner. During this time, John realized he was worried about contacting Ari. In fact, he was downright scared. Once home, he decided what to do. Off of his kitchen was an area referred to as the “breakfast nook” by the real estate agent. John had never used it for this function, instead placing a comfortable loveseat there. Devoid of the distraction of a television set, and offering a view of his comely back yard, John would often sit there to smoke and reflect on things. At this moment, John was using it to achieve a sound buzz before picking up the phone. He was drinking some mid-priced rum of the Dominican variety, as not to waste money on such a capricious task. The number he had for Ari was obtained during a brief e-mail some fourteen months ago, so he didn’t entirely expect it to be valid. Once he was happy with his level of artificial courage, he dialed the phone.

  “Hello?”

  “Ari? Hello, it’s John Scherer.”

  “Oh, hi, John. What’s up?”

  Ari’s tone of voice was as if they’d spoken yesterday.

  “How are things going?”

  “Fine.”

  “It’s been a long time. Over a year. I thought we should get caught up.”

  “I suppose.”

  “Yeah. Ray Bailey and I were thinking about doing something next weekend. Maybe taking a trip up to New Hampshire.”

  “Ray Bailey? I thought he disappeared for good.”

  “No, he’s just been busy. He’s a Manchester cop now.”

  “Uh huh.”

  “So, I was thinking maybe we could have a poker night, up at Ray’s cabin. It worked pretty well last time.”

  “Last time being over four years ago.”

  “Yeah. Like I said, it’s been too long.”

  “My only problem with that last trip was Ray’s chickie drooling all over him.”

  “You mean Kate? They broke up a while ago. It would just be the three of us this time. And Ray and I will abstain from going shooting for hours and leaving you alone with nothing to do.”

  “What makes you think I wouldn’t want to go shooting with you?”

  “You weren’t interested last time, that’s all.”

  “You stuck me with a complete stranger for four hours. I would have gladly put up with your noise compared to hers.”

  “Even still, catching up with each other would be the point of the trip, not punching holes in paper.”

  “Actually, we should go shooting. I just bought a brand new Glock 17 and I haven’t had the chance to fire it yet.”

  “Since when are you into firearms?” asked John, genuinely surprised.

  “I’m not ‘into’ firearms, John. They’re a necessary evil in today’s world. I realized that I couldn’t defend myself with martial arts in the face of all possible threats.”

  “That does sound like the Ari I remember. I have to disagree with your use of the word evil in this case, but if you want to get some practice in with us you’re more than welcome. I guess that means that you’ll come this weekend?”

  “Sure. Maybe I can swing by Logan and see if my Glock will get by the metal detectors.”

  “You do realize that’s complete bullshit, don’t you? Glocks are forty percent steel.”

  “I know, I’m kidding. You know, if I remember correctly you were never into guns much either, besides owning one or two.”

  “As you probably know, Massachusetts recently enacted a bunch of Draconian bans. That’s when I started paying more attention to the laws and my own rights. Firearms are hardly evil as you said, and if we don’t fight for our rights we’ll lose them. That’s all.”

  “I could care less about the politics, John. I like all the restrictions here in Mass. I had to go through a lot of red tape to get my permit. But that’s good; it prevents just anybody from getting a gun.”

  John was tempted to call Ari elitist, but that was so self-evident as to be redundant.

  “Well, if you’re going to be carrying that thing around with you, you’d better be able to shoot straight. It’s a lot more difficult to accomplish despite what Hollywood might have you believe.”

  “Whatever. I did okay in the required course. I’m sure I’ll do fine.”

  There was an uncomfortable silence.

  “Anyway,” began Ari, “we should get together before then. I’ve taken a liking to fine restaurants, but I so rarely have anyone to go with me.”

  “I find that hard to believe,” John replied lowly.

  “You do realize that I find maintaining a relationship a rather ponderous undertaking, right?”

  “No shit. Don’t tell me you’ve lost your fondness for the four month, self destructive tryst?”

  “Actually, yes.”

  John chuckled. “There may be hope for you yet.”

  __________

  Sometimes, Christie regretted owning a dog, if only for the fact that her small Somerville apartment allowed little room for Tycho to roam. Here at Bradley Palmer State Park, however, there was nothing to prevent him from bounding about. Tycho was a fourth generation domesticated wolf-dog, perhaps borderline away from feral to be safe around humans. Christie was aware that leaving Tycho alone with small children probably wasn’t a great idea, but having no contact with children on a regular basis, it was an infrequent concern. Christie also thought it prudent to have the most prominent collar possible on Tycho, to prevent him from being mistaken for a wolf. Tycho hadn’t been Christie’s first choice. She had her eye on a Rhodesian Ridgeback, a powerful breed originally used for hunting dangerous game in Africa. Upon querying a breeder, she discovered that purchasing such a dog was much more expensive than your average German Shepherd. The breeder also balked when Christie mentioned where she lived, insisting that such a dog needed “at least a hundred acres to be happy.” When Christie settled on Tycho, she didn’t mention where she lived.

  Tycho was obviously pleased to have the chance to run around at the park. Christie figured that all dogs loved this kind of thing. Tycho appeared to be ecstatic. The only problem that ever arose at the park was when they encountered a horse and rider. There were several well-used equestrian trails through Bradley Palmer, and Tycho had a singular reaction when meeting such an animal. He would go into stalking mode, hiding in the woods or tall grass and sniffing the air. He would never follow through with an attack, and Christie guessed that this was due to her presence and little else. On his own, Christie might end up with an expensive lawsuit or worse. One of the
main horse trails had become overgrown from disuse, a fact that brought Christie a bit of relief. Perhaps the park was falling out of favor with equines. All the better for canines.

  The sun was shining that afternoon, bringing back a modicum of the warmth that Christie had so enjoyed during the summer months. As much as she appreciated the changes of all seasons, her body had yet to accept the colder nights and brusque breezes. Despite the warmth, Christie suspected that removing her jacket would become problematic quickly. She unzipped the front halfway and lessened her pace.

  Christie was on a diet. She looked good to a casual observer, but not to herself in her mirror at home. She was also tired of wearing the same three outfits to class each week. The remainder of her clothes, favorite or not, were purchased after a whirlwind two week tour of Europe, during which time she chose lodging over food more often than not. On her frame this weight looked almost emaciated. It may not have been her body’s natural weight, but nevertheless most of her clothes were closer to it than her current status. Christie didn’t need to drop back down to that weight. A nice spot at the median point would suffice.

  Budgeting her time for exercise was easy enough. Christie spent exactly zero time preparing for her classes, and almost as little grading papers. Christie was a certifiable genius when it came to astronomy and physics, a fact that was only in suspect by her and unknown to anyone else, save for her own professor. His insistence that she was brilliant was taken with a grain of doubt, but to anyone who had actually read her bachelor’s thesis it was practically irrefutable. If she had chosen to, she could have been admitted to MIT, Berkeley, or any other academic organization offering a master’s level degree in astrophysics. Instead, in a move her parents classified as “haughty,” Christie applied directly to NASA after graduating. They found her thesis was as brilliant as she herself was under-qualified, which coming from NASA was a huge compliment. They encouraged Christie to go back to school for at least another four years. By then, however, she had obtained a job working for the Hayden Planetarium at the Boston Museum of Science. She presented both the introductory and the advanced exhibits, and had become one with the Zeiss projector. One reason why she was so enamored with this job was because she could come in after hours and use the facility. This was frowned upon, so Christie had used her feminine ways to manipulate her supervisor. It was the first and last time she would use this tactic for anything, including speeding tickets. For the use of the Zeiss projector, even three lousy dates with a terrible kisser was worth it.

  Tycho took off after a bird. Christie called him back. It usually took three or four attempts to get the dog back to her side. Christie wasn’t in a hurry at the moment. In fact, she wasn’t in a hurry about any part of her life. Applying for the position of assistant professor of astronomy at her alma mater was as much self-improvement as she’d demonstrated in the past three years, not including her current weight loss efforts. Most of her desire to obtain the position had to do with pride. Somewhat less of it had to do with the way she missed college life. This sentiment went away quickly, however, as Christie realized that she had simply grown up too much during her five years at the planetarium. It was remembering this fact that led Christie to think about her thesis.

  Christie’s thesis had to do with subatomic particles and their application to astronomical measurements. Christie was convinced that photons, the basic element that makes up light, could travel faster than light itself. Her theory was that since light exhibits attributes of both a wave and a particle, then perhaps the particle was the temporal aspect of it. If an element was energized to a certain point, then the light it gave off might have enough energy to accelerate it past the known maximum of 186,000 miles per hour. The photon could accomplish this by leaving space-time itself and appearing again elsewhere in the universe. If she could prove that this phenomenon was occurring, and where, then she surmised that she could more accurately predict the age of the universe. Or at the very least, the age of a single star. Since current methods were considered accurate enough, and the mannerisms of the photons that she described were completely improvable, her theory was at a dead end. It did contain enough sound mathematics and original thinking to get her an “A+,” and the laudatory but empty praise from NASA. Exhausted from the work of synthesizing her theory, Christie had all but given up any efforts to refine it. On this crisp September afternoon, she had a flash of new insight.

  Byron had been telling her last week about his own theory on faster-than-light travel. He was of the opinion that there was a region of reality above our own, what he called “superspace.” He preferred this term to the more popular “subspace” due to the fact that his region consisted of hyper-energized particles. He theorized that dark matter, the yet-unproved matter that might make up the majority of mass in the universe, was in fact the by-product of superspace. Byron thought that if one could discover the process by which the hyper-energized particles are converted into dark matter, then we could suspend a spacecraft in a force field, reverse the process, and send the craft into superspace. Once there, the operators could travel faster than the speed of light by riding the currents of the particles, which conveniently enough operated like trade winds between planetary systems.

  It was a nice theory, but had none of the requisite research to be taken seriously by anybody but an assistant professor of astronomy. It did give Christie a possible solution to a significant problem on her own theory, and for this she realized Byron deserved a free drink.

  4. September 30, 2003

  Black and White was a trendy bistro on the northern end of Beacon Street, on the other side of the block from Suffolk University. It was trendy enough to have a dress code, so when Christie proposed to Byron that they go there after class, Byron had to run back to his dorm to get a tie. Byron had been absent from class on Monday. Christie had been so excited about her new idea that she had almost called Byron’s room. She had rapidly come to her senses. On Tuesday, Christie ran into Byron on the street. He admitted he had blown off class on Monday to sleep off a hangover. This made Christie’s intention to buy him an alcoholic drink awkward, so she’d proposed coffee instead. Waiting alone at the restaurant that Wednesday afternoon, Christie found herself with a serious craving for a Martini, so she was a bit buzzed by the time Byron returned, resplendent in a green paisley tie. Despite his horror story, Byron ordered a whiskey and joined Christie at her table.

  “This damn smoking ban,” Byron said. “This place used to be so cool.”

  “I can take it either way. I can wait until I leave to smoke.”

  “So you wanted to talk about my theory?”

  “Yeah! I realized that it helps me deal with a problem with my own theory.”

  “You mean your theory from Suffolk?”

  “Yeah. Did you read it?”

  “Well, the e-mail you sent me didn’t get formatted properly. There were a bunch of weird symbols instead of equations. Other than that, I think I was able to get a sense of it.”

  “Did the symbols look like this?”

  Christie withdrew a pencil from her pocket and scribbled on a cocktail napkin. Byron looked sheepish when he saw it.

  “Yeah.”

  “I’m sorry, I should have mentioned that the document included physics symbology. They’re Greek letters.”

  “Oh.”

  “I didn’t expect you to understand them.”

  “Ohhh.”

  “By the time you get to a four-hundred level astronomy course, you’ll know what they mean, for the most part. It doesn’t help that most of them have several different meanings, of course.”

  “I would imagine not.”

  “So, what did you think of my theory?”

  “It’s interesting, but to be honest I found it a bit stuffy. It’s not like you’re unraveling the mysteries of God.”

  Christie was insulted, but kept it to herself. Byron had described exactly what she thought she was doing all along.

  “Perhaps not
, but it took a lot of research nonetheless.”

  “How does my theory help yours?”

  “Well, it’s like this. Your theory on superspace is that it’s essentially a dimension of highly energized particles, right?”

  “Yeah.”

  “You see, my theory involves photons leaving our space and entering another dimension. I could never come up with a really good explanation of exactly where they went while they were gone. In fact, I didn’t address the issue at all. Professor Caraviello, who was my professor when I went here, mentioned this problem in his critique of the theory. Your idea of superspace fits nicely with where the photons go when they exceed the speed of light.”

  “Cool.”

  “That’s why I wanted to buy you a drink. I think this new idea is going to give me the incentive to start working on the theory again. This time, maybe I can get it published in one of the academic journals, if I can refine it enough.”

  “Then you and I do have a reason to celebrate.”

  Byron raised his glass and Christie met it with hers.

  “We should have dinner, you and I,” Byron said.

  “Okay, let’s get some menus.”

  “No I mean dinner. At dinnertime. Just the two of us.”

  “But we’re already in a restaurant.”

  Christie realized what Byron meant. Her happiness melted away and she let a long sigh out of her lungs.

  “You mean a date?”

  “Naturally.”

  “Byron, I can’t date you. It would be inappropriate. You’re my student. Maybe if you weren’t in my class, but even still you’re a student at Suffolk and I’m a professor.”

  “This is my last semester. I’m just tying up some loose ends in with my requirements. I’ve already finished my major. Come December, I’m out of here.”

  “It’s not December. I can’t date you no matter how much time you’ve got left. I have to be able to objectively grade you on your performance.”