Siren is the story of a contemporary singer who is a genetic throwback to the Sirens of ancient Greece. Within her DNA is the song that will re-order the Universe, were she to discover it and, existentially, sing it. Harpies, Furies, and the Fates intercede, as does the goddess of love, Aphrodite, in a byzantine interplay of many mythological characters navigating the modern world.
SERIES MANAGER
PRELUDE: ODYSSEUS
A chapter a week will land here. FREE.
II
Apology and Surrender
Dwayne Cody had rushed out of the large building that housed fourteen floors of Ensley-Mix, Inc., without his severance check. He rushed out without thinking and he rushed out certainly with no thought as to where to go. His sudden unemployment had created an immovable block of void, and his denial of what had actually happened slammed into it. He had nowhere to go in this void, but he rushed so as to get there fast.
I’m loyal to the company for twelve years, he thought. I’m thorough in my duties to maintain efficiency and with it, cash flow, especially because of my unappreciated talent for preventing waste of overhead. I was the perfect prick for the company, and everyone knew it. And now I’m thirty-six years old and looking for a job, he thought.
Somewhere deep inside was a feeling of almost being used in a sexual way, like some whore the business got its pleasure from, worth his earnings as long as he was useful, immediately disposable and replaceable when the association became the least bit troublesome. And although his job description had called for him to be the prick, he knew he was not one.
And in fact, he was not.
It was all an act, but at his work it was not important for anyone to know this. Occasionally his enforcement would seem to slip; he’d let something go by. Although his subordinates had figured these were weak moments when his guard had been down, actually these were forgivable incidents that he realized made absolutely no difference to the output of the company. He wasn’t careless; he didn’t fail to notice these intermittent employee indiscretions. He allowed them by his acquiescence, dismissing them privately, which everyone assumed was his rare negligence. Whereas a late lunch was gotten away with here, or a local phone call for personal business was snuck in there, he actually did know everything like a good prick should, but chose to concentrate only on offenses that mattered. There were plenty of them, too. But the little ones weren’t enough to earn the enmity of his multi-cubicle population.
And so he walked the downtown streets unappreciated for the reasonable person that he was, unappreciated for the terrific pain in the ass his company paid him to be, and cognizant that the only loyalty that pays is to one’s self.
Dwayne Cody’s life had been formulaic. After high school he had attended Carnegie Mellon. There he had received his Ph.D. in computer science. This had been the minimum requirement to even work in a supervisory position at Ensley Mix, Inc. He had been hired straight from convocation, starting the very next day in a position overseeing the likes of Rhea Rainey and Penny Stenton. Each promotion up the cubicle hierarchy had come on schedule until he finally became the floor supervisor, overseeing the overseers of the likes of Rhea Rainey and Penny Stenton. He had been at the current position for six years, now having achieved an open ended position in that one could jump to any promotion in the company from there. But it was also more than likely a dead end, as no one had any idea when that jump, if ever, would be offered. The competition was so enormous that he realized he might be in that position indefinitely until he resigned or was fired, and being fired was as alien a concept to him as being struck by a meteor which had begun its journey billions of years ago from a distant part of the universe and by impossible chance had honed in on him.
The concept was laughable.
He laughed out loud. A meteor with his name on it had left its impact crater on his life, and what was left of his stature smoldered as debris.
That damned company! he cursed. It had no idea the good he had done for it. He had single-handedly stopped at least a hundred computer viruses that the industrial strength ViraGuard had missed. His ever-present vigil and sensitivity to this type of corporate sabotage proved lucrative to his company. He had no trouble spotting an untoward path on a computer readout amidst the digital din that was the normal print-out daily fare. He would spend extra hours on his own time, on his own computer at home, inspecting tomes of code, ferreting out the infective pathways that had been acquired from the corporate downloaded software that was constantly being added to stay with the times, which in computer use, was a daily change.
There were a few particularly virulent strains which, had the single computer which had become infected been allowed to contribute its day’s worth of work to the central link, would have cost millions in altered data. The risk was so great that he often would yank the whole cubicle’s hardware, having determined that replacing whole hard disks for two workers was considerably safer than taking a chance with continued input from a machine which had been fixed, or “immunized.” Every so often he would overreact, and the cubicle contingent of two would come upon the scene to see whole computers misshaping their plastic trash containers.
He kept a segregated, external drive at home which logged each of the viruses. The information on this drive, which he referred to as “Pandora’s box,” might prove catastrophic in its potential were it to be loaded, without safeguards, into some computer bulletin board—that is, communication with innumerable computer link-ups by fiberoptic lines and by which a lot of the country cross-referenced. The information on this disk drive was so extraordinarily dangerous because Ensley Mix, Inc. was easily one of the most powerful companies in the world and therefore targeted for damage by the most brilliant saboteurs. As viruses go, it was not surprising that these represented the industrialized world’s most impressive efforts.
Strangely enough, he thought, this external drive was made of Ensley, the breakthrough, of course, which made it possible to triple the usual storage capability.
To make it difficult to use the information, the drive data required a key, a program he kept on a separate thumb drive to decode his encoded safeguard shackle on the viral information. The program he had written would convert mathematical formulae into musical notes and, combined with a sound playing utility, made the viruses impossible to implement unless a code was first played into a computer. He was particularly proud of this lock and key system, for not only was one drive not useable without the other, but the right tune had to be pecked out on a keyboard, followed by the playing of a musical interval that spanned three adjacent whole tones—what was called a tritone. If one were to put the virus cache, Pandora’s Box, into a computer, all one would see would be a “Read.me” file describing each virus and encoded gobbledygook of each virus itself. There would be no mention of melody or harmonics, and no connection suggested between the information and music, or to the thumb drive which was the driver for the viruses. One day he made a copy of Pandora’s Box and altered each viral string with an “Ignore” bit just so he could safely hear the music it played, for the thumb drive music program went the other way also, rendering tones based on what it saw in the linked data.
The music coming back from the viruses seemed a mess at first. Intrigued, however, he recorded the output onto a CD and had played it over and over in his car on the way to work several mornings in a row. Slowly, out of the atonal depths came a strange continuity of melodic hooks and jingles. He even found himself humming parts of it to himself on the elevator each morning. The tunes were contagious! Sometimes they were hard to put out of his mind.
But now he walked fitful like one of Wagner’s Valkyries, humming the strange melody as if it were one of the Führer’s favorites. Finally ending up back at the International Business Commerce Building, he took the elevator that served the garage. He was enclosed by the walls made of Ensley, stood on the floor made of Ensley, and was roofed over by the ceiling of Ensley reinforced concrete over his head. Even the cable that silently moved his elevator was made of the stuff, so when the doors of Ensley burst open, he was freed, he hoped, from a suddenly smothering Ensley world. He walked the slight incline that was the floor his car was on. It was an Ensley company car!
He himself might just as well have been made of the stuff.
He suddenly realized that, of course, now he had no car, technically, since he was no longer employed. But the keys were in his pocket, his name was still on the little brass sign that had reserved his space for all of these years, and he still had not picked up his severance pay. So the company still owed him, he figured.
This rationalization carried him through grand auto theft. Technically.
“Let them come to my house to pick up the car,” he said out loud scornfully. He regarded one of the CDs in the car’s multiplayer and then ejected it. It was just another of the incentive lessons of propaganda that he had dutifully listened to, as recommended by the description of his position in his employment manual. He wondered how many months of person-hours he had spent listening to the pre-recorded bravado meant to inspire exceeding quotas. And all on his own time at that. He opened the window and, contrary to his scrupulous demeanor (especially when it came to the company), he used the CD to do something he had never done before in his entire life: he used it to willfully litter.
He rotated the CD carousel by pressing the button for the virus CD of MP3s in the player.
As he drove the expressway to the suburbs where he lived, he thought of that little witch, Rhea Rainey. Now just what the hell was this relationship she had with Mr. Harper, anyway? And how the hell had a person in a perfunctory position like hers even gotten into that inner sphere? It couldn’t have been that she was just a piece of ass. Not for Peter Harper who could have supermodels and Nobel laureates alike, probably at the same time if he wanted. He just couldn’t figure it out. Once again, he involved himself in the mental gymnastics of alluding to the probabilities of chance meteors. He considered the other unlikely possibilities that, like being fired, might share the list of impossibilities in his life, such as succumbing to a Gamma Ray Burst, the Sun going supernova, an extinction-grade comet collision, or being gravitationally torn apart by a Magnetar or a rogue chunk of dark matter passing invisibly by. And then he remembered he had left his copy of Beyond Layman’s Astronomy back on the fortieth floor of the IBC building.
Damn! he thought. What else?
There had always been something that had made him distrust Rhea. He had for some time suspected that she was tampering with the integrity of the computers, playing stupid little tricks. They were always so fleeting and harmless in their mischief that it would not have been cost-efficient to track down their author. He now wished he had, for he was sure it would have been that Rhea. Once, he now remembered, when she had first started with the company, he had come on to her. She was very pretty, and he was very careful, and what the hell. Exchanging pleasantries had meandered to the subject of computer viruses, and she had at that point seemed very interested. When she heard that he had kept a summary of them, she had even asked if she could see them. For some reason, bells had gone off in his head, and he had refused her. She had seemed only mildly disappointed, but then went on to abruptly end the conversation. He had never approached her again in that way, and now he was sure that she had humored him that time only for some devious reason. Now he was sure she was just trying to use him, and now he hoped that she would one day know what it was like to be used in so cheap a way.
He had had a few relationships with women, but generally they had been too fleeting to ever end up in sexual expression. He remained a virgin to this day, having had no substantial experiences of intimacy. He had never been successful in making anything worthwhile develop. He never broke things off, but neither had the girl each time. Things had always just drifted apart easily, the superficial relationship dissolving like a spreading mist before anything meaningful would gel. It was thermo-romantic entropy. Not by choice, but by attrition, he was a lonely stone that gathered no romantic moss. He had always waited patiently for his fortune to change. He could think of nothing he could do proactively to change it, so he merely waited for the change to happen spontaneously. Maybe that girl had wanted him to press her, maybe this one had wanted him to lead her to his bedroom. He’d never know, because he never had a date with anyone who wanted to just about assault him, which was the stroke of luck he would just about need to end his celibacy.
He drove up a driveway that belonged to his half of a double house. He owned the whole thing, actually, but rented out the other side. His company car, a white five-seater sedan, parked in the usual resting place of all of its forbearers, the similar white Fords and Chevrolets and Buicks and Chryslers. Dwayne had been through a car every two years at the company. This one was barely broken in, and now it was to be snatched away.
He got out of the car this day without a briefcase, which was a very unusual sight. He opened a side door that opened onto the driveway and entered his home. He shed his suit coat and his tie in the entrance hall, right on the floor, which was also very unusual for him. His slacks and shirt he tossed on the floor in front of his bed. He fell onto his bed and for the first time since childhood he lay down for an afternoon nap. And added to the times, too numerous to count and not unusual for him, he cried himself to sleep.
Life went on in the Ensley world without his help. It was business as usual. While he slept, computers like the ones that Rhea and Penny worked help retrieve millions of dollars into the company. Elsewhere, in another city, other computers disbursed millions back out. And elsewhere yet, computers tabulated the differences which documented the net gains for the company in hundreds of thousands of dollars per minute.
While Dwayne slept, Peter Harper had jetted to his next stop, destined to soil someone else’s clothing and life. While Dwayne dreamed, tons of Ensley were produced for consumers, and a disproportionate amount of polluting by-products were released into the air and waters of North America, South America, Asia, and Europe, soiling the planet. While he escaped reality with his slumber, Rhea was rifling through his ex-desk, on an angry mission to find a certain external hard drive.
Dwayne slept heavily into the evening and ultimately through seven rings of his land line telephone he had stubbornly refused to give up. He knew it was seven rings, for that was the point at which his voicemail would snap on.
Like looking into a mirror, he heard his own voice welcome the caller. It was his employed self’s voice. Just like in a mirror, it was an opposite image.
“Hello. You’ve reached Dwayne Cody, Floor Supervisor for Ensley-Mix, Incorporated. I’m not home right now, but if at the tone you would leave your name and number, I will return your call shortly.”
“Mr. Cody?” Rhea’s voice asked tenuously timidly, “I know you’re probably really mad at me, but if you’re there, could you please pick up?” Her voice paused for a moment. When she gave up on that hope, she stated, “This is Rhea Rainey. I’d like to talk to you about the company. Call me at 283-3464.” There was a click.
She’s got to be kidding, he thought, his eyes still choosing to be closed. He lay supine on his bed, his arms folded behind his head. Suddenly his eyes decided to pop open, as if autonomously. He was curious to see what time it was, as he knew he had slept aimlessly through the clock. He sat up and could see 9:30 P.M. on the digital display on the cable set top box under his TV in his bedroom.
“Maybe the new Harper girlfriend is calling to see if I want to beg for my old job back,” he said out loud, talking in an escalating tone that promised to get more frenzied and angry. “Maybe she wants to know where I keep the supervisor’s keys now that she probably has my job.” By now he had his slacks and shirt on. “And maybe I just need to return the little slut’s call and give her a piece of my mind.”
He walked over to the phone and worked the keys sequentially to disengage it, find her message, and then replay it. He scribbled down the phone number on a piece of paper and left the paper next to the phone. He was hungry. Miss Rhea would just have to wait.
He poured a bowl of rice cereal into a bowl and added sweetener and milk. He read the back of the cereal box as he ate, like he always did. One would think he’d have the backs of most of his favorite cereals’ boxes memorized by now, but he spotted some fine print that was new this time: Packaged in Ensley for wholesomeness.
A lot of repressed rage was released, along with the bowl and its flung cereal contents, which hit the wall of his kitchen. Some of the crispies stuck to the wall. Probably the ones with ingrained Ensley, he thought. He was now in a fine mood, it seemed to him, to call his former subordinate.
Her phone only rang half a ring before she answered in an expectant tone. “Hello?” she said. When there was no greeting on the other end, she assumed correctly that it was Dwayne Cody seething from his telephone. “Mr. Cody?”
There was still no response. She looked at the caller ID, but it read “Blocked.” It struck her that this may not be Dwayne Cody at all.
“Who is this?” she finally asked, now fretting a crank call. She even had a split-second of panic which turned to anger, suspecting it might be Peter Harper, woman-hater and pervert, calling just to hear her voice. But this fantasy was just a fabrication to feel a pleasure in augmenting her resentment of him for being a woman-hater and pervert. And not only those things, she fumed, but he likes to eat little girls like me for his lunch. She remembered Mr. Jameson’s comment: I understand you’re the lunch for noon. Yes, Harper liked to eat little girls like her for lunch, indeed. And then spit me out, and it would have been all over my blouse if it hadn’t been me he was spitting out in the first place! Her mind raced, but the panic and anger diminished as the fantasy moved on to negotiate the silence that had dialed her number.
“I’m going to hang up,” she promised whoever the phantom caller was.
“It’s me,” Dwayne announced angrily. “What is it that you want?” She figured that Cody was as hostile to her as she felt toward Peter Harper, so she blew him away with a direct surprise.
“Are you going to be home the rest of the evening?” Rhea asked him. There was a pause.
“Oh, I don’t know,” he finally said indignantly. “I thought I’d sign up for some ballroom dancing lessons tonight. Just the mood I’m in, I guess.”
“Good,” she said, ignoring his indignation, “stay put. I’m coming over.”
“No, don’t—” were the words he got out before she hung up on him. “Well, we’ll see about that,” he said, again to himself. He tried to feverishly think of a place to run off to so as to stand her up. But then he became curious as to what was really going on. Here she was, someone who had broken into the “inner circle” of the company, paying a visit to him after playing a part in his dismissal. It certainly couldn’t get any worse, he figured. Or more fascinating.
How would she know where I lived? he asked himself, but a girl as clever as Rhea would have no problem finding an address in the Ensley-Mix, Inc. database.
“She’s probably coming for the company car,” he argued scornfully as he sat in a chair in his small den and waited. He thought he might strike her if she dared enter his home and then challenge her to have the gall to feel affronted by this revenge.
He waited for a much longer time than he felt would be the pace from phone call to arrival uptown, but just as he was beginning to think that he was the one getting stood up— a cruel hoax that would serve as the perfect addendum to the worst day of his life, the doorbell rang. Even having over-waited, he realized he still was not ready for her. He still had not formulated a plan of response.
As it would turn out, he wouldn’t have to.
“Don’t say a word,” Rhea commanded him as she barged in.
“Won’t you come in?” he offered sarcastically after the fact. He watched her stroll past him, pass right through his entrance hall, and proceed to sit on a sofa in his den. He slowly followed the same steps she had taken but overtook her to stand in front of her.
“Before you start, let me talk,” she said. “Sit down,” she told him, but he refused. “Aw, c’mon, siddown,” she urged him, moving to plop on the far side of the sofa so as to offer him the greatest distance of separation on the same piece of furniture. He sat.
“I shouldn’t have hit you. If you want, you can hit me back.”
“Oh, no, really,” he stammered, suddenly impotent now in the face of the previous bravado of revenge being offered him.
“Well,” she continued, relieved, “I wouldn’t blame you if you wanted to. Look, I really feel bad. Did it hurt?”
“Well, actually,” he reflected, rubbing his face. “Actually, yes, it did.”
“Well, I just wanted you to know you didn’t deserve it.” She paused to gather her thoughts. “That bruise on the bridge of your nose, do you want me to kiss it to make it feel better?”
“That’s O.K.,” he replied.
“I, uh, met with Mr. Harper today.” Dwayne looked at her, anxious to hear the story. “We had our lunch, just like I bragged to you I would.” She paused again.
“And?” Dwayne goaded insincerely, really not caring at all.
“And we were alone...and he did a very bad thing to me. I’d like to think that he did something to me worse than he did to you.”
“Did he fire you?” Dwayne asked.
“No,” she replied.
“Then I doubt it could be worse.”
“Well, it was. I don’t know if you could ever believe that, especially since I’m being so vague, but I really feel he did something that terrible to me and—” She faltered.
Dwayne could see that she was getting ready to cry. An angry part of his brain felt that this was just fine, but this conflicted with the rest of him. He knew the pain of crying. Nevertheless, he sat quietly, uncomforting.
“So anyway, I just wanted to tell you in person that I was sorry and—” She stopped to stifle an outburst of tears.
“What?”
“Oh, hell, that’s just not going to be good enough, is it?”
“I don’t know what you mean,” Dwayne answered.
“Don’t try and figure it out. Just be receptive,” she said, as she suddenly was struck with an idea that would re-establish some justice in the world. “It’s only fitting that if the injustice were done a certain way or for a certain reason,” she said, paused, and then began again with stern emphasis, “—then it’s befitting to make up the injury in the same way.”
“Huh?” was all Dwayne could utter before he saw Rhea slide over to him and embrace him. She kissed the bridge of his nose. She kissed the side of his face that had met her hand earlier that day.
He thought that she was offering emotional support, but he was startled to realize that she was suddenly and with no holds barred launching sexual intimacy at him. She grabbed his head by the cheeks and kissed him hard on his lips and raised his hands to her breasts. She could feel him try to pull away, but he loosened his resistance. Dwayne Cody was not totally inexperienced, but he was inexperienced totally, although he saw no reason to let on to Rhea about his virginity. But not having had any type of intimacy for a long, long time, he would let her apologize any way she wanted—if this was how she wanted to do it.
It wasn’t long before he actively participated. Rhea felt much more fulfillment with this than the sneak rape from earlier. It was funny, she had thought earlier, that it wasn’t a rape during her lovemaking with Peter Harper, only after. And now she wished to undo the harm to Dwayne in a way she felt was appropriate in the confused mindset that her shame and guilt designed for her. Furthermore, she felt this apology was all the more powerful because of its spontaneity—all the more sincere because it hadn’t been considered at length before being put into action or been weighed by the merits of pros and cons. It was unqualified. Like a true apology, it was expressed spontaneously and, therefore, sincerely. She needed to reverse the harm, or at least the sentiment of the harm. She would not be apologetic about her apology, for above all he deserved to accept it without her analysis as to whether it would be the right thing for her.
It was not about her, nor should it have been.
She knew it would be nice for him, and her repentance was to offer herself to him without concern for her well-being. If he merely took it for the out-of-the-blue lay that it was, then this would be O.K. with her, too. She had no concern for herself in delivering.
A condom appeared out of nowhere. Rhea, Dwayne realized. After all, she was a singer in a band. Not out of character. He took it from her and applied it. But the virgin Dwayne was untested and nervous and quickly over-excited. The apology didn’t last long. Still, he lasted longer than Harper had.
After the aggressive session, they lay on the sofa. She liked that, for she herself chose to bestow her gift to him on such an ordinary sofa, an insult to the CEO’s sofa.
“I’m a little confused,” Dwayne admitted, waiting—like any man—until after to express doubts.
“Don’t be. I wanted to do this,” she said. “It didn’t have to mean anything to you, but it meant a lot to me.” Dwayne the supervisor, the acquaintance to his subordinate, Rhea, and now Dwayne the lover, looked at her kindly. He even felt kindly.
“Just what did he do?” he asked her softly.
“He put me on a casting couch. He used me.”
Dwayne thought quickly, trying to figure if there was any parallel to what had just happened to him. Running through all the angles, he couldn’t draw the two together on any level. Then he thought about having what he considered casual sex with someone who had had sex with another just earlier that day. In these times of concerns for safe sex and communicable disease, he would have been troubled by this. But he knew the famous stories about Peter Harper’s hygienic concerns. And additionally, he knew that Rhea was safe because of the mandatory blood tests that the company insisted upon from each employee. Blood tests to check for any traces of serum Ensley by-products—that was the official story. Other items, however, were dutifully tabulated as well.
A version of Ensley made a fine artificial blood, but it was carcinogenic if not prepared for this specific purpose properly. And being a supervisor, he was aware of the sneak HIV, Hepatitis, Herpes, and the other STD antibodies that were secretly screened for each time. Now he knew why, lunch dates considered. He had not noted any red flags to arise from his floor, which would have prompted referral to the Ensley-Mix, Inc. physicians. Yes, he was indeed safe, and he wondered out loud.
“I guess the next question I would have,” he ventured, “would be whether you’d like to stay and...well...”
“One apology should be enough,” she said sweetly. “You did accept my apology, didn’t you?” He smiled at her, which pleased her.
“Of course. I accepted it very much,” he said. “It was...very acceptable.”
“Good, good,” she said. “I’m glad. This is much better.”
“Why?”
“Because, as I’ve been told, I’m a creature of harmony.”
“But how can it be good if you’re still there at Ensley?” he asked. “You still are at Ensley, right?”
“Yes, for a little while.” She grinned at him, prompting his inquisitive look. “There is something I want to do before I resign,” she explained. He knew she was up to something, just as he was sure she was the one who had brought the computers down so many of those times.
“What can I do to help?” he asked, returning her grin.
“I want all of those viruses.”
“Miss Rainey,” he objected, “I don’t know if that’s such a good idea.”
“Oh, c’mon, Dwayne, call me Rhea. We’ve just had sex, for crying out loud.”
“Is that why we had it, to cry out loud?” he asked, a tease intended to embarrass her. She searched her immediate memory to recall whether she had made any noise on the sofa.
“You weren’t exactly mute, yourself,” she retorted. “Oh, wow, oh, wow, oh, wow,” she said, mimicking him. “How ‘bout it, Dwayne?”
He rose to slip on his underwear. After all, he hardly knew her, and he felt some shame for being seen stark naked in front of her. She laughed at him over this. He felt silly, but put on a pair anyway.
He walked to a roll-top desk and slid it open to reveal a computer, keyboard and screen. She could hear the computer fan on and could see that it was running, but the screen was dark.
“Your computer’s on,” she said as she strolled over to him still completely unclothed.
“I know. I’m running something.”
“But your display’s off. The screen’s dark.”
“I know,” he said again. “It’s a slow machine, and I’m building a fractal picture that’s been taking a couple of days. No need to waste electricity or LED life.”
“What’s a fractal? Can I see?” she asked.
“I guess so,” he said and pushed in the button that turned on the monitor.
Rhea was amazed. There on the screen was the most beautiful thing she had ever seen come out of a computer. It only occupied three-fourths of the screen, but was nevertheless magnificent. There were four concentric swirls of multi-colored patterns bleeding toward each other with flows of colors toward the center. The bottom two swirls were only partial, owing to the incompleteness of the picture.
“That’s so beautiful,” Rhea cooed. “What does it do? What’s it for?” Dwayne’s gaze at his fractal was less hypnotic than Rhea’s, for he was distracted by her naked body, its swirls and shapes, its own enchanting forms. “Dwayne!” she snapped.
“Oh, oh, uh...sorry.” It’s based on a mathematical formula, specifically here a Newtonian exponent—to the fourth power. You take a formula and plug it in, and the program finds all of the points on a plane that fit the formula. The colors represent the chaos as you get to points that fall close to the dividing line of whether points fit into a number set or not.” Rhea understood only a little of his explanation, but was still fascinated to know even more.
“It looks kind of like foam near the edges. How thin are the dividing lines?”
“Real thin,” he answered, smiling. Only an infinitesimal point thin, like on a number line.”
“But that means that the more exact you plug in the figures, the deeper you go into those swirls.”
“Yes. To infinity, actually. This program allows me to zoom into just one part, and find the picture of those smaller values—to more decimal points, that is—and blow up that picture.”
“And what would that look like?” she asked, still looking lovely to him.
“That’s the funny thing. If you keep going deeper and deeper, you get something like your original picture.”
“That’s incredible,” she said. “It’s so beautiful. But, still, what’s it for?”
“For me, it’s just for fun,” he answered. “But actually, industry’s been able to work this thing backwards—take a picture and translate it into a few formulas—graphic data for snapshots that can be shown on video or computer enhanced. Compression for those little megapixel cameras.” He paused, then said, “You do know it’s hard to explain things to a naked woman, don’t you?”
Rhea finally broke out of the spell. “Is that because it’s a woman you’re trying to explain it to?”
“No, I didn’t mean—”
“Dwayne, the viruses?” she demanded, not giving him any time to answer the question.
“The problem is, this program is math intensive. If you have a slow computer like me, it just takes so long to build just one picture.
“Dwayne,” she repeated.
“Oh, yea, right,” he answered, fishing out the portable external drive and its thumb drive key. He held them over a wastepaper basket that sat alongside the desk. “I’d make back-up copies of these normally, but I think I’d rather just be rid of them, along with the whole damn company. I don’t care what happens with them, assuming one—unbeknownst to me—took them out of the trash.” He let the external hard drive fall from his hand first. The thumb drive he held up before letting it follow. “You know, if one were, unbeknownst to me, link them and then make this drive the slave, open the music program, play the first four notes of Beethoven’s Fifth. G, G, G, E flat.”
“Music program? What music program?”
“That’s the decrypting key on the thumb drive. It’s a keyboard fractal program.”
“Is that what’s building your picture here?”
“No, that’s a pretty expensive, much more sophisticated version. The one on the thumb drive is a demo of it, freeware. To make these kind of pictures, you’re going to have to fork up a few hundred bucks. But the one on the thumb drive will do what it needs to do. Remember, Beethoven’s Fifth—G, G, G, E flat.”
“You couldn’t be more imaginative than that?” she asked
“Then play the tritone. Down. The tritone based on A, with the E flat.”
“Now you’re talking.”
She was fascinated with the tritone. She had sung it at her last gig. As a Catholic from childhood Catholic choir, she knew that the tritone was so dissonant that it actually had been outlawed by the Church during the Middle Ages. This two-note combination of dissonance six semitones apart had been used to great effect from Jimi Hendrix to Leonard Bernstein, from Marilyn Manson to Danny Elfman, from heavy metal to opera. Rhea could actually sing a tritone, albeit within a range, as she proved the other night. Few others could. Rhea thought she had heard Janis Joplin do it. Nilsson, too, after ignoring all of his overdubs, but he took all of the evil out of it.
Rhea had the rare talent known as polyphonic singing. She could sing a fundamental then add an overtone or an undertone, then tweak them to reach the six-semitone distance. But whereas another vocalist like the German singer, Anna-Maria Hefele, could amplify the partials differently by altering the shape of her mouth, larynx, and pharynx to alter their resonance, Rhea was different somehow.
Dwayne let the second smaller drive fall into the wastepaper basket, demonstratively for Rhea’s benefit. “There, they’re gone for all I know. I will deny I ever had them. Do you understand?”
“Were one, unbeknownst to you, ever to ask,” she answered. She cocked her eyebrows, too, in exaggerated seriousness, and then lowered her voice to make fun of him. “I...understand,” she said back, and then she retrieved the official refuse.
“No kidding,” he reiterated. “And another thing, make sure these things don’t get into anything outside of Ensley-Mix, Inc. compatibility. They could hurt a lot of other people.”
“Close your eyes,” she instructed and then she slipped the items into her purse.
“And remember, the bigger one has the viruses. The other’s the melody program I wrote to decode the information. You’re a musician; you can figure it out. First the melody—”
“Yes, Da-Da-Da......Dum!”
“And then the...tri-tone,” he whispered, with mock suspense.
“The devil’s notes.”
“Exactly. Diabolus in Musica. The acoustic version of 666.”
“I know it well. Not by that, but I know it. And now you’re rid of this awful responsibility,” she told him in a lighter tone. “I am educated, you know. I know what I’m doing. I just gave myself to you. I know that won’t get you your job back, but it was done in trust. Now you trust me back. O.K.?”
“O.K.,” he responded.
“So, Dwayne, how ‘bout offering a lady some coffee?”
“Oh, yes, of course.” Before he closed the desk roll-top, she remembered to remind him to punch off his monitor.
“Don’t want to waste all of that electricity powering LEDs—what, about a penny a week, right?”
“Oh, thanks,” he replied, missing her sarcasm.
“Can I pirate that fancy fractal program?” she asked. “The one you bought?”
“Oh, Rhea, that’s pretty illegal.”
“That’s nothing,” she warned, holding up the virus collection again.
“Yea, I guess so. But do you even have a computer?”
“Sure do. The fastest. At the International Business Commerce Building.” Rhea next spotted a telescope, a shiny white one about a foot in length which sat atop a tripod. “Do you use it?” she asked.
“Oh, that. Well, I’m kind of an amateur astronomer—at least I claim to be one.” Rhea looked through one of its lenses, but wrinkled her forehead in frustration when she saw nothing but dark. “You have to have it fixed on something luminous, I’m afraid,” he said.
“Of course,” she agreed, feeling a little foolish as she resumed an upright stance again. She looked at a counter of books that sat under the line of sight of the looming telescope a foot overhead. “Have you read all of these books?” she asked. She eyed several.
“Most of those are theoretical cosmology books,” he said.
“Which means...” she goaded.
“Which means,” he informed her, “that they deal with the speculative physics behind the origin of the universe, the Big Bang, relativity, weird possible dimensions, things like that.”
Rhea smiled at him in admiration. “You’re so damn interesting, Dwayne,” she said, meaning it.
“Hard to tell, isn’t it?” he answered her observation. She suddenly felt embarrassed by her years of insubordination.
“One day, you’re going to have to teach me all of this,” she suggested.
“I’d like that very much,” he responded. Was she offering an opportunity for escalation in endearment, he wondered? She picked up on this and was suddenly confronted with the mixed feelings of her whole role-playing this evening. She stammered in an awkward attempt to back off.
“Uh, yes, I suppose we could talk about a lot of interesting things. What’s that?” she asked, pointing to the framed photograph on the wall.
“An astronomy photo. From the HST.”
“The HST?”
“The Hubble Space Telescope.”
“Oh, yea, right. It’s beautiful. Four stars—no, five—making a perfect cross.”
“Einstein’s Cross. Actually just one, and it’s a quasar, not a star. There something very gravitational—another galaxy, that’s acting like a gravitational lens, splitting the image into four. It’s named after Einstein who predicted gravity could bend light. It’s in Pegasus.”
“Hmm. Is that the coffee I smell?”
“Sure is. It was actually already done. I had the timer set to brew it so I wouldn’t overnap this afternoon. How about some?”
“Well, I really should be going, but I really want some of that coffee, too.” They went into the kitchen, after which he poured a cup for himself and for her. They talked about his interests, which were numerous and for the most part scientific. They talked over coffee like they were more than just acquaintances, like they had been friends for years.
“Do you want to hear a confession,” he offered, feeling comfortable with her.
“Uh-oh, I’m not sure,” she answered.
“No, it’s not bad. I promise.”
“O.K. Confess.”
“I always wondered what it might be like between you and me. You?”
“No, not really—that’s my confession. No offense.”
“I don’t take any offense. Actually, mine was a mixed feeling, being at odds like we always were. I mean I had to be the way I was.” She smiled at him, unsure about that. “So, Rhea, why did you?”
“Why did I what?” she asked.
“Why did you have to be the way that you were?”
“I’m immature, Dwayne. Is that a good enough excuse?”
“Yes, Rhea, it really is.”
“Good. No hard feelings?”
“Rhea, hard feelings? After what just, I mean, we just, well, you know—” Then he felt the bridge of his nose.
“Please no hard feelings, huh?” Rhea pleaded. They smiled and offered each other their hands, the only parts of their anatomy needed to make their reconciliation complete.
“I have another confession,” he added.
“Oh, no,” Rhea laughed, “don’t tell me you had thoughts about Penny, too.”
“No.”
“No? You’re kidding. She’s so pretty.”
“No, those thoughts centered on you. I guess because of your spirit—so alive, even when at odds with me.”
“That’s fine. She’s gay, anyway.”
“Really? I had no idea.”
“She doesn’t care who knows. So, what’s the next confession?”
“Uh,” he stammered, “the other confession involves the telescope.”
“What about it?” she asked.
“I also use it to stargaze at several floors of the apartments across the park.”
“Yea,” she said, “you and about a thousand other guys who own telescopes. You thought I’d be mortified?”
“It’s just that it’s such a horny thing to do,” he admitted.
“And you’re so horny?” she goaded him. “Like I said, you and about a thousand other guys—and that’s per city block.” He smiled.
“I don’t get...around much. That’s why right now, well...”
“You won’t need to use your telescope for a while, right?”
“I can’t believe I’m telling you this,” he said, putting his hands over his face. “Just a few hours ago you were hitting me.”
“I’m sorry I did that,” she offered again, still holding his hand from the handshake. She gathered up her clothes and dressed in front of him, feeling perfectly at ease doing so.
“Are you sure you won’t stay?” he asked.
“The night? Oh, no, really, I’ve got to get back. Come here,” she reached and pulled him to her. They stood in the middle of his den as she gave him a brief kiss. “Now let me out,” she whispered. He walked her through his door and stood on the porch watching with a mysterious sense of satisfaction and well-being the entire time until she was safely in her car rolling away with her wave and smile.
As she drove off, Rhea felt they had ascended to the status of friendship, having managed to clean away some of Peter Harper’s soiling that evening.
Cleaning the silk, she figured, would be harder.
**
Next week, Chapter III: The Attraction of Opposites
SERIES MANAGER
Start at the beginning, PRELUDE, “Odysseus.”
I. Creature of Harmony
II. Apology and Surrender
III. Attraction of Opposites