Chapter 30

“Money can make potential problems conveniently disappear,” Eitan said as he exited the building where he was living with Reggie. The doorman had wished him a good day on his way past. The idea that New Haven would have such a convenience was new to Eitan, even though his sister had always had a doorman in Manhattan. The extra layer of security was inexpensive in New Haven compared to Manhattan, even with Eitan paying half the rent.

While he had missed enrollment for the semester, Eitan was still earning credits through one of the Institutes on campus. Encryption had been a daily hassle until he returned to Yale. At least one of the Institutes had fellows with high-level security clearances that required secured digital communications. While these fellows, both men and women, strutted around and pontificated at length, Eitan sat in a quiet corner doing Akemi’s research and backfilling her reports that were pending.

When Eitan reached out to taste the Institute fellows, the only taste that stuck was stinky cheese. They took themselves so seriously, justifying their affectations with the weightiness of their national security responsibilities. Their work was impressive but as people, they were at varying degrees of unbearable. He could not single out one person with whom he would sit in a bar and share a beer.

Reggie would remind him when he complained, that, yes, this was Yale University - pretentious in presentation, but with a lot of good people in the hallways. Spring semester came to end and Eitan looked forward to taking summer courses. As part of his self-therapy to lower his anxiety levels, he stopped reading the newspapers closely. He returned to the gym and the dojo.

The scanned headlines appeared to indicate a slow deflation of pressure. Most of the spectacular attacks disappeared, but the low-level attacks of people singled out as nano by no-no’s continued unabated. At Auburn University, several baseball players returned the favor, pounding on a squad of no-no’s who were itching to single out dweebs and geeks minding their own business. The pot was still burbling.

Eitan missed Akemi as Leslie’s words haunted his thoughts every day. He had no opportunity to sit with Akemi, working through their stuff in private. She was still deemed an asset by her handlers, and in the current climate, she was given little lead to wander. She had submitted her Masters’ thesis and had already secured a thesis advisor for her PhD. Even Akemi was not sure who was footing the tuition bill. She was as frustrated as he was, and the phone was a poor substitute.

Leslie was sick for a day. Tanisha also suffered the purge, but she was trapped in the earth sciences building for several hours when it hit. Sten finally had some discomfort, but he swore he could not tell whether it was the nano or the “el grande bean burrito” with double XX hot sauce from the food truck at 02:00 on a Sunday morning.

Dr. Whitcomb had gone to ground again, but with enough accessible bandwidth to keep a steady drumbeat of nano hate on independent websites that pushed his agenda. Ms. Killinger had informed Eitan that they were unable to trace the origin of Whitcomb’s digital missives, but they were having better success tracking the circuitous routes of the transmissions among hate groups. She claimed that patterns were emerging that gave them encouragement they were cutting off more and more possible routes. A new Whitcomb manifesto appeared online, rambling and disjointed. Somehow, the National Institutes of Health were poisoning children with brainwashing nano in their vaccines while the Deep State was preparing concentration camps for the undesirables who refused nano. Eitan began looking over his shoulder again.

Kavita replied to his texts, having forgiven him for his sins. The first crime was bringing down the FBI and the second sin was leaving her. Her eye prescription had changed as her nearsightedness diminished. When he asked her if she wanted to come visit him in New Haven though, she hesitated, promising to get back to him.

Eitan wanted to throw the phone against the wall. He was sick of the texting. He was fed up with the stilted phone calls, always concerned over who was monitoring. Sten could wax poetically on dark energy for hours, but consistently avoided more personal subjects. One step removed from everyone he wanted to be close, Eitan felt empty like an unwashed milk bottle, off putting.

He was also sick of whining and complaining. Some of the greatest leaps of humankind were his and he should be celebrating. Instead, he was wallowing in laments for yesterday’s certainties. If Tanisha could see him slouched on the couch now, she would be shaking her head with pity and disgust. He stood up and stretched, wondering how he allowed himself to fall into bad habits.

A key in the lock jiggled, warning Eitan that his roommate was returning. Reggie rushed through the opening door, pulled his right shoulder back and shouted, “catch!” He hurled a basketball across the room that would have taken out a window if Eitan had not snatched it from its overhead arc. “You work, you sulk,” Reggie said. “You work some more, and you sulk some more. Time to change up your schedule, roomie. Pick up a new date prospect? A new friend with benefits?”

“I’ve got a problem,” Eitan said, lighting bouncing the ball on his fingers.

“If your dick doesn’t work, I’ve got a long list of remedies,” Reggie said with a smirk. “Some of them are even fun.”

“My dick works just fine,” Eitan said. “It’s who I’m sticking my dick to that’s the issue.”

“Have all of your girlfriends found out about each other?”

Eitan dropped the ball, letting it roll across the room. “I’ll buy you a beer if you want to hear the melody with four-part harmony. I’m fresh out of ideas.”

“You? At a loss? Reggie shook his head in disbelief. “‘O Lord, how the mighty have fallen.’ The deal is beer, burger, and a bucket of fries.”

Walking to their favorite pub of the moment, Eitan had a sense that they were being observed; there were too many people to home in on a specific target though. He mentioned it to Reggie. Reggie stopped and pulled his cell phone out of his pocket. He chose a number from his contacts and hit “call.” He told the person at the other end his name and then he waited. “Yes ma’am,” Reggie said, “Eitan and I are being followed again.” He gave the street and the closest cross street and then their destination. He answered “yes” a couple of times and then hung up.

“It sucks to be you,” Reggie said as he resumed walking. “The FBI agent told me to carry on and enjoy our evening. She also warned me not to provoke your irritability. What I wanted to say was ‘we are already there’ on the irritability scale but as you witnessed, I held my tongue.”

“Does this mean I have to buy dessert too?” Eitan asked, clucking his tongue.

“A shot of bourbon will do,” Reggie said. “Seriously, you are the weirdest thing that has ever happened to me. You saved my life and then you put it in danger, twice now. What is it about you?”

Eitan put his hand on his roommate’s shoulder. “This is why we are going to feed you beer, Reggie. I need you inebriated in order to explain to you the way my world works. The drunker you are, the easier it will be for you to accept the next implosion of your worldview. A shot of bourbon will lessen the pain of reality being ripped from your consciousness.”

“Big talk,” Reggie said with a sweep of his arms. “I’m staying sober now if what you are intimating is the true history of Eitan and his harem. I want in on that secret.”

They stepped into the pub, waving to the hostess who recognized them with a small wave as she spoke to two couples just sliding into a booth. Reggie led the charge down the other side to their favorite undersized booth that only sat three because of the hallway behind it cut off half a bench. After the waitress took their drink order, Eitan slouched back in the booth as Reggie leaned forward on his elbows.

“Spill it,” Reggie said.

“Backwards, with the conclusion before the story,” Eitan said. “I can pass on my nano.”

“Duh,” Reggie said. “Nano does something to our DNA. We will all pass it on to our children.”

“No, no,” Eitan said. “I pass it on to my partners. Six, twelve, eighteen weeks after unprotected sex and boom: they got what I got.”

“You’re telling me you’ve got loaded balls,” Reggie said with a thumbs up. “The secret to your harem is that you’ve got loaded balls that no one else has.”

“Pretty much,” Eitan said. “Here comes your beer.”

“One Belgian draft and one seltzer with lime,” the waitress announced as she placed the drinks on the table. “Do you want to order dinner?” They ordered and then waited for the woman to walk out of earshot.

“I cannot control it,” Eitan said. “I can’t say ‘you get the prize’ and ‘you don’t’. The circumstance puts a crimp on the ‘let’s go troll for a piece of ass patrol’, you know?”

“No, I don’t know, you asshole,” Reggie said. “I’m going through candidates for girlfriend like the weekly lottery, where almost every number is a loser. On the other hand, you seduce them once and they’re never leaving you.”

“Dude, we had this conversation about free will,” Eitan said. “My nano, just like your nano, doesn’t compromise it. Each of my harem, which is only your word, has her own autonomy wrapped richly around particularly sharp opinions concerning my person.”