Chapter 32

Neither FBI contact had called Eitan or Reggie back after the attack in New Haven. The only information they had was the local media. The van had been fitted with a fertilizer bomb in an oil drum that did not explode. Two perpetrators were shot dead in the parking garage and one police officer was wounded. There was no word on motive and no expansion of details to supply context.

Although New Haven was never crowded in August before school, the campus had never felt like a ghost town to Eitan. Neighbors who waved an apathetic hand of greeting one day were not to be found the next. The idea to leave town for an impromptu vacation was probably the most popular set of plans circulating, especially since no one appeared to know anything. Eerie.

“Jeez, stopping bouncing your knee,” Reggie said. “You are wound up tighter than a girdle on a Baptist minister’s wife at an all-you-can-eat pancake breakfast.”

“Thank you, Ms. Devereaux, for that visual depiction of my distress. I blanch at the possibilities still lingering in that fetid mind of yours. Are my vapors distracting your driving?”

“Knock it off, Eitan, or you can walk the rest of the way,” Reggie said as he hit the gas. “Just spit it out – what the hell is eating at you?”

Eitan took a deep breath as he looked out the window. The scraggly trees of the Connecticut shore mingled with the tract houses of the poor schmucks who had an interstate rammed through their front yards.

“They’re all coming,” he said. “What if I’m wrong.”

“Were you not the one who told me ‘No guts, no glory?’”

“Hmmpf,” Eitan said, trying to digest the words. He turned around to look out the back window. There were several vehicles behind them, but none stood out as pacing them. He suggested they take the next exit for gas, even though they did not need any. After coming down the ramp, Eitan kept staring through the back window for any trailing car acting suspiciously. Even after they picked up a couple of bottles of soda, he insisted they make their way to Route 1 and take the back roads.

After an hour or so, Eitan began to relax his guard. Trying to compose himself, he settled back into his seat, working out his thoughts.

“When you said ‘everybody knows’ at the bar, just who did you mean?” Eitan asked finally.

Reggie glanced in the rearview mirror before returning his eyes to the road. “Kavita, for sure, even if she did not know who she was competing against that first night. You should know that Akemi and Kavita have already had ‘the conversation’ about you.”

“Sheesh,” Eitan said, trying to stop the blush in his cheeks with a sickly smile. “The conversation, yeah. What exactly is the conversation?”

Reggie looked in the rearview mirror again. “Sorry, you’ve got me a bit paranoid too. There are two cars behind us and a pickup truck, but they all have Connecticut plates.

“The Conversation. Eitan, you need understand where I am coming from when I say the conversation. When I arrived at college, I was your typical rich kid, a think with your dick kind of guy – hedonism 101. That night when you helped me with the nano and then connected me to Akemi, something changed. The world got bigger, darker, sinister, but also freer with more available choices I had never considered. It took me a year to work through the paradigm shift.

“Then you had to disappear, and I was truly scared for you and scared for myself. Akemi kept a line of communication open with me, and that was like another revelation: I was a friend of the family. As a friend of the family though, I got the word.”

Reggie looked in the rearview mirror again. “The pickup truck just turned off and the old man driving the beat-up minivan is driving everyone crazy. He’s all over the place and going fast-slow, fast-slow.” He sat back.

“The conversation. You guys thought that your household was all about your brother, the whacka-doodle genius who hid under blankets and read comic books. Then you guys thought your household was all about Akemi, the future rebel-without-a-cause, who was going to lead the gullible to burn down every building in Seattle before she took over the nation and the world. Then your nano kicked in and now, the family revolves around you. Everything that Akemi and your brother do, is about supporting you, even if it doesn’t look like it. Even your parents left the country to protect you.”

“How does Akemi...”

“Dude, she threatened me with bodily harm,” Reggie said with a laugh. “The only thing she did not state was what your nano does that no one else’s does. What else have you got that you haven’t told me?”

“If I understood it all, I would explain it,” Eitan said. “You see me harping on Sten, trying to push him to find me answers. You know the sensation when you brush against static electricity and your hair stands on end?” Reggie nodded. “I get the same sensation when I contact dark energy, only more intense.”

“Isn’t dark matter everywhere?” Reggie said.

“Yep, dark matter is the real fabric of the universe,” Eitan said. “Dark energy is the dynamo that binds the threads of the fabric together. Visible matter and energy rest comfortably in the cradling embrace of dark matter, able to act according to all the physics of visible matter. I sense dark energy as the threads of the fabric. It’s as real to me as static electricity is to you; we can’t see either energy, but we can experience and be confident that it is there.”

“Whoever receives this nano from you gains this sensory ability?” Reggie asked.

“Yep,” Eitan said, twisting around again to look out the back. “Well, potentially. The ability took several years to manifest in me. Everyone who has received my nano reports back that their body goes through a purging weeks or months after, but no one has noticed new sensations.”

“Like what?”

“Sensing lifeforms like radar ahead of you and tasting the unique flavors of individuals,” Eitan said. “When the sense first manifested, the sensations scared the crap out of me; I thought I was losing my grip on reality. There might be some other stuff too, but until someone else starts sensing like I do, there is no way to explain it.”

“Hmm,” Reggie said. “This is the family secret that is kept in the family?” When Eitan nodded, Reggie continued, “Am I supposed to get in on this nano?”

“Think about it,” Eitan said. “With this nano comes a huge wad of responsibility. Sten, Akemi and I already have a coterie of lawyers and accounting firms. We are going to need an office suite and security of some sort soon enough. My point is not just the money we must spend, but the levels of complexity that grow exponentially with every paper Sten publishes and every contract Akemi accepts. When we start monetizing what I can do, who can predict the needs, protocols, and outcomes? Already I feel like I’ve been pushed off the ship in the middle of the Atlantic with the crew ordering me to swim the rest of the way across the pond. Do you really want to do this?”