Patri Friedman
2/98
The air was clear, the sky dark, and Phillip Thaddeus Brown's mood stormy as his digital speedometer edged ever closer to needing a third digit. He was on his way to meet some old friends from his days as an undergrad: they were in town for a conference, and as he hadn't seen them for a year or so, they had planned to meet somewhere. While this was normally a happy prospect, he had been forced to wait until his friends finished their work for the day and then went somewhere and called with directions. No rendezvous could be arranged beforehand, as they were a bit sketchy on the location of the conference, a behavior typical of computer scientists faced with questions of concrete geography.
Phil grunted in annoyance as he came up quickly behind a dark blue Volvo station wagon crawling along in the leftmost lane, going the speed limit. This meant, from the frame of reference of any normal driver, that it was moving at twenty miles an hour in reverse. An ebony Acura paced him to the right, so he braked until it was ahead of him, and then made a beautiful three lane V-maneuver that sacrificed signalling for smoothness and the appearance of complete control. With the road again clear before him, he recalled the odd nature of the evening in general.
Things had started out well enough, some friends coming over for dinner. Still, this was not as normal as it could have been, for Phillip had a lot of weird friends. This was not a particularly distinctive quality, given that he lived in northern California, but one upon which he reflected often. This evening, for example, it had been a fact impossible to ignore, as he sat in his living room listening to two of his friends discuss the physics, metaphysics, and epistemology of time travel and parallel universes. Their conversation was spiced with heady references to the major works of theoretical physicists and science-fiction writers and one could rarely tell which was which. Even the balmiest of observers, when faced with these individuals in this particular discussion, could not help but exclaim "Wow, these guys sure are weird."
Normally, Phil enjoyed listening to that sort of thing. It was a joy to have one's mind active, to watch the cross barrage of comments and references, to be a part of the warm flannel comfort of a brilliant collective mind. It was certainly a lot less boring than the stupid things people said at work, where he was a consultant who helped large corporations decide what kind of computer hardware to buy. While it was, in a way, a complete waste of his doctorate in computer science, he was paid far more than his former classmates who were now in academia. Tonight, however, the meeting with his friends had distracted him, and he was part of naught but the cold polyester of worry and tension.
Tentatively, they had expected to call around seven, but hadn't until almost eight, and Phil was not the type who waited easily. Unlike those with the wonderful ability to patiently do something else while waiting for a phone call, he harbored a deep suspicion that the phone might refuse to work while he was not staring at it. Still, it wasn't as if contacting each other was a problem - everyone involved naturally had cellphones, Phillip because of his job, and his friends because they liked gadgets with LCD displays that would occasionally emit buzzing noises. One shudders to think of the size of their digital alarm clock collections.
He had watched the phone from 7 until 7:45, and finally, just as his bladder was about to triumph over his compulsive nature, it gave an energetic BRRRRRIIIIINNNG! He darted to pick it up before it changed its mind, but the odd character of the sound on the line startled him out of making his customary greeting. No one was talking, but there was a sort of stretched quality to the faint hissing which he heard. There is always something entrancing about the ethereal buzz of static, the vague hints at distant conversations which voyeuristically tease without ever coalescing into concrete words, the impossible sounds which the human brain creates when it tries to find patterns in what is almost total silence. The receiver felt cold against his ear, and he could not help but feel that the voice to which he was connected came from impossibly far away.
The static was broken by the faint sound of a female voice saying "Hello? Phil?"
"Susan! Hey, what took you so long? Where are you?"
"Sorry about that, we've been here for almost an hour, but it took forever to get a call through. There was this weird operator - we thought someone might have been playing a prank on us. Anyway, we are at Smoky Joe's Pool Hall. Its in Santa Carlita, off the 101. You take Shoreline Blvd. East, and then..." Susan continue to give him directions, and Phil wrote them down. It didn't sound too complicated, only a few turns after the freeway. When she finished, John took the phone.
"Hey, Phil, what's up?" boomed the jovial voice that John remembered so well.
"Not much. What took you so long to call? A professor of computer science and you can't even work the phone?" replied Phil, jokingly.
"Yeah, it was strange. One of those guys from the conference must have been jerking us around. That's what happens when you combine technical knowledge with the emotional maturity of a pre-schooler: juvenile pranks. We tried to call you, and this spacey operator comes on, asking all these strange questions. I'll tell you more about it when you get here."
"Sure, whatever. I'm on my way." Phil was about to put down the phone when John quickly said "Hey, wait a sec!"
"Yeah?"
"Susan has a GPS on her, because of the research she's been doing. You have one for camping right?"
"Yeah." Phil replied, unenthusiastically. John's feelings for small, expensive gadgets, especially those which communicated with satellites, went beyond and around the realms of love to the sordid province of lust, and he had a habit of finding uses for them.
"So bring it in the car! It'll be fun. Just in case you get lost or something, we can guide you in directly."
"Sure, whatever", Phil replied, willing to humour his friend. "See you in 20 minutes." He hung up the phone, and returned to the living room to let his friends know that he was leaving, but they were welcome to hang out. They acknowledged him briefly, condescending for a moment to concentrate on the logistic mundanities of keys and security, before returning to their talk.
He remembered that he had smiled briefly to himself as he eased his sleek black Infiniti sedan out of the driveway. The dashboard's digital display had read 8:00. All he needed to do was to get onto the 101 north and keep an eye out for Shoreline, and he would be there in twenty minutes. He could have a relaxing drink, shoot some pool, and talk to his friends. Only twenty minutes...
Suddenly jerked back to the present, he noticed that the display said 8:32. He glanced at the next sign, and was dismayed to see that it signalled the end of Shadyside, the town just north of Santa Clarita. How could he have missed it? He thought he had been paying attention better than that, but he was far enough north that he must have passed it by now. He might as well turn around. He exited the freeway, and sighed as he waited for the light on the cross street to turn green. Still, it couldn't take much more than another fifteen minutes. He would be there soon...
"Goddamnit!", Phil exclaimed aloud. He had seen no Shoreline Blvd, despite going south almost as far as his own exit and paying more attention to the road signs than a nerd to the first woman who deigns to sleep with him. What the fuck? His logical mind raced through the possibilities. Maybe he hadn't gone far enough north last time? Maybe it was one of those exits that only appeared going one way, and he had missed it the first time, and wouldn't have been able to see it from the southbound side. Maybe he had been given bad directions? The time was 8:51, and his frustration was mounting to the point where even the soothing strains of Enya from his ten-disc changer could to little to contain it. What the hell should he do now? He exited the freeway, made two left turns, and as he merged back on to the northbound side, extricated his cellphone from his inside jacket pocket. He hit John's speed-dial code from memory, and sighed as he put the phone to his ear.
It rang twice, and then an odd, tinny, vaguely female voice said "We are sorry, but that phone is not in any recognized service area." What the hell? Had John forgotten to leave his phone on? Phil angrily keyed the End Call button, and decided that he might as well head home. He thumbed an audio control button on the steering wheel, and Enya's Celtic croonings were jarringly replaced by the angst and anger of Rage against the Machine. Before he reached the next exit, however, his phone rang.
"Hello?"
"Phil! Where are you?" said Susan.
"I've been driving up and down this stupid highway for an hour. Where the hell is this Shoreline Blvd.? I can't find it. Do you remember what exits it was near? Its just not here." said Phil, his exasperation evident.
"Its just after the 101 intersects Rt. 82. You must be in a nasty mood, listening to that crap. Why didn't you call us?" said Susan, calmly.
"I did call you! I tried John's cellphone, and got an out of area message"
"Weird. Something strange seems to be going on with the phones, its kind of a pain for us to call you. But we've been talking with the operator, and it seems like all you need to do is dial an extra access code beforehand. Ours is apparently 461. So try dialling pound star pound 461, and then the area code and number for John's cellphone."
"Sure, I guess, but why? I mean, why can't I dial his phone normally?"
"We don't know what's going on, but the phone service to this bar is rather odd. We still think its some prankster from the conference, but I think we can work around it."
"Fine, whatever, as long as it works. Ok, I'll hang up and ring John's cellphone."
Phil rolled his eyes as he hung up. Stupid computer scientists and their stupid jokes. What the hell was this access code crap? Still, it looked like playing their game was the only way to go. He dialled the code and then the number, careful to keep one eye on the road. The first ring was normal, but the second was much fainter, and when he heard John pick up and say hello it had the same odd quality as their first conversation.
"Hey, I'm glad I finally got through", said Phil. "I'm driving north on the 101, and I'm almost at 82. I didn't see Shoreline last time, but I'll pay close attention."
"Great", replied John. "I'll walk you through things. Tell me when you get to the 82. In the meantime, have you heard the one about the nun on the bus? No? Well then..."
As John proceeded to detail an improbable event involving the nun, who turned out to be a guy named Dave on his way to a costume party, Phil carefully examined every sign and mile marker. Just as the joke reached its amusing and gender-bending conclusion, he saw the exit for route 82.
"Ok, I'm at route 82. I'm headed north on the 101. I'm looking for Shoreline Blvd, right?"
"Yes, yes. Shoreline. It'll be the next exit, it should be almost immediate, within the next half mile."
Phil shifted into the right lane in preparation for exit, but it stubbornly refused to materialize. There were no signs, and no exits. After a minute of waiting, a sign appeared declaring firmly that Redwood Avenue would be the next exit, in half a mile. It appeared that the entire freeway system was set on thwarting his innocent plans for a mellow evening of pocket billiards. The clock read 9:02.
"Its not there."
"What?"
"It's not there. I am sure this time. There is no Shoreline Blvd. I am on the 101, I am in Santa Clarita, I just passed the 82. There is no Shoreline Blvd."
John was only momentarily taken aback by this. Distressing though it was, it afforded a chance for gadgetry to come to the rescue. With a hint of eagerness, he said "Well, what is your GPS reading?"
"Fuck the goddamn GPS. Your directions suck! Where the hell are you?" replied Phil, angrily. He was getting a bit cranky, and was not particularly in the mood for playing with small expensive toys, especially as he had a sneaking suspicion that this was all a joke at his expense. Eventually, however, John gently bullied him into it, and they compared GPS readings. Oddly enough, Phil appeared to be only 4 or 5 miles northeast of the pool hall, a reading consistent with the instructions he had been given. He reluctantly decided to try to make it there on surface streets, using his GPS system, and hung up, promising to call if he had any problems. The clock read 9:23 by the time the readings matched, and he pulled over and parked, looking for the building as he did so.
Despite his friends descriptions of glowing neon, however, he saw nothing. He stepped out of the car and scanned the street, GPS in hand. A dilapidated warehouse stood on the north side of the street, and a row of empty lots separated by chainlink fences on the south side. According to his digital display (and we all know that digital displays never lie), he was within 15 meters of John's position. What the hell? For the millionth time that evening he wondered whether his friends were playing some sort of joke. After all, they had succeeded in getting him to what was essentially an arbitrary geographical location. Was there a satellite about to crash near him or something? A surprise party? His mind raced through the possibilities, but none of them seemed to fit. John was playful, but this wasn't his kind of neighborhood. It seemed forsaken and abandoned, the kind of place that no one even cared enough about to trash.
Phil was so exasperated by now that he wanted to scream, but this didn't seem to be the sort of place where angry cries of rage would be either wise or productive. In lieu of vocal expression, he yanked out his cellphone and punched the redial command with as much emotion as he could put into such a trivial act. It was not a particularly cathartic experience, so he kicked a rock as the phone began to ring, and it skittered across the street and shattered satisfactorily against the far curb. That's more like it!
"Alright, what's wrong this time?" crackled John's voice.
"I'm at the coordinates you gave me, and there is nothing here." said Phil, with obvious anger in his voice.
"Hey, hey, calm down. I'm sure there is an explanation. Look, read me off your location."
The two men compared readings, but could find no discrepancy. According the the low flying network of GPS satellites, they were within 30 or 40 feet of each other. Phil did not have quite John's overzealous faith in technology, but he knew that a lot of work had been put into making handheld GPS receivers robust and accurate, and it seemed strange that they should be malfunctioning. Still, there was no other logical explanation.
"So what should we do?" questioned Phil. "Shouldn't we give up? Can I go home now?" he said, almost whining.
"I'd rather you didn't", replied John. "I've been talking to the phone operator, and something strange is definitely going on. I'm beginning to have doubts about whether its just a prank. When I tried to connect to you, the operator kept asking me what universe I was calling. She wanted some sort of Universal Reference Number. It took me forever to understand what she was talking about, but eventually she said that if I told her the local value of Pi, she could look it up, and that's how we finally called you."
"What? That's ridiculous. What are you trying to say? Where do you think you are?" stammered Phil.
John ignored the question and continued.
"While you were driving that last bit, I had Susan look up your name in the phone book. It has a different phone number, and the address listed is on Via Ventana." John paused, wondering what effect this information would have.
"Via Ventana? I looked at a house there, but it was too expensive. How could you have known that?" Phil mind whirled as he tried to assimilate this new data. His theories about practical jokes were having more and more trouble fitting the facts. He could not even think of a mutual friend from whom John might have gotten the information. He hadn't bothered to talk to anyone, really, about the places he had looked it, and he had made the decision fairly quickly. Still, no other explanation made sense. What was going on?
John continued, inexorably. "Susan and I have been talking. We think that we have somehow slipped into a parallel universe."
With the invocation of that hackneyed term, the strange discussion of Phillip's friends was summoned to mind. The stretch from conversation to reality seemed a long one, but Phil felt the distance from his warm house to this desolate and chilly street and shivered from more than the wind. He felt caught in the uncomfortable position of having to discard either the mantle of friendships trust or the soft warm cloak of reason. Wearing both was becoming increasingly difficult.
"Phil? Any ideas?"
Some degree of flexibility returned at last to Phil's mind and its rarely challenged belief system, and he managed to reach a few tentative conclusions: Something strange was happening. If this was a prank, it was a damned good one. He might as well play along. And, most importantly, a glimmer in the depths of his being was whispering to him seductively: Hey. This is kind of fun.
"OK, I want you to call my house. I had a few friends over, and they may still be around. They are into this sort of thing, maybe they'll have a suggestion. If they aren't there, call me back and I'll try to track them down." The confident tone had returned to his voice, replacing the childish whine, and he felt that he at last had some sort of handle on the situation, even if the situation felt like more like a rhinoceros than a door. Still, when one is riding a rhinoceros, a handle is better than nothing.
"Thanks Phil. Will do." replied John, in a tone which made it clear how grateful he felt to be taken seriously. This was fortunate, as Phil had been half expecting the childish humour of a person who has succeeded in getting someone to believe in the ludicrous, oft used by those suggesting snipe hunts and relating urban legends. The phone clicked, and he was left alone with his thoughts, surrounded by desolation. The dim light from the flickering lamposts glinted off the lengths of fence, and was reflected and distorted by his cars dark finish. He performed a cursory inspection of his surroundings, and while no immediate danger loomed, it was cold, and so he re-entered his car. The clock read 9:28.
The thin shell of his vehicle made Phil feel distant from the gloomy streets, and he realized how impersonal the oddities of the evening were. The digital display of a GPS, words over a cell phone - everything so far had been intangible. His experiences had been relayed by communication towers and transmitted from navigation satellites, encoded and decoded, modulated and demodulated. There were so many layers of abstraction that a team of engineers could work for weeks and not create the flowcharts and protocol diagrams. Maybe he had been stupid to believe this crap. Still, despite all the barriers between them, he felt that he knew his friends. One could not discount the human element, and neither John nor Susan were the prankster type.
These thoughts occupied him until his cellphone rang. He sighed. This was almost an adventure, dammit. Why didn't something real happen? The phone rang again, insistently, and he picked it up and thumbed it on.
"Man, your friends are weird." boomed John's voice.
"Yeah, I know. Did they help?"
`I think so. After they finished babbling about multivariate probability spaces and the Copenhagen model, they suggested some sort of ritual. Apparently, our matter is sort of tuned to our universe or something, and if we focus our energies in the right way, it will get realigned and we'll be back. Or something. It was pretty hard to follow, but they seemed to think it would work."
"Great, uh, I guess. So what do you have to do?" replied Phil.
"Mostly, we just concentrate on home. He gave us some chants and stuff, to recite in our head, and we are supposed to sit facing each other with our hands linked, but that seemed to be mostly to help us focus. He said it is very important that we focus on moving towards home, while keeping all other thoughts from our minds. While we are attuned to our universe, the fact that we have already been separated from it makes it easy for us to fall into the wrong place. He said that its analogous to getting caught in a local minima. Also, whatever we do, we should keep our eyes closed, since the universe may be shifting and changing around us. That was it."
"Huh." was all Phil could think of to say. He liked talking about this stuff when it was theoretical, but there was a certain essential awkwardness in seriously discussing a topic this ridiculous. Still, he could not help hearing the tension in John's voice, and he felt obliged to say something comforting.
"Well....good luck. I'll see you in a minute, and we'll go have a drink and laugh about it. No problem."
"Thanks, man. Oh, Susan wants to talk to you for a minute. Here she is."
"Phil?" came the lilting inquiry. He felt his stomach suddenly clench. The timbre of fear in a woman's voice triggered a chivalric instinct buried so deeply in his guts that logic was unimportant. He sighed:
"Yeah?"
"Listen, could you do me a big favor? Could you stay on the phone with us while we try this? I'd feel a lot better, and I think it will help me concentrate."
"Sure, I guess. I mean, yeah! I will."
"Thanks." She sounded relieved. At least he'd done a little good. He tilted his car seat back and began idly toying with a pen as he waited. There were some scratching sounds, probably the phone being put down, and he picture his two friends sitting on the floor indian style, hands joined, cellphone lying next to them.
"Ready?" came Susan's voice, confident.
"Yes." replied John.
Now that they were no longer talking to him, the miscellaneous background sounds of the bar began to merit conscious attention. The occasional clink of a glass and the low buzz of intermittent conversation testified to the presence of other living creatures at the other end of the link, strange creatures from the strange universe which had swallowed his friends. What were they like? he wondered.
A strange keening noise startled him. He moved the receiver away from his ear, but to no effect - the sound seemed to be coming from outside. A flash of orange neon appeared briefly, faded to purple and disappeared. He scrambled out of his car, and looked towards the vacant lot. It was moving and shifting, the air itself seeming to create a moire effect, and every now and then he could see the pale shadow of a building flicker into being. Some of the buildings were short and squat, others tall and graceful, but every one had that slightly dingy, personable quality that said: "Here there be booze."
His attention was distracted from the strange visual display by the sound of voices from his phone. They were speaking english, but with an odd accent that he was sure he had never heard before. Then an indescribable shifting of phonemes occurred, and in the space of a sentence he was hearing french. As the shadows folded and braided themselves before him, the languages he heard morphed and shifted forming crazy combinations, the strangest of which sounded distinctly like ebonics spoken with a strong british accent.
Adrenalin began to pump through his heart as he was struck by the reality of this surreal experience. The human element had been removed, trust was needed no longer. He was seeing the evidence for himself.
Sound and vision speeded up together, keeping time, the shadows eddying ever faster, and the languages merging into one polyglottinous whole. Any second now they would stabilize, and his friends would be safe. With a sudden silence more startling than any sound, his cellphone went quiet. He was facing naught but an empty lot.
"John? Susan? Are you there? What happened? I saw..." his voice trailed off as he remembered that their phone had been on the floor. The phone replied with the measured stamp of boots, sounded with a shaken timbre that suggested they were hitting floor on which it lay. A voice began speaking german, which Phillip unfortunately did not know. It sounded harsh and questioning, but perhaps that was just a quality of the language. With relief he heard Susan reply in the same language, clearly confused and frightened, but at least still alive and there. The voice barked staccato orders, and again he heard the tramp of feet.
The phone crackled, and Susan's voice said "Phil? Phil are you still there?", and then was suddenly silenced by a distinct sound clearly recognizable as leather smacking flesh, and then the barked phrase "HALT DEN MUND!" That no scream or reaction of any sort was heard from John indicated clearly the balance of power in the room, and he felt cold fear begin to eat away his warm adrenalin glow.
A voice spoke, so close that it must have been talking quite near, oe perhaps into the phone.
"Was ist das?"
Phil jerked suddenly at this contact with whatever fearsome apparition was at the other end. He was no nearer to the distant universe than before, but being spoken to made him feel strangely closer to the situation.
"Who. Who are you? What is going on? What have you done with my friends?"
He heard a shriek from the other end.
"Englisch? Englisch! ENGLISCH!!!"
The phone let out a pop and rustle, as if it had been dropped, then a sudden crackle, and went dead. He could picture John's phone crushed beneath a shiny black boot, bits of plastic crunching as raw force destroyed the frail technology. His hand was still squeezing his own phone tight, and it shook as he moved the phone from his ear to where he could see its screen.
"Call Dropped" blinked the flashing letters, and the full realization of what had happened hit him. It was my fault he thought. They were meeting me. If only I had friends who knew more about transporting people from other dimensions. He was in too much shock to realize the ludicrousness of his statement. He stumbled over to his car, hoping for solace, entered it, and sat for a long time, silent, lit by the glows of buttons and readouts.
Last Modified: September 8th, 1998
Patri Friedman / patri@izzy.com