Initiate Transfer

At night, inside a stretch limo, a driver contemplates the sounds of rich people having a party. He can hear it dimly through his slightly open window. He loves the sounds: clear voices, but words indistinct. Every now and then a woman’s laugh or exclamation. He loves it when people are having fun, but he allows himself an odd thought: how much fun are people really having at a political fundraising dinner?

His reverie is abruptly broken when someone speedily gets into the passenger compartment, slams the door and slides right up behind him. The window connecting the front and back of the limo is open, and before he can see who’s there he smells her. She’s intoxicating, and he fights to keep from trying to inhale her into the front seat.

“Are you sure you have the right car?” he asks, calm, but savoring every wisp of perfume that reaches him. He doesn’t bother to turn his head or look in the rear view mirror.

“Shut the fuck up,” her voice is stressed, but strong. Insistent. “Who the fuck are you and what are you doing in this car?”

Unconcerned he gazes up into the rear view mirror. She is holding a gun, pointing it at the back of his head unwaveringly. She is scorchingly beautiful. Blonde. Perfected makeup. It’s too dark in the car to see exactly what she’s wearing, but the light hints at cleavage that could cause trouble. He takes his time to inhale and exhale slowly. He is considering something, maybe it’s her, maybe it’s a scene from his past.

“Don’t you have to threaten me with a time limit or something? You didn’t even mention that you might shoot me,” he says patiently, with only a hint of coyness.

She hits him in the side of the head with the butt of the gun, hard enough to hurt, but not to incapacitate. “Ow!” says the driver.

“Do not fuck with me! Where’s Anthony?” She is clear, demanding, but also starting to wonder what is going on.

“What? The driver? He’s pleasantly asleep in one of the guest cabins. I’m pretty sure he’s dreaming of jelly beans that have been chained to Christmas wreaths. Weird.”

“Asleep? What the fuck are you talking about? Who the hell are you?” she moves her gun wielding arm back, preparing to hit him again.

“Hey hey hey! Ok I’ll explain,” says the man in a fancy chauffeur suit. He takes his time though, inhales and exhales calmy, shifts in his seat, and fixes his gaze on hers through the rear view mirror. “You can call me Hyaklas Vagrans. I’m a traveler from another suspens, here to see what my past world might have been like.”

She doesn’t blink, she just narrows her eyes. Interestingly enough she also doesn’t move to strike him: her gun arm relaxes somewhat. “You’re a time traveler?”

“No, no.” He answers as if explaining something fascinating to a friend. “Time travel is impossible because time is a side effect of intelligible consciousness. I’m from a world that is almost exactly like this one, just about 250 years more progressed in its history.”

“You’re from outer space?”

“Um… All travel has to go through space, but I come from a neighboring space…” he says this with his voice rising lightly at the end, unsure if he can explain this idea to his own satisfaction.

She puts her gun down, sits up and cocks her head subtly. She is thinking, eyes still narrowed. “You’re from another dimension?” she asks, and there is the slightest hint of excitement in her question.

“Suspens is a better word for it,” he answers with some joy now, obviously talking about things he likes to think about. “Dimension has odd mathematical implications, and it’s not at all as if I’m coming from some humanly inconceivable vector. Think sibling state of existence. A whole other place, with its own set of existence rules. A drop of reality suspended in the absence. I just so happen to come from one that is almost exactly like this one. There’s an infinite amount of them so…”

“Why this one? Why my… Suspens?” she cuts him off, not rudely, but giving in to her own train of thought and curiosity.

“Hold on, hold on! I’ll get to that. Ok, so, infinite number of suspens. Infinite number of worlds exactly like my origin, all at varying levels of progress. I’m a bit of a wanderer and scout these days, as well as an amateur historian–my goodness, historian is an insufficient word–and I wanted to be near a J.F.K. to experience what all the excitement was about.”

“How did you know there would even be a JFK here?”

“Wow, good question. Ok, so, each suspensus has a… Very specific kind of radiation…? Vibration? It’s really closer to light than anything else. So in the same, though much more complicated way, that you can look at a planet’s atmospheric spectrograph and determine what elements are going to be there, you can analyze the “spectrum” of a suspens and get a lot of information about the content.”

She furrows her brows at this, and is then clearly distracted by sounds coming from the party. She gazes towards the sounds and gets a very wistful look on her face. “Huh… You’re not an assassin… You’re some kind of… tourist?”

“Wait, you’re looking for an assassin here? At this party?” he says excitedly, turning to face her. “In my origin suspens JFK was killed in Texas.”

She is transfixed and obviously trying to sort through several different modes of thought, fantasy, and pragmatics all at once. “Texas… Oh my God that means… I’ve got to tell…” She trails off, falling deep into contemplation. She closes her eyes, and bites her lower lip: it’s a sensual feast just to observe.

She opens her eyes suddenly, piercing him with a steady gaze, her perfect lips a steely line. “Can I go with you?” He arches one eyebrow. She speaks again, insistently, “If you’re lying to me I will torture you to death.” He arches the second eyebrow.

“You know I’m not lying: that’s why you asked questions instead of hitting me again.”

“I can’t believe something so fascinating exists. I wouldn’t be able to stand it, knowing you exist while going back to my cloak and dagger bullshit.”

“I’m not a tourist, you know. I’m up to some crazy stuff.” He states this with a look of genuine compassion. “It will be hard.”

“I’ll do anything,” she says, dropping her head.

“Not necessary. But you will have to spend a great deal of time learning about my origin suspens and the way my ship works.” he says smiling happily.

She sits still slumped forward slightly. The truth of possibility is trying to create an emotion in her she has not felt in ages. Elation eventually floods her system, and it is hard for her not to cry. A few tears escape.

“Hey hey!” he says pleasantly, “Just wait until you see my ship!”

“Are we going now?” she asks, still off balance from the depth of emotion.

“Might as well. This suspens is clearly not the one where I’m going to get any private time with Mr. Kennedy. Come, let’s step out of the car.” He smoothly exits the car and heads around to the front of the vehicle. She follows suit, with some grace, but there is a subtle shakiness that she obviously can’t shake. The prospect of infinite possibility, usually the domain of children, had been suddenly and without cost thrust back into her life: it was hard to believe.

Standing in front of the limousine, in the tree shaded light of an ornate lamp post along the driveway, they can finally see each other a little more clearly. He is pleasant looking, fit, with dark hair and European features. His age is difficult to ascertain: at a glance he appears to be no more than thirty, but his eyes speak of ages past. She is the deadliest kind of beautiful. She could have been a model, or the keepsake of one of the wealthiest men on the planet. Her employers know her value, and have done much to train her in how to wield her body as a weapon. But she has something unusual: some interior force that knows how to keep all of that in restraint, and even put it on hold for a moment. Standing in front of the limousine, she could melt any man, but she knows she cannot melt this stranger become liberator. More precisely: she can’t even bring herself to consider it.

He looks at her, and being human he cannot ignore her beauty. But being something else, he says, “Sometimes the form realm pays us a visit, and forgets it cannot bear the touch of the earth. Let us travel somewhere in between.”

With concentration and wistfulness she responds, “Sometimes I feel as if some part of me understands you, and grieves because it does not know why.”

“Study and all will become clear again,” he says with a wry smile. He pulls a small graphite colored cylinder like object from his pocket. “With conversations like this, you’ll fit right in with the dimension boys.”

“Who?” the spell is somewhat broken.

“The most advanced and yet boyish dimensional cartographers of them all. Difficult to talk to, but fun to play with.” He adds as an afterthought, “And they’re not all boys. Their most advanced member is female.”

They both look up as sounds of an inebriated couple approaching can suddenly be heard.

He smiles brilliantly. “Good timing. I’m getting too wordy and you’ve got to get to the lessons that will help make me comprehensible.” He holds the cylinder-like object in his right hand and extends his left hand to her. “Hyaklas Ferrocet Vagrans at your service. Please take my hand.”

“Uta Unausrottbar. With pleasure.” With poise she places her left hand in his, and they vanish.

Moments later a tipsy JFK and a beautiful woman stumble into view, giggling and flirting shamelessly. JFK takes a moment to confirm that the driver’s compartment of the limousine is empty, and then quickly ushers the lady inside. A few moments later the limousine begins to rock. Moments after that, the limousine is annihilated in a massive explosion.