SUPERCALISOLIPSISTICEXPIALIDOCIOUS
JOEL2 AND I were utterly flabbergasted by Zaki’s sudden appearance in our car—and by flabbergasted, I mean scared shitless.
Are they going to kill us both now? It would be elegant in its simplicity. Make it look like a man horribly replicated by a teleportation mishap gets into a car to find himself already inside. Violence ensues…. I can imagine the headline: “Bizarre Accident Yields Two Corpses of Same Man.”
I dared to ask Moti, “So, this was part of your plan, too?”
He shrugged. “Well, the medical device was an unfortunate touch. I didn’t expect to be shocked,” he said as Zaki took the belt off his wrists. “And I didn’t really want to be tied up.” He flexed his hands and smiled. “But mostly, yes. This is a Levantine car you ‘rented.’”
The vehicle in question came to a stop again. The passenger-side door opened.
“Look who it is,” Moti said.
“Hi,” Ifrit said shyly as she sat on the other side of me. She was wearing the same cream pantsuit she’d had on earlier, with a bomber-style jacket over it now. Joel2 gaped at her arrival in disbelief.
“She’s with them,” I whispered to Joel2.
“No shit,” he whispered back. “How many of them are there? This is like a reverse clown car.”
I shrugged.
Ifrit leaned forward to Moti and began whispering in his ear. “No, no,” he said, “I want them to hear this. Tell them!”
As the car began to drive again, Ifrit nodded nervously. She kept looking at Moti, avoiding eye contact with both myself and Joel2. “I received an update from Pema. She says Corina Shafer now for sure knows about Taraval taking Sylvia. She has suspended all TC operations in New York to stop him from leaving. They have also locked him out of their network.”
“Did IT take our deal?”
“What deal?” I said. “What’s going on?”
Ifrit ignored me. “She didn’t say.”
“She didn’t say,” Moti echoed her words, tsk-tsking softly. “Ifrit, we don’t fall in love with our marks. You know what Pema’s fate will be if she doesn’t deliver. Why would you cause yourself so much pain if—”
“I trust her,” Ifrit stated, defiant.
“And I trust you. But understand that when you trust someone else, you put my trust on the same chain as theirs. Once a single link in the chain is broken, all the trust is gone.”
The cool intensity of Moti’s demeanor made me feel uncomfortable for Ifrit.
“I … will contact her again,” Ifrit said, sitting back and activating her comms.
“What is she talking about?” demanded Joel2. “A way to locate Taraval and your wife,” Moti said briskly. “Now, Zaki, what else can you tell me that I do not already know?”
“If IT really turned off all the TCs, then we can start to follow chits. William Taraval will need to buy something eventually.”
“Chits?” Moti tsk-tsked again. “This is all we have to go on?”
“For now.” Zaki nervously twirled the cigarette in his fingers, visibly racking his brain for a different idea.
“Zaki!” Moti yelled. I couldn’t tell if it was a crack in his calm demeanor or just how Levantines spoke to one another. To me, it sounded like they were always on the edge of an argument, but from what I’d seen of Moti, his people usually interpreted his yelling as casual conversation. “Smoke the fucking cigarette or put it away; either way, stop fidgeting! I’m trying to think!”
Fidgeting—the fidget problem!
That crafty motherfucker. That’s it!
The excitement I saw building in Joel2’s eyes assured me he’d reached the same epiphany I had. Twins.
Our moment of levity irked Moti. “What?”
Joel2 nodded at me. “You tell him.”
“They’re porting via freight,” I said confidently. “Sylvia told me once that the freight TCs have completely different protocols. Can you guys spot Taraval or Sylvia if they log into a freight TC console?”
“They can’t go freight. It’s suicide,” Moti said dismissively. “No one would be so stupid.”
“William Taraval would,” Joel2 said before I could.
NULL ROUTE
A GENERATION AGO, Chelsea Piers had been one of New York City’s most popular destinations for water transportation. Once teleportation became the norm, very few businesses wanted to spend their time dealing with tides, storms, and seasickness to reach a destination. The only boats still in use were for hobbyists and competitive sailors. So the docks at Chelsea Piers had been purchased by IT and converted to a large-scale teleportation “shipping” yard. Several warehouses, stacks of containers, gantry cranes, and idling freight trucks populated the area. Each crane housed a console and a conductor to operate it, and was positioned over a concrete portal, which was basically a reinforced, container-sized hole three meters deep. There were twenty or so of these in the yard, interspersed several container lengths apart.
Taraval led Sylvia to the nearest crane, then stuck a piece of heavy foil tape on her mouth and wrapped the same around her legs, making sure to bind her several times. “Assurance demands prudence, I’m afraid,” he told her by way of apology.
As he sat her next to a metal container, a blaring alarm jolted them both. Blinking yellow lights spun on the crane arm. They watched as a shipping container was lowered into the portal and scanned, and then disappeared in a puff of dust as it was teleported.
“Never gets old, does it?” said Taraval, then walked off and vanished behind the ladder that led to the crane’s operation booth. Three stories above, the conductor, a goateed man in workman’s overalls and a yellow hard hat, went out to check something on the crane’s catwalk. Sylvia yelled, trying to get his attention, but the din of the shipping yard and the metal tape on her mouth drowned her out. A tear of frustration rolled down her cheek as the conductor ambled back to his control console. Shortly thereafter, the magnetic crane began to move, lifting another container and guiding it toward the portal.
Sylvia braced her feet against the ground, pushing herself to a standing position. She could now plainly see the conductor at his console, but his head was turned away. She hopped up and down, yelling as loudly as she could, trying to get into his line of sight. If he’d only look her way! She tipped over and fell to the ground, flopping and wiggling around like a fish out of water. It was embarrassing, but he actually glanced down in her direction. She increased her movements and screamed, feeling the strain on her vocal cords. The conductor looked at her quizzically, his eyes going wide—