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Another Great Shot in the Dark |
by Jennifer Carr
The only way I figure it is that I have to kill Otherme. The screen in front of me is empty, and I can't grab the words to articulate the immensity that is the universe of my failures. I have a deadline, a deadline I definitively will miss as I watch the blinking line on the expanse of white. If I do not have the words, then Otherme has them all. I get up, because sitting here does me no good, and maybe if I can clean the space around me, then everything might become clear. The dust is puffing out of the rug I'm beating, which I know isn't the best for my asthma. That's another thing, I guarantee Otherme does not have asthma...
The story actually begins with a blast of sound, actually even before this in a tiny, subatomic pinprick of weight and density, of compression, strings of predetermined mathematical equations curling in on themselves, bouncing its nothingness around in more nothingness, the “zero size,” allow me to get technical here for a moment, time is sludging around, erratic (as if that's really changed), and bored with that, the pin comes out of the prick, then the flurry of strings, twists out, arcs, explodes, reverberates, and I suppose comes the light, one flash at first, reverberates in turn into distinct particles, picture a fiber optics ball, only moving a little faster than the speed of light, now imagine the heat, although you can't really imagine this kind of heat, but just think of the hottest you've ever been, maybe your dormitory room in Fiji in January, that room just above the kitchen, the day with ninety percent humidity, that damn fan that oscillates in that one pitiful corner that really only sucks the air out of the room, this would be inconceivably hotter, but still try to imagine that, and as all of that heat passes, then of course is the blast rumble, whrrrooooshhh crash-blast, or your favorite onomatopoetic effect (as long as it is not something like a blip, bloop, bing, or clang, because that would be disappointing), but remember it is the strings that come first because you obviously cannot have any of that blast without the strings.
And just when you think, oh the shit has really hit the fan, you notice something else, that as you have witnessed (in your imagination, of course) the blast of the big bang as it swarms toward you, then passes away, rumbling and screaming on behind you now, unless you have turned backward to look at it, but you are not, because I have told you to look ahead at the thing which you are now to notice, which is, as there is a blast now behind you (having turned back around to your original position, though I do not say front because at this point of time, who the hell knows what front is) there is a simultaneous concussion, though moving in the opposite direction, the pinprick having exploded into two equal and opposite directions, and as you notice upon further inspection, it stretches out, pulling away from the gravitational mud pit and pushing its concave (as long as you are inside of it, but the outer edge doing the pushing is actually convex) edge forward into the nothing that is becoming what it was before it is now, which is still nothing because the strings denote the absence of logical time, so don't worry about the importance of that detail, it really doesn't matter anyway, only that it comes to you, the realization, that the big bang has split into two equal and opposite parts, and that it is not one universe, but two universes, meeting in the center, or departing from that center, which is now disappearing as your own universe, because you are in one, in fact, is expanding in all directions, and thus the epicenter blast of it all, still spewing its strings and light, is getting farther and farther away, and projecting from its opposite wall Otheruniverse spreading its mass, hurtling the future Otherme away with it.
Now I mention the strings because these are important in the sense that as they vibrate, or reverberate in order to keep up my consistency, as they do this reverberating, they are what form everything, of course with the help of gravity, but wait, the strings make up gravity, and they provide the equation on which even this story is based, and that it is written even before I tell you because it already has existed in the sludge pool of gravity in that pinprick I have just mentioned and I am just translating for you now the math that is really much too time consuming for us to translate everything, so we will each take up our own part, and this translation is mine. So you see, I have already been thinking about killing Otherme even before I realize that I will kill Otherme this day while I am banging the dust out of the rug and lamenting my asthma.
Otherme, I know, does not have to beat the dust out of rugs, the male Swedish housekeeper/masseuse does that, and even that little INS problem was quickly resolved on account of her close friendship with the Prime Minister. She regularly has him and his wife over to her chateau for luncheon and dinner, during which she performs the latest aria written specifically for her vocal range. If she drove, it would be an automobile similar to a Bentley, or Rolls Royce if she happens to be old fashioned, but she doesn't drive, in fact, she has never driven because Manfred, the chauffeur, always drives for her. One of the coin tosses that has gone my way—I'm an excellent driver.
I'm having a hard time figuring out how I am actually going to get to Otherme. Unlike her, it's not as though I can afford one of those fancy high-powered rocket launched satellites that celebrities and Russian businessmen are clamoring to ride. But I have to remember my assets, one of which is my adeptness at driving and the other of which would be upkeep—you see, I take very good care in the maintenance of my automobile, and thus my solution presents itself in the utility of my automobile. I decide to take my car much more quickly than I can tell you that I will take my car, one, because neurons in the brain fire through the synapses forming the image of an idea, an instantaneous cry of "eureka!" as the picture appears, quicker than I can form the words to go with that image, and two, I have always taken my car, from the time those strings flew out of the first singularity, the zero-size mass.
Problem: I don't know how to get there, and I don't have the components I need to find my moving particle opposite out of all particles. This is one of those times when I am stuck, which actually happens with some kind of frequency, but the importance is really to push forward, because I will have to be doing that for a long stretch, but something must go on even if I do not know the steps, the steps of a linear path would be inclusive of one in front of the other, but this is not such a place, and it is here that I remember the vibrations and that they may become useful even if this digression does not. We have already been compressed. At once we are open and closed...
She opens and closes the lid to the piano, staring beyond the keys at the still hammers resting on the long golden strings. She is small, almost unrecognizable except for the forced grace masking the tension that serves as the axis from which we both spin. My own fingers feel the cold metal of the chords even though she never reaches for them. She does not recognize me when we first meet, I will tell you this now, and when I inevitably arrive, I am able to watch her for a while because I have come a long way without planning how I actually am going to kill Otherme. Impulses are also made up of the strings, triggers, and something that is metaphysical, something we cannot comprehend, the strings trigger that, it is an equation, which is why physicists come up with six more dimensions, coming after the five they projected exist, and even that impulse to project was dictated, mapped out by strings, which are probably manifested somewhere in the seventh dimension, or maybe that's even in the fifth if we actually knew what the fifth dimension does, but for argument's sake, impulses are seventh, and from the time I was compressed I had already found Otherme without having a plan. But that doesn't mean that there is no plan, nor does it indicate the wrong turn I took halfway through the zero point.
Depending on what part of the story you are in, I mention again that the strings that make up the universe work by producing vibrations, that the universe is one mathematical resonance, so the trick to getting anywhere is to employ a vehicle of this type of resonance, where the energy source produces such a vibration that movement is then conducted along the strings that create time and space, if we are to believe in such things, and anything with an energy source can travel by these means, especially one with as much vibration as my Ford Grenada.
Fuel and water are the two main ingredients necessary for any long-term trip with a Ford Grenada, and not merely an extra can or bottle of each, I mean, this should be the only luggage on a journey such as this, maybe with the exception of some granola bars or dry cereal, because this car is not the finely-tuned European import from recent years, and I only need one comfortable outfit, layers of course for the hot and cold of the universe, you never can tell what you're going to get, and maybe one or two extra pairs of underwear, which will easily fit in the glove box, so all that space, that fine American space as wide as those great plains and mountains majesty and all that, and isn't manifest destiny an ironic term now, will be filled with the two main necessities for running my Ford Grenada down the great universal turnpike. Sure they give it an exotic name, Grenada, and with a name like that, you think tropical heat and humidity and shrapnel, and though I have not yet given you a physical description of my Grenada, the car, not my image of the island, just think Gren-Ah-dah, not Gren-Ā-dah if you're having trouble telling the difference, but I don't intend to muddle through images of rust-stained white metal, tan interior which has since become more burnt sienna, or the small mushrooms that grow underneath the back seat, which again is terrible for my asthma, and I know that these particular fungi are not actually native to Gren-Ā-dah, though my Gren-Ah-dah makes its own decisions about what it wants to have grown in between its folds, which I think makes it more like me than Otherme. I fill the trunk with plenty of oil and water to keep the Gren-Ah-dah running for the trip, and I'll keep that barrel of gasoline that I picked up from the station around the corner during their semi-annual going out of business sale, that will fit in the back seat, next to the mushrooms. It rattles and shakes, but remember that's a good thing, I want it to shake, because that's how everything moves from place to place, just give it enough energy and force and you push right through particles, which, remember, are really strings.
We watch Otherme and we don't watch Otherme just as before again. I promise, I am not trying to confuse you. We all actually look more alike than I expect, due in large part to the hair dye she's using now. Although Otherme looks a little haggard, if I might be perfectly frank.
I think we have had strings all wrong. Supposedly, strings are agents for some type of deliverance, Theseus' string helping him escape the labyrinth and then me, using them to get out of my hole, but this is not the same thing as picking up one end of braided twine and following it to the package/bifurcated beast/Otherme holding the opposite end in hand. I could have an image of Otherme sitting at the piano, working out complex tonic chord structures with the left hand and holding the other end of my string with the right hand, twitching the frayed end with thumb and forefinger, but I already know this is not the way it happens, and Otherme is not sitting at the piano when I arrive. But I think there is a sardonic nature to the strings' complexity, and it amuses them to no end to change their minds and reform mid-path, throwing the traveler through a wormhole, and of course it is impossible to make a U-turn because the hole on your end (well, okay, on MY end) is now closed, the strings squirming through each other as though there is no disturbance, as if the white 1977 Ford Gren-Ah-dah has always been in that one spot, but yes, it has always been there because the strings had always gotten me lost at just that point, and no, it probably had nothing to do with my reaching into the backseat for a granola bar an instant before. For instance, this blast coming toward me, no that can't be a supernova, it's chasing those strings in yes, that would be a concave shape, and...
As I have said, upkeep is essential, and I recommend that you have the important tools with you as well as a familiarity with the mechanics of your automobile, especially when the strings dump you right in front of the blast of the big bang and it knocks the axel off your white 1977 Ford Gren-Ah-dah, but the worst of it is you, alright, I realize that I've been going in the wrong goddamn direction for a while, thus it takes me longer than I anticipate to find Otherme. But the wonderful part about the strings is that with just one tap, they can take me anywhere I need to go.
My publisher will let me go if I don't meet this deadline, which is in its fourth extension, without advance, she says she is sorry, there are other clients, and in between the lines she says with more words, the promise of mine has been the veil, and the final deadline, my publisher says, is a finite point, fixed, unmovable, so instead I must be, I the mountain, movable to Mohammad's will. I put the receiver back on the cradle, thinking of wires, of the wires that connect our voices, and maybe it is in that moment when the strings first work their way from my hands to the obliteration of Otherme. But then, I would always have to kill her, so the strings have written.
Time moves very slowly near the zero size point, slowly and then skips ahead, clots of time congeal and drip, and I describe it this way because I'm thinking about coffee, coffee that I haven't had in—I know you don't drink your coffee when it is thick and chewable, and it's kind of like Turkish, only you don't chew the grounds, it's just very dense liquid that you can roll across your gums. I'm dripping through this part of space, at this point not even really driving the Gren-Ah-dah anymore.
Strings I think are the most dependable element in the universe, well that's not a fair comparison since everything is made up of strings, but because they already know their plan, they enjoy a good deception and never take you where you think you're going to go, or in my case, when I'll end up by the time I reach Otherme.
The vanity is small, but it is not a child's, it is something that Otherme has inherited from a grandmother's grandmother, old wood, dark finish but a little dull, a few curved lines, and a little curved girl in front of the green mirror. The hands, the wrists are small but undainty, a child's grace at a practiced art, counting strokes, one hundred strokes with the brush, Otherme counts them out in her child's voice, the small feet swinging from the chair, not even touching the floor.
Would you set out my green sweater on the bed?
Otherme sees me and thinks that I am the maid. I am the faceless shape that moves the objects of her life.
I remember that Otherme's father likes to hunt in the nearby woods, this is common with gentlemen, and because Otherme knows where he keeps the guns, I know where he keeps the guns, and then everything that Otherme has, I will have.
It is so easy to be shot.
I look down and see the hole in the diaphragm, equal and opposite, and no, this isn't the way it was written, and if I could tap the strings to go back, to rephrase…
Did you just shoot us?
I had shot us, but clearly I have not. I tell this to Otherme, hoping to reassure us that I have one, not just killed myself, and two, not just killed a child, Otherme or not.
Why did you shoot me?
This really isn't the way I had planned it. I've taken it back. You are supposed to be older, I tell her.
For what?
We each look at our Other, and maybe I should explain, maybe I should sum up. Or maybe I should just show her the Gren-Ah-dah, take her for a ride.
Why does your car smell like a fungus?
It's a classic. I can't help the mushrooms. And we need the vibrations to get us to where we're going.
Is there a blanket I can put down? This is kind of gross.
Just shut up about the car. You'll be fine. I'm glad I'm not as picky as Otherme.
Where are we going?
We're going to take a little spin, because I could use the visual aid to help me. You see, it's all about strings. They can take you anywhere.
So how did you get here?
I was trying to find you, well me. I turn the ignition on my Gren-Ah-dah, the rumbles begin, send waves into the ground below us, shake the strings, and we are away through space, the strings bending and snapping straight, they look like ribbons, Otherme says, putting her hand against the glass of the window, and the ribbons send us forward until I turn off, into the forest behind Otherme's house. The clouds have barely moved since we left.
Can we do that again?
I walk her back to the house first, up to the window of her room, and we watch as Otherme sits in front of the mirror, her feet flat on the floor, brushing her hundred strokes, her hair long and the ends broken off throughout the length.
Who is that? Why is she in my room?
That's Otherme. I was trying to find her when I accidentally got to you.
Oh. Her hair looks awful.
Well, maybe you shouldn't spend so much time brushing it. That's why it's breaking off, years of compulsive vanity. I must speak more plainly for her. Find a new hobby, I tell her, unless you want your hair to look like that.
Why, so that I can be like you and look like I've been living under a haystack?
I've been traveling. I shouldn't have to put up with the sarcasm of an eight year old, even if she does get it from me.
She looks like you. Even with the hair.
And that was the unexpected, the recognition, the wrists a little thicker, but the face, my face, Otherme is the Other, and my hand shakes. How am I supposed to do this?
Do what?
I should have kept the gun. Can you go in and grab it? You're small, and no one will notice you.
Wait a minute. You're going to kill her?
Well...
Didn't you try to kill me?
Well, not really, I fixed that.
Is that me?
No, it's Otherme. It's an older version of you.
But it's still me.
Yes, but...
And don't you remember what happened when you tried to kill me the last time? You shot yourself too. Think about it.
And she was right. There was no way for the plan to succeed, and the failures would compound.
Why did you want to kill us? We didn't do anything.
And Otherme is right. Let's go back to the Gren-Ah-dah. I'll take you back home.
I am home.
Yes, but not at the right time. I'm sure the universe would explode if the two of you ran into each other. They always warn about that in books and movies.
So we get to see the ribbons again?
Yes, we'll see the ribbons again. Otherme jumps back into the car, less mindful of the smell or the mushrooms under the seat. I climb in, and the vibrations take us back to where I want us to go. She wants to know why I am here, so I tell her, I tell her the story, my publisher, my deadline, the words that I don't have, my leaking pluming, the mushrooms that grow in my car no matter how clean the engine is kept, and the words, the words that will not come. Otherme presses her finger against the glass, and a string jumps to it, speeds along side us, and her entire hand lights up for an instant before it leaps off into another path.
Why don't you just write about the strings? You could say a lot about them. They're all a little different.
And I look and I watch the strings, the colors, the plans for the universes cleft and screaming away their plans for stars and all of matter, volcanoes and eyelashes, and fingers that light up. It is the story about the universe.
Because, you see, I have always written about strings.
Jennifer Carr's work has appeared in The Connecticut Review; she has recently completed her first novel about ill concert pianists and retired longshoremen. Jennifer currently teaches poetry and world literature at the Orange County High School of the Arts in Santa Ana, California.
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