Ахмед Рушди - Quichotte - A Novel

“It is hard for me,” Quichotte quietly said, “to ask forgiveness for actions I don’t fully recall.”

“And yet, curiously, forgiveness is what you’re here to ask for,” said the Trampoline.

“So that was the second unforgivable thing?” Sancho asked. The Trampoline did not reply, but drank her wine, quickly, and refilled her glass. Sancho tried a different tack. “What was the Interior Event?” he asked. “I need to know about that.”

“It’s showtime,” said Quichotte. “We need to turn on the TV.”

AFTERWARDS, WHEN THE GREAT scandal broke, there were people who said that the way Miss Salma R looked during the Evel Cent interview was the first indication that something was seriously wrong with her. She had the air of a woman who has spent half the night throwing buckets on a fire at her home and has had to leave to go to work before the flames were fully doused: tired, distracted, and not her usual lovable self. The techno-billionaire, however, was full of vim, like a child riding a bouncy ball. There were things he was bursting to say.

After introducing her guest, Salma was uncharacteristically sharp. “This business about the end of the world, Dr. Evel,” she said, and he interrupted.

“I’d appreciate it if you dropped the ‘Dr. Evel’ shtick,” he said. “It kind of sends out the wrong message?”

“Dr. Cent,” she corrected herself smoothly, without an apology. “Don’t you think it would be better, and a relief to your shareholders, I’m sure, if you stopped pushing this pretty unbelievable idea?”

“I understand that many people are in a state of denial,” Evel began.

“Most people,” Salma interrupted him. “Like, ninety-nine percent of people.”

“When ninety-nine percent of people thought the world was flat,” Evel said, “it didn’t make the world flat. The world didn’t need people to believe it was round to be round. Right now, ninety-nine percent of people are happily having a picnic on a railway track. Which doesn’t mean there isn’t a train coming down the line, traveling pretty fast. The railway train doesn’t need people to believe it’s coming, because it’s coming.”

“Evel, is this just something you’re putting out there, like a theory, something for discussion, or is there actually any proof?”

“I’m here today,” Evel Cent said, “to make two announcements. The first is that CentCorp will be releasing a report tomorrow which will contain all the proof you, or anyone, could possibly need. This is happening. The universe is fraying at the edges. It’s coming apart. We need to recognize that and take action.”

“But even if you’re right, this is something that’s going to happen, what, thousands, millions of years from now? So there are more important things to worry about at present, aren’t there? Better uses for our resources?”

“I’m not so sure it is so far in the future,” Evel said. “Some of my models show disturbing scenarios that predict the possibility of a highly accelerated progression.”

“How accelerated are you talking about, Evel? Within our lifetimes?”

“I can’t answer that. It’s one of the possibilities. We don’t know which model has the highest probable degree of accuracy.”

“So you’re here on national television, telling the prime-time audience that the world may end in their lifetime. Evel, don’t you feel that for a man with your visibility and prominence to put out such notions is, frankly, alarmist? You’re scaring people, in all likelihood for nothing. Isn’t that pretty irresponsible?”

“In the first place,” Evel replied, “the truth is the truth, and must be heard, however problematic it seems. I’m confident that when our science is judged everyone will accept our conclusions. And in the second place, as I said at the beginning, I have a second announcement to make. I said some time ago that I would come forward at the proper time. That time has come.”

“I’m afraid to ask,” Salma said.

Evel Cent actually leapt to his feet. “This is the good news, Salma. This is the astonishing news. I’m here to tell you that the first neighbor Earth has been positively identified and the NEXT systems are up and running. Listen up, world: the path has been opened!”

“And we’ll be right back with much more from Evel Cent,” a stunned Miss Salma R told her viewers, “after these messages.”

“THE PATH HAS BEEN OPENED,” Quichotte repeated in beatific wonderment during the commercial break. “He said it, right there on TV, for everyone to hear.”

“I get it that you believe everything you hear on TV,” Sancho told him, “but really, this guy is off the wall. And I don’t think he’s talking about the same path as you.”

“She’s right there next to him,” Quichotte replied, “and you heard what he said. The Path has been opened. Those are words of great power. Once such words have been spoken, events have no choice but to fall in line.”

“I forgot for a moment,” Sancho said, “that you’re as crazy as that guy on the show.”

When the commercial break ended, Salma pressed Evel Cent to back up his extraordinary claims. “You understand, don’t you, that to most people watching, this business about portals will sound like a Star Trek script? Beam me up, Scotty, you know? How do you know these gadgets work, and are safe, and how do you know this other Earth exists? Are you going to let cameras in to film them? I can’t believe I’m taking this seriously, that’s the truth. Are you sure this isn’t some sort of a prank? Because a CEO who is also the chairman of a multibillion-dollar tech corporation probably shouldn’t be doing things like this. It scares the shareholders.”

“She is not herself,” Quichotte said gravely, watching Miss Salma through narrowed eyes. “She looks shaken. You can see the panic in her eyes. The idea of a crumbling cosmos has disturbed her. This is because the end of everything is impossible to face in the absence of love. In the presence of love it becomes a form of exaltation. It becomes rapturous.”

“Shh,” Sancho said. “I want to hear about the dog.”

“…a chocolate Labrador called Schrödinger,” Evel Cent was saying on the show. “Named after the famous physicist Erwin Schrödinger and his quantum paradox about the cat.”

“What happened to the cat?” Salma asked, out of her depth on this.

“The paradox is that the cat can be simultaneously alive and dead.”

“Poor cat,” Salma said.

“However, being simultaneously dead and alive won’t work for people going through the portal, who will expect to be non-paradoxically alive and that’s all,” said Evel Cent. “So we sent Schrödinger through and brought him back to make sure he was less paradoxical than the cat. We used a dog, because dogs are more reliable. Cats don’t always do as you ask. Also, we put him on a long leash, so that if there was some emergency and we needed to get him out of there we could yank him back. Then we sent him through the NEXT portal, making him the first entity in the known history of the cosmos to travel through inter-dimensional space. He went through, he came back. A successful experiment. One hundred percent. We have a string of such experiments planned. And we have a name for this first portal. We call it the Mayflower. ”

“How is Schrödinger now?”

“He’s fine. Healthy, normal, alive, eating, in terrific shape. He’s a great dog.”

“And you recorded this, you filmed it, and you’ll make the film available to us, so that we can all see for ourselves?”

“In due course,” Evel Cent said. “We are in touch with the White House. This is a breakthrough discovery of national importance. More than that: of global importance. We have to be very careful. There are countries already thinking they could use NEXT to exile people they don’t like. The neighbor Earth is not a prison colony. It’s not Australia. Also there are strong indications that the Russians are trying to hack into CentCorp’s systems. Imagine what a neighbor Earth would think of us if their first impressions of us were provided by Russians? If that sounds bad I’m sorry. I’m a patriot. I want to make sure America is in the leadership role of this movement into tomorrow, which alters the future of the whole human race. Here in America we have one clear edge. We have all these South Asian tech geniuses in the talent pool and I’m putting plenty of those heads together to keep us in the driving seat, to keep both our creativity and our defenses high. We’ll be fine. Russian brains don’t work like brown brains. Does that sound wrong too? I’m sorry. I guess I can be too passionate.”