The Outlier #1: Beepers Page 3

verse always comes in handy.”

  “Hmm,” he said, “maybe. Sure. There's chapter 22 in Genesis where God tells Abraham to kill his beloved child.”

  “Yeah, one of my faves,” Karen chuckled. “So, when can I pencil you in?”

  “Like I said, I don't know yet,” he told her. “I should know more in the morning. Where are you now?”

  “I'm at Joey's.”

  “Okay then, tell the big lug ...”

  “Tell him what?”

  “Dang, I don't know. I thought I had a good quip but I've got nothing.”

  “All right, I'll tell him that.”

  “No!” he said, but she'd already hung up the line. Darn it, he thought, I can never come up with a good quip when I want to.

  He was always trying, though. He felt it would be appropriate to make some decent light banter with all of Karen's other guys, to sort of cement the fellowship as it were. There had to be an etiquette where that kind of thing was settled, an Emily Post-type Guide to Polyamory Comraderie. He searched in his mind for references and even asked his tablet but all he came up with were anecdotal blog posts and comments. That's a job waiting for someone to do, he thought. There was money to be made. Of course, he shrugged, there's always money to be made.

  The house was abnormally quiet. Dillon and the Commander had scoured the place for any source of noise, disconnecting all the clocks and lamps and everything else plugged in, even the refrigerator. The Commander was ensconced in the upstairs room and making sure to be ultra quiet, while Dillon snoozed lightly in comfort and style. The only sounds came from the occasional car passing by, and once a raccoon clattered a garbage can lid in the backyard. Bethany briefly considered gunning it down but decided not to add more noise to the noise. She silently wished she had brought along her crossbow.

  And then she heard it. Dillon heard it too. A definite beeping at a 1000 Hz pure tone, not loud, perhaps around 30 decibels, like a whisper in the night. Dillon sprang to his feet and stepped into the hallway. There was no doubt about it. Every nine or ten seconds, there it was. He checked his watch to make sure of the starting time. He crept towards the apparent source of the sound, which was right where Mr. White had said it was. Dillon knelt and put his ear to the molding just above the floorboards, and listened. Mr White had recently torn out the molding and the drywall behind it, but then restored it all after conclusively proving there was nothing that could beep inside of there. And now that Dillon could hear for himself, it became clear that the sound did not come from behind the molding at all, but from somewhere in the air just an inch or so in front of it.

  He cupped his hands around that spot and when the beeping beeped again, he thought he could feel a slight vibration in his palms. He glanced up to see the Commander standing nearby, firearm at the ready. He motioned for her to stand down and return to bed. Then he closed his hands more tightly around the spot, and gradually narrowed his grasp until he was practically holding the beep in his hands. The vibrations were definite and carried across his skin up to his elbows before fading out. Whatever it was obeyed the gravitational laws of this world.

  Dillon pulled his hands away and dashed into the TV room, emerging moments later with a penlight and a high-powered hand-held magnifying glass, capable of up to nine hundred thousand times resolution. On his hands and knees he shone the light and magnified to the max, but there he could visually detect no abnormalities in the particles floating in the midnight dust. Fortunately, the glass could also record, so he filmed the space for more careful scrutiny at a later time. If the source of the noise was detectable by modern science, he would have a decent chance to do so. But all of this took time, and before his inspection was as complete as he would have preferred, twenty two minutes had elapsed, and the beeping ceased as suddenly as it had begun. Dillon was left with his audio and video files, a pair of sore knees, and a genuine headache from observing so little so closely.

  He slept soundly the rest of the night, and only arose when the garbage trucks hit the rounds around nine o'clock in the morning. He found the Commander in the kitchen, drinking coffee and holding up a large folded paper thing that turned out to contain the morning news.

  “I found it on the front steps,” she informed him. “I suppose he gets one every day.”

  “Fascinating,” Dillon replied. “Is there anything of interest in it?”

  “Possibly,” she said, “if you're in the market for a used car. There seem to be a lot of those available at low, low prices.”

  She gathered up the paper by its corners and tried putting it back together, but soon gave up and dumped the thing in a heap on the table, revealing that she'd been using it to hide a surprise.

  “Orange juice, half-caf skinny flat white, raisin toast (they didn't have bagels , sir, but I'm told this toast is quite the thing the thing these days – it's supposedly hand-made) and fresh hand-picked blueberries, sir,” she announced with a grin.

  Dillon clasped his hands together with pleasure and smiled.

  “I don't know how you do it, Commander. I really don't know. Hand-made toast! Who knew?”

  “It's called effort, sir,” she said. “One tries and one does.”

  “You certainly do,” he agreed, settling down to enjoy his breakfast. “We'll be going to Boston today. No particular hurry.”

  The Commander nodded and said,

  “Yes, sir,” and immediately set about accomplishing a raft of chores, making calls and arranging things. Everything was ready by the time he'd finished eating, showering and selecting his wardrobe. For the day at hand he made several stylistic sacrifices, opting for blue jeans, flannel shirt, leather bomber jacket and bright orange running shoes. He had a definite hat in mind – practically anything with a 'B' on it would suffice – but set that aside for later.

  They were gone before Mr. White returned to find his house restored to normal, all furniture replaced and no trace of his visitors remaining, except for the note Dillon left on the kitchen table, which read, “Dear Mr. White. Thank you for your hospitality. It is very much appreciated. Rest assured that your case is well in hand and I will contact you again shortly. In the meantime, please let me know if any characteristic of the beeping undergoes any transformation whatever. I would especially be interested in changes in volume, pitch, interval and/or overall duration. Thanks again. Your guest, Dillon Sharif.”

  The Commander handled all the various issues of traffic congestion and airport delays. Such matters remained completely opaque to her passenger, who was absorbed the entire time in queries and formulations. He reviewed the overnight video several times, frequently in slow motion and stop action mode. There was something about the hyper visualization of air and dust molecules that was particularly entrancing. It was as if he were being plunged into a different universe entirely, one in which random chaos made absolute sense, in which uncertainty seemed rational and motion the only measure of value, and everything moved, constantly and continually, whether in some sort of order or no kind at all. Particles were here and then there, they danced with one another, attracted and repulsed, spun and leaped and twirled like spastic ballerinas. There was a rhythm to it, and that rhythm was defined by heat. When the action was too close and too intense, Dillon zoomed it out and slowed it down and saw a bigger picture, and as he kept zooming out incrementally, all sorts of patterns came into view until at a certain point that very real world of the essence of things vanished entirely and he was left with floorboards, molding and wallpaper, that layer of human visibility which concealed the true nature of things in exchange for simple, basic sanity.

  “In the city, you cannot tell what ought to be,” his grandmother cryptically informed him as they chatted during the flight. They had also watched the video by then, Kintara seemingly more curious than Wilkins.

  “What do you mean?” Dillon asked, puzzled.

  “All the machinery interferes,” she explained. “Think of all the man-made gadgets and equipment going on buzzing all the
time, at a whole wide range of frequencies. If you can hear it it's because of the vibrations in the air they cause, and there's more you cannot hear above and below our limited range. All of it moves the air about, all of it shifts and jostles and juggles and disturbs. Even in the countryside these days there's no getting away from it. High-powered electric lines, tractors and mowers, dams and can-openers and cellphones and light bulbs even, all of it kicking the sky and all its particles.”

  “Hmm,” Dillon considered, “so you're saying there's no way to detect any abnormality in the field around the beeping?”

  “Too many variables,” Kintara nodded, “and no possible baseline for comparison.”

  “Besides,” Wilkins put in, “who's to say it's that localized?”

  “Yes, I was considering that,” Dillon replied. “It could well be a displacement effect. In that case, there would be a lot of math involved. Reflections, resonance, materials, surfaces, quotients, all that sort of thing.”

  “Acoustics is a bitch,” Wilkins agreed.

  'Don't get too lost in the details, dear,” Kintara advised before signing off. “Think big picture too.”

  Dillon didn't notice the big picture until he found himself being driven in a small electric car through the streets of some part of the city of Boston he'd never seen before. Here all the buildings were brick and tightly packed together, three or four stories high with nothing to tell them apart except for the different curtains in the windows. It seemed to go on for miles, these warehouses full of humans and their dramas, some of which were being played out on the streets, in and around the cars piled close on curbs and sidewalks and corners. The people had run out of room to put their stuff and it was spilling out all over the place. He nodded as the Commander slowed to a halt, and he placed his Boston Bruins hockey team cap upon his head.

  The Commander had found nowhere to park and expressed concern about Dillon's safety, but he felt certain that he'd be fine. He'd slip out of the car and into the building with no one even noticing his existence, thanks to the hat and the magic of how clothes make the man. He was right. The Commander could join him later, he said, and he made his way without incident to the second floor apartment in which lived Bermuda Hills, the forty four year old resident of bean town who had heard the beeping in the night.

  She was home, as per the Commander's request. Normally at this hour she would be volunteering at the community center down the street, where she helped little kids learn how to play kickball without biting one another. In the mornings, she cleaned houses. In the evenings, she cooked meals. At night, she often babysat. It was one odd job or another, and her schedule was never entirely secure from one week to the next, but it got her through the month, the rent was paid and food could be obtained. Certainly her late husband's paltry military benefits were not able to suffice. Dillon did not appreciate the smell of the halls, and was already anticipating an extra quick visit, but was surprised when Bermuda opened the door and warmly invited him inside. It wasn't just her calm and friendly manner that filled him with an unexpected warmth.

  There was a restfulness and beauty about the whole apartment. The walls were filled with paintings of wildflowers done in all sorts of styles and colors, and hung about haphazardly rather than the straight lines which had characterized Mr. White's collection. Bermuda's home had orange and yellow painted floors, blue and green walls and all kinds of colors everywhere. Her small kitchen table was stained glass, with three round wrought iron chairs gathered around it. The one bedroom was barely large enough for the double bed it contained, but the