Chapter Four (Camille, Age 27)

“The whole car?” Benjamin asked.

“It’s a special occasion,” I said.

“You booked an entire first class train car. There are like twenty seats in here.”

“Not that many businessmen travel at this hour, and it’s the off season.”

“How much did this cost?”

“I wanted us to be able to talk freely, Benjamin. Can’t a girl throw her money around?”

He sighed. “I feel like I keep saying perfectly reasonable things and then you hit me with some...”

“Some what?” I asked, demurely.

“Some French bullshit!” He looked around for a moment, embarrassed.

“See, now you’re happy that we’re alone,” I said.

“Can you please try to work with me here, Camille? Please? I came out here to get science help not... threatening strangers and accosting rich people.”

“It’s a fourteen hour train to ride to Copenhagen, we have plenty of time to discuss the merits of my theory.”

“What do you think is gonna happen? When we get to Denmark, even if Mikkelsen sees us, then what?”

“We get back on the inside. With you to corroborate my story, we can convince Mikkelsen that my entanglement theory is the way to proceed, we focus our research on entanglement and how to move into an engineering phase.”

He sighed again. I stared out the window as suburban Paris flew by.

“What is it?”

“What if Mikkelsen doesn’t let you back into the group? I mean, it seems like your plan is to go in and yell at the guy who owns two of the largest companies in Denmark, and then dot dot dot success.”

I blew a puff of air through my front teeth. “Mikkelsen has been watching me for two years, I’ve shown you this, yes?”

“Yes...”

“Why? Because the rich bet on all horses. It is simply a question of which horse they, you know, bet on most. Is that how you would say it?”

“Which horse they put the most money on, maybe.”

“Yes, comme ça. We only need to convince that I – we – are the correct horses. And that Philip’s tachyon research is a dead end. And bull shit. And that Philip is a useless roast beef twat.”

“I’m sorry, did you just say roast beef twat?”

“Tais-toi!”

“Oh, sure, tell me to shut up.”

“I see you remember the important phrases,” I said.

We drank and talked about grand ideas of physics, as we had done before my exile.

“But how could it... you would have to know the position of the system you want to entangle, right?”

“Mais oui.”

“And there haven’t been any experiments to date with anything near the kind of scale you’re talking about.”

“There have not, but initially entanglement was only observed at the quantum level, then at the atomic, then molecular. Crossing out of quantum scales was the major, you know, bridge to be crossed. Anything after that is merely a measure of determining the states of the object to be entangled, and the ability to copy them onto a target object, or group of objects.”

“But you think it was done to your brain. Your whole entire brain. Doesn’t that bother you?” he asked.

“Well, you haven’t even gotten into the quantum teleportation problem. If teleportation is involved, that’s where it gets quite sad, n’est-ce pas?”

“What? What d’you mean?”

“Think for two seconds, Benjamin, I’m not here to do everything for you.”

“Okay. Quantum teleportation. When the information is transported to the new location – oh, shit – the original is destroyed.”

“Indeed. So we may not be ourselves, having been to the future and back. We may be mere copies.”

“But... with a whole brain? Just zapped into place? How could anyone survive that?”

“That I do not know. But I’m dying to find out.”

*

We switched trains twice in Germany, and grew weary as the hour grew late. We were in and out of sleep on the final train into Denmark, which arrived in the small hours of the morning. I watched Benjamin for a while as he slept. It was good to see him here, talk to someone who was, if perhaps not an equal, than certainly closer to it than Gerard or any of the other customers at my uncle’s wine shop. Or Renaud. I would have to text him to let him know that I would be away. Benjamin awoke to find me looking at him.

“What’s up?” he said. It was the quintessential American phrase: multipurpose, optimistic, and yet entirely devoid of actual content.

“Rien,” I said.

We struggled out of the train on to the chilly platform, blinking under the overhead lights, and handed our minimal baggage off to the driver I had hired.

“You’re kidding with this, right?”

“Wait until you see the room I booked.”

Benjamin shook his head, but he was too tired to make any more unsubtle American remarks. We slid into the car and struggled to stay awake on the ride over to the Hotel Angleterre. We were greeted by a bellhop, whom I tipped generously in Euros, as we made our way to the upper floors of the hotel.

“A hotel in Copenhagen with a French name for England. Is this some sort of weird joke?”

“No, but it is one of the top hotels in the city, and the best suite available at short notice.”

“Suite? Didn’t you say room earlier?”

“Who can recall,” I said as we were lead into the suite. Decorated in icy blues and white, it featured expansive views of the city, fresh flowers, and more importantly, fresh champagne. I thanked the bellhop and popped the cork.

“You are a machine. Are you sure you’re not Irish?”

“Don’t be so xenophobic,” I said, handing him a glass.

“I can’t even begin to respond to that.”

“Then don’t. Cheers, as you say.”

“Cheers.”

We clinked glasses. I drank first, and a cocked eyebrow convinced Benjamin that he ought to follow suit. Bad luck not to, after all, and we needed the fickle winds of probability to shift in our favor. I attempted to project confidence, but in truth, I had no idea how the meeting would go. Would our benefactor see us? Would he hear our case? Of course. How he might react, I could not say. He was as cold and enigmatic as the Baltic Sea itself, and, despite copious research on my part, I had only met the man on a few occasions.

“Shouldn’t we be getting to bed? I mean, y’know, for sleep purposes? We have the biggest meeting of all time and space in the morning.”

“We have the meeting at our leisure. We must have breakfast in the restaurant here.”

“Champagne brunch?” he teased.

“Eh,” I said. “Let’s not take it too far. Cheers.”

“Cheers,” he said, and we touched our glasses once more. “So, I uh, it’s been real good to see you.”

“It’s been good to see you as well,” I said.

“So that day, when we, I mean...”

“I told you, I wasn’t myself. Or rather, I was my future self.”

“Right. Well, your future self is a … pretty solid kisser.”

“I don’t doubt it. I wonder how my current technique compares my older self. In fact, this presents a fascinating opportunity to experiment.”

“What do you mean?”

“You see, we can compare the performance of my younger and older selves while in the same body,” I said, drifting closer to the sofa he collapsed upon. “You can tell me whether my future self has acquired greater technique.”

“That’s a solid isolation of variables,” he said, reaching out for my hand.

I let him pull me in, then turned up my glass to drink the rest of my champagne, a flung the glass into the fireplace, which may or may not have been decorative.

“You’re crazy,” he laughed.

“Maybe,” I said. “I’ll be sure to tip the housekeepers.”

I kissed him. “What are your observations?”

“I’ll make you a chart of my data points in the morning,” he said.

I giggled, and we made our way to the bed.

*

The phone rang. I reached across Benjamin’s bare chest towards it. It had a cord. Terribly quaint, the Danish. I laid myself across him as I answered. It was our wake-up call, reminding us of the breakfast reservation I had made. I thanked them and informed Benjamin there were matters that required our attention, and required us to be clothed.

“Lame. How long do we have?”

“Twenty minutes.”

“I can totally work with that,” he said, running a hand down my chest and stomach.

“Can you?”

“Yeah. Although, I kinda really need to pee first.”

“Ha!” I laughed and threw myself back upon my pillows. “You do know how to charm a girl.”

“Hey, you’re the one who had me drinking wine all day.”

I sniffed and pretended to ignore him as he walked away, even as I watched him go. “You have a narrow ass!”

“Thank you! It’s how I fit through these tiny European doorways.”

I shook my head, and looked out upon the city as I waited for him to return. It was sunny, though a few streaks of cloud smeared the western horizon. What kind of day would it be? For the first time in two years, I had no idea.

“What are you smiling about?” asked Benjamin as he reappeared in the doorway.

“I always smile when there are naked boys in my doorway.”

“Oh yeah?” he said. Americans seemed to think this was a response to almost all statements. That, and ’right?’ It was a baffling cultural quirk.

Benjamin jumped back on the bed and began kissing my neck. I pulled him towards me. Even as we began to make love, my eyes drifted to those clouds in the west. What kind of day would it be?

We quickly dressed ourselves. I mocked Benjamin for bringing only three shirts with him from America, all of which were plaid. We descended to the ground floor, and the restaurant, where we were served elegant versions of traditional Danish breakfast foods: a platter with pastry, a small bowl of museli, a soft-boiled egg, rye bread, cheese, pots of jam, some sort of sliced, smoked meat. Benjamin found the whole affair rather bemusing.

“Yes, the Danish love of rye bread is a mystery to me as well. You know,” I said, “they have something that they call junket crumble which contains grated rye bread and brown sugar.”

“What? Grated bread? Is it stale?”

“I had a friend, she would make this in the, eh, how is it? The thing, with the blade that spins?”

“Like a blender?”

“Not quite.”

“Oh, a food processor.”

“Oui, the food processor, and in would go the rye bread and the brown sugar, and then she would place it in the oven for a time, and then serve it over the ymer, which is a milk product. Like a yogurt, but, eh...”

“More Danish?”

“Ouais, precisement!” I laughed.

“Camille...”

“Yes?”

“Whatever happens with Mikkelsen today, I mean, assuming he doesn’t just have us thrown off a herring boat and into the Baltic or something... I’m really happy to see you, and I’m glad we, y’know.”

I smiled at him. “You see, this is your American puritanism coming in again, yes? You can’t have sex without turning it into an occasion for an oratory. However, I’m glad too. And you still owe me that chart, ouais?”

“Yeah, I’ll have that on your desk by Monday.”

“Of course, you know we could have done that much sooner if you weren’t such a puritan.”

“What? When?”

“In Chile, of course. All those nights in the middle of nowhere in the high desert with nothing to do but search for stupid tachyons, I was terribly bored when I wasn’t working on my calculations. I would have welcomed the release.”

“I did not know that,” he said.

“Because you’re oblivious,” I said.

“Oh yeah?”

“Yeah.”

*

After breakfast, we found that a message had been left for us at the front desk. It was from Mikkelsen, requesting that we meet him at his offices. I wondered whether he had somehow come to know what hotel we were in by tracking our movements, or if he had left messages all over town. I assumed the former.

We took the hired car to the downtown headquarters of Mikkeltek building, which was among the tallest in Copenhagen, after the Parliament and the headquarters of Carlsberg, makers of insipid lager. It was a helical tower, looking as though a normal office tower had been grasped and twisted by the hand of God.

There was a similar building in Sweden that was taller. I would have to remember to remind Mikkelsen of that.

The car dropped us in front of the main entrance. Danes in dour suits buzzed in and out of the doors like melancholy bees from their hive. Benjamin and I made our way to the front desk. There were two older women with the faces of small dogs at the reception desk. The one who looked friendly was talking to two men. One was tall and blond, and the other was shorter with dark hair, and even more pale than his tall friend. If there were two Scandanavian men, be they brothers, cousins, or friends, one will be tall and blond, and the other small and dark-haired. I call it the Law of Thor and Loki. Observe for yourselves. I promise it’s as consistent as the tides.

“We’re here to see Mr. Mikkelsen,” I said, before the mean dog lady could speak.

She raised an eyebrow and looked at me, then performed some ostentatious clacking upon her keyboards, then looked back at me, then Benjamin, then once more at me.

“Of course, madame,” she said, making an awkward attempt at a French pronunciation. Like most Danes when venturing outside their native tongue, it sounded like she had a small live fish lodged in her throat. “Please proceed to the far elevator.”

As we walked to the elevator, I asked, “Did she call me madame? What’s wrong with you, eh?”

Benjamin looked stricken, and almost as pale as the Loki in that pair of Danes from the counter. “Nothing,” he said.

“Clearly. Are you afraid of confronting Mikkelsen?”

“A little. We don’t have a lot of direct contact, and it doesn’t involve... barging into his corporate HQ.”

“He knows we’re coming. He left us notes.”

“It’s a little barge-y.”

“We’ll be fine. We’re correct, and with the proper resources we can prove it. That’s all a good scientist needs. It’s all Galileo needed, and he was Italian.”

“Sometimes you say these things, like I’m supposed to know what they mean, but I’m not really in on all of your European in-fighting stuff.”

I sniffed. “I would have thought that one was obvious.”

The car stopped and the doors opened. Before us, we saw Mikkelsen’s penthouse office. The ceilings were high, and gave an open air to the place, but the windows which surrounded the place had an odd tint to them, which I assumed were designed to keep out more than ultraviolet radiation.

The space was unnecessarily large, but mostly empty, and still occupying less than the entire floor plan. There were a few sparse pieces of Scandinavian art, and light fixtures flying at odd intervals above the ground. I know there would be a pattern there, if I understood our patron as I thought I did; but there was little time to waste on deducing such trifles, when the answer may well be that his interior designer did it.

“Camille, Benjamin, do come in,” came Mikkelsen’s voice. He was standing not far from his desk, which was two-thirds of the way across the floor. Not too close to any windows, though, I noticed. He wasn’t yelling, nor was his voice coming across a speaker system.

“Cool,” said Benjamin.

“You’re always so transparent when you’re impressed.”

“Or horny, right?”

I scoffed.

“You were thinking it.”

“Come on,” I said, and walked towards the desk. “By the way, did you stop to think if we could hear him from that spot, he might also hear us?”

“Shit.”

“Yes, quite,” I said, then quieted myself to listen to the reverberations or our footsteps as we crossed the space. Not as long as they should have been.

“Good to see you both, and welcome to my office,” said Mikkelsen. He was in his late forties, hansom enough, with almost too many cheekbones and those flat, dead, Danish eyes.

“Monsieur Mikkelsen, how kind of you to see us.”

“De rien,” he said.

“Oh, he gets to speak French to you.”

Mikkelsen and I both looked at Benjamin.

“Okay,” he said.

“Please, sit. Did you enjoy my acoustic feature? If you speak over there by the urn, your voice travels a natural acoustic pathway to the elevator.”

“Yes, how faintly amusing yet certainly unnecessary,” I said, before Benjamin could say anything overly sycophantic.

“Yeah,” he added.

“I can see you’re not in the mood for pleasantries,” said Mikkelsen.

“Not unless pleasantries include brandy.”

“None for me thanks,” said Benjamin. “Oh, but do you have that Vichy water stuff? That stuff’s good.”

“Foutre dieu! Maybe be quiet until you’re asked a question, yes?”

“Okay....”

Mikkelsen pressed a button on his phone. “Three Vichy waters,” he said. “Now, what can I do for you? Exactly?”

“We want to be reinstated to the research team and to focus the resources on working towards an engineering phase of my entanglement theory.”

Mikkelsen raised his eyebrows ever so slightly. “Do you?”

“Yes. I understand that you had to sideline me after the incident with the telescope but you always knew that I’m not crazy. And now that the same thing has happened to Benjamin, it only goes to confirm my theory is the correct route to pursue. You can keep it quiet as you like, have us work here in Copenhagen, farm out work through your people so we don’t damage your reputation. We only want to be back on the inside, because the only way this project moves forward is with us at the helm. Mostly me, but Benjamin can be useful in his way.”

Mikkelsen paused, glancing between us. I held fast, holding him with my gaze, not looking over at Benjamin, who I assumed was sweating into his hipster beard.

I heard a slight whirring sound approach, then a small robot on wheels with a tray of Vichy water atop it rolled up and docked between our chairs. It chirped at us.

“Please, take your beverages,” said Mikkelsen.

Benjamin grabbed his immediately and began to chug it like it was light lager at an American fraternity house. I took mine as well, and the drinks robot chirped again and rolled off to deliver the last water to Mikkelsen. He took a sip from the tall glass.

“I must say, I have some questions,” he said.

“By all means,” I said.

“When you say that the same thing happened to both yourself and Benjamin, I assume you are referring to your purported alibi for the incident in Chile wherein you were...”

“In the body of my future self, and she in mine, yes.”

“And you say that you want both of you reinstated to the team?”

“Yes.”

“Benjamin?” he asked.

“Yeah?”

“Is there a chance that I’ve fired you and somehow don’t remember it?”

“I’m guessing no?” said Benjamin.

My mouth tasted like chemicals. “What?”

“Okay, maybe try not to get too mad.”

“You haven’t been fired?”

“No...”

“You’re still with the project?”

“Yeah...”

“So your story about the broken lab equipment was a lie?”

“More of a pretext, really.”

“It didn’t happen to you, did it? You didn’t wake up in that room?”

“Not as um... no, I didn’t.”

“Jesus Christ, Benjamin!”

“I just wanted your help with science things! I didn’t think this was gonna happen. We’ve been hitting so many dead ends since you left, and --”

I leaped up out of my chair. “And what? You lied to me! Tried to pull out of my obsolescence, make me believe there was one other person who had been through what I had been through! You waited nearly two days, let me barge in here and make myself a fool! Or did you do it all to fuck me, eh?”

“Oh my,” said Mikkelsen.

“Oh, shut your face, you dead-eyed Danish bastard!”

“My apologies,” he said.

“Camille, I’m so sorry, I figured once we were here --”

“Don’t. Don’t you dare try to explain yourself now, you coward! I … I … Oh shit.”

Benjamin and Mikkelsen both tried to grab me as I plummeted to the ground.

Then it was black. Black beyond sleep. As though I were suspended in space before space began.

I awoke, blinking. Everything was blurry, for a moment, but it was not long before I recognized the lights above me.

I jumped up, a bit more slowly than intended, perhaps, for once again I was in my older body.

I examined myself in the two-way glass. I appeared to be around the same age as the last time. If there were perhaps a little more skin damage, it could be attributed to my current state of vengeful drinking.

I walked up to the mirror and banged on it three times with my fist.

“Hey, assholes! Why now?”