This was Belle’s room, and she was indeed in it. She hung suspended above her plain iron-frame bed in a weave of glowing threads. For a moment, he drew back, thinking she was a spider, but it immediately became clear she was more like a spider’s prey. The threads reached to all comers of the room, transparent, binding her tight.
Belle struggled to face him, eyes clouded, skin like washroom paper towels. “Why’d you wait so long?” she asked.
From across the mansion, he heard echoes of Reggie’s delighted laughter.
Oliver stepped forward. Only the blades of the shears caught on the threads; he passed through unhindered. Arm straining told hold on to the shears, he realized what the threads were: the cords binding Belle to the mansion, connecting her to all her customers. Every place she had been touched, there grew a tough, glowing thread. Thick twining ropes of the past shot from her lips and breasts and from between her legs; not even the toes of her feet were free.
Belle had not one cord to her past, but thousands.
Without thinking, Oliver twisted and thrust out the operator’s silver shears and began snipping. One by one, or in ropy clusters, he cut the cords away. With each whispering snick of the blades, some of the cords vanished. He did not ask himself which was her first cord, linking her to childhood, to the few years she had lived before she became a whore; there was no time to waste worrying about such niceties.
“Your brothers are in my vault,” Belle whispered, watching, hoping. “They found my gold and jewels. I crawled here to get away.”
“Don’t talk,” Oliver said between clenched teeth. The strands became tougher, more like wire the closer he came to her thin gray body. His arm muscles knotted and cold sweat soaked his clothes.
She dropped inches closer to the bed. “I never brought men here,” she said.
“Shh!”
“This was my place, the only place I had.”
There were hundreds of strands left now, instead of thousands. He worked for long minutes, watching her grow more and more gray, watching her eyes lose their feverish glitter, her one-time furnace heat dull to less than a single candle. For a horrified moment, he thought cutting the cords might actually weaken her; but he hacked and swung at them regardless. They were even tougher now, more resilient.
Far off in the mansion, Denver and Reggie laughed like fools, followed by a heavy thudding, clinking sound. The floor shuddered.
Dozens of cords remained. Oliver had been working at them for an eternity, and now each cord took all the strength left in his arms and hands. He thought he might faint or throw up.
Belle’s eyes had closed. Her breath was undetectable.
Five strands left. He cut through one, then another. As he applied the shears to the third, a tall man appeared on the opposite side of her bed, dressed in pale gray with a widebrimmed gray hat. His fingers were covered with gold rings. A small gold eagle’s claw pinned his white silk tie.
“I was her friend,” the man said. “She came to me and I helped her out, and she cheated me.”
Oliver stared up at the gray man through beads of sweat. Eyes stinging, he held out the shears out as if to stab him.
“Who are you?” he demanded.
“I put her to work right here—but she cheated me. That other old man, he hardly worked her at all.”
“You’re her pimp.” Oliver spat out the word.
The gray man grinned.
“Cut that cord,” he said, “and she’s nothing.”
“She’s nothing now! She’s dying.”
“She shouldn’t have messed with me,” the pimp said. “I was a strong man with lots of friends, lots of influence. What do you want with an old drained-out whore, boy?”
Oliver struggled to cut the third cord, but it writhed like a snake in the shears.
“She would have been a whore even without me,” the pimp said. “She was a whore from the day she was born!”
“That’s a lie,” Oliver said, almost doubled over with exertion.
“What you going to do with her? She give you a pox and you need to finish her off, personal?”
Oliver’s lips curled and he flung his head back as he brought the shears together with the last of his strength, boosted by a killing anger. The third cord parted and the shears snapped, one blade singing across the room and sticking in the wall with a spray of plaster chips.
The gray man vanished like a double-blown puff of cigarette smoke, leaving a scent of onions and stale beer.
Belle now hung awkwardly by two cords. Which was her link to life itself? He couldn’t see any difference.
She moaned. “Do it!” she murmured. “Finish it!”
Swinging the single blade like a knife, Oliver swiftly parted one more cord. The last drew itself out thin as a thread, glowed brilliant white, then vanished—and Belle dropped back to the bed. Exhausted, Oliver fell across her, feeling her cool body for the first time. She could no longer arouse lust. She might as well be dead. “Miss Parkhurst,” he said, and examined her face, high cheekbones pressing through waxy olive flesh. “I don’t want anything. I just want you to be all right.” He lowered his lips to hers and kissed her lightly, dripping sweat on her closed eyes.
Far away, Denver and Reggie cackled with glee …
Followed by silence.
The entire house grew quiet. All the ghosts, all the accounts received, had been freed, had fled.
The single candle in the room guttered out, and Oliver and Belle lay alone in the dark. Oliver finally got up, fumbled his way to the door, and went searching through the mansion for his brothers.
When he returned, he lay back beside Belle and, against his will, dropped into an exhausted slumber.
His breath synced with Belle’s.
Cool, rose-scented fingers brushed his forehead.
Oliver opened his eyes and saw a girl in a red shimmy lean over him. She was young, barely his age. Her eyes were big and her lips bowed into a smile beneath high, full cheekbones.
“Where are we?” she asked. “How long we been here?”
Late morning sun filled the small, dusty room.
Oliver glanced around the bed, looking for Belle, and then turned back to the girl. She vaguely resembled the chauffeur who had brought him to the mansion that first night, though even younger, her face more bland and simple.
“You don’t remember?” he asked.
“Honey,” the girl said, hands on hips, “I don’t remember much of anything. Except that you kissed me. You want to kiss me again?”
Momma did not approve of the strange young woman he brought home, and wanted to know where Reggie and Denver were. Oliver did not have the heart to tell her. His brothers lay cold as ice in a room filled with mounds of cat’s head subway tokens, lips parted in frozen laughter—bound by the pimp’s magic. They had dressed themselves in white, with broad white hats; dressed themselves as pimps. But the mansion was empty, stripped during that night of all its valuables by the greedy Sunside crowds.
Reggie and Denver were pimps imprisoned in a whorehouse without whores. As the young girl observed, with a tantalizing touch of wisdom beyond her apparent years, there was nothing much lower than that.
“Where’d you find that girl?” his momma asked. “She’s hiding something, Oliver. You mark my words.”
Oliver ignored his mother’s misgivings, having enough of his own. The girl agreed she needed a different name now, and chose Lorelei, a name she said “Just sings right.”
He saved money, lacking brothers who borrowed but never repaid, and soon had enough to rent a cheap studio on the sixth floor of the same building. The girl came to him sweetly in the rented bed, her mind no more full—for the most part—than that of any young girl. In his way, he loved her—and feared her, though less and less as days passed.
Lorelei played the piano almost as wel
l as he did, and they made plans to pass out fliers and give lessons.
All they had taken from the mansion that last night had been a trunk filled with old sheet music and books. The crowds had left them that much, and nothing more.
Momma did not visit their apartment for two weeks after they moved in. But visit she did, and eventually the girl won her over. “She’s got a good hand in the kitchen,” Momma said. “You do right by her, now.”
Yolanda made friends quickly and easily with Lorelei, and Oliver saw more substance in his younger sister than he had before. Lorelei helped Yolanda with the babies. She seemed a natural.
Sometimes, at night, he watched her while she slept, wondering if there still weren’t stories, and perhaps skills, hidden behind that sweet, peaceful face. Had she forgotten everything?
In time, they were married.
And they lived—
Well, enough.
They lived.
Genius
“Genius” was developed for the television show “Outer Limits” in 2000, but was never aired.
TEASER
FADE IN:
EXT. CAMPUS OF BURLINGTON UNIVERSITY - EVENING
POV: CUBIST PERSPECTIVE. The campus seen from all angles at once, like a PICASSO PAINTING. This REARRANGES VISUALLY into DAN SHAEFFER walking at sunset to a large brick building. Dan is tall, thin, mid-thirties. He looks middling handsome, feckless, and harried, and carries a box overflowing with papers, and balanced on top, a laptop computer.
SUPERED OVER: Burlington University, Washington State
INT. FUSION REACTOR LAB - NIGHT
SUPERED OVER: DOUBLE PULSE FUSION REACTOR LAB
CONTROL VOICE
Desire and loneliness are not limited to humans, or to the familiar coordinates of Earth. For some, space and time are playgrounds of the mind, a game, an opportunity …
Fluorescent lights, bulletin boards, scuffed linoleum: a hallway in a typical university building. Dan encounters ANDREA, a tall, jeans-clad post-doc.
ANDREA
(In passing)
You’re late.
DAN
Thanggg … you.
ON DAN, trying to push box and computer through a doorway.
CONTROL VOICE
For others, infinite dimensions are a reminder of failure and isolation.
INT. LAB OFFICE - LATER
A SMALL OFFICE, Dan and laboratory director MATT DAUBE sitting on opposite sides of the director’s desk. Blueprints and color photos of spectacular (though sub-atomic) explosions cover the walls. Matt is in his early forties, dark-haired, plumpish, with rumpled clothing but an air of frustrated authority. He pores over stacks of documents at the desk. Dan is typing madly on a laptop computer. He leans back, rubs his neck.
DAN
This is it, then—we go with a fifty-four degree internal beam angle.
(Turns laptop screen to Matt)
The first laser pulse hits the pellet, the bottle shapes the plasma into a spinning torus.
THE SCREEN shows a strange bottle-shape, what we will learn later is a KLEIN BOTTLE (sketch 1), looking like a twisted bagpipe, or a swan, if the swan were to tuck its neck under its wing. The bottle is in blueprint format: a cross-section of the DOUBLE PULSE FUSION REACTOR VESSEL. Dan’s finger traces the animation graphic as he explains.
DAN (CONT’D)
We push the second laser through the quantum tunnel at the new wavelength, pump the plasma energy from the inside … And we get a continuous and stable plasma at double the density. Should bring us plenty of return energy.
Matt has a headache. He squeezes the bridge of his nose.
DAN (CONT’D)
It’s a fundamentally different approach.
MATT
It all looks the same …
(Beat)
I don’t see the difference.
DAN
We reset the beam angle and change the laser frequency. It’s completely new.
Dan closes his laptop with a CLICK. Matt is not happy..
MATT
I’m getting a storm of crap from the university and from our investors. They’ve given us a pretty good run for the last year, without results. I just don’t see how this is any better than the design on the last shot.
DAN
It will work, Matt.
CINDY—twenties post-doc, small, with spiky, short blond hair—pokes her head into the office.
CINDY
We’re ready, Dr. Daube. Dr. Shaeffer.
Cindy withdraws.
MATT
What we need is a gusher of sheer genius. I’ve relied on you from the beginning. But I have to admit, I’m having second thoughts, Dan.
OFF DAN TO:
INT. FUSION REACTOR LAB - NIGHT
A brightly lit warehouse-sized lab, filled with equipment. A COUNTDOWN is underway. Ceiling lights flash, COMPUTER DISPLAYS run blue bars down to zero. Matt and Dan, a grad student JOHN, and the two female postdocs, Cindy and Andrea—surround the massive REACTOR VESSEL, a stainless steel and chromium ovoid with a swanlike curved neck doubling back on one side—just like the blueprint cutaway on Dan’s laptop.
MATT stands tensely with arms folded.
COMPUTER VOICE (V.O.)
Twenty seconds to compression. First step: plasma maintenance and measurement. Charging for pulse.
DAN stands beside Matt. He looks worried, even a little ill.
COMPUTER VOICE (V.O.) (CONT’D)
Stored energy at maximum.
MATT
(Low)
It’s a fifty million dollar pile of scrap if we don’t get out more energy than we put in.
COMPUTER VOICE (V.O.)
Hold for plasma oscillation buffer. Plasma in chamber.
A CHUFF and HUM fill the lab. The lights dim.
MATT
My ass is on the line here.
DAN
Very confident.
COMPUTER VOICE (V.O.)
Lasers fully charged. Quantum tunnel open for internal beam spread.
A high-pitched but ethereal WHINE fills the room. Dan grimaces. His headache is really intense. Matt presses his fingers to his temples. ALL show paleness, exhaustion.
COMPUTER VOICE (V.O.) (CONT’D)
Plasma rotating.
ALL tense.
CLOSE on a QUARTZ BOX suspended on the reactor’s “neck,” almost hidden by clumps of thick wires. Within the box, a spiraling twist of RED LASER BEAMS pass from one portion of the neck, through the box, and briefly forms a brilliant PINK KNOT inside the box.
CU Matt, PAN to Dan. Dan eyes Matt nervously.
COMPUTER VOICE
Inserting laser pulse through quantum tunnel.
A LOUD BANG. The vessel SHAKES and big steel bolts holding the vessel to concrete piers shed thin drifts of powder. Lights studding the vessel exterior now glow WHITE.
The computer displays flash RED, RED, RED. Instruments chatter in frantic despair.
We hear a HOLLOW THUD, the reactor shudders once again on its foundation, then, a FORLORN, DECLINING SIGH of dropping power fills the lab. No go.
ON MATT. He’s really and truly disgusted.
COMPUTER VOICE (V.O.)
Plasma collapse. Experiment concluded.
The team has had it. They fold their notebooks, pocket their pencils, shrug, and scatter, except for Matt and Dan, and Cindy, who checks out the vessel.
MATT
Let’s call it a night. A year. Let’s call it a goddamned frustrating year.
Matt turns, as if dancing, holding out his arms, driven to something like delirium.
DAN
It should have worked, Matt! The math is undeniable.
MATT
Each one of thes
e tests costs the university fifty thousand dollars. And so far, all we’re getting is a hot fart of deuterium gas.
(Laughs, then deadly serious)
Who’s going to save us, Dan?
DAN
We’re funded for two more runs.
But he doesn’t sound convinced. Cindy is pulling equipment out of the crystal cube.
MATT
I’m out of patience, out of aspirin, and I’m just about out of my mind. It’s over. I’m pulling the plug.
DAN
We still have funding!
MATT
What, to burn like kindling? I owe these people some sense of responsibility. I need to be big enough to admit our failure.
Cindy approaches the two men, carrying the QUANTUM TUNNEL. It’s about two feet long, a series of stainless steel donuts held together by quartz rods. The inside is blackened.
CINDY
We crisped the tunnel again. It’ll take three days to re-line.
DAN
We have the money, give me … Three days? Three days I’m sure it’s simple. It might just be engineering.
CINDY
Don’t blame us!
MATT
Every time we shoot this thing off, my head feels like it wants to split.
DAN
It’s the flu. It’s got us all down. I know we’re close!
He looks to Cindy for support. She’s ticked about the prior comment, but she swallows it, for the good of the project, the team.
CINDY
Dr. Shaeffer is right. Let’s rebuild and try again. The figures looked promising.
MATT
I’m taking the weekend off. You’ve got five days … no, make that a week. Our last shot. I need genius, Dan.
Matt stalks off.
DAN
You won’t regret it!
CINDY
(Low, a narrowed eye on Dan)
We hope.
DISSOLVE TO:
INT. A BOY’S BEDROOM - NIGHT
TREVOR BOURNE is 10 years old, small for his age, with pale features and a focused expression. He’s lying on his stomach, straight-legged, on the floor, drawing with a crayon on a large piece of construction paper. The ROOM is filled with geometric drawings, beautifully abstract Lego models. Geometric paper cut-outs hang from the ceiling: dodecahedrons and a HYPERCUBE (see sketch 2).