Charlene winks at me. “Right, dear?” There’s no way I’m going to be Petunia for the rest of our stay, but arguing in front of Serenity doesn’t seem like the loving thing to do, so I let it drop. I’ll reaffirm my identity as Wolverine later.
“Sure,” I mutter. “Dear.”
Serenity consults her notes again. For walk-around and street magic, you need to be able to read other people’s handwriting upside down and backward so that when you use mirrors you can decipher what they’ve written on cards you’re not supposed to see. In time I got pretty good at it, and right now that skill was coming in handy.
“I think you’ll find our campus inviting and restful. A place to quiet your thoughts, still your spirits, and bring a more harmonic centeredness to your inner being and to your relationship with each other.” The words are obviously scripted, but she makes them sound authentic, like she genuinely means them, and I like that about her.
“Thank you, that sounds nice,” I tell her honestly.
Charlene thanks her as well, then mentions something about how we’d been so looking forward to this, but I’m giving my attention to the lobby, taking in the simple, rustic setting that also carries an air of high-end architectural design. Outside the window lies a porch with elegant stonework and round porch tables with umbrellas spreading above them like protective canvas wings. I imagine the metal is recycled, that the canvas is organic and somehow both waterproof and biodegradable.
Charlene is still holding my hand, which is okay by me.
“They’re serving in the dining hall until six, if you haven’t eaten yet,” Serenity tells us. I want to get settled, so I’m thankful Charlene and I grabbed a bite on the way here. “Breakfast is in the morning, six to eight. Dr. Tanbyrn will meet you at nine at the Prana building.”
Charlene looks at her curiously. “I’m sorry — the piranha building?”
“Prana.” Serenity seems surprised that Charlene doesn’t know the word. “The life force. The life-sustaining force. Hindu.”
“Right.”
Charlene lets go of my hand.
Serenity holds out a map uncertainly. “I’m sorry, did you say you’ve been here before?”
“No.” It’s a dual-purpose answer — I hadn’t said that, and we haven’t been here. I accept the map from her.
Serenity settles back into her script: “There’s a 7:00 yoga class tonight that you’re welcome to attend, all at your discretion, of course. Here at the Lawson Research Center, we care more about your experience than your attendance at any of our quality scheduled events.”
She hands Charlene a schedule. “We want this to be a place apart from the normal distractions of daily life. Too many people are tethered to technology, and it gives them a false sense of connection with other sojourners but splinters their attention from the most vital relationships, those with the people around them, and all too often it keeps them from being present in the moment.”
Serenity makes it through all of that in one breath, which I find pretty impressive.
“So”—now she looks nervous—“Wolverine, Petunia, I will need to ask you not to use your mobile phones or other electronic computerized devices here on our campus. It’s our policy.” She sounds like she’s apologizing.
Fionna and her kids had researched this place extensively, and Serenity’s request comes as no surprise. We don’t have any intention of forsaking our electronic devices during our stay, but Charlene fishes through her purse, produces her phone. Shuts it off. “Of course.”
I turn off my cell as well. I wonder what the reception up here in the mountains will be like anyway.
Serenity directs us to our cabin, wishes us well, and prayer-gesture bows to us again. We reply in kind.
As we’re walking down the path toward the cabin, Charlene shakes her head. “Wolverine and Petunia?”
“I was trying to fit in. And I’m supposed to be Wolverine.”
“I kind of like you being Petunia.”
“I’ll bet you do.”
We walk in silence until I make my suggestion for the evening’s plans. “Tonight, instead of going to yoga, I think we should have a little look around the research center.”
“Jevin Banks, you read my thoughts.”
“Well, if I can actually do that, tomorrow’s test is going to be a piece of cake.”
I’m toting the bags, so when we reach the porch Charlene opens the cabin door and we step inside.
The Doll
The cabin is nothing special. No TV. No telephone. A kitchenette, a small living area, a bathroom. A bedroom with a king-sized bed lies at the end of a short hall.
Ah, that was something I hadn’t thought through very well. One bed.
I consider going back to ask Serenity for a cabin with two beds, but I doubt that would help Charlene and me look like a couple who’s deeply in love. I catch myself eyeing the couch to see if it’ll be big enough for me.
The autumnal smell of wood smoke permeates the air, although it must be from somewhere else since there’s no woodstove or fireplace in the cabin.
A sweep of the room with Xavier’s latest gadget — a pen-sized radio frequency detector — tells us there aren’t any bugs and that Charlene and I will be able to talk freely while we’re in the room. It’s probably an unnecessary precaution, but in Xavier’s mind you can never be too careful about these things.
It doesn’t take us long to put our things away, and as Charlene is closing the dresser drawer, she turns to me. “So you’re thinking wait till it gets dark? Go check out the Faraday cage?”
“Yes.”
“And how do you propose we get into the building?”
I hold up a second hotel-style key card in addition to the one to our cabin.
“How did you get that?”
“At the front desk while you were talking with Serenity.”
“You… how?”
“The key card coder. Serenity had a journal open and stopped writing in midsentence when we arrived. The slant, baseline, and connecting strokes of the passcode she’d written in the margins matched those on the sheet of paper containing her orientation notes.”
“And you swiped the key without either of us noticing?”
“Yes.”
She shakes her head. “You really are good, Petunia.”
“Wolverine.”
“Well, let’s hope you’re right about the code.”
“We’ll find out soon enough.”
“As soon as it gets dark?”
“Exactly.”
I pull out the two thick volumes that Dr. William Tanbyrn wrote — one before and one after his interest shifted from theoretical quantum physics to consciousness and its relationship to quantum entanglement. The words on the back of the second book touted:
Dr. William Tanbyrn, who received a Nobel Prize in physics for his contribution in the development of mechanisms for studying the existence of loop quantum gravity, has embarked on a daring new field of study — the human mind and its interaction with the universe around us.
As I sit on the couch, Charlene leans close. “Didn’t quite finish them yet, huh?” I can smell her perfume. I hadn’t noticed it so much earlier in the car, but it’s nice. A gentle touch of lavender.
“Barely got started.” I’d been hoping to get through the books before our meeting this week with Dr. Tanbyrn, but he wasn’t the most concise author I’d ever read, and I’d found the two five-hundred-page tomes a bit hard to decipher. “They’re pretty dense.”
“Well, tell me one thing you’ve learned so far.”
“Not even quantum physicists understand quantum physics.”
“Ah.”
“Oh, and something else I found interesting: when electrons jump from one level in orbit around the nucleus to another, they don’t travel through the space between the rings, they just appear at the next ring.”