THE MOST IMPORTANT THING IN THE WORLD
Steve Bein
Steve Bein is a philosopher, photographer, professor, translator, traveler, and award-winning author of genre-bending fiction. His short fiction has appeared in Asimov’s Science Fiction Magazine, Interzone, Writers of the Future, and in international translation. His Fated Blades novels have met with critical acclaim. Bein divides his time between Rochester, Minnesota, and Rochester, New York. This story was first published in Asimov’s Science Fiction Magazine in 2011.
Ernie Sisco knows what the most important thing in the world is. It took him a long time to figure it out, but he knows what it is now. He knows because somebody forgot it in the back of his cab.
Ernie’s been driving cabs thirty-two years now, and in that time he’s seen people leave all kinds of things behind. Crazy things, things he’d never have believed somebody could forget in a taxi. Wallets and purses are commonplace. So are asthma inhalers, epi-pens, medications the fare’s literally going to die without. Once a fare actually left her baby in the back seat, a ten-month-old in one of those tan Graco baby carriers.
The kid was sleeping right behind Ernie’s seat, right where he couldn’t see her, and he’d gone on a good half a mile before he had to pull over to take a leak. Good thing for the fare, too.
When he drove back she was crying her eyes out on the street corner, too scared to tell anyone what she’d done.
Sometimes people will say their kids are the most important thing in the world, but Ernie doesn’t think that’s right. In any case the ten-month-old wasn’t what helped him figure it out.
What sent him in the right direction was folded up in a silver Samsonite carry-on.
Ernie picks up the fare at Logan, a skinny white kid, the type that doesn’t surprise a guy when they tell him to drive to Harvard. The kid’s got two bags, matching hard cases the color that car companies call Lunar Mist or Ingot Silver Metallic.
Ernie puts the big one in the trunk. The kid insists on keeping the carry-on with him in the back seat. “Plenty of room,” Ernie says, but the kid says whatever’s in the case is too important to risk getting rear-ended. It’s obvious the kid doesn’t think much of Ernie’s driving but Ernie shrugs it off and starts the meter running.
They get to the Yard and figure out where the kid’s conference is going to meet. It’s on theoretical physics or temporal physics or something like that. Ernie took physics in high school, but that was a million years ago and he was never any good at it anyway. He was never the math-science type; Ernie’s more of a reader. Look under the driver’s seat and you’ll find yellowed copies of For Whom the Bell Tolls and Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance. Ernie doesn’t know anything about motorcycles, Zen, or the Spanish Civil War; he’s just got a thing for fiction that leans toward autobiography and lately he’s been boning up on American authors.
A lot of Harvard types don’t tend to think much of Ernie. They see a chunky bald guy behind the wheel of a cab and they make certain assumptions. But Ernie’s no dope. He’s got a cushy job where he can sit and read all day if he wants to.
Park it on the corner of Brattle and James and he can spend all afternoon reading without getting a call. Some might call it lazy – in fact, there’s one in particular who calls it lazy every chance she gets – but Ernie can read the same great books as all the other Harvard types and he can do it without dropping any thirty or forty grand a year.
Ernie drops the kid off on Kirkland and sure enough the kid forgets the little Samsonite in the back. The campus has that effect on first-timers. It’s beautiful, especially on a bright summer day: all green leaves and red brick and bright whitewashed windows. And there’s the whole reputation thing too. Thinking about how they’re going to impress all the muckety-mucks has a way of leaving people a little scatterbrained. Sometimes they ignore guys like Ernie completely, and then they go walking off toward the nearest red-brick building without leaving a tip and without remembering to check the back seat.
Ernie forgets all about it too, and doesn’t hear the case clunking around back there until he’s in the line at Fenway in the top of the ninth. There’s big business at Fenway, a lot of fares, and they usually tip pretty well when the Sox win.
They’re up six-nothing when Ernie pulls up, so he stows the kid’s carry-on in the trunk and figures he’ll drop it off the next time a fare takes him out that way.
One of the buckles comes undone when he drops the case in the trunk and curiosity gets the better of Ernie. He takes a peek.
Inside there’s this funny-looking suit, a bit like a wetsuit but with copper wires running all over the outside. The neoprene smells strongly of neoprene. It’s the same shade of blue the Royals wear, and with the hood and goggles it looks like something you’d wear if you wanted to get in a fistfight with Spiderman. On the chest there’s a steel box with a little readout screen and what looks like a phone keypad.
That’s as good a look as Ernie gets before the roar goes up in Fenway. It sounds like a third out pop fly. Ernie’s back on. By the time he’s done running Fenway fares he’s hungry, and by the time he finishes a brat and a soft pretzel he’s sick of working and so he heads home. It’s not until he’s a beer down and watching Sox highlights on ESPN that he remembers the funny-looking suit.
His first thought when he gets it laid out on his sofa is that he’s going to have a hell of a hard time fitting into it. Thirty-some years sitting behind the wheel of a cab hasn’t done much for his physique. But he’s just got to try it on. Whatever it is, the kid said it was too important to risk damaging. He’s careful with it, but he’s got to know what it is.
The boots are too big and the arms are too long, and it’s all Ernie can do to suck in his gut enough to get the front zipped. The stink of neoprene overpowers even the legions of cigarettes Ernie and Janine have smoked in this room. The stainless steel box hangs around his neck the way tourists hang their big black cameras, fixed to a sling of webbing, and on top of the box is that little readout screen. It’s about impossible to read the numbers on it unless he’s wearing the goggles, and as soon as he puts the goggles on he learns the big plastic rings around them house a bunch of ultra-bright LEDs. The goggles shift everything he sees toward the yellow-orange part of the spectrum, kind of like ski goggles, and the LEDs spotlight everything he looks at.
The readout screen on the chest unit is actually two screens. On the left you can set the date and time and the right side seems to work like a kitchen timer. The date and time are way off: six o’clock in the morning on March 13th, the year after next. Ernie sets it right, which for him means five minutes fast. Janine used to yell at him all the time for being late, and though he’ll be the first to admit she didn’t fix everything she says is wrong with him, at least he’s never late anymore.
Next he looks at the kitchen timer. By now he’s sweating his balls off even in the air conditioning, but he’s damned if he’s taking off this ridiculous suit before he figures out what it does. He sets the timer for two minutes and hits Start.
The world stops. The ESPN guy, in the midst of saying something about the Cubs, freezes on the “ah” of “Chicago” and just keeps saying “aaaaaah.” There’s a steady drone coming from the air conditioner, not the usual back and forth rattle but a constant monotone. The thin ribbon of smoke snaking up from Ernie’s ashtray stops dead and just hangs there.
“Weird,” Ernie’s about to say, but saying this is weird is like saying Ted Williams could hit a little bit, so Ernie doesn’t bother. Apart from him, the only things moving in the whole house are the numbers counting down on the kitchen timer.