Quantum Night

  Boris was unconvinced. “Yeah, but who’s to say what the maximum suffering a human can endure is?”

  “Have you seen The Phantom Menace?”

  Some of the students laughed again, but Boris just frowned. “If it can be a little less, it can be a little more.”

  “Not if experiencing pain involves neurons,” I replied. “If every pain-registering neuron is firing simultaneously, you’re maxed out. A human brain is a finite object.”

  “Some more finite than others,” said Nina, looking pointedly at Boris.

  “Anyway,” I said, “we’ll talk more about moral relativism later. What I really want to get at today is utilitarianism—and utilitarianism is striving for the exact opposite of Sam Harris’s thought-experiment hell. Utilitarianism is a terrible name. It sounds so cold and calculating. But really, it’s a warm, even loving, philosophy. Jeremy Bentham and John Stuart Mill were its first major proponents, and they said, simply, that all action should be geared toward achieving the greatest happiness for the greatest number of people. The happier people are, the better. The more people who are happy, the better.”

  I looked at Boris, who was frowning again. “Comrade,” I said, “you look unhappy.”

  Nina and a few others laughed.

  “It just all seems so self-serving,” Boris said.

  “Ah, but it isn’t,” I replied. “Bentham and Mill are both clear on that point. Under utilitarianism, you are to be neutral when weighing your own happiness against somebody else’s. True, it’s not a self-sacrificing philosophy—you don’t have to give up your own happiness for the sake of another person’s. But if doing something will cause your happiness to be diminished a little and someone else’s happiness to be increased a lot, there’s no question: you have to do it. You can’t put your needs in front of those of other people.”

  “Let me know how that works out for you,” Boris said.

  WHEN I’d first gone away to university, I’d left lots of stuff at my parents’ house in Calgary; Heather had done the same. But when our dad died, Calgary housing prices had been going through the roof, and Mom wished to downsize. I’d gone back and disposed of things I didn’t want and moved the things I did to Winnipeg in a U-Haul. And, as with most people’s collections of junk they thought was worth saving, I hadn’t looked at it since although I periodically added more boxes to the midden—doing my part to give future archeology grad students something to work on.

  I drove to the storage unit I rented and began to rummage around. Most of my crap was in identical corrugated-cardboard boxes I’d bought from a moving-supply company, but some of it was in bankers’ boxes, and some old clothing—doubtless out of style although I’d be the last person to be able to actually confirm that—was in bright-orange garbage bags. I’d lived in Winnipeg during my dark time, but I figured that there should have been get-well cards from when I’d been in hospital in Calgary, and copies of police reports related to the stabbing. But I couldn’t find anything like that.

  The two heaviest known substances are neutronium and cartons of books. I shifted several boxes around, getting more of an upper-body workout than I was used to. Eventually, I came across one labeled “Textbks 2000-01” in black Magic Marker. I placed it on the storage unit’s floor and used a box cutter to slit open the strapping tape.

  Inside were the usual you-could-kill-a-man-with-them texts with titles such as Social Psychology, Statistics for the Humanities, and Freud and Jung in Perspective, but there were also a few science-fiction paperbacks. Ah, that half-year English elective I’d taken. There were copies of Frankenstein and The War of the Worlds and Nineteen Eighty-Four, which were titles I recognized, at least, although didn’t recall having read, and others I didn’t know at all. I picked up one with a beautiful cover painting of a steamboat in a green lagoon: Darwinia by Robert Charles Wilson. As had been my habit in those pre-ebook days, I’d used the sales receipt as a bookmark. I opened the novel to the indicated page, to see if the prose sparked any memories, but—

  The receipt was from the McNally Robinson at Polo Park. That branch didn’t exist anymore, but the date—

  The date was 31-12-00, one of the few in that format that could be unambiguously parsed: thirty-one had to be a day, and double-zero could only be a year, which meant this book had been purchased New Year’s Eve 2000.

  Here. In Winnipeg.

  And the time stamp was 17:43, which must have been just before closing on a holiday evening; even the nerdiest of nerds didn’t ring in the new year in a bookstore.

  Of course, someone else might have picked up the novel for me, but—

  But, no, the credit-card number was printed on the bottom of the receipt, with Xs substituting for all but the final four digits, and those I recognized; I’d had that number for many years. I must have gone in to purchase the book, planning to get a jump on my class reading over the remaining week of the Christmas break.

  Yes, technically, one could be in Winnipeg at 5:43 P.M. and still fly to Calgary in time to shout “Happy New Year!” six hours later—or, actually, seven, if you take into account the time-zone change. But there’s no way I would have gone home for New Year’s Eve but not Christmas, even if my parents and sister were away. What the hell was going on?

  I continued to rummage around and found a Dilbert wall calendar from 2000. I’d hoped there’d be one for 2001, as well, but there wasn’t. I flipped to the last page, the pointy-haired boss staring out at me, and looked at the days between Christmas—which had been on a Monday that year—and New Year’s Eve. There were four appointments in my handwriting spread across those six days. On Boxing Day, I’d noted “Miles 6ish.” I hadn’t thought about Miles Olsen for years; he’d been in one of my classes, and we used to get together occasionally for a beer. On the thirtieth I’d written, “Pay dorm fees.” And on the twenty-ninth and thirty-first, I’d written simply “Warkentin.” There were no classes then, so these must have been related to that research project I’d volunteered for.

  I scanned further up the calendar; Warkentin’s name was written in three more times in the week before Christmas. The ink was black for the earlier appointments, blue for the later ones. I hadn’t added them all at the same time, which meant the later appointments had been made after the earlier ones; he’d asked me back for some reason—and on New Year’s Eve, for God’s sake . . .

  I’d told Menno yesterday that I’d been in Calgary on New Year’s Eve 2000. Sure, it’s possible he’d forgotten that I was with him on that long-ago date, but he hadn’t mentioned a thing.

  No, no, that’s not quite right. He’d faced me, his blind eyes behind dark lenses, and he’d said, “Let sleeping dogs lie.” I’d thought that was odd; he was a psychologist, after all—he should have been fascinated by the challenge of recovering my missing memories.

  I’d used Gmail since the days when you needed an invitation to get an account, but those archives only went back to 2004. I’d had a student address here at U of M in 2001, and so I’d called up the IT department on the off chance that they kept email archives going back that far; they didn’t. But I used to have a habit of printing out emails I wanted to keep—and, to my delight, I found a file folder containing a bunch of them in the same box that had yielded the calendar: a sheaf about half an inch thick of dot-matrix printouts, one email per sheet, conveniently stacked in send-date order. I worked my way through them: class assignments, a few from my sister, but nothing that stirred any memories.

  I reached the end of February and flipped the page; the next email was from March second, and—my goodness!—it was from Kayla Huron to me. The subject line was “Re: Friday,” but whatever my original message had been was lost to history; there were no quoted lines at the bottom of what she had written, which was, “Yeah, me, too. And I’d love to! You like Crash Test Dummies? They’re playing over at UW next week. Can you pick up tickets?” That was all the email said, e
xcept for the number 2.9 at the bottom.

  I kept reading messages; there were twenty or so from Kayla mixed in with other things. The other things were all prosaic—I’d clearly only printed out emails that had to-do items for me mentioned in them—and, indeed, the Kayla ones all had action items, too, but they also had something else: flirtation, giving way after a couple of weeks to actual smut. Apparently, we’d been way more than just classmates.

  And all her messages to me ended with the same number: 2.9. Except the last one, that is—and the action item was clear: “Pick up your stuff, asshole.”

  Near as I could figure, Kayla and I had been hot-and-heavy for three-and-a-half months, until, apparently, it had all blown up. And, in about half an hour, I’d see her for the first time in nineteen years.

  8

  I drove along Pembina Highway, heading for my rendezvous with Kayla Huron, once again listening to the CBC. As I pulled into Grant Park mall, the 1:00 P.M. newscast began:

  “Big news from Parliament Hill: Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s Liberal Party has just fallen as his controversial carbon-tax budget narrowly failed to pass a parliamentary vote. It’s a situation not unlike the one that briefly ousted his father, Pierre Trudeau, as prime minister in 1974. Canadians will go to the polls next month to choose our next national leader . . .”

  I walked across the asphalt, entered Pony Corral, and presented myself to the pretty young woman standing at the lectern. I don’t know why restaurants have lecterns; they made me want to teach.

  “Just one today?” she said.

  I hated it when they said, “Just one?” in that sympathetic tone. Sorry you’re a loser, sir. But I tried to keep the annoyance out of my voice. “Actually, I’m meeting someone. Do you mind if I have a look?”

  She gestured at the dining room, and I went in, looking around—but Kayla spotted me first. “Jim!”

  I saw an attractive redhead in a booth. She’d been a brunette in the Wikipedia photo, but the ginger color suited her. As I approached, she rose. Normally, if I’d been greeting an old friend from that long ago, I’d have gone in for a hug or a peck on the cheek, but Kayla appeared . . . leery, perhaps, and so I simply sat down opposite her.

  Her expression changed—via a conscious effort, it seemed—and I realized she was evaluating me in that way you do when you run into someone you haven’t seen for a long time: looking for gray hairs, receding hairlines, paunches, wrinkles. On the hair checklist, both boxes were empty for me, and being vegan kept me trim, but, damn it, I preferred to call them “laugh lines.” At least I wasn’t doing the same thing; I had no old memories to compare the present her to—and I liked what I saw just fine.

  Still, because it seemed the appropriate thing, I said, “You haven’t changed a bit.”

  She smiled, but, again, it was a little wan, a tad reserved. “Nor have you.” She already had a glass of white wine. “So,” she added, “what’s new?”

  I liked to respond to that question with, “New York, New Jersey, New Delhi,” but I didn’t know this woman, damn it, I didn’t know her at all; I couldn’t be sure it would get a laugh. And yet at one time she had liked me, and so just being myself seemed the way to go. I trotted out the “New” list, and it did earn me a smile—and, at least for a second, the hesitancy was gone.

  “Same sense of humor,” she said. “You remember Professor Jenkins? What was that joke you told that got you kicked out of class?”

  I was rescued by a waitress in a tight black top, cleavage showing. “Something to drink, sir?”

  “What have you got on tap?”

  She rattled off a list. I chose a dark craft beer, then turned back to Kayla. Unfortunately, though, she asked her question again. “Do you remember? That joke? Something about an orangutan?”

  Christ, I don’t think I’ve ever heard an orangutan joke in my entire life—well, except for The Simpsons singing “Help Me, Dr. Zaius” to the tune of “Rock Me Amadeus.”

  “I don’t recall,” I said.

  She shrugged a little. “Well, it was a long time ago. So, what’s up with you? Are you married?”

  “I was, briefly. We divorced a couple of years ago. You?”

  “Also divorced. I live with my daughter. She’s six.”

  “What’s her name?”

  “Ryan.”

  I nodded. One of the many boy’s names that had become girl’s names in my lifetime. I’m waiting for one of my friends to name their daughter Buster or Dirk.

  The waitress returned with my beer. I thanked her and took a sip. Kayla and I had had a fight—a big one that caused her to walk out of my life for two decades—but one that I didn’t remember at all. Maybe she’d been justifiably angry with me, or maybe she had wronged me horribly, but in a way that had never quite been so true before, it really was no skin off my nose. “Kayla,” I said, “about what happened, you know, all those years ago. I just want to say I’m sorry.”

  She looked at me for a few moments, as if seeking something in my expression. Then she tilted her head slightly. “Thanks, Jim.”

  I took a deep breath, then let it out. “Kayla, I need your help.”

  “With what?”

  “I, ah, I had an accident many years ago, about two months before we started dating. I don’t know if I ever told you . . . ?”

  “Not that I recall.”

  “Well, I almost died. And apparently that did something to my memory. I—I’m sorry, I truly am, but until today, until you called, I had no memory of you.”

  “Seriously?”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “Then why’d you want to see me again? You sounded so eager on the phone.”

  “I am. I lost memories of six months—January to June 2001—and I want to get them back. I’m hoping you can fill in some of the gaps. Earlier today, I read some of our old emails, and—”

  She looked aghast. “You kept those?”

  “Printouts of a few, yeah.”

  She took a sip of wine, then set the glass down carefully, as if afraid she might knock it over. “That explains why I haven’t heard from you in all the years since.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  A waitress glided by. Kayla tracked her movement, perhaps so she wouldn’t have to look at me. When the waitress had disappeared from view, Kayla dropped her gaze to the tablecloth. “I’ve googled you from time to time,” she said “You’ve done well.”

  “Thanks.” Silence for a moment. “Okay,” I said, “one thing’s been bugging me. A lot of those emails ended with the number two-point-nine. What the heck does that mean?”

  A spontaneous little smile—fond remembrance, perhaps? “You really have lost your memory, haven’t you?” She reached into her purse and took out a retractable ballpoint pen. She then pulled a paper napkin toward her. “You know how you make a love heart online? The emoticon?” She drew it:
  “Yes?”

  “It’s the less-than sign followed by the number three, see? And what’s less than three? Two-point-nine. So it’s a cute way of saying the same thing.”

  “Ha! That’s really clever.”

  She smiled again, and this time the warmth was unmistakable. “That’s exactly what you said all those years ago when I first used it.”

  “So, forgive me, but . . . we were . . . we were in love?”

  Her eyes tracked across the room again even though there wasn’t anyone to follow. “Oh, who knows? I thought we were, back then, but, well, we were just kids.”

  I took another sip of my beer. “Yeah.”

  The server came to take our orders—which was a case of opportune knockers, as it helped break the awkward moment. “What’ll it be?” she asked.

  “Steak sandwich,” said Kayla. “Rare. With the Caesar, please.”

  “And for you?”

  “The vegan wrap,” I said.
>
  “Very good,” she said, and sashayed away.

  Kayla’s eyebrows arched up. “The vegan wrap? You used to love a good steak.”

  She was right, but that had been before I’d read Peter Singer. The best-known modern utilitarian, Singer was the author of, among others, Animal Liberation, which had kick-started the whole animal-rights movement. Given humans can be perfectly healthy eating only plants, the minor increase in our happiness that we might get from the taste of chicken or beef in no way offsets the pain and suffering of animals raised or slaughtered in cruel conditions. “I’ve changed,” I said affably.

  She narrowed her eyes, as if that were still somehow an open question. “You don’t mind that I’m having steak?”

  “I’m from Calgary. If I couldn’t stand being around people eating beef, I’d never be able to go home again.”

  “Ha.” She took another sip of her wine.

  We chatted for the next half hour, during which our meals came, and, slowly but surely, she seemed to get comfortable with me, in part due, I liked to think, to my charm, and in part perhaps to a second glass of wine. She mentioned our dates from all those years ago that stood out in her mind, including a road trip one weekend down to Fargo; attending Keycon, Winnipeg’s annual science-fiction convention; seeing the Blue Bombers play; hanging out at Aqua Books and Pop Soda’s—both sadly now defunct—and going to a traditional Cree sweat-lodge ceremony. I’d hoped something would ring a bell, but I couldn’t remember any of them.