Dinner with Andrei

by Joshua Allen

My stomach twisted a little when I saw Andrei enter the

restaurant. I had been hoping, quite to my own embarrassment,

frankly, that he would not show up. He'd been acting erratically

even before his sabbatical, and just my brief run-in with him

the previous morning set me on edge. He'd approached me out of

the blue. I hadn't even known he was back in town. His clothes

were unkempt. His hair frolicked aimlessly on his head. His

wedding ring was gone. I hardly recognized the unkempt beast

before me. But I had been fighting with Kitty over money lately,

and damned if I didn't need a break, however weird, so I agreed

to meet him.

I didn't rise as he made his way toward the table. He was

clean now, at least. I rose to shake his hand at the last

possible second. Before he even opened his mouth, I wished I had

just called Kitty and apologized for our stupid fight. It was my

fault, anyway. I had only been too selfish to admit it. She's

usually right, and I mean that sincerely. For some reason in

private quarters I turn into a selfish child. Too late for what

if's now, Andrei opened his mouth and spoke, his voice sounding

more baritone than I remembered, as though it had become as

tanned as his leather face.

 Weirdest of all was his accent. Always before it had had a

hint of his native Russia. Now it was almost British. Just an

inflection here and there, probably not noticeable to anyone but

me, who grew up hearing it in my English-transplanted-to-Canada

household.

We exchanged pleasantries and the usual catch-up stuff. I

was happy when he opened the menu and took the focus of his eyes

off me. They looked tanned too. My old friend made me

uncomfortable for reasons I couldn't understand. I thought my

discomfort must have just been the long stretch of time that had

passed since our last meeting. He ordered briskly. I stuttered

something out.

He turned his eyes back to me.

"Do you think that everything has a rational explanation,

even if that explanation is beyond the usual?"

I smiled politely. Bee-oond he had said, in that slow, drawn

out way of the English. Or was it my imagination? I felt a

violation, I was the one with the English accent. Here in Iowa,

that set me apart, gave me a sense of identity amidst the masses.

I searched his face for some trace of derision, but found

none. The waiter appeared before I could compose an answer,

bearing wine. I was thankful. The wine poured, I said, "Yes, in

answer to your question. I think that is a fundamental belief

Allen - Dinner - 2
that all scientists must have. I must believe in natural

explanations. Eliminate the impossible and so forth."

Andrei considered my answer. I sensed now a hesitation. I

had the strangest premonition that he was about to tell me he

had joined a cult.

"I started having nightmares about five years ago, Robert.

Really vivid stuff. But you know how most times you get

nightmares and then later you can't remember what was so

terrifying about blue cows in the first place."

I inserted a smile when I caught him looking at me. To be

honest, I have never had a so-called vivid dream; though of

course as an educated man, I knew of them. However, I was always

most mentally active while awake.

He paused so long, collecting his thoughts that the food

arrived. I hoped that whatever else he had to say could wait

until after the meal. I ordered the lobster bisque with

something like rolls and vegetables on the side. He ordered

something I couldn't identify, noodles perhaps, and definitely

some beef. The restaurant apparently was fond of fresh fruit.

There was a basket of it in the middle of the table.

I turned the first spoonful of my bisque mouthbound, and he

spoke again. "I left Yelena when the dreams started to get

especially vivid."

Allen - Dinner - 3
 "You left your wife?" Normally I'm unflappable. But I nearly

shouted this question across the table. I instantly lowered my

voice and pressed on. "When did this happen?"

"Two years ago."

I flinched. Had I crawled up under a hole? I realized I

hadn't seen her at any functions, and not just since Andrei had

gone on sabbatical, but long before that. I could only shake my

head at my own solipsism. I get so caught up in my goddamn work.

"No one noticed, Robert. Don't feel down."

"Listen, if you had only talked to me..."

Andrei downed half a glass of thick red wine. "I don't want

you to trouble yourself about it. Please. I only tell you now in

passing. It was the dreams, you know? The dreams made life

unbearable."

"Explain." I said this because I wanted to know how. I

wanted to know why. In that moment, I realized I was and had

been considering leaving Kitty.

"I would wake up unable to shake them. They grew to be more

vivid awake than asleep. I yearned to return to slumber so they

would quit torturing me. Do you see my meaning?"

"I think so." I took a bite of food, digesting words and

sustenance simultaneously. I thought about Kitty. Sometimes, I

Allen - Dinner - 4
dreaded going home. Knowing I had gone wrong again, that I was

probably in for another fight about one thing or another.

"Was it the same dream over and over?" I asked.

"It was different dreams. But even though they were

different, there was one commonality with a repeated dream, each

night the dreams got more and more clear, as though they were

all building toward something I couldn't identify."

It was a lot to take in all at once. I was stunned, but

hungry. So I ate. "What were these dreams? What would make you

leave Yelena?"

He reacted to this. I could tell I'd upset him. I could see

on his face that he hadn't really wanted to talk about Yelena at

all. "Maybe saying I left her was too strong. It wasn't out of

malice or spite or anything--not the usual man-woman bullshit."

I laughed as though I were in on the joke.

"Surely you get that? I simply was making more time alone

than together with her. We didn't really talk about it. Maybe I

messed up in that regard. I didn't mean to leave her, I'm trying

to say"

"You still love her?"

"No." He ate. "She probably thought it was the work putting

distance between us."

Allen - Dinner - 5
 Yes, the work. Kitty likes to say that when I am there,

there is no getting to me, except to incur my wrath for

trespassing. That's why so many famous scientists have horrible

numerous and failed marriages. The business of things smaller

than an atom has a way of possessing you, filling up the space

in your brain billions of times more than its size should allow.

"I moved into a hotel. I was living there even before my

sabbatical." I could tell I had distracted him, asking about

Yelena. It was just such a shock. "She divorced me at some point

when I was away." Another shock. My spoon splashed into my

bisque, sending cream down my tie.

Divorce.

Such an ugly word. Unbearable, really, and tedious.

I decided to try to redirect. Get him talking about the

subject at hand. Thinking of it made me think of Kitty, and that

only depressed me. "You still haven't told me what your dreams

were," I said.

"Robert, the MBA." A little running joke. I earned the

epithet because of my reputation of getting down to business.

"Yes. The dreams." He ate his food and peered at me. "They were

vivid," he began. "They were of a very specific topic."

"The same topic?" I asked.

"Always. I was seeing the birth of our universe."

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 The language of this statement was what struck me as off at

first. Our universe. We had always ever talked about the birth

of the universe. Otherwise, I couldn't figure out what he meant.

Between the two of us, we combined for more than 50 years

studying that singular event: the birth of the universe, the Big

Bang, high-energy physics, the Theory of Everything. Why should

it be surprising that this would have infected his dreams? I

picked through this mystery, and he let me have my moments of

silence.

"I know. Birth of our universe. Doesn't seem so unusual to

you. But I was seeing it more vividly than we had ever seen it

in the lab, Oppy. I mean, I was seeing the zero point, the point

where it all began, the point we've been trying to reach for our

entire careers. And I was seeing more. The negative-one point,

the stuff leading up. There was stuff leading up, you see."

A controversial theory and a philosophical point. Could

there be anything before there was anything? We had always

avoided the question before.

"At first I thought it was work. I thought my brain was

finally doing what we could never do in the lab. I thought I was

finally putting the pieces together."

"But you weren't?" I ate slowly now.

Allen - Dinner - 7
 "It was all wrong, you see. Particles were there that

shouldn't be. Smaller things. Smaller and smaller...but...."

"What, Andrei? What was it?"

"Consciousness. Those things I saw had intention."

I put my fork down, my appetite gone. "Did you get yourself

checked by a psychiatrist."

"No."

"Come off it, then, Andrei. You left Yelena for some fantasy

dream?" I was deliberate in bringing her up again, meaning to

sting him.

"I can't explain it, Oppy. I knew what I was seeing was

consciousness. And at the same time, I knew it wasn't real, that

it was dream knowledge, analogous to fearing that purple cow in

a nightmare. It only made sense asleep. At first."

"Then your dreams were more vivid when you were awake."

Andrei nodded. "I started to go mad, Oppy. There, I said

it."

"Look, Andrei. So you went away to a convalescent home? The

mystery is solved then. I'm sorry for your pain, Andrei." I

looked for the waiter. Had he gone home for the day? "At least

you're feeling better now."

"I still believe my dreams were true."

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 I leaned back, sighing. The waiter had apparently slipped

through a wormhole in one of the fresh-baked deserts the

restaurant was famous for.

"OK, let's back up. You're right. I did try to convalesce,

but you know how I feel about psychiatry. I went to England to

recuperate on my own."

"It didn't work?"

He shook his head. "Things only grew more strange. I rented

a flat in London, seemingly at random. But the next thing I knew

I had three neighbors, all physicists. Older men, mostly, like

me. You know them, but I don't want to tell you who they are.

They have their own privacy. It's not my prerogative to drag

their names through the mud."

"So what? It's not unusual for scientists to cluster. Lord

knows we've seen it. I mean, you were probably near the

university, am I right?"

"No. What's more, none of these physicists were English. One

was German. Two Americans. A Swede joined the cabal before too

long. We all noticed each other, recognized each other from

conferences et cetera, but we didn't speak. The next thing I

knew, there were more than a dozen of us in the building."

This was perplexing. At first I thought that someone would

notice that the building next door was chock full of famous

Allen - Dinner - 9
scientists, but then I realized how foolish I was being. What

average person on the street knew us or our faces? Maybe you'd

find a few for whom our names would ring a vague bell, one or

two average Joes might even be able to pinpoint a scientist by

name alone, but who among them would recognize our faces? None

of us is Brian Greene, that's for sure. So, yes, it was entirely

possible that such a strange occurrence could have gone

unnoticed."

"Surely you weren't all able to stay silent too long. You

must have talked shop."

"Eventually. Eventually we did talk, yes. But not shop..."

It took me a moment to get what he was saying. "You don't

mean?"

"Yes. Once one of us--I don't remember who--started the

conversation, it opened the gates. Word spread quickly through

the building. We realized that we were all having the same

dream. All of us. We began to meet and do what we do: map out

the details, hypothesize."

I had no response. The waiter appeared and I shooed him off.

"It was frightening," Andrei said. "None of us understood or

liked what we were seeing or this shared vision. We thought--as

you must be thinking now--that it violated what we believed,

everything we stood for as scientists."

Allen - Dinner - 10
 "Gods, you mean?" I asked.

He frowned. "I suppose. Gods maybe. Almost infinitely small

ones. But these were no mythical creatures from ancient books.

The high energy had created them as surely as our prehistoric

soup created us--or the things that eventually evolved into us.

The point is that whatever these bits of consciousness were, we

were capable of understanding them, or at least forming

hypotheses. We were consumed, all of us, with the same thing we

had always been consumed with. A will to understand. I mean,

what could live in such a vacuum, in such an inhospitable

environment. What role had those things played in how the

universe came out?"

"It would be interesting to learn about such a thing, if it

existed. But Andrei, you are scientists. How could you have

possibly proceeded based purely on dreams?" I asked.

"Well, of course it was the fact of the shared dream. The

details that were so alike. This is what got us thinking there

was more than just dream. I make us sound so rational. Truth is,

for the first three months, all any of us felt was fear."

"I can well imagine," I said.

"Just as you suspect, we thought we must be suffering from

mass hysteria. We were terrified of word getting out. Of our

careers being ended by this simple fact of a shared dream. From

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fear, of course, came worship," Andrei said, stopping to wet his

mouth.

I nodded as though I understood, though my stomach told me I

didn't understand, didn't like it.

"We started doing the things penitents do. We prayed, in a

way. We called it trying to establish communication, but in

retrospect, it wasn't much different from prayer. We tried to

direct our dreams, to interact. This led to different forms of

revelry. There were elaborate orgies, drugs, whatever we could

think of. We needed to test these dreams, as you said. And how

do you test a dream?"

I had no suggestions. They were all clearly mad. Why not add

sex and drugs to the mix? Madness was easier to take high and in

the midst of coitus; ask any artist.

"That went on for a while. Too long, admittedly. With shame

I admit, too, that it wasn't me that ended it. I wish it had

been. No, it was another man who finally stepped up and bade us

all to stop. We did. We stopped and listened because we were

afraid and finally someone had a theory."

"What was his theory?"

"The dream, he said, wasn't an event. This wasn't something

we could influence or manipulate. The Originators, he called

them, couldn't be influenced. They had already done their work.

Allen - Dinner - 12
We were a byproduct of that work, nothing more--as we have

always known we were. Byproducts of the natural processes of the

universe.

"No, what we were receiving, he postulated, was a

transmission. This was a cinema. But the real ground breaker

took another week of quiet discussion to form. This time it was

I who put it into words," Andrei sound with quiet pride. "What

if we were only receiving a small bit of that transmission."

"A transmission must have a source," I said, acting bored,

unable to admit to myself that I was interested in hearing this

through. The check came. We ignored it.

"That's right, Robert. A transmitter. And we wanted to hear

the message. We decided we wanted to try to receive the entire

thing."

"But how?"

"How is a good question. We didn't know. We did what you or

any of our colleagues would have done. We simply started to

systematically try anything that seemed reasonable. What else do

you do when you have a hypothesis you must test and no obvious

test?"

I mulled this over. I could see the truth of this. We poked

and prodded, sometimes for years, before we figured out what the

right approach was to solving a particular problem. Asking the

Allen - Dinner - 13
right question was always the first step, but the rest of it was

Edison's 99% perspiration. "So what worked?"

"Well, what we tried was first born from our orgies,

embarrassingly enough. I mean, we are human beings, rutting apes

with slightly enlarged brains--sometimes I think maybe too

large. So we tried to open ourselves to dreams. We thought maybe

our revelry was in fact the start of our receiving

transmissions. But it didn't work and we grew tired of the

antics. So we tried stupid stuff. Science fiction book stuff. We

made tinfoil hats. We constructed a giant antenna with wire

veins going into each room and held the wires as we slept. Other

things. Plays. We acted out the drama, trying to become human

Ouija boards or something. I don't even want to tell you half

the stupid stuff we tried. I mean, you'd laugh if you looked at

some of Edison's early sketches, I bet."

I let the pause in the conversation stretch, looking for

some glimmer in Andrei's eye, but saw nothing. "So what worked?

Surely you wouldn't be here talking to me if you didn't know.

You'd be there trying to figure it out even to this day."

"Your suspicion is correct." Andrei leaned back. He looked

at the check and laid a credit card inside the leather case.

"You know what's funny? It ended up being closely related to

something we tried early on. One of the first things we did was

Allen - Dinner - 14
construct an antenna. Well, we had the right idea, but we should

have suspected then that a hunk of metal wires wasn't the

answer. You see, we were the antennae. It wasn't the proper

alignment of metal bars that would receive the transmission

fully, but a proper alignment of us."

"I'm having an image of a hundred scientists on the roof of

a building laying all crisscross in geometric shapes."

"No, not at all. It was the orgies, of course. We were

having social problems. Jealousy, rage, people switching

alliances. Constant movement. And one day the dreams simply

started to intensify. We saw answers in these new versions of

the dream, Oppy. Amazing things about the origin, the Big Bang.

I know, just from those glimpses, infinitely more than I ever

did before.

"We all felt it as soon as it happened. Immediately, we

isolated the various projects made minute adjustments to each

and tried to figure out by elimination which one was causing the

change. But none of the various experiments seemed to be the

solution. I broke the code, however. I suggested we let our

control up, to see what factors varied. Within a day or two, we

noticed more intensity in the dreams. Then it hit me that it

wasn't the projects, but the movement of people. We had stopped

moving around so much to focus our attention on our projects. As

Allen - Dinner - 15
soon as we started up again, the transmission strengthened. I

suggested what we needed was an optimal configuration."

"Within the building, you mean. Within the building there

had to be the proper configuration of people." I wanted to

understand, for pure curiosity's sake if nothing else.

"Precisely, Robert. It was three-dimensional. We

experimented with different static arrangements and got lots of

positive results. Then it was another man--the one we thought of

as Leader, the one I told you about earlier--who wanted us to

try having people in motion while others slept. That was the

key. It took a long time to get to that point, but once we were

there, it was simply a matter of combinatorics, trying different

movements and configurations until we found the one that worked

best. When we made a right move, we all knew it right away. More

details. We witnessed the explosion, the energy, the everything

as it exploded into what we know. We could see the beautiful

motion of the strings."

"String theory! I knew it as true!"

Andrei laughed. "Only the beginning, Oppy. A little tiny tip

to a very, very deep iceberg. We were all excited. We wrote our

findings during the day and tuned them in at night, sleeping and

adjusting in shifts. The ones who hadn't gotten to sleep would

read the findings the next day and would be ready for their

Allen - Dinner - 16
shift that night. Then we found the perfect configuration and

there was a...I don't know what to call it. A paradigm shift. A

blue shift. Red to blue, just like the beginning of the end. We

received the message in full. All of us, at once. Awake and

asleep."

"And it made an impression," I asked.

"It was beyond anything we could have expected."

He stopped talking. He merely looked over his food.

"...and?" I asked. I was leaning forward now. Caught up in

the drama of the hunt, if slightly bemused by the revelation.

Science wasn't revelations and epiphanies, it was a slow grind

toward truth. What Andrei had was a religious experience. I

wondered if he would tell more people. If so, his career would

be over.

Andrei rubbed his chin and sighed. "I can't tell you,

Robert."

"Of course not," I said. "that's how religions work, right?

You must hold the magic words to have access to the secret

knowledge. "

Andrei picked up a fork and picked at his food, which had

started to stale, virtually untouched. He put some in his mouth.

He stabbed another wad with his fork and offered it to me.

"Taste."

Allen - Dinner - 17
 I flinched, disturbed by this sudden change in disposition.

"What?"

"I can't tell you, but you can know," Andrei said.

"Stop messing around. Was this a joke from the start?" I

demanded.

Andrei turned the fork toward himself after a moment. He ate

the food. He stared at me, eyes fixed. He didn't blink. My heart

stopped and my hands turned cold.

His eyes had changed color.

They were still a kind of blue, as they had always been

(Christ, how I had fallen into something like love when I had

first peered into those strong blue Russian eyes), but a

different king of blue completely. Gone was the pupil, gone the

white sclera, a blue light shined there now. Shined under its

own illumination as vividly, but distantly, as a deep blue star.

The color modulated and fluxed within the eye socket, like the

surface of the sea.

Andrei picked up a load of food with his fork. He offered it

to me.

"Eat, Robert," he whispered.

I pushed my chair away from the table.

Now I could see the fork was starting to glow blue as well,

very faintly, like the surface of skim milk. Then the fork began

Allen - Dinner - 18
to vibrate and shake in his hand. The tines of the fork curled

down, flattening, drooping. It was turning to a liquid. I looked

around desperately, but no one else seemed to notice what was

happening. Could they see it, or was this my own insanity?

"Eat," he said between clenched teeth.

I couldn't. Nor did I dare to push his hand away or touch

the fork. "Tell me what this is, Andrei."

He opened his lips. Blue lights slipped out, almost an

apology of light. I don't know what the thing was across from

me, but my friend Andrei was gone. Long gone.

"We were wrong, Oppy, to think the message was coming

from"--he made a gesture--"out there."

The voice was no longer Andrei's. It was not human, or

specifically, it was not a single human, but many all at once.

"They're here, Oppy. They have always been here. We have

always been here. Eat." He moved the fork my direction, slowly.

Insistently.

I ran. Jesus, I could have won an Olympic event that day. I

ran and ran until I got home. Kitty was gone. Apparently, she'd

decided to take a night off of me, as I had done from her. Or

had she simply grown bored waiting for me? Perhaps she was

having an affair. I wouldn't blame her. For a little while, I

sat in my living room alone, thinking I was safe.

Allen - Dinner - 19
 A few hours passed and I started seeing strange things out

the window. Movement I couldn't explain. I would see things and

look and nothing would be there. I would fix on a spot, but the

movement seemed always to find a way to avoid my gaze, like a

shy liquid, a xenophobic shadow. There were things there. The

shadows were tinged in blue.

My house wasn't safe. How could it be? Andrei knew where I

lived. How many times had he and Yelena been here for supper? I

left, without waiting for Kitty to come back. I left and drove

away until I found a secluded motel. Kitty would be fine, I

reasoned. It was me they wanted. For whatever reason. For their

cult I guess.

It seemed to work too. The movements stopped. I didn't dare

call Kitty. I didn't want to know if they had already gotten to

her. I had a paranoid vision of Kitty and Yelena sharing supper

at the same time Andrei and I had. Perhaps in the same

restaurant, even. In my mind, Kitty would not be able to resist

the food when it was offered. She would eat. She was so damn

weak. I pushed that thought aside. It was paranoia, nothing

more. Still, they could follow her. I didn't want her to

inadvertently lead them to me. So I stayed here, all but

disappearing.

Allen - Dinner - 20
 The news, to my surprise, actually covered the disappearance

of my colleagues. Not Andrei. He was never mentioned and might

as well have never existed. But the others. After I hid out they

started disappearing all over the country. All over the globe.

Hundreds of scientists. First the physicists, then chemists,

astronomers, doctors, all of them. Going no one knew where.

Abandoning home and families for what? No one could explain

it. I was mentioned on two newscasts, but not on the other three

that I followed during that time. I hoped Kitty knew that I was

safe. I hoped she figured out I had gone into hiding. I hoped

she knew that I wasn't a part of whatever it was happening. I

hoped she was telling the news people that I was not a part of

any insanity such as this and that was why my name refused to

appear on those three stations.

Then, yesterday, I saw her name appear on the list. Missing

for three months, they said. Dating back to the day I holed up

in this motel. No mention of the fact that she was a mere

science teacher on a list of renowned scientists. It didn't seem

to matter. Strangely enough, I was not on the list with my wife.

I still can't figure that out. Maybe it's a message to me. Maybe

it's their way of telling me that they are still after me, and

that they will find me.

Allen - Dinner - 21
 I sleep often. Every night since my dinner with Andrei, I

sleep. I am trying to dream, I think. I don't know what I am

trying to dream. Maybe I want to dream another dream, a dream of

something out there, as Andrei had said. Something out there

that could come here and save us. Maybe if I dreamed hard enough

I could bring in the antidote to the blue shift, the liquid blue

light I'd seen in Andrei's eyes.

Soon, I will have a dream, but not the one I want. It will

be their dream. They will come and take me and I will dream

their dream and never wake up. The transmission will be

complete. Message received, Captain.

But by the time I finish the dream, I will be gone. Sucked

away.

That's my theory. This was no dream, but a virus of the

mind. What I saw in that restaurant wasn't my friend Andrei, but

something else that had devoured him from the inside out,

destroying the clicks and buzzes inside him that had once made

him simple old Andrei, a guy who liked to drink too much at

company parties and who one time propositioned me in a bathroom.

Meat and bones and animal Andrei. Something had eaten him and

was walking around in his skin.

I don't know, but I know my time is running out. I will put

my pen down now and take these pills. I hope that when I fall

Allen - Dinner - 22
asleep, I have a vivid dream, unlike every other night. I want

that dream. That good, red dream that counters the liquid blue.

It will be my one last dream. Our one last hope. But I'm afraid,

because lately when I close my eyes, all I see is blackness.

Blackness tinged with blue.

THE END

Allen - Dinner - 23