Eddie thought they’d live in the dorm, but an IA guy took the four of them to a small apartment building by the rec center and gave them each a key.
“We’re going to let you call your families to give them the news,” the guy said, grinning. “So you get to hear their reactions yourselves. Remember not to discuss the exams.” They nodded. “Have them send your stuff. Your apartments are furnished, but you’ll need your clothes, whatever.”
“Are we confined to campus?” Brad asked.
“You’re all underage,” the guy said. “So, yeah.”
“Oh, that does not work,” Rosa said.
The guy put a hand up. “You can talk to your instructor about it.”
Rosa arched her eyebrows. It was pretty effective. The guy put up his other hand. “I’m just supposed to get you settled. You meet your instructor at lunch, and he’ll take you from there. So,” he said, “mailboxes on the first floor, laundry in the basement. A couple of staff people live here, too, so you won’t be rattling around by yourselves.” He turned to go.
“You mentioned lunch?” Eddie said.
The guy pointed. “You can go ahead to the cafeteria. Your instructor will find you there.”
They lugged their bags in. The guys’ rooms were clustered at the end of the first floor hall, and Rosa was on the second floor. She had two huge suitcases, but she made it fine up the stairs. The guys could hear her rumbling down the floor above them.
Eddie’s apartment faced the front of the building. A small living room, with a bedroom to the right and kitchen and bathroom to the left. Basic furniture and a TV on the wall. Good enough—home sweet home. He tossed his duffel onto the bed and started a list of things he was going to need.
A few minutes later he met Trevor, Brad, and Rosa out front, and they walked to the cafeteria together.
“My dad took my call at work,” Rosa said, beaming. “He never does that.”
“Was he happy?” Trevor asked.
“He shouted ‘Woo-hoo!’ even though he was in a meeting.” Trevor gave her a high five. “Mom could only talk for a second, but she was thrilled, too. What about you guys?”
“My dad claimed he’s going to put up a notice in every building he owns,” Brad said. “Which means half of Manhattan will know about it by tonight.” He beamed.
“My parents took the day off so they could wait for news,” Trevor said.
“That’s great,” Eddie said.
“Yeah. Well, they’re both on call, but they were home. They said they were proud of me.” He gave a cheesy grin and pointed his thumbs at his chest.
“What did your grandma say?” Rosa asked.
“She was speechless,” Eddie said. Technically that was true, since he hadn’t called her. And then they were at the cafeteria.
It was like a new kid’s first-day nightmare. The trainees didn’t know anybody else, but everyone else knew exactly who they were. Eddie slid a fiberglass tray down the railing and got an open-faced roast beef sandwich, the kind with mashed potatoes and gravy dumped right on top. When he fumbled for his wallet at the register, the cashier said, “Trainees get their food free,” and waved them through.
“Oh,” Rosa said. “You do not know what you’re doing.”
“All this fancy equipment, and it’s their cafeteria that will bankrupt them,” Trevor said.
“Hysterical,” Eddie said, and reached back to snag a big plastic-wrapped cookie since it was free.
The windows went floor to ceiling, and they sat by the side, looking out toward their little apartment building.
“We have apartments,” Trevor said. “We are adults. That’s almost scarier than the weird stuff they’re doing to us.”
They’d finished lunch and Rosa was sucking down a little bowl of grapes when a trim black guy in khakis walked over. He’d shaved his head but you could still see the baldness line.
“I’m Reg Davis,” he said, shaking their hands. “Your instructor. Welcome aboard.” He sat across from Trevor. “You gonna eat that dill pickle?”
“No,” Trevor said. “That’s why I put it in quarantine.”
Reg Davis snagged it from the edge of Trevor’s plate and bit the end off with a snap. He closed his eyes. “I’m hoping we find a planet out there that’s filled with dill pickles.”
Rosa and Eddie exchanged a glance.
“Um, that would be this planet, really,” she said.
He took another crunch. “Good point.” He had a faint drawl—he was from somewhere in the South. He pulled a napkin out of the dispenser and dejuiced the corners of his mouth. “I’m going easy on you this afternoon—we’ll be in the classroom doing cosmology basics, just to make sure everybody’s on the same page. I haven’t instructed newbies before,” he said. Eddie caught Trevor’s eye. This was hopeful. Substitute teacher dynamic?
“You probably shouldn’t tell us that, Mr. Davis,” Rosa said.
“Damn it, Reginald!” He grinned at them. “Don’t worry. You’re going to be the best-trained babies IA’s ever had, because my career depends on it. You will not let me down.” He snapped the last bit of pickle in half, chewed, then popped the end into his mouth. “Follow me.”
They slid their trays into the rack by the kitchen and followed him toward the door. A couple of cosmologists sitting near the exit flapped their arms and quacked.
“Your vocabulary’s improving,” Reg said affably. “You learn to cock-a-doodle-doo and they’ll promote you.” The guys cracked up. Rosa caught Brad’s eye and raised an eyebrow, but he just shrugged.
“They were insinuating,” Reg said as he led them down an angled sidewalk, “that I am a mama duck and you are my ducklings.”
“Yeah,” Brad said. “We got that.”
“Excellent!” Reg said. “You’re brighter than I thought.”
He ushered them into a brick building and settled them in a small meeting room, then started a presentation giving an overview of the universe, how it’s infinite, and the math proving it. He stopped a couple of times to make sure they were following.
Trevor, Brad, and Rosa had gotten this in prep classes for the IA tryouts. Eddie learned it at his grandma’s kitchen table while she fried eggs and tossed questions at him over her shoulder, waving the spatula in a vaguely threatening manner when he messed up. He knew this stuff as well as they did—but he also appreciated the review.
“We’d planned to have you work some with Team 1 and Team 2,” Reg finally said, laying his laser pointer in the whiteboard tray. “Things have come up that have limited their availability, but I’ll make sure you meet them at some point.”
Reg gave them problems to work out—calculating the interference of states that differ in a macroscopic number of degrees of freedom. He didn’t offer calculators. They were leaning forward, pencils scratching along the legal pads he’d dropped in front of them, when something hit Eddie in the back of the head.
He rose and turned, his peripheral vision catching a Ping-Pong ball bounce off across the carpet. Reg stood there, leaning against the wall, tossing another ball in the air.
“What even the heck?” Eddie said.
“Why are you standing up? You done with that problem?”
Brad snorted.
Eddie stared at Reg, then swiveled to look at the others. They snapped back to their work. “You got a job to do, you don’t get distracted by a little thing like a Ping-Pong ball,” Reg said. And then Eddie understood.
He sat back down and continued to work while Reg tossed balls at his head. Reg moved around to the other side of the table, stood behind Brad, and started bouncing the balls off Eddie’s face. It didn’t hurt, but it still made him want to hit Reg. Brad saved him. One of the balls hit the end of Eddie’s nose, careened off the table, and hit him again. Brad snorted a laugh, then tucked his head down, but not fast enough.
“Is that funny, Mr. Quatro?”
To his credit Brad said, “Yes, sir.”
“You know what? That boy’s hair is like a toothbrush. I believe it is abrading NASA equipment.” Reg had a way of dragging out words that emphasized them somehow. And he began to pitch the balls at Brad. By the time they’d moved to the last problem, he was slinging them at all the trainees in unpredictable sequences, and they were coming in pretty hard. He was aiming at their torsos. The balls didn’t hurt, but they made concentration incredibly difficult.
“All right,” Reg said when they turned their tablets over, first Rosa, then the guys. “That was slower than it should have been, but I know you were up in the night.” Rosa flushed. “I’ve got some releases for your parents to sign,” he said, handing them out, “so that I have permission to lob Ping-Pong balls at your heads.” He grinned. “By the way, I enjoyed my first day as mama duck.”
Eddie gave him a little snort. It conveyed a lot of meaning.
“If they’re coming in person to bring your stuff, have them sign then. If not, mail it to them. You can’t figure out how to get a stamp, see me. I am your resource person for all things.”
“My grandma already signed,” Eddie said, holding the papers out to Reg.
“Yeah, that was for the tryouts and to cover an initial period. This covers everything—in case we shoot you off into space,” he said, swooping his arm upward.
“Could that actually happen?” Rosa asked. Her eyes were bright.
“No,” Reg said. “Almost nobody gets to go.”
“You ever been?” Eddie asked.
“Yeah.”
Trevor heard the wistful note. “You want to go back,” he said.
“Sweet Betsy Ross, yes,” Reg said. “But I will content myself with torturing you for now.” He grinned. “I’ve got homework for you.” He motioned them to the door, and they walked out with him. “You ever heard of the Gordian knot?”
The guys shook their heads. “It was an ancient thing. Some knot that nobody could untie?” Rosa said.
“You know the details?” Reg asked. She shook her head. “Good. Don’t look them up. You do, and it violates my very strict code of honor, which would make me switch to golf balls.”
Eddie grinned, in spite of himself.
“Gordius founded a city in Phrygia,” Reg said.
“Where’s that?” Trevor said.
“Oh, hell, I don’t know. I’m a scientist,” Reg said. “He made this huge, intricate knot tying his cart to a pole, and said whoever could untie it would rule Asia.”
“World domination?” Trevor said. “You have my attention.”
“For years people came from all over to try, but nobody could untie it.”
“Was it too tight?” Brad asked. “Did he shrink the rope after he tied it?”
“No,” Reg said, regarding him, “but you’re thinking along the right lines. They thought he’d woven the ends together, buried somewhere deep in the knot, so that it had no end.”
Rosa frowned. “You can’t untie it if you can’t find the end.”
“Precisely,” Reg said, opening the door and ushering them outside. “You know who undid the Gordian knot?” They waited. “It was Alexander the Great.”
“And he ruled Asia!” Rosa said.
“Your assignment for tomorrow is to decide what you would do if you were Alexander. You arrive in town and find out about this puzzle. How would you approach the Gordian knot?”
“Like, what would our strategy be?” Eddie asked. “To find the end, or whatever?”
“Yeah. Just a few sentences is enough,” Reg said. “No looking it up. This is a thought piece.” He started to walk away, then turned back. “Eat a light breakfast tomorrow. You’re going to learn to fly.”
They stared at one another. Reg Davis walked away, whistling.
After dinner Eddie went back to his apartment, laid the release on his dresser, and curled on his bed. He didn’t do the homework and he didn’t practice calculating the energy in inflaton fields. He felt like hell, and fell asleep in his clothes. When the knock on the door came, he looked at his phone. It was 1:17 a.m.