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WAS PREPARED FOR Root’s skepticism, but not for Walker’s outright hostility. I’d forgotten that Walker volunteered for the ACLU in her spare time; of course a more accurate surveillance device would offend her. That made her exactly the wrong person to put on an independent review board, I thought. “One more brick in the prison,” she said, banging down her cup and scalding her hand with coffee. “Look, all this information is floating around anyway,” I said, trying to appeal to the scientist in her. “Heat, electrical impulses, vibrations from heartbeats, pressure changes. How is it an invasion of privacy if I just combine the data?” “That shows all you know,” she said, mopping her hand with ice water. “Unless there’s one of these in every corner drug store, it’s flat against the Kyllo decision.” I was about to retort, but Root, who’d had his mouth full of sandwich and was gazing vaguely across the street, interrupted. “It’s neither here nor there, Melissa. Eddy was going to show us how the thing works. If it works.” He combed crumbs out of his beard with his fingernails. I nodded, aiming the Counter at a four-story monstrosity roughly where he’d been looking, all peeling yellow paint and boarded windows. As expected, it told me no one was inside. “That doesn’t prove much,” said Root. For a mathematician he’s an awful stickler for empirical evidence. Just then, as if by design, a pair of workmen in stained grey overalls approached the yellow building from the other direction, extinguishing cigarettes before they unlocked the door. I ran the Counter again. “Look,” I said. “It confirms the presence of two people inside the building. All the data correlate.” Root nodded thoughtfully; Walker grimaced. I figured I’d won the point, at least with Root. Then three men came out of the same door. Three. Walker let out a derisive yip of laughter. “So much for accurate surveillance technology!” The third man wore the same overalls as the other two; he locked the door, and the three of them retraced their steps, or rather, the steps of the first two. “I don’t understand,” I said. “I do,” said Root with a straight face. “If one of them goes back inside, the building will be empty again.” That is the punch-line of a very old joke. I rolled my eyes. “You mean, there’s negative-one people in the building right now?” “Obviously.” Walker snorted. Root said, “Check your instrument.” I ran the Counter again. The summary readout said, “ ERROR.” Then I checked the component data readings: infrared reduced, vibrations reduced, electrical impulses reduced. I compared them to the original readings; they were lower. Lower by just about the differential for one person. “Q. E. D.,” said Root. “Nonsense,” said Walker. “That man didn’t come from nowhere. You don’t just subtract three people from two people and get negative-one people. Besides being absurd on its face, it violates both conservation of mass and conservation of energy.
ILLUSTRATION BY JASON STRUTZ
BULL SPEC—ISSUE #6 The gadget doesn’t work; the building wasn’t empty to begin with.” If Walker was right, then all the law enforcement supply contracts were dead—which is just what she was hoping. I said, “Maybe I should go in and take a look. It’d be interesting to see what a negative man looks like.” “You wouldn’t see him,” said Root. “If you enter the building, then it will be empty.” “You mean, I won’t be there either? Where will I go?” He shrugged, but I didn’t get up; I didn’t actually believe that I’d vanish, but I couldn’t explain the data either. But Walker pushed her chair back and rose. “This is ridiculous,” she said. “I’m about to prove the Counter can’t count.” “I don’t think I’d do that,” said Root. Walker snorted, threw down her napkin and strode across the café, across the street and to the ruined wall of the yellow building. Of course the door was locked, but that didn’t faze her. She went around the other side, apparently looking for a back door. After five minutes Root said quietly, “Check the Counter.” It now indicated that the building was empty. After another five minutes, Root and I paid the bill and found the back door of the derelict structure. It was open, but after we entered, we were the only ones there. When we left, we left alone. &
Melissa Walker has been on the Missing Persons list for three weeks now. There are no leads, no hints, no traces, nothing. The police and FBI have lost their enthusiasm for the Counter. Since I can’t explain why it indicated two men when there were three, they agree with Walker that the invention malfunctioned. They’re unlikely to buy. Walker would be delighted at that development. It’s almost as if she planned it this way. I haven’t been able to find the men in overalls we saw from the café that day. The building has been owned by a holding company for three years. The company hasn’t sent workmen to that location for six months. No one but Root, Walker, and I saw them, and they haven’t come back. But I’m going to keep trying to find them. I especially want to meet the third one, the man who came out but didn’t go in. Does he remember what it was like before he left the building? Was he ever there? And wherever he was before, is that where Walker is now? Maybe if I sit here long enough, I’ll see someone else emerge. ■ During his strange career, Kenneth Schneyer has been an actor, a corporate lawyer, a dishwasher, an IT project manager, and the Assistant Dean of a technology school. His stories have appeared in Analog, Clockwork Phoenix 3, Cosmos Online, and GUD Magazine, among others. He attended the Clarion Writers Workshop in 2009, and became the newest member of the Cambridge Science Fiction Workshop in 2010. Born in Detroit, he teaches literature and legal studies in Rhode Island, where he lives with his wife and their two children.
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