Smells like...something
26
The University of Havana was located on the outskirts of the city, on a spacious campus with modern buildings, all concrete and glass and jagged edges. The airship
Dessalines had landed in Havana Airdock without any trouble, and Pierre and Molly had taken a stuffy taxi to the university to meet with Professor Toussaint as arranged, the driver of which was a large man with a floppy moustache and who drove with the steering wheel in one hand and a cigar in the other.
“I can’t see any drug dealers anywhere,” Molly said, gazing at the city through the cab window, before she frowned in horror. “Oh god that person is jaywalking! This place is truly the wild west, a new Babylon!”
Pierre rolled his eyes, and the taxi driver said in a heavily accented voice, in between puffs on his oversized cigar, “You should come on a Friday night. Arriba! Anyway, strange girl, jaywalking isn’t an offence in Havana. That’s a poncy Port-au-Prince thing. This is Havana! A
real city.”
“Arriba?” Molly whispered worriedly to Pierre. “Is he Mexican?”
“He can’t be. He doesn’t have a sombrero.” They both watched as the driver reached into the glove compartment and took out a bottle of tequila, which he took a swig out of. They gulped.
“He has the cigar though, which is stereotypically Cuban. Half Mexican maybe?”
“Who cares?” Molly whispered, with wide eyes. “I just don’t want to die.”
They survived, and the journey took just over half an hour. The taxi driver dropped them off outside the Administration Centre, at the centre of the campus. Pierre paid the man what he was owed and hurriedly grabbed their bags, while Molly eyed the various students that passed with dark, suspicious eyes.
“Do you know where we’re supposed to go?” Molly said as Pierre came to a halt beside her.
“When I spoke with Toussaint’s assistant over the phone, he gave me instructions. I wrote them down. Wait a minute.” He pulled out his notebook and flicked through, until he found what he was looking for. “Ah! Here we go. We need to go to room C203, in the Fidel Castro building, wherever that is.”
Molly laughed, and rolled her eyes. “Why do they always name buildings after obscure celebrities? Wasn’t Fidel Castro host of some rubbish game show, or something?”
Pierre looked sidelong at her, and shrugged. “M. Castro was quite a big star in Cuba, from what I’ve heard. He even brought out his own brand of cigars. I smoked one once, at a party held by my friend Stephan. It revolutionised my view of tobacco, let me tell you.”
“Whatever. Come on, let’s try and find this professor person.”
There was an information kiosk in the Administration Centre, and the bored looking woman behind the counter gave them a map, after they had spent an hour wondering aimlessly trying to follow a set of instructions that didn’t make sense and ended up squarely back where they had started.
Second time around they managed to find the Fidel Castro building. They entered through a side door, and after some searching managed to find room C203, with a plaque below saying “Experimental History Laboratory 1”. They knocked on the door, and were rather startled when it was immediately opened by an albino man, in a white coat.
“You are Pierre le Grand, yes?” He looked at Molly, and nodded. “I see you’ve brought a friend.”
Pierre snapped out of his fugue state, as it fell into place. “You’re Toussaint’s assistant, right? The one I spoke to on the phone?”
“Yes, that’s me. Come in, the Professor is waiting for you.”
They entered the laboratory. It was a large room filled with rows of computer monitors attached to large pieces of machinery, with a window that filled almost one entire side of the room, overlooking some trees and a lake. At the far end of a room was a grey haired man, hunched over one of the monitors, who seemed to pay no attention to Pierre and Molly’s entrance.
“Professor? Professor Toussaint?” Pierre shouted, to no response on Toussaint’s part.
The albino assistant shook his head, explaining, “He can’t hear you. Earphones. The Simulation has a musical score that is rather repetitive and...addictive. I warned Professor Ibsen about it, but he didn’t listen.”
“O...kay,” Molly said, as the assistant went to attract Toussaint’s attention. “What’s the Simulation?”
Pierre shrugged. “I don’t know, but I’m sure we’re about to find out.”
A few moments later Toussaint came and greeted them, with a large smile filled with black, rotten teeth. He was, as far as Molly could tell, in his fifties or sixties, with white hair and keen, crinkled eyes. “Welcome, Pierre, to my laboratory!” he said, shaking his hand, before turning his attention to Molly. “Well hello, and who is this lovely creature?”
“Er, I’m Molly,” she said, cringing slightly. “I’m with Pierre. I hope it is okay, my being here.”
Toussaint threw his hands in the air. “Of course, the more the merrier. What are you?” he said, examining her face closely as one would regard a fine piece of porcelain. “You look like a mulatto to me.”
Molly was taken aback by his bluntness. “Um, yeah, I guess. My, er, father is from Ukraine, and my mother’s black Jamaican.”
“Your father is a fairly recent immigrant, yes? So sad what happened over there, so sad. Anyway, come, I must show you the Simulation. My life’s work, you know,” he said with a wink to Molly.
Pierre raised his hand. “Well actually I wanted to speak to you about-“
“You must have had a long journey, would you like some coffee? Claus, make some coffee, would you?” he said, not waiting for a reply. “How many sugars?”
“Uh two,” said Pierre.
“Yeah, two for me as well,” Molly said.
Toussaint smiled, as the albino Claus scurried away. “It’s always exciting to have people take an interest in my work,” he said. “Have you read my paper, 'What if Haiti Failed to Control the Caribbean?' It’s my finest work, I think.”
“Uh, no, sorry.”
“Oh,” he said, face falling slightly. “Well you should.”
There was buzzing in Molly’s ear. She swatted the air, to no avail. “So what exactly is experimental history,” she said, blinking and shaking her head, trying to distract herself.
“It’s all to do with this,” Toussaint said, leading them to one of the terminals. “The main focus of my research is the possibility of alternative routes that history could take, like alternative realities, that sort of thing. Hence the Simulation; a computer program that can create a possible alternative historical scenario and log everything that occurs so that I can track the changes. Professor Ibsen-” his face soured slightly, “also added the option for someone to take control of a country and guide it in a certain direction, an ahistorical path of the experimenter’s choosing. He even got the students to write up what happened in these scenarios and post them on a forum on the Grid, as a sort-of project. Pointless if you ask me, but there you go. Reducing the Simulation to nothing but a mere game to be played, but that’s Professor Ibsen for you.”
Claus came with the coffees, and Molly soon lost track of the conversation between Pierre and Toussaint. She smacked her ear and took a sip of hot coffee, burning the roof of her mouth in the process. The buzzing remained.
Molly idly gazed around the laboratory, while words drifted past her. The albino Claus was working on something in the corner, and as her eyes flicked through the room, they settled on something interesting, a long cylindrical piece of glass on a golden plinth, on the desk at the front of the room. She wandered over to it, and picked it up. At first she had thought it a paperweight or snowstorm; close up it gave away no clues, but as she looked into it, she felt herself becoming hypnotised, as if some kind of energy was passing between it and her mind. She took it back to Pierre and Toussaint, who were deep in their conversation.
“...of course, the question of determinism versus free will is crucial to the entire discipline of experimental history. It has been theorised that in a purely deterministic universe, there could be no alternate realities at all, as everything is set in stone and there’s no possibility of separate realities splitting off if no decisions are being made.”
“But that’s not entirely true, is it?” Pierre said. “Surely the possibility of quantum uncertainty allows divergences even without a conscious being making decisions.”
Toussaint smiled, pleasantly surprised. “Ah! Quantum theory adds a whole new dimension—if you’ll excuse the pun—to the debate. Then you have to try and work out whether sub-atomic quantum fluctuations are actually random and undecidable, or whether there is some greater determinism at work that we haven’t yet identified...”
Molly cleared her throat, and smiled as they both looked up at her. “Sorry to interrupt your little chat, but what about the Fountain of Youth and the black stones? Isn’t that why we came here in the first place?”
“Black stones?” Toussaint said vaguely. “You mean Piedras Negras, I suppose?”
Molly blinked, stunned. “Um, I don’t know. What’s Piedras Negras?”
“Oh, it’s a Mayan ruin on the Yucatan peninsula. You didn’t know that? Don’t they teach anything in schools these days? Honestly!” he said with a roll of his eyes and a sigh. He looked at the cylinder in her hands. “Oh, you appear to be holding my libido. I was wondering why I was feeling so aroused.”
Molly’s eyes shot down at the cylinder, and she quickly put it down on the side and discreetly wiped her hands on her clothes. “Your libido?”
“Yes,” Toussaint said brightly. “It was a gift from a friend of mine, a voodoo priestess in fact. An amazing woman, for sure. Pure concentrated orgone—sexual energy, if you will.”
“I...see.”
“Anyway, do you not want to see the Simulation, Molly? I’ll let you have a go, if you like?” She swatted the air again, and shook her hair. Toussaint laughed. “That mosquito seems to have taken a shine to you.”
“Yeah I know, damn thing.”
Wait a minute, Molly thought. No! This isn’t funny! This whole thing’s been a joke, hasn’t it? Argh, you made a mosquito bite chunks out of me to make a joke work, you bastard! Not funny. Not funny at all.
Yeah, but at least you finally found out what the black stones were, Molly. That has to count for something?
Yes, Piedras Negras. Is that our side of the Central American border or not? I hope it is.
I’m pretty sure it’s not. But you’ll have fun finding out, Molly.
“No! Damn it!”
Was that a denial?
"Shut up!" Pierre and Toussaint looked at her strangely, and Molly blushed. “Sorry about that.”