Paradox hotel, p.1
Paradox Hotel, page 1
The Paradox Hotel is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
Copyright © 2022 by Rob Hart
All rights reserved.
Published in the United States by Ballantine Books, an imprint of Random House, a division of Penguin Random House LLC, New York.
Ballantine and the House colophon are registered trademarks of Penguin Random House LLC.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Hart, Rob (Fiction writer), author.
Title: The Paradox Hotel: a novel / Rob Hart.
Description: First Edition. | New York: Ballantine Books, [2022]
Identifiers: LCCN 2021015892 (print) | LCCN 2021015893 (ebook) | ISBN 9781984820648 (hardcover) | ISBN 9781984820655 (ebook) | ISBN 9780593499085 (international edition)
Subjects: GSAFD: Mystery fiction.
Classification: LCC PS3608.A7868 P37 2022 (print) | LCC PS3608.A7868 (ebook) | DDC 813/.6—dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2021015892
LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2021015893
Ebook ISBN 9781984820655
randomhousebooks.com
Frontispiece and title-page images © Goettingen, iStock
Book design by Elizabeth A. D. Eno, adapted for ebook
Cover design: Will Staehle
ep_prh_6.0_139201743_c0_r1
Contents
Cover
Title Page
Copyright
Epigraph
Quantum Entrapment
Schrödinger’s Corpse
Event Symmetry
Conservation of Suffering
Broken Arrow of Time
General Relativity
Special Relativity
Chaos Theory & Speculation
Noble Truth
Emergence
Sangha
The Theory of Everything
Dedication
Acknowledgments
By Rob Hart
About the Author
It’s a poor sort of memory that only works backwards.
—the White Queen in Through the Looking-Glass by Lewis Carroll
QUANTUM ENTRAPMENT
Droplets of blood pat the blue carpet, turning from red to black as they soak into the fibers. The drops come slow at first, before turning to a trickle as the bones of my skull squeeze like a hand around my brain. My body yearns to release the tension in my shoulders, to let the pressure off my knees, to lay down and go to sleep.
Except it won’t be sleep.
It won’t really be death either. Something more in-between.
A permanent vacancy.
This moment has been chasing me for years. The third stage, when the strands of my perception unravel and my ability to grasp the concept of linear time is lost.
More pats on the carpet. But the blood from my nose has stopped flowing.
Heavier, from the other end of the hallway, getting closer.
Footsteps.
Maybe I can fight this. A handful of Retronim. A cherry lollipop. What if I scream? I open my mouth. Nothing comes out but blood.
The footsteps get closer.
This is the moment when my brain will short-circuit. That’s the third stage of being Unstuck. No one really knows why it happens. The prevailing theory is your mind finds itself in a quantum state and can’t handle the load. Others think you witness the moment of your death. I don’t give a shit about the “why” of it. I just know the result doesn’t look pleasant: a glassy-eyed coma that’ll last as long as my body holds out.
The pressure increases. More blood. Maybe I’ll bleed to death first. Small victories.
In a moment I’ll be gone. Probably reality too. The timestream is broken and I’m the only one who can fix it, but instead I’m dying on the floor. Sorry, universe.
I slip again, memories rattling around my brain like rocks in a tin can. Sitting in my bed, the smell of garlic and chili paste frying in the kitchen, wafting upstairs. Graduating the academy, walking across the gymnasium stage, new heels tearing at the skin of my feet while I scan the sea of folding chairs.
The first time I let Mena kiss me, the two of us alone on the balcony overlooking the lobby.
That taste of cherries, and everything I ever needed.
The footsteps stop.
I feel it, the displacement of air, the gravity of another person, standing there, watching me writhe on this dumb blue carpet. Nothing I can do now. It’s over. But I’m not going to die on my hands and knees.
With the last of my strength I push up…
* * *
—
Tap-tap-tap.
Doctor Tamworth is holding his pen an inch above the flat expanse of his desk, looking at me like I might bite him. Which, the day is young.
I take a second to situate myself. The fluorescent light is so white it’s almost blue, to match the sky-blue walls and dark blue linoleum tile. So much of this place is blue, which is calming, or so I’ve been told. The room is otherwise bare, save a small tablet on the desk, a diploma on the wall from a university in his home country of Bangladesh, and a half-eaten deli sandwich in a cardboard clamshell container. I can smell the sting of the vinegar, the funk of the cheese. My stomach growls at it. Ruby is hovering in its usual spot over my shoulder, too close by half.
“Where were you just now, January?” Tamworth asks.
“Right here, Doc,” I tell him, which is only mostly a lie, because the place I slipped to is gone. Something about carpet? I reach for it, but it disappears between my fingers like smoke. Probably not important.
“It didn’t look like you were here,” Tamworth says, his voice an airy, nasal pitch that seems determined to match the creak of his desk chair. “It looked like you were somewhere else.”
“Your word against mine.”
Tamworth sighs. “No behavioral changes. That’s a start.”
He heaves his blocky frame to a standing position and turns to the cabinet. The rattle of the pill bottle lifts my soul. He places the orange tube of Retronim on the desk, just next to the sandwich.
“I’m increasing your dose,” he says. “Ten milligrams. One pill in the morning, one at night. If you’re slipping a lot you can take a third, but no more than that in a twenty-four-hour period. Your weight.” He raises his hand, spreads his fingers, waves them back and forth. “Figure by the time we get to twenty milligrams in a day, there might be a problem.”
“What kind of problem?”
Tamworth slumps in his chair. “Aggression, irritability…”
“I must be OD’ing right now.”
He frowns. “Heart palpitations, confusion, hallucinations. Not to mention your kidneys won’t be too happy.”
“Got it,” I tell him, nearly snatching the sandwich, but instead palming the bottle and stuffing it in my pocket. “Take as needed. Like candy.”
His face goes dark. “Do you ever get tired of this?”
I offer him a shrug in response.
“Your latest round of scans came in. Let me show you something.” He reaches for the tablet, opens it, and tilts it toward me. The mushy oval on the screen is lit up in greens and blues and reds. “This is the brain of a woman your age who has never stepped foot in the timestream.” Then he swipes, showing another scan with slightly less color around the center of the mass. “This is your brain. Do you see the difference?”
“I’m not a doctor,” I tell him.
“There’s clear degradation in the hypothalamus. We’re still not sure exactly how this works, but we believe the problem is related to the suprachiasmatic nucleus, which regulates the body’s circadian rhythms…”
I put up my hand. “Doc, don’t tell me you don’t know how this works, and then tell me you know what’s wrong. I told you. I’m still on the first stage.”
He taps the screen of the tablet with his pen. “Nobody with this much loss of function…”
“Except you don’t know how this works, so how do you even form a benchmark?”
He stops and stutters. “January, I’m doing this for your own good.”
“I’ve got my pills, Doc,” I tell him. “And if I hit the second stage you’ll be the first one to know.”
He slaps the tablet on the desk. “Retronim isn’t a cure. All it does is forestall the inevitable. I have serious concerns about you being here. I know it’s supposed to be safe, but look at the clocks. There’s clearly radiation leakage. You ought to be somewhere far away. Why not retire? You hit your tier. Find a beach community. Read books. Meet someone.”
I put my hands flat on the desk and lean forward, taking time to enunciate each word: “Don’t tell me what I need.”
“If you’re on to the second stage of this, you know what that means,” he says, pleading.
“First.”
“January, I’m not an idiot.”
“You may well be. And I like it here.”
“Really? Because it doesn’t seem that way.” Tamworth peers over my shoulder. “What’s your take on this?”
Ruby whirs a little closer. I consider whacking it against the wall. Not for any particular reason, just because I consider that a lot. It gives a soft beep and, in its genteel New Zealand accent, says, “Nothing worth reporting, Doctor Tamworth.”
Tamworth rolls his eyes. I don’t have a good insult, nor do I care to formulate one, so I stand and pat the pill bottle in my pocket. It gives another optimistic shake. “Thanks for the lift, Doc. I’ll see you around.” I wave to the drone hovering at my shoulder. “Let’s blow, Ruby.”
“January…” Tamworth starts.
“What?”
He looks at me again, ready to say something deeply caring and meaningful, probably. Then he thinks better of it.
As I leave, I realize I could have handled that better.
Could have taken the sandwich.
I should feel bad. It’s not like he’s not wrong. I shouldn’t be here.
But how could I be anywhere else?
I walk to the railing overlooking the hotel lobby and survey my domain.
The swooping lines and rounded corners of the midcentury modern space give it the feel of being simultaneously retro and futuristic. The lobby is cylindrical and dizzying, starting a hundred feet below me and continuing up another hundred above me. Concentric rings of walkways start at the top—the restaurant, the bar—and continue down, level after level of offices and amenities. All of it linked by elevators and sloped walkways, like a shopping mall built vertically. The focal point is a brass rod hooked into the ceiling, which plunges into the depths of the lobby. At the end of the rod is a massive, brass astrological clock, hovering a few inches off the floor.
Mena comes out of the spa across the chasm, in her black and white waitress uniform, carrying an empty drink tray. Her wavy hair is pulled back into a tight ponytail, and the precise swing of her hips reminds me of how a panther moves. My heart lurches across the empty space between us and I consider calling to her, but before I can open my mouth she turns a corner and disappears.
Mena.
I know she’s not really there.
But she’s also the reason I could never leave this place.
Because what if I do, and I never see her again?
How do I explain that to Tamworth? To anyone?
If I do, they’ll make me leave for sure.
And for the briefest moment, I think the same thing I think every time I see her: a five-minute tram ride. That’s all it would take. I just have to be willing to break the rules I’ve sworn to uphold and maybe destroy reality in the process.
Some days, it seems worth it.
“Big snowstorm about to roll in,” Ruby says. “Blizzard warning. Hazardous travel conditions.”
Snatched from my daze, I exhale and turn to the drone, which looks like a floating pair of binoculars. It turns to me, rattling the googly eyes I glued to its lens.
“You ruin everything,” I tell it.
“Just doing my job.”
I should get to work. The lobby clock reads 9:17 a.m. I watch the second hand marching across the face.
9:17:24
9:17:25
9:17:26
9:17:25
9:15:26
9:15:27
9:15:28…
Movement around the lobby draws my attention. Lots of people dragging roller bags through the tunnel from Einstein. The lines at the three desks surrounding the clock are deep and getting deeper. Cameo is at concierge, and all the check-in slots are staffed. Still, everyone is in the weeds. Which is not something that makes me happy.
“What’s with the crowd, Rubes?”
“It seems there are some issues at Einstein that have grounded flights,” it says. “Also, I have a message from Reg that he needs to see you.”
“About what?”
“That’s all it says.”
“Haven’t I asked you to not let people leave incomplete messages? You should have pinged him back and asked for more information.”
Ruby floats for a few seconds before responding. “I didn’t really care to.”
“Thanks.”
“You made me like this.”
I swipe at it, but it dodges out of the way.
“It would help if you were a little faster,” it says.
Whatever. I skip the elevator and take the winding, sloped corridors down to the lobby, where my canvas sneakers squeak on the marble floor. Hanging on one wall is a large oval screen displaying the upcoming trips.
QR3345—Ancient Egypt—DELAYED
RZ5902—Battle of Gettysburg—DELAYED
ZE5522—Triassic Period—DELAYED
HU0193—Renaissance—DELAYED
Today is going to be a day.
As I’m crossing to Reg’s office, I clock a guy standing at the coffee urn. My antennae go up. He doesn’t have a bag with him. He’s surveying the room as he sips on a cup of coffee, looking for someone. Tall, movie-star handsome, motorcycle boots, a leather jacket he actually manages to pull off. Could be a guest, but he’s a bit too scruffy for this lot. His clothes are sharp but not designer. The men who stay here tend to look like they’re dressed for an emergency yacht club meeting.
“Ruby, see the pretty boy over there?” I ask.
“You understand that as an artificially intelligent construct I don’t grasp beauty standards?”
“By the coffee, dummy,” I tell it. “Keep an eye on him.”
“Any reason?”
“Gut.”
Reg’s door is cracked so I push it open and find he’s on the phone. He looks up from his disaster of a desk—paperwork, food wrappers, who knows, maybe a cat?—and shrugs at me, like, why can’t you knock?
I give him a little shrug in response, like, you’re really asking me that?
He goes back to the call, listening intently as I survey the clutter, focusing on my favorite piece: the Sicilian flag he keeps tacked to the wall. Red and yellow, with a woman’s head surrounded by three disembodied legs, which, as I have told him many times, really ought to be the lesbian pride flag, but he does not agree.
“Yeah, I understand that,” he barks into the phone. “Right, but we’re understaffed as it is and…no, you listen…okay, fine, fine. Fine!” He taps off the call, slams the phone on the desk, and leans back, pressing his hands into his face like he wants to crush it.
Reg played offensive line in college and while those days are long behind him, he still carries an intimidating thickness. And usually, his charm and personality match his size. Not today. His skin is gray and his white hair, normally gelled into slicked-back spikes, is disheveled. His lavender button-down shirt is wrinkled and he smells like he bathed in aftershave. He’s giving off some real walk-of-shame vibes, but since the only thing he’s married to is his job, I know a hammer is about to come down on both of us.
“Jan, what was the biggest, bloodiest battle in all of human history?” he asks.
“I had to track someone down after D-Day in Normandy,” I tell him. “That was pretty gnarly.”
“I’m going to book a one-way ticket. It’d be preferable to this.” He sighs. “Those assholes moved it up to tomorrow.”
“Moved what up to tomorrow?” I ask.
“The summit.”
I breathe out a large portion of my soul. The summit. A logistical nightmare that’d been keeping me from sleeping restfully the past few nights, but at least I had until next week to prepare for it. Anger shoots through me like an electric current and I consider digging my thumb into his eye to make myself feel better, but there’s no point taking this out on Reg. The poor guy is just the hotel manager. And clearly, he’s no happier about the change than I am.
This was a TEA call, so I know who to be mad at.
“Does Danbridge know?” I ask.
“He said to take five minutes to calm down before calling him.”
“I’m giving him two, and that’s generous.”
Reg leans back in his seat. “I need a drink. Is it too early for a drink?”
I spot a lottery ticket on the corner of the desk. Reg likes to bet on horses, though he doesn’t do a very good job of it. I give the ticket a tap and say, “You know, you’d be better off putting your money in a pile and burning it. At least it’ll keep you warm.”
