Chapter
1
Hurt
It was after midnight on a Monday night. Jini reached beneath her bed and felt around with her fingers in the dim bedside lamp light and found the tampon box and pulled it up onto her lap. She grabbed her airpods from her bedside table and inserted them, left ear, right ear and unlocked her iPhone and started playing the Johnny Cash cover of the NIN song Hurt. The melancholy guitar notes began playing and soon were accompanied by the frail spoken lyrics of Johnny Cash…
I hurt myself today
To see if I still feel
Jini crossed her legs on her bed and carefully opened the Tampon box and pulled out a small box that once held a pair of earrings and opened it to reveal a razor blade. She carefully picked out the silver razor blade, it’s fine edge flashed in the dim light and held it firmly between her dark brown thumb and index finger.
Tonight was the three year anniversary of her parents death. They died tragically in a horrible lab accident along with a post doc at the University of Texas at Austin that left her an orphan. Jini was, shy, awkward, a black girl who went about her day trying to avoid human contact. She moved between classes at school with her head down. She didn’t have any real friends to speak of, and without her parents, she felt adrift and alone in the world and wondered what her life meant. Her only comfort was music and the silver instrument held between her fingers.
I focus on the pain
The only thing that’s real
Jini turned her arm over exposing the soft underside of her arm and numerous scars, some old, some fresh. They were like the rings of a tree showing the progression of time and her continued struggle with the loss of her parents, and the need to hurt herself. She gently breathed in and placed the sharp razor edge against her skin. She held her breath for a long moment waiting for mister Cash to tell her when to begin.
The needle tears a hole
The old familiar sting
She pressed the blade against her arm and slowly drew it across her skin. The blades path ran parallel to all the others before it and her eyes fluttered and closed. The blood quickly rose to the surface, brilliant crimson. She lifted the blade off her skin and let out her captive breath.
Try to kill it all away
But I remember everything
The first time she cut herself it hurt a lot, and went so deep she was afraid she would need stitches. Her aunt found her in the bathroom running her ankle under the faucet in a panic. Jini swore she would never do it again. But then for the next few days she watched her skin heal and leave a faint red line of scar tissue. Whenever she was feeling down she would run her fingers along the line of the wound and it was calming, comforting. She daydreamed about cutting herself again. But she was more careful the next time.
What have I become
My sweetest friend?
Jini laid back and rested her head on a pile of her long braided hair ending in tight brown curls and whispered to no one, “I feel so alone mom.”
Everyone I know
Goes away in the end
Chapter
11
Sarah was a young female postdoc at Ohio State University in the Astronomy department when she got knocked up by Mike. That’s not to say that they didn’t have a romantic relationship, go for long walks in the park and candle lit dinners before getting pregnant. But they had sex on their second date after a Christmas/holiday party at the head of the mathematics department’s house. And 9 months later Sarah’s career was put on a temporary hold as she nursed and raised her beautiful daughter Jini. Mike soon received a tenure track position at UT Austin in the Computer Science department where he worked in both theoretical computer science and machine learning and neural networks.
A few years later Sarah was invited to give a talk on one of her research papers from Ohio State on the theory of bubble universes. The general idea is that our universe is just one of thousands of other universes that exist in our own space-time bubble and that each universe has it’s own set of rules of physics and chemistry. If so there might be ways to make measurements at the farthest reaches of our universe that would confirm this theory by observation of the CMB (Cosmic Microwave Background) that would reveal when our universe bumped into another universe. Of course there was someone at that talk who was impressed and offered Sarah a position in their lab.
Fast forward 5 years, and Sarah was promoted to assistant professor of Astrophysics and authored dozens of papers on the theory of bubble universes, their theory and practical applications. The last caught the attention of the NSA and Department of Defense because in one paper Sarah proposed it was possible to actually create a bubble universe under the right circumstances. The biggest hurdle was the amount of energy needed and safely directing it in a small region without creating a black hole. Or perhaps better explained, you needed to create the “right kind” of black hole. Of course it would be extremely dangerous, so they decided to build the facility in Texas. The department of defense quietly solicited a budget for and broke ground on the largest particle accelerator on earth at 121 kilometers in circumference to be constructed deep beneath the city of Llano Texas.
Meanwhile, Mike, was studying quantum computing and deep learning (DL) artificial neural networks. Two seemingly different fields of study, but to him it made perfect sense. Mike also never felt tied to any one application of AI to solve real world problems. At it’s core a computer was a tool, plain and simple. You could use it to simulate nuclear explosions, predict how proteins would fold, or play a massive multi-player online role playing game. Mike was very different from Sarah. He once said, “When I’m lying on the floor and my eyebrows have been blown off, and they are carrying two of my graduate students away on stretchers, and the fluorescent lights are swinging overhead by one lone wire and sparks are shooting off it onto the floor, and the fire department has been called to the lab and sirens are wailing, THAT is the moment I know we are about to make a breakthrough!” Sarah would reply, “I thought you said that was a fire drill, they were remodeling the robotics lab to fit a new larger robot arm and those two graduate students were invited to attend a compsci conference in Tanzania for two weeks?” Mike furrowed his brow thoughtfully and then chuckled, “Is that what I told you?”
Sarah couldn’t be more different than Mike. She was just the opposite, careful, cautious, meticulous, measure 3 or 4 times, have a meeting and measure again before you make the first cut. But they respected each other.
Sarah said, “Every time I drop by your office you’re all playing video games!”
Mike said, “Well every time I drop by your office you are always.. typing.. and looking serious.”
And they also loved each other very deeply. And they loved their daughter Jini. But sometimes it didn’t seem that way. Like…
On Jini’s 5th birthday…
Jini watched as her mom ran off to a meeting on campus with the NSA.
Sarah called to Jini, “We can have cake and open your birthday presents as soon as I get back!”
On the day Jini graduated from Kindergarten…
Only her grandparents and Aunt A applauded as she walked across the stage to receive her diploma.
On the day she rode her bike without training wheels…
Her nanny showed a video message from her mom, “I’m so proud of you Jini! I wish I could have been there! f love you sweetie. You can show me this weekend.”
On the day she got a third place ribbon for her charcoal drawing of her grandmother crying at her grandfather’s funeral…
Both her parents were at simultaneous conferences in Leipzig and Tokyo. Her nanny stood beside her looking at her drawing on display in the elementary school hallway and said, “It’s so depressing.”
Jini replied, “I know, I wish they were here.” She was referring to her parents.
The nanny continued fussing over her artwork, “Your drawing sweetie. It’s so depressing. I wish you had drawn something happy like the boy who got first place.” She gestured towards the first place painting of pale white woman with unusually large breasts holding a gleaming sword in the air on the surface of an alien planet, which apparently had rolling lush green hills as if she were in Iowa.
Jini just rolled her deep brown eyes, “Are you fucking kidding me?”
Her nanny’s mouth dropped, “Jini! You do not use the F word. You just lost your electronics time this evening, young lady.”
Jini spent the evening drawing pictures of horrible atrocities performed by aliens against a lithe pale white woman with unusually large breasts. It was pretty horrifying.
You get the general idea
Eventually Jini came to expect her parents absence and filled it with reading, drawing, watching YouTube videos on her phone, and listening to music. She liked pretty much everything: classic rock, old R&B, K-pop, new R&B, musicals, pop music and yes even country. She enjoyed an occasional rap or hip-hop song, but didn’t really care for songs about girls asses, riding in sports cars, doing shots of booze or any song where they used the N word. Not that it bothered her being black, if someone used the N word, whatever. Songs like that just turned her off.
Because of how little time she got with her parents, Jini treasured the rare moments when her parents were home…
Sarah called from the kitchen, “I’m ordering Thai food for dinner to celebrate, what does everyone want?”
Mike wrapped his arms around Sarah in the kitchen and nuzzled her neck, “I can’t believe we the supplemental appropriate sailed through. It’s nearly 100 billion dollars.”
Sarah smiled and kisses Mike on the cheek, “What’s a few billion dollars these days…”
Mike said, “Can I get the Krapow and Tom Yum soup?”
Sarah replied, “You want spring rolls with that?”
Mike said, “Yes!” as he moved into the living room and fumbled with an HDMI cable and connected the Nintendo to the new 85 inch TV in the living room. The opening video and song played on the giant screen. Mike handed a controller to Jini who was anxiously sitting on the couch waiting to start playing.
Mike flopped down on the large white sectional couch with his own game controller held in his hands. Jini who had just turned 7 years old a week before got the Nintendo Switch as a Birthday present along with every game they made. Seeing the joy in Mike’s eyes as they got ready to play, Jini wondered if the game system was a gift for her or her dad.
Mike tilted his head towards Jini, “What do you want for dinner?”
Jini scrunched her face, “What’s the one with peanuts and noodles?”
Mike replied, “Pad Thai. You can get it with shrimp or chicken.”
Jini yelled to her mom, “I’ll have Pad Thai with chicken.”
Mike was busy selecting his character for the first battle.
Jini turned back to the game and scrolled through the options. She picked Donkey Kong. Her dad picked Lucina.
Jini raised her eyebrows at her dad, “Lucina? Shouldn’t you pick a boy?”
Mike replied, “Lucina is perfectly balanced and moves fast and has consistent strong attacks like the dancing blade move. She’s better than Marth. Besides, she’s kinda cute.” He smiled at Jini.
Jini narrowed her eyes at her dad, “Yeah… okay. I’m gonna kick your ass either way.”
Sarah said from the kitchen, “Jini. Language.”
Jini grinned, “That was just a taste mom. Wait til we get into it. I’m gonna do some serious trash talking in a minute.”
Jini got in game mode, “You gotta be a BEAST! That’s the only way they’ll re-SPECT you.”
Mike laughed and put his fist out for his daughter to bump, “re-SPECT.” They bumped fists and started the first Smash.
They ate Thai food and played video games all night. Even Jini’s mom jumped onto a few Smashes and a round of MarioKart. She always played Yoshi. It was her go-to character. Late that evening Sarah returned from changing into pajamas and found Mike and Jini asleep on the couch with the TV still on. She got a pair of blankets and laid them over her husband and daughter and picked up the TV remote and switched it off.