The Seductress & The Cipher Surreal

The Seductress & The Cipher Surreal

By Sean Danconia

March 10, 1962

He walked down the stairs alone.

Mid afternoon. Palm Beach light.

One might have thought it too bright for secrets. And that was just the way he wanted it.

She was at the desk, in a shade of pink rose.

As usual.

The color of a decision already made.

He paused when he saw her. And he inhaled her in, as he always did.

It was almost as if she was becoming closer to her. By the day. By the hour.

Even before the experiment had completed.

As such, he had begun to suspect that all the machinery, the spell craft and the data was just theater. That the real action…the magic, all occurred in the mind itself.

Intention was therefore the trigger. And perhaps desire was the bullet.

She looked up. Smiled the way women do when they know they’re being studied and enjoy it.

He had been studying her, of course. For days.

And today was the end. Of the beginning.

His wife had taken the children to the church garden at that hour. As they always did. To observe the rainbow assortment of Japanese goldfish.

The hotel pool area near the front had been ever so mildly readjusted by him for today’s event.

The statue of Atlas, designed with the arrogance of Michelangelo’s David in mind, and a subtle nod to that Russian novelist everyone pretended to hate—stood in the center of the pool.

He was holding up the world on his shoulders. Shrugging, as usual. And permanent strain and defiance.

Contra mundum. Against the world.

He had played it off as a gift to the hotel. A gesture of high culture. But it was positioned precisely 33° off the waterline. The sun would strike the globe at 3:32 PM and split into a narrow rainbow blade of light for approximately three minutes and 30 seconds.

Optics. It was all about optics. And he believed in them.

Which is why at the pool bar, they never touched. That only happened in private.

To assist in his advances, and in the mission at hand, he had gotten her used to the drink. So today there would be no argument.

Absinthe. The real stuff. The forgotten. Wormwood that made the world realer than real.

“You’re spoiling me,” she said.

“For service beyond the call of duty,” he replied.

She laughed. She did not know exactly what he meant, but his private jokes always amused her. Particularly when she didn’t understand them.

Across the pool, the boy stood near the statue. Curious. Serious. Yet mischievous. Trying to appear useful.

He was a character. And somehow it was understood that one day, he would be THE character in another rendition of the play.

Beside him, his uncle.

A thin man. Adamant. Eyes that never rested. A man who had seen everything. Too much, in fact.

A pragmatist. And not an idealist. Luckily. Otherwise he might have conducted this orchestra solely for his own purposes.

He carried the golden box. A smaller case was already positioned at the base of Atlas. A transmitter disguised in brushed gold. Like the most expensive radio ever made.

A gift to a president or an emperor. Or perhaps a knight of Camelot.

The antenna was hidden in plain sight. And the larger box remained in the uncle’s hands.

The president joined them briefly, leaving the lady in rose at the bar to enjoy the mild hallucinations produced by her drink and the moment itself.

“We’re ready,” the uncle said quietly.

“Where is the record?” the president asked.

The uncle smiled without warmth and handed it to him.

A small golden disc with an eagle and a very naughty symbol beneath it. It mirrored the gold coins the Germans had produced in the war. Found with the box itself.

It had taken the uncle and his team years to understand how to embed them with the required data. But that was long ago.

Now these devices could be used. And abused.

From Nikola until today, the uncle had gathered the pieces of a puzzle like a librarian detective. Not specifically for this moment. Though today would be very interesting.

Compatibility was required. More than resemblance.

The lady in rose had no idea she was related to the target. But she was.

Like to like.

The president had done his homework. So had the uncle.

They had arranged for her to work here a month ago. A coincidence manufactured through the Friends of the Thirty-Three.

The legs. The eyes. And that body.

Genetic proximity, the papers called it.

Probability adjacency.

She was not random. She was almost.

And soon she would be more than that.

The president returned to her side at the pool.

“I have something for you,” he said.

“From us,” he added smoothly. “My wife insisted.”

“Walk with me.”

They reached the point at the edge of the pool where the gold box rested.

“I picked up a few books for you in town.”

She placed her finger on the beautiful covers and traced them.

“I’ve heard about this one,” she said. “I missed the movie, but I’ll definitely read it.”

He smiled. “I think you’ll enjoy both of them,” he said.

But he thought, the other one will enjoy them more.

He touched the box.

“You can’t keep it. But I want you to listen to the music.”

“I have to take a call,” he said. “Let me put the record on.”

He removed the gold disc from his pocket.

The eagle sparkled ominously in the light.

“You’ll hear things that no one else can. Yet. It’s new. It’s…Something else.”

It was 3:32.

He pressed play.

The music began.

“I’ll be back,” he said, handing her the absinthe.

“Finish this. It’s all about experience enhancement.”

She took a sip and looked at him with more than love in her eyes.

He walked away, smiling to himself as the uncle watched from near the statue.

The boy stood by the transmitter, which glowed with its own faint golden pulse.

Far above them, the president’s wife looked down from her balcony. Amused. Disappointed. Interested.

Across from her, a bearded man with a single eye, built like a god, observed everything from a private suite at the top of the hotel.

And above him, reflecting the blade of light from the statue back toward the box, a disc hovered among the clouds.

The music increased in intensity.

Not simply melody nor harmony.

But frequency itself. THE frequency.

Light from Atlas narrowed, sharpened, and fell directly across the open box.

Across her hands. Her face. Into her eyes.

The absinthe in the glass began to swirl. Golden green, shifting into a ring of fire, spreading around the lady in rose.

For 33 seconds the pool turned the color of molten gold.

Coins shimmered beneath the surface.

Three women flickered in the water.

The bearded man’s eye glowed.

And the president felt the air change as probability collapsed.

The lady in rose met herself in that moment. Or the version who had died in another line of time.

Only one could remain. Plus they weren’t the same.

Just close enough.

So no smoke. No flash. No mirrors.

More like a copy and paste.

Painless, he had hoped. But he didn’t care.

He had seen versions of this experiment before. With other types of people. People who did not matter. And it didn’t always turn out well.

But this one did matter.

And suddenly, it was done.

She almost lost her balance and what was left of the drink spilled across her fingers. But she caught the glass. And placed it on top of the books.

Next to a lighter she had not noticed was lit.

And she stood very still.

Somehow, she understood. And did not.

This was not right.

She was not supposed to be here.

How had she arrived? Survived?

She was immediately recognizable. Of course.

He made certain the hotel was nearly empty to avoid a scene. But one was sure to come.

The softness of Hollywood was gone. The stage lighting. The powder. The luminescent haze.

But her eyes remained.

The exact, unrepeatable ones. And everything else along with them.

She looked toward him as if she had always known where he stood.

He was already walking toward her. The air leaving his lungs.

The uncle, normally dispossessed of emotion, exhaled once:

“And God said, let there be woman.”

The boy would later remember that something extraordinary had occurred. He had witnessed it. Though he could not say what.

He knew the woman was different. That was obvious.

He had seen her films. He had fantasized about her.

Where had she come from? Where had the other one gone?

The lady in rose stepped forward and took his hands.

“Jack,” she said.

Not Mr. President. Not sir.

Jack.

He leaned toward her as his wife stepped away from the balcony, leaving them alone.

Somehow everyone had drifted from the pool.

They stood in the sunlight with Atlas holding the world above them.

“Eigi gat dauðinn halda þér,” he said.