Chapter 11

You can find just about anything you want on Craigslist. A used mini-fridge. Tickets to Snoop Dogg. Someone to walk your dog. Someone that wants to be spanked.

But what I needed to find is someone who could help me, without knowing too much about what I was building, what it was for, or how much it could be worth. And I needed someone to do the hard work and not take any of the credit. I needed Rameshwar.

A couple days ago I realized internet plans for toaster circuits had only gotten me so far. I needed someone who actually knew what they were talking about. So without telling Lara, I posted a job ad on the Chicago Craigslist.

Electronics Expert Needed — Secret Project — $300

I’m looking for someone who really knows how to build circuits to help me on a one-time project. Background in medical equipment a plus. No questions.

* Location: Chicago, IL.
* Compensation: $300
* Principals only. Recruiters, please don’t contact this job poster.
* Please, no phone calls about this job!
* Please do not contact job poster about other services, products or commercial interests.

Reply to: job-633549523@craigslist.org
Date: 2010–11–04, 11:15PM CDT

The responses were about what I expected. A wave of initial offers flooded my inbox. Most looked like they were college students or guys who thought that they were computer experts just because they could install a new hard drive.

At first I thought Rameshwar was just an internet code name, something you might use when you’re playing Halo or something. Then I realized he was just Indian. He said he had hacked medical equipment before — defibrillators, electrocardiograms, and yes, electroencephalograms. I wasn’t going to ask any questions, as long as he didn’t.

I didn’t want to have him working on my machine without being there to watch, so I invited him to come over on Saturday night.

He shows up and he’s a lot skinnier than I imagined. He’s taller than me buy a couple inches — nearly six feet tall — but he couldn’t weigh more than 150 pounds. He’s wearing a plain white t-shirt and wrinkled brown pants. His shoes are black without any logos or designs.

I’m up front with my offer: “Here’s $150. When we get this thing to work, you’ll get the other half.”

“Okay.” He examines my crude soldering technique and starts sketching a diagram in his notebook. “So what’s your electronic background?”

“Just what I could find out on the internet. So nothing.”

“I see. So what is it exactly that needs to happen?”

“I need the circuit to be activated when the frequency goes over 10 Hertz. That starts the audio. Then when the frequency drops below 10, I want the alarm clock to go off.”

“That is it?”

“Yeah, is that even possible?”

“Yes. That is easy. “

“Really. Wow. Okay. Good.”

He continues sketching and seems to think that this is easy money. “So what is this supposed to do?”

I counter, “Why do you have so much experience ripping apart hospital equipment?”

“My parents are both doctors. They wanted me to go to Medical School but I wanted to be an electrical engineer. Working on EKG machines was my way of appeasing them.”

“That makes sense. I thought you were trying to build torture devices or something silly like that.”

Rameshwar just looks at me with those sad, puppy brown eyes of his. Clearly I had offended him.

I fake cough to try and bridge my thoughts. “I’m just kidding. So yeah. I’m hoping to wake myself up after I have a dream. So I can remember them better.”

“Oh.” Classic Rameshwar. He finishes his sketch and it looks roughly like what I’ve constructed.

“So, was I close?”

“No. Not at all. I will make it work. Give me some time.”

I head to the kitchen to make a ham sandwich with mayo, mustard, and lettuce on sourdough. By the time I return, Rameshwar is sitting there with his hands folded in his lap. The machine — which I swear looked just like how I had it — is resting proudly on the table.

“It’s done,” he says.

“So this will work?”

“Yes.” His confidence borders on ennui, but it reassures me nevertheless.

“Great. Well, I guess you can go home, I’ll try it out tonight and I’ll call you tomorrow to let you know if it worked. If it does, I’ll pay you the other $150.”

“Why do you not just try it now? I can wait to see if it works.”

“No offense, Rameshwar, I just feel a little creepy going to sleep with you here watching me.”

“It is not creepy. I will sit here and not make a peep, as you might say.”

“Okay, how about this. I’ll give you the second $150 right now if you go home. But if it doesn’t work, you come back tomorrow and work on it. How’s that?”

“That is fine. It will work.” On his way out the door, cash in hand, he is still offering to wait and watch me sleep. I really don’t think he means anything by it.

I look at the clock. It reads 1:54 a.m. And I am tired. In 6 minutes I will get to go back in time, and perhaps into the future as well.

I’m lying in my bed when a craving strikes. In a flash, I’m sitting in front of a table lined in white linen. I glance out the slanted windows and realize that I’m in the Signature Room. In the John Hancock Center. On the 95th floor.

But I’m alone. That won’t do. I wish my wife were here. And like that she’s sitting in the chair across from me, appearing mid-sentence. Words are coming out of her mouth before she even knows where she is.

I’ve been here twenty seconds and my waiter is nowhere to be found. You call this service? Although when you’re lucid dreaming, you don’t need waiters.

I reach for my wine glass and it fills itself with a Pinot Noir so lush and expensive, they don’t even serve it here. I swig this glass of 1978 Romanée Conti like it’s Boone’s Farm.

I decide to skip the salad. I said I was hungry. I make a waiter appear to serve me a filet complete with red wine reduction and the rock lobster tail with herb butter crust.

Outside my peripheral vision, I make a sailboat tip over. I rationalize to myself: it’s not really murder if it’s in a dream.

My steak is medium inside. I wanted medium-rare. The injustices of the world. Once I finish my meal I have trouble deciding between watching Back to the Future: Part II while getting a blowjob on a toilet or going skydiving. The decision is so stressful that it almost wakes me up.

Instead I decide to open the floor to ceiling window. Who cares if those windows don’t actually open? They do now.

I stick my face out of the open window and feel the wind scrape across my cheeks. My mouth spits and it hangs in the air before falling like a pebble.

I reach out the window, placing my palms on the outside of the glass above me. My fingers dig into the bulletproof glass. I pull myself, up and out, doing my best Spider-Man impression. An impressive feat considering I could never do pull-ups on the high school fitness test. I’m scaling the outside of the John Hancock like it’s a rock climbing wall.

If this was reality, not only would this be impossible, but anyone watching would assume I was a terrorist. They’d shoot me down before I reached the floor above me.

My hands are sticking to the outside of the windows and I don’t have to question why. I know why. I’m controlling everything.

I pull myself up and over the railing of the observation deck. It’s full of little kids wearing basketball jerseys and high tops playing a pickup game. The ball rolls to my feet and I pick it up. I stare into the children’s eyes before punting the basketball off the observation deck and into Lake Michigan. Just because.

I look to the east, taking in the lake. The air smells like fudge brownies. I see a lighthouse in the distance with a bearded man standing on the balcony. He’s wearing a bright yellow raincoat and eating fish sticks. If he were wearing cologne it would be called “Catch of the Day.”

In the foreground, I see an empty sailboat rocking from side to side.

I look to the north. Beach volleyball. Street basketball. 16” softball. All of these little people that look like dots chasing other dots around.

I look to the south. There’s Navy Pier. A place that’s famous for being famous. Tourists are paying a bunch of money to line up and go up around in a big circle. They look happy.

I look to the west. More dots running around as if they have somewhere to be. Dots running in and out of buildings. Dots carrying important things like iPhone and briefcases. Oh so important dots.

Above all these little dots is a shiny, gray dot that is growing larger in size by the moment. This particular gray dot happens to have two turbofan engines producing 40,000 pounds of thrust apiece. This gray dot is holding 289 other dots and 10,000 gallons of fuel. This gray dot took off a few minutes ago from O’Hare and now it’s headed right towards me, a brilliant dot at the top of the Hancock Observation Deck.

My first instincts tell me my options are jump, go up, or burn. But I’m already at the top. So I jump.

There’s a little boy bent over tying his size 15 Air Force Ones. My own shoe lands in the small of his back before catapulting my puffy, white ass over the western edge of the roof, 100 stories above the Second City.

As I’m plummeting past the window washing crew at the 80th floor, I ask myself: why did I create that 757?

Halfway down I’m trying to figure out the physics of it all. If I jumped from 1,100 feet, and everything accelerates towards the earth at 9.80 m/s2, how long will it take my fragile collection of skin and bones to crumple on the street below me? Will I reach my terminal velocity? Show your work.

I think I’ve got my answer as my eyes zoom in on the charcoal pavement. But instead of smashing on the surface, my body bounces on Michigan Avenue like it’s a trampoline. The Magnificent Mile is now made of rubber and is shooting me into the breezy Chicago air.

While my body is rebounding, flailing about ass over ankles, I wonder to myself: What were they serving for dinner on that airplane?

I decide it was probably Salisbury steak the moment before my face shatters the windshield of a 1995 Dodge Stratus.

My head is almost touching the center console, while my body is draped across the hood — his classy Dodge hood ornament is nestled between my legs. And the blood oozing out my ear canal muffles the sound of the car alarm I just set off.

Shards of glass have scraped ounces of flesh off my face and the whole time I’m wondering who gets a car alarm for a 15-year old Stratus? Probably the same people who still use The Club™.

That stupid car alarm keeps ringing in my ears. Again and again. Until I realize that I’m not asleep anymore. I’m listening to the alarm clock that just woke me up once my lucid dream was over.

Thank God for Rameshwar.

I look a bit closer at the alarm clock and see that it reads 2:53 a.m. Sunday morning. But of course, it’s not really 2:53. Fall back. It’s actually 1:53 a.m.