Lenny falls for Bea—or Bee—through a cross-country system that sends flash-chilled burritos through a near-vacuum tunnel from the Bay Area to New Jersey. As an apparent catastrophe leaves him trapped underground, their notes begin as flirtatious exchanges about food and gradually become a confused, emotionally charged attempt to understand one another.
Three hours and 21 minutes earlier, at an East Bay facility 4,553 miles away, Bee was thinking about him. At least, Lenny hoped she was. He wished he could track her interest for longer than the minute or two it took her to remove a flash-chilled burrito from the sorting station, place it in a carbon-fiber pod, and send it through a near-vacuum tunnel buried deep beneath the Earth at subsonic speeds.
Lenny worked at an underground exit in New Jersey, where the Bay Area’s famous Mission Burritos arrived in bulk on magnetic currents, ready to be delivered to the hungry residents of New York City’s five boroughs. Since the explosion on the surface, however, the flow had been reduced to one burrito at a time. Lenny examined each one longingly, wondering whether Bea had slipped a note into its mylar pouch.
A strange roar still vibrated through the basement walls when her first message arrived. Lenny’s thoughts turned in circles: an alien invasion, perhaps, given the contact he had experienced the previous year. Nuclear war. When he considered all the possibilities, the prospect of dying alone underground seemed almost inevitable. So when the first burrito emerged with a note attached, he was ready to risk the radiation and face the new Overlords.
This is the end of the world burrito. Best ever.
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Apparently, Bee had not expected her message to reach anyone. Who could have known that insomnia would bring Lenny to work early enough to save them both? She was now sitting atop a cornucopia of dragon burritos. The shipment sent that morning contained enough food for two people for several weeks. They could stay underground and wait for the crisis to pass.
The problem was not food, aliens or bombs. As it was for Lenny, the problem was love.
Around burrito number 9, he wrote on a whim: People might get the wrong impression if they see you spoiling me. He put the note in a mylar pouch, placed it inside an empty burrito pod, and sent it down the tube.
Bee sent back: Yes, they will think of you as my grandchild. PS What’s wrong, Lenny?
He bit into the cold tortilla. Was she flirting with him, or gently rejecting him by hinting at her age? Either way, her age would not have been a problem.
Lenny agonized over his response for hours, perhaps days. After that, every exchange between them seemed to carry a hidden meaning. chorizo, mexican red rice, refried pinto beans, and real monterey jack, Bee wrote. enjoy 🙂 Were the smiley faces shy or merely friendly? And what about the winking ones?
In his mind, Lenny spoke to her, and Bea nodded, her dark eyes dancing. But whenever he put pen to paper, his clarity vanished, collapsing into the overenthusiastic chatter of some hapless idiot.
At one point, Bee wrote: the day is long.
He stared at the plastic sleeve, longing to hold her. Then he placed his hand where she had placed hers three hours and 21 minutes earlier.
Are you bored too? Lenny answered. I thought we could spend time getting to know each other. He began telling her about where he had grown up, his favorite music and the major formative events of his childhood.
After what felt like an eternity, Bea replied. Her message was an ingredient list: Carne asada, sautéed mushrooms, salsa verde.
There were no smiles. Lenny’s heart broke.
What’s going on, Bee? What did I do? he wrote.
Several hours passed like torture. Then came her reply:
Imagine a map of an island. This is the highest fidelity and highly detailed map of the location. Now imagine that the map itself is on an island. Do you know what that means? There should be a map of the map inside the map. And inside that second map, there’s another map. On and on. It’s a map all the way, Lenny.
Lenny had heard of such a paradox somewhere. Yet Bee seemed finally to be opening up. Her scribbles looked frantic, streaking into the margins like a startled flamingo. He considered the riddle, then wrote back:
What about cartographers? Is he also depicted on all maps?
…And what about himself?
Source: www.nature.com