Recursion

by Blake Crouch

  “I don’t disagree that it’s a more intense experience than remembering something on my own, but it isn’t nearly as dynamic as I’d hoped.”

  She feels a flush of anger color her face. “We’re making progress at a blinding rate, and scientific breakthroughs in our understanding of memory and engrams that would light up the world if you agreed to let me publish. I want to start mapping memories of test subjects with stage-three Alzheimer’s, and when they hit stage five or six, reactivate the memories we’ve saved for them. What if that’s the path to synaptic regeneration? To a cure? Or at the very least, to preserving core memories for a person whose brain is failing them?”

  “Are you making this about your mom, Helena?”

  “Of course I am! She’s going to reach a point in the next year when there won’t be any memories left to map. What do you think I’m doing here? Why do you think I’ve devoted my life to this?”

  “I love your passion, and I want to destroy this disease too. But first, I want: Immersive platform for projection of long-term, explicit, episodic memories.” The exact title of her dream patent application from years ago, the one she hasn’t filed yet.

  “How’d you know about my patent?”

  Instead of answering her, he asks another question: “Do you think what you’ve built so far is anywhere close to immersive?”

  “I’ve given this project everything I have.”

  “Please stop being so defensive. The technology you’ve built is perfect. I just want to help you make it everything it can be.”

  They turn the northwest corner, heading south now. Teams Imaging and Mapping are battling it out on the volleyball court. Rajesh is painting a watercolor en plein air beside the tarped-over pool. Sergei shoots free throws on the basketball court.

  Slade stops walking and looks at Helena. “Instruct Infrastructure to build a deprivation tank. They’ll need to coordinate with Sergei to find a way to waterproof and stabilize the reactivation apparatus on a test subject who’s floating inside.”

  “Why?”

  “Because it will create the pure-heroin version of memory reactivation that I’m looking for.”

  “How could you possibly know—?”

  “Once you’ve accomplished that, devise a method for stopping a test subject’s heart once they’re inside the deprivation tank.”

  She looks at Slade as if he’s lost his mind.

  He says, “The more stress the human body endures during reactivation, the more intense their experience of the memory. Buried deep inside our brain is a rice-size gland called the pineal, which plays a role in the creation of a chemical called dimethyltriptamine, or DMT. You’ve heard of it?”

  “It’s one of the most potent psychedelics known to man.”

  “In tiny doses, released into our brains at night, DMT is responsible for our dreams. But at the moment of death, the pineal gland releases a veritable flood of DMT. A going-out-of-business sale. It’s the reason people see things when they die, such as racing through a tunnel toward a light, or their entire life flashing before their eyes. To have an immersive, dreamlike memory, we need bigger dreams. Or, if you will, a lot more DMT.”

  “No one knows what our conscious minds experience when we die. You can’t be sure this will have any effect on the memory immersion. We might just kill people.”

  “When did you become such a pessimist?”

  “Who exactly do you think is going to volunteer to die for this project?”

  “We’ll bring them back to life. Poll your team. I’ll pay well considering the risk. And if you don’t have enough sign-ups for trials, I’ll look elsewhere.”

  “Will you volunteer to go inside the deprivation tank and have your heart stopped?”

  Slade smiles, dark. “When the procedure is perfected? Absolutely. Then, and only then, you can bring your mother to the rig, and use all of my equipment and all of your knowledge to map and save her memories.”

  “Marcus, please—”

  “Then, and only then.”

  “She’s running out of time.”

  “So get to work.”

  She watches him go. Before, it was always just far enough below the surface of consciousness to ignore. Now it’s staring her in the face. She doesn’t know how, but Slade knows things he shouldn’t, that he couldn’t possibly—the full details of her vision for memory projection, right down to the name of the patent application she would’ve one day filed. The quantum processors he somehow knew would solve the mapping problem. And now this mad notion of stopping the heart as a means to deepen the immersive experience. Even more alarming, the way Slade drops these little hints, it’s almost like he wants her to know that he knows things he shouldn’t. Like he wants her to be worried about the scope of his power and knowledge. It occurs to her that, if this friction continues, a day may come when Slade revokes her access to the memory platform. Perhaps she can persuade Raj to build her a clandestine, secondary user account just in case.

  For the first time since setting foot on this rig, she wonders if she’s safe here.

  BARRY

  November 5–6, 2018

  “Sir? Excuse me, sir?”

  Barry rouses from sleep, eyes opening, everything momentarily blurry and no idea for five disorienting seconds where he is. Then he registers the rocking motion of the train. Light poles streaking past through the window across the aisle. The face of the elderly conductor.

  “May I see your ticket?” the old man asks in a courtly manner refined in another age. Barry rifles through his coat until he finds his phone in the bottom of an inner pocket. Opening the MTA app, he holds his ticket up so the conductor can scan the bar code.

  “Thank you, Mr. Sutton. Sorry to wake you.”

  As the conductor moves on to the next car, Barry notices four missed call notifications on his phone’s display screen—all from the same 934 area code.

  And one voicemail.

  He presses Play, brings the phone to his ear. “Hi, it’s Joe…Joe Behrman. Um…can you please call me as soon as you get this? I really need to talk to you.”

  Barry immediately returns the call, and Joe answers before the second ring, “Detective Sutton?”

  “Yes.”

  “Where are you?”

  “On the train back to New York.”

  “You have to understand, I never thought anyone would find out. They promised me it would never happen.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “I was scared.” Joe is crying now. “Can you come back?”

  “Joe. I’m on a train. But you can talk to me right now.”

  For a moment, the man just breathes heavily into the phone. Barry thinks he hears a woman also crying in the background, but he isn’t sure.

  “I shouldn’t have done it,” Joe says. “I know that now. I had this great life with a beautiful son, but I couldn’t look myself in the mirror.”

  “Why?”

  “Because I wasn’t there for her, and she jumped. I couldn’t forgive my—”

  “Who jumped?”

  “Franny.”

  “What are you talking about? Franny didn’t jump. I just saw her at your house.”

  Over the static-laced connection, Barry hears Joe breaking down.

  “Joe, did you know Ann Voss Peters?”

  “Yes.”

  “How?”

  “I was married to her.”

  “What?”

  “It’s my fault Ann jumped. I saw an ad in the classifieds. It said, ‘Would you like a do-over?’ There was a phone number and I called it. Ann told you she had False Memory Syndrome?”

  “Correct.” And now I have it. “It sounds like you may have it too. They say it travels in social circles.”

  Joe laughs, but the so
und is full of regret and self-hatred. “FMS isn’t what people think it is.”

  “You know what FMS is?”

  “Of course.”

  “Tell me.”

  It becomes quiet over the line, and for a moment, Barry thinks he’s lost the signal.

  “Joe, are you there? Did I lose you?”

  “I’m here.”

  “What is FMS?”

  “It’s people like me, who’ve done what I did. And it’s only going to get worse.”

  “Why?”

  “I…” There’s a long pause. “I can’t explain. It’s insane. You need to go see for yourself.”

  “How do I do that?”

  “After I called that number, they interviewed me over the phone, and then took me to a hotel in Manhattan.”

  “There are a lot of hotels in Manhattan, Joe.”

  “Not like this one. You can’t just go there. They invite you. The only access is through an underground garage.”

  “Do you know the street address?”

  “It’s on East Fiftieth, between Lexington and Third. There’s an all-night diner on the same block.”

  “Joe—”

  “These are powerful people. Franny had a breakdown when she remembered, and they knew. They showed up. They threatened me.”

  “Who are they?”

  There’s no answer.

  “Joe? Joe?”

  He hung up.

  Barry tries to call him back, but it goes straight to voicemail.

  He looks out the window—nothing to see but darkness occasionally broken by the lights of a house or a station scrolling past.

  He turns his focus toward those alternate memories that found him at the diner. They’re still there. They never happened, but they feel just as real as the rest of his memories, and he can’t square the paradox in his mind.

  He looks around the car—he’s the sole passenger.

  The only sound is the steady heartbeat of the train speeding along the track.

  He touches the seat, runs his fingers across the fabric.

  He opens his wallet and looks at his New York State driver’s license, and then his NYPD badge.

  Taking a breath, he tells himself—You are Barry Sutton. You are on a train from Montauk to New York City. Your past is your past. It cannot change. What is real is this moment. The train. The coldness of the window glass. The rain streaking across the other side of it. And you. There is a logical explanation for your false memories, for whatever happened to Joe and Ann Voss Peters. To all of it. It’s just a puzzle to be solved. And you are very good at solving puzzles.

  All that’s bullshit.

  He’s never been more afraid in his life.

  * * *

  When he steps out of Penn Station, it’s after midnight. Snow is pouring out of a pink sky, an inch already collected on the streets.

  He turns up his collar, raises his umbrella, and heads north from Thirty-Fourth.

  The streets and sidewalks empty.

  The snow dampening the noise of Manhattan to a rare hush.

  Fifteen minutes of fast walking brings him to the intersection of Eighth Avenue and West Fiftieth, where he cuts east across the avenues, colder now that he’s walking into the storm, the umbrella tilted like a shield against the wind and snow.

  He stops at Lexington to let three snowplows pass and stares at a red neon sign across the street:

  McLachlan’s Restaurant

  Breakfast

  Lunch

  Dinner

  Open 7 Days

  24 Hours

  Barry crosses, and then he’s standing under it, watching the snow fall through the red illumination and thinking this has to be the all-night diner Joe mentioned on the phone.

  He’s been walking for nearly forty minutes, and he’s beginning to shiver, the snow soaking through his shoes. Beyond the restaurant, he passes an alcove where a homeless man sits muttering to himself and rocking back and forth, his arms wrapped around his legs. Then a bodega, a liquor store, a luxury women’s clothing store, and a bank—all shuttered for the night.

  Near the end of the block, he stops at the entrance to a darkened driveway, which tunnels down into the subterranean space beneath a neo-gothic building wedged between two higher skyscrapers built of steel and glass.

  Lowering his umbrella, he walks down the driveway, into the low-lit gloom below street level. After forty feet, it terminates at a garage door constructed of reinforced steel. There’s a keypad, and above it, a surveillance camera.

  Well, shit. This would appear to be the end of the line for tonight. He’ll come back tomorrow, stake out the entrance, see if he can catch anyone coming or—

  The sound of gears beginning to turn gives his heart a jolt. He looks back at the garage door, which is slowly lifting off the ground, light from the other side stretching across the pavement, already reaching the tips of Barry’s wet shoes.

  Leave?

  Stay?

  This may not even be the right place.

  The door is halfway up and still rising, and there’s no one on the other side.

  He hesitates, then crosses the threshold into a modest, underground parking structure, occupied by a dozen vehicles.

  His footsteps reverberate off the concrete as the halogen lights burn down from overhead.

  He sees an elevator, and beside it, a door presumably leading to a stairwell.

  The light above the elevator illuminates.

  A bell dings.

  Barry ducks behind a Lincoln MKX and watches through the tinted glass of the front passenger window as the elevator doors part.

  Empty.

  What the hell is this?

  He shouldn’t be here. None of this has anything to do with his actual caseload, and no crime, as far as he can tell, has been committed. Technically, he’s trespassing.

  Fuck it.

  The walls inside are smooth, featureless metal, the elevator apparently controlled from an external source.

  The doors close.

  The elevator climbs.

  His heart pounds.

  Barry swallows twice to clear the pressure from his ears, and after thirty seconds, the car comes to a shuddering stop.

  The first thing he hears, as the doors spread, is Miles Davis—one of the perfect slow songs off Kind of Blue—drifting on a lonesome echo through what appears to be the lobby of a hotel.

  He steps off the elevator onto the marble floor. There’s dark, brooding woodwork everywhere. Leather couches, black lacquered chairs. A trace of cigar smoke in the air.

  Something timeless about the space.

  Straight ahead stands an unmanned reception desk with a backdrop of vintage mailboxes that would’ve been used in another era, and the letters HM emblazoned on the brick above it all.

  He hears the fragile clink of ice cubes settling in glassware, and then voices drifting over from a bar that’s nestled against a curtain of windows. Two men, seated on leather-cushioned stools, are in conversation as a black-vested barkeep polishes glassware.

  As Barry moves toward the bar, the smell of the cigar grows stronger, the air becoming hazy with smoke.

  Barry climbs onto one of the stools and leans against the solid mahogany bar. Through the nearby windows, the buildings and lights of the city are shrouded in a whiteout.

  The bartender comes over.

  She’s beautiful—dark eyes and prematurely gray hair held up by chopsticks. Her name tag reads TONYA.

  “What are you drinking?” Tonya asks.

  “Could I get a whiskey?”

  “Looking for anything in particular?”

  “Dealer’s choice.”

  She goes to pour his drink, and Barry glances at the men several seats down. They’re drink
ing bourbon from a half-empty bottle that’s sitting between them on the bar.

  The one closest to him looks to be in his early seventies, with gray, thinning hair and an emaciation that suggests terminal illness. Smoke spirals up from the cigar in his hand, which smells like rain falling on a desert.

  The other man is closer to Barry’s age—bland, clean-shaven face, tired eyes. He asks the older man, “How long have you been here, Amor?”

  “About a week.”

  “Have they given you a date yet?”

  “Tomorrow actually.”

  “No shit. Congratulations.”

  They touch glasses.

  “Nervous?” the young man asks.

  “I mean, it’s on my mind what’s coming. But they do a really thorough job preparing you for everything.”

  “Is it true—no anesthesia?”

  “Unfortunately, yes. When’d you get here?”

  “Yesterday.” Amor takes a puff off his cigar.

  Tonya appears with a whiskey, which she sets on a napkin in front of Barry with HOTEL MEMORY embossed in gold on the paper.

  “Have you decided what you’re going to do when you get back?” the younger man asks.

  Barry sips the scotch—sherry, caramel, dried fruits, and alcohol.

  “I have some ideas.” Amor raises his cigar hand. “No more of this.” He points at the whiskey. “Less of that. I used to be an architect, and there was this building I always regretted not pursuing. Could’ve been my magnum opus. You?”

  “I’m not sure. I feel so guilty.”

  “Why?”

  “Isn’t this selfish?”

  “These are our memories. No one else has a claim on them.” Amor polishes off the last of his whiskey. “I better hit the hay. Big day tomorrow.”

  “Yeah, me too.”

  Sliding off their respective stools, the men shake hands and wish each other luck. Barry watches them wander away from the bar to a bank of elevators.