Recursion

by Blake Crouch

  The man says, “Computer, stop session.” And then: “Thank you, Barry.”

  He leans forward and wipes the tears from Barry’s face with the back of his hand.

  “What was the point of all that?” Barry asks, broken. “That was worse than any physical torture.”

  “I’ll show you.”

  The man taps a button on the medical cart.

  Barry glances at the tube in his arm as a stream of clear liquid rushes into his vein.

  HELENA

  June 20, 2009

  Day 598

  The man is wiry and tall, his thin arms streaked with needle tracks. On his left shoulder is a tattoo of the name Miranda, which looks fresh—still red and inflamed. He wears a silver headpiece that fits him as snugly as a skullcap, only slightly thicker, and a second device the size of a whiteboard eraser has been affixed to his left forearm. Otherwise, he stands naked before a white, shell-like structure reminiscent of an egg. A man and a woman wait in the wings beside a crash cart.

  Helena is watching it all through one-way glass from a seat at the main console in the adjacent control room, between Marcus Slade and Dr. Paul Wilson, project manager for the medical team. To the left of Slade sits Sergei, the only member of the original crew who stayed.

  Someone touches her shoulder. She glances back at Jee-woon, who has just slipped into the control room to take a seat behind her.

  Leaning forward, he whispers in her ear, “I’m really glad you decided to join us for this. The lab hasn’t been the same without you.”

  Slade looks over at Sergei, who’s studying a screen displaying a high-resolution image of the test subject’s skull.

  “How we looking on those reactivation coordinates?” Slade asks.

  “Locked and loaded.”

  Slade turns to the doctor. “Paul?”

  “Ready when you are.”

  Slade taps a button on the headset he’s wearing, says, “Reed, we’re all set on our end. Why don’t you go ahead and climb inside.”

  For a moment, the wiry man doesn’t move. Just stands there shivering, staring into the tank through the open hatch. The lights give his skin a bluish hue, except for the needle scars, which glow red against his sickly pallor.

  “Reed? Can you hear me?”

  “Yeah.” The man’s voice comes through four speakers positioned in the corners of the control room.

  “Ready to do this?”

  “It’s just…What if I feel pain? I’m not totally sure what to expect.”

  He stares toward the one-way glass—haggard and emaciated, his ribs showing through sallow skin.

  “You can expect what we talked about,” Slade says. “Dr. Wilson is sitting here beside me. You want to say something, Paul?”

  The man with wavy silver hair dons his headset. “Reed, I have all your vital signs in front of me, which I’ll be monitoring in real time, and a full contingency plan if I see that you’re in distress.”

  Slade says, “Don’t forget the bonus I’m going to pay you if today’s test is successful.”

  Reed focuses his hollowed-out stare back on the tank.

  “OK,” he says, psyching himself up. “OK, let’s do this.” He grabs the handles on the sides of the deprivation tank and climbs unsteadily inside, the slosh of water audible through the speakers.

  Slade says, “Reed, let us know when you’re comfortably settled in.”

  After a moment, the man says, “I’m floating.”

  “If it’s all right with you, I’m going to go ahead and close the hatch now.”

  Ten tense seconds elapse.

  “Is that OK with you, Reed?”

  “Yeah, all right.”

  Slade keys in a command. The hatch slowly lowers into place, closing seamlessly.

  “Reed, we’re ready to turn out the lights and get started. How you feeling?”

  “I think I’m ready.”

  “Do you remember everything you and I discussed this morning?”

  “I think so.”

  “I need you to be sure.”

  “I’m sure.”

  “Good. Everything’s going to be fine. When you see me next, tell me my mother’s name is Susan. That way I’ll know.”

  Slade dims away the light. A previously dormant monitor glows to life, displaying a live feed of a night-vision camera looking straight down on Reed from the ceiling of the tank. It shows him floating on his back in the heavily salinized water. Slade pulls up a timer on the primary monitor, sets it for five minutes.

  “Reed, this is the last you’ll hear from me. We’re going to give you a few minutes to relax and center yourself. Then we’ll be under way.”

  “Got it.”

  “Godspeed. You’re going to make history today.”

  Slade starts the countdown and removes his headset.

  Helena asks, “What type of memory are you reactivating?”

  “Did you notice the tattoo on his left shoulder?”

  “Yeah.”

  “We inked that yesterday morning. Last night, we mapped the memory of the event.”

  “Why a tattoo?”

  “Because of the pain. I wanted a strong, recent encoding experience.”

  “And a heroin addict is the best you could come up with for a test subject?”

  Slade makes no response. His transformation is astounding. He’s pushing this project farther than she was ever willing to go. She never imagined she’d encounter someone more driven and single-minded than herself.

  “Does he even know what he’s gotten himself into?” she asks.

  “Yes.”

  Helena watches the time wind down. Seconds and minutes slipping away.

  She looks at Slade and says, “This is way outside the bounds of responsible scientific testing.”

  “I agree.”

  “And you just don’t care?”

  “The kind of breakthrough I’m looking for today doesn’t happen in the shallow end of the pool.”

  Helena studies the screen that shows Reed floating motionless in the tank.

  “So you’re willing to risk this man’s life?” she asks.

  “Yes. But so is he. He understands the state he’s in. I think it’s heroic. Besides, when we’re finished, he’ll go into rehab at a luxury clinic. And if this works, you and I will be drinking Champagne in your apartment…” He glances at his Rolex. “In ten minutes.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “You’ll see.”

  They all wait in a strained silence for the final two minutes, and when the timer chimes, Slade says, “Paul?”

  “Standing by.”

  Slade stares down the length of the console to the man in control of the stimulators. “Sergei?”

  “Ready when you are.”

  “Resuscitation?”

  “Paddles charged, standing by.”

  Slade looks at Paul and nods.

  The doctor releases a breath, presses a key, says, “One milligram push of Rocuronium, away.”

  “What’s that?” Helena asks.

  “A neuromuscular blocking agent,” Dr. Wilson says.

  Slade says, “Whatever happens, we can’t have him thrashing around in there, destroying that headpiece.”

  “He knows he’s being temporarily paralyzed?”

  “Of course.”

  “How are these drugs being administered?”

  “Through a wireless IV port embedded in his left forearm. It’s basically just a version of the lethal injection cocktail, minus the sedative.”

  The doctor says, “Two-point-two-milligram push of sodium thiopental, away.”

  Helena divides her attention between the night-vision fe
ed of the tank’s interior, and the screen the doctor is studying, which shows Reed’s pulse rate, blood pressure, EKG, and a dozen other metrics.

  “Blood pressure dropping,” Dr. Wilson says. “Heart rate descending through fifty beats per minute.”

  “Is he suffering?” Helena asks.

  “No,” Slade says.

  “How can you be sure?”

  “Twenty-five beats per minute.”

  Helena leans in close to the monitor, watching Reed’s face in tones of night-vision green. His eyes are closed, and he displays no visible signs of pain. He actually looks peaceful.

  “Ten beats per minute. BP—thirty over five.”

  Suddenly the control room fills with the sustained tone of a flatline.

  The doctor shuts it off and says, “Time of death: 10:13 a.m.”

  Reed looks no different in the tank, still floating in the saltwater.

  “When do you revive him?” Helena asks.

  Slade doesn’t answer.

  “Standing by,” Sergei says.

  A new window has appeared on the doctor’s primary monitor. Time Since Heart Death: 15 seconds.

  When the clock passes one minute, the doctor says, “DMT release detected.”

  Slade says, “Sergei.”

  “Initiating memory-reactivation program. Firing the stimulators…”

  The doctor continues to read off the levels of various vital signs, now mainly associated with cerebral oxygen levels and activity. Sergei also gives an update every ten seconds or so, but for Helena, the din of their voices fades away. She can’t take her eyes off the man in the tank, wondering what he’s seeing and feeling. Wondering if she would be willing to die to experience the full power of her invention.

  At the two-minute, thirty-second mark, Sergei says, “Memory program complete.”

  “Run it again,” Slade says.

  Sergei looks at him.

  The doctor says, “Marcus, at five minutes, the chances of bringing him back are virtually nonexistent. The cells in his brain are dying rapidly.”

  “Reed and I talked about it this morning. He’s ready to face this.”

  Helena says, “Pull him out.”

  “I’m not comfortable with this either,” Sergei says.

  “Please just trust me. Run the program one more time.”

  Sergei sighs and quickly types something. “Initiating memory-reactivation program. Firing the stimulators.”

  As Helena glares at Slade, he says, “Jee-woon pulled that man out of a drug house in one of the worst neighborhoods in San Francisco. He was unconscious, the needle still hanging out of his arm. He would probably be dead right now if it weren’t—”

  “That is no justification for this,” she says.

  “I understand how you could feel that way. I would again ask, all of you, to please just trust me for a little while longer. Reed will be perfectly fine.”

  Dr. Wilson says, “Marcus, if you have any intention of reviving Mr. King, I would suggest you tell my doctors to pull him out of the chamber immediately. Even if we get his heart to start beating again, if his cognitive functioning is gone, he’ll be of no use to you.”

  “We aren’t pulling him out of the tank.”

  Sergei rises and heads for the exit.

  Helena leaves her chair, following right behind him.

  “The door is locked from the outside,” Slade says. “And even if you were to get through, my security detail is waiting in the hall. I’m sorry. I had a feeling you’d lose your nerve when we reached this moment.”

  The doctor says into his microphone, “Dana, Aaron, pull Mr. King out of the tank and begin resuscitation immediately.”

  Helena stares through the wall of glass. The doctors standing by the crash cart aren’t moving.

  “Aaron! Dana!”

  “They can’t hear you,” Slade says. “I muted the testing-bay intercoms right after you started the drug sequence.”

  Sergei charges the door, ramming his shoulder into the metal.

  “You want to change the world?” Slade asks. “This is what it takes. This is what it feels like. Moments of steel, unflinching resolve.”

  On the night-vision feed from inside the tank, Reed isn’t moving a muscle.

  The water is perfectly calm.

  Helena looks at the doctor’s monitor. Time Since Heart Death: 304 seconds.

  “We’re past the five-minute mark,” she says to Dr. Wilson. “Is there hope?”

  “I don’t know.”

  Helena rushes to an empty chair and lifts it off the ground, Jee-woon and Slade realizing what she’s doing a half second too late, both men launching from their seats to stop her.

  She brings the chair back over her shoulder and hurls it at the one-way window.

  But it never reaches the glass.

  BARRY

  November 6, 2018

  His eyes open, but he sees nothing. His sense of time is gone. Years could have passed. Or seconds. He blinks, but nothing changes. He wonders, Am I dead? Draws in a breath, his chest expanding, then lets it out. When he lifts his arm, he hears water moving and feels something sliding down the surface of his skin.

  He realizes he’s floating on his back, with no effort, in a pool of water that is the exact temperature of his skin. When he’s motionless, he can’t sense it, and even as he becomes still again, he’s struck by the sensation of his body having no end and no beginning.

  No…there is one sensation. Something has been affixed to his left forearm.

  Reaching over with his right hand, he touches what feels like a hard plastic case. An inch wide, maybe four inches long. He tries to pull it off, but it’s either been glued to or embedded in his skin.

  “Barry.” It’s the voice of the man from before. The one who was sitting on the stool making him talk about Meghan as Barry was strapped to that chair.

  “Where am I? What’s happening?”

  “I need you to calm down. Just breathe.”

  “Am I dead?”

  “Would I be telling you to breathe if you were? You aren’t dead, and where you are is irrelevant at this point.”

  Barry reaches a hand straight up out of the water, his fingers touching a surface two feet above his face. He searches for a lever, a button, something to open whatever he’s been placed inside, but the walls are smooth and seamless.

  He feels a slight vibration in the device on his forearm, reaches over to touch it again, but nothing happens. His right arm will no longer move.

  He tries to lift his left—nothing.

  Then his legs, his head, his fingers.

  He can’t even blink, and when he tries to speak, his lips refuse to part.

  “What you’re experiencing is a paralytic agent,” the man says from somewhere in the darkness above. “That was the vibration you just felt—the device injecting the drug. Unfortunately, we need to keep you conscious. I won’t lie to you, Barry. The next few moments are going to be very uncomfortable.”

  Terror swallows him—the most profound fear he has ever known. His eyes are locked open, and he keeps trying to move—arms, legs, fingers, anything—but nothing responds. He might as well be trying to control a single strand of hair. And that’s all before the real horror hits: he is unable to contract his diaphragm.

  Which means he can’t draw breath.

  A maelstrom of panic washes over him, and finally pain, everything distilling down to a second-by-second escalation of the desperate need to inhale oxygen. But he is locked out of the controls of his own body. He cannot cry out or flail or beg for his life, which he would be more than willing to do if he could only speak.

  “You’ve probably realized by now that you no longer have the ability to breathe. This isn’t sadism
, Barry. I promise you that. It will all be over soon.”

  He can only lie in the utter darkness, listening to the screaming of his mind and the torrent of racing thoughts while the sole sound is the thunderous pounding of his heart as it beats faster and faster.

  The device on his forearm vibrates again.

  Now a white-hot pain courses through his veins, and that jackhammer thudding of his heart responds instantly to whatever was just blasted into his bloodstream.

  Slowing.

  Slowing.

  Slowing.

  And then he no longer hears or feels it beating.

  The silence of wherever he is becomes complete.

  In this moment, he knows that blood is no longer circulating in his body.

  I cannot breathe and my heart has stopped beating. I’m dead. Clinically dead. So how am I still thinking? How am I aware? How long will this last? How bad will the pain get? Is this really the end of me?

  “I just stopped your heart, Barry. Please listen. You have to maintain focus during the next few moments, or we will lose you. If you make it to the other side, remember what I did for you. Don’t let it happen this time. You can change it.”

  Explosions of color detonate in Barry’s oxygen- and blood-starved brain—a light show for a dead man, each flash closer and brighter than the one before.

  Until all he sees is a blinding whiteness that is already beginning to fade through shades of gray toward black, and he knows what lies at the end of that spectrum—unbeing. But maybe an end to the pain. To this brutal thirst for air. He’s ready for it. Ready for anything that makes this stop.

  And then he smells something. It’s odd, because it conjures an emotional response he can’t quite name, but which carries the ache of nostalgia. It takes a moment, but he realizes it’s what his house used to smell like after he and Julia and Meghan had finished dinner. In particular, Julia’s meatloaf and roasted carrots and potatoes. Next he catches the scent of yeast and malt and barley. Beer, but not just any beer. The Rolling Rocks he used to drink out of those green bottles.