Recursion

by Blake Crouch

  * * *

  Her eighth day in the apartment, Helena sits at the kitchen island, eating a breakfast of huevos rancheros and watching sunlight pour through the window that overlooks the river.

  This morning, in the reflection of the bathroom mirror, she inspected the row of stitches across her forehead and the fading, black-and-yellow bruise from the SWAT officer who knocked her unconscious on the stairwell of Slade’s building while she was trying to escape.

  Each day, the pain lessens as the fear and uncertainty grow.

  She eats slowly, trying not to think of Barry, because when she imagines his face, the abject helplessness of her situation becomes unbearable, and the not knowing what’s happening makes her want to scream.

  The dead bolt turns, and Helena looks down the short hall into the foyer as the door swings open to reveal a man who, up until now, has existed only in a dead memory.

  Rajesh Anand says to someone in the hall, “Close the door and turn off the cameras.”

  “Holy shit, Raj?” She leaves her stool at the island and meets him where the hall opens into the living room. “What are you doing here?”

  “Came to see you.” He stares at Helena with an air of confidence he didn’t have when they worked together on the rig, looking better with age, his clean-shaven features at once delicate and handsome. He’s wearing a suit and holding a briefcase in his left hand. The corners of his brown eyes crinkle with a genuine smile.

  They move into the living room and sit across from each other on a pair of leather sofas.

  “You’re comfortable here?” he asks.

  “Raj, what’s happening?”

  “You’re being held in a safe house.”

  “Under whose authority?”

  “The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency.”

  Her stomach tightens. “DARPA?”

  “Is there anything I can get for you, Helena?”

  “Answers. Am I under arrest?”

  “No.”

  “So I’m being detained.”

  He nods.

  “I want a lawyer.”

  “Not possible.”

  “How is that not possible? I’m an American citizen. Isn’t this illegal?”

  “Possibly.”

  Raj lifts his briefcase and sets it on the table. The black leather has worn through in places and the brass hardware is deeply tarnished. “I know it’s not much to look at,” he says. “It was my father’s. He gave it to me the day I left for America.”

  As he begins to fumble with the locking mechanism, Helena says, “There was a man with me on the seventeenth floor of that—”

  “Barry Sutton?”

  “They won’t tell me what happened to him.”

  “Because they don’t know. He was killed.”

  She knew it.

  Felt it in her bones all week locked in this luxurious prison.

  And still it breaks her.

  As she cries, her face screws up with grief, and she can feel the stitches pulling across her forehead.

  “I’m very sorry,” Raj says. “He shot at the SWAT team.”

  Helena wipes her eyes and glares across the table.

  “How are you mixed up in all of this?”

  “It was the mistake of my life abandoning our project on Slade’s oil platform. I thought he was mad. We all did. Sixteen months later, I woke up one night with a nosebleed. I didn’t know how, or what it meant, but our entire time together on the rig had turned into false memories. I realized you’d achieved something incredible.”

  “So you knew what the chair was even then?”

  “No. I only suspected you had figured out some way to alter memories. I wanted to be a part of it. I tried to find you and Slade, but you’d both vanished. When False Memory Syndrome first cropped up on a mass scale, I went to the one place I knew would be interested in my story.”

  “DARPA? You seriously thought that was a good idea?”

  “All the government agencies were discombobulated. The CDC was trying to find a pathogen that didn’t exist. A RAND physicist wrote a memo theorizing FMS could be micro changes in space-time. But DARPA believed me. We started tracking down victims of FMS and interviewing them. Last month, I found someone who claimed to have been put into a chair and sent back into a memory. All they knew was that it had happened in a hotel somewhere in Manhattan. I knew it had to be you or Slade, or the two of you working together.”

  “Why would you go to DARPA with something like this?”

  “Money and resources. I brought a team to New York. We started looking for this hotel, but we couldn’t find it. Then after Big Bend appeared, we heard chatter that an NYPD SWAT team was planning a raid on a building in Midtown that might have some connection to FMS. My team took over.”

  Helena looks out the window across the river, the sun warm on her face.

  “Were you working with Slade?” Raj asks.

  “I was trying to stop him.”

  “Why?”

  “Because the chair is dangerous. Have you used it?”

  “I’ve run a few diagnostics. Mainly I’ve been getting myself up to speed on the functionality.” Raj pops the lock on the briefcase. “Look, I hear your concerns, but we could really use you. There’s so much we don’t know.” From the briefcase, he pulls out a sheaf of paper and tosses it on the coffee table.

  “What’s this?” she asks.

  “Employment contract.”

  She looks up at Raj. “Didn’t you hear what I just said?”

  “They know the chair is capable of memory return. Do you actually think they’re not going to use it? That genie is never going back into the bottle.”

  “Doesn’t mean I have to help them.”

  “But if you are willing, you’ll be treated with the respect that’s owed to the genius who invented this technology. You’ll have a seat at the table. Be a part of making history. That’s my pitch. Can I count you in?”

  Helena looks across the table with a razor-blade smile. “You can get fucked.”

  Day 10

  It’s snowing outside, a fragile inch already collected on the windowsill. Traffic creeps along on the Fifty-Ninth Street Bridge, which appears to pass in and out of existence depending upon the intensity of the snowfall.

  After breakfast, Jessica unlocks the dead bolt and tells her to get dressed.

  “Why?” Helena asks.

  “Now,” Jessica says, with the first hint of menace Helena has heard from either of them in the ten days they’ve been together.

  Down the freight elevator to the underground parking garage and a row of pristine black Suburbans.

  They take the Queens-Midtown Tunnel like they’re heading out to LaGuardia, Helena wondering if they’re flying somewhere, but not daring to ask. They pass by the airport and continue into Flushing, past the rainbow-colored storefronts of Chinatown, then finally pull into a collection of low-rise office buildings that defines nondescript.

  Once outside, Alonzo takes Helena by the arm and escorts her up the walkway to the main entrance, through the double doors, then deposits her by the front desk, where a very tall man—at least six and a half feet—stands waiting.

  He dismisses Alonzo with a deep-voiced “I’ll text you,” and turns his focus on Helena.

  “So you’re the genius?” the man asks. He has a magnificent beard and thick, dark eyebrows that run together like a hedge below his forehead. He extends his hand. “I’m John Shaw. Welcome to DARPA.”

  “What do you do here, Mr. Shaw?”

  “I suppose you could say I’m in charge. Come with me.” He starts toward the security checkpoint, but she doesn’t move. After five steps, he glances back at her. “That wasn’t a suggestion, Dr. Smith.”r />
  He badges them both through sliding glass doors and leads her down a hallway of baize carpeting. While from the outside the building resembled a sad office park, the interior, with its grim lighting and utilitarian design, is a soulless government labyrinth to the bone.

  He says, “We gutted Slade’s lab and brought everything here so we could properly secure it.”

  “Did Raj not convey my thoughts on helping you?”

  “He did.”

  “So why am I here?”

  “I want to show you what we’re doing.”

  “If it involves using the chair, I’m not interested.”

  They arrive at a revolving door of impenetrable-looking glass and a biometric security system.

  Shaw looks down at Helena, towering over her by more than a foot. His face might be friendly under different circumstances, but in this moment, he looks intensely annoyed.

  The smell of cinnamon-flavored Altoids wafts over her as he says, “I want you to know, there is no place safer in the width and breadth of the entire world than the other side of that glass. It may not look like it, but this building is a goddamn fortress, and at DARPA, we keep our secrets.”

  “That glass can’t contain the chair. Nothing can. Why do you want it anyway?”

  The right side of his mouth curls up, and for an instant, she glimpses the steel cunning in his eyes.

  “Do me one favor, Dr. Smith,” Shaw says.

  “What’s that?”

  “For the next hour of your life, try to keep an open mind.”

  * * *

  The chair and deprivation chamber stand side by side as centerpieces under the burn of the floodlights, in the most exquisite lab Helena has ever seen.

  Raj is already seated at the terminal when they enter, and behind him stands a woman in her mid-twenties in black military fatigues and boots, her arms sleeved with tattoos and her black hair pulled back into a ponytail.

  Shaw brings Helena over to the terminal.

  “This is Timoney Rodriguez.”

  The soldier nods to Helena. “Who’s this?”

  “Helena Smith. She created all of this. Raj, how’re we doing?”

  “Full steam ahead.” He swivels his chair around and looks up at Timoney. “You ready?”

  “I think so.”

  Helena looks at Shaw. “What’s happening?”

  “We’re sending Timoney back into a memory.”

  “For what purpose?”

  “You’ll see.”

  Helena turns to Timoney. “You realize they’re about to kill you in that tank?”

  “John and Raj briefed me on everything when they brought me on board.”

  “They’re going to paralyze you and stop your heart. Having experienced it four times, I can assure you it’s an agonizing process, and there’s no way to circumvent the pain.”

  “Cool, cool.”

  “The changes you make will affect other people and cause all kinds of pain for them. Pain they’re not ready for. Do you think you have a right to do that?”

  No one acknowledges Helena’s question.

  Raj rises and motions to the chair. “Take a seat, Timoney.”

  He grabs one of the silver skullcaps in the cabinet beside the terminal and carries it over to the chair. Then he fits it on Timoney’s head and begins to fasten the chin strap.

  “This is the reactivation apparatus?” Timoney asks.

  “Exactly. It works with the MEG microscope to record the memory. Then when you move over to the tank, it saves the neural pattern for reactivation by the stimulators.” He lowers the MEG over the skullcap. “Have you thought about which memory you want to record?”

  “John said he’d give me some guidance.”

  “Only parameter on my end is that it needs to be three days old,” Shaw says.

  Raj opens the compartments embedded in the chair’s headrest and unfolds the telescoping titanium rods, which he locks into housings on the exterior of the microscope.

  He says, “The memory doesn’t have to be extensive. It just needs to be vivid. Pain and pleasure are good markers. So is strong emotion. Right, Helena?”

  She says nothing. She’s watching her worst nightmare unfold—the chair in a government laboratory.

  Raj walks over to the terminal, tees up a new recording file, and carries over the tablet that functions as a remote control.

  Taking a seat on the stool beside Timoney, he says, “Best way to record a memory, especially in the beginning, is to talk your way through it. Try to go deeper than just what you saw and felt. The memory of sounds, tastes, and smells are all critical for a vivid retrieval. Whenever you’re ready.”

  Timoney closes her eyes, takes a deep breath.

  She recalls standing at the copper-topped bar of a whiskey place she frequents in the Village, waiting for a bourbon she ordered. A woman squeezed in beside her to flag down the bartender, and bumped into Timoney, close enough for Timoney to smell the fragrance she wore. The woman looked over to apologize, and they locked eyes for three seconds. Timoney knew that any day now, she’d be climbing into the tank to die. She was excited and terrified by the prospect. In fact, the reason she’d gone out that evening was because she needed some physical connection.

  “Her skin was the color of coffee and cream, and her lips just slayed me. I wanted to touch her so badly. God, I needed to get rag-dolled, but I just smiled and said, ‘It’s fine, don’t worry about it.’ Life’s made up of a thousand little regrets like that, isn’t it?”

  Timoney opens her eyes. “How was that?”

  Raj holds up the tablet to show everyone—SYNAPTIC NUMBER: 156.

  “Is that sufficient?” Shaw asks.

  “Anything above 120 is in the safe zone.”

  He runs an IV line into Timoney’s left forearm and mounts the injection port. Then Timoney strips out of her fatigues and heads over to the tank.

  Raj opens the hatch, and Shaw gives her a hand as she climbs in.

  Looking down at his soldier floating in the saltwater, Shaw says, “You remember everything we discussed?”

  “Yes. I’m not sure what to expect.”

  “To be honest, none of us are. We’ll see you on the other side.”

  Raj closes the hatch and moves to the terminal. Shaw sits beside him, and Helena comes over to study the monitors. The reactivation protocol is already initiating, Raj double-checking the dosages for the Rocuronium and sodium thiopental.

  “Mr. Shaw?” Helena says.

  He looks up at her.

  “Right now, we are the only people in the world who control the chair.”

  “I would hope so.”

  “I am begging you. Show restraint. Its use has only ever caused mayhem and pain.”

  “Maybe the wrong people were at the controls.”

  “Humanity doesn’t have the wisdom to handle this sort of power.”

  “I’m about to prove you wrong.”

  She needs to stop this, but there are two armed guards just outside the door. If she tried anything, they’d be on her in a matter of seconds.

  Raj lifts the headset and speaks into the microphone, “We’re starting in ten seconds, Timoney.”

  The woman’s breathing comes fast over the speaker. “I’m ready.”

  Raj activates the injection port. Slade’s equipment has improved vastly since their days on the rig, when it required a medical doctor to be on hand to monitor test subjects and advise when the stimulators should be fired. This new software automates the drug sequence based on real-time vital sign reporting and engages the electromagnetic stimulators only when the dimethyltriptamine release is detected.

  “How long before the shift?” Shaw asks.

  “De
pends on how her body responds to the drugs.”

  The Rocuronium fires, followed thirty seconds later by the sodium thiopental.

  Shaw leans in toward a split-screen that displays Timoney’s vital signs on the left, and a night-vision camera feed of her inside the tank on the right.

  “Her heart rate is off the charts, but she looks so calm.”

  “Yours would be too if you were suffocating while your heart was stopped,” Helena says.

  They all watch Timoney’s heart rate flatline.

  Minutes elapse.

  A line of sweat runs down the side of Shaw’s face.

  “Should it be taking this long?” he asks.

  “Yes,” Helena says. “This is how long it takes to die after your heart quits beating. I promise you it feels much longer to her.”

  The monitor that shows the status of the stimulators flashes an alert—DMT RELEASE DETECTED. The previously dark image of Timoney’s brain explodes with a light show of activity.

  “Stimulators are firing,” Raj says.

  After ten seconds, a new alert replaces the DMT notice—MEMORY REACTIVATION COMPLETE.

  Raj looks over at Shaw and says, “Any moment—”

  * * *

  Instead of the terminal, Helena is suddenly at the conference table on the other side of the lab. Her nose is bleeding, head throbbing.

  Shaw, Raj, and Timoney are also seated around the table, everyone’s nose bleeding except for Timoney’s.

  Shaw laughs. “My God.” He looks at Raj. “It worked. It fucking worked!”

  “What did you do?” Helena asks, still trying to sort out dead memories from the new, real ones.

  “Think about the school shooting two days ago,” Raj says.

  Helena tries to remember the news coverage she watched the last few mornings in her apartment—hordes of students evacuating the school, horrifying videos taken on students’ phones showing the rampage as it unfolded inside the cafeteria, devastated parents pleading for politicians to do something, to never let this happen again, law enforcement briefings and vigils and—

  But none of that happened.