Sleeping Giants

by Sylvain Neuvel

  She’s still at the hospital. She said the pain was so sharp, she lost consciousness almost immediately. We found her hanging by her arms at her station, like Christ to the cross. The helmet had turned itself off. It took nearly a half hour for the paramedics to reach her and get her out. She could have died a thousand times over.

  When she came about she was completely blind. We almost lost her twice on the same day. Kara being Kara, she ripped out her IV the minute she woke up and tried to feel her way out of the room. She tripped over something and knocked herself unconscious on a metal cabinet. They had to close a cut on her forehead, eight stitches or so.

  There were superficial burns on her face. The doctors treated them and wrapped a bandage around her head to cover her eyes. She was supposed to keep it on for a few days. Of course, she removed it after only a few hours. She said it was itching…The doctors scolded her halfheartedly. They’ve seen her a few times already—routine exams, some cuts and bruises—so they were probably surprised she kept it on that long. I was.

  When I stopped by the hospital to see how she was doing, the whole room was agitated. Doctors were arguing amongst themselves, kept calling in other doctors to examine her. I asked what was going on about a dozen times, but I couldn’t get anyone to listen to what I was saying. Kara threw a lamp at the wall. That got their attention.

  The doctors told her that her eye was fine. She didn’t seem ecstatic enough, so they went on to explain that her retina had somehow been repaired. I didn’t believe it myself, but they showed us the before and after pictures. It didn’t take a medical degree to see it. That helmet had fixed her. It probably detected an eye injury and proceeded to repair it. I can only hope that’s why it was so painful.

  It’s hard to express how relieved I am. Kara’s fine. Better than fine, really. This is closer to a miracle. So why am I angry? Well, I was so happy. I rushed back to the lab and I tried on the helmet myself. Stupid, right? It didn’t do anything, so I asked Ryan up and had him try it on. I had every lab assistant come in and give it a go. When that didn’t work, we tried the helmet at the other station, all of us. Why risk one person’s life when you can go for half a dozen? Oh, and the helmet’s broken. As far as I can tell, the other one was already broken when we found it. Neither of them work anymore.

  What was I thinking? It repaired her eye? For all we know, these aliens might have one big eye. Maybe they have eighty of them. They might have the eyes of a fly, they might have no eyes at all. It could have ripped her skull in half, disfigured her, turned her into something she’s not. A million things could have happened to her, most of which would probably have killed her.

  It’s my job to keep her safe, to make sure nothing happens to her. I sent her up there and she trusted me. She trusted my judgment, she trusted that I wouldn’t send her in if I thought she could get harmed. I’m supposed to be a scientist. I don’t know what I am anymore.

  Kara’s scheduled for an MRI tomorrow. We should know if there’s any brain damage. If I had half a brain myself, I would have waited for the results before letting anyone back in the sphere. It’s too late for that, but I’ll have the doctors run a lot more tests before I let Kara back in there. We should wait a few weeks anyway, she might exhibit more symptoms as time goes by.

  I hope she’s OK, with all my heart. Not just for the sake of the project, I don’t think I could live with myself if I let anything happen to her. I’ve grown a lot closer to her. I’ve grown closer to all of them, but I really like Kara.

  I’m not the only one who likes her. Ryan hasn’t said a word, and we all let him think we haven’t noticed, but of course she knows. I know. Vincent knows. I’m sure the robot knows by now. I wish Ryan only the best—who wouldn’t?—but I hope his crush disappears on its own. I certainly hope they don’t end up together. I love Kara, but she’d end up hurting him, a lot.

  That being said, the two of them are doing great. It took a while, but he’s learned to leave her enough space. I have to give Ryan credit for that. They complement each other quite nicely. They work well together. They’ll have to if they’re going to stare at each other all day.

  So, I have an incomplete robot with broken controls, one infatuated pilot and one injured. I’m not sure where that leaves us. The helmets are a major setback. I don’t know when, or if, we’ll be able to fix them. Even if we manage to get them working again, there’s no guarantee we can wear these things without ending up in the hospital. They weren’t meant for us, after all.

  Which brings me to the leg controls. Ryan’s really got a bad deal on this one. His helmet doesn’t work and his legs bend the wrong way. I wish I could find a way to modify the leg controls to fit our anatomy, but there’s too great a chance of permanently damaging the controls if we start tinkering with them. I can’t reproduce the metal that was used if we break something on that station. I’ll try just about anything before I let anyone approach it with a blowtorch.

  Ryan has it in his head that he can work the legs facing the other way, with his back to the console. He’ll have to walk backward all the time. I think it’s insane but I have nothing better to offer so I’m inclined to let him try. Walking is a lot more complicated than people think. We do it unconsciously, but it’s a lot more difficult if you have to think it through. Make a comment to someone about the way they walk and see how awkward they become. It’s complex, and hard to decompose.

  They won’t be able to keep the robot balanced if Ryan doesn’t get the movements perfectly right. It’s a tall and narrow structure, and the center of gravity is going to be really high. It’s scary enough as it is, and I can’t imagine how bad a fall would be once we get the legs on. It would probably flatten a city block or two.

  I brought in some engineers to create a computer simulation. It will connect to the leg controls and to the other station and convert the pilot’s movement into a computer model of the robot. We’ll be able to see the results on computer screens. It takes weight, speed, and several other factors into account. It should at least give us an idea of whether or not what we’re trying to do is possible.

  So, if we get the helmets working without killing ourselves, if Ryan can control kilotons of metal while walking backward, we’ll be left with the console. Ryan will be facing away from it, so someone else will need to handle that.

  Right now it doesn’t work, of course. Vincent seems no closer to interpreting the symbols that are on it than he was when he first came in, and we have absolutely no idea what it does. This might be unprofessional of me, but I say we can cross that bridge when we get to it. We don’t know how complex it will be to operate. We might need a physicist, or a soldier, or maybe someone who’s really good at video games.

  I know we’re supposed to make these journal entries to help us cope with stress. Hell, I’m the one who suggested it. But I have to say, right now, it’s not helping. Do I think we’ll eventually solve all these problems and make this thing work? I…I think getting to the moon probably felt like an impossible thing to do at first. Who am I kidding? Right now, I don’t think we have a chance on Earth.

  I might feel differently in the morning. Either way, I’ll get up and go back to work. There are simply too many breakthroughs waiting for us if we can understand how this machine works. We already know it can perform medical wonders. Who knows what else it can do?

  That also scares me. Am I ready to accept all that may come out of this if it works? It might give us a cure for everything. It might also have the power to kill millions. Do I want that on my conscience? I wish I knew where this journey will take us, but I don’t. All I know is that this is bigger than me, my self-doubt, or any crisis of conscience. I now truly realize how profoundly insignificant I am compared to all this. Why does that make me feel so much better?

  FILE NO. 042

  EXPERIMENT LOG—CW3 KARA RESNIK, UNITED STATES ARMY

  Location: Underground Complex, Denver, CO

  This is Kara Resnik. Today is September 22. It’s
three in the morning, so no one is monitoring me. I’m probably gonna get in trouble for this, but what else is new? Dr. Franklin came to see me at the hospital today—well, yesterday now. It’s obvious she feels responsible for what happened to me. I tried to make her understand this wasn’t on her. I mean, it’s not like I wouldn’t have tried that thing on my own if she’d waited another day. She seemed devastated. Apparently, the whole project is on hold until they see if I suffer from any aftereffects. We’ll see about that.

  She also told me I broke the helmet. I mean, really? I didn’t do anything! I just put it on my head, because…it’s a helmet? That’s what you’re supposed to do. I don’t buy that it’s broken either. I had an MRI today, I don’t have the results yet, but I’m pretty sure that alien device didn’t scramble my brain, so I don’t see how my brain could have broken it. OK, it’s not the best reasoning ever, but it repaired my eye, for God’s sake! Doctors couldn’t do that, and that thing did! I’m sorry, but I don’t think a machine that can do eye surgery after being buried underground for three thousand years is gonna break on account of my little head.

  I’m not as smart as everyone else, but I think the pain was so intense because it repaired my eye. That, or it figured out that my brain isn’t what it’s supposed to be, and it adapted somehow. Either way, if it’s smart enough to fix me, I’m pretty sure it’ll find a way not to kill me. I have a gut feeling it may have—what’s the word—imprinted, when it adapted to my brain, like a baby duck. If I’m right, it thinks I’m its mommy now. I think that’s why it won’t turn on for anyone else anymore.

  I know that wouldn’t explain why the other helmet doesn’t work, but like Dr. Franklin always says: one thing at a time. You can’t solve every problem at once. You see, Dr. Franklin: I was listening. Now I’m trying to solve one problem. I know what you’re gonna say: I haven’t even been discharged from the hospital yet. You and the doctors told me to stay put and get some rest. Well, I can’t rest if everything’s stopped because of me; and I don’t want to worry about that helmet knocking me out every time I put it on. This is me finding some peace of mind, so don’t get too mad when you find out what I’ve done. Unless I die in the next ten minutes. Then you can get mad all you want.

  Also, don’t get mad at the hospital staff either. They probably thought I was going to the cafeteria, considering I told them I was going to the cafeteria.

  I’m at the top of the stairs now. I think next time, if there’s a next time, I’ll bring two barstools with me, just for the satisfaction of throwing one down as hard as I can. I hate these things now. From now on, I’ll stand when I go to a bar.

  You know what I’m doing, so I’m sparing you the play-by-play. Crouching, crouching. Opening the inner hatch…

  I’m inside the sphere, going to brace myself in. I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t a little nervous. This seemed like a much better idea an hour ago. Then again, I get sweaty palms when I wanna ask a guy out, so, par for the course.

  I have the helmet in my hands. I’ll put it on now, before I chicken out. Be nice, little fellow, Mommy’s here…

  AAAAAAAHHHHHRRRRR!

  Son of a…Helmet’s off! Come on! What is it with this thing?! It burned like hell. I couldn’t even keep my eyes open. Mommy’s pissed! Obviously, it wasn’t as bad as the last time if I’m still talking, but that thing really hates…

  I…

  I’ll be damned. I can’t feel much with these gloves on, but I think the cut on my forehead is gone. I can tell you the stitches are gone for sure.

  OK, I must be crazy, because I’m putting it on again. I don’t see what else it could fix, except maybe some self-esteem issues. I wanna see what it does when it’s not healing things.

  …

  Whoa. This is just amazing!…Ha-ha! I don’t even know where to start. As soon as I put it on, the visor went from dark to clear and suddenly I could see everywhere. I mean, I can see everywhere, not just inside the chamber. I can see through the metal outside the torso, I can see the lab.

  I can still see the sphere, the liquid around it, but all of it is translucent. In fact, if I focus on something outside, I can see it clear as day. If I look at something inside, then what’s outside gets dimmer. It gives a bronze hue to everything, like an old photograph.

  Let me look around for a while. This is awesome. I know I sound like a complete moron, but I can’t find the words. What…is…this?

  There’s a hologram, a miniature of the robot—about one foot tall—projecting out of the small column in front of me. It’s really cute. Dr. Franklin, I wish you could see how cool that thing is. I mean, I know what it’ll look like when we have all the pieces. It’s…out of this world. No pun intended. Other than the legs being weird, she looks like a normal badass-warrior human being. The head looks human, and there’s only one. Nice. The hologram is moving its head when I move mine. When I move my arms, it does exactly the same thing. It mimics every movement of my upper body. I suppose it will also move its legs as well once we get the other station working.

  I’m flailing my arms around like a madwoman. The actual robot arm isn’t moving an inch. That’s probably a good thing because I’d have destroyed everything in the lab, but the hologram has no problem moving at all.

  Dr. Franklin, I just realized you’ll probably never experience any of this firsthand, if the helmet won’t work for anyone but me. It breaks my heart that you can’t see what I’m seeing after all you did. But it works! You were right, Dr. Franklin! And you see there’s no reason to wait. Everything’s fine. Oh, and you’re stuck with me, for good.

  Don’t worry about the arm not moving. It will probably work when we connect all the pieces, like those old Christmas lights from when I was a kid. If a single tiny light was missing, none of them would work.

  I wish I could try the other station. I know, baby ducks. There’s only one of me and I can’t be at both stations at the same time. Still, it’d be nice to know if it works…

  FILE NO. 047

  INTERVIEW WITH VINCENT COUTURE, GRADUATE STUDENT

  Location: Underground Complex, Denver, CO

  —Dr. Franklin said you had a breakthrough.

  —I did. It’s not language!

  —Already you lost me.

  —I couldn’t figure out the meaning of the symbols. The more I thought about it, the more I realized I wasn’t supposed to.

  —Now you have really lost me. Please say something, anything, that will make sense to me.

  —The people that looked at this before me, they couldn’t come up with an interpretation because they lacked a…a frame of reference. They didn’t know the grammar of that language. They didn’t know the vocabulary. They didn’t even know what this was about. They needed something to compare it to. Do you know what the Rosetta Stone is?

  —I do.

  —Well, so you know it’s a piece of rock, like the name says, with three sections of text carved into it, one on top of the other. The top one is written in ancient Egyptian hieroglyphs, which no one understood when the stone was discovered. The middle carvings are Demotic, another Egyptian script, and the bottom one is Ancient Greek. That one we knew. What’s so great about the Rosetta Stone is that all three texts are about the same thing. Do you know what it’s about?

  —That, I do not know.

  —It’s a décret. A decree?

  —Yes.

  —Basically, it establishes the new king as a god. Because Ancient Greek was a known language at the time, it was used as a starting point and they were able to recognize key elements in the hieroglyphs by looking at repetitions. They were able to figure out how Egyptian hieroglyphs worked because they had the Greek version of the text as a reference.

  —But whoever wrote on the panels did not leave us a Rosetta Stone.

  —Maybe they did. Logically, without a frame of reference, we shouldn’t be able to do anything with this. They would know that. But if Dr. Franklin is right, this was left for us on purpose. So I started th
inking, what if this is the Rosetta Stone? What if this isn’t a message written in a different language but a key to interpreting something else? It would have to be about something we already have in common, something universal. Then it hit me. It’s not words, it’s math!

  We may not be as advanced, or evolved, as the people who wrote this. We might not be able to understand things that would seem trivial to them. But the one thing that we absolutely, positively, must have in common is some form of math. We both need to count things. I think they kept this thing simple enough so we could understand it, but they made sure we could get as many important concepts as we could out of it.

  There are seven curvy symbols on the panels, and each has a dot in the middle. All of them also appear on the console. If you count the number of curvy lines in each one, you get the numbers one through seven. It’s so obvious once you think about it, it just makes me mad not to have seen it before.

  —So the markings on the walls are a series of numbers?

  —More like a series of equations. There are several of them, enough for us to interpret the other symbols, the ones that are made of straight lines.

  Look at this one, for example. Here we have the number 2…Oh! I skipped over the part where you have to read from right to left. I’m sorry…So, from the right, the number 2, some unknown symbol, 2 again, some other unknown symbol, then the number 4. Now fill in the blanks: 2 something 2, something 4.

  —2 + 2 = 4?

  —Exactly. So now you know the symbol for addition and the one for equality. That last one could mean something a little different, like the result of an operation. I don’t know precisely but we’re in the ballpark.