by Wendy Devore
“I need to take my baby home,” my mother insisted.
They had been sequestered in my cramped Palo Alto apartment for days, and they were going stir-crazy.
“You can’t take a commercial flight.”
Each time I turned on the TV or opened a news site, I was bombarded by images of the seriously ill, hooked up to ventilators and encased in makeshift isolation wards that were little more than cubicles made from heavy plastic sheeting. The number of cases was growing, and so was the death count. Over four thousand deaths attributed to bird flu had now been reported, cropping up in all major cities, with no rhyme or reason to the pattern of the outbreak. Citizens were advised to continue their daily activities, but the b-roll images that accompanied the news stories showed eerily empty scenes of iconic locations: Times Square unpopulated, Disney World empty, Golden Gate Park deserted. The vaccine wouldn’t be ready for weeks. The risk was too great.
“We can’t sit around here forever,” she argued. “We have a farm to run.”
“Let me see what I can do.”
My parents transported my sister’s ashes home on Andric Breckinridge’s impeccably appointed private Embraer jet. I saw them off at the generation aviation terminal at San Jose International, where the security was lax enough that I could hug them goodbye on the aircraft. I supposed the rules were different for the obscenely wealthy. Aboard the craft, my empty gaze settled uneasily on my parents. Incongruous in the spacious, creamy custom leather seats, my father sat with his head slumped; my mother curled under the protective arc of his strong arm, ashen and bereft. What was left of my sister rested heavily in my mother’s lap, packed inside a plain brown cardboard box. Every time I pictured the small black trash bin inside, a wave of nausea threatened to overtake me.
I sat in my office, staring blankly at the computer, lost in a haze of sleep deprivation. I knew instinctively that if I slept, I would dream; and I couldn’t bear the prospect of any more horror. Worse yet, what if I dreamed my way into an existence where my sister still lived? I was certain either experience would break me. I couldn’t begin to imagine when I’d regain the focus to touch my code. Not when the world had fallen apart.
I was startled out of my waking stupor by a subtle rap on my door. Andrew let himself in and perched on the edge of my desk.
“Shouldn’t you be working?” I mumbled, staring down at my hands.
“I’ve been working for the last fourteen hours. I think I can spare a few minutes.”
“But the flu…”
“I received an update today. They’ve fast-tracked the vaccine, and thanks to you, production is proceeding more quickly than expected. It’s the fastest rollout of a vaccine they’ve ever achieved. The first doses should be available in just three more weeks.”
Three more weeks? That seemed like an eternity. How many more would die?
“Maybe we should slice,” I offered, although the thought of another far-slice undertaking made me weak in the knees.
He lifted my left hand and traced invisible whirls around the small scar left by the Bug. “There’s no guarantee that we would find a viable treatment. And based on our track record, we stand a real chance of making things even worse.”
“But Andric…” I insisted.
“He can wait for an hour.” He reached a hand toward me, and I stood and embraced him. He buried his face in my hair, and for just a moment, I closed my eyes. The urge to sleep was powerful, but I forced myself to stay awake. It was a Herculean effort.
I felt a sudden, overwhelming urge to be somewhere—anywhere, but here.
“Take me to my apartment.”
“Are you sure?” he asked.
I nodded.
He navigated the pickup to my apartment complex, and I fumbled through my pockets for the key.
I could barely stand the unnerving quiet of the place. I wandered through the rooms, cradling her favorite coffee mug, running my hand over a trashy paperback romance she’d left half read on the table. I expected to be overwhelmed by emotion, but instead I felt its curious absence.
Andrew followed closely as I roamed the small space, my hand absentmindedly lingering over the back of the sofa, a light switch, a doorframe. The emptiness in the apartment echoed the deafening silence in my heart. The vacuum was disconcerting, a hollowness that threatened to swallow me whole.
Andrew hesitated. “Kathryn, maybe this isn’t the best idea.”
I ignored him. In her room, I held her sweater to my face, and I could still feel the essence of her, clinging to this place. Or maybe it was just me, clinging to her.
Without warning, the grief overwhelmed me. Like a tidal wave, it surged through me and my body was racked with tears. In an instant, his arms surrounded me and I let the wave of blackness overtake me. I sobbed for what seemed like forever, and only an instant; the chasm of loss and longing inside me seemingly endless.
I don’t know when my mouth found his, but the hunger I felt was stronger than breathing—stronger than thought, stronger than life itself. I tore at the tiny plastic buttons on his gray Burberry shirt, not caring if I ruined a three-hundred-dollar garment. His hands were on my face, in my hair, under my shirt. I pushed him toward the bed in my sister’s room and fell in a heap atop him. In a moment, I had pushed my shirt over my head. I was fumbling frantically with the Italian leather belt at the waist of his well-tailored pants when he sat up abruptly and grasped both my wrists.
“Not like this,” he panted in anguish. “Kathryn, you’re grieving. If this is just an escape from the pain—”
I suddenly felt the world pitch and roll, followed by the anguished roil of acid in my belly. My hand clamped over my mouth. I lurched off the bed and stumbled toward the bathroom, where I purged the small amount of breakfast I’d managed to coax down that morning. I clutched the edge of the porcelain toilet bowl as if it was my lifeline and wept inconsolably.
He reappeared a moment later, properly clothed and carrying Michelle’s sweater. As I slid it on, he gathered me in his arms and shepherded me toward the door. I knew then I could never return. It would be the last time I ever set eyes on the place that my sister and I had called home.
Chapter 30
Andrew
November 20
He was already reclined on the portable hospital bed when she shuffled into Albaion’s fMRI suite, wearing a white linen blouse and beige wool skirt that would be perfectly appropriate in the unlikely case that they managed to reach their desired destination.
It was three in the morning and everyone was exhausted, but Kathryn looked particularly awful; her eyes were sunken and vacant, and she moved about in a daze. He was sure she hadn’t been sleeping, and logs of her badge activity indicated that she rarely ventured out of her room—not even to the kitchen for meals. Janine assured him she regularly delivered warm broth and mint tea. Kathryn didn’t code and she refused to see him. Janine reported that she spent most of her days sitting on her worn cushion, meditating. Waiting for this moment. A moment he was dreading.
Every muscle in his body tensed as the huge CereLink prototype apparatus was carefully positioned over his head. Project Satori staff bumped elbows with the two nurses tasked with attaching the sensors used to monitor vitals for far-slice travel. Through the large windowpane, he could see the ever-present scowl on the face of Andric Breckinridge as he paced in the control room.
Beside him, Kathryn stared blankly as the EKG electrodes to monitor heart rhythm were placed on her chest, arms, and legs. Her expression remained empty as Christopher Daniels gingerly pulled the EEG cap into position over her loose auburn hair. Though she rested only feet away on the second portable bed, he had the uncanny sensation that she was unreachable, miles and miles distant. His hand absentmindedly moved toward his right pocket, but he stopped it with a violent jerk and instead moved it upward until he felt the smooth exterior of the enormous CereLink helmet. He gave the helmet two sharp taps and then flashed a thumbs-up to the control room.
The intercom popped once, then Janine announced, “We’re receiving imaging.”
As he stared at the fMRI machine, Andrew imagined the impressionistic rendering of the device that would appear on the monitor in the other room, then chuckled ironically to himself as he pictured the visual recursion he was undoubtedly creating with his mental image. Something like the infinity effect in a funhouse, when two parallel mirrors reflect the same image, growing ever more miniscule.
“Andrew, we need you to focus,” Janine interrupted. “Can you please concentrate on the text calibration sheet?”
They were calibrating the text transcription. He picked up a white paper card and scanned the paragraph printed upon it—nonsense sentences now familiar after a hundred reads.
The computers would record a video stream of everything he saw, but a secondary computer cluster would also be logging a steady text stream of the taxonomy of everything in his visual field so that it could be searched and cross-referenced later. The object detection would attempt to label everything that passed through his field of vision. The fMRI machine would translate to: hospital, equipment, tool, medical devices, electronics. He glanced at Kathryn. The log would spew: person, adult, woman, clothing. He sighed inwardly at the constellation of taxonomy it would not detect: tenderness and concern. Adoration.
Amir strode into the room carrying a familiar plastic case, flip-flops slapping the floor with each step. He wore a deep maroon T-shirt that spelled out “There’s no place like 127.0.0.1” but his characteristic good-natured grin was notably absent.
He deftly unsnapped the latches of the heavy-duty plastic box, extracted a Bug, and positioned it carefully over Andrew’s right hand. The second Bug he lifted from the case trailed a long, slender black cable attached to a tiny port in its side. He positioned Kate’s device, then unspooled the fragile cable and draped it over her shoulder, snaking it back toward the rack of equipment.
“Okay, lock and load,” Amir reported. “Let’s clear the room.”
Amir, the nurses, and the white-coated Brain Trust cabal shuffled from the room. The heavy door sighed on its pneumatic hinges, and the silence within the heavily shielded room was so complete that even the subtle whirring of the computers in the server racks seemed deafening.
The intercom buzzed again. Breckinridge spoke, revealing his impatience.
“Ms. Rathman, you will begin. As soon as we’ve detected your REM stage, we will back-sync your device and insert Andrew as well. Determine your whereabouts promptly and return immediately if you have not reached the target destination.”
Kathryn’s eyes focused for the first time since she’d entered the room; she glowered at the control room window with a look of undeniable hostility.
In the background, through the still-live intercom, Janine spoke tentatively. “They might be more comfortable if I dim the lights…”
“Their comfort is no concern of mine,” Breckinridge snapped.
Andrew tried to remember the last time he’d heard his father speak without irritation. Nothing came to mind.
Despite Breckinridge’s protest, the lights in the room dimmed smoothly, and Kathryn closed her eyes.
“I want the rest of the details surrounding the CereLink technology,” Andric barked. “We must understand how they use it for incoming communication. It’s not enough to read the signals. I need to transmit them. I want the technology to make it portable enough to be wearable. And while you’re at it, I want the specifications for the solar paint. Read as many white papers and technical works as you can. Remember, it must be visual. Read it all. We’ll transcribe everything here and sort out the details later. Then get out. I expect this assignment to be completed within twelve hours.”
Andrew frowned. He was well aware of the mission requirements. His father had made them abundantly clear—numerous times. No matter that he had explained—more than once—that returning to the CereLink slice ran the risk of accelerating the avian flu pandemic, or possibly contaminating this reality with even more unexpected ill effects.
“Will you please just get off that microphone and let us work?” Andrew muttered through clenched teeth. The intercom pointedly clicked off.
Just feet away, Kathryn rested her head against the slope of the hospital bed and closed her eyes. He could hear her shallow breathing as it became more regular, and he watched as the deep worry lines in her forehead relaxed. Her head, sheathed in electrodes, lolled to one side.
The minutes ticked by in tense silence. Then, without warning, the probe on the Bug violently pierced his skin, pitching him into darkness.
He heard crickets and the tranquil sound of trickling water. When he opened his eyes, he found himself sprawled on the smooth, cool terra-cotta tiles of an outdoor patio. The darkness was gently illuminated by several low landscape lights. Their glow revealed a courtyard surrounded by a white stucco structure with Palladian doors and arched windows. For one disorientating minute, he wondered if he’d landed in a lavish villa in the Spanish countryside.
“I’m over here,” Kathryn called from behind him.
He staggered to his feet and ducked around a bushy bird-of-paradise to find her perched pensively on a teak bench facing an impressive cascading fountain.
He focused on her face as he reached into his pocket and palmed the fold of paper. “Are we in the right slice?”
Her dark-rimmed eyes were listless. “I told you, I have no control over where I land. This isn’t the CereLink slice. This is another Kate’s home in Bel Air. It’s kind of…a safe space for me. It’s become sort of a homing beacon.”
He looked around once more, imagining the soft and dreamy rendition of the graceful arches that his father would see reproduced and recorded on the faraway computer courtesy of the sensors attached to his head. While he was admiring the palm trees flanking the courtyard entrance, he inconspicuously palmed the folded paper from his pocket and passed it to her.
He heard the sound of paper unfolding and intentionally raised his eyes to the heavens, finding familiarity in the constellation Andromeda.
“It’s odd,” he remarked. “I feel strangely at home here.”
“You should,” she replied. He wondered if he was imagining the note of tenderness in her voice. “This is your home, too.”
The implication of her words became clear, and he smiled. Then he waited. Minutes passed. He heard the soft crinkling of paper as she refolded the letter and slipped it into her skirt pocket.
When she finally spoke, she was guarded. “The outbreak shows no sign of slowing. Thirty thousand infected worldwide. Over half have died. And it’s only the beginning of flu season.”
He rubbed his face and took a deep breath, but kept his vision trained on the garden. “The vaccine trials are very encouraging, but even if it works perfectly, it will take time to ramp up to full production.”
Her voice carried the weight of a thousand regrets. “It won’t be quick enough. That virus never should have happened. Too many have already been lost.”
“I know,” he replied.
“Do you think what you propose will work?”
He refocused his gaze on the fountain. “I think it’s the only way.”
“Okay,” she said. “No promises. But I’ll try.”
“We need to be careful. Thanks to your code, they can transcribe any text I read, and the visualizations of what I see aren’t photorealistic, but they are still detailed enough to be completely recognizable.”
“Do they get a transcript of what you hear?” she asked.
“They haven’t decoded Broca’s area…yet. That means our conversation should still fly under the radar.”
“Anything else?”
“Broca’s area also controls inner speech, so my thoughts are also private…for now.”
Her reply was measured monotone. “Good to know.”
“How are you?” he ventured. He intentionally focused his eyes on his hands. “We haven’t spoken since…”
She sighed heavily. “Now is not the time for that conversation.”
He realized he’d been digging a nail into the cuticle of his left thumb and stared at a minuscule bead of blood as it formed. The courtyard suddenly felt suffocating.
In the face of uncomfortable situations, he’d always fallen back to his work, and this moment was no exception.
“I know you don’t have a lot of control over where you emerge, but since you can shift in location, then perhaps landing us inside a library would save some time.”
“I’ll try.”
He knew it was unwise, but every one of her terse responses made him wish he could search her eyes for a spark of additional meaning. Instead he picked invisible dust from his pant leg and looked anywhere except at Kathryn. A warm breeze whispered through the atrium, rustling the flora and scattering droplets from the fountain. Three o’clock in the morning in November still meant temperate nights in southern California.
“Thank you for bringing me to your safe place,” he offered.
Her oppressive silence was unnerving. He was relieved when he felt her hand slide over his. Her reply was heavy with fatigue. “I suppose we’d just as well get on with it. Close your eyes; those creeps back at the ranch don’t need to see this.”
He complied and turned toward her, denying the powerful urge to contemplate the smooth skin of her cheeks, to gaze into her hazel eyes—to ascertain if her actions were mere obligation or if she still felt more. He winced when she placed her cool hand against the curve of his jaw, startled by her touch. Yet his tension dissolved as her lips brushed against his cheek, her breath warm and gentle. For this one moment, the overwhelming avalanche of desire banished the specter of his complicity in all the wrongs he had orchestrated. He surrendered to the urge to pull her toward him, grateful that the Brain Trust had not yet unraveled the secret to decoding emotions.