Susan begins by asking Danny a series of questions like “What year is it?” and that sort of thing. Danny answers accurately, smiling at the mouthed assistance being offered to her by the twins.
“You’ve been in a coma,” Susan finally says. “Do you remember anything about the accident?”
“I remember we were on our way to the airport—oh no!” She looks at my father. “Did we miss the presentation?”
“No, no.” My father smiles at my mother. “Janice did the presentation—and by all accounts, did an incredible job. We’re in good shape there.”
Danny nods, looking relieved.
“Well, my initial conclusion,” Susan informs us, “is that she’s doing remarkably well.”
“You’re going to be okay.” Tara pats Danny on the knee.
“I feel pretty okay.” Danny smiles, and absently touches the hand on her shoulder. She looks up.
“David, what’s going on here?” Her voice suddenly sounds commanding. She pushes up on her elbows and examines the IV in her arm. “What am I doing in the hospital?”
“Danny?” I call to her, but she doesn’t respond.
Susan rushes around to David’s side of the bed, looks into Danny’s eyes. “Danny?”
“I’m sorry, do I know you?”
Susan straightens, stares at us. “I need you all to leave—immediately. David, stay.”
“What’s going on?” I plead as my father ushers me out of the room. My mother, scooping up the twins, follows close behind.
“Is that…? Did she…?” I can’t quite assemble the words, but I know Daniella is back. I need to do something. But what? Charge back in there and shake her until Danny reappears?
“She switched,” I hear Susan tell Yuri before the door shuts behind us.
“What does that mean, she switched?” I ask no one in particular.
“Not sure…” Yuri stares through the observation window, turning on the intercom.
We all gather at the window to observe Danny, Susan and David.
“Danny, my name is Dr. Susan Saito. I’d like to ask you a few questions, if you wouldn’t mind indulging me for a minute or two.”
“I actually have a few questions of my own, doctor. David won’t tell me a thing and—sweetie, would you mind fetching me a glass of water? My throat is parched.”
Sweetie? Danny would never call someone Sweetie.
“I will get,” Yuri says, jabbing a finger into the intercom’s talk button.
“With ice if at all possible, please…”
“With ice—is quite possible,” Yuri responds.
“Thank you, whoever you are.” Danny theatrically rests the back of her hand on her forehead and says, “I’ve always depended on the kindness of strangers.”
David, like a man who’s just won the lottery, practically collapses on top of her.
“What’s this? You’d think he hadn’t seen me in years,” the woman who looks like Danny says over David’s shoulder. She then thins her lips and adds, “And, doc, I’d prefer it if you call me Daniella.”
I fall back into one of the control room’s chairs. It’s official. Daniella is back. David has won.
I stare at the Bourilkov System’s 3D brain map as it continuously loops through the activity targeted just before Danny awoke. Green lightning bolts zigzag across the screen.
Danny, did I cast the wrong spell?
Someone blocks my view. It’s my father. He’s saying something. I have no idea what. I seem to be on the other side of a thick glass wall.
“Danny was fine,” I mutter. “Then she switched.”
Why? Because she saw David, that’s why. She saw David and switched.
“I need to get in there.” I push out of my chair, but my father pushes me right back in.
“Tyler, for all we know, you rushing in there could send her back into a coma. You want that?”
“But Danny’s in a coma now, isn’t she? What’s the difference?”
“Let’s just give Susan a chance, okay?” He waits until I nod, then watches me attentively as I retake my spot at the window.
Yuri returns from the kitchen and hands Susan a cup of ice water through the door.
“Daniella,” Susan says, handing Daniella the cup, “what’s the very last thing you remember?”
“The last thing I remember…” Daniella holds up an index finger while she drinks. She gasps. “…is being in David’s office after being hit on the head by that piece-of-shit Cast One Metalworks cage. David insisted that I go to the hospital.” She looks at him. “I guess you got your way. I remember you yelling for Scott to get your car around front.” She stares into her ice water, jiggles the ice. “That’s about it.”
“So, just to be clear: the last thing you remember is being in David’s office?”
“At Levinson Productions, yes.” Daniella turns to David. “You told George I wouldn’t be making his meeting, I assume.”
David nods.
“Who’s George?”
“George Bowman, our Chief Financial Officer,” David replies.
“Daniella,” Susan says, “now this may sound like a particularly strange question, but are you at all familiar with a Dr. Aiden Cipriani?”
“Of course. Actually, I’ve been reading one of his books.” She touches her forehead and closes her eyes.
“Are you all right?” Susan asks.
“Yes, yes. I just—now this might seem like an even stranger question, but—was Dr. Cipriani just here? Or did I just dream that? I’ve been having the most vivid dreams lately.”
“I’d like to talk more about those dreams later. For now though, if you wouldn’t mind, I’d like to steal your husband away for a few minutes.”
“Actually, I would mind.” Daniella pulls David’s hand close to her chest.
“I’ll return him right back. I promise.”
“All right. Make sure you do.” Daniella kisses David’s hand. “Don’t you dump me for this pretty doctor.”
David hugs Daniella tightly before reluctantly letting her go.
“Oh, and see if you can find my cellphone, would you?” Daniella calls out.
“Well?” my father asks after Susan and David enter the control room.
“Well, things just got a whole lot more complicated,” Susan says. “Tyler, if you wouldn’t mind coming with me.”
I follow her without hesitation.
“Daniella?” Susan says as we enter the room.
Daniella looks up. Her eyes meet mine. Instantly her countenance changes, her features become softer, smoother, even her eyes appear bluer.
“Danny?” I rush to her.
“Where did you go?” she asks as I wrap my arms around her.
She catches her breath.
“Tyler?” She presses her lips to my ear.
“Yes?”
“Why is everyone acting so strange?”
25
Two weeks have passed since Danny and Daniella’s awakening.
Right from the start, it was clear that David and I were Danny and Daniella’s only triggers. No other combination of people or circumstances seems to make the least bit of difference. If I enter the room while David is already present, however, she remains Daniella. And if that situation is reversed, she remains Danny.
Danny and Daniella have different heart rates, different blood pressures and even different brain scan profiles. Both believe that the lapses in time they’ve experienced while the other has been active are residual effects of the coma.
Daniella believes (with some help on our parts) that David got involved with Quantum Bay because of her interest in my father’s book, and that that in turn led to my father’s and my involvement in her recovery. She also believes she’s been unconscious for two years.
And, if you think about it, all of that is true. Or at least, true enough.
Danny, for the most part, is the same. Just thrilled to be back in my arms and debating philosophy with my father.
; Susan and Yuri have their own theories as to why Danny and Daniella are now both present, but as much as they disagree on that front, they do agree that a choice needs to be made: either Daniella returns to Las Vegas with David, or Danny returns to Long Island with me.
Given all that David has been through, and the fact that he and Daniella are married, it was pretty clear to me right from the start where Danny and I stood. David certainly wasn’t going to let Daniella slip through his fingers now.
Up until two days ago, however, David and I hadn’t discussed any of this. But with our time drawing to a close here at Brook Howard, I suppose he realized he had better address the elephant in the room. He came into where I was working in room 514 and rolled over a chair.
“Is that archived data?” he asked, indicating the forecasting module’s newly incorporated brain map.
“Yes.” What else would it be? I continued to type.
“We need to talk.”
“No, we don’t. I get it. You and Daniella are married. You win. I’m just trying really hard not to think about it.” I glanced at him. “More than anyone, you should know how this feels. Just let me be, please.” I started to type again.
“Will you stop—” He pushed my keyboard out from under my fingers. “Stop. What makes you think this is so easy for me? I won? What exactly did I win? If I simply leave here with Daniella, in any sense, any sense that matters, I’m killing Danny. How is that winning? I love Danny.”
I stared at him.
“And how—” He shook his head. “How could I do that to you and your father? What in the world must you think of me?”
A moment passed in which all I could hear were the computers’ insanely loud cooling fans. I looked at the floor.
“This life-and-death choice has been heaved onto me,” he continued. “I can’t ask Daniella and Danny what they want. So—and I’m really sorry about this, Tyler, but—I’m placing the burden on you.”
“What do you mean?”
“For over a year I’ve watched as you and Danny have grown closer, all the while telling myself that Danny is not Daniella. But I think it’s really only now, seeing them together, that I truly believe it.”
I looked at him expressionlessly.
“I propose we let them both live. I’m not saying it’ll be easy, but with a lot of coordination and open-mindedness—”
“You want to—share her?”
“Her body, not her—”
“What are we supposed to do, send her back and forth to each other each week? That’s sick.”
“You have a better idea?”
“She’d be like a human timeshare.”
“She?” He furrowed his brow. “Look, I know it’s not exactly how you envisioned your life with Danny. But give it some thought, would you?” David rolled his chair back to where he had found it and left the room.
That was two days ago.
Now I’m on the seventh-floor skywalk, trying to come to terms with the fact that in less than four hours David and Daniella will be on a flight home to Las Vegas.
“You looking to be alone?” my father asks, his reflection paralleling him in the curved glass as he approaches from the East Building’s automatic doors.
“Shouldn’t you be getting ready for your speech?”
He’s giving the keynote address for the Cross-Disciplinary Conference on Artificial Intelligence at the Jacob Javits Center tonight. It’s only a few miles from here.
“I have plenty of time.” He sits down across from me. “Stewart’s starting to get around without his crutches—he just called.”
“That’s good.” I nod.
A moment passes.
“Tara and Jasmine are at it again—they’re playing tour guides with Daniella.” He chuckles. “They’re starting in the lobby. She’s pretty impressive, that young woman, don’t you think?”
“Sure, except for the part where she keeps stealing my girlfriend’s body.”
“Not intentionally.” He leans back. “What do you think of her proposal?”
The instant Daniella had learned that she and David were part owners in QBL, and that we had just won the A.I. XPRIZE, she’d started dreaming up all kinds of ideas.
The particular proposal my father is referring to involves us making the Bourilkov Neurofeedback System a target application of Prometheus 2.0. Daniella proposed that I work eighty hours per month for Quantum Bay while attending MIT. For my efforts, QBL would cover all my expenses, pay me a reasonable salary and vest to me a five-percent stake in the company.
“It’s fine.” I shrug.
“What’s wrong?”
“You know what’s wrong.”
“Oh come on, Tyler. David’s provided you with the only workable solution. Just accept it and move on.”
“Accept it? Accept putting Danny on a plane each time it’s his turn to—” I shake my head in disgust. “To be with her.”
“Not with her. With Daniella. And stop making it sound so obscene. First of all, it’s David. Second, and more importantly, it’s not Danny.
“Personally,” he says, leaning forward, “I think you’re damn lucky that David cares enough about you and Danny to make this sacrifice. He doesn’t have to, you know.”
“I know. I think he’s crazy. It’s just—” I look up at the pale blue sky. “It’s just so…”
“What? What’s the problem?”
“Problem? There are a million of them.”
“Like what?”
“What if she gets pregnant?”
“Well, I guess you’ll have to establish some ground rules.”
“Ground rules?” I cringe at the thought, the thought of sitting down with David and making up “ground rules.” “I really don’t think I can do this.”
“I really don’t think you have a choice. You really think you can just let her get on a plane today, knowing that Danny’ll never exist again? Tyler, trust me, no one can bury themselves that deep in their work.”
“But… the alternative. It’s like torture.”
“You’ve got a weird idea of torture.” He frowns.
“I just wish I could go back in time, back to before I knew anything about Daniella.” The trip Danny and I took to Mystic with José and Jenny comes to mind.
“You are back there. Those moments exist now, just as these moments existed then.”
“I know, I know, and as we sit here, dinosaurs are roaming the Earth, Lincoln is being shot and the sun is burning out, and so on and so forth.”
“That’s right.”
“And a hundred years from now, when someone’s standing over my grave, I’ll still be sitting here, talking to you.” I look at him quizzically. “So I never get to be dead?”
“Technically, you’re dead right now. But, no, there’s never a point at which you are in your grave and in some kind of ‘being dead’ state. You can only be aware of that of which you are aware. You’re not aware of standing on the Golden Gate Bridge right now. Do you feel dead about that?”
“Okay, but all that means is that I’m perpetually alive within my own lifetime. Like Sisyphus rolling a boulder up a hill for all eternity.”
“No, he just rolls it once. Remember, he’s not aware of his permanence in any given moment. Besides, don’t be so grim. Obviously, we aren’t alone in this world. Think of all the people out there. Those lives are all extensions of our own. Certainly you can see that people who share our personality types are extensions of us.”
“Like me isn’t me,” I mutter. “And before you go and use Danny and Daniella as an example, they’re really just two different versions of the same person.”
“Yes, and so are you and I.”
“We’re not made out of the same material—I mean the exact same material.”
“Starting out as molecules of our parents and spending a lifetime ingesting the same atoms isn’t enough to constitute ‘the same material’? You have special carbon atoms of some kind?”
“Structura
lly, then. Danny and Daniella are structurally identical.”
“You mean like Tara and Jasmine? Tyler, I know you know all this—you just don’t want to admit it. We’re all made out of the same material, are of the same basic design and obey the same physical laws. The only things different about us are the stories we live within and the characters we play. We’re all Dannys and Daniellas of each other.”
The automatic doors of the East Building open. It’s Daniella. She’s with Tara and Jasmine. I turn away, pretending to read something on my cellphone, not yet wanting to reveal myself. In the reflection of one of the skywalk’s chrome beams, I watch as they approach, all three, hair pinned up, looking professional, the twins taking two steps for every one of Daniella’s.
“I thought your tour was starting on the ground floor,” my father says, getting to his feet.
“It did,” Daniella tells him, “but then my two little tour guides here dragged me up to the tenth floor, where we were supposed to jump just as the elevator started to descend. They were hoping to get to floor nine-and-three-quarters—as in Platform Nine-and-Three-Quarters in Harry Potter.”
“Daniella told us we were being silly,” Jasmine mutters dejectedly.
“Were you planning to take her to Hogwarts?”
“That’s exactly what they had in mind. They wanted to see if they could find a spell that would make a copy of me. As if one wasn’t enough.”
“It’s not,” Tara says.
I stifle a laugh. I can just imagine the look my father is giving her. The twins are under strict orders not to talk about the “Danny-Daniella situation.”
“I’m sure they’re just sad to see you go,” my father says.
“Well, don’t worry, my little sweeties,” Daniella says. “I’ll be back to visit as often as I can.”
I stand and turn toward them.
Daniella’s eyes meet mine and, instantly, a kind of inner light washes over her. Danny smiles.
“Oh good, Danny’s here,” Jasmine says before seamlessly diving into a previous conversation. “You said you’d show us some more magic.”
“I said, before I left.” She looks at her watch.
Danny believes she’ll be flying out to Las Vegas with David later this afternoon to visit some old friends. She’s just lost a few hours, but she’s used to that. Generally, it only takes her a few seconds to regain her bearings.
Magic, Machines and the Awakening of Danny Searle Page 22