I can’t help myself. I must know. My hand glides over the polished surface. Woodgrain ripples beneath my fingers. I push on the table, expecting it to collapse or for my hand to pass through it, but it’s sturdy. Solid. If I were some ancient Egyptian queen revived in modern times, I’d call this magic, but I understand the basics of what’s happening.
Jorgensen is still typing. Without looking up, he says, “This is the best I can do for now.”
“Is this for real? Real in my world?”
“Yes.”
There’s resignation in his voice, but Jorgensen is deliberate. Rather than contradicting me and pointing out the obvious, that all this is an illusion, he’s kind.
I touch the hologram above the keyboard, turn it around, and select the refrigerator. It’s an old 21st-century mini-bar. These things were out of date by my time, but it’s probably the closest thing he can find. What’s a couple of hundred years difference when you’re thousands of years removed?
A fridge floats in the air before me, defying gravity. I’m tempted to withdraw my hand to see if it crashes to the floor, but I’m sure it will. It’ll get scratched, dented, and broken just like anything else in my cruel virtual world.
With a deft touch on the hologram, I lower the refrigerator to the floor and laugh.
“How is this possible? Oh, yeah. Not real, right? Well, real for me. Not for you.”
I crouch, opening the refrigerator door.
“What is this?”
The fridge is stocked with food. Candy bars. Cans of soda. Beer. Not-so-hotdogs. Milk. There’s a fruit bowl with bananas, apples, and oranges. I lift the bowl with one hand, surprised by the weight. I’ve been in space too long. I place the bowl on the table, arranging it as a centerpiece. Somewhat perversely, it seems like the right thing to do. I guess I’m a homemaker now, not an astronaut. Not anymore.
“Do I still eat?”
Dr. Everton explains, “Your virtual world is governed by the same physics as ours. Cellular biology is nothing more than physics arranged in a convoluted Rube Goldberg machine. Life is trillions of cells frantically working together.”
Being a biologist, I understand what she means, but I never thought it would apply to a virtual simulation. I offer my own interpretation.
“Oh, yeah. I get it. A row of dominos knocks over a cup, which pushes a marble down a winding track until it plonks onto a piano keyboard, right?”
Dr. Everton smiles. “Something like that. At a cellular level, that’s all any of us ever are.”
She’s right, although in my case, cellular is digital.
I pull a chair down from the hologram and place it by the table. I rest my weary legs on a seat that’s not actually there.
Jorgensen is almost manic, pulling his cap off and running his hands up through his hair as he speaks.
“There’s so much we need to do. We have to inform the academy. They’re not going to believe we’ve been able to recover a conscious awareness intact. This is unreal.”
Unreal isn’t quite the term I’d use. I smile, peeling a banana. It looks real enough to me. Tastes great. Not quite ripe, but close enough.
Dr. Everton asks, “What do you think?”
“Well, I’m not convinced about all you zombies, but I’m real.”
She smiles.
For the first time in what feels like a decade, I’m grounded. Everything is new. This isn’t a repeat. I haven’t seen any of this before. I have no idea what the future holds, but I’m not afraid. As crazy as it is, I’m relieved to have escaped déjà vu. I’m excited about the future.
I have a second chance at life.
Ghosts
Once the novelty of my appearance wears off, the various engineers and mechanics within the cleanroom leave. One of them lingers beside the sleek hull of an absurdly aerodynamic spacecraft. It’s a coupé. Its existence screams of misplaced wealth. The mechanic seems intent on finishing the installation of an exhaust manifold on the side of an engine bell. I catch him looking my way. He’s curious. Who wouldn’t be? I’m an Egyptian Pharaoh brought back to life. Given my only physical remains are a scrap of desiccated, mummified grey matter reaching down to torn ganglions, that’s not a stretch. Like Jorgensen and Dr. Everton, he’s removed his mask, which makes me wonder if the cleanroom is more for show. I try to ignore him. After all, I’m not real.
Dr. Everton talks with Jorgensen. They’re not excluding me, but they seem overwhelmed by the moment. They’re overwhelmed? Try orbiting Earth, bouncing between worlds, and landing in a laboratory on the other side of the galaxy—all within a matter of minutes.
From the shadows coming in through the windows, it’s clear night is falling. I’m not sure how long a day is on this moon, but I guess they’ve adjusted their circadian rhythms to match.
Dr. Everton pulls up a chair—a real chair. She and Jorgensen talk in soft tones. I don’t catch what’s said, but Jorgensen leaves.
I’m nervous. I hoist myself up on the table, sitting on the edge, still wearing my bulky spacesuit. It’s useless, of course. With my gloves and helmet lying on the floor and the backpack disconnected, my suit provides no protection. While I’m in it, though, I feel a sense of identity, a sense of purpose, and in that there’s comfort. As it’s not real, whatever assurance I feel is a fabrication of my mind. Apparently, my mind’s not real either. Regardless, I’m happy to sit there swinging my boots back and forth, feeling them hanging from my feet. It’s silly, but that motion alone makes me feel alive. Real.
“You’re causing quite a stir,” Dr. Everton says, but she’s distracted. She has a distant look in her eyes. It’s as though she’s focusing on something else. I remain quiet, still trying to process what’s happening, waiting for her to say more. Dr. Everton must have some kind of neural net. These were experimental in my day, but I guess they’ve come a long way in the last few thousand years. Her eyelids flicker, so I wait.
I fidget. I should be doing something. Anything. That’s my training kicking in. While the Intrepid was in orbit, there was always something to do, somewhere to be, a procedure to follow. I’m not good at doing nothing. I hate being unproductive.
Why the hell am I still wearing my spacesuit? Shining armor, it ain’t—even though I’d like to think otherwise. I decide it’s time for reality to intervene. I have to be pragmatic, constructive. I’ve got to move on. I’ve got to do something to anchor myself here in the moment. Sitting in my suit, it’s as though I’m waiting to go somewhere. I can’t seem to accept the change that has been thrust upon me. Damn it.
Dr. Everton has a glazed look in her eyes. I shed my suit, unclipping the waistband and stepping out of the trousers. The upper torso is like a tortoise shell—stiff and unyielding. Back on Earth, a couple of techs would hold it while I wriggled out of it after a session in the neutral buoyancy tank, but here on Erebus, there’s just ethereal me. I lean forward, resting the chest plate and arms on the table, and back out of it. What a sight! Next to go is the water-cooled undergarment, which is attached with velcro straps.
Dr. Everton doesn’t notice me changing, but the remaining tech does. He seems fascinated by my bulky spacesuit/sarcophagus. Given the way material sciences tend to progress, spacesuits in this age are probably more akin to the wetsuits of my time. My water-cooled panels are like chainmail. They’re carefully woven plastic tubes linking together to form a mesh, wrapping around me like armor. I pull them off, dumping them on the floor.
My underwear stretches from my wrists to my neck and down to my waist. An overlapping pair of woolen trousers sag from my legs. Sexy? Hell, no. Greasy, dirty lines mark where the water-cooled pipes rested.
It feels good to have shed some weight. Physically, I feel lighter, and that helps clarify my mental state. I sit down and kick back, leaning on my imaginary chair, with my bare feet resting on my imaginary table. I’m trying to trick myself into being comfortable. I wonder, do people mistake projections like this for reality? April 1st must be a hoot when you
can replace a real table with a hologram.
The lone mechanic in the far corner finishes up, but not without glancing over at me yet again. As he leaves, he takes one last look at the holographic freak show that’s appeared in his workshop. He’s shy but kind, raising his hand in a gesture of hello. I wave back and force a smile. It’s nice to know some things haven’t changed.
“So, doc,” I say, wanting to move things alone.
“Ah, yes,” Dr. Everton replies, shaking her head. “Of course. Of course. I was just talking with my colleagues.”
Okay, so all that was like the equivalent of calling someone on a cellphone, minus any actual speech.
She straightens in her chair, looking far more formal than me. I swing my legs down, wanting to match her demeanor.
I’m curious. “What do you know about me?” I ask, pointing at the brain fragment on the counter, still struggling to accept that’s me. “How much can you actually read from that?”
If these guys can scan memories, can they read my thoughts? Is anything sacred? Has the sanctity of the mind itself been breached? Personally, I can’t think of anything worse. Dr. Everton seems to appreciate my concerns.
“We can’t read your mind the way you read a book. There’s too much complexity. Memories are stored holistically, with imprints that differ from one person to the next. Piecing together a shared memory is more art than science. I might associate this room with its sterile smell. For you, it might be the hollow sound. For Jorgensen, it could be the way light reflects off the shiny spacecraft.”
I’m fascinated by the concepts she’s describing. I feel as though I’m taking a crash course in scientific advances over the past millennia.
“We isolated strands from each of the fragments, gaining glimpses into sequences. In your case, we got lucky. We had a common starting point. The three of you entered the Intrepid at the same time, in the same way, and had roughly the same mental reaction. From there, your memories diverged. By providing you with a virtual replica of your ship, we were able to track both your motion and your interactions with each other.”
Dr. Everton is clinical in her depiction of what to me seemed real. I get the impression everything’s being recorded as we speak. I’m a lab rat. Instead of a scalpel, she’s using words to dissect the specimen before her.
I say, “So rather than replaying our memories, you watched as we acted them out?”
She nods.
“Did you see them?” I ask.
“Them?”
“The aliens.”
“Yes,” she replies, but her voice is detached, devoid of emotion. “Where did you encounter them?”
Dr. Everton’s probing, pretending to agree with me to bring me on side and keep me talking. I get the impression she’s trying not to color my response. She’s doing all she can not to influence me unduly, leading me on.
“It’s difficult,” I say. “It’s hard for me to separate between what’s real and what’s not, what happened when and where, but I saw them. In the quiet moments. When I was tired, I’d close my eyes and there they were.”
“You remembered them within the simulation?”
“Yes. No. I mean, the encounter occurred after the destruction of the Intrepid. I suspect my recollection occurred during the simulation because our time on the Intrepid was being replayed over and over. There was something about the rings. I remember thinking they were beautiful. I think they were the trigger for my recollection.”
Dr. Everton nods but doesn’t add anything more. At a guess, she’s trying to avoid disrupting my train of thought.
“I was naked. I’d been stripped of my clothes. No suit. Nothing. Dead. They were dissecting my body. Somehow, though, I was still conscious. I could see, but, but…”
Tears roll down my cheeks.
“It’s okay,” she says. “If it’s too much, I can let you rest and we can continue later.”
“No, I’m all right.” I’m surprised by the emotions welling up within me. I guess it’s not every day you see your own mortality with such clarity. Not everyone’s had their chest peeled open by alien tentacles. “I didn’t feel anything. No pain. But I could see everything they did. There were eyes—so many eyes. Tentacles reached in from the fringes. It was like being on an operating table.”
Real or not, my hands are shaking.
Dr. Everton asks, “Where were you born?”
“Ah.” I’m not sure what it says about me, but it takes me a moment to answer as I have to unwind my mind from being here in the Proc. “Alabama.”
She’s quizzical, repeating her question with a slight inflection that denotes curiosity. “Where exactly?”
“I’m not sure what you mean?” I say. If Dr. Everton is trying to relax me by distracting me, it’s working. Already my breathing is slowing. I ask, “Do you mean, like in a hospital or at home?”
She clarifies. “Ah, yes. Alabama’s in Europe, right?”
I laugh. “No. It’s a state, not a country.”
“I could have sworn it was near Italy.”
“You’re thinking of Albania. I’m from Ala—bama. One of the United States.”
“United?”
Damn, that didn’t register at all on her mental radar.
“Do you still have countries?” I ask.
Dr. Everton looks lost. “Countries? On Earth? No. Continents, yes. But not countries. There are counties. I think. Is that the same thing?”
“No.”
I smile.
To my mind, the gap between us is like that which separates me from the time of Christ. In reality, that’s not even halfway. I’m trying to think of the various civilizations that predate the Romans. The Greeks were contemporaries. In the muddle of my mind, a bunch of cultures and civilizations overlap—the Babylonians, Phoenicians, and Egyptians. Beyond there, though, designations break down. When did the Chinese dynasties arise? Going back four or five thousand years, there were bands of people in villages, but no countries that I know of. For Dr. Everton, talking with me is like me talking to someone from prehistory. I can’t imagine conversing with someone that built Stonehenge or the Sphinx. It’s hard for me to think of a time before there were countries. For her, it’s hard to imagine lines on a map holding any significance.
As we’re alone, she reaches up and pulls off her hair-cap.
“You’re allowed to do that?” I ask. “Isn’t this a sterile room?”
“Oh, so some tiny feces gets a strand of hair stuck on his paintwork. It’s okay.”
Some tiny feces? Terms like this provide me with a glimpse into the mental gymnastic she’s performing when talking to me. I’d have said, “some little shit.” Linguistically, it’s the same, but to her, that phrase would probably sound like a line from Hamlet. Tiny feces, though? It’s all I can do not to burst out laughing. I like Dr. Everton. I’m lost in deep time, but I’ve found a friend.
Alabama
“Tell me about this Ah—la—bama,” Dr. Everton says, being careful with her pronunciation.
“Alabama was one of fifty-two US states,” I say, knowing my geography teacher from middle school would be proud. I struggled to pass his class, but I’m his only representative in the 60th century. Even as an adult, I couldn’t name all of the US states. Boys. I was more interested in the jocks sitting by the window than I was in Burma becoming Myanmar or Puerto Rico being granted statehood.
“There were fifty-two of them?” She asks, genuinely surprised. “In just one country?”
I laugh. “Yes.”
“And where was the US?”
“America. The United States of America.”
“Oh, yeah. I know America. There’s a land-bridge, right? Joining the two halves.”
From the glazed look on her face and the way her eyes lack focus, I’m guessing America is one big blob these days, with North and South America combined. Geographically, that makes sense, but the cultures and languages of America as a whole couldn’t be more varied. I’m left wonderin
g what Earth looks like in this epoch. Physically, it would be the same as there hasn’t been enough time for the continents to shift. Culturally, though, it could be entirely different. Given her surprise, she probably thinks the United States of America describes both continents. She seems genuine. How the hell am I going to explain this? Where do I start?
“I was from the north.”
My grandmother would have a heart attack if she heard me saying I was a northerner. Relative to the entire landmass of the Americas, I am, but I see myself as a southerner. It’s funny how things change.
I add, “North America,” hoping that helps.
Dr. Everton nods. I can see her recalling a map to mind. I ask some probing questions, looking to understand what she knows about my time.
“You’ve heard of North America, right?”
“Yes. Yes. Of course. So you were Inuit?”
“Not that far north. Alabama is in the southern part of the north.”
Okay, that confused the fuck out of her. I can see the dismay in the contorted furrows of her brow.
“Gulf of Mexico? Near Florida? Cape Kennedy? The Space Center?”
“Oh, where they used to launch rockets?”
“Yes.”
Vague, I know, but she’s now within a thousand miles of where I was born and raised, so that’s a win.
“Did you live on the coast? Near the sea?”
“No. Alabama is landlocked, except for one tiny strip near the city of Mobile.”
“The city was mobile? You could move entire cities back then?”
“Ah, no. It’s just a name.”
She raises an eyebrow. “You named a stationary city Mobile?”
“Yes,” I say, unable to offer her any rationale for what must seem utterly ridiculous in retrospect.
Her eyes flicker a little, and for a moment, she’s staring through me, not at me. I get the feeling she’s referencing some kind of neural implant.
“I found references to the tides in Alabama, but you said it was landlocked except for a small region. Was that area subjected to extreme high tides? Is that why they moved the city?”
Déjà Vu (First Contact) Page 6