by Brin, David
A welling coldness in his midsection. Again.
More cold, now in the right foot. Again.
A prickly sensation on his lips, playing across his cheeks. But not full senses; he could not feel his chest or arms. He started to press another button and then stopped, thinking.
So far he had been lucky. He was opening the sensory nets. Most of his right side was transmitting knowledge of chilly muscles, aches, movement. His leg was jerking less now as he brought it under control.
But if he somehow hit the shutdown button for his right arm next, he was finished. He would lie there helpless until the technicians came back.
Carlos worked the arm back onto the slab. Focus. He made the arm shift awkwardly across his chest. His motor control must extend into his upper chest and shoulders to let him do this, but without any input from there he did not know how much he could make work.
He willed the muscles to lurch to the left. A strange, abstract impression of tilting came to him. A tension somewhere. Muscles straining, locked, clenched and reaching, stretching. Again—
A warm hardness on his cheek. His nose pressed against it but he had no sense of smell. The slab top. He had rolled himself partway over. Now what?
A gathering, diffuse weariness washed through him. The arm muscles were broadcasting to the surrounding body their agony, fed by the buildup of exhausted sugar-burning tissue, leaving lactic acid.
No time to rest. The muscles would just have to keep working. He willed the arm to reach over toward the left side of the slab. He could feel nothing.
What were the chances that now he could make a fatal mistake? Probably not large; there had to be overlapping precautionary software. And he was damned if he was going to give up.
He punched down randomly, searching. A spike of pain shot through his left side. Behind that came biting cold. Slabs of muscle began shaking violently, down his left side. He stabbed down with fingers again.
Light poured in on him. He had hit the vision nerve net. A gaudy, rich redness. He realized his eyes were still closed. He opened them, and white brilliance flooded in.
Joy surged in him. He closed the eyes against the glare and punched down again.
A crisp, chill hospital smell came to him. Again.
Sound washed over him. A mechanical clanking, a distant buzz, the whirr of air circulators. No voices.
He opened his eyes just a thin slit and squinted. Turned his head. He was lying on a white slab, staring up at fluorescent lights. Now that he could see, Carlos felt with fingers coming out of their numbness. In a few tries he got back the rest of his neural net. Living had never felt so good.
He reached up toward his neck with his right hand—and his hand moved the other way. He stopped it, moved the fingers tentatively. His arm seemed to come from above his head, reaching down… but that was impossible.
He moved his left hand. It came into his vision the same way, from above.
Something was wrong with him. He closed his eyes. What could make…?
He rolled over partway and looked around the medical bay. The sign on the door leaped out. It was upside down. Carefully he reached over, clutched the edge of the slab. That was upside down, too.
What? He closed his eyes and thought. Maybe… When the eye took light and cast it on the retina, ordinary optics inverted the image. The retinal nerves filtered that signal and set it upright for the brain to use.
So the med tech had screwed that up, too. The retinal nerves weren’t working right. He had been able to find things as long as he couldn’t see, just using his internal sensations. That might be easy to fix, just move a fine-point fiber junction a fraction of a millimeter. But Carlos couldn’t, didn’t know how. He would have to manage with the world looking upside down. Somehow.
Su madre, Carlos thought, and began to fumble with the thicket of leads that snaked over his body. It was easier if he didn’t look at what he was doing. He had to avoid looking at his own body because that disoriented him even further.
Even with the inverted vision, he still had to disconnect carefully the tap-ins at nerve nexus points.
When he had read the literature the Center gave him, he had found them clear, but light on detail. Now he had to recall what he could.
The big fat lot of nerve nexus points at the nape of his neck. He grasped, explored with fingers. He would have to take it out. He pulled. It was hard to detach. Gingerly, he contracted his arm muscles—it jerked free.
Instantly he felt a hot, diffuse pain from his neck, spreading up into his skull. He had read something about that. Now the nerves were exposed, sending scattershot impressions through the area. He could feel his muscles jerk.
He had screwed up badly. Now he had to put things right, just to stop the lancing agonies that built higher.
He rolled over, ignoring a wave of aches. He blinked and studied the work table next to the slab. It was a complex jumble of connectors, microelectronics, and bunched coils of nearly invisible wires. There was a patch that led back toward his neck.
He reached out for it, stretched—and missed. The upside-down effect confused every motion. His brain saw his arm moving and corrected, always in the wrong direction.
The pain… He made himself close his eyes and visualize what he felt. Stretch, grasp— It took three tries before he could override his own coordination.
He snagged the constellation of patch lines and nearly dropped it, fingers feeling thick and slow. Carefully he brought it to his head. The floppy oval of wires fitted over the gaping hole at the back of his neck. He fiddled with it until it slid snick into place. The pain tapered off. A dull throbbing remained.
He had to get up. What was that ancient figure, coming out of the grave…? Lazarus. Rising.
He sat up. Spasms shot through him. He gasped. Fresh agonies blossomed with every move. But he felt lean and fully awake and deeply angry. He was in a deserted medical bay. A fine sensor mesh covered his body up to his shoulders, like a coppery fishing net.
He tried to take it off, failed. His hands were clumsy, fingers blunt instruments. The sensor webbing was too complicated. Just wear it, then.
He studied the liquid-optical readouts on a medical monitor nearby. The program profile was mostly numbers. He couldn’t tilt his head far enough over to read the upside-down numbers. He frowned, trying to read them directly. After a moment it wasn’t so hard. The winking digital sequences were complicated and not like anything he remembered. He identified blood pressure, heart rate. The rest was meaningless. He’d never paid much attention to the hardware details before, and now he regretted it.
He got to his feet, shaky and light-headed. His feet creaked when he stood. He was tempted to rest for a moment and let the endless river of sensations wash over him. Even this sterile room of barren ivory light seemed lurid, packed with details, smells, odd sensations.
That was it. He had never loved life so much. A singing sense of this crisp world filled him. Adrenaline?
What really mattered was that he wasn’t safe. Staff coffee breaks didn’t last forever. He would have to find his clothes, get out, and call his Life Lawyer, as they were called.
He started for a side door. Crazy quilt walking—moving across a space that looked upside down.
The first few steps taught him to keep his head tilted down, toward his feet. He had to move his eyes the opposite way, though, to shift his vision. He bumped into the med-monitor and nearly fell over a desk. After a moment he could navigate around things. He went carefully, feeling each twinge of lancing pain as his left side protested. His right arm ached and trembled from spasm.
He reached the door, opened it slightly, peered through. The equipment beyond was hard to recognize, inverted. Lab coats on pegs jutted straight up. Chairs clung to the ceiling. He fought down a mounting sense of vertigo. His eyes were telling his brain that he was standing at the ceiling. Somewhere inside him alarm systems were struggling to be heeded.
There were open drawers of surgical
instruments, a wash-up station, and electronics gear. This looked like a preparation room. He eased through.
There was a lab coat on a chair. He took halting steps over to it, reached out. His balance reeled. It was easier to manipulate things if he closed his eyes, going by feel alone. Too bad he couldn’t walk that way.
The lab smock fit pretty well. It would conceal most of the fine sensor webbing that covered him. Not all, though. He bent down. Nausea swept into him, an acid bile seeped into his mouth. He closed his eyes. Easier to let his fingers guide him. He felt along his leg. Fingers found a zip-lock in the webbing. He opened it. The stuff peeled back slowly, rasping against his skin. He gave up hopes of getting it all off and settled for stripping it from his feet. He worked the stiff fabric up and bunched it above his knees.
With the lab coat on he probably looked like an ordinary patient. The sensor net stopped at his shoulders, just peeking out at the collar of the coat. He looked around, but there were no shoes. Hell with it, he thought. Get out of here.
He crossed the room with care and pushed a door open a crack. Footsteps coming. He let the door close and waited, heart thumping. Nobody came in. He opened it again and listened to the distant murmur of conversations, people passing, ordinary office noise.
The impersonal drone of efficiency. If he walked through them they would be on to him in a second.
Now that he thought about it he didn’t have much of a chance. It wasn’t enough to just call his lawyer. He had to get away clean, have time to prove that the med techs had made a mistake. An old man stumbling around in a lab coat, trying to get out of the building… No, he needed something more.
Carlos looked around, even though it made his head swim. If only he could get his damned eyes fixed. But he didn’t know how. What else, then?
The surgical section, over there… a weapon? He shuffled over to it. Gleaming instruments hung in the open drawer, defying gravity. He picked out a scalpel in its safety sheath and gingerly slipped it into the coat pocket. He’d never used a weapon in his life, but having one was better than nothing. And it was the only thing he could think of.
Back to the door. This time he opened it and stepped out with what he hoped was a casual air. He clenched his teeth to fight off the panicky impulse that swept through him. In both directions, endless doors, offices. And luck—nobody in the corridor. He turned, gritting his teeth at a sudden jolt of nausea. Wait, at the end of the corridor—daylight. He started shuffling that way.
Two people came around a corner, talking earnestly. They didn’t even look at him. He stayed close to the wall and they breezed by.
For the first time Carlos didn’t mind the blank-faced stares that looked right past the anonymous patient. Just meat for the machines…
He tried reading signs along the hallway but couldn’t. He reached the exit door, leading into an outdoor stairwell that brimmed with sunlight—and stopped. A big sign in red. He took the time to figure it out. EMERGENCY EXIT ONLY. Some kind of an alarm trigger above it.
He backed away. Mierda—
He had to keep moving, get farther away from the med bay. Any minute now the techs would come back. Carlos shuffled away and reached an intersection of corridors. More labs/offices. He went right, walking parallel to the outer wall of the building. Up ahead, a dozen people came out of a meeting room and stopped, chattering. He didn’t want to pass them. He turned aside and saw a door. He pushed it open, stepped through and found himself in a stockroom, not much bigger than a closet. There were keys in the inside doorknob. He turned them, locking the door.
Safe, sort of. How long could he wait? Not very. Give the hall time to clear. He leaded against a wall, feeling a trembling weakness in him. He made himself count to a hundred, studying the cabinets of boxed supplies. He tried to think of some way he could use this, stuff, but most of the labels he couldn’t understand.
When the hundred ran out, he let himself out, pocketing the keys. The hall was empty. He walked slowly away. He was getting used to the vision now but it was still an effort to deal with a world that was upside down. People went by him, taking no notice. Up ahead he saw some more natural daylight. He walked faster.
“Say, you aren’t supposed to be—”
Carlos turned. A young nurse was following him.
“—in this part of the…” Her eyes widened. “But you can’t be… I just left you—”
“You’re mistaken,” he said as calmly as he could. His voice croaked but he kept on, “I’m just getting some exercise, lady.”
“No, you’re the man on slab C, I know. You can’t get up now! You’re in no condition to be out.”
She touched his sleeve and panic seized him. It was impossible to tell what her expression meant, inverted. Was she being kindly? If she kept after him—
“Come on, I’ll help you back to—”
He backed away. His hand closed on the keys in his pocket, then the scalpel.
“Look at this,” he said in his rusty, dry voice, bringing out the scalpel. He flipped it free of the safety sheath. It gleamed in the hard cold light.
She gasped. He put his hand back in the pocket, holding the scalpel, and whispered. “Now turn around and walk back that way.”
Her eyes went from his face to the pocket and, back again, confused.
“You, you can’t—”
“Sure I can.”
She hesitated a moment more. He took her arm roughly and pushed her along, feeling strong now. “You’re just taking a patient for a stroll, see. Walk.”
She did. He got her back to the stockroom without attracting any notice. He pushed her into it and was closing the door, fishing the keys out of his pocket, when she blurted, “There’s no need for you—”
“You be quiet in here, understand?” he said as harshly as he could.
“We’ll help you, you’re not ready to—”
“To get filed away in a slot. No, I’m damned well not. Not ready.”
“No, no you—”
Carlos thunked shut the door, snapped the locked over. He walked away fast, heart thumping wildly, and felt a rising fear.
He was near the exit when the banging started. He looked back. The nurse was pounding on the door with something solid. People in white coats stopped in the corridor, puzzled.
Carlos turned and hurried out the exit. He was at the edge of a parking lot with no vehicles in it, exposed. He crossed it, stretching his legs in a pleasurable way, working out how to do this in an inverted world. He walked along a sidewalk until a man’s high voice behind him called, “Hey! Hey!”
He rounded a corner and tried running. His bare feet slapped on the warm concrete and he gulped fresh air greedily. Overriding his fear he felt a rush of power in his body, a sudden zing in the pull of his legs as he sprinted down the sidewalk between tall, tan buildings.
More shouts behind him. He worked his way between slabs of concrete, around a wall, and jogged downhill through oleander bushes on a steep hillside. The inverted vision made balance hard, but he was learning to deal with it. He kept his head down and managed to move quickly, bent over, working his way down the slope. With luck the bushes would screen him from pursuers above. He was panting but not rapidly. Putting me in the slots, eh? They think we’re sheep.
A siren shrieked in the distance. Carlos reached the bottom of the slope and glanced around to get his bearing. Nausea still clutched at him if he moved his head too fast. Lets see, hard to tell upside down, the streets look so different.
He had always walked up to the Center from Wilshire. He peered at the rosy warm sun. He was facing north. So there should be a little dogleg to the south if he turned. But a massive marbled wing of the Institute blocked that way.
No time to plan. He surged ahead, through more of the Institute grounds, parts he’d never seen. Then he angled west, keeping in the shelter of eucalypts. He inhaled their scent, enjoying the feel of it penetrate his throat and lungs. In a hundred meters the trees ended, and he came out onto
sidewalk. It wasn’t Wilshire. He must have gotten turned around. It was a narrow little street, a few cars zooming quietly by. No pedestrians. A lucky break; he was pretty damned conspicuous.
He rushed down a block and crossed the street, not paying much attention to anything except the way he had come. The sirens wailed and cops would pick him up. He looked for a restaurant or something to duck into, but there were only faceless apartment buildings along this cramped little street. He tried some foyer doors but they were locked. Ahead, though, was a little city park he remembered. He could cut across there, maybe make a call from one of the phone booths by Wilshire and Rodeo Drive.
He crossed the street and entered the park, crossing the dry, beaten grass. It was surprisingly empty for this time of day. He circled around the scummy duck pond and trotted under a long line of sycamores. At Wilshire he turned left, angling back toward—
The Conway building wasn’t there. In its place was a strange sculpted thing made of glass and blue, rubbery-looking stuff.
Carlos stood frozen for a moment, trying to get his bearings. This was Wilshire, that was for sure; wasn’t Rodeo off that way?
The damned inverted vision had probably screwed up his sense of direction. In the distance towered the Sapporo building, but next to it was something that fanned out into an outrageous plumed top.
Feeling dizzy, he looked around. Now that he looked closely, he noticed that the people were kind of odd, wearing clothes that bagged in funny places and were cut the wrong way.
Carlos backed away from the street, into the park. He ran back toward the duck pond. It was easier to run than to try to straighten out his swirl of emotions and questions.
He reached the pond and looked up at the looming bulk of the Center. Something about its roof—
Two policemen were walking toward him, coming around the pond. He turned without thinking and fled.
Around a stand of eucalyptus, down a path—and there were two more police, weapons drawn. It was hard to read their expressions, inverted, but they were looking at him.