The brothers wheeled the patients back to their spots before the gigantic screen. Mr. Jones watched the cake burn.
Finally they came for him. The smiling brother inserted Mr. Jones into the front row of the audience, only a few feet from the screen. “Best seat in the house for our birthday boy,” he said. A huge plastic dial was set to C–15. There were thousands of other channels.
The orderlies left him there. He was relieved to be away from them, but he did not want to look at the screen. He’d watched enough TV in his life.
Yet. Images danced to get his attention. Thin young men in white suits, old–fashioned sailors, fought each other in a dance hall. As he watched, the figures became three dimensional, and the TV became not a cinema but a stage.
Someone behind him touched him on the shoulder, and a low, soft voice spoke into his ear. “You’re not that old. Remember that.” He looked up, then leaned out to the side, trying to catch a glimpse of the speaker, but he — or she — was already gone.
The old man next to him laughed. “Look at those cavemen go,” he said.
Mr. Jones waited for the voice to return. The images, however, kept drawing his eyes to the screen. Soon he was nodding, smiling. He forgot about his fear of the orderlies, and the uneaten cake, and the teenager with the orange–black hair.
§
The images never ceased. There was no plot that he could sense, no order to the scenes, yet still he could not look away. He did not know how long he watched. He only came to himself when the orderlies pulled him away from the screen to wheel him to a small bedroom in another wing of the building.
The walls were gray. Above the bed, a picture of a spaceship hung at an odd angle.
“See?” the smiling orderly asked. “Home sweet home.” He tugged the blanket almost to Mr. Jones’ chin. Thick fingers caressed the wrinkled skin of his neck. “Warm as gravy.”
“When can I see the doctor?” Mr. Jones asked.
“That’s not the question you should be asking,” the smiling one said. “No, you should be asking yourself, how did I get in this position? Three time’s the charm, Jonesy. Twice’t you took the hard left turn out of here and twice’t we brought you back. The third one, now…” His grin was yellow. “…the third time they’re going to take yer word for it. Them’s the rules.”
The silent brother flicked out the lights. The brothers stood in the white rectangle of the doorway for a long moment. Finally they closed the door.
Mr. Jones lay in the dark. The pillow, the sheets, smelled strongly of bleach. What did the orderly mean, hard left turn? Memories tumbled past his eyes, but he was unsure if these were images from his life or things he had seen on the screen. A tuxedo shirt draped over metal chair. A long–haired man, pale and naked to the waist, turning over white cards, one by one, each card inscribed with a sentence. And this: a dark–skinned woman with beautiful cheekbones lying in a bed, naked, one knee cocked, smiling at him. He longed for all the stories behind these images.
§
There were no windows in the room, but Mr. Jones felt that many hours had passed since they put him to bed. The wheelchair was against the wall, four feet way. He slid the bedclothes off him, and then put one foot to the floor, then the next. He leaned forward, one hand braced against the headboard. His thighs trembled as they took his weight.
The orderlies caught him as he was moving toward the chair. Standing was against the rules. But walking? That was right out.
“Watch yourself, Jonesy,” the smiling orderly said as they set him into the chair. “We won’t have your shenanigans.”
They wheeled him out to the solarium, where the other patients were already waiting. Again Mr. Jones asked for the doctor.
“No special treatment,” the smiling orderly said. “You know better than that.”
Mr. Jones regarded the screen. He didn’t know what time it was. The lights were low.
He leaned back.
§
A soft voice awoke him. No, that was the wrong word. He was awake, but dreaming. Or perhaps the TV was dreaming for him.
“The Moon boys are away,” the voice said. It was low and sweet. “Care to spend some time together?”
“Who are you?” he said.
The figure leaned around the wing of the chair, bending low to look him with kohl–rimmed eyes through a curtain of orange and black hair. The thin, powdered face belonged to a child not much older than sixteen. “Call me Jeanie.”
Jeanie steered the chair out of the pack and around the other side of the huge screen. There was another hallway there he didn’t remember seeing before. But then again, he remembered so little. This teenager pushing him had been watching him from across the room yesterday, he was almost sure of it.
This corridor’s wooden floor was weather–streaked and smelled of mildew. It seemed to stretch on forever.
“Where are we going?” Mr. Jones asked. “Out?” He could not hide the eagerness in his voice. Perhaps it was panic.
“I don’t have the permission sets for that,” Jeanie said. “I’m just a visitor, here to see an ancestor — ostensibly.” The accent was American. He was afraid of Americans.
“You’re a spy,” he said.
Jeanie’s laugh was a giggle that was almost a cackle.
The teenager pushed his chair through French doors, and then they were outside, in a winter’s garden, the chair rattling across uneven bricks. The sky was gray, heavy with mist, and the air was cool against his face. Stone planters like great funeral urns stood in rows, most empty but a few topped with brown, dying plants. Jeanie gave him a final push, nearly jolting him from his chair, and then jumped in front of him and stopped him with hands on his bony knees.
“I’ve been sent,” Jeanie said. “To rescue you.”
A low stone wall curved in front of them. Beyond the wall the ground rose steeply, so that they seemed to be at the bottom of a bowl. Leafless black trees rose up into fog. The top of the hill was invisible.
“This is the limit,” Jeanie said. “Outside, but not out. The rest is up to you.”
The rest? He wanted to go inside. He wanted the TV.
“There are people waiting for you out there,” Jeanie said. “People who remember you.”
“Who?” he asked.
“People who love you. Who know who you are.”
“I… No. I don’t want…”
“If you stay here, you’ll die,” Jeanie said, standing with hands on hips like Peter Pan. “You’ve tried to end it a couple times already. If you do it again they won’t revive you, no matter what your mental state is. Do you understand? Those are the rules.”
The talking went on for a long time. Rules. Explanations. Technical considerations. Why was he outside? It was cold out here. The teenager filled the air with words.
A hint of movement caught his eye. He look up the hill, into the fog. Something dark and low to the ground slipped behind a tree.
“What is it?” Jeanie said. Then: “Oh shit.” But the teenager was looking over his shoulder, at the doors they’d come through. Jeanie grabbed his hand, scrawled something there with a black pen.
“I’ll be waiting,” the teenager said, and then kissed him on the lips, quick as a kitten’s bite.
Jeanie scampered atop the wall, then vanished. Mr. Jones wanted to yell a warning. There were wild animals out there! But the door opened behind me, and he did not want to give the spy away.
“Ah, there you are,” a man said. A BBC presenter voice.
Mr. Jones put a hand against the top of one wheel, pushed down. The chair barely turned.
“Come out of the garden, Mr. Jones,” the man said. He patted Mr. Jones’ arm as if they were old friends. Perhaps they were. “You’ll catch your death in the fog.”
“You’re the doctor.”
“Why yes. Very good. Do you remember my name?”
He could not.
“Benway,” he said. “Doctor Benway. At your service. I understand that you
want to talk with me now, rather than waiting for our usual?”
Mr. Jones nodded.
“Absolutely not a problem. I have an hour free. Would you like to go inside?”
§
The doctor’s office was everything Mr. Jones expected, and more so. A set decorator for a 1962 film about a psychiatrist would have made no alterations.
“I hope you understand my concern,” Dr. Benway said. “If you feel at all… out of sorts, I hope you know that my door is always open.” He made a show of sucking on his cigarette. Mr. Jones stared at the tip of it. He did not remember being a smoker, but he felt as if he must have been one; in fact, he might have smoked quite a lot.
The doctor said, “And are you?”
Mr. Jones looked up.
“Out of sorts?” the doctor asked.
“No, I’m… Yes. I want to go home.”
“Home.” Dr. Benway said. “Home. That’s a tricky one.” He tapped his cigarette into a glass ashtray that was large enough to serve hors d’oeuvres. “Unfortunately, Mr. Jones, that window has closed.”
“Window?” Mr. Jones asked.
“We transferred you here just in time. A few days longer and you’d have been in no position to accept the offer. That position, of course, being six feet under.”
Mr. Jones opened his mouth in shock, then shut it.
“Apologies, apologies,” Dr. Benway said. “In a previous revival you laughed at that joke. Loved it. Still. The point is…” He showed Mr. Jones the gap between index finger and thumb. “You nearly missed it. He who hesitates is lost. Upload–wise.”
“Upload?” Mr. Jones asked.
“A terrible term,” the doctor said. “Inadequate and inaccurate. There is no software, only hardware. Look inside the body, and where would we find this self that we are all so fond of, if not in the hard stuff? All those carefully grown patterns of neurons and synapses in your head, the web of glial cells, the millions of calcium ions loaded up and ready to spring… Oh! And not just in the frontal cortex, not even the whole brain, but down to the emotional centers in the brain stem, down into the spine, down and down and down into the hundred million neurons of the enteric nervous system —”
The doctor finally noticed Mr. Jones’ confusion.
“The gut, Mr. Jones. The so–called second brain. But why stop there? What about all those nerve pathways running hither and yon through your old body? Where do we draw the line of what must be copied, and what may be left behind? Do you see the problem?”
“He don’t, Doc.”
Mr. Jones startled in his chair like an infant. He hadn’t even heard the orderly enter the office. No, both orderlies. The Moon boys, Jeanie had called them. They slid into position on each side of the doctor like a pair of rooks.
“Never does,” the smiling one said. “Wasting yer breath.”
“No,” the doctor said. “He’s getting it. You are getting it, aren’t you, Mr. Jones? We’re making a breakthrough.”
The silent orderly stared hungrily into Mr. Jones’ eyes.
Mr. Jones looked down, and saw that there was writing on his palm. Instinctively he closed his fingers to hide it. “I want to go back to my room,” he said.
“To do what, exactly?” the smiling brother asked.
“I think what my associate means is that there’s nothing more important right now than solving the problem before us. Namely —”
“Namely that you’re fucked,” the orderly said. “Neurologically speaking.” His silent brother nodded.
The doctor raised his hands. “Not your fault, of course. Dementia is quite common in the aged, especially someone like you who is extremely… well. Systems break down. And in your case — in the case of everyone here in the Temperance Building — we had to take you as–is. Because it’s all or nothing. There is no you that is not that which is, do you follow?”
“Please…” Mr. Jones said.
“He ain’t following shite,” the orderly said. “This lad’s insane.”
The doctor took a breath, then seemed to mentally back up to take another run at the problem. “Even if we could tell the difference between what was ‘damage’ and what was the result of the ‘natural’ action of your mind — which we can’t, not with anything approaching certainty — we could not return you to some idealized ‘true self’ — because who can say what that would be? Only you, Mr. Jones. You have to give your permission for us to operate on you. And not just vaguely — you must understand the risks. The laws are quite strict on this matter.”
Operate? Mr. Jones thought.
“Get to the conundrum, Doc,” the orderly said. “Then we can get him off your hands.”
The doctor frowned, but even he seemed unwilling to make eye contact with the orderly. “The conundrum, as my associate puts it, is this: What if the state of your brain is the very thing that prevents you from giving your permission?”
He opened his hands as if displaying the final card in a magic trick.
The three of them watched Mr. Jones.
They want inside my head, he thought.
Dr. Benway recognized his distress. “You don’t have to decide now,” he said. “We’ve got all the time in the world.”
§
Mr. Jones pretended to watch the screen. But then, as soon as he felt the orderlies had left the room, he squeezed shut his eyes. He kept his eyes closed for the rest of the day, until the orderlies came to move him back to his room.
“We know what you’re up to, Jonesy.” The smiling orderly leaned in so that his lips grazed Mr. Jones’ ear. He whispered: “You want out.”
The orderly straightened and waggled his eyebrows. “Show him, brother.”
The silent one stood on the other side of the bed. In his hand was a huge kitchen knife, the blade tall as a head of cabbage, hefty enough to cleave bone.
“I’d ask if you recognize it,” the smiler said. “But of course you don’t. And you’ll never get your hands on it again. Fool us once, Jonesy. You ain’t getting out of here that easy.”
§
Mr. Jones lay in bed, watching the strip of light beneath the door, waiting for the Moon boys to return. They were right, he was filled with an urge to flee — but to where? There was something he needed to do, but he could not recall what it was.
He was afraid of falling asleep. Finally he eased out of the bed and stood, one hand braced against the headboard. His legs held him.
He made his way in the dark to the doorway, flipped on the lights. He blinked against the glare.
He opened his palm. In shaky letters was written: MIDNIGHT GARDEN.
At first he could not remember who had done this to him. Then he remembered the garden, and the girl — or was it a boy? — with the black and orange hair, the red lips. Little Jeanie. But when was midnight? There were no clocks here.
Then he thought, If there are no clocks, then now is as likely to be the right time as any. He pushed his cold feet into his slippers and pulled on the purple jacket.
He opened the door an inch, listening for footsteps. Then he pushed the door a fraction wider, and saw that the corridor was empty. Which way was the solarium? Left? Right? Doors stretched away in both directions.
He chose a direction, instantly forgetting which one he’d picked. He dragged a hand along the wall to steady himself, lifting it as he passed each doorway, hopscotching past number after golden number. At some point he must have forgotten to put his hand back to the wall because he was walking steadily now. As soon as he realized this, he tried to forget that, too. The trick was to pretend that he was not so old, not such a cripple. He was not dying. No, these were his golden years.
The light globes on the walls around him began to sputter. He stopped, looked back. The hallway behind him had become banded with dark, half the lights out now. Far down the hallway, something animal–like slipped into one of the deeper shadows. He glimpsed gleaming fur and red eyes.
He wished he had the orderly’s knife. He had wiel
ded it once, evidently. Why hadn’t he hidden for himself where he could find it?
The lights in his section of the hall suddenly went out. He forced himself to move faster. Then all the lights went out, up and down the hall. He froze, his heart drumming in his chest. He turned in the dark, trying to adjust to the gloom.
Then something touched his arm. He cried out and jerked away.
A face leaned close to him. Jeanie said, “Look at you, walking.” The teenager tugged his jacket a little tighter.
“There’s something coming,” he said.
“We’re close,” the child said.
§
Somehow Jeanie knew the way through the dark. A pair of doors opened and then they were outside, in the garden. She helped him up onto the low wall, then said, “You have to step down yourself. That’s the rules.”
Permissions. Rules. He remembered her trying to explain, but did not remember the explanations.
He stepped down, stumbled, but managed to stay upright. He expected some sign that he’d crossed a barrier, some inner chime or outer alarm, but there was nothing.
Jeanie held him as he struggled to get his legs to move up the hill. He breathed hard in the wet air. At any moment he expected pursuers — the animal he’d glimpsed, or the brothers — to appear behind them. But then the fog enveloped them and he lost sight of the Temperance Building. He walked with Jeanie’s hand in his, pulling him onward, until suddenly they broke through the fog.
Suddenly they were walking on a wide city street. The many lanes were empty of cars, and all the streetlights were dead. The only light came from a hazy moon drooping between black skyscrapers, and from a scattering of small fires burning in high windows. The tops of the buildings were jagged as if they’d been chewed off.
Mr. Jones looked at Jeanie in confusion. “What happened?”
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