Before We Die Alone

by Ike Hamill

  “Insane,” I say again.

  “This is it,” he says.

  “This is what?”

  He’s staring at the floor.

  “Come forward one more step,” he says.

  I obey.

  “Okay,” the bear says.

  The flashing yellow light on the other side of the room turns solid red. We’re standing on a little gray circle, just big enough for the two of us. Outside that circle, the rest of the floor has gone black. I turn back towards the elevator and see that there’s a red light on that wall as well. The floor is so dark that it almost gives me vertigo. It looks like we’re perched at the edge of existence.

  Above us, darkness is descending. Only now it occurs to me that I don’t know how this room was lit. It seemed to have plenty of light, but there was no obvious source. Blackness is creeping in from all sides to rectify this incongruency.

  “I love this part,” the bear says.

  As the last of the darkness closes in, all I see is the gray floor beneath us and the red lights at either end of the room. Stars begin to light up in the space. Little dots that appear infinitely far away, and yet somehow must be contained in the room.

  Directly above us, one of the stars is brighter than the rest. It starts to pulse through different colors. On one of the blue pulses, it expands and I can see that it’s not a ball of light, but a tangle of blue strands. I can only guess at the size and height of the thing. I have nothing else for reference. On the green pulse, I see that the strands are twisted in the center. The bands of light make a bow.

  On the next red pulse, the strands pull out to the sides. When they’re orange, they form a figure eight. By the way one strand passes behind the other, I see that it’s more like the sign for infinity.

  It grows bigger and bigger.

  As the light comes in contact with the other stars, they get absorbed into the display.

  Stars too far away to be incorporated are stretched towards it. They shift into chromatic rainbows as they’re elongated.

  “You see why we’re still concerned about containment,” the bears says.

  The infinite loop extends even more and it blazes bright white as it reaches towards the red lights on either side of this giant room. Sparks fly there. I’m guessing that’s where the walls would be if I could see them.

  “Shut it down,” the bear orders.

  With a crackle, the loop disappears. Not all at once—the loop snuffs itself out by burning out like a trail of gunpowder, lit in the middle. The ends chase around to the other side and then it pops when oblivion meets oblivion. The lights swell back up.

  My hair is standing on end.

  The bear gives himself a shake from nose to tail, settling his fur back down.

  “That was a hundred terawatts, and it wasn’t even breathing heavy,” the bear says. “Imagine enough power for the whole planet—all you need is a way to distribute it.”

  “Worthless if it can’t be contained.”

  “That’s right,” the bear says.

  “Show me the code.”

  Chapter Thirty-Three

  * Working *

  I BEGIN MY THIRD engagement working for Janice right away. I was a patient the first time and a hostage the second. This time, I’ve come back on my own.

  The team doesn’t know how to move forward.

  They have a pile of theories documented in one place, and a pile of code implemented in another. They don’t have a plan of attack for resolving the specifications, and it seems like they haven’t spent more than an hour thinking about how to test this mess. The bear painted a grim picture of the status, and it turns out that he was being overly optimistic.

  It takes days for us to create a map of the status.

  It takes weeks to create a comprehensive list of tasks and verify that all the requirements will be met.

  The physicists are still reviewing the documentation when I assemble a team to begin planning the testing sequences.

  Meanwhile, the bear grows impatient. Janice tries to mollify him with unrealistic timelines, but I refuse to go along with her charades. I speak only the truth. After one of our meetings, the bear trashes a conference room, leaving nothing but scraps of drywall hanging from the metal studs. I have to give one of the development pods the afternoon off. They were seated right outside of the conference room, and were too traumatized to keep working. Later, I find them playing violent video games in the back of the cafeteria. They’re adjusting to rage with rage. They’re taking on power through roleplaying.

  In short order, we convert the group into a thrumming sports car. We can bolt off the line, corner with confident ease, and our top speed is unknowable. I can’t take much of the credit. Janice and the bear fill the crucial roles, but they must have needed me to complete the puzzle. My primary role is to wrangle the design.

  For clarity—a software specification is a peculiar work of fiction. It pretends to be a detailed description of how the software will work. In theory, with a detailed enough document, the design will flow naturally down the channel that the specification cuts. All design decisions will serve the specification and the gods of code will shine down upon us their golden smiles, amen.

  In practice, the day the specification is agreed upon is the last day that anyone reads it. Design and development then shoot off in independent directions and the final product is no more predictable than the location of a particular brick after a building explodes. Fortunately, I’m an expert in demolition, and to understand how something will explode, you have to understand how it’s constructed. My role is to wrangle the design and development so the specification impacts the work just enough to keep everyone on track.

  Regardless of how I got here, or the disdain I might feel for Janice and the bear, I’m actually happy doing this work. It’s challenging and then rewarding. It’s complex in ways that I never imagined. When we were building the generation systems, the theory behind everything felt like complete nonsense. It was like hiking with a blindfold on and a physicist whispering to me when to turn. In contrast, the containment system is pure logic. We have a million eventualities to contend with, but each one makes sense to me.

  I’m ticking through the completed items at my desk when I sense his presence.

  “I need to have a word with you,” the bear says.

  “There’s a meeting in fifteen minutes. Can it wait until after?”

  “No.”

  I gather my notepad and a pen and I follow the bear through the maze of cubicles. Working in close proximity, I’ve learned to read the bear. When he’s anxious, he walks on all fours and his gait makes the fur on his back flash with each stride. He also carries his abdomen a little tighter. Now that I’m accustomed to it, I can spot it from across the room. He uses his nose to push open the door to the residence hall. I follow him to the end, where my room is.

  The bear has never been in my room. I’m not sure where he stays when he’s not prowling the office floor, but it certainly isn’t one of the residence halls. I don’t think any of the developers would sleep if they saw the bear hanging around near where they lived. They’re all afraid of him. I’m merely annoyed.

  In my room, he crawls up into my recliner. Better that than my bed, I suppose.

  “Sit,” he says.

  “I’m okay.”

  “Sit.”

  Fine. I sit on the edge of the bed and look at him. Before all this, if someone had asked me what I thought of bears I might have said noble, or majestic. Now, I would likely answer sloppy, or rude.

  “You’re going to have to reassign Franklin’s tasks,” the bear says.

  Maybe it’s a reflection on my character—instead of thinking of the man, I think of all the modules he is slated to do.

  “Why?” I ask. We’ve been down this path before. The bear sometimes wants to take the best people and put them on his pet projects. He doesn’t understand what “critical path” means.

  “Franklin won’t be with us a
nymore,’ the bear says.

  I shake my head a little. It’s an involuntary reaction. There’s no way that Franklin would quit. First, I don’t think it’s possible to quit. The people here are all pretty much captives. Second, Franklin enjoyed the work. He was as excited as anyone to rush in and start working each day. If he could quit, then the office should be empty before noon. I had just heard Franklin arguing a point the day before. He was as invested as anyone I had ever seen on a development team.

  “Wait,” I say, piecing it together. “Did Franklin have an argument with someone? Did he take a stand on something and piss someone off?”

  I can’t imagine who it would be. There was nobody more senior, except maybe…

  “Yes,” the bear says, interrupting my thought.

  “Who? Let me talk to him. I can smooth this over. Give me a chance to fix it.”

  “There’s no fixing it.”

  “Come on,” I say. The bear is always being over-dramatic about this kind of thing. He describes a problem as intractable if it requires more finesse than he currently has the energy for. “Give me a shot.”

  “Smooth things over with the other developers. Come up with something that sounds believable. Tell them that Franklin went to work upstairs. They never talk to the upstairs people anyway. Nobody will ever find out.”

  “What’s wrong with the truth?” I ask.

  The bear’s getting angry. I can tell by the way he holds his ears.

  “The truth is that he pissed me off, so I ate him.”

  I’m on my feet in an instant. I’ve grown casual around the bear, but the honesty in his voice is unmistakable. It’s as if the notion this bear would kill is a fact that I’ve always known. It only took a quick sentence to confirm.

  I pace back and forth. Emotions tick through me like a slideshow. I’m angry, sad, bewildered, frightened, and stunned. Are we all just tools? Do we have no value? At the first argument, are we doomed to be treated as a food source?

  “Unless you think that telling the others would help to motivate them,” the bear says. “I hadn’t considered that.”

  I stop in front of him and turn until my shoulders are square with his sitting form. Everything else fades and anger wins the day. This absurd plushie, this lump of fat and fur—how dare he talk of murder as a motivational tool. My hand flies before my brain can stop it. My slap hits the bear solidly on his muzzle. The snap of flesh fills the room and the bear’s eyes shut as the blow ripples through his jowls. All his muscles tense and he springs to his feet. I’m eye to eye with the wobbling bear.

  His roar vibrates my chest.

  He’s in full dominance mode, and I feel his warm urine on my shins. Bears don’t pee when they’re frightened, they pee to display rage and aggression.

  His rage doesn’t equal mine.

  “Relax,” I say. I reach up with both hands and push his shoulders. He doesn’t topple, but he steps back. When he does, his ass hits the chair and his momentum carries him back into the recliner. “Your stupid anger has caused enough problems for one day. Try to put a cork in it.”

  To my great surprise, he does. Part of me is disappointed. I’m worked up enough that I actually want to fight him. The certainty that I’ll be killed and eaten is no deterrent. The bear takes a deep breath and works his tongue through his cheeks. He regards me and claps his teeth together several times. I used to think that this was an aggressive display, but lately I’ve seen him do it when he’s evaluating.

  My thoughts turn back to Franklin’s tasks. It’s horrible, but I’m already beginning to make plans on who could take on the work. I begin pacing again. Morale is important, but honestly, I’m not sure people will notice that Franklin is gone. They’re used to resources shuffling around, and people are really focused.

  “I won’t say anything,” I say. “That’s what I would do if he really were moved up to an upper floor. I wouldn’t say a thing unless someone asked me, so that’s what I’m going to do.”

  The bear rolls forward and makes a move towards the door.

  “Hold on,” I say. “Let me check the hall first. The team is already afraid of you. I don’t want them to see you in the residence halls.”

  I open my door and stick my head out.

  “Okay,” I tell him.

  He makes haste on all fours down the hall and squeezes through the door at the end. I don’t think he was spotted. Something about the way he moved was new. I think I might have just witnessed what submission looks like for this black bear.

  ---- * ----

  “No, that’s not enough,” I say.

  I’m at the back of the room. The group elected Erica to present their final testing and rollout plan. Janice is next to me, but I ordered the bear to stay away. Even though they don’t know he committed murder, they’re still stifled by his presence.

  Everyone turns to me. I don’t keep them waiting.

  “You’ve shown unit tests for all the subsystems. You’ve shown integration tests. Your tests will verify that all the pieces work independently, and that all of the pieces will combine properly.”

  Everyone is nodding. That’s how I know they don’t yet understand.

  “You haven’t shown how the system will behave when one or more of the parts operates outside the bounds,” I say.

  “But that’s what the integration test shows,” one of the guys says.

  I shake my head and open my laptop. With a couple of clicks, I replace one of their perfect models with my imperfect one.

  “Erica, run the integration test again.”

  They all lean forward a little. I don’t need to watch. I know that their integration will fail.

  It does.

  The levels begin to vacillate and then they shoot off the scales. All the gauges are red within a few seconds. By placing one bad part in a system of thousands, I’ve shown how the world will end.

  There’s always one person in the crowd—“But that’s a false test. You put in a module that wouldn’t pass the unit test, so it’s a situation that would never happen.”

  “Right,” I say. “Can anyone think of a reason that would happen in the real world?”

  Most shake their heads, but a couple are at least trying to think outside the box.

  One young woman starts to raise her hand. She realizes it’s okay to go ahead and speak. “Sabotage?”

  I nod. “That’s one way. Not likely, but yes.”

  She tries again. “Aside from a change in the laws of physics,” she begins. After a pause, her eyebrows go up and she states it again, but with confidence. “A change in the laws of physics.”

  “Exactly,” I say.

  I see that the notion is not resonating with some of the developers. I need to give them an example. “Given freedom in six dimensions, what would be the easiest way to travel to the moon?”

  It takes a second, but it’s the woman at the front, Erica, who comes up with the answer. “I would just jump to a reality where I was already there,” she says. “Then the travel is moot.”

  “Good,” I say. “And what might you know about gravity in that new reality.”

  She puzzles over that and then comes up with it. “Nothing! Gravity could be any constant. You couldn’t make any assumptions about it at all.”

  “Precisely.”

  “But this system is going to operate in our reality,” one of the developers says.

  “The system is,” I say. “But the components…” I let them fill in the rest. The way this thing will work, harvesting the potential between predicted and actual space, its components could be subjected to all kinds of conditions. They might even be folded over into a different fifth-dimensional reality.

  Little whispers break out as people come to this conclusion.

  I turn to Janice. “They’ll need some time to work this through.”

  She smiles at me and puts her hand on mine. “You’re the reason this is going to work,” she says.

  I hope she’s right.


  ---- * ----

  The bear and I ride in silence down to LL5.

  When the door opens, I’m once again stunned by the size of this room. It has been nearly six months since I first saw this place, as far as I can tell. In that time, I’ve stretched my brain to learn as much as I can about every aspect of this machine. I’m afraid that I still don’t know half of it. I’m afraid that nobody does.

  We step out and stand near the wall as the elevator doors close behind us.

  When I was a kid, we went to the beach a few times. Always a good swimmer, I was fearless about venturing out into the deep. Sure, I saw Jaws when I was a kid, and the thought of sharks was daunting. But I always reasoned that a shark would naturally go after someone fatter or slower. I never really feared for my life. That all changed one time when I was eleven. I saw some kids playing out on a sandbar and I decided to go out and join them. I loved the idea of standing in waist-deep water a good fifty yards farther out than everyone else. Between me and them, the water got deep. And my eyes betrayed me—they weren’t kids on a sandbar, they were college kids on surfboards. As I swam towards them, I couldn’t imagine how I made such a stupid mistake.

  The current took me. I panicked. It was dumb luck that I stopped trying to swim back to shore and I cut to the side, so I could try to get help from the surfers. They didn’t see, they were carefully passing a joint between themselves, trying to keep it dry. I got back to the beach with the last of my energy. That moment soured me on swimming in the ocean. After that, I played in the surf sometimes, but never over my head.

  I have the same feeling standing at the edge of this room.

  There is deep water out there, and it’s nearly impossible to make my legs propel me forward into it.

  The bear glances over at me. Maybe he senses my fear.

  “What’s in it for you, anyway?” I ask. Seems like a question I should have asked long ago.

  “I like this place,” he says. “Earth, I mean. I’m glad the asteroid didn’t hit. This is one of my favorite places to be. If I fix the energy problem, then you humans won’t fuck it up so quick.”