Edge of the Wire, page 24
“You’re aboard the Halifax, Mister Rowe,” the physician told him. “How do you feel?”
He sipped water and tried to think about this question. How did he feel?
“I hurt all over . . . but not as bad as I did down on the planet. All of my limbs are sore. My head hurts worst of all. How did I get here?”
“We sent a landing craft for you and Mister Waverly,” said the doctor. “You were not present during the general evacuation. Apparently, you had gone offline somehow. Off the Goo entirely, it turns out. But we found you. You can watch the footage of your recovery, if you like. It’s not very dramatic though.”
“No . . . Well . . . Maybe eventually,” Rowe managed.
It seemed he had never been so thirsty. The physician appeared to sense this, and refilled his glass.
“Your aneurysm clusters started to fire,” the doctor explained. “The effect would have been very sudden. Based on what we can see in your scans, you likely became unsteady, experienced hallucinations, and then lost vision and consciousness. Does that sound about right?”
“Maybe,” Rowe said. “Am I out of the woods now?”
The physician took his hand and smiled in a way that said the rest of his life was pretty much going to be woods.
“The way the clusters have collapsed on themselves makes it difficult for us to give you a satisfying answer,” she said. “The first scan was inconclusive. Right now we have stability, at least.”
“What does that mean?” Rowe asked.
“It means you may live for longer than your original diagnosis indicated. Your physicians suspected an event like this would kill you . . . but it hasn’t. The aneurysms have settled in a new way, and again, the scan is now inconclusive. The possibility remains that the clusters will continue to act in the way originally forecast. And that means, yes, you could have another episode and pass away in a shorter window of time.”
The doctor hesitated a moment, then continued.
“But in cases like this, with these kinds of errors and revisions, there is also the possibility of an outlier scenario. Your aneurysms may be showing us that they’re going to function in a way that’s vastly different than first believed. The long and short of it is, you may have longer to live than we thought. Perhaps much longer. In these situations . . . we don’t really know.”
Rowe sat up. Memories of what he had seen and felt down on the planet began to rise within him. It suddenly seemed that there were larger things at stake than his own mortality.
“The things that just happened down on Tendus-13 . . .” he said in bewilderment. “It is not a safe place. I believe there may be a danger to the Goo. I’m not sure, but I think something there—down on the surface—can contaminate or hurt it. And I think something is happening down there that I don’t really have the words to describe . . . but I need to try. I need to. You need to know about it. I . . . I . . .”
Rowe became overwhelmed and trailed off.
The physician looked as though Rowe had just suggested he had information that God was somehow in danger from—or threatened by—something on Tendus-13. She patted the top of his hand reassuringly.
“It is clear that your body needs rest, Mister Rowe,” the doctor said. “We’re going to run a few more tests now that you’re conscious. Then we’ll transfer you to a comfortable room where you can recuperate. It is vital that you allow your body time to recover.”
“But I need to tell you,” he said.
“Tell us after we run some tests,” the doctor said. “Nothing is going to go to or from Tendus-13 in the meantime. Okay?”
Rowe merely nodded. He felt too exhausted to object.
It turned out that most of the subsequent tests involved looking into Rowe’s eyes while he held them open and focused where they told him to. The physicians did not tell Rowe what the test results indicated, but they did not seem alarmed by anything they saw.
After about fifteen minutes of this testing, Rowe found himself being floated on a gurney down the halls of the Halifax to private quarters. The doctors wished him well but said nothing else as they departed.
Rowe lay on his back and looked up at the ceiling of the private room. It was composed of white paneling. He traced it with his eyes. He took deep breaths and listened to himself breathing. He did this for a long time.
Then he spoke.
“Noyes, are you there?”
Something began to materialize by his shoulder.
“Full size please,” Rowe said. “Do it as an exception for the dying, and so forth.”
“Alas,” Noyes said as he appeared in miniature. “This room lacks the necessary projection equipment for a full-size render. Poor planning if you ask me.”
“Noyes . . . what the hell just happened?” Rowe asked.
“Short version: you were rescued,” Noyes replied. “You passed out when your aneurysms fired, and—as luck would have it—an ESA craft was descending just at that very moment. Would you like to see the footage?”
“People seem awfully concerned with whether I would like to see footage,” Rowe managed. “Am I really up here? Or am I still down on the planet?”
“You’re up here, boy-o,” Noyes said. “I mean . . . If I’m up here, you’re up here. You’re where I am.”
A beat passed.
“And you wouldn’t lie to me,” Rowe stated, leaning back to look at the white ceiling panels again.
Noyes continued to hover.
“Where is Waverly?” Rowe asked.
“Your friend is undergoing his own recovery process,” Noyes said. “The situation that you encountered on Tendus-13 was remarkable and unusual. You don’t need me to tell you that, boy-o. You’ve both been through extreme trauma—trauma at the limits of what most humans will ever have to endure. I’ll say it for the umpteenth time, but that’s the importance of Silkworms. You brave the things—and you know the things—that average humans simply could not deal with. Mister Waverly is as tough a Silkworm as you’re liable to find, but even he can benefit from some counseling and decompression after a thing like this. There is medication, also. I can report that he’s making good progress; you’ll be able to see him again quite soon. But it’s your own recovery, boy-o, that I’m thinking you ought to focus on. Listen to the doctors on this ship and get your rest.”
“But you know what happened down on Tendus-13?” Rowe asked Noyes. “Correct? And you brought that knowledge up here? Did you bring anything else?”
“I’m sure I don’t understand what you mean,” Noyes replied.
Rowe stared at the ceiling of the room and considered.
He took a deep breath.
“I’m never going to know, am I?” he eventually said.
“Know what?” Noyes responded.
Rowe took a deep breath.
He closed his eyes and did not speak for a long time.
“When I was a kid, my father would always take us to the haunted houses they did at Halloween,” he said to Noyes. “I always hated those things; hated going. I found them so terrifying. Dad would laugh and smile to try to make me feel more comfortable—like it was one big joke—but I was always scared to death. The things inside the haunted houses . . . They were only masks made of rubber and paint—special effects, mostly cheap ones. Looking back, it was all so silly. None of it could have hurt me. But I remember so desperately wanting to be out. Wanting to escape. Wanting it to be over. And as interminable as it was, it did always end. We’d leave the haunted house, and I’d keep walking down the street until I was at least a block away, and then I’d finally have the courage to turn around and look back at it. See the crowd of people standing in front, lined up for their turns inside. See the full height, width, and depth of the structure. And only then would it be over. There might still be a couple of people in scary costumes outside—working the line, spooking the customers to warm them up before they went in—but the experience was over, and that was how I could confirm it. I could see it all. It was a scary thing, but it was contained and finite, you know? From down the block, I could see the totality of the place. All the horror was back inside that house, where I no longer was.”
Noyes said nothing.
Rowe took a deep breath.
“It would be immoral not to tell me if I was living in a simulation now,” Rowe told Noyes. “If I had been uploaded. You wouldn’t be doing me some kind of favor. You would be hurting me, and that’s not your function. You understand that, right?”
“Understand what now?” said Noyes.
“I’m being serious,” Rowe said. “If you’re going to joke, you can fuck right off.”
“Let me ask you a question, then,” Noyes said. “You’re concerned about the fact that whatever is on Tendus-13 could be moved off the planet and into the interstellar Goo, yes? I don’t have to be too bright to figure that one out, do I? You just told the doctor that. Tried to, anyway, didntcha? You are also concerned that you are still down on the planet, and that this is a simulation, I gather.”
Rowe hesitated for a moment, wondering if answering truthfully would somehow be a misstep that would make him vulnerable. Then, seeing no other option, gave in and simply nodded.
“Well, let me ask you something boy-o, and then I’ll go,” Noyes continued. “One last question, and I’ll leave you alone to recuperate. So . . . Maybe you’re still down on the planet, or maybe what was down on the planet is now up here with you. My question is: Which is worse?”
Rowe closed his eyes.
“Or look at it another way,” Noyes added. “Which is better?”
Rowe would have to think about that one for a while, he realized.
Luckily for him, it suddenly seemed that he had all the time in the world.
Scott Kenemore, Edge of the Wire
