Recursion(11)

Their weekend hikes in the foothills. Reports on how much snow still lingers in the high country. A concert they saw at Red Rocks. Results of her mom’s neurologist appointments in Denver. Movies they’ve seen. Books read. The neighborhood gossip.

Most of the updates come from her dad.

Sometimes her mom is lucid, her old self, and they talk like they always have.

More often, Dorothy struggles to carry a conversation.

Helena is irrationally homesick for all things Colorado. For the long view from her parents’ deck across the plain toward the Flatirons, the start of the Rockies. For the color green, since the only foliage to be seen on the rig is the small garden in the greenhouse. But mostly for her mother. She aches to be with her during what must be the scariest time of her life.

The hardest part is not being able to share any details of her tremendous progress on the chair, all of which is covered under an ironclad NDA. She suspects Slade listens in on every conversation. Of course, when she asked him, he denied it, but she still suspects.

Because of confidentiality concerns, no visitors are allowed on the rig, and no crew are given shore leave before their contracts are up, with the exception of family or medical emergencies.

Wednesday evenings have become designated party nights in an attempt to develop some level of workplace camaraderie. It’s a challenge for Helena, a hardcore introvert who, until recently, has led the life of a solitary scientist. They play paintball, volleyball, and basketball on the platform. Grill out by the pool and tap kegs of shipped-in beer. They blast music and get drunk. Sometimes they even dance. The courts and grilling area are enclosed by tall panels of glass to cut the near-constant barrage of wind. But even with the barriers, they often have to shout to be heard.

In foul weather, they gather in the communal wing off the cafeteria to play board games, or hide-and-seek in the superstructure.

As almost everyone’s boss on the rig but Slade’s, she’s hesitant to get close to people on her team. But she’s in a desert of water for as far as anyone can possibly see, stranded twenty stories above the ocean. Eschewing friendship and intimacy feels like it would lead her down the path of psychotic isolation.

It’s during a game of hide-and-seek, in a top-floor linen closet, that she fucks Sergei—the genius electrical engineer and beautiful man who always destroys her at racquetball. They’re standing too close in the dark as the seekers run past their hiding place, and suddenly she’s kissing him and pulling him toward her and he’s tugging her shorts down and pinning her against the wall.

Marcus brought Sergei over from Moscow. He might be the purest scientist in the group, and he’s definitely the most competitive.

But he isn’t her “rig crush.” That would be Rajesh, the software engineer Slade recently hired in advance of the D-Wave’s arrival. There’s a warmth and honesty in his eyes that draw her in. He’s soft-spoken and hugely intelligent. Over breakfast yesterday, he suggested they start a book club.





Day 302


The quantum processors arrive on a vast container ship. It’s like Christmas morning, everyone standing on the deck, watching with a horrified fascination as the rig’s crane hoists $30 million worth of computing power two hundred feet up onto the main platform.





Day 312


Mapping is back, the new processors up and running, code being written that will map a memory and upload its neural coordinates into the reactivation apparatus. The sense of having stalled has passed. There is momentum again, Helena’s mood shifting from loneliness to exhilaration, but also a sense of wonder at Slade’s prescience. Not just at the macro level in predicting the immensity of her vision, but more impressively at the granular—the fact that he knew the perfect tool for handling the vast amount of data associated with mapping human memory. And he knew one processor wouldn’t be enough. He bought two.

At her weekly dinner with Slade, she informs him that if progress continues at this pace, they’ll be ready for their first human trial in a month.

His face lights up. “Seriously?”

“Seriously. And I’m just letting you know now, I will be the first to try it out.”

“Sorry. Way too dangerous.”

“How is that your decision?”

“A thousand ways. Besides, without you, we’d be lost.”

“Marcus, I insist.”

“Look, we can discuss this later, but in the meantime let’s celebrate.”

He goes to his wine fridge and takes out a ’47 Cheval Blanc. It takes him a moment to remove the delicate cork, and then he empties the bottle into a crystal decanter.

“Not too much of this left in the world,” he says.

The moment Helena lifts the glass to her nose and inhales the sweet, spicy perfume of the ancient grapes, her concept of what wine can be is irrevocably altered.

“To you, and to this moment,” Slade says, gently touching his glass against hers.

The taste of it is like what all the wine she’s ever had has been aspiring to be, the scales of what is good, great, and transcendent recalibrating in her head.

It is otherworldly.

Warm, rich, opulent, stunningly fresh.

Stewed red fruits, flowers, chocolate, and—

“Been meaning to ask you something,” Slade says, interrupting her reverie.