Recursion(13)
“Does that feel OK?” Lenore asks.
“Yeah.”
“I’m going to lock you in now.”
Lenore opens two compartments embedded in the headrest and unfolds a series of telescoping titanium rods, which she screws into housings on the exterior of the microscope to stabilize it.
“Try to move your head now,” Lenore says.
“I can’t.”
“How does it feel to be sitting in your chair?” Slade asks.
“I kind of want to throw up.”
Helena watches as everyone files out of the testing bay and into an adjacent control room that is visually connected by a wall of glass. After a moment, Slade’s voice comes through a speaker in the headrest: “Can you hear me?”
“Yes.”
“We’re going to dim the lights now.”
Soon all she can see are the faces of her team, glowing a faint blue in the light of a dozen monitors.
“Try to relax,” Slade says.
She takes in a deep breath through her nose and lets it out slowly as the geometric array of SQUID detectors begins to hum softly above her, a soft whirring that feels like a billion nano-massages against her scalp.
They have endlessly debated what type of memory should be the first one they map. Something simple? Complex? Recent? Old? Happy? Tragic? Yesterday, Helena decided they were overthinking it. How does one define a “simple” memory anyway? Is there even such a thing when it comes to the human condition? Consider the albatross that landed on the platform during her run this morning. It’s a mere flicker of thought in her mind that will one day be cast out into that wasteland of oblivion where forgotten memories die. And yet it contains the smell of the sea. The white, wet feathers of the bird glistening in the early sun. The pounding of her heart from the exertion of the run. The cold slide of sweat down her sides and the burn of it in her eyes. Her wondering in that moment where the bird considered home in the unending sameness of the sea.
When every memory contains a universe, what does simple even mean?
Slade’s voice: “Helena? Are you ready?”
“I am.”
“You have a memory picked out?”
“Yes.”
“Then I’m going to count down from five, and when you hear the tone…remember.”
BARRY
November 5, 2018
In summer, the train would be standing room only, packed with Manhattanites heading for the Hamptons. But it is a cold November afternoon, the gun-gray clouds threatening the season’s first snow, and Barry has the coach car on the Long Island Railroad almost entirely to himself.
As he stares through the window, watching the lights of Brooklyn shrink away through the dirty glass, his eyes grow heavy.
When he wakes, night has fallen. The view out the window is now darkness, points of light, and his own reflection in the glass.
Montauk is the last stop on the line, and he steps off the train at a little before eight p.m. into a frigid rain sheeting down through the illumination of the streetlamps. He tightens the belt of his woolen trench coat and turns up the collar, his breath steaming in the chill. He walks alongside the tracks to the station house, which has been shuttered for the night, and climbs into the taxi he ordered from the train.
Most of downtown Montauk has been closed for the season. He was here once before, twenty years ago, with Julia and Meghan, on a crowded summer weekend when the streets and beaches were jammed with vacationers.
Pinewood Lane is a secluded, sand-dusted road, cracked and buckled by tree roots. A half mile in, the cab’s headlights strike a gated entrance, where a plaque with the Roman numeral “VI” is affixed to one of the stone pillars.
“Pull up to the box,” he tells the driver.
The car edges forward, Barry’s window humming down into the door.
He reaches out, presses the call button. He knows they’re home. Before he left New York, he called, pretending to be FedEx trying to schedule a late delivery.
A woman answers, “Behrman residence.”
“This is Detective Sutton with the New York Police Department. Is your husband at home, ma’am?”
“Is everything OK?”
“Yes. I need to speak with him.”
There’s a pause, followed by the sound of hushed conversation.
Then a man’s voice comes through the speaker. “This is Joe. What’s this regarding?”
“I’d rather tell you in person. And in private.”
“We were about to sit down to dinner.”
“I apologize for the intrusion, but I just took a train here from the city.”
The private drive is a one-laner that winds through stretches of grassland and forest on a gradual ascent toward a residence that’s perched atop a gentle bluff. From a distance, the house appears to be constructed entirely of glass, the interior glowing like an oasis in the night.
Barry pays the driver in cash, including an extra $20 to wait for him. Then he steps out into the rain and climbs the steps toward the entrance. The front door swings open as he reaches the stoop. Joe Behrman looks older than his driver’s license photograph, his hair now streaked with silver and carrying just enough weight in his sun-damaged face to make his jowls sag.
Franny has aged more gracefully.
For three long seconds, he’s unsure if they’re going to invite him in, but then Franny finally steps back, offers a forced smile, and ushers him into their home.