Recursion(37)

Slade begins to strip.

“What are you doing?” she asks.

“Fixing this.” Then he looks toward the one-way glass between the testing bay and control room. “Will somebody get her out of here, please?”

Slade’s men burst in as he climbs naked into the tank.

“Please come with us, Dr. Smith.”

Rising slowly, walking out of her own volition into the control room, where she sits behind Sergei and Dr. Wilson as they reactivate Slade’s shaving-cut memory.

All the time thinking, This is wrong, this is wrong, this is wrong, until…

She’s suddenly sitting right here, in this conference room, catching blood with the Kleenex.

Helena looks at Slade.

He’s watching Reed, who’s staring with a kind of entranced smile into nothing.

“Reed?” Slade asks.

The man doesn’t answer.

“Reed, can you hear me?”

Reed turns his head slowly until he’s staring at Slade, blood running over his lips, dripping on the table.

“I died,” Reed says.

“I know. I went back into a memory to save—”

“And it was the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen.”

“What did you see?” Slade asks.

“I saw…” He struggles to put it into words. “Everything.”

“I don’t know what that means, Reed.”

“Every moment of my life. I was rushing through this tunnel that was filled with them, and it was so lovely. I found one I’d forgotten. An exquisite memory. I think it was my first.”

“Of what?” Helena asks.

“I was two, maybe three. I was sitting on someone’s lap on a beach, and I couldn’t turn around to see their face, but I knew that it was my father. We were in Cape May on the Jersey Shore, where we used to vacation. I couldn’t see her, but I knew my mother was behind me too, and my brother, Will, was standing in the distance in the surf, letting the waves hit him. It smelled like the ocean and sunscreen and the funnel cakes someone was selling behind us on the boardwalk.” Tears running down his face now. “I have never felt such love in my entire life. Everything good. Safe. It was a perfect moment before…”

“What?” Slade asks.

“Before I became me.” He wipes his eyes, looks at Slade. “You shouldn’t have saved me. You shouldn’t have brought me back.”

“What are you talking about?”

“I could’ve stayed in that moment forever.”





BARRY





November 2007

Each day is a revelation, every moment a gift. The simple act of sitting across the dinner table from his daughter and listening to her talk about her day feels like a pardon. How could he ever have taken even one second of it for granted?

He drinks in every moment—the way Meghan’s eyes roll when he asks about boys, the way they light up when they talk about the colleges she wants to visit. He cries spontaneously in her presence, but it’s easy enough to blame on quitting the cigarettes, on watching his little girl become a woman.

Julia’s antennae are slightly up. In these moments, he notices her watching him the way one might examine a painting hanging not quite straight.



* * *





Every morning, when consciousness first returns, he lies in bed afraid to open his eyes, fearing he’ll find himself back in his one-bedroom apartment in Washington Heights, with this second chance fading into oblivion.

But he’s always next to Julia, always watching the light come through the blinds, and his only connection to that other life exists in false memories, which he would love to forget.





HELENA





July 5, 2009





Day 613


After dinner, as Helena washes her face and gets ready for bed, she hears a knock at her door, finds Slade standing in the hallway, eyes dark and troubled.

“What happened?” she asks.

“Reed hanged himself in his room.”

“Oh God. Because of the dead memory?”

“Let’s not make any assumptions. The brain of an addict is wired differently from ours. Who knows what he really saw when he died. Anyway, I just thought you should know. But don’t worry. I’ll get him back tomorrow.”

“Get him back?”

“With the chair. I’ll be honest, I’m not looking forward to dying again. As you can imagine, it’s deeply unpleasant.”

“He made a choice to end his life,” Helena says, trying to keep her emotion in check. “I think we should respect that.”

“Not while he’s still under my employ.”



* * *





Lying in bed, hours later, she tosses and turns.

Thoughts rip through her mind, and she can’t shut them off.

Slade has lied to her.

Manipulated her.

Kept her from communicating with her parents.

Stolen a life from her.

While nothing has ever intellectually intrigued her more than the mysterious power of the chair, she doesn’t trust Slade with it. They have altered memories. Changed reality. Brought a man back from the dead. And yet he keeps pushing boundaries with an obsessive determination that makes her wonder what his real endgame is with all of this.