Recursion(8)
November 1, 2007
Day 1
Her stomach is in knots as she watches the Northern California coastline dwindling away. She’s sitting behind the pilot, under the roar of the rotors, watching the ocean stream beneath her, five hundred feet below the helicopter skids.
It is not a good day at sea. The clouds drape low; the water is gray and specked with whitecaps. And the farther from land they go, the darker the world becomes.
Through the helicopter’s rain-streaked windshield, she sees something materializing in the distance—a structure jutting out of the water, still a mile or two away.
She says into her microphone, “Is that it?”
“Yes ma’am.”
Leaning forward against the shoulder harness, she watches with intense curiosity as the chopper begins its approach, slowing now, descending toward a colossus of iron, steel, and concrete that stands on three legs in the ocean like a giant tripod. The pilot pushes the stick and they bank left into a slow circle around the structure, whose main platform sits approximately twenty stories above the sea. A few cranes still overhang the sides—relics from the oil-and gas-drilling days. But otherwise, the rig has been stripped of its industrial trappings and transformed. On the primary platform, she sees a full basketball court. Swimming pool. Greenhouse. What appears to be a running track around the perimeter.
They land on a helipad. The turbo shaft begins to wind down, and through her window, Helena watches a man in a yellow bomber jacket jogging toward the helicopter. As he opens the cabin door, she fumbles with the three-point locking mechanism on her restraints until they finally unlatch.
The man helps her out of the chopper, down onto the skid, and then the landing surface. She follows him toward a set of stairs that descends from the helipad onto the main platform. The wind rips through her hoodie and T-shirt, and as she reaches the steps, the sound of the helicopter dies away, leaving the gaping silence of the open ocean.
They come off the last step onto a sprawling concrete surface, and there he is, moving toward them across the platform.
Her heart kicks.
His beard is unkempt, his dark hair wild and blowing in the wind. He is wearing a pair of blue jeans and a faded sweatshirt, and he is unmistakably Marcus Slade—inventor, philanthropist, business magnate, founder of more groundbreaking technology companies than she can name, touching sectors as diverse as cloud computing, transportation, space, and AI. He is one of the world’s richest, most influential citizens. A high-school dropout. And only thirty-four years old.
He smiles and says, “We’re doing this!”
His enthusiasm calms her nerves, and as they reach each other on the platform, she’s unsure what’s called for. A handshake? Polite hug? Slade makes the choice for her with a warm embrace.
“Welcome to Fawkes Station.”
“Fawkes?”
“As in Guy Fawkes—remember, remember the fifth of November?”
“Oh. Right. Because memory?”
“Because disrupting the status quo is kind of my thing. You must be cold, let’s get you inside.” They’re moving now, heading toward a five-story superstructure on the far side of the platform.
“Not quite what I was expecting,” Helena says.
“I bought it a few years ago from ExxonMobil when the oil field ran dry. At first I was going to make this a new home for myself.”
“You mean a fortress of solitude?”
“Totally. But then I realized I could live here and also use it as the perfect research facility.”
“Why perfect?”
“A million reasons, but the most critical are privacy and security. I have my hands in a number of fields that are rife with corporate espionage, and this is about as controllable an environment as you can get, right?”
They pass the swimming pool, covered for the season, the tarp flapping violently in the November wind.
She says, “First off, thank you. Secondly, why me?”
“Because inside your head is a technology that could alter humanity.”
“How so?”
“What’s more precious than our memories?” he asks. “They define us and form our identities.”
“Also, there will be a fifteen-billion-dollar market for Alzheimer’s treatments in the next decade.”
Marcus only smiles.
She says, “Just so you know, my primary goal is to help people. I want to find a way to save memories for deteriorating brains that can no longer retrieve them. A time capsule for core memories.”
“I hear that. Can you think of any reason this can’t be both a philanthropic and commercial endeavor?”
They pass the entrance to a large greenhouse, the walls inside steamed and dripping with condensation.
“How far offshore are we?” she asks, looking across the platform out to sea, where a dense cloud is rolling toward them.
“One hundred seventy-three miles. How’d your family and friends take the news that you were falling off the face of the Earth to do some super-secret research?”
She isn’t sure how to answer that. Her life as of late has unspooled under the fluorescent lights of laboratories and revolved around the processing of raw data. She has never managed to achieve escape velocity from the irresistible gravity of her work—for her mom, but if she’s honest, also for herself. Work is the only thing that makes her feel alive, and she’s wondered, on more than one occasion, if that means she’s broken.