Recursion(92)
* * *
He becomes aware of lying on his side in total darkness.
Sitting up, Barry’s movement triggers a panel of light above him, dim at first, then slowly brightening, warming into existence a small, windowless room containing the bed, a dresser, and a nightstand.
He throws back the blankets and climbs out of bed, unsteady on his feet.
Goes to the door and steps out into a sterile hallway. After fifty feet, it emerges onto a main artery that accesses this corridor and three others while also opening on the other side to a living space one floor below.
He sees a full kitchen.
Table tennis and pool tables.
And a large television with a woman’s face paused on the screen. He has some vague recognition of her face, but he can’t conjure her name. The entire history of his life lurks just below the surface, but he can’t quite grasp it.
“Hello?”
His voice echoes through the structure.
No answer.
He heads down the main hallway, passing a placard affixed to the wall beside the opening to the next corridor.
Wing 2—Level 2—Lab
And another.
Wing 1—Level 2—Offices
Then down some stairs and onto the main level.
There’s a gently sloping vestibule straight ahead that grows colder with every step, ending finally at a door that looks complex enough to seal a spacecraft.
A digital readout on the wall beside it displays real-time conditions on the other side:
Wind: from the NE 56.2 mph; 90.45 kph
Temp: -51.9 °F; -46.6 °C
Wind Chill: -106.9°F; -77.2 °C
Humidity: 27%
His socked feet are freezing, and in here the wind carries the moaning quality of a deep-voiced ghost. He grasps the lever on the door, and following the visual instructions, forces it down and counterclockwise.
A series of locks release, the door free to swing on its hinges.
He pushes it open, and the coldest breath of air he has ever encountered blasts him in the face with a sensation beyond temperature. Like fingernails clawing away his skin. Instantly, he feels his nose hairs freezing, and when he draws breath, he chokes on the pain of it sliding down his esophagus.
Through the open hatch, he sees a walkway angling down from the station toward the icecap, the world cloaked in darkness and swirling with needles of snow that sting his face like shrapnel.
The visibility is less than a quarter mile, but by the light of the moon, he can just make out other structures in proximity. A series of large cylindrical tanks he suspects is a water-treatment plant. A swaying tower that’s either some sort of gantry or a drilling rig. A telescope, folded down against the storm. Vehicles of varying size on continuous tracks.
He can’t stand it anymore. He takes hold of the door with fingers already beginning to stiffen and forces it to close. The locks engage. The wind downshifts from a scream to that sustained and ghostly moan.
He walks out of the vestibule and under the lights of the pristine and seemingly empty station, his face burning as it reawakens from the slightest touch of frostbite.
In this moment, he is a man without memory, and the sense of being adrift in time is a crushing, existential horror. Like waking from a troubled sleep, when the lines between reality and dreams are still murky and you’re calling out to ghosts.
All he has is his first name, and an out-of-focus sense of himself.
At the seating area around the television, he sees an open DVD case and a remote control. He sits on one of the sofas, takes the controller, and presses Play.
On the screen, the woman is sitting exactly where he is, a blanket draped over her shoulders and a cup of tea steaming on the table in front of her.
She smiles at the camera and brushes a wisp of white hair out of her face, his heart kicking at the sight of her.
“This is weird.” She laughs nervously. “You should be watching this on April 16, 2019—our favorite day in history. Your consciousness and memories from the last timeline have just shifted over. Or should have. With each new iteration, your memories are coming in more slowly and erratically. Sometimes you miss entire lifetimes. So I made this video—first, to tell you not to be afraid, since you’re probably wondering why you’re in a research station in Antarctica. And secondly, because I want to say something to the Barry who remembers all timelines, who’s quite different from the one I’m living with now. So please, pause me until your memories arrive.”
He pauses the video.
It is so quiet here.
Nothing but the roar of the wind.
He goes to the kitchen, and as he brews a cup of coffee, a tightness forms in his chest.
There’s a storm of emotion on the horizon.
His head pounds at the base of his skull, and a nosebleed hits.
The Portland bar.
Helena.
Her slow revelation of who she was.
Buying this old research station at the turn of the millennium.
They refurbished it, then flew the chair and all its component parts down here on a privately chartered 737 that stuck a harrowing landing on the polar runway.
They brought a team of particle physicists with them whom they had apparently scoped out in a prior timeline, who had no concept of the true nature of their research. They drilled out 1.5 foot–diameter cores 8,000 feet deep into the polar cap and lowered highly sensitive light detectors more than a mile below the ice. The sensors were designed to detect neutrinos, one of the most enigmatic particles in the universe. Neutrinos carry no charge, rarely interact with normal matter, and typically emerge from (and therefore indicate) cosmic events such as supernovae, galactic cores, and black holes. When a neutrino hits an atom on Earth, it creates a particle called a muon, that’s moving faster than light in a solid, causing the ice to emit light. These light waves caused by muons passing through solid ice is what they looked for.