The Speed of Dark

by Elizabeth Moon

  I watch the water falling, trying to see each part of it, the apparent masses that flow smoothly to the lip and then come apart on the way down… What would a drop feel as it slid over that last rock, as it fell into nothingness? Water has no mind, water cannot think, but people— normal people—do write about raging rivers and angry floodwaters as if they did not believe in that inability.

  A swirl of wind brings spray to my face; some drops defied gravity and rose on the wind, but not to return to where they were.

  I almost think about the decision, about the unknown, about not being able to go back, but I do not want to think today. I want to feel everything I can feel and have that to remember, if I have memories in that unknown future. I concentrate on the water, seeing its pattern, the order in chaos and chaos in order.

  MONDAY. NINE TWENTY-NINE. I AM IN THE CLINICAL RESEARCH , facility on the far side of the campus from Section A. I am sitting in a row of chairs between Dale and Bailey.

  The chairs are pale-gray plastic with blue and green and pink tweedy cushions on the back and seat. Across the room is another row of chairs; I can see the subtle humps and hollows where people have sat on those chairs. The walls have a stripy textured covering in two shades of gray below a pale-gray rail and an off-white pebbly covering above that. Even though the bottom pattern is in stripes, the texture is the same pebbly feel as the one above. Across the room there are two pictures on the wall, one a landscape with a hill in the distance and green fields nearby and the other one of a bunch of red poppies in a copper jug. At the end of the room is a door. I do not know what is beyond the door. I do not know if that is the door we will go through. In front of us is a low coffee table with two neat stacks of personal viewers and a box of disks labeled: “Patient Information: Understand Your Project.” The label on the disk I can see reads: “Understanding Your Stomach.”

  My stomach is a cold lump inside a vast hollow space. My skin feels as if someone had pulled it too tight. I have not looked to see if there is a disk labeled: “Understanding Your Brain.” I do not want to read it if there is one.

  When I try to imagine the future—the rest of this day, tomorrow, next week, the rest of my life—it is like looking into the pupil of my eye, and only the black looks back at me. The dark that is there already when the light speeds in, unknown and unknowable until the light arrives.

  Not knowing arrives before knowing; the future arrives before the present. From this moment, past and future are the same in different directions, but I am going that way and not this way.

  When I get there, the speed of light and the speed of dark will be the same.

  Chapter Twenty-One

  LIGHT. DARK. LIGHT. DARK. LIGHT AND DARK. EDGE OF light on dark. Movement. Noise. Noise again. Movement. Cold and warm and hot and light and dark and rough and smooth, cold, TOO COLD and PAIN and warm and dark and no pain. Light again. Movement. Noise and louder noise and TOO LOUD COW MOOING. Movement, shapes against the light, sting, warm back to dark.

  LIGHT is DAY. DARK is NIGHT. DAY is GET UP NOW IT is TIME to get up. Night is lie down be quiet sleep.

  Get up now, sit up, hold out arms. Cold air. Warm touch. Get up now, stand up. Cold on feet. Come on now walk. Walk to place is shiny is cold smells scary. Place for making wet or dirty, place for making clean. Hold out arms, feel sliding on skin. Sliding on legs. Cold air all over. Get in shower, hold on rail. Rail cold. Scary noise, scary noise. Don’t be silly. Stand still. Things hitting, many things hitting, wet sliding, too cold then warm then too hot. All right, it’s all right. Not all right. Yes, yes, stand still. Slurpy feeling, sliding all over. Clean. Now clean. More wet. Time come out, stand. Rubbing all over, skin warm now. Put on clothes. Put on pants, put on shirt, put on slippers. Time to walk. Hold this. Walk.

  Place to eat. Bowl. Food in bowl. Pick up spoon. Spoon in food. Spoon in mouth. No, hold spoon right. Food all gone. Food fall. Hold still. Try again. Try again. Try again. Spoon in mouth, food in mouth. Food taste bad. Wet on chin. No, don’t spit out. Try again. Try again. Try again.

  SHAPES MOVING PEOPLE. PEOPLE ALIVE. SHAPES NOT MOVING not alive. Walking, shapes change. Not alive shapes change little. Alive shapes change a lot. People shapes have blank place at top. People say put on clothes, put on clothes, get good. Good is sweet. Good is warm. Good is shiny pretty. Good is smile, is name for face pieces move this way. Good is happy voice, is name for sound like this. Sound like this is name talking. Talking tells what to do. People laugh, is best sound. Good for you, good for you. Good food is good for you. Clothes is good for you. Talking is good for you.

  People more than one. People is names. Use names is good for you, happy voice, shiny pretty, even sweet. One is Jim, good morning time to get up and get dressed. Jim is dark face, shiny on top head, warm hands, loud talking. More than one two is Sally, now here’s breakfast you can do it isn’t it good? Sally is pale face, white hair on top head, not loud talking. Amber is pale face, dark hair on top head, not loud as Jim louder than Sally.

  Hi Jim. Hi Sally. Hi Amber.

  JIM SAY GET UP. Hi JIM. JIM SMILE. JIM HAPPY I SAY Hi JIM. Get up, go to bathroom, use toilet, take off clothes, go in shower. Reach for wheel thing. Jim say Good for you and shut door. Turn wheel thing. Water. Soap. Water. Feel good. All feel good. Open door. Jim smile. Jim happy I take shower by self. Jim hold towel. Take towel. Rub all over. Dry. Dry feel good. Wet feel good. Morning feel good.

  Put on clothes, walk to breakfast. Sit at table with Sally. Hi Sally. Sally smile. Sally happy I say Hi Sally. Look around Sally say. Look around. More tables. Other people. Know Sally. Know Amber. Know Jim. Not know other people. Sally ask Are you hungry. Say yes. Sally smile. Sally happy I say yes. Bowl. Food in bowl cereal. Sweet on top is fruit. Eat sweet on top, eat cereal, say Good, good. Sally smile. Sally happy I say Good. Happy because Sally happy. Happy because sweet is good.

  Amber say time to go. Hi Amber. Amber smile. Amber happy I say Hi Amber. Amber walk to working room. I walk to working room. Amber say sit there. I sit there. Table in front. Amber sit other side. Amber say time to play game. Amber put thing on table. What is this, Amber ask. It is blue. I say blue. Amber say That is color, what is thing? I want to touch. Amber say no touch, just look. Thing is funny shape, wrinkly. Blue. I sad. Not know is not good, no good for you, no sweet, no shiny pretty.

  Don’t be upset, Amber say. Okay, okay. Amber touch Amber box. Then say You can touch. I touch. It is part of clothes. It is shirt. It is too small for me. Too small. Amber laugh. Good for you, here sweet, it is a shirt and it is way too small for you. Shirt for doll. Amber take shirt for doll and put down another thing. Also funny shape, wrinkly black. Not touch, just look. If wrinkly blue thing shirt for doll, wrinkly black thing something for doll? Amber touch. Thing lies flatter. Two things stick out bottom, one thing at top. Pants. I say Pants for doll. Amber makes big smile. Good for you, really good. Sweet thing for you. Touches Amber box.

  Lunchtime. Lunch is food in day between breakfast and supper. Hi Sally. It looks good Sally. Sally is happy I say that. Food is gooey between bread slices and fruit and water to drink. Food feels good in mouth. This is good Sally. Sally is happy I say that. Sally smile. More Good for you and good for you. Like Sally. Sally nice.

  After lunch is Amber and crawl on floor follow line, or stand on floor one foot up then other foot up. Amber crawl too. Amber stand on one foot, fall over. Laugh. Laugh feel good like shaking all over. Amber laugh. More good for you. Like Amber.

  After crawl on floor is more game on table. Amber put things on table. Not know names. No names, Amber say. See this: Amber touches black thing. Find another one, Amber say. Look at things. One other thing same. Touch. Amber smile. Good for you. Amber put black thing and white thing together. Do like that, Amber say. Scary. Not know. Okay, okay, Amber say. Okay to not know. Amber not smile. Not okay. Find black thing. Look. Find white thing. Put together. Amber smile now. Good for you.

  Amber put three things togetüer. Do like that, Amber
say. I look. One thing is black, one is white with black place, one is red with yellow place. Look. Put down black thing. Find white thing with black place, put down. Then find red with yellow place, put down. Amber touch Amber box. Then Amber touch Amber things: red in middle, Amber say. Look. Did wrong. Red on end. Move. Good for you, Amber say. Really good work. Happy. Like make Amber happy. Good happy together.

  Other people come. One in white coat, see before, not know name except Doctor. One man in sweater with many colors and tan pants.

  Amber say Hi Doctor to one in white coat. Doctor talk to Amber, say This is friend of his, on the list. Amber look at me, then at other man. Man look at me. Not look happy, even with smile.

  Man say Hi Lou I’m Tom.

  Hi, Tom, I say. He does not say Good for you. You are doctor, I say.

  Not a medical doctor, Tom say. Not know what not a medical doctor means.

  Amber say Tom is on your list, for visiting. You knew him before.

  Before what? Tom not look happy. Tom look very sad.

  Not know Tom, I say. Look at Amber. Is wrong to not know Tom?

  Have you forgotten everything from before? Tom ask.

  Before what? Question bothers me. What I know is now. Jim, Sally, Amber, Doctor, where is bedroom, where is bathroom, where is place to eat, where is workroom.

  It’s okay, Amber says. We’ll explain later. It’s okay. You’re doing fine.

  Better go now, says Doctor. Tom and Doctor turn away.

  Before WHAT?

  Amber puts down another row and says Do what I did.

  “I TOLD YOU IT WAS TOO SOON, ” DR. HENDRICKS SAID, ONCE they were back in the corridor. “I told you he wouldn’t remember you.”

  Tom Fennell glanced back through the one-way window. Lou—or what had been Lou—smiled at the therapist who was working with him and picked up a block to add to the pattern he was copying. Grief and rage washed over Torn at the memory of Lou’s blank look, the meaningless little smile that had gone with, “Hi, Tom.”

  “It would only distress him to try to explain things now,” Hendricks said. “He couldn’t possibly understand.”

  Tom found his voice again, though it didn’t sound like his own. “You—do you have the slightest idea what you’ve done?” He held himself still with great effort; he wanted to strangle this person who had destroyed his friend.

  “Yes. He’s really doing well.” Hendricks sounded indecently happy with herself. “Last week he couldn’t do what he’s doing now.”

  Doing well. Sitting there copying block patterns was not Tom’s definition of doing well. Not when he remembered Lou’s startling abilities. “But… but pattern analysis and pattern generation was his special gift-”

  “There have been profound changes in the structure of his brain,” Dr. Hendricks said. “Changes are still going on. It’s as if his brain reversed in age, became an infant brain again in some ways. Great plasticity, great adaptive ability.”

  Her smug tone grated on him; she clearly had no doubts about what she had done. “How long is this going to take?” he asked.

  Hendricks did not shrug, but the pause might have been one. “We do not know. We thought—we hoped, perhaps I should say—that with the combination of genetic and nanotechnology, with accelerated neural growth, the recovery phase would be shorter, more like that seen in the animal model. The human brain is, however, immeasurably more complex—”

  “You should have known that going in,” Tom said. He didn’t care that his tone was accusatory. He wondered how the others were doing, tried to remember how many there’d been. Only two other men had been in the room, working with other therapists. Were the others all right or not? He didn’t even know their names.

  “Yes.” Her mild acceptance irritated him even more.

  “What were you thinking—”

  “To help. Only to help. Look—” She pointed at the window and Tom looked.

  The man with Lou’s face—but not his expression—set aside the completed pattern and looked up with a smile to the therapist across the table. She spoke—Tom could not hear the words through the glass, but he could see Lou’s reaction, a relaxed laugh and a slight shake of the head. It was so unlike Lou, so strangely normal, that Tom felt his breath come short.

  “His social interactions are already more normal. He’s easily motivated by social cues; he enjoys being with people. A very pleasant personality, even though still infantile at this point. His sensory processing seems to have normalized; his preferred range of temperatures, textures, flavors, and so on is now within normal limits. His language use improves daily. We’ve been lowering the doses of anxiolytics as function improves.”

  “But his memories—”

  “No way to tell yet. Our experience with restoring lost memories in the psychotic population suggests that both the techniques we’ll be using work to a degree. We made multisensory recordings, you know, and those will be reinserted. For the present we’ve blocked access with a specific biochemical agent—proprietary, so don’t even ask—which we’ll be filtering out in the next few weeks. We want to be sure we have a completely stable substrate of sensory processing and integration before we do that.”

  “So you don’t know if you’ll be able to give him back his previous life?”

  “No, but we’re certainly hopeful. And he won’t be worse off than someone who loses memory through trauma.” What they’d done to Lou could be called trauma, Tom thought. Hendricks went on. “After all, people can adapt and live independently without any memory of their past, as long as they can relearn necessary daily living and community living skills.”

  “What about cognitive?” Tom managed to say in a level voice. “He seems pretty impaired right now, and he was near genius level before.”

  “Hardly that, I think,” Dr. Hendricks said. “According to our tests, he was safely above average, so even if he lost ten or twenty points, it wasn’t going to put his ability to live independently in jeopardy. But he wasn’t a genius, by any means.” The prim certainty in her voice, the cool dismissal of the Lou he had known, seemed worse than deliberate cruelty.

  “Did you know him—or any of them—before?” Tom asked.

  “No, of course not. I met them once, but it would have been inappropriate for me to know them personally. I have their test results, and the interviews and memory recordings are all held by the rehab team psychologists.”

  “He was an extraordinary man,” Tom said. He looked at her face and saw nothing but pride in what she was doing and impatience at having been interrupted. “I hope he will be again.”

  “He will, at least, not be autistic,” she said, as if that justified everything else.

  Tom opened his mouth to say autistic wasn’t that bad and shut it again. No use arguing with someone like her, at least not here and now, and it was too late for Lou anyway. She was Lou’s best hope of recovery—the thought made him shiver involuntarily.

  “You should come back when he’s better,” Dr. Hendricks said. “Then you can better appreciate what we’ve accomplished. We’ll call you.” His stomach churned at the thought, but he owed Lou that much.

  Outside, Tom zipped up his coat and pulled on his gloves. Did Lou even know it was winter? He had seen no exterior windows anywhere in the unit. The gray afternoon, closing in to dark, with dirty slush underfoot, matched his mood.

  He cursed medical research all the way home.

  I AM SITTING AT A TABLE, FACING A STRANGER, A WOMAN IN A white coat. I have the feeling that I have been here a long time, but I do not know why. It is like thinking about something else while driving and suddenly being ten miles down the road without knowing what really happened between.

  It is like waking up from a daze. I am not sure where I am or what I am supposed to be doing.

  “I’m sorry,” I say. “I must’ve lost track for a moment. Could you say that again?”

  She looks at me, puzzled; then her eyes widen slightly.

  “Lou? Do you fe
el okay?”

  “I feel fine,” I say. “Maybe a little foggy…”

  “Do you know who you are?”

  “Of course,” I say. “I’m Lou Arrendale.” I don’t know why she thinks I wouldn’t know my own name.

  “Do you know where you are?” she asks.

  I look around. She has a white coat; the room looks vaguely like a clinic or school. I’m not really sure.

  “Not exactly,” I say. “Some kind of clinic?”

  “Yes,” she says. “Do you know what day it is?”

  I suddenly realize that I don’t know what day it is. There is a calendar on the wall, and a big clock, but although the month on display is February, that does not feel right. The last I remember is something in the fall.

  “I don’t,” I say. I am beginning to feel scared. “What happened? Did I get sick or have an accident or something?”

  “You had brain surgery,” she says. “Do you remember anything about it?”

  I don’t. There is a dense fog when I try to think about it, dark and heavy. I reach up to feel my head. It does not hurt. I do not feel any scars. My hair feels like hair.

  “How do you feel?” she asks.

  “Scared,” I say. “I want to know what happened.”

  I HAVE BEEN STANDING AND WALKING, THEY TELL ME, FOR A couple of weeks, going where I am told, sitting where I am told. Now I am aware of that; I remember yesterday, though the days before are fuzzy.

  In the afternoons, I have physical therapy. I was in bed for weeks, not able to walk, and that made me weak. Now I am getting stronger.

  It’s boring, walking up and down the gym. There’s a set of steps with a railing, to practice going up and down steps, but that is soon boring, too. Missy, my physical therapist, suggests that we play a ball game. I don’t remember how to play, but she hands me a ball and asks me to throw it to her. She is sitting only a few feet away. I toss her the ball, and she tosses it back. It’s easy. I back up and toss the ball again. That’s easy, too. She shows me a target that will chime if I hit it. It is easy to hit from ten feet away; at twenty feet I miss a few times, then hit it every time.