Alarmed, Andrea wheeled him back to the laboratory. By the time she was ready to say goodbye to him, the glasses had reduced his vision to five images per second, each of which was composed of only six thousand pixels. He was calmer then, resigned to the inevitability of what tomorrow would bring: he would not even recognise Andrea in the morning.
SATURDAY
Mick’s last day with Andrea began in a world of sound and vision - senses that were already impoverished to a large degree - and ended in a realm of silence and darkness.
He was now completely paralysed, unable even to move his head. The brain that belonged to the other, comatose Mick now had more control over this body than its wakeful counterpart. The nervelink was still sending signals back to the lab, but the requirements of sight and sound now consumed almost all available bandwidth. In the morning, vision was down to one thousand pixels, updated three frames per second. His sight had already turned monochrome, but even yesterday there had been welcome gradations of grey, enough to anchor him into the visual landscape.
Now the pixels were only capable of registering on or off; it cost too much bandwidth to send intermediate intensity values. When Andrea was near him, her face was a flickering abstraction of black and white squares, like a trick picture in a psychology textbook. With effort he learned to distinguish her from the other faces in the laboratory, but no sooner had he gained confidence in his ability than the quality of vision deteriorated even further.
By midmorning the frame rate had dropped to eight hundred pixels at two images per second, which was less like vision than being shown a sequence of still pictures. People didn’t walk to him across the lab - they jumped from spot to spot, captured in frozen postures. It was soon easy to stop thinking of them as people at all, but simply as abstract structures in the data.
By noon he could not exactly say that he had any vision at all. Something was updating once every two seconds, but the matrix of black and white pixels was hard to reconcile with his memories of the lab. He could no longer distinguish people from furniture, unless people moved between frames, and then only occasionally. At two, he asked Joe to disable the feed from the glasses, so that the remaining bandwidth could be used for sound and touch. Mick was plunged into darkness.
Sound had declined overnight as well. If Andrea’s voice had been tinny yesterday, today it was barely human. It was as if she were speaking to him through a voice distorter on the end of the worst telephone connection in the world. The noise was beginning to win. The software was struggling to compensate, teasing sense out of the data. It was a battle that could only be prolonged, not won.
‘I’m still here,’ Andrea told him, her voice a whisper fainter than the signal from the furthest quasar.
Mick answered her. It took some time. His words in the lab had to be analysed by voice-recognition software and converted into ASCII characters. The characters were compressed further and sent across the reality gap, bit by bit. In the other version of the lab - the one where Mick’s body waited in a wheelchair, the one where Andrea hadn’t died in a car crash - equivalent software decompressed the character string and reconstituted it in mechanically generated speech, with an American accent.
‘Thank you for letting me come back,’ he said. ‘Please stay. Until the end. Until I’m not here any more.’
‘I’m not going anywhere, Mick.’
Andrea squeezed his hand. After all that he had lost since Friday, touch remained. It really was the easiest thing to send: easier than sight, easier than sound. When, later, even Andrea’s voice had to be sent across the gap by character string and speech synthesiser, touch endured. He felt her holding him, hugging his body to hers, refusing to surrender him to the drowning roar of quantum noise.
‘We’re down to less than a thousand useable bits,’ Joe told him, speaking quietly in his ear in the version of the lab where Mick lay on the immersion couch. ‘That’s a thousand bits total, until we lose all contact. It’s enough for a message, enough for parting words.’
‘Send this,’ Mick said. ‘Tell Andrea that I’m glad she was there. Tell her that I’m glad she was my wife. Tell her I’m sorry we didn’t make it up that hill together.’
When Joe had sent the message, typing it in with his usual fluid speed, Mick felt the sense of Andrea’s touch easing. Even the microscopic data-transfer burden of communicating unchanging pressure, hand on hand, body against body, was now too much for the link. It was like one swimmer letting a drowning partner go. As the last bits fell, he felt Andrea slip away for ever.
He lay on the couch, unmoving. He had lost his wife, for the second time. For the moment the weight of that realisation pinned him into stillness. He did not think he would ever be able to walk in his world, let alone the one he had just vacated.
And yet it was Saturday. Andrea’s funeral was in two days. He would have to be ready for that.
‘We’re done,’ Joe said respectfully. ‘Link is now noise-swamped.’
‘Did Andrea send anything back?’ Mick asked. ‘After I sent my last words—’
‘No. I’m sorry.’
Mick caught the hesitation in Joe’s answer. ‘Nothing came through?’
‘Nothing intelligible. I thought something was coming through, but it was just . . .’ Joe offered an apologetic shrug. ‘The set-up at their end must have gone noise-limited a few seconds before ours did. Happens, sometimes.’
‘I know,’ Mick said. ‘But I still want to see what Andrea sent.’
Joe handed him a printout. Mick waited for his eyes to focus on the sheet. Beneath the lines of header information was a single line of text: SO0122215. Like a phone number or a postal code, except it was obviously neither.
‘That’s all?’
Joe sighed heavily. ‘I’m sorry, mate. Maybe she was just trying to get something through . . . but the noise won. The fucking noise always wins.’
Mick looked at the numbers again. They began to talk to him. He thought he knew what they meant.
‘Always fucking wins,’ Joe repeated.
SUNDAY
Andrea was there when they brought Mick out of the medically induced coma. He came up through layers of disorientation and half-dream, adrift until something inside him clicked into place and he realised where he had been for the last week, what had been happening to the body over which he was now regaining gradual control. It was exactly as they had promised: no dreams, no anxiety, no tangible sense of elapsed time. In a way, it was not an entirely unattractive way to spend a week. Like being in the womb, he’d heard people say. And now he was being born again, a process that was not without its own discomforts. He tried moving an arm and when the limb did not obey him instantly, he began to panic. But Joe was already smiling.
‘Easy, boyo. It’s coming back. The software’s rerouting things one spinal nerve at a time. Just hold on there and it’ll be fine.’
Mick tried mumbling something in reply, but his jaw wasn’t working properly either. Yet it would come, as Joe had promised. On any given day, thousands of recipients went through this exact procedure without blinking an eyelid. Many of them were people who’d already done it hundreds of times before. Nervelinking was almost insanely safe. Far safer than any form of physical travel, that was certain.
He tried moving his arm again. This time it obeyed without hesitation.
‘How are you feeling?’ Andrea asked.
Once more he tried speaking. His jaw was stiff, his tongue thick and uncooperative, but he managed to make some sounds. ‘Okay. Felt better.’
‘They say it’s easier the second time. Much easier the third.’
‘How long?’
‘You went under on Sunday of last week. It’s Sunday again now,’ Joe said.
A full week. Exactly the way they’d planned it.
‘I’m quite hungry,’ Mick said.
‘Everyone’s always hungry when they come out of the coma,’ Joe said. ‘It’s hard to get enough nourishment into the host body. We’ll g
et you sorted out, though.’
Mick turned his head to look at Joe, waiting for his eyes to find grudging focus. ‘Joe,’ he said. ‘Everything’s all right, isn’t it? No complications, nothing to worry about?’
‘No problems at all,’ Joe said.
‘Then would you mind giving Andrea and me a moment alone?’
Joe held up his hand in hasty acknowledgement and left the room, off on some plausible errand. He shut the door quietly behind him.
‘Well?’ Mick asked. ‘I’m guessing things must have gone okay, or they wouldn’t have kept me under for so long.’
‘Things went okay, yes,’ Andrea said.
‘Then you met the other Mick? He was here?’
Andrea nodded heavily. ‘He was here. We spent time together.’
‘What did you get up to?’
‘All the usual stuff you or I would’ve done. Hit the town, walked in the parks, went into the hills, that kind of thing.’
‘How was it?’
She looked at him guardedly. ‘Really, really sad. I didn’t really know how to behave, to be honest. Part of me wanted to be all consoling and sympathetic, because he’d lost his wife. But I don’t think that’s what Mick wanted.’
‘The other Mick,’ he corrected gently.
‘Point is, he didn’t come back to see me being all weepy. He wanted another week with his wife, the way things used to be. Yes, he wanted to say goodbye, but he didn’t want to spend the whole week with the two of us walking around feeling down in the dumps.’
‘So how did you feel?’
‘Miserable. Not as miserable as if I’d lost my husband, of course. But some of his sadness started wearing off on me. I didn’t think it was going to . . . I’m not the one who’s been bereaved here - but you’d have to be inhuman not to feel something, wouldn’t you?’
‘Whatever you felt, don’t blame yourself for it. I think it was a wonderful thing you agreed to do.’
‘You too.’
‘I had the easy part,’ Mick said.
Andrea stroked the side of his face. He realised that he needed a good shave. ‘How do you feel?’ she asked. ‘You’re nearly him, after all. You know everything he knows.’
‘Except how it feels to lose a wife. And I hope I don’t ever find that out. I don’t think I can ever really understand what he’s going through now. He feels like someone else, a friend, a colleague, someone you’d feel sorry for—’
‘But you’re not cut up about what happened to him.’
Mick thought for a while before responding, not wanting to give the glib, automatic answer, no matter how comforting it might have been. ‘No. I wish it hadn’t happened . . . but you’re still here. We can still be together, if we want. We’ll carry on with our lives, and in a few months we’ll hardly ever think of that accident. The other Mick isn’t me. He isn’t even anyone we’ll ever hear from again. He’s gone. He might as well not exist.’
‘But he does. Just because we can’t communicate any more . . . he is still out there.’
‘That’s what the theory says.’ Mick narrowed his eyes. ‘Why? What difference does it really make, to us?’
‘None at all, I suppose.’ Again that guarded look. ‘But there’s something I have to tell you, something you have to understand.’
There was a tone in her voice that troubled Mick, but he did his best not to show it. ‘Go on, Andrea.’
‘I made a promise to the other Mick. He’s lost something no one can ever replace, and I wanted to do something, anything, to make it easier for him. Because of that, Mick and I came to an arrangement. Once a year, I’m going to go away for a day. For that day, and that day only, I’m going somewhere private where I’m going to be thinking about the other Mick. About what he’s been doing; what kind of life he’s had; whether he’s happy or sad. And I’m going to be alone. I don’t want you to follow me, Mick. You have to promise me that.’
‘You could tell me,’ he said. ‘There doesn’t have to be secrets.’
‘I’m telling you now. Don’t you think I could have kept it from you if I wanted to?’
‘But I still won’t know where—’
‘You don’t need to. This is a secret between me and the other Mick. Me and the other you.’ She must have read something in his expression, something he had hoped wasn’t there, because her tone turned grave. ‘And you need to find a way to deal with that, because it isn’t negotiable. I already made that promise.’
‘And Andrea Leighton doesn’t break promises.’
‘No,’ she said, softening her look with a sweet half-smile. ‘She doesn’t. Especially not to Mick Leighton. Whichever one it happens to be.’
They kissed.
Later, when Andrea was out of the room while Joe ran some more post-immersion tests, Mick peeled off a yellow Post-it note that had been left on one of the keyboards. There was something written on the note, in neat, blue ink. Instantly he recognised Andrea’s handwriting: he’d seen it often enough on the message board in their kitchen. But the writing itself - SO0122215-meant nothing to him.
‘Joe,’ he asked casually. ‘Is this something of yours?’
Joe glanced over from his desk, his eyes freezing on the small rectangle of yellow paper.
‘No, that’s what Andrea asked—’ Joe began, then caught himself. ‘Look, it’s nothing. I meant to bin it, but—’
‘It’s a message to the other Mick, right?’
Joe looked around, as if Andrea might still be hiding in the room or about to reappear. ‘We were down to the last few usable bits. The other Mick had just sent his last words through. Andrea asked me to send that response.’
‘Did she tell you what it meant?’
Joe looked defensive. ‘I just typed it. I didn’t ask. Thought it was between you and her. I mean, between the other Mick and her.’
‘It’s okay,’ Mick said. ‘You were right not to ask.’
He looked at the message again, and something fell solidly into place. It had taken a few moments, but he recognised the code for what it was now, as some damp and windswept memory filtered up from the past. The numbers formed a grid reference on an Ordnance Survey map. It was the kind Andrea and he had used when they went on their walking expeditions. The reference even looked vaguely familiar. He stared at the numbers, feeling as if they were about to give up their secret. Wherever it was, he’d been there, or somewhere near. It wouldn’t be hard to look it up. He wouldn’t even need the Post-it note. He’d always had a good memory for numbers.
Footsteps approached, echoing along the linoleum-floored hallway that led to the lab.
‘It’s Andrea,’ Joe said.
Mick folded the Post-it note until the message was no longer visible. He flicked it in Joe’s direction, knowing that it was none of his business any more.
‘Bin it.’
‘You sure?’
From now on there was always going to be a part of his wife’s life that didn’t involve him, even if it was only for one day a year. He would just have to find a way to live with that.
Things could have been worse, after all.
‘I’m sure,’ he said.
Unlike a lot of my stuff, ‘Signal to Noise’ is set on Earth in the relatively near future. I probably do more of these stories than is generally appreciated - I’m not exclusively a writer of galaxy-spanning New Space Opera - but I’ll admit that most of my pieces do tend to take place off-Earth. It’s not for want of trying, but most of my attempts at writing near-future SF have resulted in abandoned stories and a lot of personal grief and frustration. I don’t know why this should be the case. I like reading that kind of SF as much as I like the epic, big-canvas stuff. I think I’m alive to the world around me, and as interested in the texture and trajectory of the near future as anyone else. Perhaps it’s because, while I think I can do the extrapolative world-building, and I think I can inject the necessary number of sideways-swerves and eyeball-kicks, I have a hard time coming up with the kinds of plot
conceit that can form the basis of a story. It could be that I’m just genetically programmed to write stories set in space, in the middle-to-distant future, in which case I’d best accept my fate. ‘If it doesn’t come naturally, leave it,’ as another Al once wrote.
But I’m not giving up on the near-future just yet.
CARDIFF AFTERLIFE
Cardiff’s gone.
The epicentre of the explosion, appropriately enough, was just outside the ‘D’ gate entrance into the Millennium Stadium. So it went first, before the rest of the city. It was always a mistake, building it where they did. The Taffs always agreed on that. They should have built it west of the city, where people had a chance of actually seeing the thing. By the time I moved down from Hull the Millennium Stadium was a thing you only saw in furtive glimpses, peeking between newer, shinier buildings that had gone up around it during the thirty years since it was opened.
Zima Blue and Other Stories Page 16
