The Curiosity

by Stephen Kiernan

  “You don’t remember any particular crimes or suits before your court?”

  “None in sufficient detail to discuss them without risking egregious error.”

  “How convenient.”

  I wondered at that reply. What could he be implying? The reporter nodded at his notepad, a habit he apparently followed to avoid making eye contact. “Let’s shift a bit. Do you remember anything about your reputation as a judge?”

  “I would be the least fit person imaginable to comment. I did my best.”

  “You do recall being controversial?”

  “Every case has a winner and a loser, at least one of whom may be inclined to find fault with the jurisprudence.”

  “But you experienced something more than that, didn’t you, Judge Rice?”

  “Did I?”

  Finally Steele raised his face. Indeed he glared at me. “Weren’t you famously lenient? Or should I say, infamously? Didn’t you release a drunkard on his own recognizance, only for him to torch a shoe factory, killing four people?”

  “How can you suggest such things?” I cried. “Are you manufacturing this information?”

  “It’s all in the public record. Wasn’t your expedition actually a form of escape, to avoid a movement to have you recalled from office?”

  Hm. Now I realized. There would be no offers of baseball tickets at the end of this conversation. This man’s interrogation had a forward lean, an intent to do me harm. Why had Kate not apprised me of this? Indeed, where was she?

  “Let me explain as best I am able,” I said. “May I stand?”

  “Suit yourself.”

  Yes, my energy was surging. Despite all those years of being studiously motionless on the bench, now I paced like an animal caged. “Foremost, no. I was not lenient, I was judicious. My responsibilities were to uphold the law, safeguard justice, and respect precedent. If I erred in a ruling with a dire result, any ruling, you may be sure that my conscience paid close heed, if only for the sake of future cases. I am certain history will prove that I did err on occasion, in fact, because I am a human being and courts are human systems and we all err. If there were any movement to recall me, I remain blissfully unaware of it. I remember a number of significant fires in Lynn, some with tragic consequences, but none linked to a case of mine.

  “Your preparation for this meeting, moreover, cannot have failed to find the many ways I contributed far beyond my prescribed role to the city’s well-being, which modesty prevents me from enumerating. Thus your questions indicate a predisposition on your part, against me. We are a free people and thus you may publish what you please, but with your ink comes a grave responsibility.”

  I stopped before him, but my blood was high such that I could not hold still. “Lastly, sir, you are woefully mistaken if you perceive my motives for joining the expedition as anything other than a desire to further scientific inquiry. I was excited, yes, of course. It was a thrilling time on this earth, discoveries all around us. Knowledge seemed to be sitting there, simply waiting for someone to come along who was curious enough. In many ways I was reluctant to go, loath to leave my family, and that was so even when I felt certain of returning. The fact that I never did—”

  My voice betrayed me, catching in my throat, and I felt myself unmanned by the tears that spilled from my eyes. I turned away.

  My interviewer allowed me a respectful minute before his next question: “Do you know how much money they have spent to find you and bring you back to life?”

  “I have made that very inquiry. No one will tell me.”

  “Carthage says this project has spent over twenty-five million dollars.”

  “I have learned that money is different now than in my time. Regardless, I find this to be an inconceivable sum. Breathtaking.”

  “Yes. It would feed every hungry child in Massachusetts for a year. It would provide shelter to every homeless person in Boston.”

  I assessed him. “If I understand your implication, my reply is that I did not choose to die, nor seek to be reawakened. Your quarrel is not with me.”

  That answer seemed to satisfy him. He chewed on the end of his pen, as if deciding which path next to take. “Not a quarrel, more of an observation.”

  I made no reply.

  Steele sighed, then turned to a fresh page. “Judge Rice, what do you know about the circumstances of your reanimation?”

  “I don’t understand your meaning.”

  “Do you know how they did it?”

  I turned to him. He seemed utterly at ease, hands folded on the table, pen beside his notebook. He presented a bland affect, as if he were bored.

  “Do you know,” I said to him, “I have no notion at all.”

  “You aren’t curious? You haven’t even asked?”

  They were brilliant questions. How could I have overlooked such a basic investigation on my own behalf? “No. Though you certainly inspire me.”

  Steele paused, then looked at his watch. If he intended to convey disrespect, he succeeded brilliantly. I felt it in the roots of my hairs.

  “Judge Rice,” he continued, “forgive me, but you have said repeatedly that you are a person motivated by a desire for learning. Yet you have made no effort to understand your own experience. Do you expect me to believe you?”

  I scoffed. “What you believe, sir, is a matter of indifference to me.”

  “Well, that gets to my real question, then. Which is, why didn’t you choose someone better?”

  “I don’t follow you.”

  “If you’re going to stage a phony reanimation, why choose a flawed judge for your character? Why not a better one? Or some other profession altogether, one that doesn’t leave a career-long paper trail?” He gestured at his stack of documents. “All these rulings and decisions you could be quizzed on. Why not build your hoax on something simpler?”

  Now I understood who the TV interviewer had meant when she described skeptics. But in his unvarnished animosity, Steele had brought to mind an old witticism of the court: “If a man calls you ‘friend,’ he isn’t. If he declares ‘trust me,’ don’t. If he says ‘I’m telling the truth,’ hide your wallet.”

  Thus I knew better than to attempt to convince this reporter; each word defending my legitimacy would only confirm his disbelief. My college papers were a feint. He could have written his article before entering the conference room.

  But he miscalculated. By challenging my credibility directly, this man awakened my dignity, which was not the result of being a judge but rather the reason the governor had appointed me one, not the outcome of years on the bench but the credential that qualified me to sit there.

  “Good sir,” I said, sitting at the head of the table. “This conversation is at an end.” It felt good to behave like a judge again, a man in possession of his own powers. I gestured two fingers toward the door. “I bid you good day.”

  If there is any person on earth more confounded by time than Jeremiah Rice, I would like to shake his hand and offer my sympathies. After all, how old am I? How many years of my existence do not count? Time, always elusive, has become unknowable. Moreover, my chamber had no timepiece. The only means of knowing the hour was to rise, stand at the far end of my window, and read the clock on the control room wall. That day, chagrined by the audacious reporter, I nonetheless resisted the impulse to demand immediate explanations of anyone. With Kate absent, only one other person at the project enjoyed my trust. An opportunity to speak alone with him would require patience. Oh, the hunger of curiosity is a powerful force. It had led me to sea, I remained mindful, with the ultimate consequence. I would do better to master that appetite now.

  Dawn was approaching by the time the last technician began gathering his things. I hastened to the door. The technician sat again, remembering some incompleted duty. At last he darkened his computer and departed. I pressed 2667, the air hissed,
and the door slid wide. For the first time I marched through the lab on my own volition. My quarry’s face bore the sickly color of computer glow.

  “Dr. Gerber?”

  “Whoa.” He jumped in his seat. “Whoa, whoa.” He pulled the headphones down and panted, one hand on his chest. “You almost gave me a heart attack.”

  “I apologize,” I said. “I didn’t intend to startle you.”

  “It’s okay, man, it’s okay.” He laughed. “Just give me one second to bolt my brain back on.” Music came thinly from the headphones in his lap.

  “Do you mind terribly if I interrupt your work for a few minutes?”

  “You don’t sleep much anymore, do you?”

  “My mind has other functions to perform, it seems. Things it seeks to understand.” I hesitated. “Important things.”

  Dr. Gerber made a face, inscrutable at first, then wistful. He touched a key and the music stopped. “We are about to have a strange conversation, aren’t we?”

  “Quite frankly, I’m trusting you to tell me the truth about some things. I felt I could rely upon you to do so in a manner no else can.”

  “Not even Kate?”

  “Possibly.”

  He sighed. “I knew this day was going to come. Better me than some of the others, right? And hey, you happened to catch me on a night when I’m not . . . well, let’s just say I am feeling unusually clearheaded.” He set the headphones aside and placed a hand on each of his knees. “Fire away.”

  I’d had all day to ready my question. “How did you people wake me up?”

  “Instead of telling you, why don’t I show you?”

  “You can do that?”

  “Hang loose.” He tapped various keys and a video began playing on his screen. There was the control room. People were working at every desk, I recognized many of them. Carthage was listening while everyone offered opinions about something. The words were not clear but the mood was dour.

  Then the Dr. Gerber on the screen spoke: Well, there is such a thing as desecration of the dead. Kate nodded agreement. We’re guilty of that already.

  Superstition, Carthage scoffed, and he delivered a long speech. Aren’t you curious? he concluded. In the end, that is the only question that matters: don’t you want to know?

  Then Dr. Borden did something with his equipment, people reacted with gasps, and the lights went out. There was a general noise of complaint. Next the computer displayed an image of me, my body in contortions, arching and flailing. Smoke, actual smoke, rose from my skin. I could watch for only a moment and then, despite the depth of my interest, I was compelled to close my eyes.

  Okay, so how are we doing in there so far?”

  I blinked back to the present. Dr. Gerber had pulled his chair close, his brow creased with worry.

  “I know it’s not pretty,” he said, “but it worked. Here, hang on a sec.” He spun away, returning with a glass of water. I took a goodly gulp.

  “How are you doing there, Judge?” he said.

  “There was smoke.”

  “Sublimation is my guess. Ice from your body going directly into vapor.”

  “Was I the first one?”

  He nodded. “They’ve been looking all over the world. You’re the only person they’ve found. But I mean, a human would have to be flash-frozen, then preserved for all this time, and then found somehow among all the ice on the planet. Imagine the odds.”

  “Were there other species?”

  “Tons. Mostly little things, tiny.”

  “Might you show me some of them?”

  “Sure.” He went to his keyboard and began tapping. “This all started three years ago, before I came on board, so you’d need someone else to fill in the details. Carthage didn’t snare me till they went looking for you. Ah, here we go.”

  The image was blurred, but it showed a creature of some kind, tiny and with a tail, lying perfectly still. A counter in the lower corner of the screen was moving with breathtaking speed. “What are those numbers?” I asked.

  “Time. It’s measuring in, um, thousandths of a second.” The creature began moving, slowly, just its tail.

  “A clock like mine?”

  “Only much shorter.” The little animal increased its vigor, then abruptly stopped. “That was the first one,” Dr. Gerber said. “It lasted nine seconds.”

  “Would you be so kind as to show me others?”

  “Well, Judge Rice, let me be straight with you.” He rested his forearm atop the screen. “It wasn’t a nice thing for you to see how we woke you up. There may be other things that also aren’t so nice. You might ask yourself how much you really want to know. What’s important, and what’s only curiosity.”

  “I appreciate your concern. But this information is important. Extremely.”

  “You’re the boss.” He cackled and tapped more keys.

  The next image was of a krill. Its reanimation followed the same motion as the first, slow then fast, for twenty-two seconds. “Continue, please,” I said. “Perhaps a history, as you provided for me in the case of aviation?”

  He did exactly that, one specimen after another for more than an hour. Dr. Gerber explained each refinement—raising the immersion solution’s salt content, strengthening the magnetic field—and the resulting addition to the awakened creature’s life span. He showed me a species I recognized: a sardine. The little fish lasted a full minute, again with frenzy in the final seconds. Next came a shrimp, which thrashed wildly but lived for two minutes and twenty seconds. After that video, Dr. Gerber did not play another. He only stared at his screen.

  “Yes?” I said to him.

  “Do you get it yet? Do you see?”

  In that instant I entirely understood. The increased appetite, the reduced sleep, the inability to sit still. I was the sardine, I was the krill. “Has anyone determined yet how to stop the frenzy?”

  He shook his head without looking at me.

  “Aside from myself, is any other reanimated creature alive today?”

  Dr. Gerber did not move.

  There it was. An ocean of information beyond what I’d expected. Hm. I ambled away through the maze of desks, carrying dread like a weight. This energy in my blood was a trick. It signaled not a return to vibrancy but the beginning of completion. My road was clear: acceleration, then death.

  “In every case?” I asked him.

  Dr. Gerber nodded. “So far. Look at these.” He brought a chart onto his computer: parallel lines, rising and falling, but over time climbing steadily.

  “Those are me?”

  “Yup.” He touched different lines with his finger. “That’s heart, respiration, blood pressure, sleep duration, calories consumed, everything.”

  I turned away again. The lines confirmed what I felt within my skin.

  It was different the first time, in the sea. There was a moment when I knew all was ended. There would be no returning to Lynn, no seeing Joan or Agnes again. That knowledge was infinitely more painful than the cold of the water, but I lived with it only for a few seconds. This time I would have the same knowledge, but a longer duration of loss. Starting now, I realized, as I scanned the room, four walls in the bowels of a building where most of my second life had passed. Was this all? Was this everything?

  It felt unfair. I was still new, growing accustomed to having a body again, to having a life. I found myself staring in the window to my chamber. There were piles of books, some clothes, my neatly made bed. I had never seen it from this vantage. It looked rather humble. In truth, how small a man is.

  I read the clock: 6:08 A.M. “How long have the other creatures lived?”

  “Depends on their size. Bigger goes slower. It’s about body mass.”

  “Can you predict how long my body mass will continue to function?”

  “That’s the weird part. You should have b
urned out after twenty-one days.”

  “I defy the pattern?”

  “So far.”

  I placed my hand on the cool glass. “I wish I were tired. I would love to be tired.”

  At first he did not reply. Then his voice was soft. “Hey, Judge, I’m really sorry.”

  “Why would you be sorry, Doctor? As John Adams observed, ‘Facts are stubborn things.’ ” I crossed to the nearest desk and touched a pencil someone had left there. It rolled until it reached the bookshelf and stopped. I began to think beyond myself. “Many people are expecting a great deal of me. Vice President Walker, Carthage, even the unfortunate woman at the baseball game. Oh, but won’t the protesters be happy, when I go the way of those shrimp?”

  “Yes, they will. Which is exactly why those people piss me off. I don’t care what they stand for, anyone who finds pleasure in a stranger’s suffering is a twisted biscuit.”

  I scrutinized him from across the room. He was hunched forward, hair in a tangle around his face. “Dr. Gerber?”

  He tucked his wild locks back. “Judge Rice?”

  “I’d best make ideal use of the time left to me.”

  “That’s something maybe everyone ought to do,” Dr. Gerber said.

  I looked around the control room, an empty chair at every desk, and felt a kind of nakedness. “Have you told anyone?”

  He snorted. “I tried to get Carthage’s attention, but he is not one who listens very well. Besides”—Dr. Gerber chuckled—“he’s in the fame and money business now. Thomas makes it worse, goading him. Carthage has succumbed completely to the hunger. Which means, of course, that he is about to get eaten.”

  “Are other people aware of this?”

  He sat back. “They might suspect. Billings would, if he ever looked up from his microsamples. But you’ve seen how Carthage keeps everyone else heeling like dogs. I’m pretty much the only one he lets loose to find things like this.”

  “Kate does not know?”

  “I can’t imagine how she would. I only figured it out a couple of weeks ago. Besides, she’s been busy enjoying life with you.”