“Then how the fuck—”
“They were not good enough to stop a four-millimeter piece of rock,” Tesla said, “but they would easily be good enough to hit a target the size of Erin, especially at a lower closing speed.”
“I could hop real fast,” Erin suggested.
“You know better,” he told her. “Each time you arrive, you must look around, analyze your position and vector, and decide what to do next. You are very quick, Erin, but not as quick as the Deathstar. Or its weapons.”
My head was starting to hurt. “No, honey, you may not play hide and seek with the nice laser beam. Okay, we can’t influence the Deathstar any further. It’s armed. What does that leave us?”
We all knew the answers. After a brief pained silence, Omar summed up, ticking off points on his fingers. “We could try and stop a hurricane…or douse the Northern Lights…or persuade the Soviet Union to abandon or deorbit Mir, for no reason we could explain…or talk a cosmic ray into changing course. Or, of course, we could ask the Defense Department to shut down its Deathstar—just for a few days.”
There was another silence, then. A longish one.
“Which one ya wanna do foist?” Eddie said.
Well, of course we cracked up. Tension relief and all that. But the laughter didn’t last long, and wasn’t replaced by anything. We looked at each other and waited for somebody to come up with a Special Plan. After a while it became clear none of us was going to.
This was by no means the first, or even the fifth, time my friends and I had faced what looked like the End of Everything. We reacted the way we always had. One by one, we drifted toward the bar. I joined Tom behind the stick and began passing out medication with both hands.
And soon, inevitably, someone bravely tried to cheer us up. Long-Drink, it was this time. He nudged Doc Webster, and said in a voice loud enough to carry, “Well, one good thing, anyway: that new fascist law that lets the DEA rob anybody they can convict of everything he owns is finally finished.”
The Doc knows his cue when he hears it—as Long-Drink had known he would. In a creditable imitation of Edward G. Robinson, he rose to the occasion. “Mother of God,” he moaned, “is this the end of RICO?”
A rain of peanuts, crumpled napkins, and swizzle sticks descended on him from all sides, and groans split the night.
“Hey, Eddie,” Tommy called, “how about some music?”
Eddie nodded and headed for his piano. I found myself dizzily wondering what to request. Percy Mayfield’s “Danger Zone”? “The End of the World”? “Goodnight Irene”? What was the proper soundtrack for Ragnarok?
He solved the problem by playing something I didn’t know, either improv or a composition he’d never gotten around to sharing before. Whatever, it worked: upbeat, but not frantic, somehow cheerful and nostalgic at the same time. Some people started to dance.
If this was the last party there was ever going to be, at least we had spent a lot of time practicing. Getting it right should be a cinch.
Finally I finished passing out drinks, and went down to the end of the bar where my wife sat. We joined hands over the countertop and looked into each other’s eyes.
“Maybe I shouldn’t ask,” I heard Omar say, “but is there any way to know in advance just when the cosmic ray is going to arrive? Be nice to be able to pace my drinking.”
Tesla sat bolt upright. I turned to look at him, and his face had gone blank. “What is it?” Omar said.
He came back after a moment, shook his head slightly. “I’m sorry, Jim. I believe the last piece of the puzzle may have fallen into place. Not that it answers your question.”
“How do you mean?”
“In attempting to answer it, I had to consider what the source of the cosmic ray might be. Odd that I had not done so before.” He shrugged. “It did not seem to matter, I suppose.”
“I’ll bite,” the Lucky Duck said. “What is the source?”
Tesla didn’t reply. After a moment, Acayib answered for him. “Well, Jim, nobody’s positive what causes cosmic rays.” He glanced at Tesla. “At least, in our time. But one of the leading candidates for the source for really high energy cosmic rays is a supernova.” Suddenly he stopped and slapped his thigh. “I see what you mean, Nikola!”
“I don’t,” the Duck said pointedly.
“Picture it, Ernie,” Acayib said. “The Deathstar is keeping an eye on Mir. Solar flux begins to interfere with its communications, and is interpreted as an attempt at jamming. Hurricane Erin adds its gamma-ray fountain. I have always had some difficulty believing that even both those things together would be enough to trigger the firing of a secret superweapon. But suppose a supernova then occurs. Probably in this galaxy, but the important thing about its location is that, from the viewpoint of the Deathstar, it is occulted by Mir at the time.”
I began to see what he was driving at. “All of a sudden Mir is backlit like an aging actress,” I said, “the brightest thing in the sky.”
“And a moment after the photons,” Acayib agreed, “the cosmic rays arrive, and meet the Tesla Beam.”
“They wouldn’t come simultaneously?” I asked.
“No,” Acayib said. “Photons first.”
“Huh.” I nodded, and most of those within earshot also said “Huh” or “Mmm.” The idea did seem to make sense, and satisfied the basic condition of being absurdly unlikely.
“This is terrific,” the Lucky Duck said. “Armed only with the knowledge that the universe is gonna end, and with only about a brain and a half between us, we managed to dope out exactly how, just before it happens. I’m happy.”
I felt an impulse to smack him. To divert myself, I turned to Tesla and asked, “So then, do we know enough about predicting supernovae to be able to answer Jim’s question?”
“Oddly enough,” Tesla said, “it should theoretically be possible to do so. But only theoretically.”
“How so?” Omar asked.
“It’s a matter of computational capacity, Uncle Omar,” Erin said. “We talked about it. This kind of problem, if Uncle Nikky and I ransacked the Internet, used all the computer power we could possibly steal without getting caught at it, it would take us about a year to crunch enough numbers to get an answer.”
I got interested enough to take my eyes briefly from Zoey’s. “Maybe if you got a better computer from the future…no, that’s no good. The future just became null and void, didn’t it, Nikky?”
“I’m afraid it appears so,” he agreed sadly. “And even if not, I may not borrow tools from it.”
I returned my gaze to Zoey. “Maybe it’s better if we don’t know exactly when,” she said softly.
I nodded.
“Maybe,” Omar said. “But I can’t help wondering.”
“Would it help you any to know?” the Lucky Duck asked sourly.
“Maybe,” Omar insisted. “Taking out a Deathstar is a tough problem, granted…but if I only had to take it down for, say, a second…and I knew which second…”
“How would that help you?” the Duck pressed.
“I don’t know,” Omar admitted. “But it might. It’s something to think about. Something to do, besides kiss our asses good-bye.”
Something rearranged itself inside my head. I let go of Zoey’s hands and turned to face my daughter.
“Erin.”
“Yes, Daddy?”
“All you and Nikky need for an answer is enough computational capacity?”
“Yeah, sure,” she said. “But it doesn’t exist yet.” She frowned. “And now won’t ever, it looks like.”
“How about a big neural net? No, how about a bank of them?”
She shook her head. “Neural nets are mostly theory. They haven’t built any good ones, yet.” She saw my expression. “Have they?”
“Eddie!” I called. “Take a break.” I came out from behind the bar. When Eddie had finished his verse and stopped playing, I called for everyone’s attention, and got it.
“What’s up
, Jake?” Doc Webster asked.
I explained Omar’s question, and Tesla and Erin’s computational needs. “All they really need,” I finished, “is unrestricted access to a big interconnected bank of neural nets. We don’t think there’s one in the world, and if there is, nobody’s gonna tell us about it in the next couple of hours.”
“So what are you saying?” Long-Drink called.
“Let’s make our own.”
ROOBA ROOBA ROOBA.
Double Bill was mystified. “What the hell is that supposed to mean?”
I looked around at them all. All my friends. My loved ones. My companions. My family. I swallowed a lump in my throat and said, “I don’t know about you guys, but—” I stopped. “No, that’s silly: I do know about you guys—all but Bill and Mei-Ling, anyway, and you, Marty. What did we all originally come down here to do?”
“Have fun,” Long-Drink said.
“To get telepathic again.”
ROOBA ROOBA.
“Sure, we thought it might take ten years. And then we found out we didn’t need to do it after all. So we stopped thinking about it. Stopped talking about it. Well, we’ll not only never get a better chance, it looks like we’ll never get another chance.”
Doc Webster cleared his throat. “So you’re suggesting—”
“I’m saying we try to hook up, and give Nik and Erin what they need. We got over a hundred neural nets, right here. Let’s hook ’em up.”
Omar looked down at Erin. “Can we do that?”
She looked helpless. “I…I’m not sure. Uncle Nikky?”
He frowned ferociously and thought about it. “Perhaps,” he said finally.
Omar looked back to me. “Jake—can we do that?”
It sure was a good question.
“Well shit, Jim, how do I know?” I spread my hands. “One thing to think about, though: of the three times we’ve pulled it off in the past, every single one was a matter of life and death…and two of them were end-of-the-world situations. Maybe that helps, somehow. And how often does an end-of-the-world come along for us to run the experiment?”
“It would seem that this one will be the last,” Tesla said.
“So let’s not waste it,” I said.
“This is nuts,” the Lucky Duck said. “Even if we get our heads wired up right, even if Eyebrows and the midget there can hack an answer, what the hell good does it do us? I don’t think I really want to know the exact second it’s all gonna go to shit.”
Omar sighed. “I know what you mean, Ernie. But somehow I can’t shake the feeling it’d be good to know. Maybe I just feel like we ought to go out like a test pilot, still trying to solve the problem as he augurs in. Still reporting even the instrument readings he thinks are useless, in case they might turn out to be a vital clue for somebody…”
“Dat sounds right ta me,” Fast Eddie said. A number of people expressed agreement.
“Me too,” Long-Drink said. “Frog in a bucket of milk keeps kicking, he might just manage to churn his way out.”
“Not if he’s in a bucket of shit,” the Lucky Duck said darkly.
“Come on, Duck, what have you got to lose?”
His features went blank for a moment while he thought it over. “Not much,” he agreed. “A’right, let’s do it.”
A cheer went up. “Do it!” “Let’s do it!”
I looked to Double Bill, Mei-Ling, and Marty Pignatelli, the only telepathic virgins present. “You all game?”
Mei-Ling took the Doc’s arm and nodded without a word. Bill chewed on his pipe…then tossed it over his shoulder into the darkness and said, “What the hell: I’m in.”
“Me too,” said Marty. “Let’s do it.”
Then, of course, they all turned to me. And three or four of them said it at once.
“How do we do it?”
I took a deep breath and thought. Then I took another deep breath and thought some more. “Well,” I said finally, “when in doubt, try what worked the last time.” I held out my hands, and Zoey took one and Erin took the other. “Let’s do an Om.”
The Om is about as simple as a human group activity can possibly get. There’s nothing to it; that’s the beauty of it. Any fool, or rather any group of fools, can do it.
You gather round in a rough circle and join hands. Closing your eyes is optional. You pick a note out of the air—any note at all, as long as everyone present can reach it or an octave of it. You take a deep breath, and start singing that note, droning it from deep in your belly. Start with the syllable “AAAAAAAAA,” and at your own chosen pace, gradually warp it into the syllable “OOOOOOOO,” and when you feel your breath starting to go, bring it around to “MMMMMMMM.” Then take a deep breath and start over. Repeat until time stops.
It’s okay if your note wanders a little. It’s okay if you can’t carry a tune and miss it altogether, as long as there are enough people who can. Tonal and harmonic imperfections can lend a weird kind of resonance that actually helps things, somehow. So do the random variations that result from everybody running out of breath and starting over at different, overlapping times: the sound takes on a sort of slow unpredictable pulse.
I do not say that if you and your friends Om long enough, you will achieve telepathic symphysis. Thousands of people have Om’ed, sometimes for days, without that result. But just about any group of people who do Om will find that when they’re done, they are at least more telepathic than they were when they started. It’s just about impossible to do it for any length of time, and still remain totally locked inside your skull, chained to your personality.
And we had been trained by a master telepath, and tutored by two mutant human adepts. We had been telepathic before, more than once, and knew that it could be done. And we knew that once again, the stakes were much higher than anything as trivial as life or death…
One minute I was standing with my friends in a circle around the pool, watching the Northern Lights simultaneously dance on its surface and shimmer overhead, and concentrating on making my voice a pure strong thing—
—and then the next second, everything changed…
Again. It came on like déjà vu on steroids. Like taking acid again after a lapse of many years, feeling that odd mixture of exhilaration and fear and thinking, Oh, my God, I remember, now!
I remembered again the thing that was so hard to remember in between, in those long intervals between my brief moments of symphysis: the utter certainty that this place (field/zone/plane/whatever you want to miscall it) I was now reentering was a place I had known before I was born, and would know again after I died. The first time I had ever gone there as Jake Stonebender, back in the old original Callahan’s Place, part of me had recognized it at once.
I recognized it again now.
All of us were touching. Not just the feeble physical joining of our hands: we were as interconnected as cells in a hand, as neurons in a brain, as quarks in a particle. Our skulls became transparent and our minds touched. The persistent illusion of flesh was dispelled. We knew each other—of old, and anew. I felt my friends begin to flow into me, and I into them.
Vaguely, I wondered whether this place/zone/whatever would survive the destruction of the physical universe. Could my family and I simply remain here and be safe?
The answer came from everywhere and nowhere. NO. If the universe ended, so did this. The answer seemed wrong, to me, but somehow I was certain. Mind and matter were different…but neither could exist without the other.
Then for the fourth time in my life, there stopped being a discrete I, and there was only I/we, using our individual voices to talk to itself with.
Okay, everybody, said the artist formerly known as Erin. You all have to link up now, and surrender control to me and Uncle Nikky. Don’t be scared, Bbiillll, Mei-Ling, Marty.
Holy shit, said the part that had been Double Bill. But his fear lessened. The former Mei-Ling clung even more tightly to the once and future Doc Webster, and sent
back, I am ready. And ex-state-trooper Marty said, I’ve been dealing with fear a long time. Let’s do it.
Now! said the essence we had called Nikola Tesla.
And everything changed again.
This was different than any of the other times.
If transcendent experiences can be ranked, this fourth experience was somewhere between that first time and the other two. If you’re an old-time head, say that the first time was smoking pot, the next two were massive overdoses of pure LSD, and this was a clinical dose of mescaline.
The second and third times, in the very instant of symphysis we had all become terribly busy, trying to build something urgently needed. Both times it had been the same thing: a kind of telepathic bullhorn—a virtual machine with which to communicate with another (and nonhuman) telepath, over vast distances. In each case we were expecting said alien telepath to literally come crashing through the ceiling and kill us all in some period measurable in seconds. Both times, a lot of what psychic attention we could spare from the design and construction of our “bullhorn” got devoted to trying to figure out just what the hell to say over the damn thing once we had it built.
And every bit of attention left over had been spent exploring each other…wandering around inside each other’s heads and hearts…showing each other our secret places…reveling in openness and acceptance and compassion…laughing at shame and fear. Our very last telepathic experience had peaked with the birth of Erin and the death of Solace.
This time the experience was, without meaning to denigrate it, a “lesser” thing. Less intense, less profound, less transcendent. As telepathic experiences go, I mean.
It was more like the first time—when Jim MacDonald the mutant telepath had recruited us, had borrowed our mental energy to help him penetrate the catatonic fugue of his older brother Paul. We had not only had no idea what we were doing, back then, we’d really had nothing much to actually do, except push. It was sort of like he showed us a hypothetical truck stuck in deep virtual mud, and we gathered round and put our imaginary shoulders against it and our conceptual backs into it and heaved until it popped free, then kept heaving until we got it up to speed and Jim could metaphorically jump-start it. There’d been no device to build, no strategy to invent: all we hadda do was aim the way he pointed and push. There’d been much less risk involved then, too: the stakes had been one man’s life.
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