Collective Intelligence

by Harry Marku

ago forgotten. The snow beckoned and Tammy sought shelter beneath it's overhang.

  She dug into the bank's face, at first quickly, then more slowly as she understood what she was doing. A wave of drowsiness swept over her. Her shivering stopped. Her movements became laborious with the onset of fatigue. She didn't notice that—instead, she found herself feeling increasingly comfortable and tired.

  When the fatigue took control she simply curled herself into the depression she'd gouged away, lay down on her side and let the strange heat send her to darkness.

  She was at peace.

  Two days later, a farmer and his wife found her. As the woman called for emergency services, the man covered her with a blanket, lifted her stiff body, and placed it in the backseat of their crew cab truck. He was only being kind; he was sure she was dead. There was no breathing and her skin was too cold and too thick to feel for a pulse. All the signs suggested that she couldn't have survived.

  There were tracks, which were nearly invisible, half-filled by the blowing snow of the previous night's furious wind. When the farmer picked her up he saw that the snow beneath her body had crystallized, proving that the girl's warmth had long ago left her body. He astutely ascertained that she had been there a minimum of twenty-four hours and probably a day more. It was a tragedy and he and his wife hoped that it was neither borne of foolishness nor foul play.

  In the warmth of the crew cab, Tammy regained comprehension, though her body remained stiff and pale. She heard a woman—who didn't sound like her mother—sobbing softly, and it surprised Tammy that anyone who didn't know her could be that sympathetic.

  Tammy tried to open her eyes and speak but every muscle was a slab. She didn't panic, she sensed that it would be several hours before she would function normally again. It was more bothersome to hear the woman's crying than be unable to communicate.

  The paramedics were slow to arrive, held up by a police department that demanded to first investigate the scence. After all, there was a frozen body that no one thought was alive. During the delay Tammy's eyes began to register an opaque glow through her eyelids.

  The farmer's wife was fussing over her, smoothing the hair from her eyes, melting the beaded ice from her eyelashes, and tidying up her blouse to make her look proper, when she thought she saw Tammy's face flush. Tentatively, she touched the girl's face, quickly gasping and withdrawing her fingers in horror at the unnatural sensation so devoid of warmth or pliability. But when the small white spot that her fingertip had created slowly filled in with color, the farmer's wife was unsure that her eyes weren't playing tricks. She touched the girl's face again, resisting her instinct on contact, and was soon convinced the girl was alive.

  “She can't be alive, Ma,” her husband chided. “You're just hoping.” Disbelieving, he felt for a pulse while his wife listened for a heartbeat, pressing her head against the girl's thin party blouse, straining to hear a pitch her aged ears were no longer capable of processing.

  She called the emergency number again, proclaiming, “The girl is alive!” over and over to the doubting operator. The police were notified, the farmer's wife was warned and the paramedics were unable to change that authorization to stand down and wait.

  By the time the police arrived an hour later, the paramedics at their heels, Tammy was feeling pretty good, though she was no less capable of any type of movement.

  The police refused the paramedics' request to examine the girl, while the farmer's wife pleaded and sobbed, and chastised the couple for moving the body. They could be arrested for evidence tampering and so on.

  Fortunately, this delay was very short, and a medical coroner, having heard the radio trafffic, was singularly quick to arrive. Tammy felt the stethoscope applied to her chest—and the coroner's startled response, “There is a heartbeat!”

  There was a sudden commotion as the paramedics demanded that they immediately render aid. The confused police team stepped back and a wooden gurney appeared.

  Tammy felt herself rolled like cord wood onto the gurney and strapped into place. Though she couldn't feel the straps it was suddenly hard to breathe.

  She felt a twinge of fear. She knew she was going to be okay, but not if she was suffocated before she could speak. Help! She screamed inside. I can't breathe! Vainly she worked to get someone's attention—to move her lips or bat an eyelash—but it was still impossible to move. Her chest was locked and, without oxygen, she felt the world slipping away.

  Then, for no reason other than procedure, the second paramedic re-checked her straps. When he couldn't easily insert a finger beneath them, he thoughtfully loosened them a notch.

  It was all she needed. Imperceptibly, her chest tilted upward, fresh oxygen was inhaled and returned to her blood and, this time, there was the vague sensation of pins and needles below the skin where the straps no longer pressed so tightly. Tammy smiled inside. Her body was returning to normal.

  The medics lifted her into the ambulance, securing the wooden gurney onto a metal-frame wheeled counterpart. Tammy was instantly nauseous, not from the movement but because the cabin was a sauna. Her head spun wickedly and she would have vomited but, fortunately, too few of her muscles could function with sufficient strength to clench. Then a blast of cold air burst through the open doors, a refreshing burst that quenched the nausea but left an unrequited ache in her throat to purge her guts.

  In the quiet before the doors slammed shut, the farmer's wife cried again, with relief and pity, and Tammy desperately wished to console her.

  The ambulance jolted into movement. The farmer and his wife were gone and she was en route to a nearby hospital. Her body bounced uncomfortably against the increasingly hard gurney. Tammy wanted to complain again, not because of the rough ride, but because she knew that she was being administered the scripted aid for hypothermia—and she didn't like the disparity of heating between her chest and her extremities—which she somehow grasped was more hindering than beneficial to a speedy recovery. It made her feel cold—and she never felt cold—and she preferred to be either fully covered or not covered at all.

  The emergency doctor routinely got it all wrong, too, ignoring the temperature probes on her arms and legs that suggested that her heart was trying to rewarm her body's locomotive function before it was necessary to metabolize again. It wasn't physiologically possible, he groused, the medical equipment must be malfunctioning. The doctor stubbornly continued warming her core only, but he couldn't be faulted, either. A veterinarian might have read the signs differently, but not a human physiologist.

  At least the heat lamp felt like sunshine, Tammy thought, in spite of the discomfort. She lay on the hospital bed, tortured by the chill of her own cold blood seeping from her legs toward her heart, shocking her organs with its conflicting demand to return to stasis.

  Tammy grew ever more frustrated by her inability to speak—that the ignorant rewarming process that wasn't right for her—and she mentally wiggled her limbs until she finally was able to wriggle her arms beneath the warming blanket. Instantly, she felt better. She smiled inside. Soon her legs would follow and the discomfort would go away.

  A nurse saw her with her arms covered and assertively moved to undo her effort. Tammy mentally rolled her eyes and tried to stop her but she didn't have the strength to thwart the nurse—or to return her hands beneath the insulation. She would have to wait.

  A doctor entered the room. “What's her core temp?”

  “Thirty-four degrees Celsius,” the nurse replied.

  “Heartbeat?”

  She consulted a chart. “The last was fifty. It's been steadily increasing.”

  “What were the lows again?”

  “Eight beats per minute when they brought her in.” The nurse read off the chart. “But her core was fifteen Celsius.”

  “Fifteen?”

  “Yes.”

  “Extraordinary. Just about the coldest on record.” The Doctor was quick with his facts. “No, I imagine she was.” He surmised.

  “W
hy do you say that?”

  “She began warming in the farmer's truck. I don't know how much.” He reasoned. “I guess we'll never know.”

  Power Play

  At precisely three AM, there was a sharp knock at the front door of Ryan's home. In deep slumber in their second floor bedroom above the street, Ryan and his wife bolted upright in bed.

  “Who could that be?” His wife gasped, as startled as she was irritated.

  “I don't know.” Ryan was similarly disturbed. He rolled out of bed, fumbling in the dark for his previous day's clothes. His wife switched on a lamp and he, after recovering from the momentary blindness, found them and dressed hurriedly.

  The knocking repeated with insistence.

  “They'll wake the kids!” his wife groaned.

  Ryan grabbed his cell phone from his nightstand and dashed out the bedroom door. “Go shut their doors,” he called over his shoulder. He double-timed down the staircase, checking his phone. There were ten missed calls—all from Robb—and one message. He frowned, there had been no missed calls before he turned in the previous day, how could he have missed his phone ringing ten times? He dialed his voicemail.

  The door rattled loudly, shaking the frame—it was being tested. Ryan was suddenly alarmed. Someone who needed help wouldn't be doing this...

  “Who is it?” He asked through the door.

  “Homeland Security. Open the door!” A man's voice