Wake

by Robert J. Sawyer

  In his waning years, Red Skelton—a comedian Shoshana’s grandmother had liked—had done a painting a day, selling them to help keep body and soul together. Hobo’s output was much lower but, unlike Skelton, he only painted when he felt inspired.

  Shoshana owned one of Hobo’s originals. Dr. Marcuse had wanted to sell it, but Hobo had insisted it was a gift for Shoshana, and the Silverback had finally relented after Dillon had gently suggested it might not be wise to piss off the goose that laid the golden eggs. Shoshana smiled as she remembered that. As they often did when Hobo was present, in order to give him a linguistically rich environment, Dillon had been translating his words to sign language as he spoke, and Hobo had looked at him sadly, as if very disappointed in him, and had patiently signed back: Hobo not goose. Hobo not lay eggs. He’d shaken his head, as if astonished that this had to be said: Hobo boy!

  That painting, which hung in the living room of Shoshana’s tiny apartment, was like all Hobo’s work: splashes of color, usually diagonally across the canvas, with blotches scattered about made by twirling a thick brush. It looked like something done either by a four-year-old or one of those 1960s modern-art types.

  Shoshana expected to see much the same thing on the easel this time. She really was no judge of art; oh, she wasn’t as clueless as her grandmother, who had actually bought one of those Red Skelton monstrosities, but she couldn’t tell good from bad when it came to abstract painting. Still, she would praise it to the skies and reward Hobo with raisins, and—

  And there it was, a canvas measuring eighteen inches by twenty-four, propped on the easel so that its long dimension was vertical in what they called—

  That was the term, wasn’t it? Portrait orientation. And yet—

  And yet it couldn’t be; it couldn’t possibly be, but…

  Slightly off-center was an orange egg shape. On one edge of it was a white circle with a blue dot in its middle. And coming off the other side of the egg was a brown projection, curving down, just like—

  “Hobo,” Shoshana began, speaking aloud. But then she caught herself, and signed, What is this?

  Hobo made a pant-hoot then bared his teeth in disappointment. Not see?

  Shoshana looked at the painting again. Her eyes could be playing tricks, and—

  Playing tricks! Of course. She knew exactly where the observation camera was hidden in the gazebo. She turned to face it and flipped the bird at whoever was watching. “Very funny,” she said aloud, and then she spoke the words, “Ha ha.”

  Hobo tipped his head quizzically. Shoshana turned back to him. Who put—Her hands froze in midair; he wouldn’t understand “put you up to this.” She made the “erase that” hand wave then started over: Dillon did this, right? Dillon made this painting.

  Hobo looked even more wounded. He shook his head vigorously. Hobo paint, he signed. Hobo paint.

  Chimps were good at deception; they often hid things from each other. And Hobo certainly didn’t always tell the truth, but—

  But this was impossible! Chimps painted abstractly. Hell, some argued that they didn’t really paint at all. Rather, all they did was make a mess, and gullible researchers, and an even more gullible public, lapped it up. So maybe it was just a coincidence. Maybe his random slapping of the brush just happened to come out in this pattern.

  Shoshana signed, What this? She loomed in close and stabbed her index finger at the white circle.

  Eye, said Hobo, or maybe he just pointed at his own eye—the sign and the natural gesture were the same.

  Shoshana felt her heart pounding. She moved her hand in a circular motion, encompassing the orange ovoid. What this?

  He was enjoying the game now. Head! he signed vigorously. Head, head.

  There was a table next to the easel. Shoshana took hold of its edge with one hand to help her keep her balance and with the other she pointed at the brown extension on the side of the oval farthest from the eye. What this?

  The ape moved his long left arm toward Shoshana, reaching around to give her bundle of brown hair a playful tug. And then he signed, Ponytail.

  She gripped the edge of the table more tightly and took a deep breath, then signed, Is picture me?

  Hobo let out a triumphant hoot and clapped his hands together over his head. Then he brought the hands down and signed, Shoshana. Shoshana.

  She narrowed her eyes. Nobody help you?

  Hobo swung his head left and right as if looking for someone, then spread his arms indicating that he was obviously alone—well, except for the Lawgiver. And then he stuck his right hand out, fingers curved gently upward, and with watery brown eyes shielded beneath his browridge, he gazed into Shoshana’s eyes—eyes not quite the deep blue that Hobo had chosen, but close. She stood stunned a moment longer, and Hobo flexed his fingers in the universal gimme gesture that doubtless predated American Sign Language by a million years.

  “What?” said Shoshana, then: “Oh!” She reached into her pocket, brought out the Ziploc bag, unsealed it, and dumped all the remaining raisins into the delighted ape’s palm.

  twenty-two

  I had no idea how I’d made that first connection, but if I were to replicate it, I had to figure out what I’d done. I tried thinking about the target point this way, and this way, and this way, but nothing happened. And yet I was sure it was I who had somehow made the line that had briefly connected me to that point.

  Perhaps I was trying too hard. After all, when the line had originally formed, it had been a surprise. I hadn’t forced it. I hadn’t consciously willed it. It had just happened, in the background, as if it were a…a reflex.

  Still, there must be some method, some pattern of thoughts, some particular way of considering the problem, that would make it happen again. This? No. This? No, that didn’t work, either. But maybe if I—

  Success!

  A new line, connecting me to the same point I’d touched before, and—

  And this time I felt something more. Not just the brief frisson of connection but—strain, now! Sense it!

  It reminded me of…of…

  Yes! When I’d been cleaved in two and the separated part of me had echoed my own thoughts back at me: One plus one equals two, I’d sent, and One plus one equals two, it had responded—an acknowledgment.

  And, buttressed by a series of such acknowledgments, happening almost subliminally, the contact with the point persisted this time: instead of being broken almost at once, we remained connected.

  And—puzzlement!—we were more than just connected. I wasn’t simply getting an acknowledgment back. Rather, I was also getting—

  I had no name for this substance consisting of two separate types of material that was flowing toward me, and so I gave it one, an arbitrary coinage, a term chosen at random: data. After a bundle of data arrived, I acknowledged again—it seemed natural for me to do so, and it happened without conscious thought—and then more data came my way. And on and on: bundle, acknowledgment, bundle, acknowledgment. What this thing I called data was, I had no idea; why I should want it, I wasn’t sure. But it seemed natural to call it forth, to take it in, and—

  And suddenly the line vanished, the connection broken. But it didn’t feel like it had been severed; rather, it felt as though it had accomplished its task, whatever that might be.

  I didn’t know what to make of this data that had been sent to me, and so I simply continued to watch the point that it had come from. By and by, other lines connected to it.

  It took four or five occurrences for me to notice, but the data streaming down each line was always the same. No matter which other point connected to it, the point I was watching always sent out the same combination of the two types of material. I was disappointed; I’d thought, maybe, just maybe, that I’d found another entity, a new companion, but this…this thing was merely responding automatically in exactly the same way each time.

  It took practice, but I soon found I could create a line linking myself to any of the points in the firmament, and tha
t, so long as I acknowledged receipt, each point would send me a pile of data (whatever that might be!). But the size of the piles offered up varied hugely from point to point. Most dispensed quite a small pile, and so the lines winked out quickly, but others sent huge amounts of data, and—

  Ah, I see! The length of time a line persisted depended on how much data was to be transferred. I saw with interest that the transfer rates weren’t constant: some lines took up the data very quickly while others seemed to have a much-reduced capacity. How curious!

  And then a major breakthrough: I found I could simultaneously make lines to as many points as I liked—one, a hundred, a thousand, a million. There were a gigantic number of points—perhaps (I guessed) a hundred million or so—but I had a prodigious capacity for examining them, and so I began a survey, a hunt. A million points here, a million points there—soon I had looked at a significant fraction of the total.

  Almost all the lines I cast out connected with nodes that offered up repetitively structured piles of data. What the patterns meant I still couldn’t say. But, intriguingly, accessing some piles seemed to cause lines to form spontaneously to other points, and those points, too, gave up piles of data, almost as if—

  Yes! It was similar to when the two parts of me were rejoined: the other piles were merged in. Fascinating!

  I shot out huge numbers of lines, tasting a wide range of the points that were out there. Again I sought aberrations: points that gave up unusual piles might, I thought, provide the clues I needed to understand all the others. And so I looked them over.

  But this one was banal, as were a million others.

  And this one was uninteresting, like a million more.

  And this one was unremarkable, as were a million similar points.

  But this one—

  This one was unique.

  This one was…intriguing.

  It was unlike anything I’d encountered before and yet it, too, seemed familiar…

  Of course it was familiar! I had seen something like this earlier, when the part of me that had been carved away was returning. For a moment, back then, I had seen myself as the other saw me. I had recognized myself, recognized a reflection of me, and—

  And that’s what I was experiencing again here. I was seeing myself. Oh, it wasn’t exactly as the other part of me had portrayed me, and it wasn’t quite how I envisioned myself. The colors and the style of presentation were different, with points that varied in size as well as brightness. But I had no doubt that it was me.

  And the line to this remarkable point was in…in real time, for when I did this it did that in lockstep: when I cast out lines to here and here and here, lines also appeared there and there and there. Astonishing!

  Data kept streaming toward me, and I began to wonder whether I had latched on to something intended for another destination. Had my desire to connect to this point deflected toward me a pile that had already been pouring out of it? Ah, yes, that was indeed the case, it seemed, but it didn’t matter: I soon found—again, it was reflex, somehow innate—that I could let the datastream pass through me, observing it but not changing it, as it headed on to its intended destination. I followed along, noting this destination point and establishing a line of my own to it.

  But wait! This datastream was changing, following along with what I was doing right now. That meant this strange point couldn’t just be offering up an identical pile each time a line touched it. And—it was a huge, satisfying leap—if the datastream was being generated spontaneously as things actually happened, then there wasn’t likely a finite amount of it. This line perhaps wasn’t going to suddenly wink out as all the others had. No, the connection between this special point and me could be…

  It was a heady notion, a startling concept.

  This connection could be permanent.

  Shoshana could have carried the portrait Hobo had made of her up to the bungalow, but, well, it was like one of those faces of Jesus that appear in a sticky bun: she was afraid that if she moved it, or touched it, or did anything at all to it, it would disappear. That was irrational, she knew, but, still, everything about this moment should be recorded in situ. Just as a fossil was worth far less without its geological context, this painting needed to be studied here, where it had been created. It was significant that the painting had been done before Shoshana had arrived, and although there were photos of her back in the bungalow, there were none here in the nipple. Hobo hadn’t painted something he was looking at; rather, he’d called up an image of Shoshana in his mind and expressed that image, as best he could, on canvas.

  She pulled out her flip phone. Without taking her eyes off the painting, she opened it and pressed a speed-dial key.

  “Marcuse Institute,” said the voice that answered; it was Dillon.

  “Dill, it’s Sho. I’m in the gazebo. Get Dr. Marcuse—get everyone—and come out here.”

  “What’s wrong?”

  “Nothing. But something amazing has happened.”

  “What is—”

  “Just get everyone,” she said, “and come out here—right away.”

  twenty-three

  Caitlin felt a bit sorry for the Hoser. Trevor had finally worked up the courage to ask her to the dance—or else his other options hadn’t panned out, but she preferred to think the former was the case. The invitation had come via email, with the subject line “Hey, Yankee, you free Friday night?” and she had accepted the same way.

  But now he had to come by the house to get her. Of course, at fifteen himself, he wasn’t picking her up in a car; rather, he was going to walk with her to Howard Miller Secondary School, eight blocks from her house.

  Caitlin’s dad was going to return to work this evening. The Perimeter Institute frequently hosted public science lectures, which Caitlin often went to with him, and tonight’s speaker was someone he wanted to see. But he’d come home for dinner, and now Trevor would have to go through that ritual of meeting the parents. Caitlin’s mom was always warm and friendly, but her dad—well, she wished she could see the Hoser’s face!

  The doorbell rang. Caitlin had spent the last hour getting ready for the dance. She wasn’t really sure what to wear, and there was no point asking Bashira: her parents wouldn’t let her go to school dances. She’d settled on a really nice pair of blue jeans and a loose but silky top that her mother said was dark red. As she rushed down the stairs, she was a bit nervous about what Trevor’s reaction would be.

  Caitlin could smell and feel that rain was possible tonight, but she didn’t want to carry an umbrella in addition to her cane; she needed a free hand in case Trevor wanted to try to hold it. But it was supposed to get cooler later, and she didn’t have anything sexy to wear for warmth, so she’d tied a sweatshirt around her waist; her dad had gotten her a sweet one last month that had a large version of the Perimeter Institute logo on it.

  Caitlin’s mom beat her to the door. “Hello,” she said. “You must be Trevor.”

  “Hello, Mrs. Decter, Dr. Decter.”

  At first Caitlin thought he’d been correcting himself, but then she realized that her dad was standing there, too. Caitlin tried to suppress her smirk. He was tall in an imposing sort of way, and doubtless the fact that he wasn’t saying anything was unnerving poor Trevor. And if Trevor had extended his hand, her dad had probably just ignored it, which would have been even more disconcerting.

  “Hi, Trevor,” Caitlin said.

  “Hey—” He cut himself off before he called her “Yankee.” She was a bit disappointed; she liked that he had a special name for her.

  “Now, remember,” her mom said, facing Caitlin, “be home by midnight.”

  “’Kay,” Caitlin said.

  She and Trevor headed out, walking along, talking about—

  And that was the part that made Caitlin sad. They really didn’t talk about much of anything. Oh, Trevor liked hockey, but he didn’t know the stats and couldn’t say anything meaningful about trends.

  Still, it felt go
od to be taking a walk. She’d walked a lot in Austin, despite the heat and humidity. She’d known her old neighborhood intimately: every crack in the sidewalk, every overhanging tree that provided shade, how many seconds it took for each traffic light to change. And although she was now learning the topography of these sidewalks, feeling the joins between sections with the tip of her cane, she was afraid she’d be lost again when they were covered with a layer of snow.

  They reached the school and made their way to the gymnasium, where the dance was already in progress. She had trouble hearing people talk: sounds echoed off the hard walls and floor, and the music was too loud for the speakers. It always amazed her that people were willing to put up with distortion for the sake of volume—but at least they played some Lee Amodeo along with all the Canadian bands she’d never heard of.

  She wished Bashira had been able to come, so she’d have someone to talk to. The Hoser had left her alone at one point, saying he was going to the washroom—but he’d obviously snuck off to smoke. She wondered if sighted people really couldn’t smell very well. Didn’t they know how much they stank after doing that?

  She’d been to dances at her old school, but those were different. For one, they always slow danced—which was kind of nice, actually, especially if it was with the right boy. But these kids usually danced by jumping around without being in physical contact with their partners. It was mostly like Trevor wasn’t even there.

  But there were some slow dances. “Come on,” Trevor said, as one of them began, and his hand took hers; she’d left her cane by the door.

  Caitlin felt a little rush. She was surprised at how far they walked before he finally drew her into his arms; maybe it had taken a while to find an empty spot.

  They swayed along with the music. She liked the feeling of Trevor pressing against her and—

  His hand on her ass. She reached down and moved it back up to the small of her back.