by Joe Hart
“How?”
“I overheard you speaking with one of the committee members a few months ago before you addressed the Senate. It did not sound encouraging.”
“So you’re not only insolent but an eavesdropper too.” Her attempt at humor had the opposite effect, and a sad weariness settled over her. “I’m sorry, I won’t be able to pay your salary this month. I’ll need to put it all toward the lab. I’ll completely understand if you need to take another position.” The mere thought of continuing the research in Birk’s absence was more than daunting. It was blackly disheartening.
“Doctor, I’ve been returning my pay to the general fund for the last three months. I’ll be here to the end.” He smiled again, tipping his head to one side in his customary fashion.
The tears that sprang to her eyes were so sudden they caught her off guard. She wiped the first that fell away before it could travel more than an inch down her cheek and choked out a short laugh. “You’re too good, Birk. Someday someone’s going to take advantage of you. You know that, right?”
“Maybe it isn’t that I’m a good person, but that my fiancé is very rich.”
She laughed in earnest this time and embraced him, which was like hugging a towering oak tree. He patted her back once. “It will be all right, Doctor.”
When he released her, she swallowed several times until the knot in her throat unraveled enough for her to speak. “Okay, let’s go ahead with the trial. Maybe we’ll get lucky and prove those bastards on the Hill wrong. Then they won’t have a choice about funding.”
“I think luck will have nothing to do with it,” Birk said, moving out into the lab to don a clean coverall. She followed him, doing the same, all the while trying to keep the email from derailing her. If she could take a hydro right now, that would give her the clarity she needed. It would help her focus. She paused midway across the lab, turning back to her office.
The familiar gnawing began at the back of her mind. Whispers of how nice it would be to swallow one of the little pills, everything around her taking on a sharpened shine, how easy it would be to concentrate if she were surrounded by the narco-glow.
No. She didn’t need it. She could work through a day without relying on the pills.
But later at home, it might be nice to have one.
Stop it.
Gillian took a deep breath and finished prepping to enter the portion of the lab separated by a sterile barrier and governed by air-filtration units that controlled humidity, pressure, and temperature. The whispers faded as she stepped up to the entry beside Birk.
“Ready, Doctor?”
“Ready.”
The clean space wasn’t large, barely fifteen feet by twelve, just enough to house the monitoring equipment, an array of touchscreens, and the table in the center holding the Plexiglas cage with the open top.
Gillian took a deep breath, letting everything fall away. There was no room for anxiety or worry here, no space for doubt. Only concentration and will.
“Recording on,” she said, moving to the center table. One of the screens in the corner of the room lit up. “May 6, 2028, eleven fifty a.m. Neural plasticity light trial number fifty-four in regards to Losian’s disease. This is Dr. Gillian Ryan assisted by Birk Lindqvist.” She nodded to Birk, who crossed the room to the small cage. “Subject is male Rattus norvegicus, or common brown rat. Expression of neural channel rhodopsins is at sufficient levels for trial to commence. Trial fifty-four variable is a luciferase dose increase of .6 milliliters.”
Birk approached the table, cupping the small brown rat in his hands. It was groggy, head barely moving.
“Luciferin compound injected at eleven a.m. for sufficient cranial absorption. Sedative administered at eleven thirty-three a.m.,” Birk said, lowering the rat into the bottom of the cage where a small harness awaited. He settled the rodent quickly, positioning it as if it were standing on all four of its feet, head extended out. “Affixing neural bioelectroencephal monitor as well as injection line into cranial port.” Birk threaded a miniscule wire into the metallic port poking up through the animal’s fur at the top of its skull with a few deft movements before giving Gillian a nod.
She eyed the docile rat through the clear cage, making sure everything was in place.
Her heart rate began to climb.
What if this was it? The moment she’d been waiting, dreaming, hoping for.
What if?
She swallowed, stifling the excitement that had begun to build. It could easily be as disappointing as the last trials had been.
Or it could be the answer. Salvation.
She studied the nearest monitor. “Vitals are all stable. Proceeding to trial.”
Her finger hovered over the “Execute” square on the screen. Touched it.
There was a quiet humming from the machine beside her. “Injection of luciferase initiated,” she said quietly, and after a brief delay, the next display in line came alive with pulsing movement.
It was like watching a hundred thousand fireworks.
The biomonitor was a combination of electrical and light-sensitive apparatus and software, all tied together into a 3-D imaging computation. And right now she was looking at the partially sedated rat’s thoughts.
Each time she saw the inner workings of a mind, it threw her. No matter if it was a PET scan of an eighty-year-old Kansas woman’s brain or an MRI of a five-week-old lab mouse, the unreality of observing what made up another being’s thoughts was transfixing in a way she could never articulate. She supposed it was the intimacy of it: she was seeing what made a person or animal who or what they were.
Their thoughts. Emotions. Memories. Everything that culminated in the truest sense of their identity—it was all there on the screen before her.
Even though the rat was barely conscious, many of its dendrites, axons, and interceding synapses remained active. She could see these as flitting glimmers of light where the luciferin and luciferase were reacting to create a deep-blue bioluminescent glow throughout the rat’s brain. And where the chemicals joined, the neurons began to fire.
First thousands.
Then millions.
It was working.
“Pyramidal neurons active . . . and inhibiting neurons are now firing,” she said quietly, tearing her gaze away from the screen to look at Birk, who stared at a second monitor.
He nodded once. “Light-plasticity target engaged.” He touched a control screen as Gillian brought her attention back to the display.
More and more of the rat’s brain was becoming active. The cerebellum, hindbrain, midbrain, and olfactory structure.
But her focus was on none of them.
“Come on. Come on,” she whispered, willing it to work. Willing it to play out how she’d dreamed of it happening.
“Bioluminescence approaching hippocampal region,” Birk said.
Gillian watched the glow spread, firing neurons in its path, billions of synapses triggered by the compound, her hypothesis being proven true before her. She caught a prayer on her lips and, even in her state of excitement, banished it away.
The first portion of the rat’s hippocampus lit up, light flaring in millions of connections.
Then nothing.
Patches of darkness knitted with erratic stabs of brightness, like a lightning storm at midnight.
The compound flowed through the rat’s hippocampus, but the majority of the area remained black and unresponsive.
The hope inside her folded, collapsing in on itself like the house of cards it was.
Gillian looked down at her hands and found them balled into fists. With enormous effort she unclenched them.
“Inhibiting neurons preventing full excitation of the hippocampus,” Birk said. Gillian stared at the floor before reaching up to shut off the injection system. She moved away from the array of screens, not giving the rat a glance as she left the clean room.
Outside she tore at her coverall, unable to get it from her body fast enough. She was dr
owning, her lungs filling up. She needed a pill. Right now. Not later.
Now.
She made it to her office doorway and physically stopped herself from going any farther. Hands on either side of the doorjamb, she let her chin rest on her breastbone. The expected tears didn’t come; the frustration and anger were too much and wouldn’t allow any to form.
“It’s okay, Doctor,” Birk said from behind her.
“No. No, it’s not, Birk,” she said.
“I apologize. I misspoke.”
She felt a scream building in her like a steam whistle, but just as quickly the rage deflated, leaving the customary emptiness she was used to.
“Take the afternoon,” she said, still not facing him. She heard him shuffle around the lab for a moment before one of his large hands rested on her shoulder.
“I meant we are going to find the solution. We will try a different amount of luciferin. Perhaps—”
“It’s all right. Just . . . just take the afternoon. Let’s start early tomorrow.”
His hand left her shoulder after a final squeeze, and she listened to him exit the lab. When all was quiet again, save the soft hush of the air circulation and occasional beep of one of the many machines, she stepped fully into her office and raised her head.
She looked at the clutter of her desk. The notes scribbled hastily in her messy scrawl. The journal articles marking the gradual uptick in cases of Losian’s, named for the first child who had died, Charles Losian. He had been ten.
It all mocked her.
Gillian stepped forward and cleared her desk with one swoop of her arm.
Even as everything fell to the floor, she was turning toward the bookshelf. Tomes flew and struck the wall; one of the heaviest, an analysis on new neural radiological studies, left a dent in the Sheetrock. She spun again, tearing papers from the walls and corkboard, even her degree, which she held for a split second before sailing it to the farthest corner.
Glass tinkled, and it was this sound that stopped her cold.
Glass shattering, the feeling of it embedded in her cheek.
She brought a hand up automatically and felt the telltale scars there: small upraised patches of flesh, a horror story in braille.
All at once her legs wouldn’t hold her, and she slumped to the floor, pressing her back against the wall, feeling the solidity of it, grounding herself in the present as the past tried to draw over her like a dark veil.
She stifled a quiet moan, covering her mouth as the tears came. Why wasn’t the compound working? What had she missed? Why wasn’t she smart enough to find it?
Why had any of this happened?
But there would never be solace or an answer for that last one.
She looked around the office, half admiring the destruction she’d wrought. On the bright side, it doesn’t look that much different than before.
A sob emerged in the form of a laugh, and she let it play out. She laughed until she was crying again and her stomach ached. She was sure her tenure would be revoked by the end of the day if the dean or a member of the board were to walk in here right now, but what did it really matter? She’d be gone in a month anyhow.
The thought was enough to sober her. Because it did matter. Time mattered.
Every second.
FIVE
Now
So this is how I go. Burnt up on the way out of the atmosphere.
She closed her eyes, waiting for the heat to consume her in a hungry maw of fire. A piece of handy information came back to her then. Frank, her trainer at NASA, had mentioned the main rockets burned fuel at a temperature up to six thousand degrees Fahrenheit. So maybe she wouldn’t even feel it.
The vehicle shook again, the hardest it had so far, and she released a breathless cry.
“We’re okay,” Carson said in her ear. “Everything’s a go.”
Gillian opened her eyes. In the fire’s place was a collage of smoke and a blue she could only guess was the ocean thousands of feet below. Carrie was somewhere down there. The thought made her stomach flip in a poisonous somersault. A second later the pressure on her body increased, flattening her farther into the seat.
“Three point five Gs,” Carson said, and now she could hear the strain in his voice.
The shuttle rocked, and there was a popping sound, like both of her ears equalizing at once.
She was going to die from the velocity. It was too much.
Another wrenching shudder.
Consciousness was ebbing, dark clouds growing at the corners of her vision.
No. She’d trained for this. She should be fine. But the assurances did nothing to keep away the creeping shadows invading her eyes.
Gillian held on to the last image of her daughter, the feeling of her small body hugged close, the smell of her hair, even as everything else faded away.
SIX
Two Months Before
Traffic was light that early in the day, and the sky was overcast, a threat of rain on the horizon.
After Gillian left the lab and picked up Carrie, they made good time on 494 East toward their neighborhood a dozen miles outside Minneapolis, where most days the increasingly common clouds of smog drifted north and there was less need to wear the white pollution masks many in the city had taken to donning outdoors.
When Gillian saw the blinking sign advertising ice cream in a waffle cone, she pulled into the drive-through. Carrie accepted the double scoop of Blue Moon with a quiet thank-you. Every so often Gillian looked in the mirror, watching her daughter nibble half-heartedly at the treat while she gazed out her window at the passing landscape.
Mrs. Seaton, the manager at the day care where Carrie spent Gillian’s lab hours, had said she’d been distant today. Dispirited. And when Gillian had questioned Carrie as they left the fenced-in parking lot through the manned security checkpoint, the girl had shrugged, not meeting her eyes.
As they made their way closer to home, Gillian returned to the conversation she’d had with her sister the week before. It had been their usual back-and-forth—Katrina checking in on how Carrie was and how the research was progressing, then pivoting smoothly into the topic of them coming to visit.
We have plenty of room, and you haven’t been down in over a year, Kat had said, a hint of the adolescent whine still lingering from their childhood.
Been a little busy. Besides, you need your rest. Won’t be too long and you’ll be up all night cleaning up puke and shitty diapers.
Kat had laughed. I clean up puke and shitty diapers at the hospital every day. This’ll be like going on vacation.
You say that now.
Seriously, Gill, think about taking a break and coming down, even for a few days. I wanna spoil my niece, and she loves the beach. You can drink all the margaritas you want, and I’ll just smell them on the way by. Maybe you could pick up some college beach bum and educate him on the ways of an older woman.
It had been Gillian’s turn to laugh. I’ll think about it.
But they’d both hung up knowing she wouldn’t. There was too much at stake to take a vacation.
A train blocked their path a mile from their neighborhood, and Gillian let her mind float again, bumping off thoughts like a vessel drifting through wreckage-strewn waters. And all the while the need for one of the hydros grew.
Some graffiti on a train car caught her eye. Saul Gone, it said in hurried letters, as if the artist had been forced to rush through their work, perhaps by approaching law enforcement. She pondered the phrase. Was it referring to the popular TV show from years ago? She and Kent had never missed an episode. And Saul was definitely gone now; there was no question about that. Or maybe the artist had just been lamenting an existential truth. It’s all gone. Or it soon will be. She supposed the statement could be applied to last month’s devastating landslides in Peru and China because of heavy rainfall. Or maybe it was referring to the last of the Arctic ice, which scientists were saying would vanish completely in the next five years. She guessed it didn’t
matter what it was. Everything eventually ended.
Maybe she needed to stop watching the Weather Channel.
“Momma? I’m sorry I was bad.”
Gillian blinked and came back to herself. “What, honey? Why would you say that?”
“Because Mrs. Seaton looked angry today after the fuzzies. I didn’t mean to forget.”
“The fuzzies” was how Carrie had first described the fugue states she sometimes fell into. They had been watching an old TV show where the character’s television had turned to static, and Carrie had said that’s what it felt like when she had a lapse.
The first time she tried to reply, Gillian’s voice didn’t work. “You had the fuzzies today?”
“Yes. A little bit. I think I fell down and skinned my hand. I think Mrs. Seaton was mad.”
“You don’t need to be sorry, darling. You didn’t do anything wrong.”
“Because I’m sick?”
“Yes. But we’re going to make you better. Momma’s going to make you better.”
“Because you’re smart.”
“That’s right. And because you’re strong.”
“And I won’t go away like Daddy?”
The last car of the train clattered past, and the guard arms rose before them. Gillian pressed the accelerator and kept her eyes straight ahead until she could speak again. “No, honey, you won’t go away. I won’t let you.”
By the time they entered their neighborhood and pulled into their driveway, she was trembling so badly, all she could think was, Get Carrie inside, get a pill, and make some coffee. Everything will be clearer after that. Everything will make more sense.
But as they pulled to a stop before the double garage, her attention was drawn to the person seated on their front steps. He rose as she shut off the car.
“Who’s that man on our porch, Momma?”
Gillian stared at him, unable to separate the emotions that rushed through her. “An old friend, honey. A very old friend.”
SEVEN
Gillian shut the back door of the house behind Carrie, watching her jog to the middle of the yard.
