Knocking on Heaven's Door

by Sharman Apt Russell

  This new form of communication had happened between him and Brad in the first few days of Dog’s return, even when he was still swirly in form, still adjusting. Luke had felt only despair then. The reanchored and reassembled consciousness of Dog was too alien, too much bright energy. Luke had retreated. But Brad had kept trying, hiding the swirly shape in his office and then sneaking it out to this camp until Brad had been able to “talk” to Dog, until eventually and in some way Brad had talked Dog into his present shape, the habit of Dog.

  “This will make Luke happy, won’t it?” Dog asked.

  “Oh, yeah,” Brad said. “But, you know, still … you have to be patient. Luke hasn’t been the same since you were killed by the giant shortfaced bear.”

  “He didn’t like me being in his head.”

  “That disturbed him.”

  “I’m still there in his head. That part of me.”

  “Oh,” Brad hadn’t known this. “I guess there’s nothing you can do about that?”

  “No,” Dog said. Luke/Lucia had always been a fractured personality. Now they were more so.

  “So …” Brad hesitated. He had something important to say.

  Dog suspected he could know everything Brad was about to tell him. All he had to do was go wheelboarding through Brad’s mind. But Dog waited instead. He remembered how his siblings had hated his intrusions into their thoughts. He remembered his mother’s teeth in his neck. Waiting was better.

  The lab rat smiled, enjoying the anticipation. He smelled like a river about to rush its banks. “We did it!” Brad said, looking over at Luke first, and unnecessarily keeping his mental voice a whisper. “It finally worked.”

  Dog would have felt his heart leap if his heart hadn’t been eaten by the giant shortfaced bear. Losing his concentration, he floated a few inches off the ground.

  Forgetting that Luke was sleeping, he whined with excitement. If he had been a body still, he would have dribbled urine. (Tomorrow, Dog promised himself. That sharp and wonderful odor: urea, creatine.)

  “I really had my doubts,” Brad confessed. “The last few weeks have been so frustrating.”

  Dog agreed. He had also been almost-frustrated! First they had tried to duplicate the experiment with Dog’s head by using a dried sunflower stalk from outside the office window. Dog hadn’t gone back to the lab but had consulted with Brad at the camp, describing the dead flower’s DNA, guanine, cytosine, receiving, sending, explaining all the things Brad could put into numbers and then into his computer. They had done everything right, Dog was certain, and yet that first attempt failed, the sunflower stalk on the floor, the radios humming, and no golden cloud of unique consciousness.

  Almost immediately, Dog knew. And Dog was embarrassed. Months ago (a lifetime ago) he had seen a glowing stick of light floating above the arroyo, a flower stem three meters long topped by a composite of smaller flowers. Sunflower: guanine, cytosine, adenine, thymine. But this flower didn’t have DNA. Months ago, infused with the peyote spirit, Brad had seen sunflowers above the musical stream. A Chinese ideogram. Months ago, before that, the bushkies had worshiped their own version. A pillar of light. Dog should have predicted this. Plants were different. Time worked differently at the quantum level. They had got the equations both right and wrong. They had sent the sunflower consciousness into the past.

  Now it was a dozen sunflowers later. All sent back into the past. Dog had wanted to use a different plant, something simpler, algae perhaps. But Brad had said no. Brad kept trying with the radios in his office, newly obsessed. Dog could only wait in camp and work on his tricks to please Luke.

  “Just like before, with you,” Brad was saying, “the holo-consciousness formed above the subject. Glowing. A cloud.” But this time the glowing cloud had lengthened almost immediately to take its shape as a sunflower, so then there were two—the glowing three-meter-long sunflower and the dried stalk. “I had to smuggle them out, too, just like with you, hoping no one would see me.”

  “Where did you take them?” Dog felt a yearning.

  “We got away that night and went north a few kilometers. At first, the new sunflower stayed by the old one.” Brad paused.

  Dog remembered his own desire to be near his gummy head, a strong allegiance to that DNA. He wouldn’t have believed they could ever separate. After a while, though, the rotting head became less interesting. A pattern of molecules just like everything else. Dog was different now. Dog wasn’t made of molecules anymore. Eventually Luke buried the head under a tree.

  “Then the holo-consciousness floated away, up,” Brad went on, seeing that scene in his mind’s eye. “I couldn’t follow.”

  And Dog felt that yearning again to see the holo-sunflower returned in full bloom, each composite flower part of the larger flower, each ovule filled with seed. Where had that glowing consciousness gone? What a pity Brad hadn’t managed to bring it here. Dog whined. No matter. No matter. Dog made his first pun. Pleased by that, he spoke carelessly. “We need an animal next. A mouse would work.”

  The burning wood popped, a spray of sparks. Brad looked at Luke, still apparently asleep, and opened his mouth—and said nothing. Brad’s unique consciousness began to retreat from Dog, something Dog could feel like a swat on the nose. For Brad, this was all happening too fast. Brad wasn’t designed to accommodate a future rushing at him so quickly, carrying him, lifting him, the water flooding over and through the bank.

  In the distance, Dog heard a lion’s cough—huh, huh, huh—not particularly close and not threatening. Brad turned in that direction but also was not alarmed, sitting right next to a blazing fire. Dog perked an ear. He hadn’t expected a lion’s cough. He hadn’t manufactured it out of habit and memory, which meant he was actually “hearing” it, aware of sensations even though he had no physical way to receive them. What part of him had already known the lion was out there—a weak male thrown out of his pride? What part of him knew about the ocean waves pounding on the beach sand far away, the moon’s reflection on that sand, the light broken into patterns? The crab scuttling in moonlight? The solar flare in space? What part of him could know everything? Dog felt himself enlarge and stopped immediately. Shrank. Withdrew. To what he had always been. To what the former physical Dog could know. To what Dog could do.

  A mouse would be easy to transport. “We need an animal next,” Dog repeated, but Brad was silent, and Dog understood: This was happening too fast. Also, Luke disapproved now as Clare had disapproved. Luke had regrets, a part of Dog in his cerebellum and the new Dog not so fun-loving, not so much a companion as before. The new Dog had these ambitious ideas, conferring with Brad, urging him into the rushing future. Why? What did Dog want?

  Brad was wondering that as well.

  The moon shone here as it did on that sandy beach, gilding the pointed leaves of oak, casting shadows on the rocks above the fire. Waves rippled although they were not made of water, light, or sound. Wave upon wave, the infinite movement. Dog rocked. Dog rippled. Dog brought himself back. He didn’t want to dissolve into everything.

  Instead he reminded Brad, “Remember Clare. This is how you will get her back.”

  Brad was silent. He wasn’t sure.

  “I am sure,” Dog said and found the lie surprisingly easy. The trick to lying was to sound like you weren’t. “If we do this, we can give Clare what she wants.”

  Brad brought his arms close to his chest as though he were cold.

  Dog repeated, “We can give Clare what she wants more than anything else in the world.” Dog pressed. “We can give her Elise.”

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  BRAD

  The equipment had been a problem, too big, too heavy, and confined to the office. Brad needed something he could take outside the lab. The first breakthrough was a smaller but more powerful solarcomp capable of handling the new software that converted what Dog understood about DNA into numbers corresponding to radio signals. The radios themselves were still bulky, filling half his pack, and Brad had resigned him
self to back strain until he found a twenty-first-century website on miniaturization. Two radios could be combined into one. One could fit into the palm of his hand. This didn’t even involve a scavenging trip, only stealing some materials from the production center where they rebuilt the computers. Of course, everything took longer than he had hoped. There were always setbacks, the daily wrinkle, the thing that couldn’t be solved until he miraculously found a solution.

  For a fact, Brad had never been happier in his work. He had felt something like this before in his twenties, a sense of excitement getting up every morning. But the mathematics then had been so abstract. After his mother’s death, he only had those equations—intangible, not of the physical world. This time, he had to use his hands manipulating wires and building little machines. This time, he was not alone but always thinking about Dog. Would Dog be impressed? What would Dog advise? Brad wondered if this was how the hunters felt getting up every morning to manipulate the world. There were always problems to solve, tracks to follow, decisions to make: which animal to kill, how to protect the meat. Unlike his father, most hunters were gregarious. They worked with partners and in teams. Brad had spent his life envying them without knowing why.

  Now he understood. He understood Clare better and thought of her often, wondering what she was doing and if she missed him. This year, the spring came with a rush, small white flowers hugging the ground, sprays of orange poppies in the grass. The tips of cottonwood branches turned luminous, and the elm trees dressed in lime-green. Brad noticed the new life growing around him and knew that Clare was noticing that life, too. She was alive with the warmth and promise of spring. She was thinking of red willow, its limber growth good for baskets. She was thinking of fresh shoots and leaves, garlic and onion bulbs, certain flowering plants rich in vitamin C. She was thinking of him, or so Brad hoped. She was hoping he would come after her.

  And he was almost ready to do that. He was preparing to leave soon—when the blonde-haired woman came to see him. The Council member called out first and knocked on the office door. Brad was thinking about the nature of time at the quantum level. He wasn’t quite sure how he had solved the problem of the sunflowers. He had fiddled and adjusted and fiddled and adjusted and suddenly the glowing stalk was no longer disappearing back into the past. But why?

  And this wasn’t the only mystery. Why did consciousness seem to glow? Consciousness wasn’t matter/energy, so what caused that physical effect? Was the glow real or perceptual? And why had the sunflower become a sunflower so quickly when Dog had remained a hazy cloud for days? And where was that sunflower now?

  “Brad!” The Council member called out again.

  Brad looked around. He checked his computer screen. He prepared his face and let her in, shouting at the same time, “Buenos días! Dobry den!” It was a bit of a fad to learn Spanish and Russian although the computer translators worked fine and there was really no need.

  “We have to talk.”

  “Konechno!” Brad said boisterously.

  The Council woman pushed into the room and also looked around, not bothering to hide her interest. “What have you been doing in here?”

  “Making a breakthrough. Solving the secrets of the holographic universe.”

  “Yes, that’s what Judith said, exactly what you told her.”

  “Working on the natural harmony of general relativity, quantum mechanics, and panpsychism. The Council approved this. You approved it.” Brad smiled warmly, permitting himself the flirtation. The Council woman really was special, with that yellow hair and gray eyes, an interesting throwback or perhaps a mutation. Her critics complained she had been voted into the Council because of her looks—that famous picture emailed to every solarcomp in North America—but Brad knew she kept the position for other reasons. Because she was smart, because she was ruthless.

  Now she was frowning. “I don’t think your usual work involves spending nights away from the lab or sneaking around the production center.”

  Brad tried the offensive. “You’re spying on me? That’s not our way.”

  The Council woman changed the subject. “Whatever happened with Clare?”

  Brad turned sorrowful. “You know me. Things don’t turn out.”

  The Council woman looked at him too directly. “I do know you. And I know something is going on. I can’t imagine what. But I’m afraid for you, Brad.”

  “Afraid?” That surprised him, and Brad couldn’t help himself: he glanced at his computer again.

  “Don’t presume too much.” The Council woman followed his gaze. “You can’t just do whatever you want to do. We’ve been tolerant, but we have our limits.”

  “Ah, yes …” Brad found himself stammering.

  “I can’t protect you,” she said and shut the door behind her.

  Brad started packing. He had been meaning to leave in a few days anyway. This was almost his own plan, almost expected. He still had some hours of afternoon sun and could get a decent start before having to spend the night in a tree. The solarcomp and radios were already cached halfway to Luke’s camp. He needed to take only some clothing, the dried food he had hoarded, and … his little collection of things.

  Before putting them in the pack, Brad unwrapped the leather bundle just to check: a half-dozen dead mice, an assortment of teeth, some tufts of hair. He thought of Clare again, that habitual movement, touching her neck for the leather bag. He found himself grinning, his mouth stretched so that it almost hurt. The Council woman really couldn’t imagine what he was doing. Not in her wildest dreams.

  As he rewrapped the objects, Brad noted that his hands were shaking. Also, he couldn’t seem to stop smiling. He was afraid he might actually start to laugh. But none of this was close to funny. Perhaps none of this was temporary. He was leaving the lab. He was leaving his home. He had the strongest desire to go to his bed in the west wing and crawl under the animal skins and pull them over his head.

  Luke asked, fierce, “Did you kill those mice?”

  Still tired from the walk, hungry, too, Brad had known the old man would object to the new experiments. But he hadn’t expected this question. “We’re not monsters!” he protested, his indignation fueled by the fact that he had been tempted. Trapping mice and killing them would have been so much easier than finding mice already dead. In this case, that meant keeping watch on the lab’s small cats, intercepting the mothers feeding their young, and getting well scratched in the process. Yes, perhaps he had wanted to just poison or stab or smash the damn-muck-a-luck mice. But he hadn’t. He wouldn’t. Killing an animal for an experiment and not for food or defense? That went beyond loathsomeness.

  Brad glared at Luke. The man grunted and returned to skinning the ubiquitous squirrel. Luke seemed better, Brad thought, a little more centered, a little more like himself. Dog turned to nip a flea in his tail, and Brad felt the tension in the air lessen. Obviously, Dog didn’t have fleas. But he had perfected this performance for his old friend. It seemed to be working.

  “Let’s get started,” Dog said to Brad privately.

  Brad looked down at the six mice, six in a row on a flat stone. He arranged the radios, got out the solarcomp, and fiddled with the software. Then he picked up the best-preserved mouse and carelessly, casually, put it on the ground next to the transmitters. The tiny bundle of flesh looked pathetic. Tiny lips pulled back from tiny yellow teeth, tiny eyes closed, tiny paws curled convulsively. Apparently, the death hadn’t been painless.

  “Give me the numbers,” Brad said, also not out loud. Luke didn’t want to be part of this. Luke went on making their dinner as Brad typed on the keyboard and fiddled some more and finally, without fanfare, turned the radios on.

  He didn’t expect the first one to work. It had taken thirteen sunflowers before he had gotten the consciousness of a plant to come back at the right time, the quantum level of time matching Newtonian time, the equation fine-tuned to the plant’s DNA, the signals fine-tuned to the equation. A mouse should be harder, not ea
sier. Now Brad was puzzled, but he couldn’t stop and think about the puzzle, not with the shimmering and recognizable animal hovering in the air above its dead body and Dog growling with excitement and Luke suddenly coming over to stare.

  The mouse in the air opened its eyes, feet twitching. Much like Dog in the first weeks, the animal was having trouble holding its shape, with bits of—what? mouse consciousness?—drifting off and drifting back, coalescing and not coalescing. Dog moved in closer as if to sniff, and Brad was afraid the direwolf would suddenly extend his jaws and snap up the swirly animal as a tasty meal. It was an odd image, consciousness eating consciousness. Dog seemed to be vibrating. The golden mouse became perceptibly more solid.

  Brad looked up to catch Luke’s eye. Luke turned away.

  Dog said, “Do another one.”

  Brad tried to focus on the moment. He forced himself to remember that he had a plan, a testable theory. “I want to use the same mouse,” he told Dog. “To see if its DNA will produce multiple consciousnesses.”

  Dog seemed surprised but agreed.

  Brad didn’t feel disappointed when he turned the radios on again and nothing happened. The shimmering mouse floated in the air. The corpse of the mouse lay in the dirt. The DNA had turned on. But it would only turn on once, producing for the last time the animal’s unique consciousness shaped by matter/energy/time. The biohologram loop was already broken. The consciousness loop was now broken, too.

  “Do another mouse,” Dog insisted, and they did. Out of six mice, five retained their shape and the last expanded into a cloud, radio waves seemingly visible and then fading away in a golden shower of light. Brad squinted. The cloud was there. The cloud was gone. Where did it go?

  “Where does the stream go when it enters the ocean?” Dog answered.

  “No,” Brad said. “You are not supposed to read my mind.”

  Dog let his tail droop. “Sorry.”

  “You’re excited.” Brad struggled to speak normally. “This is incredible. Amazing. But we are all tired. We should stop now.”