by E. C. Tubb
“I’m not sure I understand.” In the back of his mind a niggling feeling warned that there was more—much more. “And why are you telling me?”
Adolphus clasped his hands together. “We need you to help us.”
“How? Do you think he mailed me some kind of secret formula?”
“Did he?” asked the ancient man.
Even the rat looked up hopefully.
“No! And I’m not a programmer, either, so I don’t see how I can help you.”
“Oh, but you can, Eddie. You can ask your brother for the exit key. In fact, we’ll pay you handsomely for that service.”
“Ask him?” Eddie’s mind went blank. “You mean—I can talk to him?”
“Even better.” Adolphus’s smile was benign. “We can send you into his virtual world. It’s a small site; you’ll find him easily.”
Eddie’s pulse beat faster, but his response was cautious.
“Okay…of course, I’d like to talk to Charles, but why are you asking me to do this and not somebody who’ll know what this key thing is all about?”
Adolphus nodded at the rat who leaned back, put his fingertips together in imitation of Adolphus’s gesture. “That’s the crux of the problem. The virtual address is based on select strands of DNA. We didn’t realize that when we…”
Adolphus cleared his throat, and Eddie saw a warning glance.
“In order to get you to the same place in the computer that he is,” the rat said, nervously, “your DNA has to have a correlation coefficient of at least .925 with Charlie’s. That allows for a clone, identical twin, parent, child or—in your case—a genetic sibling.”
“What this means,” Adolphus interrupted, “is that we can send you in to see your brother, and it’ll really be him. He’ll have all his memories. You’ll be able to talk to him about old times, inquire about family secrets. You’ll even be able to ask what drove him to his final act—if you want.”
* * * *
Eddie sank into the chair’s white upholstery, a clamp on his right index finger. He desperately wanted a cigarette.
“This is just to establish the DNA sequence,” the rat man said. His office was small and cluttered with electronic components and little yellow pieces of paper.
Closing his eyes, Eddie attempted to control his growing anxiety.
“You know, he never trusted me,” whined the rat. “I populated his databases, beta tested and checked his heirarchization tables, but he never brainstormed with me like other programmers do with their assistants.”
Eddie didn’t want to hear the rat’s complaints. “So after Charlie tells me the magic word I get out?”
“Don’t worry.” The rat made a note on one of the screens. “He won’t leave you in there. We know his profile. He’s very close to you.”
Eddie wondered: close and distant at the same time? At their mother’s funeral Charlie had fairly radiated his discomfort at being physically close to him and their sister. They never even hugged.
“So it’s safe?”
“Oh, yes. Even the others are okay…” and he quickly turned his attention to a set of monitors.
“The others?” Eddie was suddenly alert. “What others?”
The rat looked stricken.
“You mean, you’ve sent other people into this damned thing? Where are they?”
The rat opened his mouth and gestured helplessly.
“They haven’t come back, have they?” Eddie stood and pulled the clamp from his finger.
“They’re in no danger.” The rat made quieting motions with his hands.
“You should have told me about them before that contract was shoved in my face!”
“We did,” squealed the rat. “Adolphus told you we had accessed the virtual world—and couldn’t get out again.”
It was true. Eddie remembered that part of their discussion. “So what happened to them?”
“It appears they went into a setting just like Eddie’s, but he wasn’t there.”
“It appears?”
“They’re just in a different partition, is all.”
“Suddenly, I’m not liking this idea very much!”
“They’re perfectly safe. It’s that DNA sequence that tripped us up; you’ll go right to him.”
Eddie watched the rat squirm for a few moments, then sat back in the chair and exhaled loudly. “How many are in there?”
“Three.”
“Jesus!” He pressed his back into the chair. “What happens to them if I don’t get the key?”
“Their—minds stay in the computer and their bodies stay on the gurneys.”
“Can’t you just wake them up?”
The rat sighed. “The process doesn’t clone their consciousness. It’s a transfer, a real migration, and they have to migrate back. When we have the key, we’ll send in their relatives, and then they can transfer back, too.”
“My brother probably knows you’ll try something like this.”
“Perhaps, but the company knows things, too. They spied on him big time. They knew he was up to something, but Adolphus said to let him alone.”
“So, were you a spy?”
The rat hesitated. “Supposed to be, but I just ended up an assistant.”
Eddie laughed.
The rat looked up angrily. “I didn’t get my bonus!”
* * * *
“We’re almost done.”
Eddie lay fully clothed on a padded, elevated table, electrodes attached to his head, arms, and one to his right ankle.
“I hope this thing works.”
“Think of money. Lots of money,” answered the rat.
Eddie snorted. He hadn’t intended to finesse the board. He would have paid them to see his brother, but his natural reticence made him appear reluctant, and they upped the offer twice. It was all he could do to keep from laughing. He did not, however, feel like laughing now.
“Okay, the DNA sequence checks out. I’m starting the drip.”
The drug affected Eddie immediately. “You know, my sister and I always accepted that he was the successful one. What pushed him over the edge?”
“He was unhappy.” The rat’s voice sounded far away.
“Maybe it…,” Eddie’s words were slurred now. “…my fault he didn’t talk to me.”
* * * *
A brilliant light shone directly into Eddie’s face. He grimaced and rolled onto his side.
What’s this? He stuck his fingers into the warm, yielding surface: a beach? Raising himself to his hands and knees, he saw beneath him pristine yellow sand.
As soon as his eyes adjusted to the sunlight, he looked up to see a long line of shore and, with some disappointment, a black drawbridge far in the distance. The two sides of the bridge were raised, and a tanker was putting out to sea. Another tanker on the horizon was but a tiny silhouette.
He got to his feet, brushing his hands, and saw a line of small white houses facing the water across a sandy road. Low palm trees fronted a few of the houses while scrubby grass punctuated the yards. Behind one of the houses, a neon Motel sign rose from a faded adobe structure.
Turning to face the water, he saw the ocean, smooth and unbroken like glass. Only if he listened could he hear the waves, tiny, little waves that lapped the shore.
He walked toward the water line, enjoying the feel of his shoes sinking into the sand. Never had he seen the ocean so calm and crystal clear. Even from the shore, he could see the bottom, several yards out, rippled, like an impression taken from the surface. Close in, a blue crab scuttled sideways while farther out drifted the white blobs of jellyfish.
Nearby, a huge rubber raft lay deflated and collapsed, its flat yellow folds half buried in dry sand. The sections above the sand formed an irregular platform on top of which was stacked a pile of jellyfish. The interiors of the variously shaped blobs were still alive with luminous and intricate patterns. Clinging to one side of the pile was a man-of-war, its purple air sack still inflated.
Only
a few folds of rubber held the jellyfish, but the mound had begun to melt in the sun, and a small rivulet of slime crept back toward to the ocean. An odor, like dead fish, reached his nostrils.
At the sound of voices, he looked up. Children raced along the beach in his direction, each with a long stick and, on the end of each stick, a jellyfish. They veered from the ocean’s edge and ran toward Eddie.
Abruptly, they stopped at the raft and, ignoring him, flung the jellyfish from their sticks onto the pile. The blobs struck with a wet, plopping sound.
The children looked six or seven years old, four girls and one boy. The oldest girl, with blond curly hair, wore a faded red swimsuit, one piece covering her torso. The other girls, younger, wore only loose, striped short bottoms. Two of the girls were twins.
“Don’t touch the stick,” warned the girl in the red swim suit. “You’ll get stung!”
“Eww! Let’s get some more!” cried one of the twins.
They quickly turned and ran back along the beach, all except the boy, who remained, his stick still in his hand, staring down at the jellyfish. He was older than the girls—perhaps eight—and his lean limbs were darkly tanned. His hair, bleached by the sun, lay flat against his head.
“Jellyfish tide,” said Eddie softly. “Corpus Christi, the sixties.”
The boy looked up, his hazel eyes squinting at him. This was someone Eddie had never known, and he spoke again before he lost his nerve.
“I remember you said the beach stank for a week when the jellyfish melted.” Eddie laughed, raised his hands and shook his head. “It’s unbelievable!”
“So they figured out the entry code.” The voice was unfamiliar, and the boy didn’t smile.
“Charlie, is it really you?” He lowered his head to look into the boy’s face.
Charlie nodded, intense, hazel eyes shaded by a furrowed brow.
“Can you remember—everything?”
He nodded again.
Eddie let out a sigh, and straightened. “I’m so surprised. Why this place-why here?”
The boy looked out at the water, his eyes still troubled. “After we moved from Corpus I never saw the ocean again so calm.”
“I never saw it like this, ever.”
The boy continued to stare at the water.
“Please talk to me, Charlie. I’m here, and it’s kind of a miracle. You know, they sent three other guys in who haven’t come back yet.”
“Oh,” the boy looked back at the jellyfish.
“They’re hoping I can help get them out.”
Again, Charlie was silent.
Eddie sighed and ran his fingers through his hair. “You know, when they told me what you did, it kinda pulled the rug out from under me, too. Was life so bad?”
Charlie shook his head. “It’s hard to explain. I guess when I looked over the hill and I saw only more numbers, more formulas, more algorithms—and nothing else, not another soul….”
Eddie gave a sigh. “OK. I guess that kind-of thing happened to me, too. Only when I looked over the hill all I saw were more beers and more tits, pardon my French. Getting old for that sorta thing, but it didn’t make me suicidal.”
“Doesn’t sound much better than what I saw,” said Charlie.
“I dunno. Maybe you shoulda tried the tits.”
The boy gave him a dark look.
“Just kidding,” he said, raising both hands. “Besides, two wives didn’t do much to improve the landscape for me.”
The mewing of gulls distracted them. The birds hovered low, rising and falling with the beating of their wings.
“So,” said Eddie, tentatively, “none of your boyfriends worked out?”
Charlie clenched his jaw. “No, but it wasn’t their fault; it was mine.”
“Don’t be so hard on yourself. Mom and Dad weren’t affectionate. It rubbed off on me, too.”
“I think I got all the kinds of love mixed up,” he said, “sexual, family, brotherly, whatever, and I couldn’t really deal with any of it. You know, one time I signed a letter to mom, ‘sincerely yours.’ That was too much, even for her.”
“But dad was that way, too,” said Eddie.
Near the shore, tiny fish jumped, sparkling and shimmering on the water’s surface. They jumped again, all in the same direction.
“I always wondered what made them do that,” said Charlie.
“Must be something bigger down there, but—don’t you know? Didn’t you program them?”
“I never saw what it was.” Charlie shrugged and returned his attention to Eddie. “It’s not fair to blame mom and dad. I was a happy kid; I didn’t feel unloved. It was only when I got out into the world that I began to worry that I was cold, or that I couldn’t relate.”
“So, what about going Catholic? That didn’t help?”
“I loved the mass; it gave me a place to go when I was sad.”
“But Charlie, you don’t kill yourself because you’re sad, or you’re lonely!”
“How do you know?”
“Hell, I’ve been lonely. I’m lonely and a failure, but that’s not enough to make me check out.”
“What if you knew, for certain, that it never, ever was going to get better?”
“Ha! I’d suck up a beer, and I’d light a cigarette, and then I’d suck up another beer, but I’d keep going.”
“Would you? Wouldn’t you just be doing the same thing I did, only taking a little longer?”
“It’s not the same.”
“It is, too! Have you had those lungs checked lately? Have you? You can’t keep on tanking your liver and carbonizing your insides without consequences.”
The other children returned, each with a jellyfish on a stick. They plopped their catches on the pile, looked questioningly at Charlie, and then ran back to the water.
Eddie said quietly, “I was too young to remember the beach gang, but I recognize them from pictures. The one in the red suit?”
“Yeah,” Charlie said, “it’s Vicki.”
Eddie shook his head. “Oh God! It was such a shock when she died. Can she talk to us?”
“She isn’t really there. She has no memories, no awareness. I’m the only real person in this little diorama.”
Eddie sighed. “Who are the others?”
“Geesy and the twins. I don’t think I ever knew their names.” Charlie absently poked holes in the sand with his stick.
“You know, Charlie, this is more than just about your suicide. It sorta feels like my suicide, too. I always thought that Vicki and I, perhaps we deserved what we got, but you—you were the achiever, and your success was our success. And now you go off and kill yourself. What happened? Were you sorry you weren’t a happy heterosexual, like me?”
Charlie chuckled. It was the sound of an older man. “I’m glad to see you. Really, I am.”
Eddie’s throat constricted. “Thanks, Charlie.”
“No, that wasn’t the problem. I always held back. They knew it, I knew it, and we’d both realize it wasn’t going to change.”
“Maybe that’s it, Charlie. Maybe you’ve got to accept love, you know, and you’ve got to give it back, too. And if you don’t, it turns against you, kinda like milk you never take out of the fridge: It goes bad on you.”
“Let’s see now: ’Love not given is like milk gone sour.’ Perhaps you could go into the greeting card business.”
“Come on, Charlie, think about it.”
“Why? Like it’s gonna do me some good now? You think I’m gonna learn my lesson, post-mortem?”
“Charlie, please!” He fell to his knees. “This is for real; it’s for both of us.” He would have broken into tears but for something he glimpsed to his left. “Oh Jesus!”
Charlie turned and looked, too. A toddler with blond, curly hair came from the direction of the ocean, his diaper dripping with sea water, his pudgy face wreathed in a smile.
Charlie turned to Eddie and shrugged.
The children had run back. Vicky, in the red swim suit
, took hold of the baby by the hand, scolded him, but the baby only laughed. She looked up. “You’re gonna get in trouble, Charlie,” she shouted. “Mama told you to watch him!”
“Well, mama told you to watch him, too!” returned Charlie, and he grinned up at Eddie. “You know, you did that about every other day. You loved the water.”
Eddie could not take his eyes off the toddler. “I look so happy.”
The girl dragged him, none too gently, toward the first white house. It had a little, white wooden arch over the end of the walkway leading from the front door.
“I can see why you liked it here,” said Eddie, “where the water is calm.”
“You know, I thought I’d get bored. The sun never sets. The raft never fills with jellyfish. But every time I dash out in the water and spear one of those things, I get a thrill. Sometimes, I can even grab one of the big round ones with my bare hands and not get stung. And every time I dump one on our pile, I feel like I’ve accomplished something. It’s counter to all the neuro-adaption theory I ever learned. I can’t explain it.”
“Well, this idea of yours, creating your own Garden of Eden, it’ll make a hell of a video game.”
The boy’s brow wrinkled. “Is that what they told you?”
“Well, I thought….”
“This is a perpetual life machine.”
Eddie thought for a moment. “You mean, you can start a whole new life in here?”
“You can’t go that far. The size of the system is limited by—lots of factors, but you can create a little segment of life, like this one. A day’s about the limit, and then you make a loop of it. The result is that you can live the happiest day of your life over and over—forever.”
Eddie glanced up and down the shore. The waves had grown enormous and broke in two long lines before crashing onto the beach; he could hear the sound of them up and down the shore. The children ran, squealing, in and out amongst them.
“We always got big breakers after a tanker passed,” Charlie said.
Eddie took several steps back as the tail-end of the waves scudded farther up the strand.
“That’s what they want to market,” said Charlie, “a perpetual life machine. Much better than a perpetual flame, don’t you think? People near death will pay anything for it, and their families will continue paying to keep it running.”
