Antediluvian

by Wil McCarthy

  “I had an armored shirt made of rope and wood,” Harv said to her.

  “You’re not making sense,” she told him.

  Thinking that over, he seemed to collect himself for a few seconds before saying, “It was a mountainous region in Europe, where Neandertals and, I guess, Cro-Magnons were living in neighboring valleys. The level of social organization was high. Even the Neandertals lived in painted tents. They had pointy ears.”

  “Try not to speak,” the male paramedic said. It sounded like it was aimed at Harv, but he was looking at Tara when he said it. He and his partner were very busy, reading displays and writing on handheld devices and injecting various substances into Harv’s IV.

  “Little bit of epinephrine here. Okay. This is a benzodiazepine. You may feel a little floaty. Please keep that mask in place, sir.”

  But Harv remained alert, and kept right on pulling the mask back, until finally they gave up and put some tubes in his nose. He seemed to relax after that.

  “It was real, Tara.”

  “Okay.”

  “Look, I know what you’re thinking, but there was so much detail. Things I could never come up with. Why would I? It doesn’t help anything if I sound crazy, or if my story doesn’t add up.”

  “No,” she agreed. And then, because she couldn’t help herself, she asked, “Do you still remember the first seizure? Your years with Manu?”

  “Vividly.” He slapped the rail of the gurney. “It was real, as solid as this. But that wasn’t his name.”

  “Okay,” she said again, granting that for the time being, “but why would you still be receiving memories when you’re not hooked up to the machine?”

  “I don’t know. It’s worrying, isn’t it? Maybe the brain can’t process the information all at once.”

  “That’s not good news,” Tara said. “Are you going to keep seizing?”

  “Who knows? Oh. Oh, I do feel floaty.”

  “That’s to calm down the electrical activity in your brain,” the paramedic said.

  “It feels fine. It feels fine. But Tara, there’s something you need to know: I wasn’t a passive observer. I was able to influence events.”

  Tara snorted. “Um, no. Sorry. Is that the drugs talking?”

  “No, no, is it so crazy? Think about it, Tara: entangled photons can affect each other instantly, even light-years apart. The qubit states in the Y chromosome have been entangled for a long time. A change in the present should be reflected in the past. Or vice-versa. It doesn’t mean causality is violated; just that those two moments are adjacent in a higher-dimensional space.”

  “So you didn’t…change history?” The words sounded outrageous as she said them.

  “No. I don’t think so. But I was part of it.”

  Tara was overwhelmed with all of this. She didn’t know what to say, or think, and a really big part of her wanted it all to be the seizure dream of a half-fried brain. But there were just too many stacked-up coincidences here to ignore. That story didn’t add up.

  “Are you sure?” she asked feebly.

  “No,” he said. “We need to talk to some physicists. Cosmologists, maybe. And archaeologists. You’re right to be skeptical—they certainly will be.”

  “What are you guys talking about?” the female paramedic demanded.

  “Time travel,” was Tara’s answer. “Maybe.”

  “Oh,” the paramedic said, and went back to what she was doing.

  * * *

  In the emergency room, Harv found himself tied to another electroencephalogram, along with an electrocardiogram and a pulse oximeter. The nurses and technicians cut off his clothes, and replaced them with a faded green-yellow-white hospital gown patterned like a stained glass window. They fussed over him, asked him a lot of the same questions the paramedics had, and rolled a portable MRI machine over his head and shoulders to take some buzzing, beeping images of his brain.

  A female doctor Tara’s age came and went several times, each time asking Harv how he was feeling.

  “Tired,” was Harv’s answer every time. But his grip on Tara’s hand was strong.

  A technician asked him, “Do you have any family in the area?”

  “No. My parents live in Texas. This is Tara, my girlfriend.”

  Harv thought he caught a glimmer of disapproval from the technician at that. And why not? Harv had committed the ultimate cliché of a sin: graying-at-the-temples professor bangs twentysomething postdoc. She wasn’t his postdoc, so he hadn’t technically violated any university ethics policies, but when he really thought about it—how it looked, how it felt—he couldn’t summon much defense. Here they were, subject to a sudden wave of outside scrutiny, and what could he possibly have to say for himself? She held my hand, sir. You’d do it, too, if you were me. Harv did not make a habit of this kind of thing—not at all. The largest age gap he’d ever had in a relationship before was seven years, and even that had felt like a lot at the time. But all that was impossible to explain to these people. None of it was any of their business, and yet.

  “Are you okay with your girlfriend overhearing your medical information?”

  “Yes. And Gurdeep Patel, my grad student.”

  After restating that in several different ways, he thumbprinted an electronic release confirming it.

  “What events?” Tara asked him, when things had settled down sufficiently. “What is it you think you…participated?”

  “Well, for example, I spoke to Manuah. He heard me. He told his brother he heard me. I think it might be why he built his ark in the first place.”

  “Harv…”

  “I know.”

  “What am I supposed…”

  “I know. But this is an experiment, and that’s one of our findings. It actually is.”

  “How… For God’s sake, assuming any of this could be verified, how would we possibly write it up?”

  “Good question.”

  “I mean, the subjectivity…”

  “Yeah. But if we leave anything out…”

  What a mess, Harv thought. Findings like these were every scientist’s worst nightmare. Cold fusion? Extraterrestrial signals? Lamarckian evolution? Warm-blooded fucking dinosaurs? Being wrong meant never working again. It meant you’d wasted the best years of your life, and would finish out your time on Earth at the U of North Dakota, or behind the counter of a Starbuck’s. And being right…

  Hell, being right often meant your vindication arrived a hundred years after your death. If you were lucky, it meant decades of swimming upstream against stubbornly incredulous peers, waiting for them to die off or retire so the tide could turn in your favor. Either way, the rest of your life was laid out on rails, impossible to change.

  “What have you done to us?” Tara asked Harv.

  “Me? All by myself?”

  “Fine. What have we done?”

  At this point, Patel came in, looking worried. Harv had never seen him worried before.

  “Hey, Boss,” he said, at once too loudly and too gently. “How are you feeling?”

  “Confused,” Harv admitted. “Enlightened. Triumphant. This is going to be big.”

  “We need to nail down exactly what the machine did to you,” Patel said, unnecessarily. So much of what he said was redundant or noncommittal or simply agreeing with Harv, and it occurred to Harv, for the umptieth time, to wonder what actually went on in Patel’s head. He was unquestionably a smart guy, but he was two years into a PhD program, totally dependent on Harv for his future, and Harv wondered if he ever dared speak his mind–no matter the prompting.

  “True,” Harv said. And then, more thoughtfully, “Even the paramedics and hospital staff know that. Patel, you graduate next year, and we need to get you placed somewhere good. You need to learn to share more of what’s going on in your brain.”

  “Okay, Boss.”

  Harv sighed. To Tara he said, “Could you talk to him for me, please? Find out what he really thinks?”

  “Sure,” Tara agreed, with
that same whatever-whatever kind of tone.

  He sighed again. “I suppose it’s too much to ask, to have conversations like this from a hospital bed, while beset with seizures.”

  “Beset?” Tara asked. “That implies they aren’t over.”

  He hadn’t realized it until speaking, but he felt there was some kind of cycle going on here, and it was presently on the rise again. Hmm. Was that good or bad? Was any of this worth it?

  He could totally understand the skepticism of Tara and Patel, and see it as a tiny shadow of how the wider world was going to react. But he knew. The machine had worked; its principles were sound, and his admittedly-kinda-crazy push to build it had been based on actual scientific insight. Forget Nobel Prizes; what really drove a scientist was blank space. Once you started glimpsing the gaps between the insights of other people, you soon realized there was a vast, blank wilderness behind them. Here be dragons! And in Harv’s case, he simply wouldn’t rest until he was out there on that vast, blank page, writing in his own contributions to human knowledge.

  And here he was! Manuah and Argur were real people with real lives, and somewhere out there in the world were corroborating details. But would that matter, if Harv’s own brain turned to mush? He’d also dragged two people into the blankness with him. Would they have cause to thank him, or curse him?

  To Tara he said, “I think there’s a…kind of a cycle, yes. I feel something coming, and I’m concerned that this is undermining the credibility of our findings thus far. It’s important that the two of you take detailed notes. I don’t think I’m dying or anything, but…”

  “But you might be?” she asked.

  “Any of us might be,” he said. “But yes. I think it’s… Wow. I think it’s…”

  Alarms started beeping, and then blaring. As Harv’s eyes rolled back, he was struck by the realization that it wasn’t an involuntary response. As the seizure came on, it simply felt good to roll them up out of the way. And he became aware of heat and dust and the distant sound of birds.

  “I think I’m in Africa,” he said in a clear voice, to no one in particular.

  “Stand back!” someone shouted. “Back! Back! Visitors out!”

  PART THREE

  The Garden

  3.1

  “I want to see Father,” Tik-Tik said again. He knew he had said it very much today, and Grandmother was becoming quite unhappy with him. But he did not understand, and she had not made the connection for him. Or else he only doubted what she was saying, or he disagreed with it—with the entire idea. Why had every adult agreed to journey from the old housing development, forever, and why had they gone in two different directions?

  “Enough people, not enough food,” Grandmother told him again. “Long commutes to work. People needed to gather and hunt, but food was far. That earth was finished. We needed new earth, to gather and hunt.”

  “But why one earth and another earth?” he demanded. “Why two?”

  All around, men and women were setting up houses and placing stones in circles. There was much talk from the men and women, and Mother and Stepfather were laughing. Tik-Tik disagreed with that. Why laugh? Why now?

  “Food limits people,” Grandmother said. “Men and women make babies, and so people expand. But does food expand? No. And so people move here and there, until food is enough.”

  Tik-Tik understood that part, somewhat. But he did not understand why Father was there, while Tik-Tik and Mother and Grandmother were here. He questioned, again.

  Now Grandmother was angry and said, “Mother and Father divorced, Tik-Tik. They argued much. Remember? Mother helped us, helped you, by divorce. Mother wanted new man and new house, with less shouting. Stepfather is good for Mother. Look: Stepfather is strong, happy, and peaceful. Stepfather hunts well. Stepfather makes cushions and plates and spoons for Mother, so Mother is happy. Stepfather’s house is harmonious. Good? Good.”

  “Stepfather is Mute,” Tik-Tik said, pointing and waiting. He watched Mother speaking to Stepfather, watched Stepfather nodding and laughing and speaking a few words. But his voice was not very beautiful, and he did not know many words.

  But Grandmother only laughed at that. More laughter! She said, “Mute people may be warm, Tik-Tik. Mute people may say things with bodies, and with actions. Grandmother’s man, Tik-Tik’s Grandfather, was Mute, and loved. Very loved. Grandmother selected Grandmother’s man, of many men.”

  She seemed lost in thought for a moment, and then said, “And Grandmother’s Father was mute, and one of Grandmother’s Grandmothers. More Talking People exist now, Tik-Tik, but so many people are Mute. Mute, Mute, Mute. Many beautiful people, many kind people, even many sensible people are Mute.”

  “I do not approve,” Tik-Tik said. “The comparison with Father is bad. Father is strong and sensible. Father is not Mute. I do not approve of divorce, or of Stepfather. I do not approve of Mutes.”

  These were big words, and many words. Tik-Tik felt very sensible, talking like that.

  But Grandmother looked unhappy again, and disapproving. “Do not be so certain,” she said. “When Tik-Tik is bigger, and Tik-Tik’s blood runs hot, Tik-Tik will find the body of a Mute girl as soft as the body of a Talking girl. And Tik-Tik may find the talking…” she seemed to struggle for words “…unimportant.”

  Tik-Tik didn’t know what to say to that. Grandmother liked to say “when Tik-Tik is bigger,” but Tik-Tik could not think that. He had never been bigger—had always been smaller. He knew in a vague way that small boys grew to be big boys, who grew to be men, but he had never seen it happen, and was not friends with the idea. Would he be out walking one day, and then suddenly be big, all at one time? Would he have to pick up a spear and hunt? Would he have to make a spear?

  A distance away, there was some commotion: shrieking, and more laughter.

  “You are funny!” Mother was saying to Stepfather, who had put down the house pole he was holding, and had begun whipping her with a long blade of grass, and grinning.

  “Baaa,” Stepfather said back to her, imitating the sound of a goat and grinning even more widely. Oh yes, very sensible.

  “I want to see !Ibi,” Tik-Tik attempted, hoping this argument might touch Grandmother’s kindness. “And Uncle, and Cousins. And Moku.”

  Moku was his friend. !Ibi was his older sister, who had not come here with Mother and Stepfather. She was with Father, and traveling in a different direction, to a different place. Tik-Tik didn’t know where. He didn’t know when he might ever see her again.

  “!Ibi and Father are harmonious,” Grandmother said. “!Ibi and Mother are not. !Ibi and Grandmother are not. One big, inharmonious group becomes two smaller, more harmonious groups.”

  “!Ibi and Tik-Tik are harmonious!” Tik-Tik protested. And then suddenly he was crying, all at one time, and Grandmother was comforting him, saying, “Mmm, mmm, mmm, little one. Bitter tastes don’t stay in the mouth. Rough stones don’t stay under the feet. The future is green, and long, and Tik-Tik will be happy.”

  But it was a long time before he stopped crying, and by then Stepfather had made up a little bed for him inside their new house, and given him a drink of water from an ostrich shell, and Mother was giving him plants to chew on, and the tiredness of the day caught up with him, and he slept.

  * * *

  Tik-Tik soon discovered another thing that was different in the new earth: Mother went by herself to gather food and firewood, leaving Tik-Tik with other boys and girls in the care of three Grandmothers, and one Grandfather who didn’t seem to do much except yell when his things were touched.

  “Tik-Tik is very heavy for Mother to lift,” she explained, “and Tik-Tik is very slow to walk with Mother. Staying with Grandmother is good. Grandmother will teach songs and stories. Grandmother will teach foods and not-foods, and running, and observation for danger.”

  “I do not approve of this,” Tik-Tik said.

  But his approval was not asked, or needed.

  Another thing that w
as different was that the Grandmothers did not pay as much attention to Tik-Tik as Mother had done. This was partly because they had many boys and girls to watch over, but also partly because they simply took the task less seriously. And when the Grandmothers weren’t looking, the boys and girls would push each other and bite each other and pull each other’s hair. A girl named !Ey-!Ey hit Tik-Tik in the penis and ran away crying, and never did get trouble from it.

  “You shouldn’t be running around with your penis out anyway,” Grandmother told him.

  And this led to another thing that was different: the loincloth Grandmother started making him wear. A strip of leather, a cord, a knot. A knot! How troubling! Tik-Tik could not undo it when he needed to give waste, and so he soiled the loincloth, and himself, over and over. Soon the loincloth smelled so bad that Grandmother could no longer wash it, and had to bury it. Freedom!

  But this gain did not last; Grandmother spent several days teaching Tik-Tik to tie and untie knots, and then presented him with a second loincloth.

  “If this one is soiled, Tik-Tik will eat it,” Grandmother warned. “Tik-Tik also needs to learn to give waste outside housing development, not on the floor or street.”

  He took the warning seriously for a time, and when he finally realized she was teasing about making him eat his waste, that it was only a laugh to her, he had already made the change.

  “Congratulations,” she told him. “Now Tik-Tik is not a baby. Now Tik-Tik is a boy, and will learn the ways of boys.”

  3.2

  Rather suddenly, it seemed, Tik-Tik began to discover the world around him. When he used his senses, he found that the new earth was unpleasantly hot from the end of the afternoon through the early part of the evening. It was unpleasantly cold right before the sun came up. When rain came, it was unpleasantly wet, and when wind came, it was unpleasantly dusty. But most of the time, the new earth was very pleasant, and he could lie down in the grass, in the shade, and listen to the birds and bugs make their noises.