I’m . . . I’m not exactly available right now.”
“Oh. Right.”
“But it was very nice to meet you. Really. I hope you find the particle, the Higgs boson. I’m sure I’ll read about it on the wire if you do.”
“Thanks.”
Mike extends his hand to her, and they shake.
“You’re not going this way?” she asks.
“In a minute. First I’d better head to the bathroom.”
“Okay,” she says. “Well, see you later.”
“Good-bye, Kelly.”
He watches her, stunned, as she disappears into a current of harried travelers. Embarrassment momentarily paralyzes him. Finally Mike finds his way to the bathroom, and later the parking garage, where he will climb into his car and make the empty, two-hour drive to Olney.
1
Death is dreaming.
You go to sleep, darkness envelops you, and then dreams come. Dreams about a wreck you saw during the day, dreams that loop the opening bars to a popular song, dreams of kissing your high school sweetheart. In life, these dreams represent random electrochemical impulses or perhaps a reshuffling and organizing of the brain’s file system. Necessary but ignored; vital but invisible.
Pain shimmers all around him, an invisible field that holds his consciousness together. At first the field appears uniform in all directions—constant, homogeneous pain—but that supposition comes before he detects fluctuations and movement. Movement that seems to localize the pain, that turns it spiteful and glassy. And if he can detect these locations, these regions within the field, he should also be able to map them. Identify his location. Identify himself.
Never before has he experienced such intimate sensory input. Pain defines this existence, nothing but pain. No touch or sight or smell. Nothing to hear and certainly nothing to taste.
But then—
Blood. He can taste blood. He can’t feel it, can’t sense a mouth or tongue from which this taste should originate, and yet there it is. Coppery and organic.
Blood.
If he can taste blood, does that mean he’s alive? Alive but suspended in some sensory-deprived limbo?
He is not a religious man. He never really believed in anything he couldn’t see, couldn’t touch. Afterlife was an attractive but unrealistic concept. But here, now, he may have to reconsider. Maybe life really is just the beginning. Maybe death is not an end. Perhaps falling out of a window onto wet cobblestone is not—
There it is. He was pushed out a window. He was in Zurich. A man attacked him. Janine cheated on him.
He is Steve. Steve Keeley. He can taste blood because certainly he must have bled everywhere, must have damaged numerous internal organs, must have broken bones and split his head wide open on the cobblestone street. No one could have survived such a fall.
And yet movement within the field seems to localize and intensify his pain. Which suggests he is alive but asleep somehow. Unconscious.
Or in a coma.
Steve remembers watching something on television about coma patients, how many of them, after waking, report having been aware of their surroundings, knowing they were alive but unable to communicate this to the outside world. Steve himself can’t see because his eyelids are closed, but why can’t he hear? Why can’t he smell?
He focuses again on the field of pain, trying to determine which areas of his body are injured the worst. There is significant pain to the south. On his east and west the pain is somewhat less intense. But by far the worst pain hovers directly over him, in him, in the center of his tiny, comatose universe. The pain in his head. The pain that signals the presence of death in the area, floating in circles above him, growing closer with each orbit.
And then ahead, on some invisible event horizon, a new field approaches, a field of pure white. He can sense its arrival and cowers before it. Fear like he has never known descends upon him. He does not want to die. He does not possess the faith to meet death with dignity. The
“Oh. Right.”
“But it was very nice to meet you. Really. I hope you find the particle, the Higgs boson. I’m sure I’ll read about it on the wire if you do.”
“Thanks.”
Mike extends his hand to her, and they shake.
“You’re not going this way?” she asks.
“In a minute. First I’d better head to the bathroom.”
“Okay,” she says. “Well, see you later.”
“Good-bye, Kelly.”
He watches her, stunned, as she disappears into a current of harried travelers. Embarrassment momentarily paralyzes him. Finally Mike finds his way to the bathroom, and later the parking garage, where he will climb into his car and make the empty, two-hour drive to Olney.
1
Death is dreaming.
You go to sleep, darkness envelops you, and then dreams come. Dreams about a wreck you saw during the day, dreams that loop the opening bars to a popular song, dreams of kissing your high school sweetheart. In life, these dreams represent random electrochemical impulses or perhaps a reshuffling and organizing of the brain’s file system. Necessary but ignored; vital but invisible.
Pain shimmers all around him, an invisible field that holds his consciousness together. At first the field appears uniform in all directions—constant, homogeneous pain—but that supposition comes before he detects fluctuations and movement. Movement that seems to localize the pain, that turns it spiteful and glassy. And if he can detect these locations, these regions within the field, he should also be able to map them. Identify his location. Identify himself.
Never before has he experienced such intimate sensory input. Pain defines this existence, nothing but pain. No touch or sight or smell. Nothing to hear and certainly nothing to taste.
But then—
Blood. He can taste blood. He can’t feel it, can’t sense a mouth or tongue from which this taste should originate, and yet there it is. Coppery and organic.
Blood.
If he can taste blood, does that mean he’s alive? Alive but suspended in some sensory-deprived limbo?
He is not a religious man. He never really believed in anything he couldn’t see, couldn’t touch. Afterlife was an attractive but unrealistic concept. But here, now, he may have to reconsider. Maybe life really is just the beginning. Maybe death is not an end. Perhaps falling out of a window onto wet cobblestone is not—
There it is. He was pushed out a window. He was in Zurich. A man attacked him. Janine cheated on him.
He is Steve. Steve Keeley. He can taste blood because certainly he must have bled everywhere, must have damaged numerous internal organs, must have broken bones and split his head wide open on the cobblestone street. No one could have survived such a fall.
And yet movement within the field seems to localize and intensify his pain. Which suggests he is alive but asleep somehow. Unconscious.
Or in a coma.
Steve remembers watching something on television about coma patients, how many of them, after waking, report having been aware of their surroundings, knowing they were alive but unable to communicate this to the outside world. Steve himself can’t see because his eyelids are closed, but why can’t he hear? Why can’t he smell?
He focuses again on the field of pain, trying to determine which areas of his body are injured the worst. There is significant pain to the south. On his east and west the pain is somewhat less intense. But by far the worst pain hovers directly over him, in him, in the center of his tiny, comatose universe. The pain in his head. The pain that signals the presence of death in the area, floating in circles above him, growing closer with each orbit.
And then ahead, on some invisible event horizon, a new field approaches, a field of pure white. He can sense its arrival and cowers before it. Fear like he has never known descends upon him. He does not want to die. He does not possess the faith to meet death with dignity. The
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