Recursion Read online

  He says, “Apparently thousands of people remember Nelson Mandela dying in prison in the 1980s, even though he lived until 2013.”

  “I have heard of this. It’s the whole Berenstain Bears thing.”

  “I don’t know what that is.”

  “You’re too old.”

  “Fuck you.”

  “There were these children’s books when I was a kid, and a lot of people remember them being called The Berenstein Bears, S-T-E-I-N, when it’s actually spelled Berenstain. S-T-A-I-N.”

  “Weird.”

  “Scary actually, since I remember Berenstein.” Gwen shoots her whiskey.

  “Also—and no one’s sure if it’s related to FMS—instances of acute déjà vu are on the rise.”

  “What does that mean?”

  “People are struck, sometimes to a debilitating degree, with the sense that they’re living entire sequences of their lives over.”

  “I get that sometimes.”

  “Me too.”

  Gwen says, “Didn’t your jumper say that her husband’s first wife had also thrown herself off the Poe Building?”

  “Yeah, why?”

  “I don’t know. Just seems…unlikely.”

  Barry looks at her. The bar is getting full and loud.

  “What are you getting at?” he asks.

  “Maybe she didn’t have False Memory Syndrome. Maybe this bitch was just crazy. Maybe don’t worry so much.”

  * * *

  Three hours later, he’s wasted in a different bar—a wood-paneled, beer-lover’s wet dream with the taxidermied heads of buffalo and deer protruding from the walls and a million taps lining the backlit shelves.

  Gwen tries to take him to dinner, but the hostess sees him wavering on his feet in front of her podium and refuses them a table. Back outside, the city feels unmoored, and Barry is laser-focused on making the buildings not spin as Gwen holds him by his right arm, steering him down the street.

  He suddenly realizes they’re standing on a street corner God-knows-where, speaking to a cop. Gwen is showing the patrolman her star and explaining that she’s trying to get Barry home but is afraid he’ll throw up in a cab.

  Then they’re walking again, stumbling, the futuristic, nighttime brilliance of Times Square swirling like a bad carnival. He catches the time, 11:22 p.m., and wonders what black hole the last six hours fell into.

  “I don’t wannagohome,” he says to no one.

  Then he’s staring at a digital clock that reads 4:15. It feels like someone caved his skull in while he slept, and his tongue is as dry as a strip of leather. This isn’t his apartment. He’s lying on the sofa in Gwen’s living room.

  He tries to go back and Scotch-tape the evening together but the pieces are shattered. He remembers Julia and the park. The first hour of the first bar with Gwen. But everything after is murky and tinged with regret.

  His heart pounds in his ears. His mind races.

  It is the lonely hour of the night, one with which he is all too familiar—when the city sleeps but you don’t, and all the regrets of your life rage in your mind with an unbearable intensity.

  Thinking about his father who died when he was young, and the enduring question—Did he know that I loved him?

  And Meghan. Always Meghan.

  When his daughter was a little girl, she was convinced a monster lived in the hope chest at the foot of her bed. It never crossed her mind in the daylight, but the moment the sun went down and he had tucked her in for the night, she would inevitably call out for him. And he’d hurry to her room and kneel beside her bed and remind her that everything seems scarier at night. It’s just an illusion. A trick the darkness plays on us.

  How strange then, decades later and his life so far off the course he charted, to find himself alone on a couch in a friend’s apartment, attempting to assuage his fears with the same logic he used on his child all those years ago.

  Everything will look better in the morning.

  There will be hope again when the light returns.

  The despair is only an illusion, a trick the darkness plays.

  And he shuts his eyes and comforts himself with the memory of the camping trip to Lake Tear of the Clouds. To that perfect moment.

  In it, the stars were shining.

  He’d stay there forever if he could.

  HELENA

  November 1, 2007

  Day 1

  Her stomach is in knots as she watches the Northern California coastline dwindling away. She’s sitting behind the pilot, under the roar of the rotors, watching the ocean stream beneath her, five hundred feet below the helicopter skids.

  It is not a good day at sea. The clouds drape low; the water is gray and specked with whitecaps. And the farther from land they go, the darker the world becomes.

  Through the helicopter’s rain-streaked windshield, she sees something materializing in the distance—a structure jutting out of the water, still a mile or two away.

  She says into her microphone, “Is that it?”

  “Yes ma’am.”

  Leaning forward against the shoulder harness, she watches with intense curiosity as the chopper begins its approach, slowing now, descending toward a colossus of iron, steel, and concrete that stands on three legs in the ocean like a giant tripod. The pilot pushes the stick and they bank left into a slow circle around the structure, whose main platform sits approximately twenty stories above the sea. A few cranes still overhang the sides—relics from the oil- and gas-drilling days. But otherwise, the rig has been stripped of its industrial trappings and transformed. On the primary platform, she sees a full basketball court. Swimming pool. Greenhouse. What appears to be a running track around the perimeter.

  They land on a helipad. The turbo shaft begins to wind down, and through her window, Helena watches a man in a yellow bomber jacket jogging toward the helicopter. As he opens the cabin door, she fumbles with the three-point locking mechanism on her restraints until they finally unlatch.

  The man helps her out of the chopper, down onto the skid, and then the landing surface. She follows him toward a set of stairs that descends from the helipad onto the main platform. The wind rips through her hoodie and T-shirt, and as she reaches the steps, the sound of the helicopter dies away, leaving the gaping silence of the open ocean.

  They come off the last step onto a sprawling concrete surface, and there he is, moving toward them across the platform.

  Her heart kicks.

  His beard is unkempt, his dark hair wild and blowing in the wind. He is wearing a pair of blue jeans and a faded sweatshirt, and he is unmistakably Marcus Slade—inventor, philanthropist, business magnate, founder of more groundbreaking technology companies than she can name, touching sectors as diverse as cloud computing, transportation, space, and AI. He is one of the world’s richest, most influential citizens. A high-school dropout. And only thirty-four years old.

  He smiles and says, “We’re doing this!”

  His enthusiasm calms her nerves, and as they reach each other on the platform, she’s unsure what’s called for. A handshake? Polite hug? Slade makes the choice for her with a warm embrace.

  “Welcome to Fawkes Station.”

  “Fawkes?”

  “As in Guy Fawkes—remember, remember the fifth of November?”

  “Oh. Right. Because memory?”

  “Because disrupting the status quo is kind of my thing. You must be cold, let’s get you inside.” They’re moving now, heading toward a five-story superstructure on the far side of the platform.

  “Not quite what I was expecting,” Helena says.

  “I bought it a few years ago from ExxonMobil when the oil field ran dry. At first I was going to make this a new home for myself.”

  “You mean a fortress of solitude?”

 
“Totally. But then I realized I could live here and also use it as the perfect research facility.”

  “Why perfect?”

  “A million reasons, but the most critical are privacy and security. I have my hands in a number of fields that are rife with corporate espionage, and this is about as controllable an environment as you can get, right?”

  They pass the swimming pool, covered for the season, the tarp flapping violently in the November wind.

  She says, “First off, thank you. Secondly, why me?”

  “Because inside your head is a technology that could alter humanity.”

  “How so?”

  “What’s more precious than our memories?” he asks. “They define us and form our identities.”

  “Also, there will be a fifteen-billion-dollar market for Alzheimer’s treatments in the next decade.”

  Marcus only smiles.

  She says, “Just so you know, my primary goal is to help people. I want to find a way to save memories for deteriorating brains that can no longer retrieve them. A time capsule for core memories.”

  “I hear that. Can you think of any reason this can’t be both a philanthropic and commercial endeavor?”

  They pass the entrance to a large greenhouse, the walls inside steamed and dripping with condensation.

  “How far offshore are we?” she asks, looking across the platform out to sea, where a dense cloud is rolling toward them.

  “One hundred seventy-three miles. How’d your family and friends take the news that you were falling off the face of the Earth to do some super-secret research?”

  She isn’t sure how to answer that. Her life as of late has unspooled under the fluorescent lights of laboratories and revolved around the processing of raw data. She has never managed to achieve escape velocity from the irresistible gravity of her work—for her mom, but if she’s honest, also for herself. Work is the only thing that makes her feel alive, and she’s wondered, on more than one occasion, if that means she’s broken.

  “I work a lot,” she says, “so I only had six people to tell. My dad cried, but he always cries. No one was really surprised. God, that sounds pathetic, doesn’t it?”

  Slade looks at her, says, “I think balance is for people who don’t know why they’re here.”

  She considers that. In high school, in college, she was encouraged again and again to find her passion—a reason to get out of bed and breathe. In her experience, few people ever found that raison d’être.

  What teachers and professors never told her was about the dark side of finding your purpose. The part where it consumes you. Where it becomes a destroyer of relationships and happiness. And still, she wouldn’t trade it. This is the only person she knows how to be.

  They’re approaching the entrance to the superstructure.

  “Hold up a second,” Slade says. “Watch.” He points toward the wall of mist as it plows across the platform. The air becomes cold and silent. Helena can’t even see to the helipad. They’re caught in the heart of a cloud.

  Slade looks at her. “Do you want to change the world with me?”

  “That’s why I’m here.”

  “Good. Let’s go see what I’ve built for you.”

  BARRY

  November 5, 2018

  NEW YORK CITY POLICE DEPARTMENT

  24TH PRECINCT, 151 W 100TH ST.

  NEW YORK, NY 10025

  * CHIEF OF POLICE

  JOHN R. POOLE

  * TELEPHONE

  (212) 555-1811

  [X] PRELIMINARY POLICE REPORT

  [ ] SUPPLEMENTAL REPORT

  CSRR

  01457C

  DATE

  07/11/03

  TIME

  2130

  DAY

  FRI

  LOCATION

  2000 WEST 102ND

  41ST FLOOR

  NATURE OF REPORT

  POLICE—NARRATIVE

  I, PO RIVELLI, WHILE ON PATROL, RESPONDED TO A 10–56A AT THE POE BUILDING ON THE TERRACE OF THE HULTQUIST LLC OFFICES. I FOUND A WOMAN STANDING ON THE LEDGE. I IDENTIFIED MYSELF AS A POLICE OFFICER AND ASKED HER TO PLEASE STEP DOWN. SHE REFUSED TO COMPLY AND WARNED ME NOT TO COME NEAR HER OR SHE WOULD JUMP. I ASKED HER NAME AND SHE TOLD ME IT WAS FRANNY BEHRMAN [W/F DOB 12/06/63 OF 509 E 110TH ST]. SHE DID NOT APPEAR TO BE UNDER THE INFLUENCE OF ANY DRUGS OR ALCOHOL. I ASKED HER IF THERE WAS ANYONE I COULD CALL FOR HER. SHE SAID “NO.” I ASKED WHY SHE WANTED TO END HER LIFE. SHE SAID NOTHING BROUGHT HER HAPPINESS, AND THAT HER HUSBAND AND FAMILY WOULD BE BETTER OFF WITHOUT HER. I ASSURED HER THIS WAS NOT THE CASE.

  AT THIS POINT, SHE STOPPED RESPONDING TO MY QUESTIONS AND SEEMED TO BE BUILDING THE NERVE TO JUMP. I WAS ON THE VERGE OF ATTEMPTING TO PHYSICALLY REMOVE HER FROM THE LEDGE WHEN I RECEIVED A RADIO COMMUNICATION FROM PO DECARLO, ADVISING THAT MRS. BEHRMAN’S HUSBAND [JOE BEHRMAN, W/M DOB 3/12/61 OF 509 E 110TH ST.] WAS COMING UP THE ELEVATOR TO SEE HIS WIFE. I ADVISED MRS. BEHRMAN OF THIS.

  MR. BEHRMAN ARRIVED ON THE ROOF. HE APPROACHED HIS WIFE AND CONVINCED HER TO STEP BACK ONTO THE TERRACE.

  I ESCORTED MR. AND MRS. BEHRMAN DOWN TO THE STREET, AND SHE WAS TRANSFERRED VIA AMBULANCE TO SISTERS OF MERCY HOSPITAL FOR EVALUATION.

  REPORT OF PO RIVELLI

  OFFICER IN CHARGE SGT-DAWES

  * * *

  Massively hungover and sitting at his desk in the field of cubicles, Barry reads the incident report for a third time. It’s making his brain itch in all the wrong ways, because it’s the exact opposite of what Ann Voss Peters said had happened between her husband and his first wife. She thought that Franny had jumped.

  He sets the report aside, wakes his monitor, and logs into the New York State DMV database, his head throbbing behind his eyes.

  His search for Joe and Franny Behrman turns up a last-known address of 6 Pinewood Lane in Montauk.

  He should let this fall to the wayside. Forget about FMS and Ann Voss Peters and get on with the listing towers of paperwork and open case files that clutter his desk. There is no crime here to justify his time. Only…inconsistencies.

  But the truth is—now he’s madly curious.

  He’s been a detective for twenty-three years because he loves solving puzzles, and this one, this contradictory set of events, is whispering to him—a misalignment he feels a compulsion to put right.

  He could get written up for driving his Crown Vic out to the end of Long Island on something that was decidedly not sanctioned, jurisdictional police business, and his head hurts too much to drive that far anyway.

  So he pulls up the MTA website and studies the schedules.

  There’s a train leaving Penn Station for Montauk in just under an hour.

  HELENA

  January 18, 2008–October 29, 2008

  Day 79

  Living on Slade’s decommissioned oil rig is like getting paid to stay at a five-star resort that also happens to be your office. She wakes each morning on the superstructure’s top level, where all the crew quarters are located. Hers is a spacious corner apartment with floor-to-ceiling windows made of rain-repellant glass. They atomize water droplets so that even in the worst weather, her view of the endless sea remains unobstructed. Once a week, housekeepers clean her apartment and take out her laundry. A Michelin-starred chef prepares most meals, often using fresh-caught fish, and fruit and vegetables harvested from the greenhouse.

  Marcus insists that she exercise five days a week to keep her spirits up and her mind sharp. There’s a gym on the first level, which she uses when the weather is bad, and on the rare calm days of winter, she goes running on the track that circumnavigates the platform. She loves those runs the most, because it feels like she’s doing laps at the top of the world.

  Her research lab is 10,000 square feet—the entire third floor of the Fawkes S
tation superstructure—and she has made more progress in the last ten weeks than during her entire five-year stint at Stanford. Anything she needs, she gets. There are no bills to pay, no relationships to maintain. Nothing to do but single-mindedly pursue her research.

  Up until now, she had been manipulating memories in mice, working with specific cell clusters that had been genetically engineered to be light-sensitive. Once a cell cluster had been labeled and associated with a stored memory (for instance, an electrical shock), she would then reactivate the memory of the mouse’s fear by targeting those light-sensitive cell clusters with a special optogenetics laser inserted via filaments through the mouse’s skull.

  Her work on the oil platform is a whole other ball game.

  Helena is leading the group tackling the main problem, which also happens to be her area of specialization—tagging and cataloging the neuron clusters connected to a particular memory, and then reconstructing a digital model of the brain that allows them to track memories and map them out.

  In principle, it’s no different from what she did with mouse brains, but orders of magnitude more complex.

  The technology the other three teams are handling is challenging, but not groundbreaking—cutting-edge tech, yes, but with the right personnel and Marcus’s giant checkbook, they should be able to re-create it with no serious roadblocks.

  She has twenty people working under her across four groups. She’s heading up the Mapping Team. The Imaging Team has been tasked with finding some way of filming neuronal firings that doesn’t involve shoving a laser through a person’s skull and into their brain. They’ve landed on building a device that utilizes an advanced form of magnetoencephalography, or MEG for short. A SQUID (superconducting quantum interference device) array will detect infinitesimal magnetic fields produced by individual neurons firing in the human brain, right down to the level of determining the position of each neuron. They call it the MEG microscope.