Nick Sagan - Idlewild
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Carl Sagan
Carl Sagan
John Scalzi
Nathaniel Parker Willis
Gabrielle Borisovna
Sagan Carl
Sagan
Sagan
Peter Sagan
Nick Sagan
Nick Sagan
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Idlewild
Nick Sagan
For Clinnette
Dont place faith in human beings. Human beings are unreliable things.
MACHINES OF LOVING GRACE, BUTTERFLY WINGS
PROLOGUE
DAY 1
Im not dead.
A dim realization but an important one, because I should have died. The shock of whatever just ripped through me was strong enough to do it some kind of electrical overload lighting me up from head to toe like a fireworks display. But my brain kept repeating the mantra: not dead, not dead, not dead, and pretty soon I had to believe it. One eye popped open and then the other, and consciousness (if you can call it that) slowly returned.
Cold and dark. Orange. Harvest. A damp, musty smell; sound of crickets; the bite of a monster headache. Yes, I was trapped in a pumpkin patch, twisted and tensed, taking shallow breaths like a newborn kitten.
Clarity did not follow consciousness. My mind felt sluggish, and all attempts at coherent thought made my temples ache worse. Why? What had happened to me?
I remember the shock and
and nothing. Just the shock. Disturbing doesnt even begin to cover it.
Sitting up seemed like a bad idea, so I tried to grab my hornets nest of a head. Simple. Left hand, up. Right hand, up. But nothing happened. My arms wont move, I realized.
I tried to wiggle my legs, fingers, hips, toes, nose, ears and neck. They didnt answer the bell. Im paralyzed.
I could feel my pulse coming faster now and I wondered what would happen if my breathing stopped. No mystery there, eh? My brain would atrophy like a wilting flower and the consciousness Id fought for would be hideous as I spiraled down the path of no return. Panic hit me hard. I started making desperate deals with phantom deities I invented on the spot. Please, I thought, dont let me die. Whoever you are, if you can hear me, get me up on my feet. Ill do anything. Ill give you anything well
Well, what? What did I have to offer?
Nothing. I know nothing, and thus I have nothing. I dont even know my own name. Puzzles have pieces, dont they, so why cant I remember?
A new theory came to me: brain damage.
Two words I didnt want to consider, but they made frightening sense. The paralysis didnt need to stem from a broken vertebra, after all I could have simply forgotten how to move, the way Id forgot ten everything else.
Lets not jump off that bridge just yet. If you forget something, surely you can remember it, given enough time. Thats me looking on the bright side, like always.
I clung to hope and faulty logic and waited to remember. And waited. And waited some more. Words came to me in my senselessness, another mantra from the dim recesses of my jigsaw mind: There is no pain. Keep control. No pain in the house, just keep control. But I didnt have control, damn it, it hurt like fire and I just stayed sprawled there, useless and pathetic, for who knows how long. Im not a control freak, mind you not per se but deprive me of something basic and I begin to go stark raving mad. The possibility dawned on me as I lay there. Stark, yes. Mad, possibly. But raving? Was I raving?
Hysterical paralysis, they used to call it. Hysteria: a psychoneurotic condition characterized by violent emotional and sensory disturbances, by paroxysms in the motor functions, and by changes in consciousness that are symbolically or psychically determined. Hysterical, sure, but somehow I didnt feel like laughing.
Could I be dreaming, I wondered? Half awake, eyes open, body still asleep, dreaming my paralysis a hypnogogic state? I was, perhaps, a prisoner of my unconscious mind
Friction of the forewings; the crickets kept pissing me off. Theres a formula for crickets, just like theres a formula for everything. I dont mean their genetic formula, but rather their thermometric formula. Crickets chirp less often as the temperature drops, so you can estimate heat by timing the chirps: (chirps per minute / 4) + 40 = # of degrees Fahrenheit. I counted a chirp per second, making it a slightly nippy fifty-five degrees.
I could remember that, but not my own identity? Or how to move?
A strange organ, the brain.
As the crickets mocked me with their love songs, I began to hear another sound a distant whine faint but getting clearer. And then, like a thunderbolt, the rules suddenly changed.
I heard a loud toc and my body could move again, just like flipping a switch or having a base-two zero snap over to a one. I jumped to my feet. My body wasnt stiff. There was no soreness. My nerve endings felt alive and open. Little flowers of pins and needles bloomed along my spine and down my arms and legs, but the pain was already beginning to fade.
CHAPTER 1
HALLOWEEN
Dropping like flies, drawls the first Gedaechtnis employee. He is a Southern Gentleman who has never quite been able to kill his West Memphis accent. He has defeated both the poverty of his youth and the inherent racism of twenty-first-century America, but the twang remains like a stubborn mule. As his red felt-tip pen highlights the latest casualty figures, the gentleman tries not to wonder about his own condition. He finds he cant help himself and reluctantly places two fingers to the side of his neck to hunt for signs of swelling. There is no swelling, but this does not reassure him. His doctor has informed him that he will be dead within the year.
What do you expect? A last-minute reprieve? This is the second Gedaechtnis employee. Her English is harsh and clipped, much like her hair style. She had hoped for something like a pageboy cut but the stylist botched it and she is making do as best she can. She is part of the Munich contingent. Gedaechtnis corporate headquarters is in Munich and she is a very important cog in this machine.
The Southern Gentleman does not like her and would not be working with her if their task were less important. She reminds him of a poster child for Aryan eugenics, she with her blond hair and piercing blue eyes. Blue was once a heartbreaker, he thinks, but now her looks have faded.
I expect the worst. Im still hoping, though. Hoping for a miracle.
There are no miracles. Not for you, certainly not for me. Not for any of us.
No, not for any of us, he repeats, thinking of his wife and daughter.
But what about all of us?
Confusion set in. I imagined a thought bubble floating up from my head with a question mark on display. In actuality, a meter above my head, a rapidly blinking light hovered in place. It flipped back and forth between two colors red-green-red-green-red-green, bright like a fantastically annoying firefly. Was it a firefly? I couldnt see any wings. I took a step back. It floated forward.
I thought: I am on some terrible drug.
Go away, I said and my voice sounded strange to me. I cleared my throat and took another step. Go away, I repeated. The twinkling sprite didnt respond, but it moved forward again, recovering the lost ground. I took my jacket off, rolled it up, and lashed out, but it passed through the light without affecting it at all. Red-green-red-green-red-green, over and over, an optical siren. And then another popped into existence next to it, this one yellow-blue-yellow-blue-yellow-blue.
I ran for it.
The lights matched my speed.
A hollow voice billowed up from all around me at once what little I heard, I couldnt understand. It kept fading in and out, loud-soft-loud-soft-loud-soft. It sounded like: EX EE ERE SEE UNCT URGE RE SKREEEEEE!
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