Recursion - Blake Crouch Page 0,2
the dark office, sees two patrolmen standing at the ready by the reception desk. He looks back at Ann. “Then why don’t you climb down from there, and we’ll walk inside together and get you a glass of water.”
“Would you bring it to me out here?”
“I can’t leave you.”
Her hands are shaking now, and he registers a sudden resolve in her eyes.
She looks at Barry. “This isn’t your fault,” she says. “It was always going to end this way.”
“Ann, no—”
“My son has been erased.”
And with a casual grace, she eases herself off the edge.
HELENA
October 22, 2007
Standing in the shower at six a.m., trying to wake up as the hot water sluices down her skin, Helena is struck with an intense sensation of having lived this exact moment before. It’s nothing new. Déjà vu has plagued her since her twenties. Besides, there’s nothing particularly special about this moment in the shower. She’s wondering if Mountainside Capital has reviewed her proposal yet. It’s been a week. She should’ve heard something by now. They should’ve at least called her in for a meeting if they were interested.
She brews a pot of coffee and makes her go-to breakfast—black beans, three eggs over-easy, drizzled with ketchup. Sits at the little table by the window, watching the sky fill with light over her neighborhood on the outskirts of San Jose.
She hasn’t had a day to do laundry in over a month, and the floor of her bedroom is practically carpeted in dirty clothes. She digs through the piles until she finds a T-shirt and a pair of jeans she isn’t totally ashamed to leave the house in.
The phone rings while she’s brushing her teeth. She spits, rinses, and catches the call on the fourth ring in her bedroom.
“How’s my girl?”
Her father’s voice always makes her smile.
“Hey, Dad.”
“I thought I’d missed you. I didn’t want to bother you at the lab.”
“No, it’s fine, what’s up?”
“Just thinking about you. Any word on your proposal?”
“Nothing yet.”
“I have a really good feeling it’s going to happen.”
“I don’t know. This is a tough town. Lots of competition. Lots of really smart people looking for money.”
“But not as smart as my girl.”
She can’t take any more of her father’s belief in her. Not on a morning like this, with the specter of failure looming large, sitting in a small, filthy bedroom of a blank-walled, undecorated house where she has not brought a single person in over a year.
“How’s the weather?” she asks to change the subject.
“Snowed last night. First of the season.”
“A lot?”
“Just an inch or two. But the mountains are white.”
She can picture them—the Front Range of the Rockies, the mountains of her childhood.
“How’s Mom?”
There’s the briefest pause.
“Your mother’s doing well.”
“Dad.”
“What?”
“How’s Mom?”
She hears him exhale slowly. “We’ve had better days.”
“Is she OK?”
“Yes. She’s upstairs sleeping right now.”
“What happened?”
“It’s nothing.”
“Tell me.”
“Last night, we played gin rummy after dinner, like we always do. And she just…she didn’t know the rules anymore. Sat at the kitchen table, staring at her cards, tears running down her face. We’ve been playing together for thirty years.”
She hears his hand cover the receiver.
He’s crying, a thousand miles away.
“Dad, I’m coming home.”
“No, Helena.”
“You need my help.”
“We have good support here. We’re going to the doctor this afternoon. If you want to help your mother, get your funding and build your chair.”
She doesn’t want to tell him, but the chair is still years away. Light-years away. It’s a dream, a mirage.
Her eyes fill with tears. “You know I’m doing this for her.”
“I know, sweetheart.”
For a moment, they’re both quiet, trying to cry without the other knowing, and failing miserably. She wants nothing more than to tell him it’s going to happen, but that would be a lie.
“I’m going to call when I get home tonight,” she says.
“OK.”
“Please tell Mom I love her.”
“I will. But she already knows.”
* * *
Four hours later, deep in the neuroscience building in Palo Alto, Helena is examining the image of a mouse’s memory of being afraid—fluorescently illuminated neurons interconnected by a spiderweb of synapses—when the stranger appears in her office doorway. She looks over the top of her monitor at a man dressed in chinos and a white T-shirt, with a smile several shades too bright.
“Helena Smith?” he asks.
“Yes?”
“I’m Jee-woon Chercover. Do you have a minute to speak with me?”
“This is a secure lab. You’re not supposed to be down here.”
“I apologize for the intrusion, but I think you’ll want to hear what I have to say.”
She could ask him to leave,