Connie Willis - Passage

But she remembered hearing a sound as she came through. She turned her head, trying to remember it. It had been a loud sound. She had heard it distinctly right after she came through. Or had it been as she was coming through? No, she had been in the lab, and then, abruptly, she was here.

As she thought it, she had the sudden feeling that she knew where “here” was, that it was somewhere familiar. No, that was the wrong word. Somewhere she recognized, even though the passage was completely dark.

It’s a place, she thought, a real place. I know where this is, and light poured into the passage ahead of her. She turned to look at it. It filled the corridor, blindingly bright, and she thought, now I’ll see where I am, but the light was too dazzling. It was like trying to look directly into headlights. You couldn’t see anything.

Headlights. “What if the light at the end of the tunnel turns out to be an oncoming train?” Vielle had said. Joanna looked instinctively down at her feet for railroad tracks, but the light came from all directions, the glare as intense from below as from ahead of her, so bright she had to close her eyes against the pain of the brightness.

No wonder her subjects had squinted. It was like someone turning on the light in the middle of the night, or shining a flashlight in your face. But neither one, because the light was golden.

Her patients said that, too—“it was golden”—and when she had said, “It wasn’t white?” they had said, irritated, “No, it was white and golden.” Now she knew what they meant. The light was white, but not the greenish-white of a fluorescent light, the searing blue-white of an arc light. It had a golden cast, like candlelight, only much, much brighter.

She put her hand up to shade her eyes. The light, though it was all around, came from the end of the passage. Where somebody opened a door, she thought. The light’s coming from outside, from beyond the door.

She began to walk toward the end of the passage, squinting against the light, and as she walked, it seemed to dim a little. No, that wasn’t right, the brightness stayed the same, but now she could almost make out a figure outlined in the light. A figure in white.

Mr. Mandrake’s Angel of Light, she thought, walking toward it, but the figure did not grow clearer. She wasn’t sure there was really a figure at all, or whether it was just a trick of the light.

She squinted, trying to see, and was back in the lab. “I did it,” she said, but no sound came out, and she thought, I must be in the non-REM state, and fell asleep.

She woke to Richard calling her from a long distance away. That’s what Greg Menotti meant by “Too far away,” she thought. I must still be near where the NDE was.

“Joanna?” Richard said, much closer, and she opened her eyes. Richard was bending over her, and she thought, Vielle’s right, he really is cute, and fell asleep again.

“She’s awake,” Tish said. “Should I stop recording?” She was holding the recorder, and Joanna thought, Oh, God, I hope I didn’t say he was cute out loud.

“Did I say anything?” she asked.

Richard leaned over her, grinning. “You won’t believe what you said.”

Oh, no, Joanna thought. “What?”

“You said, ‘It was dark,’ ” Tish volunteered.

“Like every other NDEer,” Richard said.

“It was dark,” Joanna said, trying to sit up. “It was pitch-black, like in a cave, only it wasn’t a cave, or a tunnel. It was a passageway.”

“Don’t sit up,” Richard said, “and don’t try to talk till the effect of the sedative’s worn off.”

Joanna lay back down. “No, I want to describe it before I forget. Is the recorder going?” she asked Tish.

“It’s on,” Tish said, handing it to Richard. He put it close to her mouth.

“I was in the lab, and then I was in a tunnel,” Joanna said.

“Nothing in between?” Richard said. “No sensation of leaving the body or hovering above it?”

“You’re not supposed to lead the subject,” Joanna said reprovingly. “No, I just found myself in the passage.”

“You keep saying ‘passage,’ ” Richard said. “What do you mean? An underground passage?”

“You’re leading again,” Joanna said. “No, not an underground passage. And not one of the passageways the Greek soldier Er took to the realms of the afterlife. It was some kind of corridor or hallway, and there was a door at the end of it.” She described the passage and the light and the dimly seen figure.

Tish took Joanna’s pulse and entered it on the chart. “It felt like an actual experience in an actual place,” Joanna said. “It wasn’t a dream or a superimposed vision. There was no sense of what I was seeing being imposed on where I really was like Saint Paul on the road to Damascus or Bernadette in the cave at Lourdes, where even though you’re seeing a blinding light or the Virgin Mary, you’re still aware of where you are. I had no awareness of being in the lab, of lying on the table.” Tish wrapped the blood pressure cuff around her arm. “It felt like I was really there, that it was a real place.”

“Do you know what kind of place it was?” Richard asked.

“No, but I had the feeling that I knew where I was.”

“You recognized it?”

“Yes. No,” she said. “I had the feeling that I recognized it, but I can’t—” She shook her head, frustrated. No wonder her subjects ended up shrugging lamely.

Tish checked her pulse again and then began peeling the electrodes off her scalp.

“I recognized the place,” Joanna said, “but—”

“But at the same time you knew you’d never been there?” Richard said. “You had a sensation of déjà vu, of experiencing something new and feeling you’ve experienced it before?”

“No,” she said, trying to remember the fleeting feeling. It had felt familiar, no, not familiar, yet she had had the feeling that she recognized it. “Maybe. It might have been déjà vu,” she said doubtfully.

“That’s a strong indicator of temporal-lobe involvement,” he said and couldn’t keep the excitement out of his voice. “The feeling of déjà vu’s been definitively located within the temporal lobe.”

Tish finished removing the IV and put away the equipment. “Do you need me for anything?” she asked.

“I don’t think so,” Richard said absently. “Temporal-lobe involvement… you didn’t have an out-of-body experience?”

“Leading,” Joanna said. “No. I was in the lab and then in the tunnel, with nothing in between.”

“Did you feel—?” He broke off and started again. “What feelings did you experience?”

“The light didn’t make me feel warm and safe, or loved. I felt… calm. I guess you could describe it as peaceful, but it was really more just… calm. I wasn’t frightened.”

“Interesting,” Richard said. “Did you feel detached? Did it feel like you were separated from what was happening, that what was happening was unreal, dreamlike?”

“It wasn’t a dream,” Joanna said firmly.

“If you don’t need me for anything, I’m going to go,” Tish said, and they both looked at her, surprised she was still there. “Do you need me tomorrow?”

“I don’t know yet,” Richard said. “I think so. I’ll call you, Tish, thanks,” and turned expectantly back to Joanna. “How was it different from a dream?”

“It… dreams feel real while you’re having them, and then when you wake up, you realize they weren’t. But the NDE still feels real even now. That’s something nearly all of my subjects have said, that what they experienced was real. I didn’t know what that meant, but they’re right. It doesn’t feel like the memory of a dream. It feels like the memory of something that actually happened.”