Terry Bisson - Bears Discover Fire

“Where are the Others?” asked Hvarlgen again.

“Only the protocol is where,” said the Shadow. “Awhere-when point.” It seemed to enjoy answering her questions. It had stopped flickering and its speech was now in synch with its lip movements. Its movements looked familiar; gentle; graceful. I felt a certain proprietary affection for it, knowing it was an idealized version of myself.

“What do they want?” Hvarlgen asked.

“To communicate.”

“Through you?”

“The communication will end the protocol. The connection is one-time only.” The Shadow looked directly toward us, but not at us. It seemed always to be looking at something we could not see. It was silent, as if waiting for the next question.

When nobody said anything, the image began to fade, ghostlike once again—

And the Shadow twisted into being in the bowl at my feet. It seemed even clearer than before. I could see stars behind it. It was like seeing the stars reflected in a pool, only I had the distinct (and uneasy) feeling I was looking up. I even checked the back of my neck with my hand.

That was it for the first day. We’d had three sessions, and Hvarlgen thought that was enough. Dr. Kim asked us to join him for 4-D Monopoly. He had a passion for the game with its steep mortgage ramps and time-release dice.

While we played, the lunies watched movies in Grand Central. We could hear gunshots and bluegrass music in the distance, all the way down the tube.

We began the next morning with a leisurely breakfast. I was still on moonjirky, but I had no appetite anyway. The poster over the coffee machine said D=77.

“How many hours until sunrise?” I asked.

“I’m not sure; somewhat less than seventy-seven,” Hvarlgen answered. But it wasn’t a problem. Even though Houbolt was no longer environmentalized for the lunar day, it would be comfortable for all but the six days of the lunar “noon”—and would probably have been manageable even then, in an emergency. According to Hvarlgen’s plan, Here’s Johnny was to arrive and take us off soon after sunrise.

Hvarlgen went down the tube toward the infirmary first, followed by me, followed by the lunies. East smelled like PeaceAble, indicating that Dr. Kim had been up for a while. He suggested that he be allowed to ask one question, and Hvarlgen agreed.

Me, I was just the hired asshole. I took off my pants and the bowl was slid between my feet. Ignoring me (or seeming to) the Shadow in the bowl twisted itself into nothingness. This time I didn’t feel sick. In fact, it was beautiful, slick and fast, like a whale diving.

“Is there a message for us?”

It was Hvarlgen’s question. I looked up from the empty bowl and saw the Shadow standing across the room—or across the Universe.

“A communication.”

“Are you conscious.”

“The protocol is conscious and I am the protocol.”

“Who is communicating with us?”

“The Other. Not a who.”

“Is it conscious?”

The Shadow said, “You are conscious. The protocol is conscious. The Other is not a where-when string.”

There was a long silence. “Dr. Kim—” Hvarlgen said. “You had a question?”

“Are you a Feynman device?” Dr. Kim asked.

“The protocol is a two-device.”

“What is the distance?” Dr. Kim asked.

“Not a distance. A where-when loop.”

“Where does the energy come from?”

As if in answer, the Shadow began to flicker and fade, and I leaned over the bowl (even though I no longer believed that the Shadow was inside of me). And like a dark whale surfacing, the Shadow twisted into its bowl. I wondered how such a tiny space could contain a space so huge.

While the lunies cleared the room, and Hvarlgen hurried down to Grand Central to make a phone call, I pulled my chair over to the bed and sat with Dr. Kim.

“I see it’s no longer accessing our universe through your butt,” he said. “Maybe it has what it needs.”

“Hope so,” I said. “Meanwhile—what’s a Feynman device?”

“Have you ever heard of the EPR paradox?”

“Something to do with Richard Feynman?”

“Indirectly,” Dr. Kim said. “The EPR paradox had been proposed by Einstein and two colleagues in an unsuccessful effort to disprove quantum physics. Two linked particles are separated. The ‘spin’ or orientation of each is indeterminate (in true quantum fashion) until one is determined, up or down. Then the other is the opposite. Instantaneously.”

“Even if it’s a million light-years away,” Hvarlgen said, from the doorway. She rolled into the room, shutting the door behind her. “I told Sidrath about your question. He liked it.”

“It was never answered.” Dr. Kim shrugged.

“In other words, we’re talking about faster-than-light communication,” I said.

“Right,” said Dr. Kim. “Theoretically, a paradox. It was Feynman who proved that the paradox wasn’t a paradox at all. That it was true. And that FTL communication was, at least in theory, possible.”

“So that’s what our little isn’t is,” I said. “A muon bridge.”

“An ansible,” said Hvarlgen. “A device for faster-than-light communication. As I said, Sidrath agrees. What we have here seems to be some version of a Feynman device. Everything that happens to it here happens simultaneously, perhaps as a mirror image, at the other ‘end.’”

“Across the galaxy,” I said.

“Oh, much farther away than that, I think,” said Dr. Kim, taking another shot of PeaceAble. “We may be dealing with realms of space and time that don’t even intersect our own. I think, for sure, that we are dealing with forms of life that aren’t biological.”

At noon I asked for a sandwich. “I’m going to quit worrying about my lower intestine,” I said. “The Shadow has quit worrying about it.”

“We’re not sure,” said Hvarlgen. “Stay on moonjirky just one more meal. This afternoon, we’ll try the session with your pants on and see what happens.”

The Shadow didn’t seem to notice. (I was a little hurt.) It twisted in its bowl, diving into—another form (my own) which appeared across the room as before.

“When is this communication going to occur?” asked Hvarlgen.

“Soon.” The way the Shadow said the word, it sounded almost like a place—like “Moon.”

“What is soon?”

“When the protocol is adjusted.”

There was a long silence.

“What kind of communication will it be?” asked Dr. Kim. “Will we hear it?”

“No.”

“See it?”

“No.”

“Why is it that you never speak unless we ask a question?” asked Hvarlgen.

“Because you are half of the protocol,” said the Shadow.

“I thought so,” said Hvarlgen. “We’ve been talking to ourselves!”

The Shadow started to flicker. I resisted the urge to bend over the bowl, and watched him fade away.

I was tired. I went back to my wedgie to sleep, and I dreamed, for the first time in years, of flying. When I got up, Hvarlgen was still in East with Dr. Kim. They were on a conference call with High Orbital and Queens; they were somewhere between calling the Shadow an ET and an AD (alien device).

I left it to them. I ate alone (another sandwich) and then watched the first half of Bonnie and Clyde with the lunies.

They had a kind of cult thing about Michael J. Pollard. Now I understood why every time something went wrong around the station, one of them was bound to say “dirt.”

Hvarlgen rolled into Grand Central at almost nine P.M. “We’re going to skip the evening session tonight,” she said. “Sidrath and the Q-Team don’t want to miss this promised communication. They are afraid we’ll speed things up, or wear the Shadow out, like an eraser.”