Robert Sawyer - Quantum Night

One of the students, a muscular guy named Enzo, raised his hand. “Well, then, Professor Marchuk, if all that’s true—if it really is possible—then how do we know you’re not a p-zed?”

“How indeed?” I replied, smiling beatifically at them all.

“We have to try again,” said Dominic firmly, on January 2, 2001.

“Are you insane?” replied Menno. “You saw what happened to that student, Jim Marchuk.”

“Which is precisely why we have to try again. We have exactly one data point now. We can’t draw any conclusions from that.”

“That boy might have died. What if he’d never regained consciousness?”

“But he did. And, really, we don’t even know that our equipment is what caused him to black out.”

“Oh, come on! It happened the moment we activated the helmet. What else could have caused it?”

“Who knows? Correlation is not causation. But, anyway, if the effect was unique to him, we need to know that. I’d hate to cancel a whole program based on one failure.”

“You know who else said that? General Turgidson in Dr. Strangelove —right before the world came to an end.”

“Don’t worry,” said Dominic. “It’ll be fine. We’ll be prepared this time. No fucking Laurel and Hardy carrying the body down the corridor. We’ll belt the next subject into the chair so he can’t fall out—don’t want a concussion! And if he does lose consciousness, well, we’ll just wait patiently. Marchuk revived in a matter of minutes, after all.” He thought for a moment. “Let’s try that business student, the runner. He had an inner monologue, too, and he’s from Winnipeg; he should be around. What was his name?”

“Huron,” Menno said reluctantly. “Travis Huron.”

“Okay, Travis,” said Menno into the intercom. “We want you to just think about the test message, all right? Just that, nothing else. Do you remember it?”

On the other side of the window, the athletic young man nodded. “‘Broadsword calling Danny Boy.’”

“Exactly. Just repeat that subvocally over and over once I say ‘go.’”

Another nod.

Menno had his finger poised over the enter key, but just stood there, unable to bring himself to press it.

After about ten seconds, Dominic, standing next to him, muttered, “Oh, for Christ’s sake,” reached over, and stabbed the other enter key on the numeric keypad, and—

—and Travis’s head tipped forward, and his strapped-in body sagged.

“Shit,” said Menno, rushing out the door and into the adjacent lab. He unstrapped the helmet and tossed it across the room to get it out of the way. It was just like with Jim Marchuk. Travis’s pulse was good—Menno had no trouble finding it this time—and his respiration was normal.

Dominic entered, too; Menno had run here, but Dominic must have fucking sauntered to take so long. “Well?” Dom said, as if inquiring about the score in a sporting event he didn’t really care about.

“Unconscious,” said Menno. “Otherwise fine… I guess.”

“It must be the transcranial focused ultrasound that makes them black out,” said Dom, “but I’m not sure why.”

“We shouldn’t have done this,” said Menno, feeling nauseated. He looked at his watch. “Two minutes.”

“It’ll be fine.”

Menno started to pace. “Damn, damn, damn.”

They waited… and waited… and waited, Travis breathing calmly the whole time, although a little drool had started to come out of his half-open mouth.

“There!” said Menno. “It’s been fifteen minutes. That’s got to be at least three times as long as Marchuk was out. We have to call 911.”

Kayla ran up to the nursing station. “What room is Travis Huron in?”

The nurse—a stout, middle-aged woman—pointed to a green chalkboard on the opposite wall. It was a chart of patients, with their room numbers and the names of their attending physicians; Kayla found the line about Travis and hurried down the corridor, low heels clicking against flooring marked with colored stripes.

The door to Travis’s room was open. He had a bed whose front could rise; it was supporting his back at a forty-five-degree angle. His eyes were closed and his hair—dark, like Kayla’s—lay flat against his scalp. Some sort of drip was going into his left arm, and his right index finger had a pulse monitor clipped to it. He was wearing a hospital smock the color of an old woman’s hair rinse.

“Travis,” said Kayla, coming up on his left side.

No response.

A slim and short male doctor in a white lab coat came in. “Hello,” he said. “I am Dr. Mukherjee. And you would be?”

“Kayla Huron. His sister.”

“Ah, yes, good. Thank you for coming. Have you been briefed?”

Kayla shook her head.

“Well, it falls to me, then,” said Mukherjee. “Your brother is in a coma as far as we can tell. There is no sign of trauma or injury. He has had an MRI, and there is no blood clot or tumor.”

“How long will it last?”

Mukherjee lifted his shoulders slightly. “That we do not know. There are varying degrees of being in a coma: we use something called the Glasgow Coma Scale to assess motor response, verbal response, and eye response. Sadly, your brother scores the lowest—the worst—on all three axes. Of course, we will do everything we can. With luck, he will wake up at some point.”

“With luck?” snapped Kayla. “What the hell happened? How did he get here?”

Mukherjee was carrying a clipboard. He looked at it. “He was brought in by ambulance”—a glance at his watch—“five hours ago. Apparently he was found unconscious in an empty classroom at the U of M; a janitor stumbled upon him.”

“What are you doing to help him?”

“We are attending to his physical necessities. But you, young lady, can sit with him. Chat. If he makes any response—speaks, turns his head toward you, or the like—let the nursing station know. Just pull that red cord there, do you see?” He turned and left.

Kayla looked at her watch; Christ, she’d never make it to the club tonight. A chair with orange vinyl padding and a chrome frame was tucked against one wall. She scraped it across the floor. Once it was by Travis’s bed, next to the stand holding the drip bag, she sat on it. “Come on, Trav,” she said. “Wake up, damn it. It’s me, it’s Kayla. Wake up.”

He didn’t react. She looked at him, studying his face, something she hadn’t done for ages. She still thought of him as an angular, geeky kid—but he’d grown into a handsome young man, with clear skin, a high forehead, and…

…and, she knew, piercing blue eyes. But they weren’t visible now: his lids were closed, and the eyeballs beneath were stationary, she could see that. No rapid eye movement, no dreaming.

“Trav, for God’s sake,” Kayla said. “Mom will have a fit. You don’t want me to worry her. Wake up, will you?” She hesitated, then took his hand; it was warm but limp. “Travis?” she said. “Travis, are you there?”

“You really effed up the helmet when you threw it across the room,” said Dom.

“I didn’t throw it,” Menno replied. “I just—”

“Man, you hurled it.”

Maybe he had; he was furious at the fucking thing, and at himself.

“Anyway,” said Dom, “if we’re going to get more work done before classes resume on the eighth, we’ve got to get that first kid who fainted—what’s his name? Jim Marchuk? We’ve got to get him to come in.”

“Why?” Menno asked.

“To recalibrate the equipment. He’s the only one we have previous readings from who’s still around; all of our other experimental subjects have gone home for the holidays.”