Robert Sawyer - Quantum Night

“You’re sure?”

“As far as I can tell, yes. I mean, I remember being disgusted when the US Supreme Court handed down the decision in Bush v. Gore —but that was in December of 2000. I don’t remember Bush’s actual inauguration although there had to have been protests, right?”

“I imagine so.”

“And in June of that year, Carroll O’Connor passed away—Archie Bunker himself! You know how much I love All in the Family. I simply couldn’t have missed that bit of news, but somehow I did. Until today, I’d always assumed he was still alive in retirement somewhere.”

“And you just realized you had this gap?”

“Well, it was nineteen years ago, right? How often do we think about stuff from that far back? I do remember 9/11. I remember being right here, on campus, when I heard about the planes hitting the World Trade Center; I’d just started my third year. But other things from that long ago? How often would they come up?”

Menno shifted his bulky form in his chair. “Any idea why you can’t remember those six months?”

“Yes,” I said, but then fell silent. Menno had known me back then, but I’d never told him about this.

“And?” he prompted, reaching down to stroke Pax’s head.

I took a deep breath, then: “I died when I was nineteen. Legally dead. Heart stopped, breathing stopped. The whole nine yards.”

Menno halted in mid-stroke. “Really?”

“Yes.”

“What happened?” he asked, leaning back again.

I pulled my chair closer to his desk. “I’d gone back home to Calgary for the Christmas break. My sister was off in Europe, and my parents were on a cruise—but I wanted to see my friends. I remember New Year’s Eve, of course. Yes, the whole world had celebrated big-time a year before, on December thirty-first, 1999, but you know me: I held out for the real beginning of the twenty-first century, which was January first, 2001, right? Not 2000.”

“Because there was no year zero,” supplied Menno.

“Exactly! Anyway, I’d attended a party at the house of one of my high-school friends, and that night—that is, like 2:00 A.M. on the morning of January first, 2001—when I was heading home, I was attacked by a guy with a knife. It was a cold, clear night. I remember the stars: Orion standing tall, Betelgeuse like a drop of blood, Jupiter and Saturn near the Pleiades.”

“You and the stars,” he said, smiling; I’m secretary of the Winnipeg Centre of the Royal Astronomical Society of Canada.

“Exactly, but it’s relevant, see? I was doing what I always do. Cold night, I’ve forgotten my mitts so my hands are shoved into my jacket pockets, toque pulled down over my ears, and I’m walking along looking up—not ahead of me, but up, finding the ecliptic, looking for planets, hoping to maybe see a meteor streak across the sky. Sure, I’d checked for traffic before crossing the street, but that’s all I did. I wasn’t looking to see what was happening on the other side. Oh, I probably registered that there were a couple of people there, but I wasn’t paying any damn attention to them. And so I crossed diagonally because I was heading in that direction, right? And when I got to the other side, suddenly this guy wheels around, and he’s got this pinched, narrow face and teeth that are sharp and pointy and all askew, and his eyes, man, his eyes are wild. Wide open, whites all around. And he shoves me with one hand, palm against my chest, and he snarls—really, it was a total snarl, his breath coming out in clouds—and says ‘What the fuck do you want?’

“I look over at the other guy, and, Christ, he’s covered in blood. It seems black in the yellow light from the streetlamp, but that’s what it’s got to be, blood all over his nylon jacket. That guy’s been stabbed; I’ve walked into a drug deal gone bad. I stammer, ‘I’m just heading to the C-Train.’

“But it’s no good. The guy is crazy or high or both, and he’s got a knife. The other guy takes the opportunity to try to get away: he starts running—staggering, really—onto the street. But he’s badly hurt, and I see now that he’d been standing in a puddle of his own blood, a puddle that’s freezing over.

“But the guy with the knife is looking at me, not him, and he lunges at me. And I’m me, right? I don’t know jack about street fighting. I don’t know how to deflect a blow or anything like that. I feel the knife going in sideways, and I know, I just know, it’s going in between my ribs, just off the centerline of my chest. It doesn’t hurt—not yet—but it’s going deep.

“And then it pierces my heart; I know that’s what’s happening. And he pulls the knife out and I stagger a half-pace backward, away from the road, clutching my chest, feeling the blood pouring out, and it’s hot, it’s like scalding hot compared to the chilled air, but it’s not ebbing and flowing, it’s not pumping. It’s just draining out onto the sidewalk. I fall backward, and I’m looking up at the sky, but it’s too bright here, the streetlamp is washing everything out, and I’m thinking, God damn it, I wanted to see the stars.

“And then—nothing. None of that tunnel bullshit, no bright light except the sodium one from the lamp; none of it. I’m just gone.”

Menno had switched to leaning forward, and about halfway through, he’d steepled his fingers in front of his wide face. They were still there. “And then what?” he said.

“And then I was dead.”

“For how long?”

I shrugged. “No one knows. It can’t have been too long. Man, if the word ‘lucky’ can be applied to that sort of situation, I was lucky. I’d fallen right by that streetlamp, so I was in plain view, and it was bitterly cold. A medical student coming home from a different party stumbled upon me, called 911, plugged the hole in my torso, and did chest compressions until the ambulance got there.”

“My God,” said Menno.

“Yeah. But, given the timing, it has to be what’s affecting my memory.”

Silence again, then, at last: “There was doubtless oxygen deprivation. You likely did suffer some brain damage, preventing the formation of long-term memories for a time.”

“You’d think—but there should be more evidence of it. During my missing six months, if I wasn’t laying down new memories, I’d have had enormous difficulty functioning. I was in your class then. Do you remember me behaving strangely?”

“It was a long time ago.”

“Sure, but I also was one of your test subjects in that research project, right?”

He frowned. “Which one?”

“Something about… microphones?”

“Oh, that one. Yeah, I guess you were.”

“You had a cool name for it, um…”

“Project Lucidity.”

“Right! Anyway, I was helping you with that before the knifing, and—well, I don’t know: that’s the whole point. Maybe I was part of your study afterwards, too?”

“I honestly don’t remember,” said Menno.

“Of course. But could you check your files, see if you have stuff about me going that far back? I’m looking for anything that might jog my memory.”

“Sure, I’ll have a look.”

“I must have been laying down long-term memories during my… my ‘dark period.’ I mean, how else could I have functioned?”

“I suppose, yeah.”

“And I did a half-year course in science fiction then, one semester, January to April. It was required that I take an English course, and that seemed less painful than CanLit.”

“Ha.”

“Anyway, I found the reading list from it still online. Apparently, we all read this novel about a biomedical engineer who discovers scientific proof for the existence of the human soul—but I don’t remember ever reading it; I only know that’s what it’s about because I looked up the title on Amazon today.”