Richard Powers - The Echo Maker

A noise tore out of him, the squeal of a dog whose hind legs were just run over by his master’s station wagon. “Know what ? What am I supposed to do with this? Go help somebody else come back from the dead? How do I do that? I don’t even know where the dead are .”

Cold clawed up Karin’s spine. Dark things, games the police had hinted at. “What do you mean, Mark? What are you saying?”

He waved his arms around his head, warding off evil like a swarm of bees. “How am I supposed to know what I mean?”

“What…dead people don’t you…?”

“I don’t even know who is dead. I don’t know where my sister is. I don’t even know where I am. This whole so-called hospital could be a movie studio where they take people to fool them into thinking that everything’s regular.”

She mumbled apologies. The note meant nothing. She reached to take it back. But he grabbed it away from her.

“I need to find who wrote this. This person knows what happened to me.” He scrambled in his back pockets, his favorite baggy, low-riding, black jeans that Karin had brought him from home. “Shit! I don’t even have a wallet to put this in. No social certificate card. No fucking photo ID! No wonder I’m nowhere.”

“I’ll bring your wallet tomorrow.”

He stared up at her, his face flared. “How are you going to get into my home to get it?” When she said nothing, his shoulders collapsed. “Well, I suppose if they can operate on your brain without you even knowing, they’ve probably got the keys to your damn house.”

They ask Mark Schluter who he thinks he’s supposed to be.Sounds like an easy one, but their questions all have little tricks. Always more to them than you might think. God knows why, but they try to trip him up. All he can do is answer and stay cool.

They ask him where he lives. He points to all the medical crap, everybody running around in whites. Shouldn’t they be telling him? They change the question: Does he know his home address? Mark Schluter, 6737 Sherman, Kearney, Nebraska. Reporting for duty. They go: Is he sure ? How sure do they want him to be? They ask if his house is in Kearney or Farview. Just another desperate attempt to confuse him. Sure, he lives in Farview now . But they never said he needed to answer in the present tense.

They ask him what he does. Trick question. Hang with his friends. Go hear bands, at the Bullet or elsewhere. Check for ground effects on eBay. Do vids. Watch TV. Run the dog. He’s got a thief character online whose stats he builds up when nothing else is happening. He does not say the obvious: that they’re treating him like an online character himself.

Is that all? All he does? Well, they don’t have to know all . Not their business, what goes on behind closed doors. But no; they’re like: What does he do to make a living? Where does he work ? Well, why didn’t they ask as much in the first place?

He tells them about Utility Maintenance and Repair II. Which machines are a bitch and which are cake to maintain. Only in his third year, and already earning sixteen big ones an hour. They don’t ask him how he feels about the animals, which is just as well. He hates it when people ask. Everybody eats the damn animals; somebody has to kill them. And that’s not even him: all he does is watch over the gear. He gets to wondering why they want to know so much about the plant. He hasn’t been in for a few days, and perhaps there’s funny stuff afoot. Certain people might want his job. It’s decent money and good work, especially in a recession. Tons of guys would kill for worse.

They ask him who’s the vice president under the first bush. Insane. What next? Senators in the trees? They tell him to count backward from a hundred by threes. Is this a particularly useful skill, might one inquire? They give him tons of quizzes — circling things, crossing them out, and whatnot. Even here, they jerk him around, make the print way too small, or give him ten seconds to do half an hour of work. He tells them he likes his life and doesn’t really want to audition for anything else; if they want to fire him from the test program, feel free. They just laugh and give him more tests.

Something weird about all this grilling. Doctors saying they’re his friends. Tests proving he can’t do certain things, when obviously he can. They should be testing the woman who’s impersonating his sister.

His buds come by, but even they are strange. Duane-o seems regular enough. You can’t duplicate him. Get him started on any topic — terrorism, whatever: Are you familiar with the concept of jihad? Here’s the thing the State Department doesn’t understand about the Islamicists. They can’t help belonging to a foreign country.

Islamicists? I thought they were called Muslims. Am I wrong in calling them Muslims?

Well, “wrong.” Wrong is a relative term. Nobody’s going to call you “wrong,” per se…

A stream of unbelievably meaningless crap, like only the Cain Man can deliver. Rupp looks and sounds okay, too, but there’s something off with his timing. Tommy Rupp is never off. The man who got Mark hired at the plant, who taught him how to shoot, who turned Mark on to undreamed-of alternate experiences: One-shot Rupp, of everyone, should be able to explain what’s going on.

He asks Rupp if he knows anything about the chick who’s pretending to be Karin. The guy gives him a look like Mark’s turned werewolf. Something has infiltrated the man’s food supply. He’s so uptight all the time, like it’s always somebody’s funeral. Real Ruppie never gave a shit. He knew how to have a time. Real Ruppie could stand in the cooler all day long, toting cow quarters around and not even feel it. Nothing ever froze that guy. This guy is frozen constantly.

The whole setup is deeply disturbing, and all Mark can do is roll with it. They’re hiding something from him, something bad. His truck, destroyed. His sister, missing. Everyone claims innocence. No one will tell him about the accident or the hours just before and after it. He can only sit tight, play dumb, and see what he can learn.

Duane-o and Rupp make him play five-card. Therapy, they say. So okay: he’s not doing anything else. But they use trick cards where the clubs and spades look the same. The deck is funny, too, with way too many sixes, sevens, and eights. They play for IBP packing stickers; Mark’s stack vanishes like the buffalo. They keep telling him he’s already drawn cards, when he hasn’t. A dumbass game for pissants. He tells them as much. They’re like: Schluter, this is your favorite game of all time. He doesn’t bother correcting them.

They spend a lot of time listening to mix CDs that Duane downloads and burns. A lot has happened to music while Mark was away. The songs jack with him. Jesus! Would you listen to this? Weirdest stuff I’ve ever heard. What is this, country metal?

This upsets Rupp. Stop squirming and use your ears, Gus. Country metal! You still on morphine, or something?

Country metal exists, Cain insists. It’s a totally recognized genre. You’re not onto that? Duane’s the real Cain, no matter what.

But the looks those two shoot each other make Mark want to hide. When they’re near, he can’t hear himself think. Too much happening at once for him to see what’s wrong. But when they’re gone, he has no leads to follow. You can’t explain what you can’t see.

Problem is, the Karin look-alike seems so real. He’s sitting by himself, respecting the laws, listening to something restful, when she comes by to harass him. She won’t quit with the sister act. She hears the music. Hawaiian vocal trios?

I don’t know. They’re like Polynesian polkas, or something.