Factoring Humanity

33

Becky stayed for a joyous two hours, but at last she had to leave. She lived downtown and had to be up early to open the store Wednesday morning.

When she was gone, Kyle sat back down on the couch.

Heather looked at him for a long time.

He was such a complicated man—more complicated than she’d ever known. And he was, when all was said and done, a basically good man.

But not a perfect one, of course. Indeed, Heather had been shocked and disappointed by some of what she’d discovered while plumbing his memories. He had his dark side, his shoddy parts; he could be petty and selfish and unpleasant.

No, there was no such thing as the perfect man—but then, she’d known that even before she’d left Vegreville to come to Toronto. Kyle was both deeply great and deeply flawed—peaks and valleys, more and less than she’d ever thought he was.

But, she realized, whatever he was now, she could accept it; the fit between them wasn’t ideal, and probably never would be. But she knew in her heart that it was better than it could be with anyone else. And perhaps acknowledging that was as good a definition of love as any.

Heather crossed the room and stood over him. He looked up at her with brown puppy-dog eye’s, like Becky’s.

She reached out a hand. He took it. And she led him across the room, to the stairs, and up to the bedroom.

It had been a year since they’d last made love.

But it was worth waiting for.

She didn’t tense at all.

When they were done, when they lay holding each other, Heather spoke the only words to pass between them that night after Becky’s departure. “Welcome home.”

They fell asleep in each other’s arms.

The next morning: Wednesday, August 16.

As she reached the bottom of the staircase, Heather looked over at Kyle. He seemed to be staring into space, his gaze resting on a blank spot on the wall between a Robert Bateman painting of bighorn sheep and an Ansel Adams photoprint of the Arizona desert.

Heather moved into the room. On an adjacent wall was their wedding photo, now almost a quarter-century old. She could see the toll all of this had taken on her husband. Until recently his hair had been much the same dark brown it had been on the day they’d married, with only tiny incursions of gray and his high forehead had been relatively line-free. But now—now there were permanent creases in his brow, and his rusty beard and dark hair were streaked through with silver.

He seemed physically diminished, too. Oh, doubtless he was still a hundred and seventy-seven centimeters, but he sat on the couch hunched over, collapsed in on himself. And there was the paunch—he’d fought so hard to lose it after his heart attack. True, it wasn’t back to its former proportions, but Heather could clearly see that he’d let himself go. She’d hoped that now that Kyle had made his peace with Becky, that he’d snap out of his malaise, but despite the joys of last night, it seemed that he hadn’t.

Heather continued into the room. Kyle looked briefly up at her; his face was angry.

“We’ve got to stop her,” he said.

“Who?”

“The therapist.”

“Gurdjieff,” said Heather.

“Yes. We’ve got to stop her.” Kyle looked at Heather. “She could do the same thing to somebody else—ruin another family.”

Heather sat down next to him on the couch. “What do you suggest?”

“Get her disbarred—or whatever the psychiatric equivalent is.”

“Get her license revoked, you mean. But she’s not a psychiatrist, or a psychologist. She didn’t even call herself a therapist anywhere that I could see when I visited her; that was Becky’s word. She called herself a ‘counselor,’ and, well, you don’t have to be licensed to be a counselor in Ontario.”

“Then we should sue her. Sue her for malpractice. We’ve got to make sure she never attempts to treat anyone again.”

Heather didn’t know what to say. She’d been trying to come to grips with the ramifications of her discovery; surely once she went public, once the whole human race had access to psychospace, surely there would be no way a fraud like Gurdjieff could continue to have any influence—surely the problem would take care of itself.

“I understand what you’re saying,” said Heather, “but really, can’t we let it be over?”

“It’s not over,” said Kyle.

Heather made her tone soft. “But Becky has for—”

She stopped herself. She’d almost said “has forgiven you,” as if there were anything to forgive. Maybe Kyle was right—maybe the stigma never does go away. Of all people, Heather should be convinced beyond any doubt of Kyle’s innocence, and yet, without thinking, for the briefest moment, her unconscious had started a sentence that suggested something had happened.

Kyle let air out.

“I mean, she understands now that nothing happened,” said Heather, trying to extract the verbal knife. “She knows you never hurt her.”

Kyle was silent for a long time. Heather watched his rounded shoulders rise and fall with each breath he took.

“It’s not Becky,” said Kyle at last.

Heather felt her heart sink. She’d done more than he could possibly know to help him—but perhaps in the end it had not been enough. She knew that many marriages crumbled after a crisis was over.

She opened her mouth to say, “I’m sorry” but Kyle spoke before her words were free. “It’s not Becky,” he said again. “It’s Mary.”

Heather felt her eyes go wide. “Mary?” she repeated. She so rarely spoke the name aloud, it sounded almost foreign to her. “What about her?”

“She thinks I hurt her.” Present tense; the inability to accept what had happened.

Heather fell back on what she’d originally intended to say. “I’m sorry.”

“She’ll never know the truth,” said Kyle.

To her surprise, Heather found herself waxing religious. “She knows,” she said.

Kyle grunted and dropped his gaze to the hardwood floor. They were both silent for half a minute. “I know I didn’t do anything,” said Kyle, “but…” He trailed off. Heather looked at him expectantly. “But,” he continued, “she thinks I did. She went to her grave”—he paused, either choking on the word, or just reflecting for a moment on its relation to his own last name—“thinking her father was a monster.” He lifted his head, looked at Heather. His eyes were moist.

Heather leaned back into the couch, her mind racing. It was supposed to be over, dammit. It was all supposed to be over now.

She looked up at the ceiling. The walls were beige, but the ceiling was pure white plaster with a roughened texture. Little points, projecting through.

“There may be a way,” she said at last, closing her eyes.

Kyle was quiet for a moment. “What?” he said, as if he hadn’t heard clearly.

Heather breathed out. She opened her eyes and looked at him. “There may be a way,” she said. “A way for you to—well, not talk to Mary of course. But still, perhaps a way for you to make your peace with her.” She paused. “And a way for you to understand why we don’t have to do anything about Gurdjieff.”

Kyle narrowed his eyes, baffled. “What?” he said again.

Heather looked away trying to think of how to explain it all.

“I was going to tell you soon,” she said, needing to build her defense from the outset. “Really, I was.”

But that wasn’t true—or at least, it wasn’t certain. She’d been wrestling with it for days now, unsure of how—or if—to proceed. Yes, she’d told Becky, but she’d also sworn Becky to secrecy. She wasn’t proud of the way she’d been acting; yes, there was great science at stake; yes, there were fundamental truths to be shared. But, well, it was so much—how was one supposed to react? How did one deal with a discovery of this magnitude?

Heather turned back to face Kyle. He was still looking at her quizzically.

“I figured out what the alien messages are all about,” she said softly.

His eyes widened.

Heather raised a hand. “Not everything, you understand—but enough.”

“Enough for what?”

“To build the machine.”

“What machine?”

She opened her mouth slightly, then exhaled, feeling her cheeks puff out as she did so. “A machine to access… the overmind.”

Kyle tilted his head, stunned.

“The aliens—that was what they were trying to tell us. Individuality is an illusion; we’re all part of a greater whole.”

“Theoretically,” said Kyle tentatively.

“No. No. In reality. It’s true—all the theories we talked about yesterday are true. I know—know it for a fact. The messages, they were a kind of blueprint for a four-dimensional device that…”

“That what?”

Heather closed her eyes again. “That lets an individual plug into the human collective unconscious—into the actual, literal shared mind of humanity.”

Kyle slid his lower lip behind his upper teeth, but said nothing for several seconds. Then: “How could you build such a thing?”

“I couldn’t of course—not personally. But a friend in Mechanical Engineering helped.”

“And it works?”

Heather nodded. “It works.”

Kyle was quiet for a moment. “And you—you’ve what? Connected to the overmind?”

“More than that. I’ve sailed it.”

“ ‘Sailed,’ ” said Kyle, as though he couldn’t understand the word in this context.

Heather nodded again.

Kyle was quiet for another moment. Then: “This has been a difficult time for all of us,” he said. “I hadn’t—I’m sorry honey—I hadn’t realized what a toll it had taken on you.”

Heather smiled despite herself. Like father, like daughter. “You don’t believe me.”

“I—well…”

Heather’s smile faded. She kicked herself for not thinking to bring home the videotape of the tesseract folding up. “I’ll show you. I’ll show you today. The equipment is in my office at the university.”

“Who else knows about this?”

“No one but me and Becky.”

Kyle still looked unconvinced.

“I know I should have told you before. I was going to; I really think I was going to last night. But—but it’s like nothing you can imagine. It’ll change everything, this technology. Personal privacy ceases to exist.”

“What?”

“I can access anyone—find their memories, their personality, the archives of what they are.… .”

“Yes?”

She lowered her eyes. “I connected with your mind, leafed through your memories.”

Kyle moved slightly away from her on the couch. “That’s—that’s not possible.”

Heather closed her eyes again, fighting a wave of shame. “You buy hot dogs with grilled onions from a vendor on St. George.”

Kyle’s eyes widened again.

“There’s a student in your summer AI class named Cassie. You think she’s a babe. ‘Babe’—that’s the precise word you think. You’re betraying your age, you know—the term today is ‘nova,’ isn’t it? That’s what the young people say: ‘She’s a real nova.’ ”

“You’ve been spying on me.”

Heather shook her head. “Not spying—at least not from outside.”

“But—”

“You think my thighs are corrugated—that’s another direct quote. If you’re any kind of gentleman, you’ve never said that to anyone.”

Kyle’s jaw dropped.

“The technology works. You can see why I’ve kept it secret, at least for the time being, can’t you? Your PIN—anyone’s PIN; the combination to any lock; your password—all of it could be plucked from your mind, from anyone’s mind, with this technology. There are no secrets anymore.”

“And you probed my mind without telling me? Without my permission?”

Heather lowered her eyes. “I’m sorry.”

“This is incredible. This is too much.”

“It’s not all bad,” said Heather. “I was able to prove that you hadn’t hurt Becky or Mary.”

“Prove it?” Kyle’s voice was sharp now. “You didn’t trust me—didn’t believe me?”

“I am sorry but… but they’re my daughters. I couldn’t choose between you and them. I had to know—know for certain—before I could start putting my family back together.”

“Jesus Christ,” said Kyle. “Jesus Christ.”

“I am sorry,” she said again.

“How could you keep this from me? How on earth could you keep this from me?”

Heather felt her own anger rising. She was about to snap back: How could you keep your sexual fantasies from me?

Did you tell me about your hatred of my mother?

Did you let me know what you really felt about my not yet having made tenure? About my not contributing as much financially as you did?

Did you reveal your feelings about God to me?

How could you keep so much secret from me, year after year, decade after decade, a quarter-century of deception? Minor ones, to be sure, but the cumulative effect—like a wall between us, built up brick by brick, lie by lie, omission by omission.

How could you keep all that hidden?

Heather swallowed, regaining her composure. And then a small, humorless laugh escaped her now-dry throat. Everything she’d just thought—her own anger, her own restrained feelings—would soon be laid bare before him. It was inevitable; there was no way to avoid it—no way he could resist the temptation, a temptation he’d doubtless think was his right, fair turnabout, once he himself entered the construct.

She shrugged slightly “I am sorry.”

He shifted on the couch again, as if he were about to get up.

“But,” she said, “don’t you see? Don’t you get it? It’s not just your mind, or my mind, that you could touch. It’s any mind—including, perhaps, those that are no longer active.” She reached over, took his hand, the fingers immobile. “Now, I haven’t tried this yet, but it may work. You might be able to touch Mary’s mind—the archive of it, the backed-up version.” She squeezed the hand, shaking it slightly looking for a response. “Perhaps you can make your peace with her. In a very real sense, perhaps you can.”

Kyle’s eyebrows went up.

“I know it’s not over yet,” said Heather. “But it may be. It may be soon. We may be able to put it all to rest—all the demons, all the bad times.”

“And what happens after that?” asked Kyle. “What happens next?”

Heather opened her mouth to reply, but soon closed it, realizing she had not the slightest idea.