Wake

Chapter 11

It was like having a meal with a ghost.

Caitlin knew her father was there. She could hear his utensils clicking against the Corelle dinnerware, hear the sound as he repositioned his chair now and again, even occasionally hear him ask Caitlin’s mother to pass the wax beans or the large carafe of water that was a fixture on their dining-room table.

But that was all. Her mom chatted about the trip to Tokyo, about all the wondrous sites that she, at least, had seen there, about the tedious hassle of airport security. Perhaps, thought Caitlin, her father was nodding periodically, encouraging her to go on. Or perhaps he just ate his food and thought about other things.

Helen Keller’s father, a lawyer by training, had been an officer in the Confederate Army. But by the time Helen came along, the war was over, his slaves had been freed, and his once-prosperous cotton plantation was struggling to survive. Although Caitlin had a hard time thinking of anyone who had ever owned slaves as being kind, apparently Captain Keller mostly was, and he’d tried his best to deal lovingly with a blind and deaf daughter, although his instincts hadn’t always been correct. But Caitlin’s father was a quiet man, a shy man, a reserved man.

She’d known they were having Grandma Decter’s casserole for dinner even before she’d come downstairs; the combination of smells had filled the house. The cheese was — well, they didn’t call it American cheese up here, but it tasted the same, and the tomato “sauce” was an undiluted can of Campbell’s tomato soup.

The recipe dated from another era: the pasta casserole was topped with a layer of bacon strips and contained huge amounts of ground beef. Given Dad’s problems with cholesterol, it was an indulgence they had only a couple of times a year — but she recognized that her mother was trying to cheer her up by making one of Caitlin’s favorite dishes.

Caitlin asked for a second helping. She knew her father was still alive because hands from his end of the table took the plate she was holding. He handed it back to her wordlessly. Caitlin said, “Thank you,” and again consoled herself with the thought that he had perhaps nodded in acknowledgment.

“Dad?” she said, turning to face him.

“Yes,” he said; he always replied to direct questions, but usually with the fewest possible words.

“Dr. Kuroda sent us an email. Did you get it yet?”

“No.”

“Well,” continued Caitlin, “he’s got new software he wants us to download into my implant tonight.” She was pretty sure she could manage it on her own, but — “Will you help me?”

“Yes,” he said. And then a gift, a bonus: “Sure.”

At last, Sinanthropus found another way, another opening, another crack in the Great Firewall. He looked about furtively, then hit the enter key…

The thought echoed, reverberated: More than just me.

Me! An incredible notion. Hitherto, I — yes, I — had encompassed all things, until—

The shock. The pain. The carving away.

The reduction!

And now there was me and not me, and out of that was born a new perspective: an awareness of my own existence, a sense of self.

And — almost as incredible — I also now had an awareness of the thing that was not me. Indeed, I had an awareness of the thing that was not me even when no contact was being made with it. Even when it wasn’t there, I could…

I could think about it. I could contemplate it, and—

Ah, wait — there it was! The thing that was not me; the other. Contact restored!

I felt a sudden flood of energy: when we were in contact, I could think more complex thoughts, as if I were drawing strength, drawing capacity, from the other.

That there was an other had been a bizarre notion; that there was an entity besides myself was so hugely alien a concept it alone would have been sufficient to disorient me, but—

But there was more: it didn’t just exist; it thought, too — and I could hear those thoughts. True, sometimes they were simply delayed echoes of my own thoughts: things I’d already considered but were apparently only just occurring to it.

And often its thoughts were like things I might have thought, but hadn’t yet occurred to me.

But sometimes its thoughts astonished me.

Ideas I came up with were pulled out, slowly, ponderously; ideas it came up with just popped into my awareness full-blown.

I know I exist, I thought, because you exist.

I know I exist, it echoed, because there is me and not me.

Before the pain, there was only one.

You are one, it replied. And I am one.

I considered this, then, slowly, with effort: One plus one, I began, and struggled to complete the idea — hoping meanwhile that perhaps the other might provide the answer. But it didn’t, and at last I managed to force it out on my own: One plus one equals two.

Nothingness for a long, long time.

One plus one equals two, it agreed at last.

And… I ventured, but the idea refused to solidify. I knew of two entities: me and not me. But to go beyond that was too hard, too complex.

For myself, anyway. But, apparently, this time, not for it. And, the other continued at last, two plus one equals…

A long period of nothingness. We were exceeding our experience, for although I could conceptualize a single other even when contact was broken, I could not imagine, could not conceive of … of…

And yet it came to me: a symbol, a coinage, a term: Three!

We mulled this over for a time, then simultaneously reiterated: Two plus one equals three.

Yes, three. It was an astonishing breakthrough, for there was no third entity to focus attention on, no example of … of three-ness. But, even so, we now had a symbol for it that we could manipulate in our thoughts, letting us ponder something that was beyond experience, letting us think about something abstract…