Blind Lake

The O/BECs. Even Charlie had been known to call them “a keep-your-fingers-crossed technology.” Marguerite had very little background in quantum computing; she didn’t pretend to understand the intricacies of the O/BEC platens.

Hooking up a collection of O/BECs in a self-evolving “organic” array was an experiment that should never have worked, in her opinion. The results were unpredictable and spooky, and she remembered what Chris had said (or quoted): It could end at any time. It could, yes it could. And maybe this was the time.

But, God, no, she thought, not now, not when they were on the brink of a profounder knowledge, not when the Subject was in mortal danger.

The control-and-interface room was more crowded than Marguerite had ever seen it. Tech people clustered around the system monitors, a few of them arguing heatedly. She was dismayed to see that the big main screen, the live feed, was utterly blank. “Charlie, what happened?”

He shrugged. “Loss of intelligibility. Temporary, we think. It’s an I/O hang-up, not a complete system failure.”

“We lost the Subject?”

“No, like I said, it’s an interface thing. The Eye is still watching him, but we’re having trouble talking to the Eye.” And he gave a half-shrug that meant, At least that’s what we think.

“Has this happened before?”

“Not like this, no.”

“But you can fix it?”

He hesitated. “Probably,” he said at last.

“There was still an image twenty minutes ago. What was he doing when you lost him?”

“The Subject? He was hunkered down behind some kind of obstruction when everything grayed out.”

“You think the storm is causing this?”

“Marguerite, nobody knows. We don’t understand a fraction of what the O/BECs do. They can look through stone walls; a sandstorm shouldn’t be a problem. But visibility is severely compromised, so maybe the Eye has to work harder to keep a fix on a moving target, maybe that’s what we’re dealing with here. All we can do is treat the peripheral problems as they come up. Keep the temperature in spec, keep the quantum wells stable.” He closed his eyes and ran a hand over his stub-bled scalp.

This is what we don’t like to acknowledge, Marguerite thought: that we’re using a technology we don’t understand. A “dissipative structure” capable of growing its own complexity — capable of growing well beyond our intellectual grasp of it. Not really a machine but a process inside a machine, evolution in miniature, in its way a new form of life. All we ever did was trigger it. Trigger it, and bend it to our purposes.

Made ourselves the only species with an eye more complex than our own brains.

The overhead lights flickered and dimmed. Voltage-bus monitors bleated shrill alarms.

“Please, Charlie,” Marguerite said. “Don’t let him slip away.”

Chris was following Tessa’s abrupt gesture when he heard the explosion.

It wasn’t an especially loud sound, not much louder than the sound of a slammed tailgate, but weightier, full of rolling undertones like thunder. He straightened up and searched the sky. So did the other sledders, anyone who wasn’t already skimming down the slope.

At first he saw an expanding ring of smoke, faint against a background of high cloud and patchwork blue sky… then the airplane itself, distant and falling in a skewed curve toward the earth.

Falling, but not helplessly. The pilot seemed to be struggling for control. It was a small plane, a private plane, canary yellow, nothing military; Chris saw it in silhouette as it flew briefly level, parallel to the road from Blind Lake and maybe a couple hundred feet off the ground. Coming closer, he realized. Maybe trying to use the road as a landing strip.

Then the aircraft faltered again, veering wildly and ejecting a gout of black smoke.

Coming in badly, and coming in close. “Get down,” he told Tess. “Down on the ground. Now.”

The girl remained rigid, motionless, staring. Chris pushed her back into the snow and covered her with his body. Some of the sledders began to scream. Apart from that, the silence of the afternoon had become eerie: the plane’s engines had cut out. It should make more noise, Chris thought. All that falling metal.

It touched ground at the north end of the parking circle, nosing up at the last minute before it collided with a bright red Ford van, translating all that kinetic energy into a fan of red and yellow debris that cut trails and craters into the fallen snow. Tessa’s body trembled at the sound. The shrapnel traveled east and away from the sledding hill, and it was still coming down in a patter of snow-muted thunks when the wreckage burst into flame.

Chris pulled Tess into a sitting position.

She sat up as if catatonic, arms rigid at her sides. She stared but didn’t blink.

“Tess,” he said, “listen to me. I have to help, but I want you to stay here. Button up if you get cold, look for another adult if you need help, otherwise wait for me, okay?”

“I guess.”

“Wait for me.”

“Wait for you,” she said dully.

He didn’t like the way she looked or sounded, but she wasn’t physically injured and there might be survivors in the burning wreckage. Chris gave her what he hoped was a reassuring hug and then bounded down the slope, his feet gouging imperfections into snow compressed and made slick by the sledders.

He reached the burning airplane along with three other adults, two men and a woman, presumably all parents who had come sledding with their children. He advanced as close to the fire as he dared, the heat of it prickling the skin of his face and boiling snow into the air. The paved lot showed through the snow in watery black patches. He could see enough of the van — its roof had been sheared off — to know there was no one inside. The small plane was another matter. Behind its furiously cooking engine a human shape struggled against the clouded glass of the cabin door.

Chris peeled off his cloth jacket and wrapped it around his right hand.

Later, Marguerite would tell him he acted “heroically.” Maybe so. It didn’t feel that way. What it felt like was the obvious next thing to do. He might not have attempted it if the fire had not been relatively contained, if the plane had been heavier with fuel. But he didn’t recall doing any risk-benefit calculation. There was only the job at hand.

He felt the heat on his face, prickling his skin, gusts of cold air behind him angling toward the flames. The figure faintly visible in the crumpled cabin twitched, then stopped moving altogether. The door was hot even through the folds of his jacket. It was slightly ajar but stuck in its frame. Chris fumbled at it futilely, backed away to catch a breath of cooler air, then kicked hard at the accordioned aluminum. Once, twice, three times, until it bent far enough that he was able to brace himself, grasp the door in the folds of his now-smoldering jacket, and apply some leverage.

The pilot spilled onto the damp ground like a bag of meat. His face was hairless and blackened where it wasn’t a shocking, charred red. He wore a pair of aviator glasses, one lens missing and the other lens crazed. But he was breathing. His chest lifted and fell in cresting waves.

The men behind him dashed close enough to pull the pilot away from the wreckage. Chris found himself hesitating pointlessly. Was there something more he was supposed to do? The heat had made him dizzy.

He felt a hand on his shoulder, felt himself tugged away from the flames. Just a few feet away the air seemed dramatically colder, far colder than it had been on the hillside with Tess. He staggered away, then sat on the hood of an undamaged automobile and let his head droop. Someone brought him a bottle of water. He drained it almost at once, though that made him feel sicker. He heard an ambulance screaming down the road from Blind Lake.