Nebula Awards Showcase 2013 (19 page)

“It's why you can't hold the ball. You never look at what you're doing.”

“Fuck you,” you say. And you turn away.

So you aren't watching when she reaches out and grabs your left wrist.

“Hey!”

She's stronger than you, despite your panic. She yanks up the hand and holds it before your face. “Look at it.” Her other hand clamps onto your head so you can't twist away.

So you do it. You look at the hand. At the intact but twisted middle finger. At the half forefinger, wriggling like a decapitated worm. At the puckered stumps at the hand's outer edge.

“All right!” you shout at her. “I'm looking! Now let go!”

“No,” she replies. “You're looking at this messed-up thing I'm holding. Now—” and suddenly you realize that her voice, this whole time, has been surprisingly gentle, almost a whisper, “—look at
your
hand.”

It's not some immediate, magical thing. But after a few seconds you notice the thumb. And, yes, it's your thumb, exactly the same as it's always been. And that's your palm, with all its familiar lines and creases, including the scar from when you fell onto a rock as a kid. And the fingers—the parts that are still there—those are yours, too.

You lift your other hand, and she releases her hold as you press your two palms together. You turn them back and forth, back and forth, studying what's there. What's not.

If, for the first time since the crash, you start crying, go to section 378.

If she's brought back a memory from your college philosophy class, go to section 125.

125

The professor is roaming the aisles between desks, as he always does, speaking about determinism and free will. You try to pay attention, but you were up all night at a party, jamming some blues with a hot piano player and a lukewarm fiddler while everybody else drifted home or fell asleep in the corners. Now the only things keeping you awake are the cup of dorm coffee you swallowed on the way to class, and the good-looking redhead two rows down, across the aisle.

Somebody punches you in the shoulder.

“Ow!” you say.

The professor stands beside you, massaging his fist. “What's wrong?” he asks.

“You punched me! Why did you do that?”

He looks confused. “What do you mean? Oh—my fist?” He studies it. “Well, my fist has free will. It hit you for no reason.”

“What?” You know that you've fallen into one of his Philosophical Dialogues, but you're pissed. “Your fist doesn't have its own will. It does what
you
decide.”

“Yes, I suppose that's true.” He draws out the moment, as if you've just given him something novel to consider. “Well,
I
have free will.
I
punched you for no reason.”

You notice the redhead watching you.

You say, “People don't do things for no reason.”

“You endorse determinism, then? The claim that everything that happens is predetermined by what's happened before? So I punched you because, say, I wanted to get your attention. And I wanted to get your attention because you were nodding off. And you were nodding off because—well, I suppose that's none of my business, is it?”

Your classmates snicker. Except the redhead, who smiles and raises an eyebrow.

“But,” continues the professor, “don't I have free will? Can't I make unpredictable decisions, regardless of what's come before?”

You're about to speak when you have a sudden insight.

If you think you see how free will and determinism can coexist, how their apparent conflict is merely superficial, go to section 132.

If it strikes you that philosophy is bullshit, and after lunch you drop this course, and then pretty soon you decide to drop the whole university and become a professional musician, go to section 390.

390

You spend two more weeks in the hospital. The nurses explain about changing the bandages. The therapist gives you exercises to do, and a rubber ball.

When you're discharged you try to leave your guitar behind. But the nurse with the freckles makes you take it.

You drive—of course you can drive, you're right-handed—to Paul's memorial service. Lisa, Paul's wife, widow, hugs you tightly, careful to avoid your bandaged hands. You hug her back, but when you step apart there's a piece of the way she looks at you that you can't manage to interpret as sympathetic. Or friendly.

You sit in the rearmost row of folding chairs. The room fills with people all sitting still, watching and listening. Like a concert audience. Your forearms always tighten up right before a gig, and they do that now. But this time your legs tighten, too, and then they start shaking.

Somebody picks up a guitar to sing one of Paul's songs. Your heart hammers at twice the song's tempo as you push back your chair and sneak away.

You reach your apartment as the sun is setting. You lean the guitar case against its usual bookshelf. You're relieved to finally collapse into your own couch, surrounded by your comfortably familiar clutter. Then, after a few minutes, you take a closer look at your familiar clutter. CDs, sheet music,
Guitar Player
and
Dirty Linen
magazines, scattered picks, broken strings. The apartment doesn't feel so comfortable now.

You stare awhile at the telephone. But all your friends are musicians. You don't want to watch them as they try to say the right thing. As they try to not look at your hands.

If, despite all that, you do phone one of them, one of your oldest friends, go to section 402.

If you go out for a drive and after an hour come back with three fifths of Scotch, go to section 429.

429

Your savings—at least, the dollars you don't spend on the increasingly cheap whiskey that keeps you from hearing your own thoughts—let you hold onto the apartment for three months. The guitars and the mandolin buy you two more. It's nearly another two before the police show up for the eviction.

It's late spring by now, so your timing could have been worse. Your hand hurts a lot, though, and the prescriptions keep running out early—and your new pharmacy, who meets you each Wednesday in the alley behind the porn shop, isn't interested in your Medicaid card.

The guitar case—you've still got that. The way it saved your life and all. Also, with a rope tied to the strap-stumps you can sling it over your shoulder with all your stuff inside. The case whacks against your hip when you walk, but that's not so bad, and when the bottles in there clink against each other—on the happy occasions when there's more than one—you tell people that you're making music.

If you meet a guy at the shelter who convinces you to get into treatment, go to section 440.

If you tell that guy to go fuck himself, go to section 472.

472

You should, somehow, have gotten yourself down South someplace before winter arrived. Last night some asshole stole your shopping cart while you slept, so now your only possession that you're not wearing is the crappy cardboard sign asking people to help a vet. (It's pretty obvious that not everybody buys that when they first glance at you. But you always hold the sign with your left hand showing good and plain, and then nobody asks anything.)

This afternoon you kind of lost track of the time, and when you finally got to the shelter it was full. So now you're heading toward the bridge by the river, where at least you'll be out of the wind.

You must have turned the wrong way, though, because you're walking along right next to the frozen river. You look up, and then around, and finally you find the bridge, way the hell behind you.

As you turn, your foot slides onto the ice. Which isn't as thick as it looked. You yank it out quick, though, and it doesn't feel wet. Of course, both of your feet were already kind of numb.

If you think you can still make it to the bridge, go to section 476.

If the idea of just lying down right here and sleeping in until noon is too tempting to pass up, go to section 491.

491

You wake to noise and light. Your chest hurts. You squint against the glare and lift your head just enough to see that some asshole has stolen both your goddamn coats and all your shirts and left you lying here, covered in just a sheet like a corpse. You try to grab the railings and sit up, but your wrists are tangled in some straps and your arms don't move.

“Hey!” you yell. “Hey! Hey!”

Somebody grabs your shoulder. Red hospital scrubs. Nurse, you think.

Both of your shoulders get shoved down against the mattress. Your nurse says, “Take it easy.”

“My case,” you demand. “Where's my case?”

You twist around to see her freckles, but she's up behind your head too far.

“We've got your case, don't worry.”

Of course you're not worried. “The Coast Guard,” you explain to her.

“Sure,” she says. “Take it easy.”

Damn, she's not even listening to you! “The Coast Guard!” you repeat. “They're supposed to bring my case!”

If you keep trying to get through to her, until a warmth slides up inside your arm and then you feel sleepy, go to section 501.

If you shut up for a minute and look around and realize that you're not where you thought you were, and then you quietly ask the nurse if maybe you can stay here a few days and get some help, go to section 525.

501

You're sitting in a plastic chair, in a circle of people sitting in plastic chairs, in a bright hospital room with pale blue walls. There's a TV mounted high on one of the walls, but it's off right now.

“All right,” says the guy in one of the chairs. He's the only one who's wearing shoes. Not these little socks with rough patches on their soles, at least if you put them on right.

The guy says, “The past couple days here in group we've been talking about what? Choices, right? Choices. Now I've got something I want you to try. I'm going to shut up for the next ten minutes, and for that ten minutes I invite each of you to think about the thing I'm about to explain. And each of you, you need to shut up, too, or else it's not fair to the others. Okay?”

He waits until everybody, including you, says okay, or at least nods.

“All right, so here's the thing. We've all had moments in our lives where we were faced with a choice. And we made our decision, and that choice sent our life down a certain path. And one thing led to another, and finally, well, here we all are.” He looks around the circle, his gaze pausing on each person. When he looks at you, you stare right back at him and he gives you this little smile he does sometimes. Then he finishes looking around the circle, and then he shakes his head and says, “Here we all fucking are.”

Everybody chuckles. This guy is all right. He's told you that his drug of choice, back when he wasn't the one wearing shoes to group, was meth. Normally you can't stand tweakers. But he's all right.

“So,” he says, “here's what we're going to do for the next ten minutes. Each of us is going to think back to some choice we once made, some decision that at the time made sense, but that ever since, we've wished we could do over. All right? Now, I invite you to sit here and take yourself, in your head, back to that moment. But this time, this time you get to do it over. This time you make a different choice. And for the next ten minutes—maybe close your eyes, if you like—for the next ten minutes you get to watch how your life goes, step by step by step, after this different choice. Just follow it out slow and easy, okay? All right? Give it its fair chance. All right, here we go. I'm shutting up now for ten minutes.”

You look around the circle. Most of the others are doing the same. A few have closed their eyes.

What the hell. You close your eyes.

If you ask Paul's friend to let you both spend the night on the floor of his apartment, go to section 304.

If that strikes you as too obvious—too predictable—and instead you're curious about how free will and determinism can coexist, go to section 132.

132

You pick an empty table and set down your tray, still thinking about your dialogue with the professor. As you're taking the second bite from your burger, the redhead from class sits down opposite you.

“Hi,” says the redhead. “I'm Kerry.”

You never finish the burger.

The two of you talk about how free will differs from unpredictability. How predetermination doesn't equate to constraint. How fists can't have free will because they don't have brains, but how brains are overrated.

Kerry is a year ahead of you—a junior—and a math major. (Kerry's the one who introduced the term
equate
into your conversation.)

You try not to be obvious about letting your gaze wander over what you can see of Kerry's body. You'd like to see more.

Then Kerry makes a stupid claim about the contrast Boethius drew between fatalism and divine omniscience.

If you steer the conversation back to the part about how brains are overrated, go to section 138.

If you get frustrated as you keep trying to explain why Kerry's claim is stupid, go to section 155.

138

You and Kerry have been spending all your evenings together at the library, and afterward at the Rathskeller or just wandering campus talking. But so far things haven't gotten past holding hands and kissing. Pretty intense kissing, true, but come on.

Apparently math majors are shy.

Tonight, though, the two of you are rolling around on your bed, and many items of clothing have been removed. A few minutes ago you almost blurted out something about hoping that Boethius's God was looking someplace else, but you suppressed the impulse.

As you yank off a sock, Kerry suddenly pulls away and says, “Do you have any . . . I mean, because I don't, not with me. . . .”