The Gift (11 page)

Sam thought about losing memories. There were precious few he’d miss. Nearly all of those were of Elizabeth or Zach. His absolute favorites included both of them, as did his absolute worst. Those memories, however painful in the end, he did not want to lose. His inability to lie to himself reminded him that he was on track to lose memories, good and bad, one way or another if he didn’t change. He knew it. Those who cared about him knew it. Something had to change or the things that hurt the most would ultimately destroy him, just as the events he longed to remember and lived a life destined to make him forget had taken everything that had mattered to him.

He thought about asking about the odds of damage associated with failure for a long time. Adia said nothing, understanding what he was weighing in his mind. In the end, he realized he no longer cared about odds or safety of any kind. He wanted to make a difference again. If the attempt killed him, or left him more maimed than he already was, it would only hasten a process he was already participating in.

“So, my choices are to continue to get to know you and ultimately decide to integrate, or to let you die at some point never having had the chance to really participate in trying to save humanity? I don’t see that I really have a choice. I’m not going to let you die and I’m not sitting this fight out. I could never live with myself if I did. How do we do this?”

Adia told him, and they began to change.

C
HAPTER
T
WELVE

Angela took her hand off the collection of gifts. She’d started this attempt to communicate the same way she’d succeeded in doing so before, by touching the same gift in as close to the same place as her memory and the video recording of the event allowed. Even before she made contact, she knew that something was very different. She had no urge to reach out to the formation, as she had before. It was every bit as physically beautiful as it had been earlier, but it no longer felt alive. She no longer felt as if she was being called upon to have a conversation with what had seemed instantly like an old and trusted friend. It no longer felt as if she was being called upon at all. Still, she’d proceeded with hope and confidence. The fact that AJ and the others had failed to establish communication with the entity she’d more than spoken with was of little concern to her. She was the linguist and she was the one, the only one, it had communicated with so far. Her disappointment at receiving no response at all was profound. She’d made contact with an alien mind, been exposed to a whole new and richer method of communicating, and perceived the desperation and nobility of an entirely different species. For all she knew, she was the only person on Earth to have done so, and now, nothing.

Disheartened, but unwilling to give up, she placed her hand back on the same gift and tried speaking aloud. She did so in every language she knew. She asked questions. She made statements. None of it mattered. Aside from the slight feeling of warmth she felt on contact, warmth belied by thermal measurements proving the gifts were at exactly the same temperature as the surrounding air, again nothing. She pulled her hand away for a second time and settled it on a different gift and tried it all again. No difference. Finally, she took a couple of steps back and activated her microphone.

“Six, this is Leone, negative response, Sir”

“Leone, Six, return to the CP.”

“Wilco." Angela began the short walk back to the command post.

Angela entered the CP to find a discussion about her experience earlier that morning under way. Jack currently had the floor.

“No one else has been able to replicate anything like what Major Leone said she experienced. How do we know it wasn’t just a stress induced hallucination?”

“It would be a pretty damn elaborate hallucination developed in an extraordinarily short period of time." AJ started to reply as the group realized Angela was back among them and was now part of the discussion in addition to being its topic.

“It was not a hallucination. It was as real as anything I’ve ever experienced,” Angela responded as she approached the group.

“Then how do you explain the fact that no one, not even you, can repeat it?” Jack asked.

“I can’t, yet. The fact that an event occurs only once does not mean it did not occur,” Angela replied.

“But we have no proof it occurred at all, do we?” Jack asked.

Angela started to respond, but was preempted by Web. “While it may not be possible to completely dismiss the fact that Major Leone is our only witness to the events that transpired between her and the objects, her account of what she experienced provides a plausible reason for the objects to be here. Can anyone else do the same with the facts at hand?”

When no one responded, he continued, “We’re dealing with a situation as unlike any that the human race has ever experienced as any I could imagine. There are bound to be elements of it that we do not, at least immediately, understand. Within the bounds of prudence, we will have to act accordingly. Which is to say, we will have to accept some things as facts until we are shown otherwise. I suspect that will make some of you uncomfortable. It makes me uncomfortable. Unless one of you can provide a more powerful argument that moves the ball forward right now, that is how we’ll proceed.”

“I concur,” Chang interjected. “It was our habit of acting according to protocol that ended Angela’s conversation with the entity in the first place. Perhaps if we’d allowed her to continue interacting with the entity, we would now have some form of proof that the conversation took place. In fact, it is possible that the very act of severing contact so abruptly is the reason why we can no longer establish such contact.”

“I’m not going to second guess my decision to move Major Leone away from physical contact with the objects, Doctor. We had no way of knowing if it was attempting to harm her,” Web replied.

“That is my point, Colonel. We had no reason to assume it was, and it does not appear that it did in fact harm her. As I have argued before, if they want to harm us, they appear fully capable of doing so. Continuing to act in fear couched in prudence may lose us other opportunities. We must act as active explorers, willing to assume risks in order to learn. I suggest we take one of the gifts out of the formation and see what happens. In fact, I would be happy to do so personally right now.”

“As valid as your point may or may not be, no one is going to disturb the formation just yet. That decision is above my pay grade. I will forward it, along with any supporting statements you’d like me to include, to the command authority. They will decide how we will proceed on that front. Does anyone else have any suggested courses of action they would like to have considered?” Web asked.

Dan was the first to reply, “Proceeding with the assumption that Angela’s experience was factually accurate, I’d like to get back to Peterson and continue working with the computer program running there. If it’s possible for us to access all of the knowledge of the Makers, I can’t think of anything I can contribute right now that would make more of a difference. We know the program is real, because we all saw its output, and we strongly suspect that it was doing more than generating a projection for two reasons. First, given the same foreknowledge the gifts had of the events it portrayed, we could have created a nearly identical projection in a similar fashion. Hardly a demonstration of technology intended to match what the projection portrayed. Second, the resource utilization of the cluster had not fallen as of when we departed for here. In fact it was still rising”

“I agree with you. The team would be better served with you there, and I don’t need to check with anyone for that. Please work with Captain Andrews to make arrangements to get you back to your team as quickly as possible,” Web said.

“If I could have a moment of your time outside for a minute, Colonel?” Dan asked.

Web looked a bit surprised, both at the request and Dan’s use of his rank, “Sure, let’s go.”

Outside, and far enough away from anyone to ensure their conversation would be private, Dan began, “We all noticed Sam was not included in the team that came to the landing site. May I ask you if he’s still working on this project?”

No one but Web had been allowed contact with anyone outside of the landing area since their arrival, and as such Dan did not know what had occurred elsewhere since then.

“He is not.” Web replied.

“May I ask you why not?”

“He’s not a member of the first contact team. I’ll grant that your request to include him, supported by Jack and several others, made sense when we were working in his specialty, but his contribution has been made. We have sufficient computer scientists and other experts to get the job done. We don’t need him.”

“I’m not sure you fully understand what Sam brings to the table. I am requesting, again, that he be included in our future work. In fact, I am requesting that he be made a full member of the team. Without his help, we would not have been here when the gifts landed. We would have been too late for Angela to communicate with the entity. We would not have recorded its transition from its arrival state to its current formation. Sam is a valuable asset to the entire team, and to my team in particular right now. Had he been working on the problem from Peterson while we were here, I’m confident my team would have made more progress in the intervening hours. Will you reconsider your decision?”

“I’ll take it under advisement. Anything else?” Web asked.

“No,” Dan answered.

“Then I suggest you find Captain Andrews and get back to your team as quickly as possible.”

C
HAPTER
T
HIRTEEN

Sam awoke exhausted, sore, hungry and thirsty. He felt like he was recovering from the worst case of flu he’d ever experienced, and he smelled so bad he briefly considered showering before eating and drinking. In the end, he decided he wasn’t sure he had enough strength to make it through a shower without replenishing his body. As little food as he had in the house, he was pretty sure he’d eat it all before doing anything else. It was as close to a biological imperative as anything he’d experienced in years.

Getting up from his recliner, he carefully navigated his way to the kitchen, his towel left behind. The half eaten package of cheese was sitting on the counter where he’d left it…when? He didn’t know. It was no longer cold and was covered in a light sheen of oil. It didn’t look appealing. Sam didn’t care. He picked it up as he retrieved a glass from a cabinet. He began eating the cheese while filling the glass with tap water. He alternated bites of cheese with gulps of water. When the cheese was gone, he went back to the refrigerator and grabbed a quart bottle of Gatorade. He opened the bottle and began drinking it as fast as he could while looking around for more food. There was a package of Chinese takeout he’d ordered Friday, Happy Family. Grabbing a fork from a nearby drawer, he started eating it directly from its cardboard container. The spicy oils had congealed to grease. He cared as little about that as he had about the state of the cheese. When the container was empty, he set it down on the counter and grabbed the only other thing in the refrigerator besides condiments, one of three bottles of beer. Briefly impressed with himself in a macabre way, he was surprised his Saturday night binge had left them. He twisted the top off of the first one he grabbed before drinking it down like a college freshmen and grabbing the next. When he’d finished the last, he slumped to the floor of the kitchen and fell back into a deep sleep.

When Sam awoke for the second time since committing to the change, things were very different. Although he’d slept naked on the cold, hard tiles of the kitchen floor, he felt no discomfort upon waking. While he couldn’t remember waking in as bad a shape as he had the first time in many years, he also couldn’t remember waking without pain for just as long. He couldn’t remember not hurting physically since before he’d met Elizabeth. With that thought, he realized he could still recall everything about his life with her and Zach. In fact, the memories were clearer than ever; both good and bad. They were also subtly different. He could recall the events as they happened, but he could also recall how he had remembered them before he chose to change. The dual recollections differed. Without effort, he realized he’d been subconsciously selectively editing events from his past. The edits his mind had made were not flattering. While Sam’s mistakes, character flaws and other personality defects had contributed to the events that made up many of the bad memories he harbored, he could now see that his mind had exaggerated their contribution over time. He had made himself more responsible for the bad events in his life in order to justify his decisions to abandon it through abuse and neglect. It was a selfish decision. He could see that now, and he was ashamed.

Adia’s thoughts interrupted his self-recrimination, “Don’t do that to yourself, Sam. Don’t do it to us. It is how humans are wired to remember. They either take more credit for success or more responsibility for failure than is their due. Your species evolved this way. It is a mechanism for selecting and replacing leaders. Everyone who accepts a gift will learn this. What they do with the knowledge is what will define them going forward.”

Adia paused before continuing. “I think I can now answer your question about what will happen to the criminally disturbed members of your species who attempt to partner with a gift." Her tone was sad, deeply so. Sam suspected she would be softly crying had she had a body other than his with which to express her emotions. “They would die, Sam, both the gift and its recipient. The human brain is not sufficiently developed to cope with such a stark contradiction between their previous perception of their decisions and the reality of those decisions. With the death of the host, the gift will pass as well. It is a terrible waste. Our Makers had not considered that some of what the group minds thought about individual intelligences could be so close to the truth." Adia stopped. Sam suspected she had little choice in that decision. She was struggling with her own understanding of what her new life would entail.