Disclaimer: Not real, not mine, not making money from this
A/N: I haven't watched 127 Hours because it has not been screened where I live, so this is an approximation of the movie's scenario. Also, my medical knowledge is limited to wiki searches and I've tried to portray the split-brain theory as realistically and as sympathetically as I could. Hope it works.
Pall
I'm coming up only to hold you under
I'm coming up only to show you wrong
-The Funeral by Band of Horses
before
Arthur doesn't remember anything solid. When he plies his mind for information all that rises is a blur of numbers and letters till his head hurts like hell and he can't think.
Eames doesn't bother remembering at all. Instead, he relives the sensation of falling, again and again.
As time goes by and the afternoon sun blazes stronger overhead, the past comes to them, slowly but in incremental portions for Arthur, in sudden psychedelic waves for Eames.
Between them they have ascertained that this much is true: a man is caught in what seems like a canyon, with his lower right arm trapped beneath a boulder. How he has landed himself in this predicament is yet unclear. There is not a soul to be seen or heard.
Arthur is frightened.
DAY 01, 0958 hours
According to Arthur, who has taken stock of all dry and sundry in the lumpy knapsack, it contains:
(1) 139 millimetres of water,
(2) Half an energy bar (strawberry flavoured), and one-fifth of a badly melted Snickers,
(3) A pocketknife,
(4) A length of rope too short to be useful,
(5) Approximately three days, one hour and fifteen minutes before they die.
DAY 01, 1033 hours
After tugging uselessly at his arm for half an hour, Arthur is pretty sure it's not going to budge. His arm is a little numb, with tingling at the fingertips from the weight of the boulder but nothing is broken. There is, thankfully, no pain; only a little chaffing from all the tugging and pulling. He convinces Eames to chip away at the boulder with a pocketknife. It is not very large and he supposes it can be splintered it away, bit by bit, freeing the arm eventually. Eames acquiesces out of good humour.
Time seems to have worn away his patience but left the boulder unmarked. Eames' efforts, a picture of dogged persistence at the beginning, have slowly ebbed into haphazard stabs at the stone. After slightly over an hour, he leaves off hacking at the boulder altogether and lets his arm hang slumped by his side.
"Why have you stopped?"
"Nothing happening."
"No," he says, "it's working. Slowly, but it'll work." He can hear the lie in his own voice. A sick feeling mounts in his stomach. It may be due to the heat, the closeness of the walls about them or the unceasing tinnitus in his ear that replaces the silence.
"I'm tired."
He counters, "Sooner you get out of here, the sooner you get to rest."
This seems to revive Eames, but the rejuvenating effect lasts only ten minutes. He appears to have recognised the unacknowledged futility beneath the veneer of Arthur's encouraging vibes.
"Just face it, all right, Arthur? It's not working."
DAY 01, 1302 hours
"Eames, do you remember how you got here?"
"No."
"Neither do I," Arthur muses. Then it hits him. He exclaims, "Maybe this is a dream!" The relief he feels is almost instantaneous; it is as though someone gave him an IV of some strong anodyne that has stemmed the rising panic.
"..."
"This is a dream," he pronounces with crisp certainty.
"And how can you be so sure?"
"Because it is too large a plot-hole to have two cerebral hemispheres talking to each other."
"Maybe they got sundered due to trauma," Eames suggests.
"Right."
"Maybe this guy, us, is, um what's the word, epileptic. Or maybe we were running away from the military, and fell in here by accident, I don't know. If I recall rightly, the military was a pretty vicious thing back then."
Back where?, Arthur wonders, and falls silent.
DAY 01, 1512 hours
"This can't be real."
"Oh, please don't start that again."
"It can't be," Arthur insists, "you and I can't be two halves of the same brain. It's ridiculous."
"And why is it ridiculous?"
"Because it's simply not possible. This has to be a dream. It's your fault; this must be the result of one of those crazy chemicals you were always so eager to test out."
"All right, all right. If you're so sure this is a dream, why don't you stab us in the heart? Pass our carotid artery through the shredder."
"Stop referring to us as a single entity. Also there is no shredder to be had around here." Arthur gazes despondently around him for the hundredth time and all he sees is rock.
"Do it," Eames urges.
With Eames' hand, Arthur pulls the cheap blade out of the knapsack's side compartment and places the dull point against his heart. Eames' heart. Their heart. This dual-brain thing is getting to his nerves. He braces himself for a sharp pain that takes forever to come. When he opens his eyes he realises the knife point has not even broken the skin yet.
Eames nods knowingly, "See, you can't know for sure."
"Can you forge?"
"I've tried. It doesn't seem to feel the same way."
"What about your totem?"
Eames pauses, thoughtful, puts his hand into his pocket. There is nothing in there.
"Well?"
"Maybe there is no such thing as a totem. Maybe we dreamt that all up."
"What?"
"..."
"Oh shit."
"…"
"Wait, wait, wait. You're saying, what if this is reality. And everything else, everything else is, was…"
"Just a dream."
"A dream."
"Yup."
Arthur makes a sound torn between a laugh and a sob. "Everything. A dream."
There is a general lull in activity as both of them process the gravity of the situation.
Suddenly, Eames hits on a brilliant resolution. "Well then, if this is all there is, real, I mean, and we're just, two separate matters encased in one cavernous place, there's nothing to fear, is there?"
"…"
"We won't need to worry about dying because we've never been alive, so to speak." A pause. "Well. Apart from electrical impulses."
"…"
"Right. So." Eames' voice has a finality about it.
"Eames."
"…"
"EAMES. You've gone to sleep haven't you."
"…"
"Damn it."
DAY 01, 1946 hours
"You should eat," Arthur says through a mouthful of chocolate.
"But we already have,"
"Oh. Sorry." Despair has softened Arthur a little, blunted the sharp edges of his character into a pale likeness of himself.
"Oh, don't be, don't be. Be glad."
"What? You're insane."
Entirely oblivious, Eames commences a song, his humming steady but off-key. Arthur, for the life of him, is sure he knows the tune but cannot place it. Every time he latches onto its name it fleets him carelessly again. And that's when he surprises himself by laughing, a shrill laugh that falls from his lips and rings out harshly against his suppressed anxieties and Eames' anonymous tune. In spite of all, he's content to squander one moment on laughing, laughing at this life, his life and what it throws at people at unexpected turns.
Eames leans to the right a little, and smiles.
DAY 02, 0000 hours
Arthur tilts his head back and sighs, I don't even know how this face looks like. He has yet to identify himself as part of this whole, this person, this form of being. The list of definitions leads him on a trail that turns cold in seconds. Whichever way he puts it it's still a name that hangs foreign upon his tongue. Here in the stillness he can imagine nature going on her own way, laying on layer after layer of sediment, wearing man-sized boulders to nothing particle by particle, undisturbed by the imminent fate of one individual. He feels small, ineffectual. The only thing that exudes any presence at all is the ghostly holographic glow of the digital watch, chunky and mechanical, that adorns his left wrist (thin and somewhat like his own, only two shades tanner), whose face reminds him of the seconds counting down to the inevitable end.
Something must be done.
DAY 02, 0025 hours
"Eames."
"..."
"Eames. I think I know how to get us out of here."
"Don't tell me."
"You've got to-"
"Don't say a word."
DAY 02, 0031 hours
"This is enough. I don't care; I'm saying it."
"Not listening."
"The arm's got to go."
"Uh-uh."
"Eames. Eames, you've got to cut the arm off."
"I can't."
"It's the only way we'll get out of here," Arthur's voice frays in desperation. As he says this Eames conjures up the slice of metal against flesh, the unclean break of bone and how its stark whiteness will give off an unearthly effervescence in this vacant night.
"I can't."
"What do you mean you can't. We're this man's brain. We're responsible for keeping him alive."
"Oh Arthur," he sighs, "don't you see, it's your arm we're speaking of."
"Oh."
"If it was mine we'd already be out of here, snug and safe in a rescue jet tucking into-"
"Shut up."
DAY 02, 0145 hours
Arthur explains that they can do it, they can tie a tourniquet and it'll be over in minutes. Think of the greater good, he says, coming out of here alive, finding out the truth about his past, their past, why they are trapped here in the first place. He mentions the phrase 'a worthy exchange'. Also, there is something called a future involved. Besides, at the rate the water's going they'll be so delirious they will not even feel the pain in the end. There's a way marked with footholds and handholds up to the surface. The rope can (barely, but Arthur wants to fortify his argument) be used to rappel down walls. They will find help.
Eames pictures a man stumbling across sandy dunes (complete with wind-swept hair and the works), solitary and defenceless, trailing blood wherever he goes. The pain in his arm will be the dull, pulsating sort that drives one nauseous. That is not what he fears. What truly holds him back is how Arthur will deal with what he calls the future, if there is one at all, Arthur who is always so independent it seems he is selfish with his thoughts and feelings but is really only guarded and solemn, going about his own business but having to rely on him for the simplest thing, a glass of water, a pen, not to mention his hideous handwriting. It is an infantile need, he knows, but he must have Arthur whole, preserved as intact as memory, for both their sakes.
DAY 02, 0725 hours
"What about your family? You want to die without seeing them one last time? If you want to see them you must follow my plan to get out of here." Arthur knows he is grasping at straws; Eames, an only child, hadn't contacted his parents in years. He took for granted that they'd hated him because he had developed into the perfect negative of their mental portrait of him. He said it was actually less wretched to imagine them hating him than to know for sure that they felt nothing for him at all.
"I always told my folks I'd rather see them at my funeral."
"That would make you prophetic, since that's exactly what would happen if you refuse to listen to me and let things remain as they are."
"Arthur. In all probability only you'd be at my funeral."
"There is NO ONE at this funeral. There is NO FUNERAL." When Arthur is exasperated he emphasises his words with increased volume but unvaried intonation.
"I hate the sandwiches at funerals. It's always tuna fish. I hate tuna fish."
DAY 02, 1103 hours
"Fine. Since you're making me say it," he takes a deep breath and speaks very quickly, "Do this for me, okay, Eames? For me. To save me." There it goes, Arthur thinks, hook, line and sinker, he'll have to say yes.
There is a pause pregnant with frenzied deliberation, followed by scenic calm. What Eames comes up with takes Arthur by surprise.
"I've seen you die countless times. There is always this instant, if you don't look closely you'll miss it, but it's always there-"
"That was a dream. When you die in a dream you-"
"It's always there, and I see it." Eames thinks, and he must admit, it's the most beautiful thing, Arthur's frame slackening for less than a second, embracing whatever that comes over him before turning business-like again, ripping the micropore tape from his wrist with surgical efficiency and looking about him, springing up to carry out the next tactical move with a wildness and a fear that he never lets his face betray. That transient moment before all this flux; there is no saving one from that.
Arthur struggles, and almost emerges victorious. "That's just a dream."
"But this is all I have."
DAY 02, 1549 hours
The same way that he has given up extricating his arm from underneath the boulder, Arthur no longer bothers to explain to Eames the rationalities behind an amputation. He has gone over it for exactly 57 times and he thinks, enough is enough, and just wants to settle comfortably with dying. It is only now that he lets himself contemplate the actual dimensions of it: the heart rate quickening to compensate for the decrease in plasma volume, the way breathing becomes rapid, shallow and ineffectual, and the body, desperate to do itself justice, intensifies this vicious cycle by trying to breathe faster and harder.
It's hard to think of your family when you aren't sure if they even existed. Arthur racks his brains but the best he can come up with are grey figures dissolving into static background, framed by a sizzling white noise that is frightful to hear. The date on the watch is given as 02/01/1900, which from their manner of dress cannot be true, so he figures the watch had reset itself on the first day, unless this is some kind of sick joke.
He imagines saying goodbye, only there is no one to say goodbye to because the only one who has accompanied him to the current situation is, well, Eames. And that part, he isn't even sure he didn't make it all up in his head.
"Did I make you up?" He's embarrassed by this inane question as soon as he's given it voice.
Eames minces his textbook laugh, "In all my complexity? No, I don't think so. But say, if you did, asking (of all people) the subject of your imagination for clarification is no help, is it?" and chortles again.
"Also," he adds, "pink guava juice is revolting. Don't mention it in the eulogy."
DAY 02, 1821 hours
The strawberry-flavoured energy bar is radioactive green glue encased in a neon pink shell.
"God, this is hideous. Where do they manufacture this kind of goo anyway?"
Arthur actually checks, "Doesn't say."
"Looks like alien grub. Is that what you'd call it? Alien grub?"
"Yes, that's what I would call it."
Eames chews silently. "Not too bad, though."
DAY 02, 2212 hours
There is a kind of freedom in submitting to something utterly beyond your control. It is a feeling Arthur has never experienced before and he's waiting for his inner defence mechanism to kick in at any moment and rebel against this alien resignation simply to reason and protest and (maybe) cry his way out. But it appears that he has accepted it, assimilated it even, into his frame of mind. With nothing else to do he rehearses his death in earnest as one might honour a convocation. He wonders if he will drift off into nothingness or be wrenched away violently from autonomy.
He wonders who will die first, Eames or him, or whether they would slip into the dark together, slip into it as one might slip into a suit cut in ways neither of their minds could ever conceive.
He wonders if it would be dark at all, if it would be coloured anything like the dark that envelops him now, an uncanny darkness that dims everything he summons up in his head.
DAY 03, 0859 hours
"Does it hurt?"
"Does it what?"
"I'm not afraid of pain; I, I just want to know, does it hurt? I've tried to figure it out myself but all I come up with are weird abstractions like 'soul' and 'liberty' and all that teatime nosh."
Arthur keeps a straight face. "No, no, it doesn't."
"Won't hurt one bit."
"I'm pretty sure it won't."
DAY 03, 1256 hours
Arthur says, "That's the last of the water," but really means, we're going to die within the next... as he bends his head down to consult the timepiece, although he already knows how many hours they have left.
Eames can hear it; the words left unsaid echoing in the hollow desert. He turns his arm away and places it behind his back, and whispers (though he knows what comes out will be cornier than Kellogg's), "Time is nothing."
Arthur can't even find a witty retort to throw back at him.
DAY 03, 1732 hours
Arthur tells Eames to bring two fingers to his neck. He takes a long time to do so; the arm seems to rise against gravity in slow-motion. He assesses the pulse as weak, rapid but thready. It is a not a good sign if they want to live, though a passable confirmation that they are on the right road.
Eames shifts his hand from its place on the cold, clammy neck to his mouth, as if he was trying to cover a yawn, before placing it to rest upon his right cheek.
DAY 03, 2357 hours
In a last feverish gasp of effort, "Why can't you just-"
"Nope."
"You're completely unreasonable. I have no more energy to argue with you."
"I didn't ask you to."
"..."
"..."
"What we need is a fucking corpus callosum."
"Are you," Eames swallows thickly; his mouth is so dry, "saying what I think you're saying."
Arthur makes to say something vitriolic but changes his mind. He sighs, "I'm saying that's as close to a love declaration as you'll ever get."
DAY 04 0649
They have spent the night passing in and out of consciousness, a dreamless sleep that does not merit its own name; it swathes none of the weariness and drowses one without bringing one fully under. It is a mockery of sleep, the same way sleep is a mockery of death.
after
Arthur is walking in a field of grass that comes up to his chest. He cannot see where he is, or where he is headed; the only thing for sure is that he is young because his knuckles have yet to lose their baby fat and the sun is lemon-bright and cheery overhead and there are no clouds. The air smells yellow-green and dry and he keeps on walking, happy just to be, wading through the grass with his arms fanned out in the noontime blaze.
Yet I'll not shed her blood;
Nor scar that whiter skin of hers than snow,
And smooth as monumental alabaster.
One more, one more.
Be thus when thou art dead, and I will kill thee,
And love thee after. (Othello, V.2.3)