A/N: Any Borges fans out there?
Nothing Like A Train
Chapter Twenty-One: Funes the Memorious
The burning stops.
Internal flames flicker, fluctuate, flutter — die.
I am not fighting the Intersect as I did before when Moe jabbed me with her fire needle. The pain was intense, hellish, but brief, and now, gone.
I am a boy again. Before my Dad's computer, standing before it. I depress the button deliberately. Although I do not understand the risks, not fully, I know it is risky: Mom's gone, Dad's lost, and if he finds out…
I depress the button anyway, a shrug of my shoulders. The screen comes to life…
The Duplex Boy becomes the Duplex Man. Did I choose it? — Yes, and no. Like most important things in life: we close our eyes and, hopeful, depress a button, take a step, don a ring...
I have thought for two years that I had the Intersect, or it had me. But it is nearer the truth to say that I am the Intersect and the Intersect is me. Not having but being. The Intersect has been with me so long it seems inalienable. I am fused to it, it to me. Fusion — but without confusion.
I do not fight the Intersect. I recognize it now as me. I understand who and what I am.
Moe's fire needle was designed to diminish me and enlarge the Intersect. But Moe misunderstood. I did too. No longer.
What she was enlarging was not other than me, it was just an earlier me, not someone else. That earlier stage grew into me and remains in vital contact with me. I am one. One person. One Intersected person. She is enlarging me, reuniting me with myself.
Aikido, 'The Way of Unifying Energy'. It's all coming together...
And then memories tumble into my mind, massive and overwhelming, one continuous flash or a million separate flashes flashing so quickly they appear continuous, one moving image on a screen. When I punched that button on Dad's computer, I took on the Intersect's architecture, its form — but it was contentless. Empty. When I punched the button in my bedroom, on my birthday, I took on the new Intersect's content: the old form was in place.
Form.
The form of a thing is what makes it continuous, one entity, across time, through change.
The form is the what-it-is-for-it-to-be-what-it was.
And the Intersect's form is my form and vice-versa.
That early Intersect treated my life from then on as content, gobbled it up. I now find that I can remember it all, in vivid, stunning, colorfast detail. Like Borges' Funes the Memorious, the boy who could remember everything, every detail, every nook, every cranny, of every house he ever lived in or visited, the exact shape of every cloud he ever saw. Each minute particular. My life avalanches down on me: the morning Dad is gone, the smell of the house, the red around Ellie's eyes, the mangled pancakes she made in an attempt to conjure Dad's return by means of the batter. My gray t-shirt, syrup-stained, the exact shape of the spackling spots on the ceiling of my bedroom as I stare, comatose, up at it — the work Dad began never to be finished. The feeling of my tears on my cheeks. The sounds of Ellie's. It all comes back, sped-up, intricate almost past bearing. Days, weeks, months, years. Pain and ignorance kept it from me: I had no idea I had recorded my life.
But the Intersect's recording, despite its ultra-high fidelity, makes no sense of my life. It is just a maddening profusion of finely wrought moments, overly replete. Still, I let my repressed past run through me, own me. It merges with what I remembered before. As it does, it begins to take on sense, meaning, giving new meaning to what I did already remember. Owning me, I own it. I have fought the Intersect, I realize, since I was a boy, unknowingly. Mental fight. Blake. Not because it hurt me, but because it took my natural sensitivity, my natural retentiveness, and enhanced it. But my environment at the time — Mom recently vanished, Dad lost in his head and heart — did hurt me, hurt me deeply. Too deeply. I couldn't carry all that around in ultra-high fidelity, so I somehow repressed the Intersect and its recordings of the hurtful stuff. And then Dad left and the hurt worsened.
The pain of all that hurtful stuff now consumes me. The sad boy with the unselfrecognized computer in his head. I believe I am weeping but I am not sure; I am still not truly conscious.
Another lucid dream filled with memories. Lucidities.
I come to consciousness, halfway, anyway, with arms around me. I am wracked by sobs.
"Sarah, Sarah?"
"No, Chuck," responds a whisper, "it's your...Mom. I'm so, so sorry."
I open my eyes, damp, tear-wet. The lab is dark. My arms are around my Mom. Frost. My arms are free. She is holding me. Not even the desk light is on.
"Mom?"
She leans down, her eyes level with mine. "Yes, Chuck. Can you stand? We don't have much time. Thank God that worked." I look at her hand and realize she is holding a syringe. I look a question at her.
"Moe told me what to do, how to revive you sooner."
"Moe's on our side?"
Her eyes are slits. "No, Chuck, Moe's dead. I killed her a few minutes ago. C'mon!"
My legs are free. I stand, wobble. Mom puts her arm around me, steadying me. I look down at her and then notice the blood on her hands, the peppering of red stains on her blouse.
Mom sees me notice. "She didn't...want to tell me." Her lips compress into a barely visible line. Frost. Her blue eyes are an arctic waste. "But she did."
She turns, grabbing my hand, and leads me to the door.
I stop us. Terrified, my sense of where I am returning, of what's happened, I pull on Mom's hand.
She turns, frowning. "Chuck?"
"Sarah?" My entire life, all that I am, everything that happens, hangs on that word, that name. The center of my everything. I can't breathe.
"Alive. And coming for you, I hope." With that, Mom turns again and yanks me forward.
Sarah is alive!
I stumble behind Mom, feeling returning to my body, my heart. My feet are sore.
Mom limps ahead of me.
Sarah is alive!
Moe is dead. Mom made her talk.
We move through a maze of tunnels, sometimes cave-like and unfinished, sometimes smooth-walled and smooth-floored. Mom seems to be keeping count as we come to specific spots. I realize that she is following some kind of timetable, but I don't know what it is, what it's for.
I was unconscious for another five hours, the Intersect tells me. Seventeen hours since I left the yurt, since I last saw the woman I love.
Alive: she is alive: and coming for me. Sarah! I feel the Intersect surge in me. My drowsiness is slowly lifting, not gone, but I am no longer just being led by Mom. I am trying to understand, keep up.
We keep pausing. Mom checks her watch, counts under her breath, then she hurries me forward. Each stop, I finally understand, is at an intersection overwatched by a camera. She is timing our appearances carefully. Or, I guess, our unappearances.
I want to know what happened to Sarah and what it means that Sarah is coming — where? Where is here? But I notice that my hand, the hand Mom keeps pulling, yanking me forward, is bloody, the blood from her hand smeared onto mine. Moe's blood.
Our strange, silent game of hide-and-seek continues, and I feel like a low hit-point thief in a Dungeons and Dragons campaign, Queen of Demonweb Pits, my Mom as Lolth, drow Spider Queen.
Drow. Drowsy. Still feeling slightly drugged, I give my head a shake, hoping to focus.
We finally cross a hallway, through a doorway, and enter a stairwell. Mom gives me a look, telling me to stay quiet, and we begin to climb. Again, she is timing us, pulling me forward, and stopping me as we approach and leave landings. Occasionally, we hear footsteps above us. Later, footsteps below us.
During a moment without footsteps, but when we are stopped, I lean to Mom's ear. "Sarah?"
"Later, Chuck. Sorry."
We climb. Finally, on the 12th floor, we leave the stairwell. We move quickly down a carpeted hallway, the lights warmer, less institutional. Living quarters. We reach a room at the end of the hallway and we enter.
Mom holds the door and I step past her. The rooms I enter are redolent with her scent. It's not the same as the one I remember from before she left us, but it's similar. The rooms are immaculate. Everything is not just in its place; everything is precisely in its place, the place assigned to it before the Big Bang: its destined place. It reminds me of home before she left. Everything gleamed. She cleaned ruthlessly. Ellie and I both sorta inherited that. We clean when we are stressed, antsy, dissatisfied. I glance at Mom, understanding our spotless house and her, suddenly.
She closes the door and stands, facing it; I watch tension melt out of her. She turns and blows out a breath. "Keep your voice down, but we can talk here." She walks into an open doorway off to the side. I walk back to it.
Mom stands over the marble sink, washing her hands, a bar of soap in them. The water in the sink is pink and sudsy. She glances at me as I watch her but says nothing. She finishes but runs water and carefully washes out the sink. She rinses her hands again, then dries them on a black towel hanging near the sink.
She stares at me as she finishes drying her hands.
She has no idea what to say to me and I return the favor. Finally, she hangs the towel back up. "I know there are things you want to know, but we can't stay here long. I have to get you to the roof."
She checks her watch. "Are you okay, Chuck? You feel okay?" She walks to me and puts her hand on my chest. "It seems that all I have been destined to do is hurt you. But maybe I can make that up to you today."
"Mom, Sarah?"
Mom gives me a frowning smile. "Agent Walker's all that she is reputed to be. But she is fine, Chuck. Agent Casey and the old woman too. Volkoff's men — not so much."
She glances at her watch again and takes a deep breath. "Go to the bedroom, Chuck, and check the closet. There's a case there. Bring it to me. We don't have much time."
I want to ask for more but I don't. I'm learning to hold my peace. Even when I am not at peace. But I can feel the urgency still coiled in my Mom. I find the case and carry it to her. She puts it on the sink and opens it. She grabs two pistols. She puts one in her pants and hands the other to me.
I don't take it. She looks at me. "No?"
I wave my hand. "No. Not a gun guy."
"Tranq gun?" Mom asks, reaching for another.
"I'd prefer a broom handle." Mom eyes me but then gestures curtly to a closet in the bathroom. "Help yourself, Evillene."
I glance at her as I open the closet. A broom stands there, amid cleaning supplies. Grabbing it, I speak. "Evillene? The Wicked Witch of the West?"
"You watched that for the first time with me, remember. You hugged me and hid your eyes when the flying monkeys…"
"I remember," I tell her. I do. Every detail. Her turquoise blouse, the scent of her, mixed with the scent of buttered popcorn and melted milk duds. I hear Evillene's laughter and the crazy cries of the monkeys. But this memory, also repressed, predates the Intersect. I've never let myself remember it before. Like so much that hurt me, I pretended to forget it.
I close my eyes, again trying to focus. I unscrew the broom handle. Weigh it; it feels like my jo. When I turn, Mom is putting grenades in her pockets but staring at me. She shakes her head. "I have to remember you are half Stephen."
Her tone makes my chest hurt, the one with which she says Dad's name. What the hell happened? Where has she been all this time?
She seems to hear my questions even though I only think them and she hurries past me out of the bathroom. She has a gun in her hand, another Makarov. She holds it up.
"We're going back to the stairs, then up two flights. The door at the top will open onto the roof of the building, Chuck. If everything worked, a chopper will be here to pick us up." Her eyes get shadowy. "Once the chopper touches the roof, you get the hell on it and don't look back, do you understand me?"
I grab her and hug her but she doesn't hug me back. She just leans her head on my shoulder for a second, the Makarov pressed between us. "We don't have time, Chuck. Let's find out just how good your team is."
She opens the door and does not look back. I follow her into the hallway, then through the door to the stairway. She looks up the stairs. I hear the faint whir of helicopter blades.
"C'mon, son," she says, checking her watch, it's time. I hear an explosion below us just as she finishes the words.
We run up the stairs until they stop and I burst through the door.
It's dark out.
I knew it would be but am still unprepared for it. Above me are the lights of a helicopter, the wind from its blades beginning to whip across the rooftop. In the distance, I see the lights of Moscow. We are on the outskirts of the city.
A man runs from a guard booth, a rifle in his hands. He doesn't see or hear me. I yell at him and he turns, lunges at me with the end of the rifle, a reflex. I knock it down and sweep his feet from beneath him. A shot rings out and a second guard crumples in the guard booth doorway. Mom. The chopper is settling on the roof.
The guard I knocked down struggles to rise and I hit him with the broomstick. He falls, unconscious. I run to the chopper, ducking down. The door slides open and Sarah is there, staring at me, calling my name. She looks exhausted, grief-stricken.
"Chuck!"
She reaches for me. I reach out for her hand but turn to look back. Mom is standing in the stairwell door. I see her toss a grenade down the stairs. She closes the door and there is an explosion. It blows the door open, but she is clear, running, running toward me.
Sarah pulls me into the chopper. "Chuck, quick!"
Mom runs toward us or is blown toward us, stumbling. Her limp.
I hear Sarah yell, "Go, go!" Casey is beside her, a large gun cradled in his hands, trained on the roof. I pull myself from Sarah's hands.
"Mom!"
Casey glances at me, wide-eyed. Sarah gasps.
Mom reaches out for my hand.
I close my hand on hers and yank her as she yanked me earlier. My hand is still bloody. Moe's blood. Mom killed her.
The chopper is off the ground. I pull as hard as I can, the Intersect pumping adrenaline through me.
Shots ring out.
But I have her. Frost. Mom. I pull her inside as the chopper rises. Casey helps me and then shuts the door. I hear shots hit the chopper but we are up and away.
The sound of the chopper is oddly like the sound of flying monkeys. Sarah wraps me in her arms. "Chuck!"
I look at Mom. She's on her back on the floor of the chopper. Her shirt is covered in blood. Her blood.
"Mom!"
Casey grabs a medical kit and I watch as he tries to stop the bleeding. And then the Intersect shows me what to do. I push Casey aside gently and begin to care for my mom. Lights from the roof flash into the chopper, momentarily showing me Casey's face and Sarah's, as she moves to help.
"This is your mom, Bartowski?" Casey asks in a whisper.
"Yes."
He shakes his head as he presses a large piece of gauze against Mom's wound. She has said nothing, her face is a mask of pain.
"Goddamn Bartowskis." Casey shakes his head again and grunts in disbelief.
The pilot, a man I do not know, cranes his head around. "We're away. We made it." He gives us a thumbs-up. The lights of Moscow are closer.
Sarah looks at me with so much relief and so much love that I want to shout her name. But she grabs the medical kit. "Tell me what to do, Chuck."
And then I hear Mom, her voice weak. She sounds annoyed with herself and with me; her tone is scolding, a tone I recognize from years ago. "I told you not to look back, Chuck…" and her eyes close.
A/N: Yep. Thoughts?