Recursion - Blake Crouch Page 0,37
future, you built an empire on this timeline, and lured me with the promise of unlimited funding once I’d made my initial breakthroughs at Stanford.”
He nods.
“So you could completely control the creation of the chair and how it was used.”
He says nothing.
“You’ve basically been stalking me since you started this second timeline.”
“I think ‘stalking’ is a bit hyperbolic.”
“I’m sorry, are we on a decommissioned oil rig in the middle of the Pacific that you built solely for me, or did I miss something?”
Slade lifts his Champagne glass and polishes off the rest.
“You stole that other life from me.”
“Helena—”
“Was I married? Did I have kids?”
“Do you really want to know? It doesn’t matter now. It never happened.”
“You’re a monster.”
She gets up, goes to the window, and stares through the glass at a thousand shades of gray—the ocean near and the ocean far, stratified layers of cloud, an incoming squall. Over the last year, this apartment has felt more and more like a prison, but never more so than now. And it occurs to her as hot, angry tears run down her face that it was her own self-destructive ambition that carried her to this moment, and probably the one in 2018.
Hindsight is also having a clarifying effect on Slade’s behavior, especially with regards to his ultimatum several months ago that they start killing test subjects to heighten the memory-reactivation experience. At the time, she thought it was reckless on his part. It had resulted in the mass exodus of almost everyone on the rig. Now she sees it for what it was—meticulously calculated. He knew they were in the homestretch and wanted nothing but a dedicated skeleton crew to witness the chair’s true function. Now that she thinks about it, she isn’t even certain the rest of her colleagues made it back to shore.
Up until now, she has suspected her life might be in danger.
Now she’s sure of it.
“Talk to me, Helena. Don’t go inward again.”
Her response to Slade’s revelation will probably be the determining factor in what he decides to do with her.
“I’m angry,” she says.
“That’s fair. I would be too.”
Prior to this moment, she had assumed Slade possessed an immense intellect, that he was a master manipulator of people, as all industry leaders tend to be. Perhaps that’s still true, but the lion’s share of his success and fortune is simply attributable to his knowledge of future events. And her intellect.
The invention of the chair can’t just be about money for him. He already has more money, fame, and power than God.
“Now that you’ve got your chair,” she says, “what do you plan to do with it?”
“I don’t know yet. I was thinking we could figure that out together.”
Bullshit. You know. You’ve had twenty-six years leading up to this moment to figure it out.
“Help me streamline the chair,” he says. “Help me test it safely. I couldn’t tell you what I meant the first time, or even the second when I asked this question, but now you know the truth, so now I’m asking for a third time, and I hope the answer will be yes.”
“What question?”
He comes over and takes hold of her hands, close enough now that she can smell the Champagne on his breath.
“Helena, do you want to change the world with me?”
BARRY
October 25–26, 2007
He walks into his house and closes the front door, stopping again at the mirror by the coat rack to stare at the reflection of his younger self.
This isn’t real.
This can’t be real.
Julia is calling his name from the bedroom. He moves past the television, where the World Series is still on, and turns down the hallway, the floor creaking under his bare feet in all the familiar places. Past Meghan’s room, and then a guestroom that doubles as a home office, until he’s standing in the doorway of his and Julia’s room.
His ex is sitting in bed with a book opened across her lap and a cup of tea steaming on her bedside table.
“Did I hear you go out?” she asks.
She looks so different.
“Yeah.”
“Where’s Meghan?”
“She went to Dairy Queen.”
“It’s a school night.”
“She’ll be back by ten thirty.”
“Knew who to ask, didn’t she?”
Julia smiles and pats the bedspread beside her, and Barry enters their room, his eyes drifting over wedding photos, a black-and-white of Julia holding Meghan on the night of her birth, and finally a print over the bed of Van Gogh’s The Starry Night, which they bought at MoMA ten years ago after seeing the original. He climbs