I wondered—of course I wondered—as to the nature of my bond with the machines. I’d never heard or read of anything like it. It seemed like a bizarre form of telepathy—human to machine. I tried on a number of occasions to read the minds of the people who moved about me, and I was totally unsuccessful. It appeared that my ability was very specialized. I realized that I must have been born with some small aptitude along these lines, and that it might never have developed further but for the unique set of circumstances into which I had been thrust.
Whatever its genesis and method, I could not but be grateful. Other patients, in better shape, might have television sets in their rooms. I had a connection with much of the world right there in my head.
… And more time passed. The records showed that my condition was static. I remained underweight, catheterized, my bowels stimulated electrically. I occasionally required hookup to an IV, I received regular medication, I was manipulated and turned, but I still suffered from bedsores. Further surgery was not indicated. It was implied by one neurologist that I was probably totally psychotic by then, anyhow. From all indications, I was, and would remain, a vegetable for the rest of my days.
I tried to resign myself to this, but naturally it haunted my dreams and some intervals of wakefulness. I researched my condition, of course, but could find nothing too encouraging.
I continued to seek my diversion within the data-net, always alert for any medical breakthroughs which might bear upon my condition.
I do not know at exactly what point it was that I became vaguely apprehensive. Not about my condition. Nothing in my records indicated imminent death or a sudden downturn. No. While I had not exactly become stoical or in any way resigned to my fate, I nurtured some small hope of recovery, possessed some bit of wishful thinking that that medical breakthrough would come along and work my eventual recovery. I needed that much. The feeling is more difficult to explain. As I ranged through the data-net, I occasionally had the impression that someone was looking over my shoulder. At first, it was only a casual, intermittent thing, but later it came to me with greater and greater frequency. I dismissed it for a time as a form of paranoia. After all, my condition had certainly unbalanced me for a long while, and now my only form of recreation was of a highly unusual character. Being haunted by a ghost in the machine might well be a reaction—possibly even a healthy one, signifying that I was now turning my attention, actually seeking, for things beyond the ego-filled universe I had inhabited for so long. But it persisted, grew stronger and became for a time my constant companion. It seems that eventually I reached some accommodation with the feeling. I was not about to give up my pastimes. A certain haziness covers that period, however, a thing possibly connected with the events which followed.
I woke up one morning with some sensation in my left thigh. I could not move the leg, or anything that complicated, but the area—about the size of the palm of my hand—tingled; it burned. It became very uncomfortable and totally distracting. I could not coil away, I could not do anything but think about it—for hours, I guess. Strangely, it did not occur to me at first that this might be an encouraging sign. I simply looked upon it as a new torment. The next time that I awoke, I felt it in the toes of my left foot, also, with intermittent flashes of sensitivity in the calf; also, the area upon my thigh had grown larger. It struck me about then that something good might be happening.
The rest is a jumble, a montage—and it took place over a period of many weeks. I remember the terrible buzzing in my ears which went on for days and days before it resolved itself into discrete sounds and, later, words. I was barely aware of the faint light until I had been seeing it for more than a day. My right leg, my abdomen and my arms caught the fire and the itching, and finally I felt the pain of the bedsores. I forget at exactly what point it was that a nurse became aware of the change in my condition. Doctors came and went in great numbers, and I got to see and talk with that neurologist who’d thought I must have gone crazy. Needless to say, I did not tell him—or anyone else—about the Coil Effect, as I’d come to think of my pastimes, for fear of confirming him in the opinion.
It was a long time and much physiotherapy before I could walk again, but it was sufficient during the interval to be wheeled about the corridors and later to wheel myself, to be able to look out of windows at the grounds or the traffic, to talk with other patients. It was good to be able to feed myself. And I decided not to start smoking again, having gotten a complete, free withdrawal out of my former condition.
While my parents’ deaths still pained me, and I knew that one of my first acts upon release would be to visit their graves, I had lived with the knowledge for a long while and it was no longer constantly on my mind.
The medical breakthrough I had awaited had not occurred. My body, with the passage of time, had fortunately been able to manage the remission on its own.
… And as I rested, I coiled, for now the computer connection had become a part of my life, was a phenomenon for which I felt a great affection. I was grateful that the ability had not left me, being somehow displaced by the return of my other faculties. I still ranged the data-net as I lay in bed in the evenings. But somehow it was no longer exactly the same.
Click.
I lay there, gasping, on the front seat of the truck which had come to my rescue. Already, it had slowed, dropped back and pulled away from my burning vehicle and the other rescuer, which had also taken fire. We were swinging back toward the road, climbing the slope now.
My back still felt hot. I reeked of smoke, mixed with the smell of singed hair and cloth. I tasted the smoke in my mouth. I coughed and drew deep breaths of this cleaner air. The partway opened door creaked as we hit a rut. Its window was cracked but not broken.
I elbowed myself upward and drew the sprung door more tightly closed. As I did, I saw my original transport and the other truck collide with the rocky outcrop at the field’s center. A pair of explosions followed and the fires danced rings around the scene of carnage. The cracks in the glass flashed like lightning bolts as it happened.
Chapter 11
he other vehicles in the automated lane made room for us, and soon we were a part of the traffic flow once again. It was, of course, too good to last. We had broken the pattern of the traffic control computer’s programming routine and must even now be showing up as an oddity. While I might have gotten away with reprogramming a long line of vehicles earlier, I was fairly certain that it wouldn’t work now. There had to be some sort of alert in effect after the results of my last alteration had become known. And the vehicle I rode would even be easy to spot physically, with the damage it had sustained.
A quick coil, a quick search, showed me that I was in eastern Tennessee. I caused the truck to pull over onto the shoulder, and I ran it along there for nearly a mile before I stopped it and got out. Off in the distance, across open fields and better-groomed grounds, appeared what could be the line of a railroad track. Reaching out, I could feel the data-flow along the fiber-optic cables which followed it.
I stood beside the truck for a moment. Looking back, I could see the dark, wind-twisted streamers of smoke which rose from the wreckage of my original truck and its companion. I hoped that Barbeau would assume I had been killed in it, at least for a sufficient while to give me something of a headstart.
I instructed my rescuing vehicle to return to the automated lane and continue on its way. Obediently, the gears ground and it moved off, the other trucks immediately adjusting their spacing to accommodate its presence.