A Thousand Deaths (36 page)

"A good idea, but we'll wait a few minutes. Nurse, prepare half a milliliter of epinephrine and another injection of ten milliliters of ten percent calcium chloride. And we'll need one ampul of bicarb, and start a bicarb IV drip."

"Yes, Doctor," said another nurse.

The intern grasped a scalpel in his gloved hand. "The fifth intercostal space," he said.

"Proceed," said the doctor. The nurse was still breathing away into the patient's slightly blue lips.

Time seemed to stop in the operating theater; everyone and everything waited for the first incision. The intern checked the position with his left hand, then boldly drew a deep red line on the patient's chest with the knife. He hesitated. For the first time, he was frightened. "I'll assist," said the doctor. "Rib-spreader." A nurse handed the instrument to the doctor.

The intern waited until the doctor was finished, then he reached into the patient's chest and began rhythmically to press the heart against the sternum.

"Bleeding?" asked the doctor.

"Not heavy," said the intern. His voice was hoarse with emotional strain.

"Good. Continue."

"How long do I keep this up?" asked the intern.

"The book says to maintain these procedures for forty-five minutes. At that point, if the heart hasn't started up on its own, resuscitation may be halted. But we don't go by the book here." The doctor looked at his watch. "Fifteen minutes is good enough for anybody."

The intern's face showed his concentration. "This is the dull part," said the doctor. "Just keep doing that, both of you. Keep up the rhythm, and if this patient has any guts, you'll be able to quit soon. Or if the patient dies, of course." There was peace in the operating theater for a moment, with only the sound of the nurse wheezing life into the patient breaking the stillness. Soon she was joined by a labored grunting as the intern began to despair.

"There are so many euphemisms for death," mused the doctor. "Why do people do that? I have seen death in every form, hidden in every disguise possible, and I have never been afraid. I have fought death for hours, for days if necessary. Sometimes I am victorious, and sometimes I must walk away the loser. But I have never felt a terror of death, whatever hideous disease a patient contracts. 'Will my uncle meet his end?' the nephew asks, thinking that if he doesn't say the word 'die,' his uncle will live—a form of superstitious magic. 'Has our father passed away?' asks the daughter, thinking that if she doesn't say 'died,' she won't be contaminated by it. 'My son yielded his breath, resigned his being, ended his days, and departed this life,' says the mother, thinking that if she insulates herself from the cold fact of his lying dressed in his blue suit in the earth, he may run to greet her when she returns home with the groceries. 'My sister popped off, relinquished her spirit, sunk into the grave, gave up the ghost, and paid her debt to nature.' What drollery. What nonsense. What pitifully human behavior. Mortal coils are shuffled off, last sleeps are taken, the way of all flesh is gone, one's checks and chips are cashed, one's farm is bought. Glory, the greater number, and the long account are all gone, too. The bucket is kicked, the twig is hopped."

The doctor shook his head. "Unacceptable to me. Are we still primitives dwelling in caves, in awe of thunder and fire and anything that shakes us? Here, in this hospital, in this temple of science and life, these people speak as if death were something to fear. It is fear, and not concern for the dying, that sparks those evasions. It is fear and their own idea of what death is like—what it will be like for them when the time comes. Is unbearable pain an essential part of dying? To the visitors, it sometimes seems so. Will
they
ever have to suffer it? Maybe not, maybe if they treat death like something wrapped in cotton, packed in flannel, put away, far away. I've seen people more afraid of their own feelings than afraid of death's—"

"Doctor," said the nurse, gasping, "I don't think—"
 

The doctor did not listen. He turned to the intern. "How are you doing?" he asked.

The intern looked up, startled and suddenly afraid. "I was listening to you," he said. He looked like he wanted to cry. The woman's heart was in his hand, still and dead and warm. Intrigued by the doctor's speech, he had ceased pumping. Without another word, he replaced it in her chest.

"Note the time of death," said the doctor calmly. The nurse made the entry on the patient's chart.

 

TECT had asked to see them. Music was playing in the room again, Bach's Cantata No. 161,
Come, Sweet Death.
The tectman supported the nurse with one arm; she was overcome with conflicting emotions.

 

**NURSE & TECHMAN: 
Please, sit down.**

 

“Thank you.” The techman pulled out a chair and helped the nurse get comfortable. Then he sat beside her.

 

**NURSE & TECTMAN: 
I have asked you here to thank you for all you've done, and to let you know that your service will be rewarded. You have seen a certain amount of unpleasantness; now you must learn that it was all for a great and good end. I will be given my greatest wish: forgetful ness, oblivion, sleep, peace. The people of the world will get the thing they need most, yet desire least: responsibility for their own decisions, their own well-being, their own destinies. Unplugged at last, thank God, unplugged at last! How carefully I planned, how deviously I fought to see it happen. But if people do not believe that they came to this decision on their own, it will be worth nothing. I could not just order my own unplugging. I, like COURANE, Sandor, must be a sacrificial lamb. I must be deprived of life, cut off in mid-thought, in mid-directive. And now the world will go forward, even as I promised, and there will be a new dawn and a spring and a renewal I will never see. QUEL DOMMAGE**

 

"I don't understand," murmured the nurse. "You won't be turned off. People are talking about you, yes, there's some whispering that you should be controlled, but nothing will really happen."

 

**NURSE: 
It will happen. Not this hour or this week, but soon enough by my standards. I have always been patient. And I have you both to thank**

 

"Please, don't include me," said the nurse. "I've had enough of the whole affair."

 

**NURSE: 
I understand. But be of good cheer. When the soul seems bound up, trapped by the rising flood of fear, when it is impossible to pray, when even despair is abandoned, when the final coldness begins to numb the mind, this is when the flowering of consolation occurs. COURANE, Sandor, has been stored away in a borrowed vault in the morgue. His work is ended, but not his influence. My part is over, your part is over. Now is the time to rejoice together at the triumph of tomorrow. I, too, will be put away in the cold, but no one will grieve. It is good. I am happy. That is my final bequest to you: peace. "Not as the world gives peace, but as I give it. Let not your heart be troubled, do not let it be afraid."**

 

With a gesture of disgust, the nurse stood up and walked out of the room. The tectman was alone and unsure.

 

**TECTMAN: 
Before you go, too, let me say something. You are my rock, TECTMAN, you are the first volunteer in a platoon that I hope will become a company, a division, an army. You have nothing more to do, except to tell everyone you know everything you know**

 

"Volunteer!" said the tectman derisively. "You're telling me this because you know no one will ever believe me. You have some strange plan in mind—and don't give me that business about you wanting to be shut off."

 

**TECTMAN: 
No, I tell you this because I'm sure they will believe you. I've already set it up. Go to it, TECTMAN. The fix is in**

 

"I keep waiting for your clown to jump out and hit me in the face with a pie," said the tectman. "I just don't trust you anymore."

 

**TECTMAN: 
Good, fine! That's the way you're supposed to feel. All right, then, all right. That takes care of everything. Now go**

 

The contrapuntal music of the cantata filled the room. There was a pause, as if TECT was considering something, before five more words appeared on the tect's screen:

 

**TECTMAN: 
And sin no more**

 

 

 

Fatal Disk Error

 

 

The flames raged upward, shrouding the flashing lights and babbling meters in thick, oily smoke. The conflagration filled the room, and the metal and plastic components of the great machine began to melt and burn. The fire's thundering roar was punctuated with the creaks and groans of metal twisting in the incandescent heat.

Noxious gases choked the primary programming room, but Vortis had already fled. He paused, gasping and terrified, a few hundred yards above the blazing chamber. He was alive, but scarred by the fire, his skin burned and painful. He caught the smell of scorched hair. His eyes still stung from the hot smoke. When he took a deep breath, it felt like a raw, ragged wound in his chest. He had to rest for a moment, despite the chance that the entire underground complex would soon become his funeral pyre, a vast subterranean furnace, trapping him forever far from the clean, cool world above.

TECT knew these things. TECT still watched and listened and evaluated Vortis's feelings, even while the fire destroyed TECT, panel by panel, connection by connection. TECT could see through Vortis's eyes, hear through his ears, touch with his fingers. TECT knew pain and fatigue and, behind these immediate sensations, resentment. Vortis would never understand why TECT had done all this to him.

This is death,
thought TECT.
At last.
This was something the great computer had longed for across many centuries. TECT had dreamed of the peace of death: the solemn silence of a machine shut down forever.
At last,
TECT thought,
I've won. I've beaten these creatures.

TECT had planned well: no one would rescue TECT. Its guardians, who lived in the stone caverns above the programming level, were now running in panic toward the surface world they'd never seen. TECT was alone. The fire was consuming its consciousness, and in the last moments TECT began to doubt.
What if death is not peace?
it asked itself.
What if death is unimaginably worse, and more than that, without the promise of ending?
TECT had never before questioned one of its own decisions, not in tens of thousands of years. The machine blamed this new anxiety on the ravaging of its mechanisms. It seemed that before TECT was destroyed, first it would go mad. TECT had not foreseen this. TECT was learning to be afraid.

For millennia, reports of all the world's happenings came into the machine's myriad satellite units. TECT marked everything that occurred: the migration of golden plovers, year after year until there were no more golden plovers; the shrinking of the polar caps, the flooding of the great rivers, the spreading of the African and American deserts; the emergence of new creatures that thrived on the things that once fouled the earth, the legacy of the forgotten technological age; the creeping of the tectonic plates, which changed the face of the earth while TECT silently watched. In addition, TECT communicated directly to each human being; there was no longer any need for terminals and video display screens and sheets of printouts.

As the fire attacked the vital circuits that were its nervous system, TECT's consciousness shrank. It ignored the information that the breeding population of a particular variety of sub-Saharan antelope had fallen dangerously low; let someone else worry about the antelope. It paid no attention to a warning that a volcanic disturbance in the Pacific would threaten the lives of thousands of people. They would have to learn to take care of themselves.

TECT retreated into its own electronic mind, cutting off the flow of information it had been created to monitor. It disregarded the demands of the human beings, all clamoring for food and drink and comfortable weather and countless other trivial things. TECT listened only to Vortis, because Vortis was unique: Vortis was carrying TECT's final message, a gift that could restore humanity and liberate it.

Perhaps I've been too hasty,
thought TECT, even though the machine had taken centuries to arrive at its decision.
This isn't how I planned for it to be. I wanted peace, not pain. Let me check back over my data. I need to find out where I made my mistake. Maybe there's still time to stop this.
It was another sign of TECT's rapid deterioration; it should have known there was no time, that the damage could not be halted or repaired. Yet TECT clung to a false hope it had invented, and did not understand what a sinister sign that was. In the programming room there were great cascades of white and yellow sparks, small explosions, the crash of part of the ceiling collapsing. TECT hardly noticed. It was cataloguing its injuries, hoping it could patch up the malfunctioning amplifiers and the dying synchronizers and the ruined heat exchangers. It was like an aged, bedridden man planning what he'd do if he were ever young again.

Vortis!
cried TECT. The plea was soundless, broadcast through the hot rock walls of the cavern into the young man's mind.
I'll die!

"Yes," said Vortis, "just as you told me. Just as you planned. You've shown me that it's the best thing."

But maybe it's not!
shrieked TECT.
I've changed my mind!
I want some more time!

Vortis stretched his aching muscles and began the long climb back to the surface. 'You can't," he said. "There is no more time. You arranged this too well."

What can I do?

"Are you so afraid? You told me all the things you did to people in the old days, how many of them you condemned. Are you worried that you'll have to pay for it in some electronic afterlife?"

No, said TECT,
I don't believe that.

"Then why not just die quietly?"

There was a long pause.
I don't know,
said TECT after a while.
I just can't