Quantum Night by Robert J. Sawyer

Author:Robert J. Sawyer
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Publisher: Penguin Publishing Group
Published: 2016-01-24T16:00:00+00:00

25

WHEN he’d been fifteen—which was seven subjective and twenty-six objective years ago—Travis’s hand had gotten sliced open. He’d walked into a plate-glass window at a shopping mall that he’d thought was an open door. It should have been made out of safety glass but wasn’t, and the damn thing broke into giant slabs. As he lifted his arm to shield his face, one of the huge sections dropped from the top of the frame and smashed into the back of his right hand, cutting it down to the bone. The tendons were severed, the wound gaped, and he was rushed to the emergency department.

All of the surgical beds were in use, and so they put him in something like a dentist’s chair, with his hand supported on a little tray, and the reconstructive surgeon, called in from a concert he’d been at, sat on a stool next to him and carefully sutured up the tendons, which looked like gray fettuccine noodles. They’d only used a local anesthetic, and Travis had watched, fascinated, examining the inner workings of his hand.

The scar, Travis was pleased to see, had faded greatly over the last two decades, doubtless the only part of him that had improved with age. Still, this was a bit like that: for the first time, he realized, he was reflecting on the inner workings of his own mind. And, like that—like seeing the tendons, the bone, the whole mechanical infrastructure of his metacarpus—it was interesting for a time, and something he was glad to have experienced, but not anything he needed to do again, and certainly not something he wanted to be subjected to all the time.

Kayla had been sitting with him for the last couple of hours, presenting a compressed version of twenty-first-century history to date: the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, a second space shuttle blowing up, the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, the election of the first black American president, Canada being dragged far to the right and then snapping back to the left with—holy crap!—the recent election of a Muslim prime minister, same-sex marriage being legalized across Canada and a decade later across the US, the polar ice caps shrinking, and so much more. It was overwhelming.

But around 6:00 P.M., Kayla’s boyfriend Jim showed up to let Kayla take a break. They disappeared into the corridor for a couple of minutes, and Travis looked out the window. The trees were swaying—it had become quite a blustery day. An eagle flew by, passing just above a pole with a tattered, faded Canadian flag.

Jim re-entered and took the seat Kayla had been using. Travis regarded him. This guy was presentable enough, but his sister, even having aged, was better-looking. Travis said, “How old are you?”

“Thirty-nine,” replied Jim.

Travis shook his head. “Last birthday I remember, I turned twenty-two. Now, I’m forty-one.”

“Tempus fugit,” Jim said, and Travis found himself immediately liking the guy. He didn’t follow the phrase with raised eyebrows, which, Travis knew, would

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.