I attempted to retrace my steps. I hadn’t exactly been worrying about where I was going as I ran, but I was pretty sure that we had come into this world next to the gnarled tree in the distance, so I made for that.
“Tom!” I shouted as I went. “Tom, are you there? It’s Miles! If you can hear me, say something! It’s safe to come out, Tom! They left!”
No answer came immediately, but I kept trying. I scanned my surroundings in all directions as I went. It was truly desolate. From the direction the “Cho’l” came from, the flat, high desert landscape turned to sand dunes. In all other directions lay the same dry, cracked earth, interspersed with dry shrubs and dead grass. But apparently, in one direction was “Eraztun,” whatever that was. In that direction I thought I could make out mountains, far off in the distance.
There did not seem to be anywhere to hide, except maybe behind the tree.
A niggling thought: Tom wouldn’t hide.
As I approached, still yelling, I saw nothing. No footprints, nothing left behind, no Tom.
“Tom!” I yelled again, louder, as loud as my worn lungs could muster. “Please Tom, it’s me! Where are you?”
There was no answer. The gnarled tree only stared at me, part of its bark looking like a mocking face.
“RENA,” I asked, knowing that some small part of “her” was probably always listening. “What the hell happened to Tom?”
“I have already told you, Miles,” RENA responded. “I have received no data from Tom since your arrival.”
Part of me felt foolish, knowing that anyone who stumbled upon me right then would see a half-naked man yelling at himself. But I hoped I wasn’t so unlucky as to have another group of thieves run into me.
“What the hell does that mean, RENA? Is he still back home? Did he get transported somewhere else?” Is he, I couldn’t quite get out, is he still alive?
“Are you asking for a supposition, Miles?”
“Sure, yes, fine, give me a supposition.” I was pacing now, nervously.
“Okay, Miles. As discussed before transport, the movement of mass between dimensions is extremely energy intensive, as well as being somewhat unstable. The larger the mass, the larger the energy cost, but on the other hand, the more energy used, the less likely the chance of lossage. This analysis was made based on the results seen in previous tests, when it was attempted to send cameras through the portal. 87% of the time, the cameras would not send a feed, leading Tom to conclude that they were being lost in transmission.”
“RENA, hold on a second.”
“Paused. Yes, Miles?”
“Are you telling me that we got sent through a portal with a fucking 87% failure rate?”
“Of course not, Miles. That would be foolish. May I continue?”
“Fine.”
“Tom, with the help of my analysis, determined that we were simply not using enough energy to ensure a stable transmission. The expense rose exponentially, but as we increased the energy given to the machine powering the portal, the rate of success increased as well.”
“So what were the chances?”
“That is a complicated question, Miles.”
I sighed. “I need to find Tom, RENA, so I need to understand what happened. I’ve got the time. What the fuck else have I got going on?”
“I detect a rhetorical question. Would you like me to answer?”
“No, RENA, just tell me what our chances of ‘lossage’ were.”
“As I said, the more stable we made the transmission, the more exponentially expensive the transmission became. Therefore, a cost-benefit analysis was done, to determine the point of diminishing returns. This point, for Tom, gave what we believed to be a 97% chance of success. Or, in other words, a 3% chance of failure.”
The story has been illicitly taken; should you find it on Amazon, report the infringement.
“Are you saying that Tom could have had better chances, but you determined that it wasn’t worth the money?”
“That is one way of phrasing it, Miles. Would you like me to continue?”
“Can you just answer the first damn question I asked, already? What does failure actually mean, RENA? What happened to Tom?” Then something she said struck me. “And what do you mean, ‘for Tom?’”
“I mean only that the estimated failure chance was for Tom, not for you.”
“We entered at the same time. How could we have different chances? Our mass is identical, I can assure you.” I was constantly checking to make sure we matched weights. I bought him a scale as a gift, telling him I had bought one online and they had sent two by mistake. Which was a lie. The scale had a history feature, so all I had to do was break into his bathroom occasionally and compare. If we were ever more than an ounce apart, I would stick my finger down my throat, or stuff my face, whichever the situation demanded.
“It was not body weight that was the determining factor. And you are incorrect, Miles. You entered the portal slightly after Tom did. 3.1894 seconds later, approximately.”
“RENA, for an AI, you really like to dance around the topic at hand. Why did we have different chances?”
“The cost-benefit analysis was done separately for each participant in the expedition. Your chances at the time of transmission were approximately 70%.”
“What! You’re telling me I had a 30% chance of failure? What the hell, RENA? Why?”
“I just told you, Miles. It was based on a cost-benefit analysis. This was all included in the paperwork you signed.”
I started to wish I had read that paperwork before signing it. “You’re saying that I am worth less than Tom. Significantly less.”
“That is not inaccurate, Miles, according to the metrics used.”
According to the metrics used, I repeated in my mind. I would love to know what those metrics were.
Unfortunately, I didn’t have much of an argument against being worth less than Tom. It was obviously true.
“RENA, I’m going to ask one more time, and I want you to answer immediately. If Tom experienced a failure in transmission, then what happened to him?”
“There are multiple possibilities. I am unable to confirm one.”
“Give me the most likely option,” I said, frustrated. “In simple terms.”
“The most likely option is, simply put, death. Of both Tom and the communicator. Though a communicator does not exactly die. But it ceases its function, which could be called similar to death. Likely this was caused by electric shock, since the machine is extremely high voltage. Do you understand?”
“No,” I said, firmly. “Absolutely not. Not Tom. Not possible. What’s the second most likely option? Tom isn’t dead.”
“The second most likely option is disintegration.”
“What? How the hell is disintegration different than death?”
“Are you asking me a philosophical question, Miles?”
“I- fuck off, RENA. Fine. Third most likely. He’s alive, damnit.”
“The third mostly likely option is that Tom was sent into the planet itself, rather than the surface. He has by now likely suffocated, if he wasn’t immediately crushed by the high pressure, and, regardless, the crust of the planet is interrupting the signal, perhaps because of lead, bauxite, or some other, unknown material.”
“Are you going to fucking tell me every single way that Tom could have died? Tom is not dead, RENA! I’m telling you, that isn’t possible. Put that into your fucking code if you have to. What’s the fourth most likely option.”
“I predict that you will not like the fourth option, Miles.”
“Fuck!” I punched the tree. It didn’t do anything.
“Wait,” I said. “No no no, wait a minute RENA. You’ve missed something. What if Tom is just somewhere else on the planet? What if he’s just a few miles away?”
“That is a possibility.”
“Well there you go, RENA.” I laughed. “Why did you have to give me all this death talk? Tom is probably just over the horizon. What if we, I don’t know, can you scan my surroundings, or something? Can you analyze where he is most likely to be?”
“I regret to inform you that I have no such ‘scanning’ capability, especially in that dimension, in which my only current information comes from you, and a few scattered cameras.”
“I don’t suppose you see him on one of the cameras?”
“No, Miles.”
“What about before we lost the data feed? What was the last footage or audio you received?”
“There is no data from after entry.”
“What are-“ I started, but something caught in my throat before I could finish. I collected myself and tried again. “If possibilities one, two and three all involve Tom dying… which is the first one that involves him being alive?”
“That would be the twenty-third possibility. Unless you mean alive, and uninjured, and likely to stay alive for at least another twenty-four hours. In that case, that is the forty-seventh highest possibility.”
“What percent chance is that?”
“There is a large degree of error, but I approximate it to be 1%.
1%.
-
I watched the wind carry grains of sand across the dry earth. I could see birds, high in the air, maybe a mile or two off. I thought at first they must be buzzards, but they hung strangely in the sky, like too-big hummingbirds too far from the ground. I watched as they circled some distant corpse.
Occasionally, I would look down at my shadow, tracking its progress as the sun moved through the sky. It was around midday, now. The shadow had disappeared.
Except that isn’t true, I thought. I am the shadow. It is the body itself which has disappeared.
I stood, and began to walk.
“Your emotional state appears to be unstable,” RENA said again, though I couldn’t tell you how many time she had said it already. “I would like to remind you that as an employee at Dimen-X, you are eligible for top-class health care coverage, which includes therapy visits. Would you like me to sign you up? It will only deduct a small part of your monthly salary.”
I didn’t answer. I just kept walking.
“Where are you going, Miles?” RENA asked.
“Towards the birds.”
The midday sun beat down relentlessly, and sweat fell around me on all sides. But I couldn’t feel the heat. Couldn’t feel my feet being torn up on the cracked ground.
What now? A voice in my head asked, but I pushed it away. I couldn’t think about that, Couldn’t think about anything. Just the birds. They had landed some time ago, during the walk. I don’t know how long the walk was. An hour. Hours.
When I arrived at the body, the birds had already picked much of the skin off the bones. They were clearly upset that I had interrupted their meal, but scattered all the same. They hung in the air above, waiting for the intruder to leave.
The body was unrecognizable. It could have been almost anyone. Nearly a skeleton, features peeled away by sun and beaks. It wasn’t even clear what the man had died from. Perhaps he wasn’t even injured, just died from thirst, or exhaustion.
“RENA,” I asked, “Is this Tom?”
“I can say with near certainty that it is not Tom, Miles. Whoever it is, they’ve been dead for a very long time. Much longer than Tom would be.”
“Is it me?”
“I do not understand the question, Miles.”
“Is it me?” I repeated.
“No, Miles. The dead body in front of you is not you. Not unless you subscribe to certain Buddhist or Hindu beliefs that everything is everything and there is no real differentiation between anything. But there is no evidence for such a belief, and, according to your records, you are not a member of either such belief system. Would you like me to update your records?”
“You can update them to ‘deceased.’ Save us all some time.”
“On behalf of Dimen-X, I would once again like to remind you of your eligibility for immediate health-care coverage, including therapy visits, which can be done over the phone. Would you like to…”
I stopped listening again. I couldn’t get the thought out of my head that this skeleton was Tom. Or me. And me. He looked happy, at least. As happy as a dead body can look.
I laid down next to the body, nestling myself on the side furthest from the sun. The body was warm. I tucked myself back into the shadow.
“I’m back, Tom,” I whispered. “I’m right here, in your shadow, like always. Doing what you do. Trusting the plan.” I closed my eyes, and went to sleep.