The Apex Book of World SF Part 5

"But then we're unemployed."

"Not quite: the world is a very large place. I've always wanted to go deep into the Amazon jungle, and explore the Banglades.h.i.+ marshlands. Doesn't Medicins sans Frontieres need any volunteers there?"

"The Levantine Experiments"

Guy Ha.s.son.

Guy Ha.s.son is an Israeli writer, playwright, and filmmaker. His fiction is predominantly written in English, whilst his stage and film work is written in Hebrew. He is the author of two books published in Israel--a short story collection and a short novel--and he wrote and directed the science fiction feature film Heart of Stone in 2008. He is also a two-time winner of the Israeli Geffen Award for science fiction short stories.

They were dangerous times, those modern times.

They were the years in which Man had become more than any man. They were the years before Man discovered his own true nature. They were a time in which that true nature was the subject of Man's experiments.

The worst experiments were called the Levantine Experiments.

Sarah was birthed and then left in a room with a surrogate mother. At the age of two, she was left alone in the room. Since then she had never seen another human being.

She had lived in a small room, slept on the floor, and had no furniture. In the corner there was a toilet. When she slept, food would appear in a special place, and with it came water, toilet paper, and a blanket to keep her warm. The voice of Mother spoke to her through the walls. It taught her to speak, and when Sarah was five, the voice disappeared.

She had never worn clothes, had not felt another's breath since the age of two, had never heard of the outside. The room was her entire life. It was her universe. There was no concept of outside, of a world, of stars. She had never been taught those words.

Unseen cameras peered at her through the ceiling. The cameras recorded her every move, watched her every action, studied her.

It was a Levantine Experiment.

No building is perfect.

Nothing is safe from chance.

No concrete is safe from time.

One day chance caused there to be the smallest of cracks in the wall.

Sarah was twelve.

Sarah looked at the crack. There was no word for it. There was nothing to explain it.

Sarah touched the crack. Sarah looked inside. In a small place, light could peer a millimetre into the wall.

Sarah spent the entire day looking at the crack.

That night, as she slept, dreams came to her.

In her dream, she looked at the wall, and the wall was the same as always. She turned from it, and there was a crack in the wall. She turned again, and the crack was gone. Once more she turned, and the crack returned.

The crack frightened her, and she was determined to keep it from reappearing. And so, she did not turn again.

But when she closed her eyes, as everyone must, the crack returned. She blinked, again, and it vanished. But there was no comfort in this, for she knew it would come back.

Every time she blinked, the process repeated itself. In her dream, she fought herself, fought the urge to close her eyes. Each time, she succeeded in keeping her eyes open a bit more. But always she would blink. And then, when the crack returned, she would quickly blink again. Even as the crack disappeared, the fear of it only grew.

At first, she could not keep herself from blinking for more than ten seconds. Then she succeeded in not blinking for an entire minute. And then for five. And then for ten. And then for an hour. And in her dream, she experienced every second of that hour, fighting to not close her eyes, fighting her instincts, fighting her nature. And in each of these seconds she spent fighting, she knew she would eventually succ.u.mb; she knew that at some point in the future, the crack would return.

When she woke up that morning, sweaty and exhausted, the crack was still there. Blinking did not make it go away. Turning her back to it did not make it disappear.

The crack stayed in place.

That second night, she dreamt of it again.

This time, it did not disappear.

She would blink, and it would not go away. She would turn around, and it would not vanish. She would try closing her eyes for a second, but it would always remain.

She tried closing her eyes for a few more seconds, but it was still there. She tried closing her eyes for a longer period of time. But when she opened them, it was there.

In her dream, she closed her eyes for a long, long time. With each second that pa.s.sed, she thought, "Is this enough? This is not enough." She waited more. And then she waited more. And then she waited even more.

Each time she would not resist temptation and opened her eyes, only to find that she had not waited long enough.

And so she would close her eyes, again, waiting longer, thinking the same thoughts. Longer and longer she would wait. But always, when she could not resist, she would find out that it had not been enough and that she would have to start over.

In her dreams, in the nights that followed, she shouted at it, she hit it, she screamed at it, and it did not go away.

And one day, in her dream, another crack appeared, elsewhere in the wall. She stared at it for a long time, then collapsed and cried.

The next day, another crack appeared in her dream. And another. And another. And they all looked the same. They all had the same length, the same size, the same depth, the same shape.

The cracks surrounded her and brought weakness and helplessness to her dreams.

As the days pa.s.sed, the crack in her room became less scary. She was used to it, and although cracks appeared in her dreams, they did not frighten her as much.

Three weeks after the crack had appeared, she dreamt once more of the walls of her world filled with cracks. But this time, two cracks touched each other, and a longer crack was created. She ran her fingers from the bottom of it to the top. It was long.

And the next day, another crack joined the two cracks. And then another, and another. Until the bottom of it was at the bottom of the wall and the top of it was at the top of the wall, and the crack separated the wall. One wall became two walls. And there was darkness in between.

The next day, she dreamt that she slept. And as she slept, a crack appeared on the floor. And another. And another. And then the floor was filled with cracks. There were cracks underneath her sleeping body. And then one crack formed that joined another crack, making a bigger one. And another crack underneath her joined the other two. And soon there was a maw underneath her entire sleeping body.

And there was blackness in it, nothing but blackness.

She hung above it in her dream, and immediately woke up in reality. All day, she could not get that feeling out of her head: hovering above the blackness in the crack. The floor gone. Large blackness. Sleeping in the air.

And now, in her dreams, she hovered.

She was always asleep when she hovered, seemingly unaware of the huge blackness underneath her. And yet, since this was a dream, she looked at herself from the outside. She watched her arms rest on mere air. She watched her legs rest above the blackness. She could not see her face, not even in a dream, because she had only seen its murky reflection in the water. Even in dream, she only saw her arms and legs and stomach as they appeared to her in a sleeping position.

Knowing that she was looking at herself sleep and knowing that she was in deep sleep, she was careful to maintain an even sleep, even though she felt the exhilaration of hovering. Each slow intake of breath moved her slowly to one side. Each time she exhaled, her body moved back to its original position.

In this manner, she enjoyed moving from one spot to another, then back again, for the entire night.

There was elation in this.

In her waking hours, she replayed those moments, experimenting with the feeling it gave her.

Many nights pa.s.sed, and through numerous dreams, her ability to move as she hovered grew incrementally larger.

And in one dream, cracks in the ceiling joined each other, separating one side of the ceiling from the other. And in between was a ma.s.sive blackness.

And slowly, in her dreams, she would rise with each breath she took. As the nights continued, she rose higher and higher, halfway up the room. And then she rose even higher. And then, one day, she was almost close enough to reach the darkness.

But before she reached the crack, she woke.

She wanted to fall asleep again, to see what would happen. But sleep would not come. Her heart hammered in excitement.

But that night, the dream came to her again. And once more, she woke before reaching the ceiling.

The dream came again and again, and now she knew how to not stop the dream. The crack above her beckoned. Higher and higher she rose, though the movement was slower and slower. As she neared it, she stalled her excitement and ignored it.

One more millimetre, one more increment, one more breath of air.

She reached the height of the ceiling and dared not be excited. She knew that she should feel a wall, but she did not. There was still "above."

One more breath, one more move, and she was above the "above." She felt that there was something there, she felt the existence of something. Her brain seemed to explode from possibilities and wonder, and then she woke.

This dream would never be forgotten by Sarah. There was above the above.

There was above the above.

There was above the above.

She knew this to be true.

What was above the above?

Nothing came to her mind. There could be nothing above the above, except that she had felt clearly that there was.

There could be nothing above the above. Her imagination was blank. Her mind gave no answer except "impossible." But "impossible" was no longer true.

And now began the days in which she waited to fall asleep. She ran to and fro in her tiny world in order to exhaust herself and prepare her body for sleep.

What could be above the above?

Slowly, her dreams broke the barrier and gave answers.

There was blackness above the above. She hovered upward. Each breath took her upward. And each upward motion led to blackness. But each time she rose, she felt that there was something more above. Blackness disappointed her. And then there was another breath.

Another breath. More blackness.

Another breath. More blackness still.

Another breath.

For two weeks, she rose up through the blackness. She rose and rose. And always she felt that there was more above her.

Always she was certain that there was more than blackness above the blackness.

She spent her days imagining the blackness, remembering what it was like to rise up.

And one day, she rose above the blackness. She saw a glimpse of bright light that blinded her, and then she woke up.

The next day, she looked for a bit longer. The light was created by the device that gave light and shadows to her room. But beside the light was another light: one familiar device beside another.

She looked aside, and saw that there were many, many lights, filling every place in sight. She was in a room, exactly like the one she knew, but it was filled with lights.

She already knew how it warmed her hands when she tried to touch it. The lights warmed her like a blanket from afar.

She enjoyed the room. She revelled in it. But still she wanted to see what was above.

She rose beyond it. And after much darkness, more light gave way. This time, there were many lights, but not as many.

And above that was darkness. And above that was light.

But in that light, something was different. She knew it, but could not place it. And then she woke up.