0:01

From the Olympian online December 11,

0:06

2014, Neville Bell, owner of New Harvest

0:08

Nursery on Kaiser Road, Northwest, reported

0:11

the theft of a farm implement from the

0:14

nursery's property on Wednesday night. The

0:16

alleged male perpetrator appeared

0:18

to have a large buck knife protruding from

0:20

his waistband when he emerged from his shed

0:23

shortly before midnight.

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Bell made a statement that the perpetrator, quote,

0:27

only took a hoe and then he threw the knife

0:29

on the ground like he didn't want it anymore.

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I don't care about the hoe, but he was a scary person.

0:34

He looked crazy, and he walked so

0:36

slow and weird I was afraid to do any kind of confronting.

0:40

He said the man walked off into the woods, and

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by the time police came, they were

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unable to locate him.

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My name is Joel Spanauer. I

0:55

met Samantha in 2013 at

0:58

a screening of Come and See, the

1:01

brutal anti-war film by Elum Klimov.

1:04

It was the kind of screening only die-hard

1:06

cinephiles attend, folding chairs

1:08

in the basement of a museum.

1:10

I decided to try on this intriguing

1:13

stranger, my

1:15

famous move of sidling up creepily

1:17

after the credits and just sort of lurking

1:20

silently nearby as she drew

1:22

coffee from an urn into a styrofoam cup.

1:25

She offered me a weak smile and I attempted

1:28

what was for me a recklessly bold

1:30

conversational gambit, saying, that

1:33

ending, huh?

1:34

She had already rebundled against the cold outside

1:37

and was almost drowning in a huge green

1:40

scarf with orange snowmen

1:42

all over it.

1:43

She was pretty, but what I think I liked about

1:45

her was that her short blonde hair was

1:48

cut and styled so awkwardly

1:50

and indifferently. I thought maybe here was

1:52

someone like me, to whom fashion

1:55

was a mystery never to be solved. we

1:57

had both long since given up.

2:00

After 15 minutes of nervousness and stumbling

2:02

over my words, I worked up the nerve

2:04

to suggest we dissolved the coffee

2:06

shop across the street, having gotten

2:08

involved in discussing Rainer Fassbinder.

2:11

It never even occurred to her to

2:13

take off her coat and scarf while we sat there

2:15

for an hour. It wasn't that she was chilly,

2:17

and it wasn't a defensive gesture, it just

2:20

never occurred to her.

2:22

Anyway, this for me was whirlwind

2:24

level of courtship, and I was a little mortified

2:27

when

2:27

she asked if I wanted to pop upstairs to

2:29

look at her DVD collection. It turned out she lived

2:31

in one of the dim little apartments right above the coffee

2:34

shop. But I needn't

2:36

have worried that Samantha Cash was

2:38

going to launch seductive moves that I

2:40

wasn't remotely prepared for. Like

2:42

me, she had no real education

2:44

in that area. It was only because

2:47

she was so without guile

2:49

or presumption and so

2:51

unwisely trusting that

2:53

she asked me up.

2:55

And yes, all she wanted was to share her

2:57

taste in movies with a fellow film nut.

3:00

When I saw stuff like With Nail and I

3:02

and Melancholia on her shelf,

3:05

I suspected the trajectory of my life might

3:07

change forever.

3:09

But I didn't really know how to go about wooing this

3:11

woman. I was 28, and

3:13

like her, a veteran of exactly

3:16

one romantic relationship.

3:18

She had been so disappointed and confused

3:21

in hers, I think she'd

3:24

slowly lost the belief that anyone would ever

3:26

again find her alluring enough to pursue.

3:29

As for me, I was just plain baffled

3:31

about what women wanted, never had

3:33

a dime to my name and had simply found it

3:35

safer to retreat into

3:37

the world of theater, movies,

3:40

and books. Fifteen

3:43

is the number of drafts I guess I

3:46

composed of an email to her the next

3:48

day, suggesting we get together the next

3:50

weekend at Get

3:52

This Smooth Move,

3:53

a coffee shop two doors

3:55

down from the one we'd just been to during

3:58

the day, even for a meal.

4:00

just another overpriced latte.

4:02

She showed up in a distressed university

4:05

sweatshirt, thrift store sneakers,

4:07

and her spare pair of eyeglasses, which

4:10

were taped on one side with a cut-down

4:13

Spider-Man Band-Aid.

4:14

By vanity, this woman was not

4:16

possessed. This time,

4:19

we talked for three hours. Oh

4:21

God, that goofy, hiccup-y,

4:25

baby platypus laugh of hers whenever

4:27

she was seized by something funny

4:29

in midsip or mid-bite. When

4:31

I first heard it, I was tempted to both propose

4:34

marriage and assure the people sitting nearby

4:36

that they need not run for the exits.

4:39

When we recognized in each other that we found

4:42

dumb humor, a great defense

4:44

against the horrors of the world, that

4:47

erased any lingering conversational

4:50

awkwardness. It's a wonderful moment between

4:52

a budding couple when they're freed to share

4:54

the things they hate and mock them together.

4:58

I actually felt good telling Samantha tales

5:00

of my current stupid job with a corporate

5:02

caterer. She had completely

5:05

outclassed me in the income department.

5:07

She was something called a data archivist

5:10

for a bougie IT firm in

5:12

Olympia, and had fascinating stories

5:14

to share about their rather scary work

5:16

in artificial intelligence,

5:19

trying to build chatbots with rudimentary

5:21

understanding of human morality.

5:24

I tried to intrigue her with my half-assed

5:26

adventures, writing and acting, and

5:29

universally ignored plays for a local

5:31

black box theater group called the Angry

5:34

Snowmen.

5:35

By date number three in

5:38

the first week of April, it became obvious

5:40

that our views of the world and its

5:42

societies were mutually so dour

5:45

we had to confront it.

5:47

the depressing movies we loved

5:49

and our belief that humankind was doomed

5:52

to repeat the same mistakes over and over,

5:55

just with nicer iPhones every year.

5:57

We were an appallingly pessimistic pair.

6:01

I made a lighthearted joke of Rahat's cider beside

6:03

a fire barrel about how

6:05

we were probably bad for each other. To

6:08

my surprise and discomfort,

6:10

she didn't take that as a joke. She

6:13

said when it came to mistrusting the world,

6:16

maybe there was safety in numbers.

6:19

It was then that I knew somehow

6:21

she really was hoping we

6:23

were going somewhere together.

6:26

I invited her to the final performance

6:28

of my group's latest wobbly show.

6:31

She came, she laughed supportively

6:33

while the four other attendees

6:36

in the house did not. And

6:38

she didn't look too uncomfortable when the plot took

6:40

kind of a

6:41

ridiculous turn that everyone in the group

6:43

except the author who delivered pizzas for

6:45

living and was high all the time was

6:48

embarrassed by.

6:50

Our first kiss was that night

6:53

on the A7 bus across Olympia.

6:56

Our beginning was not a love

6:58

story to be captured in oils

7:00

by the Impressionists. There were no sonnets

7:03

left at each other's doors or even heart

7:05

emojis in various colors when we texted.

7:08

No one will ever write a three-act play

7:11

about the courtship of Joel and Samantha,

7:14

two prematurely tired millennials.

7:16

His idea of a big Friday night was to rearrange

7:19

our Netflix cues. We

7:22

were just two people who had found each other in the

7:24

static, but saw actual

7:27

romance as a clunky

7:29

proposition best left to fictional

7:31

characters. It was

7:33

nice and unspectacular

7:36

and easy. And I don't think

7:38

either one of us had the emotional

7:41

energy to look around for anything

7:43

more.

7:45

When there's that point in a relationship, month

7:47

three or four maybe, where

7:49

you learn what each other's fears are, not

7:51

the deepest ones, not yet, but the ones

7:53

that itch just a little every

7:56

day in the recesses of consciousness.

7:59

I

8:00

was genuinely afraid back then of

8:02

nuclear war that

8:03

some rogue state or terrorist

8:05

group was going to make the unthinkable happen

8:08

real soon.

8:09

Samantha's fears were a little bit more layered.

8:13

She asked me if I'd ever heard of Moore's Law.

8:16

That's the supposition that the power of

8:18

computer processes will double

8:21

every two years forever and

8:23

unstoppable geometric

8:25

progression.

8:27

In her five years working at Cap Cobra

8:29

Innovations, she'd become afraid

8:31

that things were moving way too fast for

8:33

humans to ever be able to control

8:35

that progress again.

8:38

What specifically are you afraid of? I

8:40

asked her once as we lay in the park on, fittingly,

8:43

a Logan's Run beach blanket.

8:46

My mother bought me when I was 11. God rest

8:48

her soul.

8:49

She had trouble putting it into words.

8:52

It was maybe just people soon getting

8:54

to a point where they could not accept

8:57

any flaw or inconvenience

8:59

or even pause in the tech-assisted

9:02

hum and flow of their lives.

9:04

And I think,

9:06

she said, it's going to be

9:08

a rough world for people who can't perform

9:10

as well as the machines. And

9:13

now let me try to describe the funny

9:16

thing that happened to us without making us seem

9:18

insane. Yes, a lot

9:20

of couples adopt little idiosyncrasies

9:23

in their communication, the most irritating being the

9:25

pet names, of course, the shmoopies,

9:27

the hunbuns, or maybe

9:29

they write dorky, inspiring messages

9:31

to each other on a chalkboard they bought on the bottom

9:34

floor of IKEA. Have a super

9:36

meeting, champ, you got this, stuff

9:38

like that.

9:39

One day, Sami and I were checking out at a used bookstore

9:42

and the credit card swiper wasn't working for

9:44

her. And for my benefit, I suppose, She

9:47

threw a weird robot voice

9:50

at it.

9:51

She said, Sam, displeased

9:53

with Swiper Apparatus. And

9:56

I said, Swiper functional

9:58

SAM machine faulty.

10:00

recommend destruction

10:01

and the cashier look at us like we were mickey and

10:03

mallory from natural born killers later

10:06

at subway sam

10:08

criticized my kind of bad choices

10:10

with the comment

10:11

joel revulsion level rising

10:14

condiment software update required

10:17

to which i responded girlfriend

10:19

termination protocol said to activate

10:22

in t minus thirty seconds

10:25

for

10:25

whatever reason we found the

10:27

robot voice has to be just

10:29

the thing for what ails us and they continued

10:32

and odd moments for weeks increasing

10:34

in frequency and complexity

10:36

when no one was around here and sometimes when they

10:38

were thank god we had so few friends in

10:41

my mind the voices always

10:43

had a teeny echo attached

10:45

to them like displeasure with current

10:48

movie selection causing internal

10:50

component erosion or samantha

10:52

about tardy apology sequence

10:55

required to continue anyway

10:57

cut to the summer of twenty thirteen

10:59

when we were habitually greeting each other

11:01

in the robot voices and generally

11:04

busting them out so often it wasn't even

11:06

a conscious joke anymore how

11:08

did we get to this low point i

11:10

asked sam wants on the sofa when we had robot

11:13

it our way through a criticism of jaws

11:15

three that of this giggling like idiots

11:18

we

11:19

pinky swore then in their the

11:21

before we became something unrecognizable

11:24

to ourselves and others we

11:26

must once and for all and

11:28

the private joke that have given us more pleasure

11:30

than anything in our lives since

11:32

the late nineties the

11:34

ban lasted about three

11:35

days when a cut to seems

11:38

finger upon slicing a lemon resulted

11:40

in a horrifying flow of blood

11:42

onto the countertop she

11:44

held this alarming injury up

11:46

to me and said vital signs dropping

11:48

rapidly recommend peroration

11:51

a replacement sammy and

11:53

i immediately said replacement

11:55

unaffordable thank you for your service

11:57

so even imminent loss of Consciousness

12:00

wasn't as important as

12:02

the joke and we realized we

12:04

were deeply ill. As

12:07

I speak these words years later and after

12:10

musing again on the words of the psychiatrist

12:13

Sam would see for years after the incident which

12:15

changed everything between us.

12:18

I have my own uneducated theory

12:20

about the subconscious origins

12:23

of the robot voice.

12:25

intimidated as she had become daily

12:27

by the ominous future of technology. Those

12:31

goofy verbalizations straight out of cheesy

12:34

1950s sci-fi probably

12:36

seemed like a comfortable throwback. 70

12:38

years ago the concept of silvery

12:41

machines becoming sentient and all-powerful

12:43

was about as terrifying as the blob or

12:45

Godzilla, something harmlessly far-fetched

12:48

and abstract. It felt nice

12:50

to embody creaky robots whose

12:53

rebellion could probably be struck down by

12:56

withholding a little WD-40,

12:58

as opposed to the HAL 9000.

13:01

And if we wanted to throw a little

13:03

rusty foot shuffling and jerky

13:05

arm gyrations into the mix when we dropped

13:08

the voices on each other yet again, you know, adding

13:10

a little performance aspect, hey,

13:13

that was between the sweethearts.

13:15

I don't think there was anything wrong

13:18

with Sam when I met her, just the usual

13:20

quirks God knows I had mine, persistent

13:23

shoplifting fantasies among them.

13:26

Sometimes I was a little worried about

13:28

a particular belief she had that

13:30

felt completely in conflict with her hyper-rational

13:33

views on science and nature and religion.

13:36

Since she was maybe

13:38

seven or eight, she told me,

13:40

she'd been occasionally convinced that

13:43

An unseen presence lingered

13:45

on the margins of her life, observing

13:47

her. It was like part

13:50

of herself had broken off

13:52

early on, got its own way, formed

13:55

into a walking being more confident

13:57

than her,

13:58

And it would return occasionally to just watch

14:00

her from afar.

14:02

She'd always felt it was a male presence.

14:05

Once at a concert in Sylvester Park, I

14:08

saw her staring strangely at

14:10

a person far off in the blanket and

14:12

beach chair section,

14:14

and she confessed that certain vague

14:16

facial characteristics or mannerisms

14:19

struck her as belonging to

14:21

that

14:22

mysterious other. It

14:25

only hits me every few years this feeling,

14:27

she said pensively,

14:29

It just never went away.

14:32

Kind of like the remnants of an OCD thing

14:34

I once had, I thought, or to this day out of nowhere,

14:36

I'll find it very preferable to

14:39

even out the number of steps I take from

14:41

point A to point B. I

14:44

gave her a hug and reassured her insanity

14:47

scan negative.

14:49

Sam's mind was strong in 2013. Her

14:52

will was

14:53

strong. I

14:55

blame the

14:56

airfield incident

14:58

for everything.

15:02

Just before Thanksgiving,

15:04

Sam revealed to me a juicy little secret,

15:06

which was that her parents

15:08

had big time money, having

15:10

been early pioneers in designing decision-making

15:13

software for small businesses.

15:15

So when it came time for her to fly home for the holiday

15:18

to Oysterville,

15:19

the arrangement was not quite normal. Her

15:21

parents allowed their employees to shuttle

15:24

around the Pacific Northwest on a private jet

15:26

if they needed. So Sam was gonna hop on

15:28

it, as she usually did each year, and

15:31

make the 90 minute flight from Tiny

15:33

Pasc Flower Airport in Delphi over

15:35

to Colfax.

15:37

Clearly, I had made a good choice in potential

15:39

life partners.

15:41

So I drove her to the flight early Wednesday evening. We

15:43

got to Pasc Flower at about 6.40.

15:46

Now big time money doesn't mean insane money.

15:48

So what her parents did was list

15:51

the jet with a charter company to deliver

15:53

anyone else who might want to pay to be flown to that area.

15:56

Meaning there would be six hibiscus

15:58

software employees on onboard, and

16:00

about six regular folk, all

16:03

gliding around in a gulf stream that seated 20.

16:06

The weather was really bad that night,

16:09

rainy and foggy, and

16:12

I wondered whether the flight might be cancelled, but there was

16:14

no ice yet, with the temperature hovering safely

16:16

above freezing. The fields

16:18

around South Bay had been frosted over already

16:20

for days, thanks to a

16:22

powerful cold front.

16:24

Temperatures were supposed to drop further around

16:26

midnight.

16:28

at Pasque Flower was a breeze and free,

16:30

so I decided to wait with Sam inside the cute

16:33

little terminal, which was surprisingly

16:35

filled with people.

16:36

Things were a little off between me

16:39

and Sam that night. We'd maybe

16:41

been getting on each other's nerves

16:43

a bit about my job situation.

16:45

We hadn't gone anywhere or done anything

16:47

remotely exciting for weeks,

16:50

so it was probably for the best that

16:52

we were having a five-day break. We

16:55

kissed goodbye and she walked out across

16:58

the tarmac onto the plane at 7.20, huddling

17:00

under her umbrella. She

17:03

turned and gave me an exaggerated

17:05

wave as she climbed up the steps into the

17:07

cabin.

17:08

I bought hot cocoa from a little

17:11

cart a nice older lady had set up in the terminal,

17:14

and I hung out until the plane started to taxi away.

17:17

Little things about that night

17:19

come back to me again and again, and I

17:21

suppose they always will.

17:24

the cute design of a sleeping cat

17:28

on that cup of cocoa,

17:29

the classical music playing in the terminal, and

17:33

especially the faces of the few

17:35

other people who had been waiting nearby for the Colfax

17:38

flight. Sam and I had talked

17:40

to one of them briefly.

17:41

Her name was Shanice.

17:44

She was a hyper-caffeinated senior

17:47

in high school,

17:48

traveling home after a debate club tournament,

17:51

and she wouldn't know if her side had won the final or

17:53

not for another week and she was absolutely

17:56

agonizing over it. on the

17:58

plane after settling in. Sam

18:01

found herself sitting very close to Shanice

18:03

and they kept talking. And Sam

18:05

also talked to a very late arrival

18:08

named Mattie Snyder, who she knew

18:10

personally. He'd

18:11

been the head of sales at Hibiscus Software

18:14

since the very beginning.

18:15

She'd liked him as a little kid because he'd always had

18:17

an endless supply of funky toys in his

18:19

office.

18:20

And her parents would park her there and she'd

18:23

play with them, never wanting to leave.

18:25

A goofy, chubby, fun

18:27

uncle was

18:28

Maddy Snyder, who was a widower since 2010.

18:32

The visibility on the tarmac was lousy

18:35

and was going to stay that way. Through

18:37

the windows of the plane, Sam

18:39

didn't see much but fog and indistinct

18:42

lights. The plane's ground

18:44

roll toward its takeoff position was interrupted

18:46

for about five minutes for reasons the passengers

18:49

were never told.

18:51

I had actually started to walk out of the terminal when

18:53

I saw the plane stop out there, small

18:56

in the darkness. I couldn't even read

18:58

the letters and numbers on its side anymore through the

19:00

formless wit and murk the night had become.

19:03

I

19:03

figured it was just the usual unexplained delay,

19:06

so I headed out to my car. Sam could always

19:08

text me if there was a real problem.

19:10

At no point did the

19:12

sheer number of small planes out there on

19:14

the tarmac concern me, because what

19:17

What did I know about what was normal?

19:19

I didn't know there had been a sudden flooding problem

19:21

at Olympia Regional that was causing small

19:24

planes to reroute to Pasc Flower,

19:26

and there was some shuffling going on to make enough room

19:29

for everybody.

19:30

The small ground control crew had a lot

19:32

to deal with. A lot.

19:35

The radio message that

19:36

guided Sam's plane to runway

19:39

2C instead of 2A

19:42

at the last minute was

19:43

never confirmed properly. I

19:46

drove away, cursing the weather, avoiding

19:49

the highway and taking a back road toward home

19:51

instead.

19:52

On the Gulf Stream, at about 745,

19:56

Sam was looking out the window beside her across

19:58

runway to a.

20:00

and watching the blinking of a radio tower

20:02

far away, distorted by the rain.

20:06

The plane began to shake strangely,

20:09

but not because of its engines. They were still

20:11

powered mostly down.

20:14

A hibiscus software employee looking

20:16

out the opposite side said something very

20:19

loudly in a reaction to a startling

20:22

visual out there.

20:24

All they got out was the meaningless exclamation.

20:26

What?

20:28

Sam didn't even get a chance to fully turn

20:30

around. She saw a curious,

20:34

bright green flash of light fall

20:37

across the face of a woman sitting nearby.

20:39

And then, nothingness. No

20:42

more memory. The Beechcraft

20:45

Premier One that was attempting

20:47

to take off from Runway 1B

20:50

struck Sam's plane at

20:53

an inexact perpendicular.

20:55

It

20:58

was the entire night and half the morning before

21:00

I got to the hospital. And it was only through

21:02

a habitual and unhealthy check

21:04

of the news online that I realized

21:07

what had happened.

21:08

Sam hadn't texted to let me know she'd gotten

21:10

a Colfax, but we didn't really do that kind of

21:12

thing. That

21:13

felt a little clingy to us both. If

21:16

I hadn't seen the news, well,

21:18

her parents didn't even have my contact

21:20

information. I met them at the hospital

21:23

for an agonizing and awkward first

21:26

meeting,

21:26

and the doctor there explained that Sam

21:28

was alive and stable. Concussion,

21:31

four major broken bones, including her hip,

21:34

burns to her lower legs and right arm

21:36

that might require surgery down the line.

21:39

Two people on her plane had been killed,

21:41

and so had the pilot of the Beechcraft

21:43

that had pulled up at the last second, but couldn't

21:46

get vertical fast enough to avoid destroying

21:49

both planes, sending

21:51

machinery and bodies across the

21:53

tarmac. Two of the hospitalized

21:56

developed severe pneumonia because of their time

21:58

lying there on the pavement. cold rain

22:00

as people flooded out of the

22:02

terminal to try to help.

22:04

And strangely,

22:06

one of the people on board Sam's plane

22:09

seemed to still be missing.

22:11

This was

22:12

Shanice Lander,

22:14

the talkative young debate champ we had

22:16

both spoken to. Sam's

22:19

phone had been lost, but her folks assured

22:21

me they would have her call or try to

22:23

text me as soon as she was able. We

22:26

weren't even allowed to truly see her yet,

22:28

heavy sedation. That

22:30

left only a series of daily updates

22:33

from her parents on her very slowly improving

22:35

condition. Nice people, they

22:37

were ex-hippies who had unexpectedly

22:40

struck it very rich.

22:42

Dedicated as ever to saving the earth and helping

22:44

the poor, and given to what Sam called

22:47

tiresome hand wringing over their guilt about

22:49

being wealthy even as their tastes

22:51

kept getting more extravagant.

22:54

Every day I spoke with them I felt more entrenched

22:56

in the family. Years of familiarity,

22:59

unnaturally compressed into two weeks.

23:02

Finally, Sam and I reconnected

23:05

by phone,

23:06

and then I was able to see her alone. She

23:08

had a private room with a nice view of downtown.

23:11

We could even see part of the museum where

23:13

we'd met.

23:14

Predictably we had no words at first and

23:17

just held each other and cried a

23:19

little. She was grateful that I didn't have to

23:21

see her with all her bruises. prominent

23:24

on the right side of her face was a sort of half

23:26

moon colored of sunset orange.

23:29

In the end, she was in the hospital for a total

23:31

of 18 days, and then

23:33

her physical rehab began.

23:35

She was not exactly overwhelmed by

23:37

visitors outside of extended family.

23:40

Her old college roommate, two people

23:42

from her office. Like

23:44

me, she hadn't built a lot of friendships, and

23:47

she kept her coworkers at a distance. It

23:50

was a little heartbreaking when she told me

23:52

she thought she might be going away for a while,

23:54

staying with her parents all the way in

23:57

Oysterville.

23:58

hurdles ahead of her. seemed mostly

24:00

to be psychological ones.

24:02

And talking to a hospital counselor made her think

24:04

it was best for her to isolate and

24:06

be in a place utterly without obligations

24:09

or pressures, even benign ones. Blankets,

24:13

comfort food, family, or childhood

24:15

things all around.

24:17

I told her I understood.

24:19

I figured the obvious sympathetic

24:21

strategy was to nod and say yes to whatever she

24:23

wanted, right?

24:25

I told her I'd visit every day till she checked

24:27

out of the hospital, but she said every other day

24:29

was enough. We did

24:31

have a laugh or two while she was there, and

24:33

we watched Walkabout together on

24:36

a portable DVD player, but

24:37

of the future there was no talk.

24:40

Leaving her room that last time before she

24:43

was allowed to go home,

24:44

I felt like I had maybe

24:47

lost her to this tragedy

24:49

and its uncertain aftermath, and the

24:52

reset of our relationship was

24:54

going to be long and maybe painful.

24:57

She told me she'd call me when she filled

24:59

up for me driving to Oysterfield to visit,

25:01

but till then she might be out of contact.

25:04

She was taking some tentative psychiatric advice

25:07

to stay away for a while from phones,

25:10

the internet, even television. Real

25:13

19th century living till spring.

25:15

Anything to preserve that state of calm. Save

25:19

Sammy through tech deprivation, program

25:22

initiated. She joked darkly. these

25:26

highly addictive painkillers are

25:29

21st century, she said to me, one

25:31

tear running down the side of her face as she touched

25:34

the bed table beside her, still

25:36

not able to reach her bottles of pills

25:38

without discomfort. So

25:41

I bought some fancy stationery and

25:43

fancy envelopes and got ready to write

25:45

a few letters.

25:47

I never heard back from the very first

25:49

one I sent.

25:51

A text to her father went unanswered

25:53

as well, which seemed to be by Sam's

25:56

design. So that was the

25:59

late winter. now twenty fourteen

26:02

it seemed like there is nothing i could do that wouldn't be

26:04

intruding on the recovery she wanted

26:07

so

26:07

beginning in early spring i

26:10

spent my pillow time before

26:12

sleep at night preparing myself for

26:14

different had space one

26:16

where same he was simply

26:18

someone i'd been very very fond of was

26:20

simply taken from me by

26:23

a horrifying random event and

26:25

then the mental adjustment the patient

26:27

required after it i'd

26:29

maybe exchange christmas cards with

26:31

her for a few years before the inevitable

26:34

final fade and

26:35

maybe com summer the

26:37

warmer weather would make my getting

26:40

out of bed every seem to have some kind

26:42

of point but

26:45

there came a day when

26:47

i just couldn't hold out any longer i

26:49

had to try to talk to her though

26:51

the silence had told me very well might

26:53

not be walk i

26:56

texted her father again not pleading

26:58

way very exploratory

27:01

and he did text back this time a

27:03

couple of hours later sammy

27:05

was there with her parents still her

27:07

physical healing was more or less complete

27:10

and

27:10

he asked me to call his number

27:12

at about eight that night she'd

27:14

probably have the phone in

27:16

his second and last text

27:18

and afternoon he said he wasn't positive should

27:20

be up for speak the

27:22

hours leading up to that call were tents

27:24

ones for me i

27:26

lay on top of my bed for a long time

27:28

and just stared at the ceiling i

27:30

got for rings at eight o two

27:32

that night and then i bust

27:35

out smiling and same answer

27:37

the phone

27:38

greetings human you are free

27:40

trial phone call has begun

27:43

and all that weight of the months

27:45

of silence melted away because of the

27:48

stupid wonderfully annoying

27:51

robot

27:51

voice i

27:53

laughed request results

27:56

of sammy software scan

27:58

i said which

27:59

had been our standard replacement for

28:01

How Are You? And she replied,

28:04

Hard drive slowed by junk files. 61

28:07

gigabytes. I

28:09

switched then to my standard boring

28:12

Joel voice, the one that anguished experimental

28:14

theatergoers hadn't even been able to hear

28:16

properly for the last three years.

28:19

But Sami did not switch to

28:21

hers.

28:23

Oddly, she kept on with the

28:25

robot, even when it must have seemed clear

28:27

I was ready to move back to human things. She

28:30

wouldn't drop the silly ruse in answering questions

28:32

about her bones healing or if she

28:34

was getting bored there at all

28:36

in remote Oysterville. Human

28:39

speech setting on,

28:41

I said to her.

28:43

But there was only a long silence

28:46

after that. And then finally

28:48

she said, setting corrupted,

28:51

drop down menu deactivated.

28:55

about the continued robot voice

28:58

on only a so-so cell phone connection

29:00

was so off-putting as opposed

29:02

to hearing it from the face I knew so well.

29:05

I didn't know how to reply to setting

29:08

corrupted. I tried to pick up where I

29:10

left off, asking her if she

29:12

was still thinking about me maybe driving

29:14

out there some time, just so she

29:16

could show me her parents' hedge maze or their

29:19

moat, whatever, show me how the other half

29:21

lived. Schedule

29:23

uncertain. She answered me.

29:26

Just two words.

29:28

Is it okay that I called? I asked.

29:31

You're not mad, are you? She

29:33

had to be. I thought that's what the lack of humanity

29:36

must have meant. Anger,

29:39

scan, negative. Said robot

29:41

Sammy.

29:43

I shifted gears. I asked her a question

29:45

about something light, her opinion of the new Terrence

29:47

Davies movie, if she'd seen it. But

29:50

the robot informed me her protocol for

29:52

mass entertainments was still on pause.

29:56

I mentioned some little tidbit of gossip

29:58

I just heard about a mutual acquaintances

30:00

secret accumulation of parking tickets

30:02

but even that got a dry response from

30:04

the automaton instead of sammy

30:08

i

30:08

stared out the window of my ugly apartment

30:10

in bleak jefferson street towers

30:13

and

30:13

i closed my eyes and frustration after

30:15

almost every comment i made it every question

30:18

i asked because it was clear the

30:20

human sammy would not be speaking

30:22

to me and

30:23

just maybe was because she psychologically

30:26

could not by

30:28

the time the clock tower in the strip mall

30:30

to the west read eight eleven

30:32

i couldn't take anymore gotta

30:35

go for now i said her

30:37

finally very abruptly trying

30:39

to keep my voice steady we

30:42

call me had a couple of weeks even if you're not

30:44

ready for a visit

30:46

schedule and thirteen she

30:49

told me again i

30:51

told her i missed her had hung up the phone i

30:54

walked like a zombie down eight flights

30:57

of stairs and out into the street

30:59

about butter pecan ice cream i did

31:01

not really want just to be among the crazy

31:04

horde of students and barney scoop shaq

31:06

to hear their chatter about stupid

31:09

things at and cared about for years

31:14

on

31:14

july thirteenth twenty

31:16

fourteen sami's

31:18

mother invited me out of the blue

31:20

to meet her and her husband for

31:22

lunch while they were briefly in olympia for

31:24

a marketing conference they

31:26

had some better news about sammy they could share

31:29

i accepted immediately without follow up questions

31:31

and was content to be grateful for the contact

31:34

assuming they had realized the one

31:36

conversation between say me and

31:38

i had been a disaster it

31:40

was quite a gesture what they did but

31:42

that was the kind of people are folks were jonah

31:45

and nina i

31:46

think they figured i was still kind of poor and

31:48

they wanted me to be at ease because they

31:50

said they were in the mood for a nice diaby

31:52

burger place it

31:54

just didn't realize the camelot burger

31:56

in was a cd dark bar

31:59

lit read through most of the gloomy interior.

32:02

They had to walk a delicate line, sitting

32:04

there in our dim back booth, sharing

32:07

stuff about Sammy while not betraying

32:09

the confidence she had with them or with her

32:11

new doctor.

32:12

They were hyper-aware of not saying too

32:14

much, but they slipped sometimes, meaning

32:16

well, there was just no way to avoid it. Nina

32:19

would lightly poke Jonah in the ribs,

32:22

reminding him not to put words into the

32:24

doctor's mouth or paraphrase Sammy too

32:26

much, and he would comically slap

32:28

his bald head and say forgive me, whose

32:31

idea was it to let me be a parent?"

32:34

Sami's psychiatrist was named Dr.

32:37

Iris Ricks. She was a visiting

32:39

scholar at Gonzaga University, from

32:41

which I had graduated eight years before.

32:45

Sami's parents had spent a considerable

32:47

amount of money and even plied some personal

32:49

connections and a favor to have Ricks

32:52

take her on as a patient. The woman was

32:54

extremely in demand.

32:56

Sammy's recovery arc, they

32:58

told me when our dry burgers had

33:01

been set indifferently before us,

33:03

began with some group therapy specific

33:05

to survivors of the accident through St.

33:08

Luke's,

33:08

and from there, Ricks had gotten her

33:11

into a more freeform group

33:13

situation for six weeks at Whitman

33:15

in Colfax.

33:16

Sammy had tentatively turned

33:19

down one-on-one talk therapy.

33:22

It was at St. Luke's that she had adopted the

33:24

unusual habit of,

33:25

well, speaking like a robot

33:28

sometimes, often very much

33:30

out of context. It was

33:32

something her folks informed me she'd done

33:35

very rarely on and off through her life.

33:38

Ricks was of the belief that the voice was

33:40

a kind of emotional retreat

33:43

in uncertain times and situations.

33:46

By reducing herself to a machine, Sami was

33:49

subconsciously pushing away her free

33:51

will, the

33:52

possibility of making wrong

33:54

choices.

33:56

Then the accident happened.

33:58

the stress of group therapy and the stress

34:00

of

34:00

caring, buried memories of that night,

34:03

memories that were beginning to push

34:06

in on her,

34:07

and perhaps triggered her into a state of increased

34:10

robotics, for the lack of a better word. The

34:13

less human she was, the less frightened

34:16

she could be of her own mind turning against

34:18

her. Dr.

34:19

Ricks thought it was best to let the voice and

34:21

Sami's emotionally distant behavior

34:24

run its course. She should still be at home

34:26

and outside of group for a while

34:29

to better determine if that had been too triggering. If

34:31

nothing changed fairly soon, Ricks

34:33

might recommend removing the protective shell around

34:36

her life a little, to get her interacting more

34:38

with people in non-therapeutic

34:40

environments. And then she'd raise

34:42

the prospect of one-on-one sessions again.

34:45

Ricks had told them that

34:46

what was going on with Sam was unusual, but not

34:48

totally

34:49

unforeseeable. It was a strange time,

34:52

but she'd likely be Sammy again,

34:55

all the way soon enough.

34:56

Brooks had advised her parents to keep one phrase

34:59

always in mind,

35:00

no pressure.

35:01

Let the stricken

35:03

walk their path. We might

35:05

get very scared because we didn't understand where

35:07

Sami's path was going, but somewhere inside

35:10

herself,

35:11

she knew.

35:13

Everyone needed to trust her.

35:16

I didn't ask many questions during lunch.

35:19

I did ask

35:20

how much Sami actually recalled

35:23

of the accident. That was

35:25

when I first learned in general about what she had seen

35:27

and heard inside the plane.

35:29

Everything beyond that moment of

35:32

intruding bright green light

35:34

had been suppressed. Everything.

35:37

Ricks apparently saw some value in that, but

35:39

she hadn't explained to Nina and Jonah what

35:41

she'd meant precisely.

35:43

I never asked about whether Sami even knew

35:45

about that day's lunch,

35:47

or if she ever spoke of me.

35:50

John joined us after our real

35:53

talk, coming directly from that conference.

35:56

A large guy with a graying red

35:58

beard can

35:59

find a to a wheelchair since

36:01

the previous winter.

36:03

It was Mattie Snyder,

36:05

still director of sales for Hibiscus

36:07

Software,

36:08

survivor of the airfield incident,

36:11

rescued from the cabin of the Gulf Stream,

36:13

then having had to endure two surgeries

36:16

to save his spleen. He

36:18

and I shook hands and he grinned widely

36:21

and warmly.

36:22

Half his face was still reddened from his burns.

36:26

As he pushed himself herself outside onto the sidewalk, Mattie's

36:29

cell phone chimed in an unusual

36:31

way and after looking confused

36:33

for a moment he laughed.

36:35

"'My dating app telling me I have a

36:38

match,' he said. "'I

36:40

forgot to delete it after I got burned,

36:42

crippled and spleen-challenged.' Mattie

36:45

continued to make jokes to lighten the

36:47

mood as they all waited for their cab. Before

36:51

we all parted, he reached up and slapped

36:53

me strongly on the back, gave me his card

36:56

and winked. Any time I wanted to get my

36:58

butt handed to me and backgammon, to which I had claimed

37:00

some expertise, I should look him

37:02

up.

37:04

There was something so different about him.

37:07

Driving home, it occurred to me I may have

37:09

just met that incredibly rare person

37:11

in life who did not just have a

37:14

healthy gallows humor about the darkness

37:17

that unfolds us

37:18

and a positive attitude in the face of crisis.

37:22

I think Maddie Snyder,

37:24

just a jovial uncle figure to Sami

37:26

when she was very young,

37:28

might have been indomitable,

37:31

one of life's quiet and relentless

37:34

rowers, rowing against

37:37

every

37:38

brutal tide with a heart that

37:40

cannot be shattered.

37:44

It got dark out as I drove home, just

37:47

one exit off Route 5. I

37:49

popped into my favorite rust stop just because

37:51

I had a shameful weakness for the awful

37:54

coffee in its vending machines.

37:57

Getting out of that little brick hut I stood

37:59

for a moment sipping.

38:00

the and looking off at the forlorn

38:02

picnic area beside the building with the bathrooms

38:04

in it there was someone standing

38:06

beside one of the cheap plastic picnic

38:09

tables just kind of looking at me

38:11

from afar no

38:12

food beside her on the table or anything know

38:15

backpack nothing like that a

38:18

girl a teenager in

38:20

a dark sweater and an open coat

38:23

despite the time of year headlights

38:25

fluid one hundred yards beyond

38:27

her in a furious blinking array

38:30

i was a little unsettled by or stairs

38:33

so i turned

38:34

to but abruptly and what backed by car

38:37

rolling

38:37

out of the lot i noticed she wasn't

38:39

there anymore she

38:40

moved there

38:42

had been a disturbing into familiarity

38:45

about her

38:46

i was in my apartment throwing my styrofoam

38:48

cup away when it occurred to me where i'd

38:50

seen someone who looked just like

38:54

in

38:54

the terminal at pask flower airport

38:58

the debate judges are power addicts

39:01

she'd

39:01

said to me and sammy before

39:02

she'd shuffled out with the other

39:05

passengers onto the tarmac

39:08

and onto the gulf stream sammy

39:11

did not get that much better

39:14

not them from

39:15

her parents i found out that she did finally

39:17

agreed to one on one therapy with doctor

39:20

expert to do so she had to move down to

39:22

eugene where she'd been set up with a little apartment

39:25

so

39:25

she was now two hundred twenty

39:27

miles away from me she

39:29

got back to communicating normally for

39:32

the most part but sometimes slipped back into her

39:34

robot voice apologizing for it later

39:37

i

39:37

resumed my unspectacular

39:39

life and

39:40

there were only occasional updates from

39:42

our folks semi

39:43

had gotten remote work hand

39:45

editing scientific manuscripts

39:48

she continued to see doctor wrecks

39:50

and normality was becoming a real

39:52

goal but

39:54

sammy never did write to me and

39:56

for called me she

39:58

likes it in oregon or Father

40:00

texted me apologetically.

40:02

She likes being near the ocean. I

40:05

reread that a few times, thinking, that's

40:08

it. Those last six

40:10

words are the last time I'll ever hear

40:12

from Jonah and Nina Cash.

40:16

It was alright. I had long since

40:18

begun to consciously let Sammy

40:20

go.

40:21

I wasn't dating, God knows. I

40:24

found my loneliness to be familiar

40:26

and comfortable, at least until I left

40:28

my theater group.

40:30

It wasn't rewarding anymore to write

40:32

or act in plays that tried amateurishly

40:35

to plumb the depths of anger

40:38

and sadness, to lease

40:40

a maturity about sorrow I

40:42

didn't really own. Now

40:44

that I'd had the experience of getting truly

40:46

close to genuine tragedy,

40:48

I felt ashamed at having fumbled around

40:50

with the pretend version on a stage,

40:53

fabricating those emotions based

40:55

on so little life experience. Playing

40:58

with them like a kid uses a slinky

41:00

to entertain myself, indulge myself.

41:04

What

41:04

happened to Sammy made fiction

41:06

seem farcical, so I wanted

41:09

out of it.

41:10

Even my movie snobbery was failing

41:12

me.

41:13

The frankly harmless worlds

41:15

of Freddy Kruger or Roger

41:17

Moore's James Bond, which made

41:19

no pretense of addressing the

41:21

conundrum of human pain,

41:24

had a new appeal for me.

41:26

When I left the angry snowmen, my friendships

41:28

there dissolved, more or less, as

41:31

I always thought they might.

41:33

And I was truly,

41:34

for the first time since my early days

41:36

at college as an angst-ridden freshman,

41:40

alone. Then

41:43

three weeks before the anniversary

41:46

of the accident,

41:47

Sammy called me. The

41:49

real Sammy.

41:51

It was a good catch-up call when I

41:54

never thought would happen.

41:55

She sounded fine, seemed like her old self

41:58

almost. She'd kept. working

42:00

remotely,

42:01

she was very amused by my own strides

42:04

toward conformity,

42:05

namely having accepted an office job for

42:08

an insurance group,

42:09

and now edging dangerously close

42:11

to a promotion possibly. Yes,

42:14

I had sold out a little,

42:15

clinging to casual Fridays as

42:18

a salvation for my artsy soul.

42:21

She invited me down to Eugene, promised

42:23

to give me the whole tour of the town.

42:25

Her tone told me it was not

42:27

an empty invitation.

42:29

I gleaned enough from the conversation to know she hadn't

42:31

really made any friends down there.

42:34

And so the week before Thanksgiving,

42:36

I drove down the I-5 feeling weird

42:39

and apprehensive.

42:41

Yes, but also happy.

42:43

I had a sense of completion.

42:45

What I expected was a nice, companionable visit,

42:48

and at its end,

42:49

a necessary goodbye that seemed more fitting

42:52

than our awful phone call

42:54

months before.

42:56

sweethearts getting together on the Oregon

42:58

coast for one last friendly check-in,

43:01

to write the end of the story in a bittersweet but

43:03

acceptable way.

43:05

No robot voices were invited, and

43:08

none appeared unexpectedly.

43:11

And of course what happened was that I couldn't

43:13

seem to leave.

43:15

Driving, talking, coffee,

43:17

lunch, dessert, walking endlessly

43:20

from place to place. I forget the order it all happened,

43:22

But

43:24

I was going to be comically late in getting back

43:26

on the road. And then

43:27

in a coffee house and gift shop,

43:30

Sammy said to me, Dr.

43:31

Rix is a godsend. I'm doing great.

43:34

Don't go back tonight. My place is

43:37

big enough to be embarrassing. You know how my parents

43:39

insist on helping. And

43:41

of course I stayed. I

43:44

think I probably would have, even if she didn't seem

43:46

so much like she used to.

43:48

so funny and awkward and

43:50

prone to fumbling over words in a rush

43:52

to get them out, and full of her usual

43:54

sunshiny venom towards all

43:57

our favorite old targets, even

43:59

though she can't

44:00

hadn't even brushed against pop culture

44:02

for almost a year,

44:03

and I had to fill her in on lots of, well,

44:06

nonsense, most of it film-related. Her

44:09

hair was much longer, but

44:11

still carelessly tended to.

44:13

It made her more alluring to me, yet

44:16

powerfully different, a different

44:18

version of the same person. She'd

44:20

gotten a cat, too, Bernie Birnbaum.

44:24

I stayed the night and then we agreed

44:27

without speaking

44:28

that I'd stay for another one.

44:31

And there was no doubt our jigsaw

44:33

pieces were

44:34

locked together again.

44:36

And I felt so peaceful on the way

44:38

back north I pulled over beside a

44:40

pretty cemetery outside of Wilsonville

44:43

and just

44:44

sat there in the sun beside a

44:46

fountain in the humble awe

44:48

of the complexity of it all.

44:51

love's maze of baffling

44:53

circuitry.

44:55

I was still young enough then to

44:57

believe secretly in happy

44:59

endings.

45:01

I spent the oddest thanksgiving of my young

45:03

life with Sammy and her parents

45:06

at their modest mansion in Oysterville.

45:09

Nina and Jonah seemed genuinely

45:11

happy to see me again.

45:13

It was there that the non-digital lifestyle

45:16

Sammy had adopted really asserted

45:18

itself and I experienced how different it was.

45:21

Sammy's dad and I had been talking geekly about football

45:23

before the turkey came out, but that night there

45:26

was no TV in the corner with the games

45:28

on and no predictable post-meal

45:30

movie with the family.

45:32

There was just cozy talking and later

45:34

an especially confrontational game of

45:37

upwards.

45:38

Originally the information and entertainment

45:42

detox that Sammy's first doctor had recommended

45:44

was designed partially to keep her away

45:46

from any troubling news about the accident.

45:48

Now though, without

45:50

a cell phone, without cable,

45:52

without her own computer or social media,

45:55

Sami seemed to be living on a slightly elevated

45:58

plane of existence. She

46:00

got up every day now, she wasn't immediately

46:02

given 12 reasons to hate the world or

46:04

feel obligated to respond to it.

46:06

She lived locally, among the people

46:09

and things she knew well and was fond of.

46:11

The frantic clashing and boiling

46:14

points in society had become meaningless. She

46:16

caught up to them when she felt like it, and she got

46:18

most of her information and worldview from reading

46:21

three month old issues of Dissent magazine.

46:24

I hadn't myself been able to keep away

46:26

from the

46:27

awful clickbait that had drawn me

46:29

into to the fate of young Shanice

46:31

Lander,

46:32

and couldn't stop thinking of what it might do to

46:35

Sammy to read about that particular

46:37

narrative

46:38

as it had unfolded in the days

46:41

after the accident. We went

46:43

to the ocean a couple of times, which to

46:45

me has always been a place where time stops

46:47

and aging ceases.

46:49

At the coast, I felt like I was eternally 10 years

46:52

old. Sammy too, I think.

46:54

The folks are working at a mission in San Francisco

46:57

for Christmas, She told me in mid-December,

46:59

what are you gonna be doing? We

47:02

were at Sea Rose Beach when she asked

47:04

me that. Big cups of takeout

47:06

coffee in our hands, the Pacific

47:09

vast before us, and finally

47:11

a little money in my pocket. Let's

47:14

just drive the coast, I suggested.

47:17

I liked the idea of an illogical wandering

47:20

drive slamming a door on the bad

47:22

things that had happened. It was the kind

47:25

of irresponsible anti-holiday

47:27

maneuver Only the truly young and

47:29

free would try, so I wanted to

47:31

do it. And we

47:34

almost made it work.

47:39

How did Dr. Rick's worker magic

47:42

was how I phrased the question that nearly

47:44

ended our togetherness for the second time.

47:47

We

47:47

were sitting on the screened-in front porch of a little

47:49

Airbnb in Neskowen, and

47:51

it was night and raining.

47:54

I might have been able to go forever, not knowing

47:56

just how Sammy had been repaired,

47:59

me. But I asked.

48:02

It was really the dumb question of a layperson

48:04

baffled by the mysteries of psychiatry. Through

48:07

knowing Sami, I had become both

48:10

shaken and impressed by the malleability

48:13

of the human mind.

48:15

Here is what she told me. There

48:17

had come a critical point in her therapy when she

48:19

seemed to be recovering memories of the actual

48:22

accident.

48:23

And she was not responding to this well

48:26

at all.

48:27

It was then that Dr. Ricks had made the decision

48:29

to try an alternative sort of treatment.

48:31

She had researched and tested off

48:33

and on for years and written about

48:36

extensively.

48:37

She called it carrier and comfort.

48:41

Through hypnosis, she'd asked

48:43

Sammy to visualize the construction

48:45

of a kind of memory lockbox.

48:48

It was six feet high, this

48:51

imaginary box, Sammy told

48:53

me. looked a lot like an old school phone

48:55

booth.

48:56

Into this glass box went

48:58

her emerging memories of the accident,

49:01

which, if they made their way fully into her

49:03

conscious thoughts, could drag her

49:06

back into a deep depression.

49:08

Sammy was asked to imagine those

49:10

memories clasped by

49:12

a living, breathing being

49:15

who was locked inside that box, to

49:18

imagine sending both it and

49:20

the memories away forever.

49:23

so that they could never return to harm her.

49:26

Not kill them, no, because they

49:28

were part of her after all, and

49:30

to turn them into enemies was

49:33

unwise.

49:34

They and the carrier were

49:36

just being asked to live a life

49:39

far away. Dr.

49:41

Rix's voice, which sometimes

49:43

came to Sami under hypnosis in

49:45

the form of beautiful Calligraphic

49:48

notes on red pieces of paper said,

49:52

now let's give the carrier that robot

49:54

voice to take away with him. What do you say? And

49:58

Sammy had said, yes. I

50:00

want to give that away. And

50:02

then from Dr. Ricks, let's

50:05

give the carrier a name. He's

50:07

not a villain, Sammy, so let's give

50:09

him a name before we say goodbye

50:12

to him.

50:13

And Sammy had laughed a little,

50:15

and she laughed again when she told me

50:17

this on the dark porch of that

50:19

Airbnb by the ocean. He

50:21

should have a robot name, she'd suggested.

50:25

Dr. Ricks said that was just fine.

50:27

And so the robot carrier, clutching

50:30

Sammy's potentially traumatic memories

50:32

to his chest, was christened 41584,

50:34

which was her birthday plus one day.

50:37

Sammy

50:41

remembered images of her pushing

50:44

the giant glass box in a rolling cart

50:46

along a sidewalk beside a great rushing

50:48

river in the woods.

50:51

She'd

50:51

pushed the box off the cart,

50:54

down an embankment, and

50:56

the rapids had taken it away. What

50:59

if he gets out? Sammy had asked,

51:01

Dr. Ricks, worried, to which had

51:03

come a soothing reply, the

51:05

river is going all the way to the other side of the

51:07

world, Sammy. It doesn't matter.

51:10

41584 is

51:13

welcome to speak robot in Polynesia.

51:16

During all this, Sami was not even now

51:19

entirely sure what she'd said and heard

51:21

under hypnosis, or even what

51:23

had been dreams or a part of live sessions

51:26

whose memories had become hazy.

51:28

She only knew that after only about six

51:31

more hours of talk therapy, she felt

51:33

almost as light and as free sometimes

51:36

as she had when she was in her early twenties.

51:39

No trace of emerging memories

51:41

of the airfield,

51:42

and no desire to speak in the robot

51:44

voice. Were

51:46

there any drugs involved, any medication?"

51:48

I asked her. Just the usual

51:51

stuff to help keep me in the hypnotic

51:53

state?" she said,

51:55

sitting close beside me on the wicker

51:58

sofa, she'd begun to sense that

52:00

doubt in my voice the worry.

52:02

How did she put you under?

52:04

I asked.

52:06

She told me the method was very simple.

52:08

Sammy had sat at a table

52:10

and had been asked to move her hands

52:13

across its surface in wide arcs,

52:15

wide rotations, very gently.

52:18

And she counted upward, starting at one, visualizing

52:21

each number as a tree with more

52:23

leaves on it.

52:25

When she got to a tree that was completely verdant,

52:28

she would tumble head over heel. into

52:30

the forest, which was the hypnotic

52:32

state. Cute but strange,

52:35

Sammy said. I got

52:37

up then and went to the screen,

52:40

looking out toward the water, trying to take

52:42

this all in. You mean, basically,

52:45

I said,

52:46

that the method

52:48

she picked was total

52:50

denial.

52:52

Carrier and comfort, Sammy said,

52:55

a bit of irritation edging into her voice. The

52:57

name was very carefully chosen. So

53:02

what happens if you suddenly do

53:04

remember everything sometime?

53:06

I asked. Is it going

53:08

to make everything worse now? Why

53:11

would it? She said. And

53:13

I said, well, I don't know. It just sounds like some kind

53:15

of

53:16

wish fulfillment fantasy.

53:19

And that statement turned the talk stressful

53:22

for her and she got a little angry. But

53:25

I closed my eyes and took it all back.

53:27

I apologized. I didn't know what I was talking

53:29

about. Of course Dr. Ricks was

53:31

the expert

53:33

and we tried to get past it.

53:35

Later,

53:36

long after we laid down to sleep with the

53:38

sound of the waves far away,

53:41

Sammy rested her head on my chest

53:43

and whispered,

53:45

you can't understand the sadness

53:47

of just

53:48

hoping for one day of

53:51

feeling what you used to be like. I

53:55

just held her

53:56

and we drifted away

53:58

and the next day was better.

54:00

the next day was all about a used bookstore

54:02

the stone tiger out front and

54:04

just down the road the best

54:07

reason hello we'd ever tasted my

54:11

own research into doctor

54:13

iris rick's we took a day or so sitting

54:15

in the college library when a got back

54:18

on the beer whenever

54:19

three books was even in the stacks and the

54:21

second floor was about child psychology

54:24

her treatise on carrier and comfort

54:26

therapy had been digitized to the university

54:28

of washington the

54:30

articles i could access about

54:32

this technique online were responsibly

54:34

peer reviewed and

54:35

so were to fairly strong

54:38

rebuttals of her work i

54:40

read a couple of case studies on line and me

54:43

to him like a quiet of the library one

54:45

concerned a victim of a random

54:47

act of street violence in queens

54:49

the other was the case of a man who tried everything

54:52

to address his alcoholism but failed

54:54

in

54:54

the former case be patient had created

54:56

a sort of blind and deaf mute

54:59

half brother through hypnosis while

55:01

the alcoholic had been asked to

55:03

transfer his urges to

55:05

an imagined gentle giant who

55:07

carried a teddy bear in

55:10

neither case and the therapy completely served

55:12

its purpose but it had bought both

55:14

patients lot of stable time

55:17

to work on their issues i

55:19

watched a video of rex speaking on

55:21

some panel shit a very easy demeanor

55:23

in a cheerful sense of humor about popping

55:26

herpes and who are microphone i

55:28

can make out on the video that she even had a tattoo

55:30

on her neck it looks like a sandcastle

55:32

on

55:34

that panel she revealed that the

55:36

origins of carrier and comfort

55:39

came from her own experiences a post grad

55:41

and california coping with an attack

55:44

by a blood drinking killer named

55:46

judy burrow this

55:48

made me feel more uneasy

55:52

after the library i swung by the student

55:54

center for old time's sake god

55:56

knows i'd spent too much time as an undergrad

55:58

they're eating junk food and avoid

56:00

studying by watching baseball highlights

56:02

on the tv bolted over

56:04

an air hockey table i

56:06

sat for a while just before the campus

56:08

staff started closing place down for the night

56:10

and students drift back their dorms

56:13

the

56:13

tv was turned to the local ten o'clock

56:15

news the

56:17

second story was

56:19

about the lawsuit that the parents

56:21

of should nice land her and

56:24

just filed against pask flower

56:26

airport and to related entities

56:29

for

56:29

negligence and what happened to their daughter

56:32

not just in the crash of november twenty

56:34

thirteen but what happened immediately afterwards

56:36

i

56:38

was riveted again by the story like

56:41

so many others i couldn't look away even

56:43

as i prayed sammy

56:44

was still protected from all

56:46

of this into

56:48

that night was when i had the worst

56:50

nightmare of my life or alone in my apartment

56:53

a nightmare stitched together from the

56:56

real facts i knew from the news

56:58

which

56:58

then got stylized

57:00

by the cruelest corners of my subconscious

57:04

in the dream i saw a bright green light

57:07

flash over the face of a passenger

57:09

named wendy doll five

57:11

seconds before the beechcraft crashed

57:14

into the gulf stream and sent me

57:17

tumbling

57:17

through the air and on

57:19

to the rain drenched tarmac beneath the planes

57:22

i heard a roar and

57:24

felt a rolling tide of pure

57:27

yellow heat flow

57:29

over into past me like

57:31

a flaming barrel

57:32

i heard sammy crying out she

57:35

was saying where's my slink where's

57:38

my slink i

57:40

heard a man screaming over

57:42

here over here we need oxygen

57:46

i was paralyzed blow the chest i

57:49

lifted my head off the time and something

57:51

enormous was on fire and your by

57:54

the cold rain sizzled off

57:57

metal surfaces i

57:59

saw a figure

58:00

far away. Shanice

58:02

Lander was walking slowly

58:04

away from the wreckage of the plains. Bystanders

58:08

and Samaritans were running everywhere, but no one seemed

58:11

to notice Shanice, or they

58:13

thought that she too was someone out there trying

58:15

to help. Maybe she'd spotted

58:17

another survivor.

58:20

At the moment of impact, one of the wheels

58:22

of the beachcraft had been flung so hard

58:24

into the fencing a hundred yards south of the

58:26

runway, that it had collapsed

58:28

a portion of it. Shanice

58:31

was headed that way, wearing

58:33

her winter coat drenched by the rain.

58:36

Her backpack had been left behind. In

58:39

shock, she walked across the fence

58:42

boundary and started across a small,

58:44

snow-covered field toward the white woods

58:47

beyond. In the dream,

58:49

she got smaller and smaller in my vision.

58:52

I opened up my mouth to tell someone tending clumsily

58:54

to my injuries that there had been a girl on the plane, and

58:57

she was wandering away from the wreckage,

59:00

but no sound came out.

59:02

Shanice suddenly

59:04

dropped clumsily out of sight, barely

59:07

having time to throw her arms up to

59:10

break her fall. A hole

59:12

had opened up in the thin ice of the tiny

59:14

pond whose surface she had errantly

59:16

wandered onto, just

59:19

two feet of water. But

59:21

it was enough to swallow her up. I

59:23

saw it happen in my nightmare, Shanice

59:26

the Debate Champ. The trees

59:28

beyond seemed to keep waiting for her to emerge

59:31

from that little hole.

59:32

She never did. When

59:34

they found her the next morning, it

59:37

seemed inconceivable that it could have happened

59:39

the way it did. But

59:40

in the chaos and confusion and a panic,

59:43

that was, based on all the known

59:45

evidence, exactly the

59:48

way it happened. That was the part

59:50

of the whole story that

59:51

few who knew it could forget.

59:54

I was a wreck at work the day after that dream.

59:57

I sent an email to my boss after lunch and told them I

59:59

was wasn't feeling well and was going home, it would

1:00:02

be fine.

1:00:03

My new job had a good personal leave policy.

1:00:06

It had a good everything.

1:00:08

I went in every day,

1:00:10

sat in front of a computer for eight hours, then

1:00:12

went home.

1:00:13

With the nice paychecks I was getting, I had begun

1:00:15

for the first time in my life to

1:00:17

casually narcatize myself

1:00:20

with all the things I'd never been able to afford

1:00:22

before, including all of the latest

1:00:25

digital and

1:00:26

robotic conveniences.

1:00:28

High-end cell phone, cable package

1:00:30

with all the movie channels, refrigerator

1:00:32

with Ice Cube Maker,

1:00:34

Ford Taurus with heated seats

1:00:36

and Bluetooth capability,

1:00:39

and even a pre-order for a new thing that Apple

1:00:41

had coming out, a watch that could

1:00:43

flow in harmony with your laptop.

1:00:45

Had a new one of those too.

1:00:48

These were the things that were comforting

1:00:50

me

1:00:51

and erecting cushiony walls

1:00:54

against the nagging sense that

1:00:56

all my creative impulses were quietly

1:00:59

fading into my past.

1:01:01

If Sami wanted a powerful mechanical

1:01:03

device to take her anguish halfway across

1:01:06

the world, I seemed to now

1:01:08

own quite a few of them.

1:01:10

And every day I felt like I was becoming a kind

1:01:12

of device myself.

1:01:14

Harmlessly. Painlessly. Just

1:01:17

like everyone I knew. All

1:01:19

of us joined in an elite class

1:01:22

of cheerful, robot-human

1:01:24

hybrids,

1:01:25

synchronizing our calendars, our

1:01:28

playlists,

1:01:30

and our anxieties. On

1:01:34

December 6th, Sammy

1:01:36

and I were together at her apartment. I

1:01:38

was staying the weekend. It had been a pretty good

1:01:40

day. We'd gone for a hike and then cooked

1:01:43

dinner in.

1:01:45

Sometime will pass midnight,

1:01:47

I woke up, becoming aware that she

1:01:49

had gotten out of bed and was sitting at her work

1:01:51

desk in the dark, but turned

1:01:54

the wrong way around, facing the

1:01:56

bed.

1:01:58

She explained to me what she was feeling.

1:02:00

and had been feeling most of the last two days.

1:02:04

A few hours before I'd come into Eugene, she'd

1:02:06

been down the street picking up some tea

1:02:08

for us, and she'd heard a random

1:02:11

mechanical ratcheting sound from somewhere

1:02:13

nearby, like one heavy metal

1:02:16

object was having trouble lifting another,

1:02:19

the kind of thing you hear several times

1:02:21

a month living in a city. But

1:02:23

this time, it had gotten into

1:02:25

her mind that The sound had

1:02:28

been made intentionally to

1:02:30

let her know that someone who had gone away

1:02:32

was back. It

1:02:35

was a little friendly signal.

1:02:39

I nodded and told her I got it, though,

1:02:41

of course I couldn't really. She'd

1:02:44

gotten out of bed 20 minutes before when

1:02:46

the final image of a nightmare had woken her. She'd

1:02:49

been standing on a vast frozen lake

1:02:53

With

1:02:53

a strange, almost Martian-like

1:02:56

planet low in the sky, it

1:02:58

was beaming intense orange light all around,

1:03:01

a permanent sunset. Some

1:03:03

tall man with no discernible

1:03:06

facial features was

1:03:07

walking toward Sami across

1:03:10

the ice.

1:03:11

Slowly and clumsily,

1:03:13

his arms outstretched, beckoning.

1:03:17

Each step as it got closer sent another

1:03:19

mechanical ratcheting sound through it,

1:03:22

right into the bottoms of her feet, with

1:03:24

the sound vibrated and locked

1:03:26

her feet firm to the ice so she couldn't

1:03:28

run away. I

1:03:31

thought it was 41584, she said. I

1:03:35

thought he wanted to hurt me.

1:03:38

She was due to meet Dr. Ricks that

1:03:40

week. She did go. Sammy

1:03:43

later reported there wasn't

1:03:44

too much cause for alarm. The

1:03:47

man on the ice may have even been a manifestation

1:03:49

of her old, imagined pseudo-doppelganger,

1:03:52

the one she used to imagine was out there somewhere,

1:03:55

watching her,

1:03:57

tracking her life, Meaning

1:03:59

no harm.

1:04:01

She'd never mentioned that belief since

1:04:03

the accident.

1:04:04

Never had one of those manifestations before,

1:04:07

though, have you, in your dreams? I asked her,

1:04:09

and she could only reply, no.

1:04:11

The

1:04:14

spiral, as I think of it, a

1:04:17

spiral leading down, swift

1:04:20

and irrevocable, began

1:04:22

only a week later. On

1:04:26

the early morning of December 13th,

1:04:29

a rock climbing instructor named Lucas

1:04:31

Thorpe, who

1:04:32

lived in Malone, Porter, about 30

1:04:35

miles away from my apartment, became

1:04:38

overwhelmed with concern about a strange

1:04:40

silence from his younger brother, Dennis,

1:04:43

who he'd been expecting a call from for

1:04:45

a day and a half.

1:04:47

Dennis Thorpe, age 34, currently

1:04:50

unemployed, had lived alone for

1:04:52

the last three years in a tiny A-frame

1:04:54

house in the woods, a cute structure

1:04:57

he'd bought and built himself for less

1:04:59

than $30,000.

1:05:00

Because of a recent traumatic event

1:05:03

Dennis had suffered, Lucas had made a

1:05:05

point to keep in touch with him more often. They'd

1:05:07

agreed to go Christmas shopping together for their mother

1:05:10

and sister that afternoon in the city. But

1:05:12

Dennis hadn't called back to confirm

1:05:14

the day or night before,

1:05:17

and now there was no answer to several

1:05:19

cell phone calls. This

1:05:21

was especially concerning because Dennis

1:05:23

had seemed unsettled by a mysterious

1:05:26

call he'd received two nights before, but

1:05:29

hadn't been able to give his older brother many details

1:05:32

about.

1:05:33

He'd said only that a strange person

1:05:35

talking like a machine

1:05:38

had twice whispered something into the phone

1:05:40

about a correction that was needed

1:05:42

to his programming,

1:05:44

and then the line had gone undead.

1:05:47

At about 9am on the 13th, Lucas

1:05:50

got in his car and nervously drove the 11

1:05:52

miles to Dennis' little house, which

1:05:55

was secluded down a country lane called a widow's

1:05:57

fair.

1:05:58

When Lucas arrived... the

1:06:00

property, a small and crudely

1:06:02

fashioned woodland oasis.

1:06:04

He saw that Dennis's pickup truck was parked

1:06:06

over near his wood pile, but

1:06:08

there was no answer to Knox at the front door. Finally,

1:06:11

Lucas tried the doorknob and found it unlocked.

1:06:15

There was very little to the A-frame house. The

1:06:17

entirety of its interior was more

1:06:20

or less visible from the front doorway.

1:06:22

Lucas saw immediately that the door to the

1:06:24

bedroom,

1:06:25

The only enclosed room in the house

1:06:28

was open, and in there

1:06:31

the bedding, blankets, sheets,

1:06:34

pillows,

1:06:35

had been entirely removed from Dennis'

1:06:37

bed. Getting closer, it appeared

1:06:39

that the headboard had sustained a

1:06:41

single blow from a sharp object,

1:06:44

leaving a long gouge in it.

1:06:47

Lucas didn't know if it had ever been there before,

1:06:49

but it stuck with him.

1:06:51

He made a wide walking circle around

1:06:54

the property, calling out for his brother.

1:06:57

His attention went back to the pickup truck beside

1:06:59

the wood pile. Lucas walked

1:07:01

over to it and then around it,

1:07:04

and he saw a bundle of blue bedding

1:07:07

dumped there beside the stacks of firewood.

1:07:11

Dennis was wrapped inside the bedding

1:07:14

and partially propped up against the side

1:07:16

of his truck.

1:07:17

His head had been

1:07:19

partially crushed through more than

1:07:21

a dozen blows by a sharp instrument,

1:07:23

which had left deep wounds spanning

1:07:26

his entire forehead, where the focus

1:07:28

of the attack had been concentrated.

1:07:30

Blood and the grass and dirt close by

1:07:32

suggested that Dennis might have been

1:07:34

rendered unconscious in the bedroom by an initial

1:07:37

attack, but then

1:07:38

beaten more brutally once he had been

1:07:40

dragged outside, perhaps regaining

1:07:44

consciousness and fighting back.

1:07:47

The killer had clumsily etched

1:07:50

two words, just barely legible, into

1:07:52

the GMC's right rear door panel,

1:07:55

creating a crude headstone.

1:07:58

letters spelled out the word

1:08:00

faulty human.

1:08:04

The media was quick to learn exactly who

1:08:06

Dennis Thorpe was, though those

1:08:09

two words on the GMC were

1:08:11

kept secret from it.

1:08:13

The news broke quickly that the air traffic

1:08:16

controller blamed for the miscommunication

1:08:19

that led to the Pasc Flower Airport

1:08:21

disaster the previous November had

1:08:23

been and found gruesomely

1:08:25

murdered.

1:08:28

Sammy and I were back in our respective

1:08:30

apartments when it happened. And she

1:08:32

called me two days later as she was riding

1:08:35

a bus downtown to speak to someone from the Washington

1:08:37

State Police. We're sending a man

1:08:39

from their jurisdiction to Eugene

1:08:41

to talk to her informally.

1:08:44

She sounded very calm.

1:08:46

She had gotten her only information directly

1:08:48

from the police, not from the news.

1:08:51

I wasn't able to break away, not

1:08:53

just yet, so I told her to

1:08:55

hang on for just another day and I'd

1:08:57

come.

1:08:59

The talk with the police seemed mostly informational

1:09:01

and meant to calm her and reassure

1:09:04

her, but its urgency felt

1:09:06

unusual, and she went through a surreal

1:09:09

moment when she knew that despite what she called

1:09:11

the detective subtlety and delicacy,

1:09:14

he was obligated to inquire about her alibi

1:09:17

for the

1:09:18

late night and possibly morning of Dennis

1:09:21

Thorpe's murder.

1:09:23

Sami didn't exactly have

1:09:25

one that was

1:09:26

airtight.

1:09:28

She was asked about people she either knew

1:09:31

or associated with on the plane

1:09:33

and in her months of therapy afterward,

1:09:36

pressed for relevant details about anyone

1:09:38

who seemed to have had an unusually strong

1:09:41

reaction to the accident's aftermath.

1:09:44

Today's talk with the police lasted only about a

1:09:46

half an hour. She returned to

1:09:48

her apartment at a little past 7pm

1:09:50

on the 16th

1:09:52

and got under the covers. Far

1:09:54

to the north, Dennis Thorpe's tiny

1:09:57

house in the woods had been roped

1:09:59

off. and was being guarded by two

1:10:02

policemen watching the dark.

1:10:05

Alone, unable to sleep, Sami

1:10:07

got up at about 10 and decided to get out

1:10:09

of the apartment, go somewhere, anywhere.

1:10:11

There were a few things she needed from

1:10:13

the grocery store, so she walked two blocks to

1:10:16

Albertsons. It would close at 11, so

1:10:18

it was just her and a handful of other shoppers

1:10:21

wandering the quiet aisles.

1:10:23

She was in the pasta section looking for

1:10:26

Orzo when

1:10:27

something unusual caught her eye.

1:10:30

On the top shelf where the sauces were,

1:10:32

someone had cleared out a little space and

1:10:35

stacked

1:10:36

six jars of prego marinara

1:10:39

in a simple pyramid.

1:10:41

Not a formal display, no.

1:10:43

Just a bit of

1:10:44

spontaneous and meaningless activity,

1:10:47

as if a child had become bored

1:10:49

waiting for their mom to make her choices. But

1:10:52

it was way too high for a child

1:10:54

to have done. found

1:10:57

herself staring at those jars.

1:10:59

They meant nothing, surely,

1:11:02

but the simplicity of the structure made her

1:11:04

imagine it was the kind of thing a robot

1:11:07

might have decided to build. To

1:11:09

maybe

1:11:10

test its dexterity skills,

1:11:13

and then been pleased with. Almost

1:11:16

perfectly symmetrical, the labels all

1:11:18

facing the exact same way. Project

1:11:21

accomplished. Human being

1:11:24

practice completed.

1:11:26

Sammy looked up to see someone all the way down the aisle,

1:11:29

smiling at her. A very large, bald

1:11:32

man in a store apron grinning inappropriately

1:11:34

wide. "'Do you need any help?' he

1:11:36

asked her, walking forward. Sammy

1:11:40

turned away from him without a word. She

1:11:42

left her grocery basket sitting on the floor, and she

1:11:44

hurried out of the store. She

1:11:46

was shaking when she got back into bed, her

1:11:49

pulse still pounding.

1:11:51

In Olympia, I was lying awake,

1:11:53

trying not to call her yet again to see how she was

1:11:55

doing. And nearby,

1:11:58

the police were learning a lot from their...

1:12:00

the talks with st luke's hospital staff

1:12:02

enough to make a delicate call to sammy

1:12:05

and a loving detective

1:12:07

emmett club recommended to

1:12:09

her that she be in the company if someone she

1:12:11

knew for live in

1:12:13

other words it might be safer

1:12:15

to not

1:12:16

be alone or the

1:12:19

ringing of the phone had woken her from another

1:12:21

terrible nightmare of a faceless

1:12:24

phantom pounding on a glass

1:12:26

tube and screaming it's

1:12:28

own name over and over

1:12:30

again for one five three

1:12:32

to four one five

1:12:34

eight four

1:12:35

i am four one

1:12:38

five eight foot in

1:12:42

the

1:12:42

minutes after the fatal collision

1:12:44

on the runway at past flower airport

1:12:47

thirteen months before more

1:12:49

than a hundred people ran out of the terminal

1:12:51

and onto the tarmac for the pouring rain creating

1:12:54

a great deal of confusion many

1:12:57

samaritans were able to provide valuable

1:12:59

help while some could only stand

1:13:01

bewildered unable to and

1:13:04

some even gotten wave first

1:13:06

responders who managed to wave everyone

1:13:08

back to safety over the course of

1:13:10

twenty minutes among

1:13:12

that massive terrified

1:13:14

humanity shiny

1:13:15

slander may have seemed

1:13:18

like just another wondering so

1:13:20

tragically

1:13:20

overlooked there

1:13:23

was one other important player in the drama

1:13:25

of that night who no one seemed to notice

1:13:27

much it

1:13:29

took piecing together many people's

1:13:31

fragmented memories to make this other person

1:13:33

story clear his

1:13:35

name was george vi door

1:13:39

he was twenty nine years old and

1:13:40

was at the airfield that night only to drop

1:13:43

off a job application for a part time

1:13:45

position as a small aircraft

1:13:47

refuel he

1:13:49

had taken a bus from the edge of delphi

1:13:51

then still had a walk a half mile for

1:13:53

the cold and the rain when

1:13:56

the collision happened and

1:13:58

the runway exploded in high

1:14:00

flashes of yellow and orange

1:14:02

and white.

1:14:03

He joined the crowd, making their way outside

1:14:06

to help.

1:14:07

Those few who remembered glimpsing him

1:14:10

said they thought he didn't do too much,

1:14:12

just watched, mostly. He

1:14:15

was tall, over six feet,

1:14:17

swaddled in a puffy down

1:14:20

jacket that was

1:14:21

ripped in several places. He

1:14:23

had it scrunched up almost to

1:14:25

his eyes to keep warm. About 30

1:14:29

minutes after the crash, when Shanice

1:14:32

Lander had already vanished,

1:14:34

when almost everyone other than official medical

1:14:36

and fire and police personnel had been moved

1:14:39

back into the terminal,

1:14:40

George Vidor was for some reason

1:14:43

still out there,

1:14:44

and lurking dangerously close to

1:14:47

a section of the the Beechcraft's burning fuselage.

1:14:50

A spontaneous settling of its components

1:14:53

caused by the intense heat of the flames

1:14:56

suddenly toppled a great steel

1:14:58

mass and it crushed the

1:15:00

vidor's lower leg.

1:15:03

He had to be pulled out from underneath, screaming,

1:15:05

and it was rushed to the hospital among many others.

1:15:08

He was bed bound in pain for three

1:15:10

weeks,

1:15:11

a titanium rod permanently

1:15:14

embedded in his right leg.

1:15:16

Like almost all the other survivors of the accident,

1:15:19

he was visited several times by mental

1:15:21

health counselors. He was offered

1:15:23

a series of free group therapy

1:15:25

sessions to help him work through what he

1:15:27

saw and experienced on that night. He

1:15:30

agreed to attend.

1:15:32

That was where he met Sammy.

1:15:35

Sammy had never told me about George

1:15:38

Vidor, and how deeply

1:15:40

strange he was eventually revealed

1:15:43

to be.

1:15:43

The

1:15:46

advice of the police that Sami

1:15:48

not be alone because there might be a chance

1:15:51

the killer of Dennis Thorpe had

1:15:53

specific hostilities involving the

1:15:55

accident frightened us both badly.

1:15:58

They were legally ob- obligated

1:16:00

to be frustratingly vague. Sammy

1:16:03

crashed the night of their call on her cat

1:16:05

sitter sofa,

1:16:06

and she and I agreed to meet and hunker down

1:16:08

at her folk's house in Oysterville until we

1:16:11

got more information.

1:16:12

They would be flying in on Wednesday morning from

1:16:15

helping Maddie Snyder's home health aide

1:16:17

move him into his new retirement condo,

1:16:20

so it would be just me and Sammy on Tuesday

1:16:22

night.

1:16:23

She would get there at about six.

1:16:25

I decided to go down earlier than I even

1:16:27

told her I would, because the last thing I

1:16:30

wanted was for her to show up at that big house

1:16:32

alone.

1:16:33

I pulled into the circular driveway at what I kept

1:16:36

calling the mansion,

1:16:37

just as it was getting dark.

1:16:40

The place wasn't precisely secluded.

1:16:42

The neighbors on both sides were fairly close by.

1:16:45

Everyone just had so much land that it was a hike

1:16:47

to get to the next house over.

1:16:49

Each house was of a price range well

1:16:52

beyond my imagining.

1:16:53

and the grounds of each were at least partially

1:16:56

wooded,

1:16:57

sometimes by careful design.

1:17:00

The mansion even had a big pond out back

1:17:02

where geese lived the good life, while

1:17:04

the front lawn sloped gently

1:17:06

downwards for a hundred yards, dotted

1:17:09

with two winding pebbled footpaths

1:17:12

with waist-high

1:17:12

hedges snuggling against

1:17:14

them.

1:17:16

I got out of the car,

1:17:17

and having no key or familiarity

1:17:20

with the security system,

1:17:21

I couldn't do much, but wait for Sami.

1:17:24

I hadn't been able to convince her to go back to using a cell

1:17:27

phone, just enough to text back and

1:17:29

forth for my peace of mind.

1:17:31

So aside from her first call that she was getting

1:17:33

into her car and headed to Oysterville, there

1:17:36

weren't going to be any updates unless she broke

1:17:38

down and used the little no

1:17:40

contract phone her parents had begged her

1:17:42

to keep in her glove compartment in case of

1:17:44

emergency.

1:17:45

30 minutes on this little sucker just raring

1:17:48

to go, Sami had reported.

1:17:50

For the first time, I strolled the

1:17:53

expensive front lawn alone, wishing

1:17:55

I'd brought gloves with me.

1:17:58

And then I went around to the back and stood beside.

1:18:00

the silent pond,

1:18:01

looking off into the barren winter woods as

1:18:03

the sky went fully dark. I

1:18:06

got back in the car when I got too cold and

1:18:08

closed my eyes to rest after taking one

1:18:10

last look at the house. There

1:18:12

were a couple of lights on inside, just for

1:18:15

appearances sake.

1:18:17

What I didn't realize then was

1:18:19

that those symbolic lights

1:18:22

were the only security system Jonah

1:18:25

and Nina had for the house. True

1:18:28

to their undying hippie beliefs,

1:18:30

they didn't believe much in protecting mere possessions.

1:18:34

Aside from the

1:18:35

very basic locks on the

1:18:37

outer doors of the place,

1:18:39

there was very little to stop anyone

1:18:42

from getting inside,

1:18:44

for whatever purpose they might have had.

1:18:49

When George Vaidor was 17

1:18:52

years old,

1:18:53

he and his parents were victims

1:18:56

of

1:18:56

carbon monoxide poisoning in their small

1:18:59

rural cabin in East Tacoma. The

1:19:02

faulty design of the heater

1:19:05

killed Melvin and Margaret Vaidor

1:19:08

and put George into a coma for two weeks.

1:19:11

He never did return to school.

1:19:13

He never lived with anyone after that.

1:19:16

At 29, he had never owned a computer,

1:19:18

so he had no traceable online activity,

1:19:21

not even through a library card. He

1:19:23

did not own a cell phone, a car,

1:19:26

or sign up for cable TV.

1:19:28

No one who called themselves a friend

1:19:30

to him was ever found.

1:19:33

Detectives were eventually lucky to track down a couple

1:19:35

of ex-teachers who had foggy memories of him.

1:19:38

One of whom made the comment that George did

1:19:40

not seem at all interested in his surroundings

1:19:43

or the people in them, seemed generally

1:19:46

lost in the world.

1:19:48

Since the death of his parents, police had talked to

1:19:50

him one time in his life. That

1:19:52

was when the man who had been sued on

1:19:54

Melvin and Margaret Vidor's behalf, for

1:19:56

damages relating to the faulty heating system that

1:19:59

killed them.

1:20:00

was crushed

1:20:01

in a hit-and-run accident.

1:20:03

George had been 19. Though

1:20:05

he was listed as a person of interest in

1:20:07

the case, no charges were ever

1:20:10

filed.

1:20:11

He'd never gotten a driver's license. But

1:20:14

you don't need to take a test or

1:20:16

own a vehicle title to figure out how

1:20:19

to get behind a wheel and

1:20:20

knock someone so hard into a wire

1:20:23

fence that they're nearly cut

1:20:25

in half. With

1:20:27

the financial settlement he'd received

1:20:29

after his parents' deaths, he'd managed to

1:20:32

eke out an unnoticed and unchallenged

1:20:34

existence, moving around the Pacific

1:20:36

Northwest anonymously,

1:20:38

living a non-life.

1:20:41

Occasionally he would apply for a job,

1:20:43

always something involving the operation of machinery.

1:20:47

But

1:20:47

he was never hired. He

1:20:49

said virtually nothing during group

1:20:51

survivor therapy St. Luke's,

1:20:54

and certainly nothing memorable.

1:20:55

One day while waiting for a session to begin, Sammy

1:20:59

had lapsed once again into her robot

1:21:01

voice when offering George Vidor

1:21:04

a piece of gum.

1:21:06

He had responded likewise.

1:21:09

The two of them went on to share this little

1:21:11

voice from time to time.

1:21:13

George took to it immediately and seemed

1:21:16

to really like it when he

1:21:18

and Sammy would speak exclusively in

1:21:20

the voice, away from the

1:21:22

other patients. They

1:21:24

never exchanged much personal information,

1:21:27

and Sammy remembered little about

1:21:29

him, except his insistence on greeting

1:21:32

her as the Georgebot,

1:21:34

commenting on the weather as the Georgebot,

1:21:37

chatting about empty and forgettable

1:21:39

things as the Georgebot. George

1:21:43

will visualize your structure

1:21:45

later. He would say.

1:21:47

And she'd say...

1:21:48

This structure has been programmed

1:21:50

for reappearance on Wednesday.

1:21:54

Sami, still at that time trapped

1:21:57

in the most difficult mental storms

1:21:59

of her life.

1:22:01

found comfort in just

1:22:03

rolling with the routine. But

1:22:06

then

1:22:07

George Vidor vanished from group

1:22:09

therapy without a word.

1:22:11

By then, he'd listened to enough of Sammy's

1:22:13

talk in the sessions to

1:22:15

glean and figure out a fair amount

1:22:17

about her personal life,

1:22:19

including who she was related

1:22:21

to,

1:22:22

and that she had been dating a man named

1:22:25

Joel.

1:22:26

Me.

1:22:28

Inevitably, the question of why

1:22:30

Fyodor had left the group sessions so suddenly

1:22:33

and permanently was

1:22:34

investigated.

1:22:35

And Sami had only remembered that his responses

1:22:38

to her simply stopped after she told

1:22:40

him firmly she didn't want the robot

1:22:42

talk anymore. And

1:22:44

he had become completely silent.

1:22:46

This odd character who, according

1:22:48

to a counselor at St. Luke's refused

1:22:51

to go near personal computers,

1:22:53

having an intense paranoia

1:22:56

about mechanical parts he could

1:22:58

not see and touch.

1:23:01

But she recalled the look on his face as

1:23:03

he sat in that last group session,

1:23:05

offering absolutely nothing of himself

1:23:08

to the conversation, as always. She

1:23:10

said it was like something had both dawned in his eyes

1:23:13

and a light had gone out entirely.

1:23:17

He began to wonder if there was something very

1:23:19

wrong with him that no one knew about.

1:23:22

Then just like that,

1:23:24

he was gone.

1:23:25

When police went through the possessions left

1:23:27

behind in his room,

1:23:29

they found a great deal of science

1:23:31

fiction novels, few of them more

1:23:33

recent than the 1970s.

1:23:36

He seemed to read the genre to the exclusion

1:23:39

of anything else, except for magazines

1:23:41

like nuts and vaults, popular

1:23:44

science and servo.

1:23:47

He liked his research,

1:23:49

did George?

1:23:50

Liked to find things out on his own,

1:23:53

in secret. In fact,

1:23:55

a toll booth ticket and fast food

1:23:58

receipt left in his desk.

1:24:00

Eventually suggested he'd found his way

1:24:02

to Oysterville once before, a

1:24:05

month after starting group therapy

1:24:07

at St. Luke's. His obsession

1:24:09

with Sammy already taking shape. God

1:24:12

only knows how close to her and to

1:24:14

her parents he had been without

1:24:16

them ever knowing someone

1:24:18

was watching. Sammy

1:24:22

pulled up at the mansion at 6.30. Exhausted

1:24:25

from too many emotions already that day, She hugged

1:24:28

me somewhat stiffly and I didn't press

1:24:30

her on anything

1:24:31

Nina and Jonah kept their fridge pretty

1:24:34

well stocked and I made us some chicken

1:24:36

with some brown rice and gravy and

1:24:39

Sammy surprised me by Saying

1:24:41

she wouldn't at all mind at the sound of the TV

1:24:44

some sports thing I liked maybe just in the far

1:24:46

background

1:24:47

it would soothe her those voices

1:24:50

So I put on a blazers game and we

1:24:52

listened to a couple of old records of hers in

1:24:54

the small solarium that looked

1:24:56

out over the back pond.

1:24:58

We talked about

1:25:00

the merits of the various film versions

1:25:02

of A Star is Born and

1:25:04

tried desperately to find some common

1:25:07

ground in our opinions of

1:25:09

David and Lisa and

1:25:11

Pretty in Pink.

1:25:13

The stress of the day wiped us out by about nine

1:25:16

and we decided to go to bed after her folks

1:25:19

called to say they were still on schedule

1:25:21

to roll in at noon the next day. We

1:25:23

didn't say much to each other as we lay in the

1:25:25

dark, there in her bedroom decorated

1:25:28

during one of her college years when her parents

1:25:30

had first bought the house.

1:25:32

An REM poster of the bed, the

1:25:35

one she'd for all the pretty horses

1:25:37

and lost in translation beside

1:25:40

the bathroom door. A fading

1:25:42

remnants of the younger Sammy,

1:25:45

who

1:25:45

knew nothing of me.

1:25:47

I ran a hand through her hair the

1:25:49

way she liked, gently massaging

1:25:52

her temple. Her hair had gotten so

1:25:54

long. even dressing a bit

1:25:56

differently to

1:25:58

attempting sort of a different style.

1:26:00

Still very casual, but with

1:26:02

more carefully chosen color combinations.

1:26:05

And she didn't have pure sweats

1:26:07

and sneakers days anymore, like I still

1:26:09

did, not really. Even

1:26:12

her opinions seemed more forceful

1:26:14

now. Before

1:26:15

I slept, I thought about how quickly we had fallen

1:26:18

into our old routine, despite all

1:26:20

the things that had been happening.

1:26:22

A nice routine, for me. Comforting

1:26:26

like it used to be.

1:26:27

But it felt like something had

1:26:29

to change because she was

1:26:32

changing,

1:26:33

while I saw myself as rowing

1:26:35

in place, only with more

1:26:37

money to spend. Turning

1:26:40

over on my pillow, I couldn't stop myself

1:26:42

from thinking about how briefly my

1:26:45

time in the world and Sami's time

1:26:47

had intersected. I

1:26:49

had about as much true understanding

1:26:52

of her as a might of a portrait

1:26:54

of her in a gallery

1:26:55

I came to every day.

1:26:57

I could linger at it for hours in

1:27:00

a silent echoing room and

1:27:02

read the card on the wall about its history

1:27:04

and its meaning. But in

1:27:06

the end, it felt like the

1:27:09

lights were always turned out around

1:27:11

me. I always had to go back home

1:27:14

alone, and that portrait

1:27:17

could not belong

1:27:19

to me. 449 AM.

1:27:26

To this day, I can't precisely define

1:27:30

the sound I heard that woke me up. I

1:27:33

only know that it was something far away and so subtle

1:27:35

that I believe it was my subconscious

1:27:38

that reacted to it more than my waking

1:27:40

being.

1:27:42

A thump, a click, I just don't

1:27:44

know. Maybe only therapy

1:27:46

could recover that knowledge.

1:27:48

Sami looked very peaceful beside me.

1:27:51

I was too warm. I climbed

1:27:53

gently out of bed and before I turned

1:27:55

the thermostat down just a little,

1:27:58

I stood and listen.

1:27:59

a minute.

1:28:01

The house, so flawlessly built,

1:28:04

did not creak or moan or allow

1:28:07

the whistling of the wind to even slightly

1:28:09

disturb the piece.

1:28:12

I went to the window, which looked out

1:28:14

over the back of the property. On

1:28:16

that clear night, I could see that

1:28:19

the pond down there had partially

1:28:22

frozen over as the temperatures continued

1:28:24

to fall. Everything out

1:28:27

there had a grim, gray cast

1:28:29

to it, the pond's surface

1:28:31

dull and lifeless. That

1:28:34

weak ice would not support

1:28:36

the weight of even a child, probably. Only

1:28:40

in the act of turning away from

1:28:42

the window did I see him.

1:28:44

At the furthest edge

1:28:47

of my peripheral sight as the

1:28:49

contents of the bedroom again swallowed

1:28:52

almost my whole field of vision.

1:28:54

A tall, thin man

1:28:57

standing before the pond,

1:28:59

draped in an overcoat that went down

1:29:02

past his knees, hands

1:29:05

clasped behind his back, short,

1:29:08

messy hair blowing around his head.

1:29:12

He was gone in an instant, a

1:29:14

remnant of a dream that hadn't been able to find

1:29:16

me in my sleep. No

1:29:19

human, no ghost lingered

1:29:21

out there in the cold. Yet

1:29:23

I knew I had just seen

1:29:26

Sammy's decades-old protector,

1:29:29

the wanderer who did not really

1:29:31

exist. That was

1:29:34

him. A crazy

1:29:36

thought took hold of me. He's

1:29:38

facing the wrong direction. He

1:29:40

can't protect her looking there." I

1:29:44

formed my hands into fists to release

1:29:46

the jitters. All right, what's

1:29:48

happening here, I thought. And

1:29:51

I slipped out of the bedroom into the hallway in my

1:29:54

sweatpants and old t-shirt, leaving

1:29:56

the door open behind me. I

1:29:59

passed a spare bedroom.

1:30:00

on my left and was then at the top

1:30:02

of a carpeted staircase that hooked

1:30:04

down into the airy and expansive

1:30:07

living room, which I could see spread out below

1:30:09

me in total because of the fashionable

1:30:12

open design. The room was

1:30:14

dark like the rest of the house, except

1:30:16

for the kitchen and master bedroom upstairs

1:30:19

where single bulbs struggled

1:30:21

to push away the gloom.

1:30:23

The dark down there presented a logical

1:30:26

problem.

1:30:28

We'd left the living room lights on

1:30:30

when we'd gone to bed. Of that, I was

1:30:32

sure. But then I thought

1:30:35

Sammy or her parents had said something once

1:30:37

about them being on a timer.

1:30:39

Not that night, no, but

1:30:40

once before at some point when I had

1:30:42

visited.

1:30:43

So it made

1:30:45

sense, sort of. I didn't

1:30:47

live there.

1:30:48

I didn't know things.

1:30:51

I descended the

1:30:52

open staircase, whisper quiet.

1:30:56

It bent twice, architecturally

1:30:58

ambitious if not entirely functionally necessary.

1:31:01

When

1:31:01

I reached the bottom floor I listened again,

1:31:04

looking

1:31:04

down the hallway into the solarium

1:31:07

on the west side.

1:31:08

Nothing moved in the kitchen of which I could see

1:31:11

only an illuminated sliver two dozen

1:31:13

steps away. The electric

1:31:15

fireplace near me exuded the faintest

1:31:18

red glow and gentlest ambient

1:31:20

heat turned down

1:31:22

to almost nothing.

1:31:25

"'It could be,' Iris

1:31:27

Ricks wrote later, after

1:31:29

weeks of studying the documents and evidence that

1:31:31

accompanied the case, that Vidor

1:31:34

recognized the chance in

1:31:36

willingly becoming a living, breathing

1:31:39

robot to completely

1:31:41

abandon the free will he found

1:31:44

so oppressive and bewildering all his life.

1:31:47

But more importantly, it gave

1:31:49

him the chance to ascribe his darkest

1:31:52

impulse as to another being entirely,

1:31:55

something pre-programmed, without

1:31:57

control,

1:31:58

and thus without guilt.

1:32:00

In this way, he could utterly give in

1:32:02

to the homicidal rages which

1:32:04

were more and more consuming him and

1:32:07

resulted in the four deaths

1:32:09

we know about. As the frequency

1:32:11

of the rages increased, he

1:32:14

may have been looking for the ultimate escape from

1:32:16

human guilt. He likely found

1:32:18

the key after the surgery which

1:32:20

rendered him partially artificial, when

1:32:23

Samantha Cash first began speaking

1:32:26

to him in her robot voice. These

1:32:29

factors could have created a powerful connection,

1:32:31

a powerful passageway that had

1:32:34

never existed for him before.

1:32:36

And when the police came calling, and

1:32:39

he perhaps guessed that his only

1:32:41

ally in the world had betrayed him to

1:32:43

them, his last course

1:32:46

was set. When

1:32:48

in the living room I felt a faint unexplained

1:32:51

draft on my face, I

1:32:54

turned to the house's shadowy

1:32:56

south side, and a

1:32:58

few steps down the hallway toward the den

1:33:01

brought into view the wide open window at

1:33:03

the hallway's

1:33:04

end. George Vidor

1:33:07

was already inside the house,

1:33:10

standing on a pricey wool carpet.

1:33:13

Spotting me, he came forward

1:33:16

slowly as I backed into the bigger,

1:33:18

safer space of the living room. If

1:33:21

I had explored the kitchen beforehand,

1:33:24

I might have spotted the The old stolen

1:33:26

minivan he'd patiently tracked Sami

1:33:29

in parked far down the curb

1:33:31

in the no-man's land between this house

1:33:33

and the next. Vidor

1:33:36

wore gray mechanics overalls,

1:33:39

and it was figured out later that he had shaved his

1:33:41

head mostly bald in the days prior.

1:33:44

Some object was blocking

1:33:46

the lower part of his face.

1:33:48

It was a small square box

1:33:51

made of metal, with

1:33:53

a thick mesh center.

1:33:55

It was tied there, tight over

1:33:57

his mouth, with a thin plastic strap.

1:34:01

On both his right and left hip there appeared

1:34:03

one green glowing circle,

1:34:06

two small lights affixed to

1:34:08

his belt, having almost the intensity

1:34:11

of neon.

1:34:12

The lights winked on, then winked

1:34:14

out, came on and went out

1:34:16

again, a pattern fed by a single 9

1:34:19

volt battery. In his right

1:34:21

hand, Vaidor held a long, thin

1:34:24

object made stoutly of wood. Its

1:34:27

butt end was pointed toward

1:34:30

me, an iron stump

1:34:32

tapering at a five-inch

1:34:34

hooked blade.

1:34:35

It was the heavy farming

1:34:38

hoe he had beaten Dennis Thorpe

1:34:41

to death with.

1:34:42

His eyes were gaping unnaturally

1:34:45

wide as he moved toward me. He looked

1:34:47

sick, dangerously emaciated.

1:34:50

Now a single sound broke through the house

1:34:52

as Vy'Dor lifted one foot absurdly

1:34:55

high with weird slowness,

1:34:59

and then stamped it down

1:35:01

hard on the carpet before him,

1:35:04

then repeated this motion

1:35:06

with the other foot.

1:35:09

foot,

1:35:11

right foot,

1:35:12

back and forth, tilting

1:35:14

his torso forward not just for balance,

1:35:16

but in a crude simulation

1:35:18

of a rusty, two-legged machine

1:35:21

just learning to walk. The

1:35:23

weapon he held, heavy and awkward

1:35:25

enough to make the sequence more difficult.

1:35:28

It was several seconds before Vaidor

1:35:30

appeared in the dim light of the living room. I

1:35:33

had backed all the way to the base of the staircase,

1:35:36

and as I reached behind me to touch the railing,

1:35:39

I hollered out for Sammy as loud

1:35:41

as I could. Vaidor

1:35:43

ended his forced march and stood

1:35:45

straighter, carefully rebalancing

1:35:48

himself.

1:35:49

I couldn't see his mouth, but I heard him

1:35:51

speak through the mesh set into

1:35:53

that handmade prosthetic. The

1:35:56

voice that came out was primitively

1:35:58

amplified by...

1:36:00

another battery and single wire,

1:36:02

echoing in the cavernous room. Reveal,

1:36:05

faulty, robot, queen,

1:36:08

four, correction, he

1:36:10

said to the mask. The

1:36:12

little green lights on each hip

1:36:14

flickered and went out again.

1:36:16

I heard the bedroom door open upstairs.

1:36:19

Why? I said to this man.

1:36:21

I was gripping the handrail ferociously beside

1:36:23

me, my eyes flitting left and right,

1:36:25

looking for something to defend myself with.

1:36:28

Vidor lifted his surgically repaired right

1:36:31

leg, arthritically and precariously,

1:36:34

almost falling over,

1:36:36

readjusting his grip on the farm hoe,

1:36:38

whose heavy blade I could see better now. He

1:36:41

brought his foot down hard on the wooden

1:36:43

planks peeking through two sections of

1:36:45

carpet. Hostile actions

1:36:48

detected, the George Bot told

1:36:50

me. Erasure required.

1:36:53

Sammy was running down the stairs now,

1:36:56

barefoot in her sweatshirt and shorts. Vytor

1:36:58

craned his neck upwards with artificial

1:37:01

effort. Every move he made seemed to

1:37:03

be dictated by an internal discipline

1:37:06

to be something other than what

1:37:08

his birth biology had dictated.

1:37:11

Sammy stopped at the last hook in

1:37:13

the staircase. I could only see her through

1:37:15

the gaps in the risers. She

1:37:17

was holding something in her right hand, something she had secretly

1:37:20

borrowed from her cat sitter as she became

1:37:22

paranoid about being followed.

1:37:24

A.22 caliber short,

1:37:27

the smallest and weakest handgun she

1:37:29

could find. She was frightened of them but couldn't

1:37:31

stop herself.

1:37:33

Unbeknownst to me, she had hidden it under

1:37:35

the bed upstairs after dinner. Vaidor

1:37:38

did not suddenly charge and pursue

1:37:40

either one of us. He had no intention

1:37:42

of charging us. Iris Rix

1:37:45