‘We’re pushing him too far,’ Clyde says, turning down the dials. The roaring hum of the room settles into a dull buzz and both Clyde and Helen watch as the twitching man on the table through the plate glass window slowly begins to settle into stillness.
‘We’re not going to get far if we keep taking breaks like this,’ Helen says, scanning the readouts. ‘We won’t make the deadline.’
Clyde’s jaw tenses. Like he doesn’t know what’s at stake. He tries not to show his agitation on his face but Helen picks up on small details like that. It’s her job.
‘You can’t feel too much sympathy for him,’ she says, not turning away from the readouts. ‘You know what he’s done.’
‘If we keep going at this rate we run the risk of permanent damage to the brain.’
‘We’re way below that threshold,’ she says dully, ‘as you well know.’
‘I meant psychological damage. No one should be enduring that much pain.’
Helen raises an eyebrow. ‘You mean to imply that he hasn’t caused a significant amount of pain by his actions?’
‘So this is meeting out some payback is it?’ Clyde snaps, unable to restrain his objective demeanour. ‘I thought this was all a means to an end?’
‘It is,’ says Helen. ‘If we don’t get those transmissions translated, we’ll have no way to communicate with whatever comes out of that when it collapses.’
He knows what she means, but Clyde hates looking at it. That massive tear on the horizon. A wound in the fabric of space.
‘I wonder, if a machine could process it, would you use it instead of him?’
Helen doesn’t answer at first and for a moment, Clyde thinks she has ignored the question entirely. ‘Yes, of course,’ she says quietly. ‘Now power it up again. We’re running out of time.’
Paddy Dobson
5th April 2022