“So you’re saying that in my ‘base life,’ I took the safe way out. I swam to the surface and let Piranha go down without me.”
“No. I think that in that long and safe base life, you didn’t even go to the Naval Academy — too much risk of eventually having to do something dangerous. You probably went to Purdue and studied mechanical engineering and lived your working life out in a cubicle, with a nice safe wife waiting for you in a nice safe home. And this? All this? This is you wondering what life could have been like if only you’d taken more risk.”
“And so there are a thousand variations. There’s lives where I did swim to the surface, right?”
“There’s lives where on that midshipman cruise, you decided to go on a nice, safe aircraft carrier, not down to the scary depths of the submarine force.”
“So what’s the point of all this?” Pacino asked.
“The point is, in the afterlife, after watching all the thousands of lives that resulted from different decisions, your soul will eventually have no regrets. Your soul will see every decision’s result, every outcome. And in that review of every life that emerges from a decision, your soul will learn and evolve and find peace. You’ll become a more powerful you. And then, who knows, maybe you decide to do it again, and you come back. A new you, without the conscious memories of your past lives, but the unique individuality of your soul is always with you.”
“You know, Commander, that sounds completely whacko,” Pacino said, but finding himself smiling.
Fishman smiled back. “I presented that theory in my doctorate board in philosophy at Old Dominion U.”
“And?”
“They failed me, sent me back to do another thesis, but by that time I was done with philosophy. But at least I learned that the world isn’t ready for the real truth.”
“Sorry to hear, Commander. Maybe it is a bit odd, but something to think about, I suppose. At least it’s making me feel better about going out that hatch.”
Fishman clapped Pacino on the shoulder. “Good man. So when we invade this target submarine, remember, it’s just a video game.”
Pacino smiled. “I will, Commander.”
Against the aft bulkhead of the lockout trunk, Senior Chief Ronald “Scooter” Tucker-Santos strapped on his Mark 6 non-lethal attack weapon, his Mark 17 propulsion unit and a waterproof, portable emergency medical kit, then looked over at Petty Officer First Class Hoshi “Swan Creek” Oneida.
“Skipper giving that newbie officer that speech about ‘this is all a video game’?” Tucker-Santos asked.
Oneida looked at Tucker-Santos. “Yup. Works every time. Something about someone making you doubt the reality of walking into combat makes it bearable. ‘It’s only a movie.’ It helped me in Tokyo, Doctor Scooter.”
“Yeah? Do you still believe in Fishman’s theory?”
“I wonder.” Oneida said. “The Skipper is crazy. But something happened and I’ve been meaning to ask Skip about it. If every decision creates a unique branch and a new reality, do those branches ever touch each other? And if they touch, is it possible that you’d be moving along one branch and suddenly find yourself in another?”
“Something happened? What?”
“Back in Japan, my cousin was very close to our grandmother, and in her last days, he sat with her by her hospital bed, only leaving her side for bio-breaks and the occasional shower, having food brought up from the cafeteria for him to eat in her room.”
“Okay, Swan,” Tucker-Santos said.
“So my grandmother died on a Tuesday in May. My cousin left the hospital and went home, completely overwhelmed with grief. He can’t sleep, but finally naps at maybe five in the morning, Wednesday morning, mind you, and at eleven the hospital is calling him. It’s grandmother’s favorite nurse on the line, asking when he’ll be at the hospital, because his grandmother was awake and asking for him. The day after she died, she’s there, asking for him.”
“What?”
“Yeah. So he goes to the hospital, gets there at noon Wednesday, and grandmother is sitting up and having a few bites of lunch. She lasted ten more days before she died again.”
Tucker-Santos looked over at Hoshi Oneida.
“Yeah,” Oneida said. “Two complete parallel realities.”
“Did your cousin ask Grannie if she remembered dying?”
“He told her the whole story. She told him he was crazy. She told him he dreamed it all from exhaustion that Tuesday. But my cousin? He still had the pamphlet the favorite nurse gave him when grandmother died, labeled, ‘When Your Loved One Passes Away’ with a hand-written recommendation of which undertaker to call. And that pamphlet? Favorite Nurse Girl had no memory of giving it to him or of writing anything on it.”
The two SEALs were silent for some time. Grip Aquatong, having heard the exchange, came over and leaned on the aft bulkhead by Scooter and Swan. “You know what I wonder?” he asked the others.
“What’s that, Grip?”
“In a video game, does taking a bullet still hurt?”
“If we fuck up,” Oneida said, deciding to check his ammo one more time, “we’ll find out.”
Pacino realized he was truly exhausted, thinking about Fishman’s alternate endings theory. He shut his eyes and concentrated on making his muscles relax in his toes, then his feet, then his shins, then his thighs, working his way up to his neck, until he was completely relaxed. He imagined himself in a dark movie theater, where he was alone in a row a few from the front in the center, and the screen was blank, with a word dimly appearing on the screen, the word spelling SLEEP.
Five minutes later, Lieutenant Anthony M. Pacino, U.S. Navy, lay in a deep sleep on the deck of the submarine USS Vermont, headed into a combat mission.
BOOK 4:
CHANGE OF COMMAND
19
USS Vermont AN/BYG-1 History Module // Ship’s Deck Log—
Date: 3 June.
Time: 1012Z.
Status: USS Vermont in trail of target submarine Panther. Target has been steaming deep and submerged since trail operation began. Awaiting target’s next excursion to periscope depth.
Update: Panther’s noise signature indicates target is preparing to come to periscope depth.
“This is finally it, gentlemen,” Commander Fishman said. “What’s not an option?”
“Fucking up,” Lieutenant junior grade Aquatong replied, pulling his mask down over his face.
“Control, Lockout Trunk, request permission to flood down the trunk,” Fishman said into the 7MC communication box nestled in the overhead of the trunk, in a protected space separated from the rest of the trunk by a vertical wall. When the trunk flooded, this space would maintain an air bubble and stay dry.
“Lockout Trunk, Control, flood the trunk,” the pilot said over the comm box’s speaker, the COB, Master Chief Quartane, at the pilot station, having taken the battlestations watch over from Dankleff, since Dankleff was on the Panther boarding party.
“Flood the trunk, Lockout Trunk, aye.” Fishman looked at Tucker-Santos. “Doctor Scooter, check shut the side hatch.”
“Side hatch shut and locked, Skipper,” Tucker-Santos reported.