What Doesn't Kill Us

by Scott Carney

Hof lies back on one of the tables and closes his eyes. They roll back in his sockets and flutter. He turns red and when he opens his eyes he is once again bursting with energy. One of the problems with following someone with superpowers is that my body doesn’t obey the same rules of rest and recovery that his does. And now that we’re close to the summit his mind is focused only on setting a record. Everyone else is recovering and waiting for a hot lunch that we’d been told was on the way. Hof checks the time. It’s 11:40. Then he shouts, “Okay, everyone. We go in twenty minutes. We’re not on the mountain because we want to eat. We’re here to make the summit.” The message lands flat in a room full of confused faces. I’m not the only one to mutter an obscenity. Sensing insubordination, Hof revises his message 3 minutes later. “Never mind rest,” he says. “We go now and make a new record!” He launches himself out of the room and walks down the wide path between Kibo’s humble buildings and into a collection of mountain guides. Mike Nelson, the guide who helped retrieve Mallory’s effects off Everest, tries to block Hof’s path. “You can’t go now,” he tries to command Hof. But the gnome-like leader of our expedition simply brushes past him. He heads up the mountain towing two Belgian ladies who had come on the trip to enhance their corporate leadership skills. I watch the movement of his neon orange shoes from the doorway while trying to decide whether I have a duty to follow the ...