The Ferryman

by Justin Cronin

“Proctor,” my father says, “it’s so good to see you.” He wraps my hand, the one holding his chin, with both of his. His gaze is intent as a laser. He leans forward and lowers his voice. “Have we arrived?”

“Almost.”

He nods. “Because I would very much like t...

This statement comes up later on p. 191.

“We’re going to get out of the car,” I instruct my father. “Can you do that with me?”

His expression sours. He shakes his head gravely. “The world is not the world.”

The worst is upon me. I am losing him; he is sinking into madness. “Just stay with me. I’...

“You’re no...

won’t be the first to reach my father. One of the watchmen has caught up to me. He is young and strong, a man eager to prove himself. Ropes of brawny muscle bulge beneath the blue fabric of his uniform. His leather belt creaks with gizmos—handcuffs, a shocker, a long, retractable baton. Why would such a man care that I’ve pulled my badge from my suit coat and held it high, that I have identified myself as a ferryman at the level of managing director, that I have ordered him to stand down? He is simply incapable, a dog cut from his leash. He applies a final burst of speed, and as my father turns to face his attacker, the watchman tackles him, the two of them hurtling to the concrete, and out comes the shocker, which he presses against my father’s throat.

My father convulses once, his body stretched into grotesque rigidity as it arcs above the pavement, then collapses like a deflated balloon. The rest is a blur of heedless violence. Even as I enact it, I am aware that it will come back to haunt me—everything is being recorded by the drones that hover overhead. I reach down, yank the watchman by his belt to pull him off my father, wedge his neck into the crook of my elbow, and squeeze, compressing his carotid artery. He begins to fight me, clawing at my arms, but surprise is on my side, and I am no weakling. His life means nothing to me.

Somehow, the better part of wisdom triumphs. I release the watchman, who slithers to the ground, out like a light.

I kneel beside my father.

His lips work soundlessly, fighting for speech. I bend to listen. A single word takes shape.

“Oranios.”

“Dad, look at me.” I

“Don’t you see?” he says. “It’s all…Oranios.”

“Oranios,” my father murmurs. “Oranios, Oranios, all Oranios…”

“Proctor?”

“Yes, I’m here.”

“I’m frigh...

I take his hand and hold it as the countdown commences. Ten. Nine. E...

“I just didn’t want to fo...

“I love you,” I tell him.

“I’m sorry, but I have to go.”

“Mother

Guess how you'll feel when you find out who SHE is! P. 319.

He was leaving us, of course, because he had a better offer. Why should a man like Warren Singh be saddled with an evening as dull as ours? Probably a woman was already lounging in his bed, clad in a combination of high-dollar silk and nothing at all, listlessly paging through a magazine while she wondered what was taking him so long.

No "scrolling"? No smartphones in this world?

“Mrs. Bennett

"Mrs."? Pretty old-fashioned.

Thus, to the Central Library. Within its vast, dimly lit maze lay the collected knowledge of the ages—the apex of human civilization, from a time before “the horrors.” The reference room was suitably majestic, like a cathedral or a medieval dining hall. Iron chandeliers hung on black chains above the rows of tables, where students and scholars were earnestly reading and scribbling.

No computers.

“Is there a CIS terminal available?”

A VERY primitive computer. Uses a command line. Usage described in following paragraphs.

The Central Information System was not available to the general public, of course. Even I, a managing director, had only limited access. Still, I hoped it would prove sufficient to my purpose.

The place was oddly quiet: no clicking typewriters or shuffling papers,

Not a modern office!

“I guess it’s possible, but the man was my guardian. Surely one of us would have felt it before. He also seemed very impatient to get to the pier. ‘I would very much like to arrive soon’ was how he put it.”

We got Jason’s address from the directory at a phone kiosk.

“So, is Cynthia even your real name?”

“That part’s true. Around here, though, I’m known as ‘Mother.’ ”

All told, the journey will take us two hundred and thirty years. Two hundred thirty years, one hundred nineteen days, and fourteen hours, to be precise.”

“Quite an undertaking.”

“I’d say so. But most of the technology we’re using is off-the-shelf; we’re just enlarging the scale. The same can’t be said for life support. How do you keep eighty thousand people alive on a journey ...

“You’re referring to consciousness ...

“How is it different from other form...

“Well, as you know, stasis, or long-duration sleep, has been around for some time. For short periods—say, traveling to our settlement on Mars or mining operations in the asteroid belt—it works quite well. What we’ve discovered, though, is that somewhere between the five- and ten-y...

“You’re referring to the Neptune Pro...

“There are others, but that’s the most dramatic instance. Over time, ment...

The crew of NP1 emerged from stasis perfectly healthy but showing profound mental distress—paranoia, confusion, hallucinations, catatonia. The onboard diagnostics found no physical changes to their brains or central nervous systems, and yet all of them, to varying degrees...

No one could figure it out. That is, until now.”

“Yes. The problem was quite simple, actually. They ran out of dreams.”

That's a new one!

your dreams are a subconscious re-sorting of your waking life, which serves as the source material.

“But what if there’s no source material? Or, in the case of long-duration sleep, what if the sleeper runs out of source material?

They continued to dream, but over time these dreams became repetitive and nightmarish, a mental hell from which they couldn’t escape, even when they finally emerged from stasis.

Imagine what it would be like if the worst things in your life were reconstituted in your dreams and you were forced to relive them over and over for years.”

“Now, enlarge the problem to the scale of interstellar travel—in our case, a voyage of over two centuries. Obviously, conventional stasis wouldn’t work. It would be, in fact, a form of mental torture. What we needed was a way to give the ship’s complement eight hundred years of fresh material.”