The House of Illusionists, page 8
We make it out. It takes forty minutes to go two miles, but we make it.
The water calms. The fog has begun to clear by now, and through the dissipating haze the sun lights the scene. Rolling toward me is the wave, my wave, a dazzling mountain of water, glassy and green. It’s bigger and moving faster than I’ve ever seen it—the face at least eighty feet high.
Why surfing? I was asked in an online Q and A. Why such a niche sport in this day and age, especially with the approach that you take? Have you considered surfing with more modern gear and apps?
There were several things I could have said.
I could have said: This is the way I distinguish myself in a crowded field of mind-casters.
I could have said: I’m spearheading a return to a more authentic expression of human achievement. Body augmentations and mods have their place, and the new reflex-enhancing apps have enabled incredible feats. But I want a purer form of sport; I want to remind people of what the raw human body and mind can do.
Or I might have told the truth, and said: When I was starting out, I didn’t have money for the best neuromod apps and augments. And then, my friends and I started getting attention, and we realized that this was the way to play it.
I might have said: It’s because I learned to surf as a little girl growing up in southern California, back when people still lived there, back before the currents and storm patterns changed and the swells moved north and the fires burned everything down. Back when regular people still took to the waves, and Trestles was crowded on every good day. I learned to surf the real way, with an unaugmented body and non-motorized board. And then I came north to Oregon with my family and all the other drought refugees, and the world was wet and green and strange. The kids at the new school teased me; the sea felt like ice. But I pulled on a wetsuit and took out my board, and I was home. Surfing was home. It always will be.
“It’s the biggest rush there is,” I told the interviewer aloud. “It’s not just speed—you can get that other ways—but it’s skill and mastery and riding the energy of the sea. You can’t feel the wave the same way with the new tech-boards and apps. It’s hard to explain.”
I looked at the camera. “Download one of my mind-casts,” I told the audience. “Any of them at all. You’ll feel it for yourselves.”
Brett is the first one to take on the Ghost Wave. These waves are too large to catch paddling in with unaugmented arms, so we use our jet skis to tow each other in—a deliberate recreation of the classic technique of an earlier generation of big-wave surfers.
I slingshot Brett into a clean seventy-footer. He slices across a face that’s the height of an office building seven stories high. He carves a long, swooping arc, down and then up to the wave’s crest and down again, staying seconds ahead of the falling lip, and as he pulls safely out of the collapsing wave, he’s screaming in joy.
Then the other tow team has a turn—Jake whipped into a wave by Ken driving jet ski. Jake angles down a face at least as tall as Brett’s monster; then, insanely, he cuts back up under the pitching lip and into one of the biggest tubes I’ve ever seen. We all hold our breaths as he disappears behind the pouring, thundering curtain. Seconds later, the barrel spits out a plume of spray. And he’s there, on his feet, riding out on the last surge of that barrel’s breath.
Even Taj, watching and recording remotely from miles away, is yelling and hooting with us. Ken swoops in on jet ski to pick his partner up, and it’s off for the next wave.
They keep rolling in, these beautiful, flowing, roaring sculptures of water and light. Brett and Jake carve smoothly down faces like green glass. And then it’s time to switch drivers and surfers. It’s my turn.
Brett’s eyes are still shining as I position my feet in the straps on my board. I take hold of the tow rope behind the ski. And we’re skimming forward to meet the swells. The first one coming at us is large, but there’s one behind that, and another after that, too—a set, and each bigger than the last. “This one! This one!” I scream at the third, and Brett opens the throttle and we’re on it, the beast rising under us. I drop the tow rope, and he drives away to the safety of the shoulder. The wave keeps rising beneath me, steepening; it’s drawing up the entire sea as it stands. It’s a vertical wall, and now there’s no time to do anything but point my board straight and beeline it right down the face.
This is the thing about riding big waves: I’m not thinking about anything else when I’m on one.
I’m not thinking of the people logged into my mind-feed, slumped blank-eyed and slack-jawed on ratty couches or sleek form-adjusting chairs; scattered in rural land-locked towns and cities in Iowa, Minnesota, the Great Plains; tapping in from Portland, Seattle, Vancouver, Calgary; insomniac teens in Beijing or a middle-aged manager in Sydney who once surfed in his youth. I’m not thinking of my counts and hits and investor demands and whether or not this group cast will do well. I’m not thinking about the shitty terms in that new mind-cast distribution deal, or the new equipment I’d like, or how if I were smarter and richer, I’d have insisted on more backup water safety, maybe even a support boat or helicopter on call. I’m not thinking of the cost of medical insurance. I’m not thinking of my mother, who keeps asking if I’ll ever go back to college and get a real job. I’m not thinking about Alex, who’s likely riding in my mind right now, the only time I’ve ever let him or any lover into my mind: when I know I won’t be thinking of them, or of us, at all.
I’m not even thinking about the next wave.
I’m only thinking about this one, at this time. Just this moment, the ocean roaring and moving under and all around me. The lip of the wave gathering behind me. The feel of the water under my feet, and the split-second adjustments I must make to stay alive.
The lip crashes down behind me, nearly at my heels; the spray from the explosion catches me and nearly knocks me off my feet. I stay on the board, barely. The world is white mist. Brett’s there suddenly, zooming in on jet ski to pick me up. I swing up onto the sled behind the ski.
My heart’s beating hard enough to trigger an arrhythmia in a vulnerable mind-rider. I was running for my life the whole way.
“That was insane—the biggest one yet!” Brett tells me as we race out from the whitewater. I hear my friends whooping for me over the audio connection. “You could have driven semi-trucks through the barrel that was behind you!” Jake yells, and Ken says, “Two semis at once!” and Mandy just keeps repeating, “Holy fuck.” “The biggest one yet,” Taj says solemnly. He has the software for measuring wave height from trough to crest, so I believe him. I don’t ask for the number of feet or meters. I don’t check my own sensor feeds for the stats. Another swell is looming on the horizon. “Let’s go,” I tell Brett, and we’re off for the next.
We fall and wipe out. All of us. It’s almost inevitable in waves like these.
Jake falls in his next barrel; Brett hits chop on the face and goes spinning. Ken, after three flawless rides, suffers a nightmare: He falls while still near the top and is sucked up the moving face and then caught and pitched down within the massive, plunging lip. We all freeze at the sight; we all assume that he’s pulverized, dead. But he pops up, alive, his safety vest inflating and doing its job. It’s Mandy who makes the rescue, racing on jet ski into the seething cauldron of whitewater to fetch him. They escape the impact zone before the next wave hits, and he’s shaken and beaten but miraculously unhurt.
I fall as well.
These are the moments edited out of a polished mind-cast. These moments when you’re driven down, down, and the water is black, and you curl yourself into a ball because the whirling force of the wave is trying to tear off your limbs. You’re caught in the spin-cycle of the world’s largest washing machine, and you’re pummeled as you tumble helplessly, blind. The air in your lungs is slowly burning away. It takes everything you have to force away the panic. You’re reminded that you’re not in control. You never were.
I’m flushed to the surface; I’m sucking air through thick foam. Brett’s there to pluck me from the water, just as partners are supposed to do. I realize that I’ve been shot half a football field’s length from where I fell. I’m gasping on the ski’s rescue sled. “Are you okay?” Brett asks. I am. I’m thrilled with just being alive.
We’re at it for hours. An offshore wind picks up, blowing straight into the wave faces, grooming them and making them stand taller. Accidents happen when you’re tired; everyone knows that, but no one’s tired; we’re mainlining top-grade adrenaline. Who knows when this wave will break again? Who knows the next time that distant storms and winds align just right, focusing the sea’s energy just so at this spot? It might never be this good again.
Brett’s ripping a monstrous wave as though it’s half the size, carving sharp turns, snapping off the top; he’s surfing as though it were a mild day at our home break. He’ll never reach the performance levels of a star running top-shelf neuromod apps—the neural programs that enhance reflexes and reaction times, that suppress fear while still maintaining fear’s focus. But I think, with his natural gifts, that he comes close.
He’s not a Luddite or fool; none of us are. We do what we can to stay safe and surf well. We have the best classic boards you can buy, made with the best modern materials. We wear health monitoring apps like everyone else; we have wet suits with GPS trackers and all the safety features we can afford. We use technology selectively, as Alex would say.
But we want to feel it when we surf. Not use neural programs to turn ourselves into perfect, contest-winning, record-breaking machines. I’ve experienced the mind-feeds of those neural app users; I know the difference.
The ocean’s still throwing out bombs, these incredible waves. Brett’s making a turn when something happens: I see his body twist and pitch forward. He bounces off the water’s surface. And then the white fury of the peeling lip catches up and buries him.
I’m on it; I can see the tracking signal from his suit shining on my visual display, overlaid on the real-world visuals. I shoot forward into the whitewater. It’s chaos, but his tracking signal is a bright red light through the spray. I see him with my real vision, a dark figure bobbing in the water. I go in to grab him, but when I pull alongside, his hands slip off the rescue sled. I come back around. I can see that something’s wrong; his face has gone nearly as white as the foam. Taj, watching from above, shouts a warning about the incoming wave. I can sense it bearing down on us. I grab Brett’s arms and use the acceleration of the ski to provide the momentum to flip him onto the sled.
I gun us out of there.
But not fast enough. I know that the next wave will hit the moment before it does.
There’s the sharp thunder-crack as the lip hits, almost right on us. And in that same instant, I see nothing but white, as the blast of the wave’s collapse catches us and hurls us into the air.
Why do you do it? strangers comment on my social feeds.
Why do you keep doing it? my mother has asked. She’s sat through some of my mind-casts; she should understand.
But I know what she’s asking. She’s waving one hand about helplessly as she talks, as she mentions those barrels I caught in Chile two years ago, and how happy I was then and how those waves didn’t seem so big, so scary. She’ll mention other sessions in smaller waves, exploring Vancouver Island’s hidden breaks, paddling into double-overheads with Brett at our regular spot, catching long tubes that seemed to go on forever off the coast of Namibia. They were all good rides. She’s right; I was perfectly happy then.
But I can’t stand still; I can’t keep at the same level. I have to keep pushing it, changing it up, exploring new breaks and techniques and approaches. I have to keep surfing bigger waves.
My most dedicated followers understand. They’ve been there from the beginning, and they log in to every ride. They understand how challenge and fear feed the thrill. They feel it when I get too comfortable, when I’m too far back from the edge. The edge is where they—and I—want to be.
I’m flying through the air; I see the distant shore—green pines, cliffs—hanging inverted before me. And then I’m plunging down into darkness.
My safety vest inflates, and I surface. Brett is floating about twenty yards away. A wall of churning whitewater is behind him, blotting out the world. It’s coming so fast. I don’t have time to deflate my vest and dive to duck its power. I barely have time to draw a breath before it’s upon us.
There are moments that you don’t want your loved ones to share. Times that you hope they’re not logged in, feeling what you feel.
The force is like a wall of concrete slamming into me, and I’m driven down again, down, and everything is ringing. I’m spinning, spinning, spinning, and the beating seems to go on forever.
I come to the surface again. There’s another wave upon me. Again.
It knocks out what little air I had left in my lungs.
When the body is denied oxygen and carbon dioxide builds up in the blood, the body begins to spasm. Fingers and toes begin to tingle. The urge to draw in a breath—even when you know it’s a suffocating breath of salt water—becomes overwhelming.
I force myself to relax. My mind to empty. The urge to breathe passes.
I hear Mandy on the audio connection, her voice steady and calm. “Hang on. We’ll be right there to get you; we can see where you are. Just hang on.”
So I do.
Even with my vest fully inflated, it seems to take a long time to break the surface. But I do, and I’m gulping air hungrily, desperately.
There’s another wave left in the set.
There are multiple waves left in the set.
Taj, from somewhere above, can see them all and is counting them off—Just three more left, hang on, he says —and I can hear the others talking to me, talking to both Brett and me, calming, reassuring, staying with us. The poundings blur together; it’s a nightmare, but it’s a nightmare I’ve known. I’ve been held under before, caught in multiple-wave poundings before, although this is the worst I’ve ever had.
And then I hear the jet ski, and Mandy’s there, and she grabs me, and she gets us both out of there before the last wave of the set hits.
I’m gasping on the rescue sled ,and the world is still spinning. Tiny black dots swarm across my vision. My body feels pounded to tissue paper, and I’ve never been so grateful to Mandy in all my life.
“Brett?” I say when I can finally talk.
Ken’s voice on the audio, tense: “Got him. I’ve called the medics, and they’re on their way.”
“Brett?” I say again. Brett doesn’t answer.
We all go together to take Brett back to shore. By now, he’s recovered a little from the initial shock, but the pain from his injuries has come flooding in, and the choppy ride back doesn’t help. He lies face down on Ken’s rescue sled and bites a strap to keep from screaming. I’m on Ken’s ski, too, trying to keep Brett still. He sprained a knee on his fall on the wave’s face, and then the falling lip shattered the femur of his other leg. This is what the emergency room doctor surmises, remotely reviewing the data from Brett’s health app sensors. It’s a miracle that Ken got him out before much more damage could occur. Matter-of-factly, the doctor tells us to keep the leg as still as we can, to keep the broken bone bits from sliding around. It’s lucky, she adds, that a bone hasn’t punctured Brett’s femoral artery. He’d bleed out to death within minutes.
It’s not exactly a comforting thought as we drive back through the rough shore break.
But we make it to shore, and he’s still alive, and the medics and ambulance vehicle are there. One of the medics jacks into Brett’s health apps to start a localized pain block, and Brett’s face immediately eases. By the time they bundle him away, he’s joking about his fall. He’s safe, and his husband has been called and will be meeting him at the hospital.
The rest of us are left standing on the beach, looking at one another.
There’s still a mind-cast to be recorded. There are still waves to be ridden before a predicted storm tomorrow comes and blows it all to worthless chop.
“Are you going back out?” Jake asks me carefully. His green eyes hold no judgment. I already know what he and Ken will do. Jake was the one who tracked down my jet ski and board and drove my ski in while I rode with Brett and Ken.
I look at Mandy. She’ll be the one to tow me into the waves if I go back out.
“I can handle it,” she says evenly. “Your call.”
I feel weak and shaky, but I think—as I’ve thought before, as I thought after my first really bad wipe-out and after countless spills and wipeouts since—that if I don’t get back out there now, I might not have the nerve to get back in again. Brett’s safe. And besides, I still haven’t made it out of a barrel this session.
“Yeah,” I say. “I want just one more wave.”
I get it. Mandy tows me into a beautiful one—not as big as the other monsters we’ve been surfing, but it’s perfectly formed. I’m in the right position. I pull into the barrel, into the heart of the wave. The green lip arcs and throws over my left. The roar of the wave quiets. The barrel’s translucent green light surrounds me. The translucent light fills me.
I see the barrel’s opening ahead, a portal back into the world. I keep my eyes fixed on that opening, adjusting my speed. The water flashes and sparkles all about me. I think that I might make it out this time.
I do.
I keep to my feet as the barrel spits me out in its cold spray, and Mandy’s waiting there to pick me up. My friends are all cheering. I feel weightless with the relief and joy. It was over too soon, as it always is, but it’s enough. “That’s it,” I tell Mandy. “I don’t need any more for today.”
