Bears Discover Fire and Other Stories by Terry Bisson

asked that question then, or later, on reflection, I have no way of knowing; for memory and experience and anticipation were one to me then.
    “After” (there is no sense of time in LAD space) I had bathed in this glory for what seemed an eternity I felt myself drifting back, down, away from the light. The light was receding and the darkness below was growing closer. I could see both in front and behind as I “fell” and I was vaguely conscious (or did memory add this later?) of the darkness reaching up toward me, like welcoming arms.
    And I was blind again. Blind! I pulled back, toward death—and the light—and suddenly felt a sharp shock, and the outrage that pain brings. Reeling, I felt another shock; both, I learned later, were from the electroshock system built into the car, bringing me back to life.
    I was vaguely conscious of hands on my face. I tried to raise my own hands but they were tied. Then I realized they weren’t tied, but dead.
    Dead.
    To describe what I felt as “fear” understates the wave of terror that filled me. Though something—my consciousness? my soul?—had been revived, my body was dead. I had no sensation and couldn’t move. My mouth was open, but not by my own will, nor could I close it.
    It was only when I tried to scream that I realized I wasn’t breathing.
    The third electroshock came as a friend: I welcomed its violence as it ripped through me. I felt , for the first time in my life (or was this my life?), my heart stir in my breast as it clutched itself inward, sucking for blood greedily, like a child sobbing; I heard it bubbling as it filled. Then the blood flooded into my brain, ice cold, and I could hear screaming all around me.
    It was my own scream, echoing.
    * * *
    I must have lost consciousness again, or perhaps there was an injection to smooth out the reentry process. When I awoke I was breathing smoothly, relaxed, lying on a two-person wheeled gurney. It was 4:03  P.M. according to my Braille watch; only two hours since my trip had begun.
    I heard voices and sat up; a paper cup of hot tea laced with bourbon was thrust into my hand. My lips were numb.
    “That first retrocution can be rough,” DeCandyle said.
    “How do you feel?” Sorel asked, at the same time: “Are you with us?”
    I hurt all over but I nodded.
    Thus began my journey to the Other Side.
    * * *
    “There’s something creepy about those two,” my ex said when she picked me up at 5:00  P.M. as arranged.
    “They’re okay,” I said.
    “She has no chin but her nose makes up for it.”
    “They’re researchers, not models,” I said. “It’s an experiment where I paint dream-induced images. Perfect job for a blind man.” This was the agreed-on lie; there was no way I could tell the truth.
    “But why a blind man?” she asked.
    My ex is a cop. It is to her that I owe the independence I have enjoyed since the accident that blinded me. It was she who brought me home from the hospital and stayed with me, commuting daily from Durham where she works. It was she who managed the contractors and used the financial settlement from the Mariana Institute to rework my mountainside studio so that I was able to move (at first on ropes, like a puppet, and then independently) from bed to bath, from kitchen to studio, with as little hassle as possible.
    Then it was she who went ahead with the divorce she had been planning even before the accident.
    “Maybe they want somebody who can paint with his eyes closed,” I said. “Maybe I’m the only fool who’ll do it. Maybe they like my work; though I realize you would find that a little far-fetched—”
    “You should see her hair,” she said. “It’s white at the roots.” She turned off the highway up the short, steep driveway to my studio. The low-slung police cruiser scraped on the high spots. “This driveway needs fixing.”
    “First thing in the spring,” I said.
    I couldn’t wait to get to work. That night, I began my first new painting in