Containment by Christian Cantrell Page A

were always changing, but the changes typically happened so gradually as to be almost imperceptible, like the erosion of a landscape. But also like a landscape, it was always possible for extreme and unanticipated events to occur which could transform a person instantly and almost beyond recognition.
    Cadie looked perpetually tired. Her hair was longer than Arik remembered it, and she wore it pulled back into a simple ponytail. She wore her glasses all the time now, and her complexion was ruddy and lustrous. She didn't fit into any of her dresses anymore, and usually wore synthetic pants with an elastic waist and one of Arik's shirts.
    Before the accident, Arik wore his hair long like most of the males in V1, but it was now kept short enough that his incision could be easily examined. He seldom bothered to shave anymore, and his face was often involuntarily contorted by the pain of his constant headaches. His muscles were atrophied, and the last time he was weighed, he was told that he had lost 13% of his body weight.
    Cadie was getting bigger, swelling with life, and Arik was being reduced to a thin and brittle shell.
    They had hardly spoken in the three days since Arik came home. Cadie hadn't been allowed to see Arik in the Medicine Department after her initial visit because of fear of infection, and until Arik's emotional and cognitive states were better understood, she was asked not to communicate with him via video link. Arik received several recorded messages from her, but they always felt awkward, and rather than bringing them closer together, they only seemed to emphasize the distance between them. He never responded.
    The last three days had shown Arik a side of himself that disappointed him. He had always thought of himself as an objective and extremely effective problem solver. He was very good at detecting patterns, tracking down irregularities, getting at their root causes and repairing them. There was no reason for him to assume that problems with his marriage would be any different. Arik and Cadie always knew they wouldn't be one of those couples that let problems between them fester. They would immediately address any issues that arose, bring them out into the open, discuss them until they reached a mutually satisfactory conclusion. They felt bad for some of the Founders who they believed had unhappy marriages — couples who were not strong enough to be truthful and open with each other, and even worse, with themselves.
    But Arik was discovering that relationships were very different from other parts of his life that were prone to unexpected anomalies. Software could be approached objectively because software itself was objective. Computers were uncaring and, for the most part, predictable, assuming you knew what you were doing. But relationships were made up of complex analogue emotions rather than digital logical bits, variables which just led to more variables and unknowns rather than to well defined constants. Sometimes
true
evaluated to
false
in the context of human emotion which meant relationships were not problems that could be worked through using conventional logic. The complexity of relationships had the potential to increase exponentially until the only sane way to approach them was through instinct and intuition rather than calculation.
    Arik had tried several times to talk to Cadie about the baby, and he assumed that Cadie wanted to discuss it, as well, but there was always something easier to talk about or to do. Arik had daily examinations and physical therapy, and he spent his evenings trying to catch up on work. Cadie was learning everything she could about fetal growth and development while putting in even more hours at the Life Pod. It was easy for them to put their work ahead of themselves because the most obvious and measurable problem that the baby represented was that the dome wasn't producing enough oxygen to safely support an additional human life. But that wasn't the problem that