"But it's been five years," Hudson protested.
"He'll be back. Something happened, that's all. He's probably working on it right now. Could be that he messed up the time setting when he repaired the unit or it might have been knocked out of kilter when Buster hit the helicopter. That would take a while to fix. I don't worry that he won't come back. What I can't figure out is why did he go and leave us?"
"I've told you," Hudson said. "He was afraid it wouldn't work."
"There wasn't any need to be scared of that. We never would have laughed at him."
"No. Of course we wouldn't."
"Then what was he scared of?" Cooper asked.
"If the unit failed and we knew it failed, Wes was afraid we'd try to make him see how hopeless and insane it was. And he knew we'd probably convince him and then all his hope would be gone. And he wanted to hang onto that, Johnny. He wanted to hang onto his hope even when there wasn't any left."
"That doesn't matter now," said Cooper. "What counts is that he'll come back. I can feel it in my bones."
And here's another case, thought Hudson, of hope begging to be allowed to go on living.
God, he thought, I wish I could be that blind!