Roberta puts a finger to his temple. “But the best of it all is right in here!” She moves her finger around the multitextured fuzz of his hair, pointing out different spots on his cranium, like travel destinations on a globe.
“Your left frontal lobe holds the analytical and computational skills of seven kids who tested at the genius level in math and science. Your right frontal lobe combines the creative cores of almost a dozen poets, artists, and musicians. Your occipital lobe holds neuron bundles from countless Unwinds with photographic memories, and your language center is an international hub of nine languages, all waiting to be reawakened.”
She touches his chin, turning him to face her. Her eyes, which seemed so far away in the mirror, are now only inches from his. They are hypnotic and overpowering.
“Anata wa randamu de wa nai, Cam,” she says. “Anata wa interijento ni sekkei sa rete imasu.”
And Cam knows what she’s saying. You are not random, Cam. You are intelligently designed. He has no idea what language it is, but he knows what it means, all the same.
“Every part of you was handpicked from the best and the brightest,” Roberta tells him, “and I was there at each unwinding, so you would see me, hear me, and know me once all the parts were united.” She takes a moment to think about it, and sadly shakes her head. “Those poor kids were too dysfunctional to know how to use the gifts they were given—but now, even divided, they can finally be complete through you!”
Now that she speaks of unwinding, fragments of memories flood him.
Yes, he had seen her!
Standing beside the operating table without as much as a surgical mask to cover her face, because the point, he now realizes, was for her to be seen and remembered. But it wasn’t just one operating room, was it?
An identical memory
from dozens of different places in his mind.
But it’s not his mind, is it?
It’s their minds.
All of them.
Crying out.
Please, please make this stop,
until there is no voice to beg,
no mind to scream.
At that singular moment
When “I am” becomes “I’m not . . .”
He takes a deep, shuddering breath. Those final memories are a part of him now, spliced together, like the skin of his face. The memories are impossible to bear, and yet he bears them. Only now does he realize how strong he truly must be to hold the memory of a hundred unwindings without crumbling to nothing.
Roberta bids him to look around at the wealthy spoils of the cliffside mansion. “As you can see by your surroundings, we have very powerful backing to support you, so that you may continue to grow and prosper.”
“Backing? From who?”
“It doesn’t matter who. They’re friends. Not just your friends, but friends of a world we all want to live in.”
And though it is all beginning to come together, his whole life beginning to slide into place, one thing still plagues him.
“My face . . . it’s horrible . . .”
“Not to worry,” Roberta says. “The scars will heal—in fact, the healing agents are already taking effect. Soon those scars will vanish completely, leaving the faintest of lines where the grafts meet. Trust me on this; I’ve seen the projection of what you will look like, Cam, and it is spectacular!”
He traces his fingers along the scars on his face. They are not as random as he had thought. They are symmetrical, the different skin tones forming a pattern. A design.
“It was a choice we made to give you a piece of every ethnicity. From the palest sienna-Caucasian, to the darkest umber tones of unspoiled Africa, and everything in between. Hispanic, Asian, Islander, Native, Australoid, Indian, Semitic—a glorious mosaic of humanity! You are everyman, Cam, and the truth of it is evident in your face. I promise you, when those scars heal, you will be the new definition of handsome! You will be a shining beacon, the greatest hope for the human race. You will show them that, Cam! By the mere virtue of your existence, you will show them!”
As he thinks of this, his heart accelerates, pounding powerfully in his chest. He imagines all the races this heart of his has won—and although he has no memory of being a star swimmer, his heart knows what his mind does not. It longs to be in the pool once more, just as his legs long for the track.
Right now, however, those legs buckle beneath him, and he finds himself on the ground, wondering how he got there.
“Too much stimulation for one day,” Roberta says.
The guards, who have been watching from the door, race in and help him up.
“Are you all right, sir? Should we call for help, ma’am?”
“That won’t be necessary. I’ll tend to him.”
They bring him to a plush sofa. He’s shivering now, not just from the chill in the air, but from the revelation of knowing his own personal truth. Roberta grabs a throw blanket and covers him. She orders the room be made warmer, and she sits beside him like a mother comforting a feverish child.
“There are big plans for you, Cam. But you don’t have to worry about that now. Right now, all you have to do is build that amazing potential; rope in all those parts of your mind that are still stray; teach every part of your body to work in concert. You are the conductor of a living orchestra, and the music you’re going to make will be beyond spectacular!”
“What if it’s not?” he asks.
Roberta leans over, kissing him gently on the forehead. “Simply not an option.”
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Cam’s dreams are always lucid. He always knows that he’s dreaming, and until now his dreams have been a source of intense frustration. They don’t follow dream logic—they don’t follow any logic—they are disjointed, disconnected, and confused. Snippets of randomness strung together by the cobweb of his unconscious mind. His dreams feel like channel surfing through mental stations so quickly, it’s impossible to grasp the concept of any one thought-byte. Maddening! However, now that he knows the nature of his being, Cam finds that he’s able to ride the wave.
Tonight he dreams he’s in a mansion. Not the one overlooking the ocean, but one in the clouds. As he moves from room to room, it’s not just the decor that changes, but the world as well—or rather, the life he’s living within that world. In a kitchen, there are siblings he recognizes sitting at a table waiting for dinner. In a living room, a father asks him a question in a language that didn’t make it into his brain, so he can’t answer.
And then there are the hallways—long hallways with rooms on either side, containing people he knows but only slightly. These are rooms he will never enter, and those people will never be more than images, trapped in those rooms. No further memory of them exists, or at least not within the cortical tissue he received.
In each room and hallway he moves through, Cam feels an intense surge of loss, but it’s balanced by the anticipation of the many rooms ahead.
At the end of the dream, he finds a final door opening on a balcony with no railing. He stands at the edge, looking down into billowing clouds below, shredded and reformed by the forces of some sentient wind. Within him a hundred voices—the voices of those who are a part of him—all speak to him, but their many voices have blurred into an unintelligible rumble. Still, he knows what they’re trying to tell him. Jump, Cam, jump! they’re saying. Jump, because we know you can fly!
- - -
In the morning, still high from the dream, Cam pushes himself harder than he ever had before in physical therapy. He feels the burn in his muscles now rather than the strain on his healing wounds.
“You’re at the top of your game today,” Kenny tells him as he treats Cam’s joints with a repeating cycle of ice and heat to speed the healing. Kenny, Cam has learned, was a top trainer for the NFL, but the powerful friends of whom Roberta spoke hired him to train a single client, offering him top dollar.
“Money talks,” Kenny had to admit. “Besides, it’s not every day you get to be part of history in the making.”
Is that what I am? Cam thinks. Future history? He tries to imagine the name Camus Composite-Prime taught in future classrooms, but it doesn’t stick. It’s the name. It sounds too clinical, like the subject of an experiment rather than the result. He ought to shorten it. Camus ComPri. The images of race cars speeding around a bend soars through his mind. The Grand Prix. That’s it! Camus Comprix. Silent S, silent X—a name that holds as many secrets as he!
He grimaces as Kenny ices his shoulder, but today, even that pain feels good.
“Pie-marathon, no more basket!” he says, then clears his throat and allows the thought to congeal, gathering the proper words. “This marathon I’m on . . . now it’s as easy as pie. Not feeling wasted at all.”
Kenny laughs. “Didn’t I tell you it’d get easier?”
This afternoon Cam sits on the balcony with Roberta, and they’re served lunch on silver trays. Each day the foods have greater variety, but they’re always in small portions. Shrimp cocktail. Beet salad. Chicken curry with couscous. All delicious challenges to his taste buds, sparking micro-memories and forcing neural connections to accompany his acute senses of taste and smell.
“All a part of your healing,” Roberta tells him as they eat. “All a part of your growth.”
After lunch, they sit for their daily ritual before the digital tabletop, taking in images to stimulate his visual memory. The images are more complicated now. Nothing so easy as the Eiffel Tower or a fire truck. There are obscure works of art that Cam must identify—if not the actual work, then at least the artist. Scenes from plays.
“Who is the character?”
“Lady Macbeth.”
“What is she doing?”
“I don’t know.”
“Then make something up. Use your imagination.”
There are images of people in various walks of life, and Roberta asks Cam to imagine who they might be. What they might be thinking. Roberta doesn’t allow him to speak until he has taken a moment to find the proper words.
“Man on a train. Wondering what’s waiting at home for dinner. Probably chicken again. He’s sick of chicken.”
Then, amid the pictures strewn across the computer tabletop, Cam sees an image of a girl that catches his attention. Roberta follows his eyes to the image, and she immediately tries to wipe the image away, but Cam grabs her hand and stops her.