Текст книги "UnWholly"
Автор книги: Neal Shusterman
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Текущая страница: 4 (всего у книги 27 страниц)
3 • Cam
Wrists. Ankles. Neck. Strapped down. Itching. Itching all over. Can’t move.
He flexes his hands and feet in the bonds. Side to side, up and down. It scratches the itch, but makes it burn.
“You’re awake,” says a voice that’s familiar, and yet not. “Good. Very good.”
He turns his neck. No one. Just white walls around him.
The scrape of a chair. Closer. Closer. The person who spoke comes into blurry view, moving her chair into his line of sight. Sitting. Legs crossed. Smiling, but not smiling. Not really.
“I was wondering when you’d wake up.”
She wears dark pants and a blouse. Pattern of the blouse too blurry to make out. And the color. The color. He can’t put a finger on the color.
“ROY-G-BIV,” he says, searching. “Yellow. Blue. No.” He grunts. His throat hurts when he speaks, and the words come out raspy. “Grass. Trees. Devil puke.”
“Green,” the woman says. “That’s the word you’re looking for, isn’t it? My blouse is green.”
Can the woman read minds? Maybe not. Maybe she’s just clever. Her voice is gentle and refined. There’s an accent to it. Slightly British, perhaps. It automatically makes him want to trust her.
“Do you recognize me?” she asks.
“No. Yes,” he says, feeling his thoughts cinched in bonds tighter than the ones that secure him to the bed.
“Fair enough,” says the woman. “This is all very new to you—you must be frightened.”
Until that moment, it hasn’t occurred to him that he should be frightened at all. But now that the crossed-legged, green-shirted woman says he must be, then he must be. He tugs against his bonds in fear. The burning itch begins to hurt even more, and it brings forth a jagged shattering of memories that he must speak aloud.
“Hand on stove. Belt buckle—no, Mom, no! Falling from bike. Broken arm. Knife. He stabbed me with a knife!”
“Pain,” says the cross-legged woman calmly. “ ‘Pain’ is the word you’re looking for.”
It is a magic word, for it calms him down. “Pain,” he repeats, hearing the word as it spills from strange vocal cords, and over unfamiliar lips. He stops struggling. The pain fades to burning, and the burning fades to an itch once more. But the thoughts that came along with the pain are still there. The burned hand; the angry mother; the broken arm; and a knife fight that he never fought, and yet somehow did. Somehow, all these things happened to him.
He looks again to the woman, who studies him coolly. Now that his focus is better, he can see the pattern of the blouse.
“Paste . . . palsy . . . hailey.”
“Keep trying,” says the woman. “It’s in there somewhere.”
His brain twitches. He struggles. Thinking feels like a race. A long, grueling Olympic race. What is that race called? It starts with an M.
“Paisley!” he says triumphantly. “Marathon! Paisley!”
“Yes, I imagine this is as exhausting as a marathon for you,” says the woman, “but it was worth the effort.” She touches the collar of her blouse. “You’re right, it does have a paisley pattern!” She smiles, this time for real, and touches his forehead with her fingertip. He can feel the tip of her nail. “I told you it was in there.”
Now that his thoughts are beginning to settle, he realizes that he does recognize the woman, but has no idea from where.
“Who?” he asks. “Who? Where? When?”
“How, what, and why,” she adds with a smirk. “Your question words have all returned.”
“Who?” he demands again, not appreciating the joke at his expense.
She sighs. “Who am I? You can say I’m your touchstone, your connection to the world—and in a sense your translator, because I can understand you, where few others can. I’m an expert in metalinguistics.”
“Meta . . . meta.”
“It’s the nature of the language you speak. Metaphoric associations. But I can see I’m confusing you. It’s not for you to worry about. My name is Roberta. But you wouldn’t know that, because I never told you my name in all the times you’ve seen me.”
“All the times?”
Roberta nods. “You can say you’ve only seen me once, yet you’ve also seen me many, many times. What do you think of that?”
It’s a marathon again as he searches through his mind for the word he wants to say. “Gollum in the caves. Answer, or you can’t cross the bridge. What’s black and white and red all over?”
“Work for it,” says Roberta. “I know you can do it.”
“Riddle!” he says. “Yes, marathon but worth it! The word—riddle!”
“Very good.” Roberta gently touches his hand. He takes a long look at her. She is older than him. He knows this, even though he has no idea how old he actually is. She’s pretty, in a motherly sort of way. Blond hair with a hint of brown roots, and just a little makeup. Her eyes seem younger than the rest of her face. But that blouse . . .
“Medusa,” he says. “Crone. Witch. Crooked, rotten teeth.”
She stiffens a bit. “You think I’m ugly?”
“Uuuugly!” he says, savoring the word. “No, not you! Ugly green paisley ugly.”
Roberta laughs, relieved, and glances down at her blouse. “Well, I guess there’s no accounting for taste, is there?”
Accounting! Accountant! My father was an accountant! No—a policeman. No—a factory worker. No—lawyer, construction worker, pharmacist, dentist, unemployed, dead. His thoughts are all true, and all false. His own mind is a riddle that he can’t hope to solve. He feels the fear that Roberta told him he must feel. It wells up again, and he begins to struggle once more against his bonds. They’re not just bonds, though; some of them are bandages.
“Who?” he asks again.
“I already told you,” Roberta says. “Don’t you remember?”
“No! Who?” he asks. “Who?”
Roberta raises her eyebrows in understanding. “Oh. Who are you?”
He waits anxiously for an answer.
“Well, that’s the million-dollar question, isn’t it? Who are you?” She taps her fingertips on her chin, considering it. “The committee could not agree on a name. Of course, everyone has an opinion, the pompous buffoons. So, while they’re dickering about it, perhaps you can choose one for yourself.”
“Choose?” But why must he choose a name? Shouldn’t he already have one? He runs a series of names through his mind: Matthew, Johnny, Eric, José, Chris, Alex, Spencer—and although some of them seem more likely than others, none of them hold the sense of identity that a true name should have. He shakes his head, trying to push something—anything—about himself into its proper place, but shaking his head only makes it hurt.
“Aspirin,” he says. “Tylenol-aspirin, then count the sheep.”
“Yes, I imagine you must still be tired. We’ll up your pain medication, and I’ll leave you to get some rest. We’ll talk more tomorrow.”
She pats his hand, then strides out of the room, turning off the light and leaving him alone with thought fragments that won’t as much as shake hands with one another in the dark.
• • •
The next day—or at least he thinks it’s the next day—he’s not quite so tired, and his head doesn’t hurt as much, but he’s still just as confused. He now suspects that the white room that he took for a hospital room is not. There were enough hints in the architecture to suggest he was in some private residence that had been retrofitted for the convalescence of a single patient. There is a sound beyond the window that he can hear even when the window is closed. A constant rhythmic roar and hiss. Only after a day of hearing it does he realize what it is. Crashing waves. Wherever he is, it’s on a seashore, and he longs to see the view. He asks and Roberta obliges. Today is the day he gets out of bed.
Two strong uniformed guards come in with Roberta. They undo his bonds and help him to his feet, holding him beneath his armpits.
“Don’t be afraid,” Roberta says. “I know you can do this.”
The first moment of standing gives him vertigo. He looks to his bare feet, seeing only toes sticking out from beneath the pale blue hospital gown he wears. Those toes seem miles beneath him. He begins to walk, one labored step at a time.
“Good,” says Roberta, walking along with him. “How does it feel?”
“Skydiving,” he says.
“Hmm,” says Roberta, considering this. “Do you mean dangerous or exhilarating?”
“Yes,” he answers. In his mind he repeats both words, remembering them, pulling them from a massive box of unsorted adjectives and filing them in their proper place. There are so many unsorted words in the box, but bit by bit, it’s all beginning to slide into coherent formation.
“It’s all in there,” Roberta has told him more than once. “It’s just a matter of finding it.”
The two guards continue to hold him beneath his armpits as he shuffles along. A knee buckles, and their grip grows tighter.
“Careful, sir.”
The guards always call him “sir.” It must mean that he commands respect, although he can’t imagine why. He envies their ability to simply “be” without having to work at it.
Roberta leads them down a hallway that, like the distance to his feet, seems like miles, but is only a dozen yards or so. Up above, in the corner of the ceiling, there’s a machine with a lens that zeroes in on him. There’s a machine like that in his room, too, constantly watching him in silence. Electric eye. Cyclops lens. He knows the name for the device. It’s on the tip of his tongue. “Say cheese!” he says. “It puts on ten pounds. Rolling . . . and . . . action! A Kodak moment.”
“The word you’re looking for starts with a c, and that’s all the help I’ll give you,” Roberta says.
“Cuh—cuh—Cadaver. Cabana. Cavalry. Canada.”
Roberta purses her lips. “You can do better.”
He sighs and gives up before frustration can overwhelm him. Right now, it’s hard to master walking, much less walking and thinking at the same time.
Now they come through a door to a place that is both inside and out.
“Balcony!” he says.
“Yes,” Roberta tells him. “That one came easy.”
Beyond the balcony is an endless sea, shimmering in the warm sun, and before him are two chairs and a small table. On the table are cookies and a white beverage in a crystal pitcher. He should know the name of that beverage.
“Comfort food,” Roberta tells him. “Your reward for making the journey.”
They sit facing each other with the food between them and the guards at the ready, should he need their help, or should he try to hurl himself off the balcony to the jagged rocks below. There are soldiers with dark, heavy weapons positioned strategically on those rocks—there for his protection, Roberta tells him. He imagines that should he hurl himself down to them, the guards on the rocks would also call him “sir.”
Roberta pours the white liquid from its crystalline pitcher into crystalline glasses that catch the light, refracting it and splintering it in random projections on the stonework of the balcony.
He takes a bite of cookie. Chocolate chip. Suddenly the intensity of the flavor drags more memories out of hibernation. He thinks of his mother. Then another mother. School lunch. Burning his lip on a freshly baked Toll House. I like them best chewy and hot. I like them best hard and almost burnt. I’m allergic to chocolate. Chocolate is my favorite.
He knows all these things are true. How could they all be true? If he’s allergic, how could he have so many wonderful chocolate memories?
“The marathon riddle continuing,” he says.
Roberta smiles. “That was almost a complete sentence. Here, have something to drink.”
She holds the glass of cold white liquid to him, and he takes it.
“Have you given any thought to your name?” Roberta asks, just as he takes a sip—and all at once, as the flavorful fluid dislodges a piece of soft cookie from the roof of his mouth, more thoughts fly in. The combination of tastes forces a hundred thoughts through a sieve, leaving behind diamonds.
The electric eye machine. He knows what it’s called! And the white stuff, it’s from a cow, isn’t it? Cow juice. Starts with an M. Electric eye. “Cam!” Cow juice. “Moo!”
Roberta looks at him strangely.
“Cam . . . Moo . . . ,” he says again.
Her eyes sparkle, and she says, “Camus?”
“Cam. Moo.”
“Camus! What a splendid name. You’ve outdone yourself.”
“Camera!” he finally says. “Milk!” But Roberta isn’t listening anymore. He has sent her to a more exotic place.
“Camus, the existential philosopher! ‘Live to the point of tears.’ Kudos to you, my friend! Kudos!”
He has no idea what she’s talking about, but if it makes her happy, then it makes him happy. It feels good to know that he’s impressed her.
“Your name shall be Camus Composite-Prime,” she says with a grin on her face as wide as the shimmering sea. “Won’t the committee just die!”
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From then on, each of his days begins and ends with therapy. Painful stretching followed by guided exercises and weight lifting that seem specifically designed to cause him the greatest amount of pain.
“The healing agents can only do so much,” says his physical therapist—a deep-voiced bodybuilder with the unlikely name of Kenny. “The rest has to come from you.”
He is convinced this therapist enjoys watching him suffer.
Thanks to Roberta, those who don’t just call him “sir” now call him Camus, but when he thinks of the name, all that comes to mind is a big black-and-white whale.
“That’s Shamu,” Roberta tells him over lunch. “You’re Camus; it rhymes, but has a silent S.”
“Cam,” he tells her, not wanting to sound like a sea mammal. “Make it Cam.”
Roberta raises an eyebrow, considering it. “We can do that. We can most certainly do that. I’ll let everyone know. So how are your thoughts today, Cam? Feeling a bit more cohesive?”
Cam shrugs. “I have clouds in my head.”
Roberta sighs. “Maybe so, but I can see your progress, even if you can’t. Your thoughts are becoming a little clearer each day. You can string together longer strands of meaning, and you understand almost everything I say to you, don’t you?”
Cam nods.
“Comprehension is the first step toward clear communication, Cam.” Roberta hesitates for a second, then says, “Comprends-tu maintenant?”
“Oui, parfaitement,” says Cam, not knowing that something was different about it until the words came out of his mouth. He realizes that yet another door of mystery has opened inside his head.
“Well,” says Roberta, a mischievous smirk on her face, “for the time being, let’s go one language at a time, shall we?”
New activities are added into his day. His afternoon naps are pushed back to make room for hour-long sessions sitting at a table-size computer desktop filled with digital images: a red vehicle, a building, a black-and-white portrait—dozens of pictures.
“Drag to you the images you recognize,” says Roberta on the first day of this ritual, “and say the first word that each image brings to mind.”
Cam feels overwhelmed. “Scantron?”
“No,” Roberta tells him, “it’s not a test, it’s just a mental exercise to find out what you remember and what you still need to learn.”
“Right,” says Cam. “Scantron.” Because her answer is the very definition of a test, isn’t it?
He looks at the images and does as he’s told, pulling the objects he recognizes closer. The portrait: “Lincoln.” The building: “Eiffel.” The red vehicle: “Truck fire. No. Fire truck.” And on and on. As he pulls an image away, another sprouts to replace it. Some he has no problem identifying, others have no memories associated with them at all, and still others tug at the edge of his mind, but he can’t find a word to attach to them. Finally, when he’s done, he feels even more exhausted than he does after physical therapy.
“Basket,” he says. “Crumpled paper basket.”
Roberta smiles. “Wasted. You feel wasted.”
“Wasted,” Cam repeats, locking the word in his mind.
“I’m not surprised—none of this is easy, but you’ve done well, haven’t you? And you are to be commended!”
Cam nods, more than ready for a nap. “Gold star for me.”
• • •
Each day more and more is asked of him, both physically and mentally, but no explanation is given for any of it. “Your success is its own reward,” Roberta tells him, but how can he relish any success if he has no context with which to measure it?
“The kitchen sink!” he tells Roberta at dinner one day. It’s just the two of them. It’s always just the two of them. “The kitchen sink! Now!”
She doesn’t even have to probe to figure out what he means. “In time you’ll know everything there is to know about yourself. Now is not that time.”
“Yes, it is!”
“Cam, this conversation is over.”
Cam feels the anger well in him and doesn’t know what to do with it, and he can’t put enough words together to take it away.
Instead it goes to his hands, and before he knows what he’s doing, he’s hurling a plate across the room, then another, then another. Roberta has to duck, and now the whole world is flying dishes and silverware and glass. In an instant the guards are on him, pulling him back to his room, strapping him to the bed—something they haven’t done for over a week.
He rages for what feels like forever, but then, exhausted, he calms down. Roberta comes in. She’s bleeding. It’s just a small cut above her left eye, but it doesn’t matter how small it is. He did it. It was his fault.
Suddenly all his other emotions are overwhelmed by remorse, which he finds is even more powerful than anger.
“Broke my sister’s piggy bank,” he says in tears. “Crashed my father’s car. Badness. Badness.”
“I know you’re sorry,” Roberta says, sounding as tired as him. “I’m sorry too.” She gently takes his hand.
“You’ll be restrained until morning for your outburst,” she tells him. “Your actions have consequences.”
He nods, understanding. He wants to wipe away his tears, but he can’t, for his hands are secured to the bed. Roberta does it for him. “Well, at least we know you’re every bit as strong as we thought you’d be. They weren’t kidding when they said you were a baseball pitcher.”
Immediately Cam’s mind scans his memory for the sport. Had he played it? His mind might be disjointed and fragmented, so finding what it contains is always difficult, but it’s easy to know what memories don’t exist at all.
“Never a pitcher,” he says. “Never.”
“Of course not,” she says calmly. “I don’t know what I was thinking.”
• • •
Bit by bit and day by day, as more things fall into place in Cam’s mind, he begins to realize his terrifying uniqueness. It is night now. His physical therapy has left him, for once, feeling more exhilarated than exhausted—but there was something Kenny the therapist had said. . . .
“You’re strong, but your muscle groups don’t work and play well with others.”
Cam knew it was just an offhand joke, but there was a truth to it that stuck in Cam’s craw, the way food often did. The way his throat didn’t always agree to swallow what his tongue was pushing its way.
“Eventually your body will learn the alliances it has to make with itself,” Kenny had said—as if Cam was a factory full of strike-prone workers, or worse, a clutch of slaves forced into unwanted labor.
That night Cam looks at the scars along his wrists, like hairline bracelets, visible now that the bandages have been removed. He looks down to the thick, ropy line stretching down the center of his chest, then forking left and right above his perfectly sculpted abs. Sculpted. Like a piece of marble hewn into human form—an artist’s vision of perfection. This cliffside mansion, Cam now realizes, is nothing more than a gallery, and he is the work on display. Perhaps he should feel special, but all he feels is alone.
He reaches toward his face, which he has been told not to touch. That’s when Roberta comes in. She knows he’s been taking stock of his body, having spied on him through the camera lurking in the corner of the room. She is accompanied by two guards, for they can already tell Cam’s emotions are starting to surge and threaten a tempest.
“What’s wrong, Cam?” asks Roberta. “Tell me. Find the words.”
His fingertips graze his face, which is filled with strange textures, but he’s afraid to truly feel his face, for fear that in his anger he might tear it apart.
Find the words. . . .
“Alice!” he says. “Carol! Alice!” The words are wrong, he knows they’re wrong, but they are the closest he can get to what he wants to say. All he can do is circle, circle, circle the point, lost in orbit around his own mind.
“Alice!” He points to the bathroom. “Carol!”
A guard grins knowingly, but knowing nothing. “Maybe he’s remembering old girlfriends.”
“Quiet!” snaps Roberta. “Go on, Cam.”
He closes his eyes, forcing the thought to take shape, but the only form that comes is the ridiculous shape of—
“Walrus!” His thoughts are useless. Pointless. He despises himself.
But then Roberta says, “. . . and the Carpenter?”
He snaps his eyes to her. “Yes! Yes!” Somehow, as random as those two things are, they make perfect sense.
“ ‘The Walrus and the Carpenter,’ ” says Roberta, “an absurd poem that makes even less sense than you!”
He waits for her to connect at least some of the dots for him.
“It was written by Lewis Carroll. Who also wrote—”
“Alice!”
“Yes, he wrote Alice in Wonderland, and Through the—”
“Looking Glass!” Cam points to the bathroom. “Through the Looking Glass!” But he knows that’s not the word people use for it anymore. The modern word is—
“Mirror!” he shouts. “My face! In the mirror! My face!”
There is not a single mirror anywhere in the mansion, or at least in the rooms he’s allowed in. Not a single reflective surface anywhere. It could not be an accident. “Mirror!” he shouts triumphantly. “I want to look in a mirror. I want to look now! Show me!” It is the clearest statement and the highest level of communication he has yet to achieve. Surely Roberta will reward that!
“Show me now! Ahora! Maintenant! Ima!”
“Enough!” says Roberta, with calculated force in her voice. “Not today. You’re not ready!”
“No!” He touches his face with his fingers, this time hard enough that it begins to hurt. “It’s Dauger in the iron mask, not Narcissus at the pool! Seeing will lighten the load, not break the camel’s back!”
The guards look to Roberta, ready to leap in, to restrain him, to tie him once more to his bed, where he can’t hurt himself. But Roberta does not give the order. She hesitates. Considers. Then she finally says, “Come with me.” She turns and strides out of the room, leaving Cam and his guards to follow.
They leave the wing of the mansion that has been carefully designed for his protection, journeying to places that seem far less clinical. Rooms with warm wooden floors instead of cold linoleum. Framed artwork instead of bare white walls.
Roberta tells the guards to wait at the door, and she leads Cam into a living room. There are people present: Kenny, and some members of his therapy staff, as well as others whom Cam doesn’t know; professionals of some sort who work behind the scenes of his life. When they see him, they rise from their leather chairs and sofas, alarmed by his presence.
“It’s all right,” Roberta tells them. “Give us a few minutes alone.” They drop whatever they’re doing and scurry out. Cam would ask Roberta who they are, but he already knows. They’re like the guards at his door, and the guards on the rocks, and the man who cleans his messes, and the woman who rubs lotion on his scars. All these people are there to serve him.
Roberta leads him to a full-length mirror against a wall. He can see himself now head to toe. He sheds the hospital gown and stands there in his shorts, looking at himself. The shape of his body is beautiful; he is perfectly proportioned, muscular and trim. For a moment he thinks maybe he is Narcissus after all, absorbed in vanity—but as he steps closer and more into the light, he can see the scars. He knew they were there, but to see them all at once is overwhelming. They are ugly, and they’re everywhere—but nowhere are they more pronounced than on his face.
That face is a nightmare.
Strips of flesh, all different shades, like a living quilt stretched across the bone, muscle and cartilage beneath. Even his head—clean-shaven when he awoke, but now filling in with peach-fuzz hair—has different colors and textures sprouting like uneven fields of clashing crops. His eyes ache from the sight of himself, and tears cloud them.
“Why?” is all he can think to say. He turns from his reflection, trying to disappear into his own shoulder, but Roberta gently touches that shoulder.
“Don’t look away,” she says. “Have the strength to see what I see.”
He forces himself to look again, but all he can see are the scars.
“Monster!” he says. That word comes from so many different bits of memory, he needs no help finding it. “Frankenstein!”
“No,” Roberta says sharply. “Never think that! That monster was made from dead flesh, but you are made of the living! That creature was a violation of all things natural, but you, Cam, you are a new world wonder!”
Now she looks into the mirror with him, pointing out his many miraculous parts. “Your legs belonged to a varsity runner,” she tells him, “and your heart to a boy who could have been an Olympic swimmer, had he not been unwound. Your arms and shoulders once belonged to the best baseball player any harvest camp had ever seen, and your hands? They played guitar with rare and glorious talent!” Then she smiles and catches his gaze in the mirror. “As for your eyes, they came from a boy who could melt a girl’s heart with a single glance.”
There is a certain pride in the way she speaks of him. It’s a pride he cannot yet feel himself.
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.
