Текст книги "Undivided"

Автор книги: Neal Shusterman

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Текущая страница: 23 (всего у книги 26 страниц)

72 • Strangers

He’s a thirty-five-year-old accountant. Ran track for UCLA, but has since developed the spare tire that comes with a sedentary profession. Now he runs a steady clip on the treadmill at his local gym beside strangers, never getting any closer to the palm trees outside the window.

“Crazy thing, isn’t it?” says the runner on the next treadmill. “That poor kid.”

“I hear ya,” says the accountant, in between breaths, knowing exactly what the guy is referring to. “The way they . . . just shot him . . . down.”

They’re speaking, of course, about that tithe clapper kid, Levi something-or-other, who came out from under a rock just long enough to be blasted by trigger-happy cops. Half the TVs hanging above their heads in the gym are still reporting on it days after the actual event.

“If you ask me,” says the stranger, “the whole Juvenile Authority oughta be investigated. Heads need to roll.”

“I hear ya.”

Even though only one of the three officers that shot him was a Juvey-cop, the Juvies are getting all the heat from it—and rightly so. Up above, the TVs show various protests in the wake of the shooting. Seems like people are protesting everywhere.

The accountant tries to catch his breath so he can ask his co-runner a question. “Did they finally give him those organs?”

“Are you kidding me? The Juvenile Authority is stupid, but not that stupid.”

At first, to calm a furious public, the Juvies promised to give him the organs needed to save him—but, of course, it would be all unwound parts. It was like throwing gasoline on a fire. Give a kid who’s protesting unwinding the parts of other kids? What were they thinking?

“Naah,” says a runner on his other side. “They’ll just keep him hooked up to all those machines until people forget, and then quietly unplug him. The bastards.”

“I hear ya.”

Although the accountant doesn’t think people will forget it so quickly.

•  •  •

A woman sits on a commuter train heading into Chicago for yet another day of pointless meetings with self-important people who think they know all there is to know about real estate.

There’s something odd happening on the train today, however. Something entirely unheard of on public transportation. People are talking. Not people who know one another either, but total strangers. In fact, a stranger sitting across from her looks up from his newspaper and says to anyone who’s listening, “I never thought I’d say this, but I’m glad for yesterday’s clapper attack downtown.”

“Well, I can’t exactly say I’m glad,” says a woman who rides standing and holding a pole. “But I’m certainly not shedding any tears.”

“And anyone who survived ought to go to prison for life,” adds someone else.

The real estate agent finds, oddly, that she’s compelled to join in. “I don’t even think it was a real clapper attack—it was just made to look like one,” she says. “There are plenty of people angry enough to want to blow Proactive Citizenry sky-high.”

“That’s right,” says someone else. “And if Proactive Citizenry controls the clappers, why would they target their own headquarters? It must have been someone else!”

“Whoever did it oughta be given a medal,” calls someone from the front of the train car.

“Well, violence is never justified,” says the standing woman. “But what goes around comes around, I say.”

The real estate agent has to agree. The way the supposed charity manipulated the Juvenile Authority, bought politicians, and pushed the public to support unwinding . . . Thank God it’s all come to light before this year’s elections! Unable to contain her own righteous rage, she turns to the intimidating man in a hoodie beside her, a person whose existence she would have ignored a few days ago. “Have you seen the images of those poor rewinds they were making in Hawaii?”

The man nods sadly. “Some people say they oughta be euthanized.”

The suggestion makes the woman uncomfortable. “Don’t they have rights? After all, they’re human beings, aren’t they?”

“The law says otherwise. . . .”

The real estate agent finds herself clutching her purse close to her, as if it might be taken away—but she knows it’s not her purse she’s worried about losing.

“Then the law needs to change,” she says.

•  •  •

The construction worker’s been unemployed for months now. He sits in a coffee shop scouring want ads. His first interview in weeks is that afternoon. It’s with a company contracted to build a harvest camp in rural Alabama. He should be thrilled, but his feelings are mixed. Why do they even need to build another harvest camp? Didn’t some company just announce that there’s a way to grow all sorts of organs? If it’s true, then why cut up kids? Even bad kids?

It’s just a job, he tries to tell himself, and I’ll be gone long before any kid is actually unwound there. And yet, to be a silent partner with the Juvenile Authority . . . A week ago he might have thought nothing of it, but now?

At the table next to him, an older man looks up from his laptop, shaking his head in disgust. “Incredible!” he says. The construction worker has no idea exactly which incredible thing he’s speaking of—there are plenty to choose from these days. The man looks at him. “Been five years, give or take, that I’ve had this unwound liver here. But truth be told, if I had it to do all over again, I’d quit drinking and make do with the one I was born with.”

The construction worker offers him an understanding nod, and takes a moment to consider his own options. Then he pulls out his phone and cancels his job interview. It might hurt today, but he knows he won’t have any regrets five years down the line.

•  •  •

The accountant arrives home after his workout too late to say good night to his kids. He lingers at the door to their room, watching them sleep. He loves them dearly—not just his natural one, but the one who arrived by stork as well. The news and conversations of the day have gotten him thinking. He would never unwind his kids—but isn’t that what every parent says when their children are still young? Will he think differently when they become defiant and irrational, making infuriating choices, the way most kids do at some point in their lives?

He senses a change in himself. An awakening of sorts, brought on by all the events around him.

Had it just been the boy who was shot . . .

Had it just been the discovery of those military rewinds . . .

Had it just been the announcement of the organ printer technology, which had apparently been suppressed for years . . .

Had it been any one of those things, it might have piqued his attention for a day or two, then he would have gone on with life as usual. But it wasn’t just one thing, it was all of them at once—and as a number cruncher, he knows that numbers don’t always “crunch.” Sometimes they multiply, exponentiate, even. Taken together, these seemingly unrelated events have stirred in him something huge.

His wife comes up beside him, and he puts his arm around her. “Hey, isn’t there supposed to be some sort of rally against unwinding in Washington in a few weeks?” he asks.

She looks at him, trying to gauge where this is coming from. “You’re not thinking of going, are you?”

“No,” he says. And then, “Maybe.”

She hesitates, but only for a moment. “I’ll come with you. My sister can watch the kids.”

“I think they’d rather be unwound.”

She punches him halfheartedly and gives him the warmest of smirks. “You’re not funny.” Then she goes off to prepare for bed.

The accountant lingers at his children’s doorway a moment more, listening to the easy rhythm of their breathing, and something cold moves through him, like the passage of a ghost—but he knows that’s not it. It’s more like the portent of a future. A future that must never come to pass . . .

. . . and for the first time, he gives rise to a thought that is silently echoed in millions of homes that night.

My God . . . what have we done?

Part Six

The Right Arm of Liberty

3D PRINTING WITH STEM CELLS COULD LEAD TO PRINTABLE ORGANS

A potentially breakthrough 3D-printing process using human stem cells could be the precursor to printing organs from a patient’s own cells.

by Amanda Kooser, February 5, 2013 4:31 PM PST

Some day in the future, when you need a kidney transplant, you may get a 3D-printed organ created just for you. If scientists are able to achieve that milestone, they may look back fondly at a breakthrough printing process pioneered by researchers at Heriot-Watt University in Scotland in collaboration with Roslin Cellab, a stem cell technology company.

The printer creates 3D spheroids using delicate embryonic cell cultures floating in a “bio ink” medium. They end up looking like little bubbles. Each droplet can contain as few as five stem cells. Basically, this comes down to the printer “ink” being stem cells rather than plastic or another material.

Dr. Will Shu is part of the research team working on the project. “In the longer term, we envisage the technology being further developed to create viable 3D organs for medical implantation from a patient’s own cells, eliminating the need for organ donation, immune suppression, and the problem of transplant rejection,” Shu said in a release from Heriot-Watt.

. . . The research results have just been published in Biofabrication under the title “Development of a valve-based cell printer for the formation of human embryonic stem cell spheroid aggregates.”

. . . [i]t’s applications like this that could really turn 3D printing into a world changer.

The full article can be found at: http://news.cnet.com/8301-17938_105-57567789-1/3d-printing-with-stem-cells-could-lead-to-printable-organs/

73 • Lev

There’s a tube down his throat. It pumps air into him, then lets his diaphragm pump it out. His chest rises and falls in a regular rhythm. He’s had this sensation for a while, but this is the first time he’s aware enough to understand what it is. He’s on a ventilator. He shouldn’t be on a ventilator. A martyr to the cause can’t survive, or he’s not a martyr. Did he fail even in that?

He opens his eyes, and although he can only see a fraction of the space he’s in, he knows exactly where he is. He knows because of the shape and design of the room—a large circular space with windows that let in what he suspects is early morning light, because the morning glories in the window boxes are wide to the sun. Around the circular room are multiple alcoves for patients, and the foot of everyone’s bed faces a soothing fountain in the center of the room. He’s in the intensive care unit of the Arápache medical lodge. For Lev, it seems all roads—even the road of death—lead back to the Rez.

He closes his eyes, counting the pulses of the ventilator until he’s asleep again.

The next time he opens his eyes, the morning glories have closed, and the last person he was expecting to see is sitting beside him, reading a book. He watches her, not entirely sure he’s not hallucinating. When she notices he’s awake, she closes her book.

“Good! You’re awake,” says Miracolina Roselli. “That means I can be the first to officially inform you that you’re an idiot.”

Miracolina! The willing tithe he had saved from her own unwinding. The girl he fell for in spite of how much she hated him—or maybe because of how much she hated him. The girl who, in the dark, claustrophobic confines of a Greyhound luggage compartment, offered him absolution for all that he had done. He was afraid to even think of her, for fear that she had been caught and unwound—but here she is!

He tries to talk, forgetting the ventilator. Instead he just coughs, and the machine beeps, registering a burst of erratic breathing.

“Look at you! I don’t even recognize you with all those names tattooed on your face, and that peach-fuzz hair.”

He weakly lifts his hand, putting his thumb and forefinger together in the universal Let me write this down gesture.

She sighs with feigned exasperation, and says “Hold on.” She leaves the unit, and returns with a pad and pen “As they didn’t shoot you in the head,” Miracolina says, “I assume you still have enough brainpower to write legibly.”

He takes the pen and pad and writes

Why am I alive?

She looks at the pad, gives him a beat of the stink eye, and says, “Oh right, it’s all about you, isn’t it. Never mind saying, ‘Good to see you, Miracolina. I missed you. I’m glad you’re alive.’ ”

He takes the pad back and writes all that, but of course it’s too late.

“The most annoying part about the idiotic thing you did is that it worked,” she tells him. “Suddenly people are seeing the Juvenile Authority as the enemy—but don’t you think for a second that excuses you!”

He can tell Miracolina enjoys the fact that he can’t talk back and that she can berate him freely.

“Just so you know, your stunt has cost you your liver, your pancreas, both of your kidneys, and both of your lungs.”

Considering how many bullets tore into him, that sounds right—but wait . . . if he lost both of his lungs, how is he breathing? How is he still alive at all? There’s only one way he could survive the loss of so many organs, and he begins to thrash in his bed in angry panic, then grabs the pen and writes in big block letters:

NO UNWOUND PARTS! TAKE THEM OUT!!

She looks at him with mock attitude, and says. “Sorry, suicide boy, but you did not receive any unwound parts. Charles Kovac from Montpelier, Vermont, offered up the one lung that’s currently in your chest.”

He raises his hand to write, but Miracolina stops him.

“Don’t ask me who he is, because I have no idea. He’s just some guy who would rather live his life with one lung than see you die.” And she goes on. “A woman from Utah donated part of her liver, a guy in a car accident actually bequeathed you his pancreas with his dying words. And the day you were admitted to New York Hospital, half the city seemed to show up to donate blood.”

Finally she offers him a smile, although he suspects it slipped though her defenses. “I don’t know what it is, but people suddenly love you, Lev. Even looking like that.”

He tries to smile around the ventilator tube but finds it too difficult.

“Anyway,” she says, “everyone who donated part of themselves to save your life were total strangers, except for one.”

Perhaps it’s the medication he’s on, or perhaps he truly is dense, but he doesn’t figure it out until Miracolina stands, turns around, and raises her blouse to show a six-inch wound on the left side of her back. “I think giving you my left kidney buys me the right to tell you that you’re an idiot,” she says.

Yes, it does, Lev writes. And yes, I am.

•  •  •

The rest of the day becomes a receiving line. First comes Elina, who is, of course, his primary physician. When Miracolina leaves, Elina tells him that the girl has barely left his bedside since the day she arrived two weeks ago. “She offered her kidney, but only with a guarantee that she and her family could come to the Rez while you recover.” And then Elina adds, “She’s a sweet girl, although she tries not to show it.”

Chal takes time out of an extremely hectic day to give him a legal briefing of sorts. He tells him that the Tribal Council revoted on his petition to officially give AWOLs sanctuary, and it passed. Now the tribe is threatening a veritable war against the Juvenile Authority. Lev would like to think that his failed attempt at martyrdom might have had something to do with it, but they made the decision a day before, when the Parental Override bill passed in Congress. Still, Lev was the one who planted the idea in their heads.

“One more thing,” Chal tells him. “In order to get you back here to the Rez, we had to jump through some legal hoops. Elina and I had to become your official guardians. . . . The easiest way to do that was to adopt. I’m afraid you’ll have to change your business cards,” Chal jokes. “Because now you’re Lev Tashi’ne.”

“You certainly are building up the identities,” says Elina.

Pivane comes and sits beside him in stoic silence for a while, then later in the afternoon, Una and Kele pay him a visit. They bring with them something Lev was never expecting to see. In truth, he was never expecting to see anything in this world again, but this is something he really wasn’t expecting to see. It’s a small furry creature clinging to Kele’s shoulder. Its large, soulful eyes dart everywhere around the room, before making eye contact with Lev.

They’ve brought him a kinkajou.

“It was Kele’s idea,” says Una.

“Well, it’s your spirit animal,” Kele says, “and people do keep them as pets sometimes.” Kele peels the kinkajou from his neck and puts it on the bed next to Lev, where it promptly climbs to his head, makes itself comfortable, and urinates.

“Oops!” Kele grabs the animal away, but it’s too late. Lev finds that it actually raises his spirits, though. He’d laugh if he could.

I guess he’s claimed me, Lev writes.

To which Una responds, “I think you claimed him first.”

Elina, who enters the unit a moment later, is fit to be tied. “Take that out of here! What were you two thinking? Now we’ll have to sterilize everything, bathe him again, and redress all of his wounds. Out! Everyone out!”

But before Una leaves, she says the oddest thing.

“Your new friend might not be welcome here, but I’ll let you bring him to the wedding.”

He has to run it through his mind again to make sure he heard her right.

What wedding? Lev writes.

“Mine,” Una tells him, with a smile that speaks as much of sadness as it does of joy. “I’m marrying Wil.”

74 • Co/nn/or

In another hospital bed a thousand miles away, Connor lies awake. He has no memory of waking, he just is. And he knows something is off. Not exactly wrong, just different. Very different.

A face looms before him, inspecting him. It’s a face he knows. Old. Wizened. Stern. Perfect teeth. The admiral.

“About time you came out of it,” the admiral says. “I was ready to tear the surgeons a new one for rewinding you into a vegetable.”

It all goes in one ear, but doesn’t exactly come out the other—it just gets tangled inside. He knows what the admiral said, but has trouble grasping it again once he’s done speaking.

“Can you talk?” the admiral asks. “Or did the cat get your tongue?” And he laughs at his own gallows humor.

Connor opens his mouth to speak, but it’s as if his mouth is on upside down. He knows it’s not—it couldn’t be—but it feels that way. Where am I? Connor wants to ask, but his mind can’t find the words. He closes his eyes, reaching through his mind, but all that comes to him is the image of a globe he remembers from his elementary school library. The name of the company that manufactured it was written in bold black letters across the Pacific Ocean. Where am I? Connor wants to ask, but what comes out instead is—

“Rand? McNally? Rand McNally?”

“I have no idea what you’re talking about,” the admiral says.

“Rand McNally!” He shuts his mouth, and grunts in frustration, shutting his eyes, trying to grasp what’s happening to him. Another image comes to mind.

“Zoo . . . ,” he says. Caged animals in a zoo. These are his thoughts and memories. All still there, but locked away from one another.

“You’re babbling, boy.”

“Babbling,” he says. Well, at least he can mimic.

The admiral seems a bit troubled by Connor’s responses, and that troubles Connor. “Damn it,” the admiral yells to a nurse Connor didn’t see in the room a moment ago. “I want the doctors in here. Now!”

One doctor comes in, then another. Connor doesn’t see them, but hears them. Connor only processes part of what they say. Something about “a severe insult to his brain.” And “nanites working internal repairs.” And the word “patience” repeated several times. Connor wonders how a person’s brain can be insulted.

When the admiral returns to Connor’s bedside, he seems placated. “Well, if nothing else, you’re certainly building up identities.”

Connor gives him what he hopes is a questioning look. It must work, because the admiral explains.

“First, you were the Akron AWOL, then you were Robert Elvis Mullard at the Graveyard, and now you’re Bryce Barlow.” He pauses, clearly intending to confuse Connor, and further confusion is definitely not something he needs.

“That was the name on all forty-six of the boxes you came in. Bryce Barlow was the boy we purchased at auction, before your friend Argent played the old shell game, and switched all the labels.”

Now it all comes back to Connor. He lets the understanding flow through him.

His own unwinding.

The cheery voice of UNIS.

And the plan. The crazy, harebrained, desperate plan.

Connor honestly didn’t have much faith in it, because it had too many moving parts. Far too many things could go wrong. First, Risa had to contact the admiral—the only person they knew with money enough to actually enter Divan’s auction. Then Argent had to find a way to get him into the auction with various false identities without arousing Divan’s suspicion. Then the admiral had to win the bids on every piece of some other poor kid who’d just been unwound. As if all that wasn’t difficult enough, Argent—who was not the sharpest tool in the shed—had to be counted on to switch the labels, which wasn’t just a matter of changing tags; the stasis containers were all digitally coded. Lot 4832 had to be switched with lot 4831. Every single box.

And even if all that came together, there was no telling if Connor would. No one had ever tried to physically reassemble an Unwind from his own parts. Connor would become the real-life “Humphrey Dunfee,” in a way Harlan Dunfee never had.

“We had help, of course,” the admiral explains. “I put together a top-notch surgical team that could make Connor out of Connor stew.”

“Toothpaste back in the tube.” Connor says.

The admiral is pleased that Connor has said something he understands. “Yeah, that’s the long and short of it.”

Connor finds his mind fixed on poor Bryce Barlow. There was no one to fight for his reintegration. No one to bring him back. What made Connor any more worth saving than him?

And what of Risa? Just because he’s here, doesn’t mean she freed herself from Divan.

“Piano!” he demands. “Wheelchair! Heartbeat! Kiss!” He grunts in frustration, bears down, feeling an ache in his brain, and triumphantly pulls out her name. “Risa!” He says. “Risa! Rand McNally Risa?”

And he hears quietly from somewhere across the room, “I’m here, Connor.”

She’s been here all along, keeping her distance. How awful must he look if she has to build up the courage to approach him? Or maybe she was just trying to get her emotions under control, because he can see that her eyes are moist. If there’s one thing Risa hates it’s for people to see her cry.

As Risa comes into view, the admiral moves away. Or maybe Connor’s mind is only able to hold one of them in his awareness at once. Insulted brain, he thinks.

She takes his hand. It hurts, but he lets her take it. “I’m so happy you’re awake. We were all worried. It’s a miracle you’re here.”

“Miracle,” he says. “Happy. Miracle.”

“It’s going to be hard at first. To move and to think. You’ll need rehabilitation, but I know you’ll be back to your old self in no time.”

Old self, he thinks, and something hits him that brings on a sudden wave of anxiety. “Eating machine! Blood in the water! Amity Island!”

Risa shakes her head, nowhere near understanding him. So in spite of the pain, he raises his right arm, and finds what he’s looking for:

The shark.

It’s still there! Thank goodness it’s still there! He doesn’t know why, but the fact that it’s still a part of him gives him great comfort.

He takes a deep breath of relief. “Fireplace,” he says. “Cocoa. Blanket.”

“Are you cold?

“No,” he says, happy to have found the right word. It inspires him to hack through the thicket to find more words. “I’m warm. Safe. Grateful.” The cages begin to fall in the zoo. His thoughts begin to free themselves.

Risa goes on to tell of the things that happened while he was “in transit,” and how he’s been in a two-week coma since his rewinding.

“Trick or treat,” he says.

“Not quite,” Risa tells him. “Another two weeks.”

She tells him how she and Divan’s other Unwinds were freed, but that Argent never made it out. She tells him how Divan’s black-market auctions have mysteriously stopped. “We think he’s focusing his attention on fighting the Burmese Dah Zey.”

Connor considers that. “Godzilla,” he says. “Godzilla versus Mothra.”

“Indeed,” says the admiral from somewhere out of his line of sight. “Best way to save humanity is to turn the monsters against one another.”

Risa tries to cheer him up by talking about Cam, and what he accomplished on his own. “He’s a hero now!” Risa tells him. “He brought down Proactive Citizenry, just like he said he would—and that awful woman who blackmailed me is being tried for ‘crimes against humanity.’ They’re actually calling her ‘Madame Mengele,’ and I can’t think of anyone more deserving.”

There’s more, about Lev, who, as usual, almost died but didn’t, and Grace, who made herself some sweet deal with the organ printer—and Hayden, who’s called for a march on Washington—but Connor finds he can’t hold on to the details, so he closes his eyes and lets her words wash over him like a healing spell.

He knows it won’t always be like this. It will get better each day. Maybe not easier but better . . . and yet he senses that the mere act of having been unwound has taken something from him. No matter how much he heals, he’ll always have a deep and abiding war wound. Now he knows what Cam must feel. Not so much an emptiness, but a gap between what was and what is, like air trapped between the seams of his soul. He tries to express it to Risa, but the only word that comes is—

“Hole . . .” He grips Risa’s hand tighter. “Hole, Risa, hole . . .”

And she smiles. “Yes, Connor,” she says. “You’re whole. You’re finally whole.”

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