UnWholly (10 page)

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.

“No. Let me see.”

Reluctantly Roberta takes her hand from the image. Cam drags it toward him, rotates it, and enlarges it. He can tell the picture was not taken with the girl’s permission. It’s framed at an odd angle. Perhaps taken secretly. A memory flashes. This same girl. On a bus.

“That picture is not supposed to be here,” Roberta says. “Can we move on now?”

“Not yet.”

Cam can’t quite tell where the picture was taken. It’s outdoors. Dusty. The girl plays a piano under something dark and metallic that shades her. The girl is beautiful.

“Clipped wings. Broken heaven.” Cam closes his eyes, remembering Roberta’s order that he find the proper words before he speaks. “She’s like . . . an angel damaged when she fell to earth. She plays music to heal herself, but nothing can heal her brokenness.”

“Very nice,” says Roberta unconvincingly. “On to the next one.”

Roberta reaches over and tries to drag the picture away again, but Cam slides it to his corner of the table, out of her reach. “No. Stays here.”

The fact that Roberta is bothered by this just makes Cam more curious. “Who is she?”

“Nobody important.” But clearly from Roberta’s reaction she is.

“I will meet her.”

Roberta chuckles bitterly. “Very unlikely.”

“We’ll see.”

They get on with their mental exercises, but Cam’s mind stays on the girl. Someday he will find out who she is and meet her. He will learn everything he needs to know, or more accurately, unify and organize all the things that are already there in his fragmented brain. Once he does, he’ll be able to speak to this girl with confidence—and then, in his own words, and in whatever language he needs to, he’ll be able to ask her why she looks so sad, and what unfortunate twist of fate has left her in a wheelchair.

34 CHILDREN ABANDONED UNDER NEBRASKA’S SAFE-HAVEN LAW

by Nate Jenkins, The Associated Press
Friday, November 14, 2008

LINCOLN, Neb. (AP) Nebraska officials geared up Friday for a special legislative session designed to deal with a unique “safe haven” law whose unintended consequences have allowed parents to abandon nearly three dozen children as old as 17.

As the session to correct the law approached, a 5-year-old boy was dropped off at an Omaha hospital on Thursday night. Earlier in the day, a woman dropped off two teenagers at another Omaha hospital, but one of them, a 17-year-old girl, fled. Authorities have not found her yet.

As of Friday afternoon, 34 children had been abandoned under the Nebraska law, five of them from other states.

Nebraska was the last state to enact a safe-haven law, intended to take in unwanted newborns. But unlike laws in other states, Nebraska’s doesn’t include an age limit.

Some observers have interpreted the current law as applying to children as old as 18.