A Stand-In for Dying Page 10

  “So what are some of the pictures you hold in your mind’s eye? Can you remember when you were no bigger than them?” She gestured with an open palm toward the picture.

  “That was an awfully long time ago.”

  “And yet your eyes remember.” She traced the tear trickling down his left cheek with her own gaze. “Time means little in the archives of our mind. Can you tell me who it is that you miss?”

  Ray cupped his face in his hands as the floodgates opened. His whole body shook with the force of his sobs. He raised one hand to wave off the question, shaking his head from side to side. The doctor folded her hands in her lap and waited. The sobbing subsided. Ray reached for a tissue from a container on the table beside him.

  “We must begin somewhere,” she prompted. “Tell me about that little boy. Was he always so fearful and cautious?”

  “Not always,” Ray said between the last of his sobs. “When I was with my dad, I felt invincible.”

  “Your dad...would you tell me about him?” She leaned back in her chair and waited, hoping his words would follow.

  “He was my best friend,” Ray said at last, “and I was his shadow.” He paused long enough to organize his thoughts so that he could measure the pace of his story without it overwhelming him.

  “I was told he was a genius,” Ray went on. “When my parents met, he was studying engineering, but he had little patience for the academic world and dropped out of college to become an auto mechanic. Once he’d supported my mother through medical school, he started building and racing cars and motorcycles. I loved watching him bring a shiny bike to a screeching stop in a cloud of dust. I wanted to be just like him.”

  “On my fifth birthday, he led me to the garage, where there was something covered in a dirty sheet.” A smile played around the corners of his mouth for the first time. “He whipped off the sheet and there was a pint-sized dirt bike, just my size. I learned to ride it in a day and was speeding around off-road and doing wheelies in a week. Dad loved to watch me ride, but it terrified my mother.”

  “She didn’t stop you?”

  “No. As uncomfortable as it made her, she knew how happy it made me and Dad, so she swallowed her fear and let us play. But in the end, she was right.” The smile faded. His lips formed a perfectly straight line as he fell silent. They sat for several minutes in silence.

  “What happened, Ray?” she asked at last. “What happened to your dad?”

  Ray drew in a deep breath followed by a long sigh. “It was July 4th, 2006, just a week after my seventh birthday. He’d just finished restoring a Vincent Black Shadow, his favorite bike of all time. He was on a test run on a dirt strip and had brought it close to its top speed.” Ray turned his head abruptly, followed by a couple of involuntary twitches. His words stopped. He was gasping. Dr. Jensen waited for his breathing to slow, engaged his eyes, and gestured silently for him to continue.

  “The bike hit a rut in the road and upended. He went flying. When he landed on his head, his neck snapped, and he was dead.” The horror of that long-ago moment was written on his face for an instant. Then it seemed as though every ounce of life force drained from his body with a forceful exhalation. He fell still.

  The doctor, too, fell still. Her breath came in shallow pants. She’d not been fully prepared for the power of the moment. When her breathing had resumed its regular rhythm, she broke her silence.

  “What a terrible thing for a child to see. I can’t imagine what you must have felt.”

  “At the time,” Ray replied, “I felt nothing. It was as if everything happened in slow motion while my dad was in the air and the action stopped before he hit the ground. Even the sound of the impact stopped short of my ears. I was frozen in a motionless, soundless world. It took years for the images and sounds to catch up.”

  “We’re getting close to the end of our hour,” said the doctor. “Will you be OK until we meet again?”

  Ray nodded.

  “You’ve worked hard today and taken risks. Together we’ll make those risks worthwhile.” The doctor rose and Ray followed. By the time he was on the street, the rain had stopped. Patches of blue sky were appearing between the clouds and beginning to coalesce. The sunlight peeking from the edges of a remaining storm cloud seemed eerily bright and its reflection glistened on the water beading on the surface of the waiting hovercar.

  “God help me,” Ray thought. “What have I gotten myself into?”

  *****

  Ray was fifteen minutes late to his next appointment with Dr. Jensen. He’d considered not keeping it at all, but at the last minute changed his mind and summoned the car. When he emerged breathless at the top of the stairs, he found her door ajar and let himself in. She was seated in her usual chair, sipping a cup of tea, and gestured for him to sit.

  “Sorry I’m late.”

  “It’s your hour. You may use it as you like.”

  “I didn’t mean to be late. I just miscalculated how long it would take to get here.”

  Rather than confronting his transparent avoidance, the doctor acknowledged his statement with a nod and waited to see where he might go on his own.

  “Do you know who I am?” he asked abruptly.

  “What do you mean?” the doctor replied.

  “I mean, have you heard of me before we met? Do you know what I’ve done?”

  “Yes, I’ve heard of you,” she responded. “I may be ancient, but I’m not entirely out of touch with the present.” The corners of her mouth turned up ever so slightly, but the twinkle in her eyes lit up her face. “Why do you ask?”

  “You must know that most people hate me. I wondered if perhaps you hated me, too.” He’d been looking straight at her, but diverted his eyes at the end of the sentence.

  “I’m here to help, not judge. And I’ve learned long ago not to draw too many conclusions from the news. Things get twisted and turned as they pass from person to person. But I wonder, Ray...how do you feel about yourself?”

  Ray stood and turned his back to the doctor. “Sometimes the guilt rises from deep inside me and feels as though it will crush me.”

  “The guilt?”

  “For everyone who’s suffered or died because of me. I’d wanted to help...to save the world, but I was blind to the unintended consequences. How could I not have foreseen what happened? For a supposedly brilliant scientist, I’ve been an imbecile.”

  Ray seemed in earnest about the responsibility he felt for the consequences of HibernaTurf, but his emotions lacked the fire of the earlier sessions. He seemed almost detached by comparison.

  “Everyone who’s suffered or died...” the doctor said, taking a stab at the real issue. “All strangers?”

  He turned back to face her and looked as if he’d been punched in the gut. Then he sunk down into the chair with a thud. The antique furniture creaked, but supported his weight. The look of horror she’d seen flash across his face when he’d told her about his father’s accident appeared momentarily again, followed by the same defeated stillness.

  “No...not all strangers,” he replied at last.

  “Who else, then?”

  Ray took in a deep breath and blew it out through pursed lips. “After my dad was killed,” he began, “I couldn’t bear to look at the dirt bike, but I did everything else imaginable that a kid my age could do to put myself in danger. I dove off cliffs, ran in front of speeding trains, and wove through traffic on my skateboard. I was addicted to risk. Each time I tempted death, I felt alive again inside, just for a moment, but the color drained from my world as soon as the danger passed.”

  “My stunts drove my mother crazy. She’d hired nannies to watch me after school, but I became expert at giving them the slip. They never lasted more than a month or two.”

  “Then what happened?”

  “She began job sharing with another doctor so she could be with me after school. She was pretty awkward as a mom. There was no way she could replace Dad. We went to movies and theme parks, but never really co
nnected, at least not at first. But she turned out to be a whiz at video games. Must have been the robotic surgery. We’d play for hours. It was the only time she really seemed comfortable with me...or with herself.”

  “She must have been grieving, too,” said the doctor.

  “Yeah. We both missed him terribly, but we never talked about him.” His voice wavered. He paused and looked at the wall while he composed himself.

  “On my eighth birthday, I pulled the cover off the dirt bike in the garage and rolled it into the driveway. My mother almost became unhinged when she saw me. She started to stop me, but held back when she saw the light in my eyes and just watched. The bike connected us both to him. It was my one daredevil activity she learned to tolerate.” His voice again began to crack, then stilled. The doctor was riveted to his narrative and waited patiently.

  “We started late,” Ray said. “It must be time to go.” He began to get up.

  “We have a few minutes left,” said the doctor, “But if you need for this to be a stopping point, we can pick up again next time.”

  Ray was already on his feet and had taken a step toward the door, “Thanks, Dr. Jensen,” he said, turning briefly toward her. “See you next week.”

  The doctor closed the door behind him as he clambered down the stairs to the street. Ray had no idea whether he would ever come back to see her again.

  17

  BY THE TIME NATASHA turned four in the spring of 2052, Corinne and Marcus already knew she was becoming an extraordinary person, endowed with the intellectual ability and sensibilities inherited from them both. Her brimming curiosity led her to explore the world around her from the celestial bodies down to the minutest details of a leaf. She found joy in every aspect of the natural world.

  Corinne held Natasha in her lap and read aloud to her from the beginning. From the time she began to walk, Natasha pulled books off the shelves and curled up in her mother’s lap, begging her to read. Soon she was reading on her own, taking in the smell and the feel of the books along with the words. Corinne delighted in seeing her daughter’s affection for her treasures.

  Like her father, Natasha had an instinctive rapport with animals. Dogs and cats followed her home with such frequency that Marcus and Corinne funded a shelter just to find homes for her strays. She might be seen one day gently holding a field mouse and another climbing over a pasture fence to commune with a foal. By the time she was five, she was so fearless and independent that keeping her safe was becoming a formidable challenge.

  “Let’s get her a horse,” Corinne suggested one day. “Perhaps that’ll keep her occupied enough that she won’t keep wandering off.”

  Marcus kept his back turned, pretending not to hear. A twinge of pain in the pit of his stomach told him it would be a risky move. The danger he sensed wasn’t physical, but emotional. He envisioned Natasha becoming deeply attached and then some day having her beloved companion snatched away. Marcus knew that anything can happen when it comes to animals. And he couldn’t bear to see his daughter’s heart break.

  “Marcus?” Corinne persisted. “What about it? We could get her a Paso Fino and she could learn to ride.”

  “I don’t know,” Marcus replied. “She’ll be starting school soon. That’ll keep her busy. And she’s awfully young for that kind of responsibility.”

  “Young? Marcus! This is Natasha we’re talking about.” Corinne laughed. “She hasn’t been a child since she was three.”

  Marcus still had his back to her and sighed. Corinne moved around to where she could see his face and caught the tear trickling down his cheek. Then she understood. She put an arm around his shoulder and kissed the top of his head.

  “Life’s full of risk, Marc,” she said. “She has so much love to give and we can’t protect her forever. Someday she’ll lose something or someone and she’ll need to find a way to deal with it.”

  Marcus took her hand, kissed it and shook his head.

  “I know,” he said. “Of course you’re right. I just can’t bear the thought of seeing her hurt.”

  When it was time for Natasha to start her formal education, another thornier issue arose between Corinne and Marcus. Those who could afford it often elected at this point to have their children implanted with MELD chips. Those children so equipped enjoyed the distinct advantage of acquiring a wealth of passive knowledge before school had even begun. And they were better prepared to interact with the virtual environments that provided the foundation of their educational experience.

  Corinne was among a small minority of wealthy parents who believed that knowledge acquired naturally through social interaction and intuitive discovery provided both a sounder intellectual foundation and a more joyful approach to learning. Marcus wanted their daughter to have every possible advantage and imagined her struggling to keep up with her more data-endowed peers.

  “Just look at her,” Corinne urged Marcus as she watched through a window while Natasha tended her hydroponic garden. “She has such wonderful instincts. All those facts will only distract her from what’s really important.”

  “As smart as she is,” Marcus countered, “just imagine what she could accomplish with unlimited knowledge at her fingertips. She has enough sense to sort it out and use it wisely.”

  “She doesn’t need it, Marcus. She’ll learn to solve problems better without having a huge database to rely on. It’ll make her more resourceful. Besides,” Corinne went on, “look what you’ve accomplished without a chip.”

  That was always Corinne’s trump card in these arguments, and Marcus never had a comeback since Corinne could never know that her assumption was wrong. So Corinne won this battle and Natasha went off to school with only the brainpower with which she’d come into this world.

  Natasha held her own, for the most part, among her more digitally endowed classmates. She proved superior in logical abilities to most of them and more socially capable. Other children were attracted to her in much the same way animals were, so she was immensely popular. But children being what they are, she suffered taunts from time to time even from her closest friends because she lacked a chip.

  “Daddy,” Natasha came crying one day from school, “the other kids called me ‘Squishy Brain.’”

  Marcus could only wrap her in his arms and tell her how smart she was until her tears dried up. Her playmates had no shortage of nicknames for her. Sometimes she was “Analog Brain,” sometimes “Mush Brain,” and on particularly dreary days “Booger Brain.” With a world of vocabulary at their fingertips, this was still the best they could do.

  Corinne’s instincts proved sound. Natasha thrived. She moved through her world of wonder glowing with a natural joy that brought smiles to the faces of anyone who saw her. Nowhere was she happier, though, than atop Cinnamon, her palomino filly with the flowing white mane. Within weeks she was at ease in the saddle and within months riding bareback with swiftness and grace. Horse and girl moved as one. When Marcus watched her gliding across the landscape, bittersweet memories of Hugo would flood in.

  Little got by Natasha’s notice. One day when Marcus had just returned from his morning run and the bull’s breath seemed to dance on his chest, Natasha asked him about the image’s meaning. He hesitated at first to tell her a story that might disturb the security of her idyllic world, but took her upon his knee to spin the tale, which now had a happier ending. Pastures were once again filled with contentedly grazing livestock thanks to his work with Takana Grass. The last blades of HibernaTurf had been squeezed out by lushly growing species of vegetation and its sterile landscape was becoming a distant memory. Perhaps Hugo hadn’t died in vain, after all.

  As Natasha watched him in rapt attention and he gazed into her innocent eyes, Marcus wondered how long it would be before she learned the horrible truth about how he’d sold his family’s future. Traces of the truth already flowed through her veins, since half her genetic legacy had undergone the Conversion. Once she reached her teens, when the effects of cellular aging first bec
ome detectable, it would take but a drop of her blood or a scraping from her cheek for anyone to discover the telltale telomeres that distinguished the chromosomes from his body from those from Corinne’s.

  Since her genome was read at birth, there might be no reason for anyone to look again for a long time. But if Corinne or Natasha ever grew suspicious, there would be no hiding the evidence. He could only hope that the bonds between him and his wife and daughter could survive their discovery of his deceit.

  18

  RAY STEPPED out of the car in front of the now familiar brick building. It was a bright sunny day, illuminating the structure as he’d never seen it before. The brick looked clean and new, imprinted with a regular pattern of tightly spaced vertical grooves. There were sprigs of ivy, rooted in fresh dark soil, growing up the very bottom of the walls, but the mass of vegetation that usually covered the building was gone.