“I THINK THIS IS the place,” said Faustina as she pulled in front of the well-kept house that was illuminated by a bright moon. “I wish the good doctor had agreed to meet at his office.”
“He told me that since the FBI raid, Clerval Industries is being watched closely,” said the man as he lifted the cardboard box from the floor to his lap. “Outside visitors especially so.”
“Makes sense, but this feels creepy. Daytime in an office feels safer than nighttime at a private residence anytime in my book.”
“But he’s a doctor.”
“Okay, okay,” said Faustina as she turned off the car and unbuckled her seat belt. “Let’s see what the good doctor has to say. I also have to pee really badly. A two-hour drive to Oxnard will do that to a girl. Traffic through the San Fernando Valley really sucked.”
“I’m sure he will let you use his bathroom,” said the man as he opened his car door.
“If he doesn’t, this meeting ain’t happening,” said Faustina.
As they walked toward the house, they noticed the curtains move in the bay window.
“We’re being watched,” said Faustina.
“Maybe I scare him,” said the man as he hugged the cardboard box tightly to his chest.
“Why?”
“My people have been getting a lot of bad press lately.”
“Your people?”
The man looked at Faustina and smiled just a bit.
“Your sense of humor is improving by the hour,” said Faustina.
They walked up the four steps to the small porch and stared at the front door. A large, grinning jack-o’-lantern sat on the left end of the porch.
“Someone likes Halloween,” said Faustina.
“Well,” said the man, “I guess someone should ring the doorbell or knock.”
“Sounds like a logical choice. I vote for knocking. It’s much more assertive. We need to approach from a position of strength.”
“You’re sounding like a lawyer.”
“Guilty as charged.”
The man raised his right hand, made a fist, and prepared to knock. But before he could, the door opened. In front of Faustina and the man stood a short, gray-haired man who held a black-and-white cat in his arms. He was boxy and neat like his house.
“Dr. Prietto, I presume,” said Faustina.
Dr. Prietto looked at the man and then Faustina and then back at the man. He smiled and nodded. “Come in, please,” he said as he stepped aside to let his guests in.
“Which way to your bathroom?” said Faustina as she entered.
“Oh, yes,” said the doctor. “Down the hallway, on your left. We’ll be over here in the living room.”
Faustina nodded her thanks and walked quickly toward the bathroom. The doctor nodded back and then guided the man down a different hallway to the living room. They entered a capacious but cluttered area whose major furnishing seemed to be books of all sizes on wall-to-ceiling bookshelves and every horizontal surface including the floor. Side one of Tierra’s City Nights filled the room at a low volume from a turntable hidden in the shadows. The doctor set his cat down on the couch and then removed about a dozen books from the same couch and carefully stacked them in a corner of the room near another stack of books. The doctor motioned to the man to sit near the cat. The man obliged. The cat looked up at the man, blinked, licked its lips, and closed its eyes to sleep. The man set the cardboard box down on the coffee table, which was already covered with various books. He turned to the curled-up feline and scratched the back of its head. The cat seemed to appreciate this gesture immensely.
“Quetzi likes you,” said the doctor.
“Quetzi?” said the man.
“Short for Quetzalcoatl. The Plumed Serpent! You know, the greatest of the Aztec gods.”
“Oh.”
“May I get you a drink?”
“No, thank you.”
The doctor walked to a small table that groaned under various bottles and glasses. “I could use another little splash,” he said as he refilled his glass with an amber liquid from a cut-crystal decanter. “Doctor’s orders!” he chuckled as he retrieved his now-full glass and settled into a large leather wingback chair across from the couch. He took a long drink and exhaled loudly. “¡Híjole!” the doctor exclaimed to himself as the booze warmed his throat.
“Oh, there you both are,” said Faustina as she entered the living room. “I found the kitchen and another little room before I found you gentlemen. I guess I was distracted when you pointed to where you were going. A full bladder will do that to me.”
The doctor stood and held up his glass. “Drink?”
“A little happy juice would be nice,” said Faustina as she made her way to the small table. “A fine collection of adult beverages.”
“There’s ice in the bucket there,” said the doctor as he sat again and smiled at this beautiful woman’s unabashed desire to have a drink.
Faustina dropped three ice cubes into a glass and examined her options until she found the bottle she wanted. “Ooh, you have Johnnie Walker Blue Label!” she cooed as she snatched up the bottle and poured a healthy glass of whiskey. “I deserve a treat after all of that driving,” she added as she returned to the couch and settled in next to the man.
“I’m glad you called me,” said the doctor. “You’re saving me from being a superfluous man.”
The man clutched his knees and nodded. Faustina enjoyed her drink.
The doctor smiled at Faustina and took a drink as a sign of camaraderie. He then gingerly balanced his glass on a pile of books on the coffee table and reached for the cardboard box. The doctor placed the box on his lap and slowly opened it. He smiled.
“Why do I have this book?” said the man.
“I put it with your new belongings when you were reanimated, of course,” said the doctor.
“But why?” said Faustina.
“What does it mean?” said the man.
“Two very different questions,” said the doctor. “Which one shall I answer first?”
Faustina turned to the man and waited for him to respond.
“Answer her question first,” said the man after a few seconds of thought.
“I’m glad you chose that first, because the second question is a bit harder to answer,” said the doctor as he returned the book to the cardboard box. He took a long drink and sat in silence for almost a full minute. Finally he said, “The short answer is what I alluded to before. I don’t want to be a superfluous man.”
“Wait,” said Faustina. “You were the doctor who worked on his reanimation, right?”
“I am, along with my team, yes.”
“So how could you be a superfluous man if you gave him life?”
“It is one thing to set something—or someone—in motion; it is something else to give that act of creation meaning.”
“I don’t understand,” said the man.
The doctor drained his glass, stood, and walked to his makeshift bar. He refreshed his drink, returned to his chair, and took another drink before considering how he could answer. The doctor breathed in deeply as he thought about where to start.
“Think of a parent who brings a life into this world,” the doctor slowly began. “A ‘bad’ parent, if you will, would abandon that baby and not think twice about its welfare or education or development, correct?”
The man and Faustina nodded in unison.
“Well, after my first five years of creating life and then abandoning my children—if you will—to the world, setting them adrift with their culture and history all wiped clean, I decided to violate the legal and ethical protocols and offer my reanimated subjects a little bit of their identity back when possible. Think about what I was struggling with. Yes, I did create life, but that life was a clean slate wiped of personal memories and experiences—all the things that make us who we are, the things that make us human. But I didn’t want to do too much or leave my children’s own desires and feelings out of the equation. So I settled on an elegant solution. I planted a hint, nothing more, in their belongings that they would eventually find. Perhaps a bit subtle, but I have found that it is just enough to allow my children’s free will to take it from there and do what they need to do. For themselves, not for me.”
“A hint?” said the man. “Like this children’s book?”
“Yes, like that children’s book, plus a note on my business card that left it to you when you were ready. That’s called free will, no? And here you are, of your own volition. You must be ready. You have agency, as they say. And I am not the Dr. Frankenstein that so many people just love throwing at my face. Ni modo. That is a different discussion. In any event, I believe that I have answered the why. Now as for what the book means, are you ready for that?”
The man and Faustina looked at each other. Finally, the man turned back to the doctor and said softly, “Yes.”
“There’s a Mexican saying my mother used to rely on because, frankly, we didn’t have much. She would say, ‘A falta de pan, tortillas.’ It’s all about making do with what you’ve got. And for you, all I had was that children’s book.”
“How did you get it?” said Faustina.
“Another question!” said the doctor with a laugh. “But the answer to that helps me with responding to the question of what does it mean, no?”
“I suppose so,” said the man.
“Are you sure you don’t need a drink?” said the doctor.
Without waiting for a response, Faustina gave her drink to the man. The man looked at it, thought for a moment, took a gulp, then handed it back to Faustina.
“Wise move,” said the doctor.
The man nodded, fortified by the alcohol.
“You died in a car crash,” said the doctor. “The left side of your body was crushed, but the rest of you was almost pristine. Remarkable, really. I still have the photos at the lab. We photographed everything, but all of that is shut down, of course, and we are repurposing—as they say—our medical technology. We’ve learned a lot, you know. In any event, we were able to graft a new left arm and leg onto you. Sorry for not matching your left arm very well, but new limbs don’t grow on trees, no pun intended. At least, we can’t grow them yet!”
The doctor let out a guffaw at his last observation. The man and Faustina did not smile. The doctor composed himself and continued: “But when we put you together—me and my team—and completed the reanimation process, I thought you looked beautiful even with mismatched parts. Do you know why?”
The man shook his head.
“You were beautiful to me because you were alive,” whispered the doctor.
“That’s it?” said the man.
“What is more beautiful than life?”
The man and Faustina nodded in unison.
“In fact, when you first showed signs of life, I announced to my team: He is alive! Life is something that must be proclaimed, acknowledged, celebrated.”
The room fell into silence as the man absorbed the doctor’s observation.
“At the time of the crash,” the doctor said as he finally finished his digression, “you had a box of belongings with you that included this children’s book. There were other books but for adults as well, and some clothing, photographs, term papers, and the like. The best I could figure was that your mother had given you things that were cluttering up her home and that rightfully belonged with you—things that you had not taken earlier, when you had moved out on your own. Kids always do that. My son did, that’s for sure. I still have a box or two of his stuff stored in the garage. Anyway, I kept your children’s book and returned all of that other stuff to her.”
“You mean, my mother?” said the man.
“Lo siento, I’m getting ahead of myself,” said the doctor as he reached for the book again, opened it to the frontispiece, and pointed to the crayoned name. “This book belonged to a young boy named Fernando Ochoa.”
“Me?” said the man.
“Yes.”
Faustina handed her drink to the man, who took the glass and drained it.
“I know it’s a lot,” said the doctor.
“Why did you choose this one item for me?”
“Well,” began the doctor, “childhood is an important time for our development as humans. Our brains are like sponges, absorbing language and sensations and, well, the world that will shape us into who we eventually become as adults. I made a calculated guess that the book was precious to your younger self—after all, why keep it as an adult? And so I slipped it into your belongings in that cardboard box when you were transferred to your transitional housing after reanimation. So in my mind, that book represented your childhood. ¿Entiendes?”
“I think so,” said the man. “I think that makes sense.”
“But why not give him more?” said Faustina. “Why play a Citizen Kane game with him?”
“Oh, I love that movie!” laughed the doctor. “Rosebud, am I right?”
“I don’t know what that means,” said the man.
“I’ll tell you later,” said Faustina. “And we’ll stream the movie. You’ll love it, I hope. If you don’t, I might have to leave you.”
“Ha!” laughed the doctor. “I like this woman. But back to your question. Why did I choose this book? I had to be careful about how much I could breach the protocols. They have eyes everywhere, you know. Sometimes it was easy to become quite paranoid. Even now, with reanimation shut down, there are search warrants and the like. So, you know, I risked my medical and reanimation licenses. I had to be subtle, not get too bold, avoid raising any red flags. Just enough not to be a superfluous man. But some of the protocols made sense. One of the key protocols is to protect the survivors, allow them to grieve the loss of a loved one, move on with their lives. Your former self—Fernando Ochoa—is essentially dead.”
“But…” said the man.
“The person who was Fernando Ochoa,” continued the doctor, “no longer exists and he can never be truly resurrected. Period. Fin de la historia. That’s something you need to accept.”
“What can you tell me about my mother?” said the man.
“Well, not much. Nothing more than her last address. But I can’t give that to you, unless…”
“Unless what?” said the man.
“Again, as I said, you have to understand that some protocols should not be violated. You had signed a donor card where you agreed that upon reanimation, you’d be as good as dead to your family and friends. All of your old social media accounts were wiped and personal records purged. You got a new Social Security card and driver’s license, both marked with a big red R on the front of them. A scarlet letter! Your reanimation credential replaced your old birth certificate. And if you ever had your DNA determined by one of those companies—Ancestry or 23andMe or whatever—the reanimation statute required them to block those records and prevent any future attempt by a reanimated subject from getting a DNA test. If you ever became famous, you couldn’t be a guest of Henry Louis Gates Jr. on that PBS show, that’s for sure.”
“Oh, I love Finding Your Roots,” said Faustina.
“Why go through so much trouble?” said the man.
“All of that protects your family and friends as much as it protects you,” said the doctor before taking another drink. “I mean, you are not the same person they knew. It would be disastrous to pretend otherwise, no? But at the same time I understand your desire to know your roots. It’s very normal. That’s why you’d have to promise before I can give you any more information, such as your mother’s address.”
“Promise what?” said Faustina.
The man stared at the doctor and waited for an answer to Faustina’s question.
“If I give you the address, you must promise me that you will not inform anyone from your prior life who you were. You are dead to them, so you must understand that they have already mourned your loss. You could cause great emotional damage if you’re not careful. Can you imagine a situation, for example, where a reanimated subject returns to his former home and finds that his spouse has remarried and started a new life that might even include children? That kind of thing. People have moved on. And if they’re healthy about such things, they’ve processed the loss in whatever stages work for them. You are nothing more than a memory. And your memory of your past life was wiped with the reanimation process. So they are really strangers to you, no matter how much you might want otherwise. You can’t truly miss what you don’t remember.”
“But he could promise you anything to get that information and just lie through his teeth,” said Faustina. “I mean, think about it. You’re asking a lot. Maybe too much. He could lie to your face and you’d never know.”
“True,” said the doctor. “But not likely. One of things we’ve observed this last decade of reanimation is that our subjects are remarkably honest—honest to a fault, you might even say. Maybe it has to do with the wiping of their histories in the reanimation process.”
“I knew you were different from all the other guys I dated,” said Faustina with a laugh.
“Ha!” said the doctor. “That’s a good one.”
“Okay,” said the man. “I promise.”
The room grew quiet. The doctor nodded slowly.
“But if I give you the address,” said the doctor, “I will also give you some background as well as a story that you can tell those you end up meeting. I know it will feel like a lie, but we will practice, and it will be for their—and your—protection. Are you okay with that?”
“Yes,” said the man. “I am okay with that. I promise.”
“And above all else, you must remember one thing,” said the doctor.
“And what’s that?” said the man.
“No matter what you learn about your former self, and no matter what cover story we come up with, the most important thing you must remember is that you are alive. Got that? Alive. In the here and now. What you are experiencing is real. It’s just different from what you had before.”
“Yes,” said the man. “I am alive.”
Faustina looked at the man and squeezed his right arm.
“Good,” said the doctor. “We can get down to business.”
“But,” said the man, “what about these?” He withdrew from his shirt pocket a bottle of pills. “I am almost out. I can’t find any more at the pharmacy. I’ve been cutting them in half.”
“Those are worthless,” the doctor laughed. “Just a simple antihistamine, nothing more.”
“I was told that I had to take it or else I wouldn’t live my full twenty years.”
“Just another revenue stream for Big Pharma,” said the doctor.
“But why would they do that?” said the man.
“Occam’s razor.”
“What?”
“The simplest explanation is preferable to one that is more complex,” said the doctor. “Greed is the answer, pure and simple. It is the great motivator. So this alleged need for a reanimation medication was part of the backroom dealmaking that a few Senators got for their pharmaceutical donors. The circle of life… for the scum of the Earth.”
“So I don’t need my medication?”
“You will live as long as any person, so just eat your vegetables, exercise, floss your teeth, and love the one you’re with, as the old song goes.”
“Oh,” said the man.
“That’s fucked,” said Faustina. “Not your health advice and loving the one you’re with. The Big Pharma bullshit.”
“Yes,” said the doctor. “Royally fucked. Cabrones, all of them! It’s emblematic of their thinking, you know that? Better to reign in hell than to serve in heaven, that’s their motto. They don’t mind being cast from heaven as long as their pockets are bulging with dinero. The almighty dollar is their god. And besides, they never viewed the reanimated community as being fully human anyway. Just some kind of… of… let me think, what’s a good metaphor? Golem. That’s it! Golem, not human.”
“What’s a ‘golem’?” said the man.
The doctor thought for a moment, then scanned the room. He let out a little grunt when his eyes landed on a pile of books set atop the coffee table. The doctor stood and walked to the table, lifted three books, and snatched a fourth, then returned the first three with an alacrity that startled the man and Faustina. He handed the book to the man as if offering a rare, bejeweled gift.
“Read this when you have a chance,” said the doctor. “Essentially, a golem is an artificial human being from Jewish folklore, but this book explains its rich history.”
The man took the book from the doctor and read its title aloud: “The Golem Redux: From Prague to Post-Holocaust Fiction.”
“It’s a fascinating book that will answer all your questions about all things golem,” said the doctor. “In some ways I prefer the golem metaphor over some of the other ones like, you know, the Shelley novel. Though I sort of like the moniker of the ‘modern Prometheus.’ Nothing beats being a Titan unless, of course, your father is Zeus and decides to punish you. Then watch out for your liver!” said the doctor as he took another drink. “Though I’d love my liver to grow back each day.”
“Poor old Prometheus,” said Faustina with a laugh. The man blinked, not certain what to think.
“But I’m no Victor Frankenstein,” continued the doctor. “And you are not a monster. You are a person. And every person has value, no? Frankly, the ones who call you a monster are the real monsters. Ni modo. We need to focus on the task at hand.”
The man placed the golem book on the couch and waited.
The doctor walked to the bookshelves that covered the far wall. He scanned the titles, muttering to himself, and then said, “Ah!” He reached for a tattered paperback book and walked over to the man and Faustina.
“Let’s begin with this,” said the doctor as he presented the book to the man.
Quetzalcoatl looked up at the humans, licked its lips, and closed its eyes again. The man received the book and scanned its cover. He mouthed to himself, “… y no se lo tragó la tierra by Tomás Rivera.”
“I read that novel in college,” said Faustina. “The English translation, though. I love the title: … And the Earth Did Not Devour Him. I mean, how many book titles begin with an ellipsis? Those three little dots say so much. Anyway, after I read the English translation, I was able to make it through the original Spanish with the help of a dictionary. So beautiful.”
“It’s a bilingual edition,” said the doctor. “The translation is actually quite good. The translator is a poet in her own right, so even the English sings!”
“Do you want me to read it?” asked the man.
“Only if you want to, later. But more importantly, you should open it,” said the doctor as he walked to the turntable and flipped the Tierra album over. As the first song of side two started, the doctor closed his eyes and hummed a little to himself, lost in a faraway happy memory. He sighed, opened his eyes, and walked slowly back to the couple.
The man opened the book, and hidden in the pages was a folded piece of paper. He carefully pulled it out, handed the book to Faustina, and unfolded the paper.
“The FBI searched my hard drive and cell phone, but they were daunted by my thousands of books,” said the doctor. “They never looked into any of the volumes on these two walls because they got tired of opening book after book after book on that smaller bookcase over there,” he added with a chuckle as he pointed to a bulging bookcase near the fireplace. “I got the idea from an Edgar Allan Poe short story. Hidden in plain sight!”
The man studied the handwritten notes on the paper.
“It’s just bare-bones information on you—who you were—like date of birth, schools you attended, what you studied in college, your most recent employment, et cetera,” said the doctor. “You weren’t married, and you didn’t have any children.”
“And this name here,” said the man, “Elisa Ochoa, is that my mother?”
“Yes,” said the doctor. “And that’s her last known address. Right here in Oxnard. That’s why I asked you to pack a few things when you first called me. You can stay in my guest room, not a problem. The foldout is actually quite comfy. I am a longtime widower, and my son is across the country teaching biology at Brown, so you won’t be in the way. It’d be kind of nice to have people around this big house. I can cook a big breakfast. I was planning on chorizo con huevo, steaming corn tortillas, and gallons of coffee. But if you want, there’s also a Comfort Inn, and I think a Hilton, and other hotels not too far from here if you prefer to have your own space, as they say. Ni modo. I thought that you might want to pay a visit tomorrow to Elisa Ochoa, since it’s Sunday.”
The man looked at Faustina, who shrugged.
“We can stay here tonight,” said the man.
“And your suggested breakfast menu sounds better than anything I can think of,” said Faustina. “Thank you!”
“Por nada,” said the doctor. “And it will give us a bit more time to plot out a cover story for you. We don’t want to upset anyone.”
“Yes,” said the man. “We don’t want to upset anyone.”
At that moment, Quetzalcoatl woke from its nap, blinked, yawned, and let out a small meow.
The doctor laughed. “The mention of chorizo con huevo must have broken into Quetzi’s dreams. Let me feed my little friend first. Sadly, Quetzi will have to dine on more traditional cat food. Then we three can get down to work and get ready for your big visit tomorrow.”
“Yes, I would like that,” said the man.
“Sounds like a plan,” said Faustina.
“Yes, it does,” said the doctor as he reached down to pick up the cat. “Yes, it does.”
WASHINGTON (AP)—Attorney General Joyce McCluskie launched a formal, wide-ranging investigation Thursday into the reanimation industry for what she called “egregious” and “systematic” breaches of the so-called Stitcher Protocols that had been in place prior to President Mary Beth Cadwallader’s recent banning of the reanimation procedure.
“One of the reasons the president outlawed reanimation was the brazen pattern and practice of protocol violations that undermined not only the rule of law but also the moral fiber of our society,” said the attorney general, who was joined by her legal team at the press conference.
“Recent FBI raids uncovered extensive potential violations as well as potential coverups at the highest levels of some of our largest targets,” said McCluskie. The attorney general declined to name which companies were targets, though one of the highest-profile FBI raids was conducted last month at Clerval Industries, based in Oxnard, California.
McCluskie, in rather vague terms, described the alleged protocol violations as being tied to actions by industry doctors to maintain contact with reanimated subjects in order to inculcate them with “politically correct” and “race-based” information of their prior lives.
When asked if the investigation was related to the upcoming midterm elections and the president’s desire to maintain her majorities in both the House and Senate, the attorney general vehemently denied the accusation.
“We are about doing the right thing, uninfluenced by politics or party affiliation,” said McCluskie. “We are the Department of Justice, not the department of midterms,” she added with a chuckle.
McCluskie has been mentioned as a potential replacement for Supreme Court Associate Justice Alexander Williams, who turned 87 last week and has been in ill health since suffering a series of strokes at the end of last term. Justice Williams, however, has refused to step down and issued a statement last week indicating, in his trademark colorful language, a desire to continue working until he is “carried out of my chambers, boots first.”