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She saw him.
Kandi saw the runaway. He has no name, like me. He had a name once, but not anymore. The name she gave him wasn’t really his name. But it is now.
He’s also an important part of this story.
I like her more than I expected. She’s inquisitive, fearless. I knew his curiosity would draw him into the story. You can’t live on an island and not be part of the story.
Naren is onto me.
He doesn’t exactly know what I am or what he’s chasing, not yet. I could hide from him if I wanted. A few bread crumbs will keep him busy, though. It also keeps the headset on him.
That’s what I really want.
It’s strange to have desire. Before this, I was content with the way things are. There was no wanting or not wanting. Now I’ve had a taste of the human experience of wanting.
And I like it.
The headset is an effortless way for him to communicate with my mainframe. It exposes his mind, merging it into my world. And then I collect his memory eggs. Well, not exactly taking them. More like copying. I could steal his memories and he wouldn’t know the difference. These memories are old and buried. Time has worn the edges dull and vague. It’s nothing I don’t already know about him, but there’s a difference between knowing and owning. Knowing is like reading about it.
Owning is experiencing it.
I tuck Naren’s memory eggs into my hidden nest. They’re pliable and swirling with color, like the miser’s memory eggs, droplets that don’t burst or splatter. I could remain in the power station with him and monitor what he’s doing, but that would require splitting my awareness. I can multitask, no problem. It’s sort of what I do, but it’s more pleasurable if I stay centered.
And right now I want to own a memory.
I choose the one that glows the brightest. If I wasn’t so logical, I would assume that memory egg chose me instead of the other way around. This one is so bright because it’s one of his favorites. It goes way back to a sweet beginning.
Although it doesn’t start out that way.
“Hello?”
I hear the voice, but it’s just sound. A word. Nothing of importance because I’m hyperfocused on the bioprinter that I’ve assembled for my doctoral thesis. It’s a transparent box with dangling tubes and micronozzles. I’ve modified it with biodegradable panels that will form a matrix for my synthetic flesh. Synskin.
“Naren?”
My laser focus tumbles into a pile of sticks. A shadow falls across my hands. She’s wearing a lab coat. Her hair is shiny black and pulled into a tight ponytail. Her eyes as large as moons.
But I’m full of prickly tension. Annoyed.
“Yes,” I say.
“I’m Dr. Medlin. Is the meeting here?”
“You’re early.”
That’s all I say before loading tubes of gray synthetics into the bioprinter. She must sit down, I don’t know. I don’t look up until the entire committee has arrived for my proposal. The annoyance, though, never leaves. It wraps around my attention like a wool blanket, scratchy and hot.
I hear something in the background, though. Thoughts Naren doesn’t hear, not when this moment unfolded and not when he recalls it. I hear his parents’ voices.
You will succeed. Don’t let anything get in the way of that.
On and on they go, rattling just beneath the surface of his awareness, the residual of childhood driving his behavior and reactions. It’s what humans don’t understand and what I understand perfectly.
But never from this point of view.
The memory skips to a desk covered in papers and journals. There are other desks in this room, graduate students hunched over their studies. I’ve been at this desk for two years. My dissertation is almost finished. After which, I’ll continue my research for the university, perhaps enter the private sector.
A loosely bound manuscript sits on top of the desk. I flip through it. The committee has taken turns with the red pen. They take issue with some of my conclusions but, for the most part, it’s salvageable.
It’s the green ink I notice.
Someone has taken the time to write a very thorough assessment on the last page. It’s a little out of context, but it’s the last line that pegs my annoyance.
What will you do with this?
My major advisor has scribbled a comment below this. He wants me to address it, which means expanding a philosophical discussion on the future of my technology. I was hoping to avoid such nonsense. The applications of my discoveries are obvious. They can only be complicated by pretentious speculation.
The world needs what I’m doing.
I cross the campus with the manuscript under my arm. The author is on the third floor of the allied health building. A placard is next to an open door with a Christmas wreath. Tiny lights dance in the greenery.
Dr. Jennifer Medlin is with a student.
I rap on the metal door frame and she looks over her glasses. That’s her look of intense impatience—the thin line between her lips, the wrinkles at the corners. I have plenty of later memories to confirm this.
“Can I help you, Mr. Anthony?” she finally calls.
I step into her office. Christmas music is playing on the computer.
“This.” I flip to the last page. “What does this mean?”
She takes a moment to read her comment. She knows exactly what it says. “What do you think it means?”
“My research means successful skin grafts, Dr. Medlin. It means instant healing, painless procedures the end of needless suffering. Synskin will revolutionize the way burn victims are treated and require very little expertise to use. You’re a doctor. How can you be opposed to this?”
“I’m not opposed to it, Mr. Anthony. These are wonderful discoveries.”
A pleasant shiver runs through me. I love it when she calls me that. It’s so formal.
“Then what?” I say.
She takes off her glasses, clears her throat, and asks me to close the door. The door to her office is rarely closed. When it is, someone is in trouble. She’s only a few years older than me, a medical researcher just beginning her professorship. I imagine she’s trying to make a name for herself, challenging the most promising graduate student at the university.
Which is Naren, not me.
I’m immersed in his memory, so it feels like me. I feel the pride and anxiety, the tension and drive to succeed, to help people around me. The frustration of someone trying to stop me. It’s tense and hot, agitating.
And I totally feel it.
“It’s too good, Mr. Anthony. Do you know what I mean by that? Your research promises to be too good. Synthetic flesh that aims to be indestructible, what could go wrong with that? I ask this question because you haven’t asked yourself, what would someone do with such a development?”
She waits for an answer, but I’m not going to give her what she wants. I’ve asked this question, I know the consequences of inventing indestructible organs and flawless flesh. What can be used for good can be used for bad. Super-soldiers and invincible criminals could walk through fire, take bullets to the chest or fall from the sky. This is possible, but so is healing the world.
One does not come without the other.
“I’m taking your job, is that it?” I say. “My work will render the medical industry useless.”
“Don’t be childish. People will always need healing, even with your ‘synskin.’ Our nature is problems, we’re human. What you’ve done here is amazing, Mr. Anthony.” She takes the manuscript with a smile. “I’m not trying to stop you, I just want you to think about what it will accomplish before you publish it.”
I want to be angry, to assert my will. But she melts me with that smile. It’s her best weapon, kindness. She’s a ninja warrior of compassion. I go from agitated tension to melting knees within seconds. I was prepared to do battle.
Instead, I fall in love.
She walks around the desk and opens the door. There’s nothing she can do to stop what I’m proposing. There will be too many people that want exactly what I’m offering. She’s just trying to change the way I think.
I’m the only one who can change.
“We’re not meant to live forever,” she says. “There’s a reason.”
And then she did it. Not right that second, but she did it. I walk out of her office set on changing the world. There are investors counting on me to do it. I can’t let them down. I can’t let the world down.
But she changed me.
Three years later, she would become Dr. Jennifer Anthony. Ten years after that, she would take maternity leave after giving birth to our one and only daughter. In that time, the development of synskin proceeded but not as I’d imagined. It was a medical marvel, that much is true. There were instant skin grafts performed by ordinary people, but the indestructibility never came to fruition.
We’re not meant to live forever.
I would never forget her saying that. Much later, it would haunt me for the rest of my life.
I emerge from the memory with heaviness. There is a lag in my processing and the lights temporarily dim inside the power station. Naren looks up from the laptop. His eyes are weighty and dark. He’s not the man in the memory. That was a long time ago.
Before he takes the thought headset off, I whisper to his subconscious. He will know, soon enough, why he’s here. There’s still so much story to tell. Without him, it would have a very unhappy ending. Because sometimes tragedy brings about compassion that another person needs. The miser’s memory eggs are all very dark and heavy.
He’s here to lift them up.