Cam and Roberta’s Washington town house becomes the place to be invited to. Dinner soirees abound with international dignitaries, political movers and shakers, and pop culture icons, all of whom want a proverbial piece of Camus Comprix. Sometimes their attention is so aggressive, Cam wonders if they actually do want a piece of him as a souvenir. He dines with the crowned prince of a small principality he didn’t know existed until the entourage showed up at the door. He does an after-dinner jam with none other than music superstar Brick McDaniel—the artist who comes to mind when you think of the words “rock star.” Cam is actually so starstruck, he becomes a gushing fan—but when they jam side by side on guitar, they are equals.
The heady lifestyle he leads is addictive and all-encompassing. Cam keeps having to remind himself that this is not the prize—nor is it the path to the prize. All this glitz and glamour are merely distractions from his purpose.
But how can you bring down the people who’ve given you this extraordinary life? he occasionally asks himself in weaker moments. Like the moment when Brick McDaniel actually asked for his autograph. He knows he must be careful to ride the tornado—and not be drawn into it.
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“Someday you’ll attend the high school graduation of your great-great-great-granddaughter. Someday you’ll live in a five-hundred-year-old historical landmark . . . that was built three years after you were born. Someday the redwoods will be jealous of your age. Tonight, take a moment to think about all the wonderful things that make your life not only long, but worth living. At Proactive Citizenry we think about those things every day. That’s how we help to make ‘someday’ today!
“At Proactive Citizenry, we know the first person to live forever is alive today. And it’s you!”
“I’m needed back on Molokai,” Roberta tells him one evening. She’s come down to the basement where they’ve set up a full gym for him. His old physical therapist, back when he was first rewound, used to say that his muscle groups didn’t work and play well with others. If only he could see Cam now.
“I’ll return in a couple of days. In time for our luncheon with General Bodeker and Senator Cobb.”
Cam doesn’t let her announcement interrupt his set at the bench press station. “I want to come,” he tells her, and finds that it’s not just posturing—he does want to go back to the compound on Molokai, the closest thing to home that he knows.
“No. The last thing you need after all your hard work is Hawaiian jet lag. Rest up here. Focus on your language studies so you can impress General Bodeker with your Dutch.”
Dutch, one of the various languages that wasn’t included in the nine he came with, has to be learned by Cam the old-fashioned way. His knowledge of German helps, but it’s still a chore. He prefers when things come easier.
“Just because Bodeker has Dutch ancestry doesn’t mean he speaks it,” Cam points out.
“All the more reason for him to be impressed that you do.”
“Is my whole life now about impressing the general and the senator?”
“You have the attention of people who make things happen. If you want them to make things happen for you, then the answer is yes—impressing them should be your primary focus.”
Cam lets the weights drop heavily, with a resounding slam.
“Why do they need you on Molokai?”
“I’m not at liberty to say.”
He sits up and looks at her with something between a grin and a sneer. “ ‘Not at liberty to say.’ They should put that on your grave. ‘Here lies Roberta Griswold. Whether or not she rests in peace, we’re not at liberty to say.’ ”
Roberta is not amused. “Save your morbid sense of humor for the girls who fawn over you.”
Cam blots his face with a towel, grabs a sip of water, and asks, as innocently as he can, “Are you building a better me?”
“There is only one Camus Comprix, dear. You are unique in the universe.”
Roberta’s very good at telling him the things she thinks he wants to hear—but Cam is very good at getting past that. “The fact that you’re going to Molokai says otherwise.”
Roberta is careful in her response. She speaks as if navigating a minefield. “You are unique, but my work doesn’t end with you. It is my hope that yours will be a new variation of humanity.”
“Why?”
It’s a simple question, but Roberta seems almost angered by it. “Why do we build accelerators to find subatomic particles? Why did we decode the human genome? The exploration of possibility has always been the realm of science. The true scientist leaves practical application to others.”
“Unless that scientist works for Proactive Citizenry,” Cam points out. “I want to know how creating me serves them.”
Roberta waves her hand dismissively. “As long as they allow me to do my work, their money is far more important to me than their motives.”
It’s the first time Roberta has referred to Proactive Citizenry as “they” instead of “we.” Cam begins to wonder if the whole debacle with Risa has put Roberta in the organization’s dog house. He wonders how far she’ll go to get back into their good graces.
Roberta goes upstairs, leaving Cam to finish his workout, but his heart is no longer in it. He does take a moment, though, to examine his physique in the mirrored wall.
There were no mirrors when Cam was first rewound—when the scars were thick ropy lines all over his body and horrible to look at. Those scars are now gone, leaving behind smooth seams. And now there can never be enough mirrors for him. His guiltiest pleasure is how much he enjoys looking at himself and this body they’ve given him. He loves his body, yet that still falls short of loving himself.
If Risa loved me—truly and without coercion—then I could bridge that gap and feel it myself.
He knows what he has to do to make that happen—and now that Roberta will be five thousand miles away, he can begin the work necessary to bring this about without fear of her persistent scrutiny of everything he does. He’s been stalling for much too long.
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Who are we? We are the two steps forward for every one step back. The silence between the beats of your father’s new heart and the breeze that dries a troubled child’s tears. We are the hammer that shatters the glass ceiling of longevity and the nail in the coffin of deadly disease. In a sea of uncertainty, we are the voice of reason, and while others are doomed to relive the past, we challenge ourselves to prelive the future. We are the dawn’s early light. We are the silky blue behind the stars. We are Proactive Citizenry. And if you’ve never heard of us, well, that’s all right. It just means we’re doing our job.
As soon as the limo spirits Roberta off the following morning, Cam gets to work on the computer in his room, moving his hands across the large screen as if casting a spell. He creates a nontraceable identity on the public nimbus—the global cloud so dense it would plunge the world into eternal darkness were it real instead of just virtual. He knows all his activity is monitored, so he piggybacks on an obsessive gamer somewhere in Norway. Anyone monitoring him will think he’s developed an interest in Viking raids on drug-dealing trolls.
Then, obscured within the nimbus, he tweaks and strokes the firewall of Proactive Citizenry’s server until it opens for him, giving him access to all sorts of coded information. But for Cam, making sense of the random and disjoint is a way of life. He was able to create order within the fragmented chaos of his rewound brain, so pulling order out of Proactive Citizenry’s protective scramble will be a walk in the park.