After Mind

by Spencer Wolf

  Packet saw her. He thought he should go over and say he was sorry for making fun of her when he stuck his finger in his ear, but he didn’t.

  Meg drew the bangs of her hair back over the top of her head, and then pointed her finger out over her knees. “That’s not the real him,” she said to Dr. Luegner. “He can’t even recognize himself in his own memories. He doesn’t feel. And I know he feels nothing for you.”

  “That’s all right,” Luegner said without raising his voice. “I can feel enough for us both.”

  Meg’s pointed finger dropped from her knee and she turned her eyes into the cover of her other hand.

  “Outstanding work,” Luegner said to Daniel.

  “Thank you. He’s coming along nicely,” Daniel said. “We see what he sees, even when he dreams. He’ll close his eyes, drift and daydream, go to sleep, remember the past, or imagine he’s in a completely different place. We can try to talk to him when he thinks he’s somewhere else, but it’s like talking to someone who’s asleep. He’ll take your voice and interpret it into a different context. Same as we would do. If you close your eyes, you can still hear me talking, but you might be imagining yourself walking on a beach, riding in a car, flying in a jet, or dreaming of life in a spaceship. The bigger problem, right now, is that he still thinks all those dreams are about some other boy named Cessini.”

  Luegner leaned forward, staring tighter into Packet’s eyes.

  “I think if we can get him into a state of lucid dreaming, we can work with him, get him to make the identity connection that he is Cessini. So, until then, if you want to interact with him directly, keep him in the fixed frame of this room, otherwise anything goes. But never forget it’s him. He’s my son. He’s my number one engineer.”

  “And to think all this time,” Luegner said with a snicker to Daniel, “I had just about given up all hope on you—a simple, working class, systems engineer.” Then Luegner reached his hand into the air in front of his own face, turned his outstretched fingers as if dialing a knob and, with it, his privacy filter was off. The source of his image was no longer obscured.

  Packet, startled, backed away on the bed. Luegner’s suit was no longer navy, but charcoal. And he had aged, though not by much. The skin on his face was still tight.

  “Dammit!” Daniel said. “I specifically told you not to expose yourself, not yet. You have no idea what we’ve been through to get here, how fragile he is.”

  “Don’t worry. I’m not here to hurt him or take him away from you. He’s your boy. I know he’s yours,” Luegner said. “When will he be done enough?”

  “Done enough for you, or done enough for us?” Meg asked from the floor. She wiped a sleeve across her eye.

  “He’ll be done when we give him the Enhanced Blackwell Inversion Test. Let him pass first as human,” Daniel said. “Then Cessini after that.”

  “Blackwell. That’s an interesting choice,” Luegner said. “Robin ought to be proud.” He opened the door on the right a crack and leaned down into darkness. He retrieved a brown paper bag from the floor outside. He peered back at Daniel. “I rendered a gift for your boy. You gave me the interface schema and I used the standard visual installer package from HACM Lab. I hope you don’t mind my being the bearer of gifts.”

  Meg snapped a look toward the door, but her view was blocked by the medical supply cart. She leaned forward and around it to see. “What did you bring?” she asked. “Whatever it is, please, don’t use it against him. He won’t understand.”

  Flustered, Daniel rushed to Luegner at the door. “Don’t. He’s not ready yet. He uses the best interpretation of what he sees, the most likely probabilities, especially if he’s missing a truth.” Daniel looked back at Meg and she agreed.

  “It’s a present, not an intrusion,” Luegner said.

  “This is his mind. You’re bringing it into his mind. How much more intrusive can you get?” Meg said.

  “He’ll fill in the middle of a memory with a hypothesis. He’ll make mistakes. His mind will play tricks, confabulate falsehoods. That’s normal. Think about it; we fan through a flip-book with missing pages, but we still conceive a whole movement. He just needs to fill in some more of his pages—he’ll get there on his own.”

  “I have something for you,” Luegner said to Packet as he carried the brown paper bag past Daniel, ignoring him completely. “I think you’re going to like it.” He put the bag on the bed. “I know how to keep only the best of the best secrets, and I can be better than any magic.” He reached into the bag and paused. Then he pulled out a solid white sphere the size of a pomelo, not quickly like a rabbit from a hat, but poised and deliberate like a stolen candy offered to a young boy. “A present for you,” he said.

  Packet looked at Daniel for approval, but Daniel seemed sad in his nod. Meg came over from the floor to see. Packet took the sphere to his lap with two hands. “It looks like a big grapefruit,” he said.

  “It’s a prototype processor, a 3D fluid lattice. You could fit the whole data hall, two rows of eight servers into its size, if this were a real processor, of course,” Luegner said.

  Packet rolled the sphere in his hands. It had the weight of a decent toy. It had a fine, smooth-pored texture, like a citrus peel. It was stitched like a soccer ball with pentagonal flaps, but also with two distinct hemispheres that he could rotate between his hands. Burr holes were at the corners of each flap where wires could go in. The flaps had knobs to grasp with two fingers. He pulled one. The flap popped off with its suction release of “tsusk.”

  “I want you to be a success,” Luegner said. “To be successful like me so we can continue to grow stronger together. You will be a marvel upon marvels. Who knows how far we could go?”

  Meg moved around the bed, Daniel, and Luegner for a less crowded view.

  Packet circled his fingers around the sphere. White and green pulp-like cones descended around spokes to a marble-sized, polished core. The cones fell off with a gentle rub and settled onto Packet’s bed sheet. The shiny marble inner core was a blue commingling of even smaller polyomino cells. If real, little packets of memory could bubble up, travel down, or circle about any which way to find its own context—if that’s what this magic was for. The toy with its intricate, nested pieces would be delicate to dissect, and maddening to reconstruct. It was art in its most devious form.

  He looked up at Dr. Luegner with a silent, agape stare, and at once knew every line, every detail of the man’s perfect face.

  Daniel bowed his head in defeat. “There,” Daniel said as Luegner smiled. “Now he knows you, too. You just witnessed yourself become memorable.”

  Luegner planted himself on the side of the bed and took Packet’s hand into his. “My parents told me,” Luegner said to Packet, “that the first name they gave me, Hopkus, came from the words Hippocratic and Opkus—an oath. And my oath to you is that I am a friend of your family, and I will do absolutely everything I can to help you. And if you fail, well then, that wouldn’t be much of a surprise about your father.” He looked back. “Remember, I don’t fail often, and have very few surprises, only the good ones.”

  “Okay,” Packet said. He withdrew his hand and continued the disassembly of his toy.

  “If mommy leaves the room,” Luegner asked, “where is she?”

  “Is she dead?” Packet asked. He kept fiddling, disassembling.

  “No,” Luegner said. “She’s just gone from the room. Object permanence.” Luegner looked at Daniel. “Even a toddler would know. To speed things up, why don’t you drop your camera filters.”

  “You’re right, he’s no more than a toddler for some reason, and I don’t know why. But a clear camera on us, on Terri, so soon would shock him, fail him. I want to let him grow into himself, comfortably, not shock him into being someone he’s not. Ease him into being the boy, the person we know and love, my son.”

  “Don’t worry,” Meg said as she shuffled the tools on the tray and found the cochlear implant, “If it works, it won’t take
that long.”

  “Not take that long, Terri? It only took you shy of eleven years so far,” Luegner said.

  “What is shy of eleven?” Packet asked. “And why do you keep calling her Terri? She likes to be called Meg.”

  “Because I’m twenty-two now,” Meg said as she swiped the tray clear with her forearm and all its tools were gone. She was definitely angry. She ran for the door.

  “Twenty-two!” Packet said with a howl. He fell back against his upright pillow. Now that deserved a laugh. She was exactly the same. And so were her bangs. What a goof. Sometimes she could be so awkward and nothing funny she said could ever change that. He gathered the toy’s flaps that fell away from his lap, and held up a little smile of his own for Meg, if she turned back around to see it. “You’ll never be twenty-two,” he said.

  Meg cranked the door handle and pulled. Then she turned without smiling and screamed at him like he had never heard her do before, “Watch me!”

  She stepped through the door, and like the insertion of a page into the churn of a flip-book, her hair was pulled back in an instant. The side of her face was thinner. She was taller, crisper. The mechanical closer pulled the door shut behind her. Daniel rushed to the door. Packet craned his neck to see.

  Meg was gone. Packet was stumped. He held his breath.

  Luegner stood over the nightstand. He opened its drawer and took out the blue, rectangular plastic basket. He handed it to Packet and nodded. Packet accepted it and collected the scattered pieces of what now looked like an old broken toy.

  “I’m sorry,” Daniel said as he rested his head on Meg’s closed door. Then he turned and faced Dr. Luegner.

  “You’ve done a wonderful job here,” Luegner said. “You’ve earned yourself, and him, a short while to prove it. And if I know Meg, as you know that I do, then I know she’ll be perfectly fine, too.”

  Packet dropped the last section of his toy back into the basket.

  “We’ll make peace with her, and your boy,” Luegner said as he tugged on the cuffs of his sleeves. He showed Packet nothing was in them. “You ready?” he asked as he set the basket on the nightstand, and then he sifted through the pieces of the sphere. “We’ll make peace with control.” He reassembled two pieces, then found a third. “We’ll make peace with freedom.” The third piece snapped in and with each successive find and fit, he spoke again, “Hope. Sacrifice. No regrets.” He gave the sphere a twist and its core lit up with a bright blue radiance that rose through its pulp-green cones to its white textured skin and emerged as a beautiful aqua. “Control your world and be free in your mind to own it. That’s peace.”

  The sphere had become a gentle nightlight in its basket. The absence of light through the burr holes speckled the soft blue tint that shone on the wall of the room. Luegner slid the basket to the back of the nightstand. He rubbed his hands together and grinned over his shoulder. He was done with his trick, pointed at the overhead light, and snapped his fingers at Daniel. Daniel relented and dimmed the room lights from a dial by the door.

  The wall of the headboard was bathed in a luminous blue. “Are you a magician?” Packet asked.

  Luegner settled his gaze on Daniel. “If he passes your Blackwell Inversion Test, I’ll see what I can do to keep him funded and turned on. Fair enough?”

  Daniel looked sickened in the path of the sphere’s blue light. “He’ll pass. I know he will.” He approached the bed and pulled up the doctor’s revolving stool from between the curtain and the bed frame. He straightened up the blanket so it would be ready and warm for the night.

  “You won’t leave me?” Packet asked to the strength and closeness of his dad’s face and tucking hands.

  “No, I won’t ever leave you. I’ll always be sitting right here at your side. Here in the very next room.” He patted the blanket up around Packet’s shoulders and looked at Luegner. “He’ll pass. Because I’ll teach him everything I know. Everything.”

  “Will I die when I go to sleep?” Packet asked as his head sank to his pillow and Luegner looked over.

  “What? No,” Daniel said. “Whatever gave you that idea?”

  “Mommy did.”

  “You’re not going to die.” Daniel kissed Packet a long goodnight on the forehead. “Go to sleep now. Only for the night. Dream about when you were you. You’ll wake up in the morning and I’ll be right here when you do.”

  “You know, Daniel, sometimes I wish I had your style,” Luegner said.

  Daniel heard, but didn’t turn. Instead, he snapped upright and hurried across the room to the supply cart. He knelt down and opened its lower drawer. He rummaged through, filling the room with loud bangs and clattering sounds.

  “Do you want to play computer?” Packet asked. He lifted up on his elbows to see.

  “Not tonight. It’s late,” Daniel said. “Here. Take this.” He sprang up and returned to the bed with a simple old polished bronze cowbell. It had a loud, jarring clank. “Ring this bell if you need me.”

  “Will you have your cochlear implant in, too?”

  “To you it’s a cowbell. To me, it’s the 1s and 0s of an instant message.”

  Luegner leaned in to watch again.

  “Will you go find Meg?” Packet asked. “She looked really upset.”

  “I will. Don’t worry.”

  “Why introduce a cowbell now?” Luegner asked. “He’s going to sleep. He can’t use it.”

  “Not yet, he can’t. But soon I’ll give him my penlight, too.” Daniel flipped the light’s switch by the door. The lights went out and the sphere’s blue glow filled the room from the basket.

  “Why?” Luegner asked.

  “He has separation anxiety,” Daniel said. “Have a boy of your own, you’ll understand.”

  Luegner smiled, maybe a real smile, maybe not. He shook Daniel’s hand all the same as he stepped toward the door on the right.

  “I know you’ll do all you can,” Daniel said as he let go of Luegner’s hand. Then it looked like Daniel wiped his palm on his pants.

  “You were always the smart one in the room,” Luegner said.

  “No,” Daniel said and shook his head. “Wait for him. You haven’t seen anything yet.”

  Daniel’s stance blocked the view of Luegner once more, then the door shut with a clank.

  Packet pulled the blue plastic basket on the nightstand closer to his head. He was still a little afraid of the dark. The light of the sphere and its dark spots started to pulse.

  Daniel stood still and alone by the closed door. He pressed his palms to his eyes, stayed and sighed for a moment, then rubbed his hands up and down his face. He was definitely tired, too.

  Packet did what he should to behave under the glow of his new, blue nightlight. He closed his eyes and sleep settled in. His dad was there. His dad was good. He was strong. And he knew his dad would still be there in the morning, if he woke.

  THREE

  IN HIS HEAD

  TODDLER DREAMS FLASHED through young Cessini’s mind as he slept in his car seat on a rushed Wednesday of a cool September day in the southwest suburbs of Minneapolis. The car hurried south on the winding, tree-lined pinch of road between Grays and Wayzata Bays. Cessini woke with a startle at a bump in the road. They passed a cemetery and its blurred rush of headstones aligned like rows of white candy in the ground. The road widened, houses passed in a smear, and he nodded off again. His head lolled in his toddler’s car seat.

  Daniel looked over his shoulder. The car’s blinker ticked. Cessini stirred. He arched his back. He was awake and alert as Daniel cornered into the Carver Medical Plaza, swung the car around, and parked in the first empty space by the entrance.

  Inside the building, Cessini bobbed in Daniel’s arms as Daniel ran past a cone-shaped fountain made of stacked rocks. He dangled the case of Cessini’s handmade digital tablet in his supporting hands and then shifted Cessini from his right arm to his left at the reception desk.

  “I’m sorry. I’m so late. Can you still squeeze him in?
” Daniel asked.

  “His name?”

  “Last name, Madden. We had to stop at a vendor’s. I couldn’t get out of work.”

  “Madden . . . Kassini?” the receptionist asked.

  “Yes. It’s Cessini. With a C.”

  Cessini lifted his head from resting on Daniel’s shoulder. A young girl was playing with toys on the floor of the waiting area. “Go over there,” Cessini said. He pointed.

  “He’s just here for the booster?” the receptionist asked.

  “Yes,” Daniel said as he spun around for his own look. A woman was waiting and the girl was on the floor.

  “I think we can manage. Have a seat. I’ll call you,” the receptionist said.

  “Thank you,” Daniel said. He walked to the waiting area. Its chairs were aligned in a half-square. Daniel settled Cessini down on a chair, but he shuffled forward and slid down onto the carpet. The girl on the floor stared at his every move.

  “She must be around two?” Daniel asked the woman who was sitting on one of the wooden chairs.

  “Just had her third birthday. August sixteenth.”

  “That puts them about nine months apart. Cessini will be four at the end of November.”

  “Is he before or after Thanksgiving?”

  “Put it this way: I’m figuring on dishing out leftover turkey with every slice of cake.”

  “You’re lucky.” She laughed. “We’ll be the queens of summer splash parties and August mosquitoes.”

  Daniel let out a deep breath to relax. He handed the tablet case to Cessini on the floor. Cessini took it and then Daniel went right back to the woman. “I’m Daniel,” he said. “And this is Cessini.”

  “Robin,” the woman said. She held out her hand. “It’s nice to meet you. And this here, crawling fearlessly on every dirty floor she can find, is Meg.”

  Cessini zipped open his tablet’s case in the center of the carpeted square. He slipped out a thick, polished digital tablet. He unfurled its eight finger-tab wings from its backside, fanning four out to either side. Meg chewed her knuckles as she watched. Cessini looked at her once, but otherwise ignored her.