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“I would love to be your first,” she says. “You can do that, can’t you? I mean you’re . . . complete, right?”
“More than complete,” he tells her. “In fact, I have three. ”
She just stares at him dumbfounded, and he decides not to tell her he’s joking.
He finds himself attracted to some, left cold by others—but in none of them does he find the spark of connection he has hoped for. By the time he gets to the last girl, a Boston scholar with New York fashion sense, he just wants to get this day over with. The girl is one of those who is intrigued by his face. She doesn’t just look at him, though, she studies him like a specimen under a microscope.
“So what do you see when you look at me?” he asks.
“It’s not what’s on the outside—it’s the inside that matters,” she responds.
“And what do you think is inside?”
She hesitates, then asks, “Is this a trick question?”
Roberta is exasperated when he refuses to accept a single one of them. Dinner between the two of them that night is all clattering silverware and intense cutting of meat. They barely look at each other across the table. Finally Roberta says, “We’re not looking for your soul mate, Cam, just someone to fill a role. A consort to help ease you into public life. ”
“Maybe I’m not willing to settle for that. ”
“Being practical is not the same as settling. ”
Cam slams his fist down. “My decision! You will not force me. ”
“Of course I won’t—but—”
“Conversation over. ” Then the meal goes back to severe silverware. Deep down he knows she’s right, which just makes him furious. All they need to make Roberta’s scheme work is an attractive, personable girl holding his hand, convincing the public that there’s so much about Cam to love. But he finds no bit of actor in him. Perhaps he can feign it, but he dreads the moments alone when he has to face the emptiness of a false relationship.
Emptiness.
That’s what people believe is inside him. A great void. And if he can’t find a soul mate among the girls paraded before him, does that mean they’re right, and he has no soul?
“Incomplete,” he says. “If I’m whole, why do I feel like I’m not?” And as usual, Roberta has a calming platitude intended to ease his mind, but as time goes on her rote wisdom leaves him flat and disappointed.
“Wholeness comes from creating experiences that are solely yours, Cam,” she tells him. “Live your life and soon you’ll find the lives of those who came before won’t matter. Those who gave rise to you mean nothing compared to what you are. ”
But how can he live his life when he’s not convinced he has one? The attacks in the press conference still plague him. If a human being has a soul, then where is his? And if the human soul is indivisible, then how can his be the sum of the parts of all the kids who gave rise to him? He’s not one of them, he’s not all of them, so who is he?
His questions make Roberta impatient. “I’m sorry,” she tells him, “but I don’t deal in the unanswerable. ”
“So you don’t believe in souls?” Cam asks her.
“I didn’t say that, but I don’t try to answer things that don’t have tangible data. If people have souls, then you must have one, proved by the mere fact that you’re alive. ”
“But what if there is no ‘I’ inside me? What if I’m just flesh going through the motions, with nothing inside?”
Roberta considers this, or at least pretends to. “Well, if that were the case, I doubt you’d be asking these questions. ” She thinks for a moment. “If you must have a construct, then think of it this way: Whether consciousness is implanted in us by something divine, or whether it is created by the efforts of our brains, the end result is the same. We are. ”
“Until we are not,” Cam adds.
Roberta nods. “Yes, until we are not. ” And she leaves him with none of his questions answered.
- - -
Physical therapy has evolved into full-on training sessions with machines, free weights, and cardio. Kenny is the closest thing Cam has to a friend, unless you count Roberta and the guards who call him “sir. ” They talk openly about things that Roberta would probably want to monitor.
“So the great girlfriend search was a bust, huh?” Kenny asks while Cam pushes himself on the treadmill.
“We have not yet found a consort for the creature,” Cam says, mimicking Roberta’s accent.
Kenny chuckles. “You got a right to be choosy,” he tells Cam. “You shouldn’t accept anything less than what you want. ”
Cam reaches the end of his workout, and the machine begins its slowdown. “Even if I can’t have what I want?”
“All the more reason to demand it,” Kenny advises. “Because then maybe they’ll get closer to the mark. ”
Sound logic, perhaps, although Cam suspects it will do nothing but set him up for disappointment.
That night he goes alone to the tabletop computer screen in the living room and starts digging through photo files. Most of it is random stuff—the images Roberta still tests him on, although not as frequently as before. None of it is what he’s looking for. He finds a file that features the head shots of all the girls who interviewed. Two hundred smiling, pretty faces, with attached résumés. After a while, they all begin to look alike.
“You won’t find her in there. ”
He turns to see Roberta standing on the spiral staircase, watching him. She descends the rest of the way.
“Deleted?” he asks.
“Should be,” Roberta says, “but no. ”
She touches the screen, logs in, and opens up files that had been locked to Cam. In just a few seconds she drags out not just one, but three photos and sighs. “Is this who you were looking for?”
Cam looks at the pictures. “Yes. ” The other two photos, like the one he had already seen, seem to have been taken without her knowledge. He wonders why Roberta is now willing to show him these pictures of the girl in the wheelchair, when she was so much against it before.
“Bus,” says Cam. “She was on a bus. ”
“Her bus never made it to its destination. It was run off the road and hit a tree. ”
Cam shakes his head. “I didn’t get that memory. ” Then he looks to Roberta. “Tell me about her. ”
20 - Nelson
The Juvey-cop turned parts pirate has outdone himself this time! Not one, but two AWOLs!
Nelson attributes his success to the ingenuity of his tactics. He caught the girl at a food court by posing as a resistance worker. Gullibility has always been his greatest ally. The girl’s hair isn’t quite red, as Divan requested, but it could be strawberry blond in a certain light. As for the boy, Nelson used the girl as bait, securing her to a drainpipe near an abandoned factory in an umber neighborhood that was known to be AWOL-infested. He waited until her cries drew someone from the dark recesses of the building, and he watched as the boy freed her. Then, from his vantage point in a building across the street, Nelson tranq’d them both as they ran.
His DNA analyzer pegged them both as known AWOLs, which is always better for his conscience than catching kids who actually had a life to go back to.
The drive back to Divan’s auto dealership is filled with anticipation for Nelson. He was never an overachiever, so doing twice the job with half the effort is a rare thing indeed!
When he arrives, Divan is surprised but thrilled to see him so soon after the last delivery. “What a catch,” he exclaims, and for once, doesn’t even dicker—he gives Nelson the price he asks. Perhaps because Nelson doesn’t ask for his trophies this time. The girl’s eyes have fading purple pigment injections that are just plain ugly, and Nelson never did see the boy’s eyes. He rarely covets what he doesn’t see.
In a rare show of gratitude, Divan treats Nelson to dinner in the kind of restaurant he hasn’t frequented in quite a while.
“Business must be pic
king up,” Nelson comments.
“Business is business,” Divan says, “but prospects are good. ”
Nelson can tell that the black marketeer has something on his mind. He watches and waits as Divan dips a spoon into his coffee, stirring slowly, methodically. “At our last encounter,” Divan says, “I spoke to you of rumors, did I not?”
“Yes, but you failed to share them with me,” Nelson says, drinking his own coffee much more quickly than Divan. “Are these rumors something I’ll enjoy hearing?”
“Not at first, I’m sure. I’ve heard it spoken of more than once now. I didn’t want to bring it to your attention until I had heard it from more than one source. ” He continues to stir his coffee. Not drinking, just pondering the swirling liquid. “They are saying that the Akron AWOL is still alive. ”
Nelson feels the little hairs on the back of his neck rise and embed themselves in his collar.
“That’s impossible. ”
“Yes, yes—you’re probably right. ” Then Divan puts down his spoon. “However, did anyone actually see or identify the body?”
“I wasn’t at Happy Jack. I imagine it was a mess. ”
“Exactly,” says Divan slowly. “A mess. ” Then he picks up his coffee and takes a long, slow sip. “Which means that any number of things could have happened. ” Then he puts down his coffee and leans closer. “I believe these rumors may be true. Do you have any idea how much the parts of the Akron AWOL would go for? People will pay obscene amounts for a piece of him. ” Then he smiles. “I’ll pay you ten, maybe twenty times what I paid you for today’s catch. ”
Nelson tries not to react, but he knows that by not saying anything, his greed has expressed itself. But for him, this particular moment of greed is not about money. Bringing in Connor Lassiter wouldn’t just be about the cash, it would even out a very imbalanced score.
It’s as if Divan can read his mind. “I am telling you this before any of my other suppliers. It would bring me great pleasure if you were the one to catch him, considering your history with him. ”
“Thank you,” Nelson says, genuinely grateful for the head start.
“Word has it that there are some sizable AWOL populations in hiding. It would be wise to find those places, as there’s a good chance he’s working for the Anti-Divisional Resistance now. ”
“If he’s alive, I’ll catch him and bring him to you,” Nelson tells him. “One thing, though. ”
Divan raises an eyebrow. “Yes?”
Nelson levels his stare, making it clear that this is nonnegotiable, and says, “I get his eyes. ”
Part Four
Leviathan
SURGEONS HARVEST ORGANS AFTER EUTHANASIA
by Michael Cook, May 14, 2010, BioEdge web journal
How often is this going on in Belgium and the Netherlands? Bioethics blogger Wesley Smith drew our attention to a conference report by Belgian transplant surgeons about organ procurement after euthanasia. As the doctors from Antwerp University Hospital explained in the 2006 World Transplant Congress (in a section called “economics”), they killed a consenting forty-six-year-old woman with a neurological condition and took her liver, two kidneys, and islets.
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