The Curiosity

by Stephen Kiernan

  Billings went on to describe the body-mass calculations, Borden’s salt strategy, the odds that Judge Rice would not have woken at my touch. “In truth, lovely,” he said to me, “we half expected you to find him cold.”

  “So wait.” Gerber pressed downward with his hands, as though he were a traffic cop telling someone to slow down. “You had a life-or-death situation going on, but you didn’t bother to share it with your senior research staff?” He laughed. “That’s hilarious.”

  Carthage folded his arms. I stood there steaming. Those secretive bastards.

  “At least I told you,” Billings said, facing me. “They didn’t want to explain even now. Perhaps that brings me a smidge back into your good graces?”

  “This place is incredible,” I said. “Billings, you feel like a hero for telling me after the fact, when Gerber and I might have helped solve this problem. And you two.” I turned to Borden and Carthage. “You may know science, but you know nothing about what the life of the man in there is worth. This place is not a zoo.”

  Carthage just made his weird lopsided smirk. “There you are wrong,” he said. “That is precisely what this place is. A zoo. What you fail to recognize is that Dr. Borden and I are the keepers.”

  CHAPTER 21

  Dressed to Meet the World

  My name is Jeremiah Rice, and I begin to awaken.

  It began in earnest on the twenty-second day when Dr. Philo came for me, stirring me from sleep so deep I felt thawed once again out of the ice. Twice now she has placed her hand on me directly. Though my mind has no awareness of the century I spent insensate, my skin knows every second that it has gone without human touch. When her hand lifted away that morning, I felt immediately parched.

  With a deep breath, I sat upright. Some debate was under way out in the control room. I observed how Dr. Philo remonstrated and Dr. Gerber laughed, Drs. Carthage and Borden remained as impassive as gargoyles, and Dr. Billings volleyed from one duo to the other like a baseball among four fielders. I wondered if I were the cause of this dispute, if my request for privacy and other amenities had created a conflict. At last the two in charge swept from the room like general and lieutenant, king and minion, Billings at their heels, whilst my friends went to their desks, continuing to speak animatedly across the room.

  I rose to don yet again the attire of prior days, and noted that the fabrics were tiring. My trouser cuffs had begun to fray. The shirt button at my throat remained clasped by a last thin thread. Hardly would I ask for a change of clothes, however, until I knew that the dispute caused by my last request had been resolved.

  I placed some of Dr. Borden’s porridge in the windowed box that heats food faster than any stove imaginable, pressed buttons to initiate its humming and turning of the platter inside, and in minutes was swallowing down my ration of gruel. Thin pleasure, to be sure. Betimes I thought the spoon had more flavor than the food. Setting the empty bowl aside, I heard the restraining door hiss. In charged Dr. Philo, her sleeves rolled up.

  “Big day today, Judge Rice. Big day.”

  “What new pleasures and adventures have you planned, Dr. Philo?”

  “What I promised yesterday—to find you a thousand friends.” She picked up my half-eaten orange. “You all set with this?”

  “I apologize. I simply—”

  “No problem, your honor.” She tossed the remainder in the waste bin without comment. “I’m glad you’re dressed. We have a lot of ground to cover.”

  I stood, rubbing my hands together as if to warm myself. “Lead on, Doctor.”

  Outside, the protesters were barking like dogs, led by one at the front with a handheld device that magnified his voice such that it echoed off the buildings. Between cheers he taught them a drill of some kind: one of their number would volunteer to stand a bit aside, and at a signal from the leader, the rest would rush to form a circle around that one. Then another would volunteer and the group would rush to surround him. They hurried from spot to spot, reminding me of a barn cat that lets its mouse escape a dozen times before making the kill. I heard their leader call the exercise “swarming,” though to me it suggested coercion, entrapment. To my relief, this time we skirted the green without attracting his notice. Whatever their game, I did not want to play.

  Dr. Philo took me, as if she had read my thoughts that morning, to a haberdasher. She called it something else, and the store’s name was “Garb.” But the moment we stepped inside, I recognized the nature of the establishment.

  A salesman descended on us. “You are that reawakened man, aren’t you?” he asked, scurrying across the carpet.

  “This is Jeremiah Rice,” Dr. Philo said.

  “Honored to meet you, sir.” The salesman shook my hand vigorously. “My name is Franklin. And today we would be looking for . . . ?”

  “I don’t know,” I said, turning to Dr. Philo as well. “A gray suit?”

  “Everything,” she told Franklin. “Time to bring the man up-to-date.”

  “Excellent. Marvelous. I just knew today was going to be a special day. Marcy? Oh, Marcy?”

  A freckled waif came from the back room, a silver ring through one nostril—the oddities of here and now were apparently limitless—and folding a shirt as she entered. Franklin told her where to find his phone, which he explained to me also contained a camera. My experience with photography consisted of long-held poses with the captain and crew prior to the expedition’s departure. The camera was larger than a breadbox, stood on three legs, and had a cloth draped over the back. I could not imagine how a thin-wristed elf like Marcy would carry such a weight. When she returned with a device smaller than a pack of playing cards, I was all the more perplexed. But Marcy dutifully pointed it at me in my worn clothes, displaying the photograph a moment later, my whiskered face, my surprised eyes.

  Franklin bustled back. “This is going to be so much fun.”

  I cannot say the subsequent hour fit that description, exactly, but there was a certain amusing giddiness in trying on so many garments. The store boasted a wealth of options. Dr. Philo left to buy herself a coffee while I tried on each of a stack of shirts. When she returned, she pulled Franklin aside and they chatted a moment. He nodded, looking at me meaningfully.

  “What conspiracy are you two concocting?” I asked.

  Franklin only hurried over. “Let’s see about some shoes.”

  So passed the morning: shirts, socks, pants, jackets. Marcy photographed everything. When I pulled on a pair of navy, pleated trousers, Franklin assessed my appearance, then called to Dr. Philo. “This is going to be better than winning the lottery.”

  Lastly came undergarments, which I tried alone in a dressing room. The fabric was soft like a cat, and snug. Finally Franklin had me dress in a complete ensemble and pointed me at a mirror. A man of here and now peered out at me: thin lapels, no waistcoat, a softer shirt with its collar already attached.

  “Marvelous,” Franklin said. “Now there’s only one last thing.”

  I turned to him. “Yes?”

  He wiggled a finger to instruct me to face the mirror again, then brought one hand up on either side of my face, palms over my sideburns. “These.”

  “But I’ve had them since—”

  “Not an option. They simply must go.”

  “They must?”

  “We’re not providing all of this merchandise for free if you’re going to walk out of here looking like that.”

  “I beg your pardon? You mean to say you are giving me these clothes?”

  “In exchange for photos of you for ads, yes. That’s what your friend negotiated. Now, wait right here.”

  In a moment Franklin returned with a corded device which had one end shaped like shears. Plugged in and switched on, it buzzed like a bee against a window. “Hold still,” Franklin said, pressing me into a forward lean, while Marcy held a wastebasket beneath. In two sweep
s he had taken most of my whiskers. Another half minute of close work lifted the stubble away to give me clean cheeks. Just like that.

  Marcy took more photos whilst Franklin stepped back to survey his handiwork. “Marvelous. Believe me, sir, you will thank me. Now go show your friend the new you.”

  I ran a hand over my smooth face, as unknown to me as a stranger’s, then tugged my sleeves down snug and marched into the sales area. Dr. Philo was standing by the window, sipping her coffee. I cleared my throat. She turned, and brought one hand to her mouth. “Oh my God,” she said. “You, you look . . .”

  “Franklin insisted on my sideburns. What do you think?”

  “What do I think? Good Gawd.” She lowered herself into the nearest chair, clearly unaware that she was staring. Then all at once her face went blank, as calm as a pond. “You look fine, Judge Rice. Just fine.”

  “He looks fantastic,” Franklin announced. “Now, last thing, we find you a tie.”

  I followed him to the racks and he selected several with bright colors. Marcy photographed away while I stood before another mirror, holding them to my neck: blue, green, a patterned purple one you would never have seen the likes of in the gentlemen’s stores of Lynn.

  Then I felt Dr. Philo’s hand again, in the middle of my back as when she wakened me that morning. I held perfectly still. She looped a yellow tie around my throat.

  “That’s an excellent shade,” Franklin said. “Nice and bright.”

  Bringing her hands under my arms, she proceeded to tuck the fabric through my collar, then tie it with surprising skill. “I used to do this all the time for my father,” she said, finishing a neat knot, then sliding it snug to my throat.

  “There we go,” Franklin declared.

  “Thank you very much, sir.”

  “Oh, no,” he said. “It is I who thank you. And now you are gorgeous.” Franklin turned to Dr. Philo. “Isn’t he gorgeous?”

  She made final adjustments to my tie, smoothed it down my chest, and said not a word. Only stepped aside and directed me toward the door.

  Thusly did my introduction to contemporary humanity commence.

  CHAPTER 22

  The Bandit

  (Kate Philo)

  Years ago, when my father died, instead of flying back to Ohio, I decided to drive. My mother passed away when I was twelve, so there was no need to rush to give or receive comfort. Chloe was on the scene anyway, competent as a robot. Instead of jetting disconnectedly overhead, I wanted to feel the distance. It gave me time to remember, time to cry. He’d been declining for almost two years, my beloved, round daddy, but that did not mean I was prepared for the fact of it, the finality when his death arrived.

  I drove north from New Haven, across central New York, into Pennsylvania, then down toward home. I kept the cell phone off, only checking for messages when I stopped for gas or a snack. Each time, Chloe’s updates showed that she had things in better order: the casket selected, funeral songs chosen, relatives notified. She was an insurance litigator, skilled in detail, handling these tasks with her accustomed efficiency.

  When I arrived, it was to discover efficiency times ten. I climbed out of the car before an open garage door. Inside lay boxes, chairs, kitchen gadgets, paintings, a disassembled bed. What the hell? I entered the kitchen. A stranger was packing up the everyday silverware. He glanced up, said hi, returned to his work.

  I found Chloe upstairs in our bedroom, our childhood bedroom, separating books into two big boxes. I stood in the doorway, stupefied. “Hello?”

  “Hi, Katie-bug,” she said, giving me a hug so quick and weightless you would have thought she was part hummingbird. Chloe had a look on her face, though, almost as if she’d been caught at something. It struck me, that expression, much as she tried to conceal it. Then she returned to her task, hunched like a vulture. “I hope you don’t mind the disruption, but since we’re both in town, I figured we’d get a head start on all this nasty dividing stuff.”

  “Really? If you think so.”

  I had no interest in participating. The one thing I wanted was a cable-knit cardigan my father had bought long ago on a trip to Ireland. He’d worn it constantly the winter I was seventeen. I found it in his closet, thin at the elbows, missing buttons, but it smelled like him. Except for the funeral, I wore it the whole time I was home: drinking wine with a high school chum on the rusty backyard swing set, standing in the kitchen in the morning waiting for water to boil, on quiet walks through my childhood neighborhood, the houses looking smaller but the trees become giants. Meanwhile my sister slaved away upstairs or in the basement, reenacting her half of the ancient roles of predator and prey.

  After the blur of the funeral, the two of us riding home in a limousine I thought was unneeded but Chloe insisted showed proper decorum, she coughed, removed her masking sunglasses, seized my elbow. “I can’t be silent one more second, Katie-bug. I have to say right now that I am worried about you. Extremely worried about your future.”

  “Don’t be,” I said. “I have my dissertation defense in three weeks, a great postdoc job lined up at Hopkins starting in July. I’m on my way, Chloe.”

  She shook her head. “You don’t have him to puff you up anymore. It’s reality time.”

  “Puff me up? What are you talking about?”

  “We both know what I mean. Just try, Katie-bug, please. From now on? Try your best not to be insignificant.”

  While I gulped in disbelief, my sister put her shades back on, her job done.

  I should have been furious, I suppose. Instead I felt sorry for her. So I did not correct her. I did not explain that my father was not puffing, but loving. I did not pierce Chloe’s view of herself as the responsible executor of his estate, when her behavior was more like that of a thief.

  Is that the younger child’s job? To bite her tongue out of pity? Possibly. Meanwhile I was the one acting like a criminal, sneaking that sweater out to my car the night before driving back to Connecticut only when I knew Chloe was asleep.

  I defended my dissertation, landed the next job, then the next, then the Lazarus Project. Each advancement served in my mind as a rebuke to my sister’s putdown disguised as concern. In my nerdy world, not for one second have I been insignificant.

  Enough years pass, I forget these things. Chloe has her husband, her two girls. But she is all the family I have left. That reality apparently enables me to excuse scorn, insults, even her decision not to divide my father’s estate evenly. “I knew you needed the money more,” she announced, when I found out five years after the fact.

  True. Still I fumed, I stomped, then I let it go. Yet it did not quite let me go.

  I was strolling Cambridge with Judge Rice. June, a windless evening, streetlights dappled through the trees. By that point we walked arm in arm, whenever we had privacy. I delighted in being his teacher. He was amazed by everything: this traffic light was brilliant, that parking meter a revelation. I prompted him to tell me about days in his court. Judge Rice’s memory was spotty in that area, but on rare occasions a case would come back to him in detail. His favorites were the ones in which both sides were partly in the right. He called it “competing legitimate interests.”

  There was a banging from a stand of trash bins a few feet away, a metal top clanged to the sidewalk. It scared me; I hooted, jumped aside. The barrel tipped over, more noise, garbage spilling into the alley.

  Who should poke his head up from the cans then but a fat old raccoon, his face masked like a bandit. He made no effort to run or hide, but rather growled at us.

  Judge Rice laughed. “Bold creature, isn’t he?”

  “He startled me, though.”

  The raccoon returned his attention to the empty soup can between his little black paws, glancing up at us while he licked his snout.

  Judge Rice offered me his arm again. “Seems this fellow knows what he wants.”
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  “He sure does,” I said. “Good thing for him that I already ate.”

  We moved away slowly, calm regained. But two things stayed in my mind. The first—say what you will about human traits in animals—was that the raccoon’s face echoed Chloe’s expression when I caught her dividing the books. I recognized it. The spoils.

  The second thing was that in the moment I leaped back in alarm, Judge Rice had jumped forward to protect me.

  CHAPTER 23

  “For My Next Trick”

  My name is Jeremiah Rice, and I begin to receive a welcoming.

  Each day Dr. Philo promenaded me from place to place in Boston, one corner of the city to its opposite. Newspaper interviews, business meetings, long marches down one street after another. Everywhere people greeted me, shook my hand, and provided me with whatever merchandise my heart desired or they felt to be beneficial to my needs. At no place would anyone accept payment.

  Restaurateurs held their doors open to us, and when we demurred because of Dr. Borden’s diet for me, they extracted promises that we would return. I met teachers, lawyers, clergymen, clergywomen, by glory, plus women lawyers, doctors, and more. The city’s people came from all nations and races, Japanese and Russian and Brazilian and African American, and all manner of mixtures thereof.

  Everyone knew my name. They hailed me on the avenue, called from passing cars, saluted on passing transit vehicles. As I walked a side street, an upper window opened and an enormous woman stuck out her head and waved a meaty arm.

  “Hey theah, Jerrr-oo-mmiieee-uhh.”

  “Hello and good morning,” I called in reply.

  She laughed. “Good mawning ta you, too, ya crazy fuckah.”

  “Hm,” I said, recoiling.

  “Actually”—Kate leaned near—“it’s kind of a compliment.”

  “Thank you.” I waved the woman good-bye, then muttered to my companion, “Your world is mad.”