by Mark Alpert
I state this fact as calmly as I can, but my stomach twists as I say the words. Jenny bites her lip, and a different look appears on her skeletal face. It’s a look of pity. She feels sorry for me. “Good luck, okay?”
My chest starts to hurt as Shannon pushes my wheelchair out of the room. The familiar pain knifes through me, making it hard to breathe. I guess I’ve managed to stay cool so far by not thinking too much about the procedure. But Jenny’s obviously thinking about it. Maybe I should do the same.
Shannon wheels me down the corridor. Her breathing sounds a little rough too, actually. “Well, that was a fun visit,” she says, trying to make a joke out of it.
“Yeah, I feel so much…confidence now. I’m not worried…at all.”
Shannon stops the wheelchair and grips my right arm, the one I can still move. “This next visit will be better. I promise.” She squeezes my arm, then points at another door, marked 103. “This is DeShawn’s room. He’s with his mother, Ms. Johnson. She’s a nurse at a veterans’ hospital in Detroit, but she’s been taking care of DeShawn full-time for the past year. She told me the whole story this morning.”
Shannon knocks on the door. A woman’s voice, loud and cheerful, shouts, “Come in!”
This room is larger than Jenny’s and full of medical equipment. I’ve seen these types of machines at Westchester Medical Center—the ventilator, the heart-rate monitor, the cough-assist device—but the equipment here is newer, sleeker. The machines surround a hospital bed, and their tubes converge on a boy lying on the mattress. At first glance the boy looks small, as puny as a preteen, but that’s only because his arms and legs have wasted away to skin and bone. His torso is full-sized, and though his head is tilted at an unnatural angle, he has a handsome, dark-skinned face. His eyes are closed and I assume he’s asleep. His rib cage rises and falls as the ventilator pumps air into his tracheostomy tube, which sticks out of a gauze bandage at the base of his throat.
The pain in my chest gets worse. DeShawn has muscular dystrophy. I remember seeing him in the auditorium two days ago and feeling relieved that my own illness wasn’t as advanced as his. But now when I look at his body and mine I don’t see that much of a difference. I’m just a few months behind him, that’s all.
While I stare at DeShawn, his mother greets Shannon with a hug. Then she steps over to my wheelchair, blocking my view of her son. Ms. Johnson looks tired. Her eyes are bloodshot and their lids are drooping, and it looks like she’s been sleeping in her clothes. But she smiles as she bends over me. “Oh, I’ve been looking forward to this.” She grasps my good hand. “It’s so nice to meet you, Adam.”
I feel a little uncomfortable. Although I’ve never seen this woman before, she’s treating me like a long-lost cousin. But I like the fact that she took my hand. She’s not squeamish like most people. “Nice to meet you too, Ms. Johnson.”
“You look just like your father, you know that?” Still holding my hand, she glances at Shannon. “Back me up on this. Doesn’t he look like Mr. Armstrong?”
Shannon nods. “Adam’s weirder, though. He’s got a strange sense of humor.”
Ms. Johnson doesn’t seem to hear her. She turns back to me and squeezes my hand. “Your father’s a wonderful man, Adam. He’s a blessing from God. He’s going to work miracles. For you and for Shannon and for my DeShawn.”
Her bloodshot eyes are glistening. It looks like she’s going to cry. This makes me even more uncomfortable, but at the same time I notice something interesting. Ms. Johnson seems to be a religious woman, and yet she isn’t horrified by the Pioneer Project. She thinks it’s a miracle, like something from the Bible. So maybe there’s hope for my mother. Maybe I should ask Ms. Johnson to talk to her.
She finally lets go of my hand and points at her son. “Would you like to talk to DeShawn?”
“Uh, isn’t he sleeping?”
“No, it just looks that way. He’s awake.” Ms. Johnson gets behind my wheelchair and pushes it next to DeShawn’s bed. “He can’t talk, but he can hear what you’re saying. And I’ve already told him all about you.” Once my wheelchair is in place, she takes a step backward to give us some privacy.
For a few seconds I just stare at DeShawn’s face. His mouth is open, but there’s no whistle of breath between his lips because the ventilator is pumping the air straight to his lungs. His cheeks are slack and his closed eyelids are motionless. Looking at him scares me but I lean toward him anyway, straining against my wheelchair’s straps.
“Hey, DeShawn. How are you?”
No response. I doubt he’s awake. It looks like he’s in a deep coma. But even if DeShawn can’t hear me, I want to say something hopeful. Maybe more for my benefit than for his.
“Listen, we’re gonna beat this thing. We’re not gonna let it kill us.” I feel so awkward. I sound like a football coach giving a pep talk to his team. But I don’t know what else to say. “My dad’s a smart guy, and if he says the procedure will work, I believe him. So I’m gonna go ahead and scout the path, all right? And then you’re gonna follow me. We’re gonna make this work, DeShawn.”
I’m embarrassed. What I just said sounds ridiculous. Worse, I don’t believe it. I’m just pretending to be brave.
But then I hear a rustling noise. I look down at the bed and see something moving under the sheet. It’s DeShawn’s right hand.
Ms. Johnson jumps forward and pulls the sheet aside. “He can still move that hand a little. Watch this.”
At first it looks like his hand is just twitching. But ever so slowly his thumb starts to rise. After a few seconds it’s vertical. DeShawn is giving me a thumbs-up.
“You see?” Ms. Johnson is cheering, ecstatic. “He heard you!”
I feel like cheering too. DeShawn’s not pretending. It’s the bravest thing I’ve ever seen.
• • •
That night the Pioneer Base soldiers assign me to my own room on the floor, number 101. Then an Army sergeant comes into my room with an electric razor in his hand. He says he needs to shave my head to prepare me for tomorrow’s procedure.
The haircut takes less than five minutes. With practiced ease the sergeant guides the razor across my scalp while I sit in my wheelchair. After he shaves off all my hair, another soldier comes into the room to deliver my last meal—a bowl of clear broth and a couple of slices of white bread. For medical reasons the meal has to be bland, which really sucks. I was hoping for a great last meal, like what a death-row prisoner gets before his execution. The soldier watches me eat to make sure I don’t choke.
My room is pretty big, like DeShawn’s. It has a hospital bed and a heart monitor, and also a flat-screen TV on the wall. After I finish my last meal, the soldier hands me a remote control and points at the TV screen. “You can watch a video if you want,” he says. “Just press the index button and a list of movies will come onscreen.”
“What about Comedy Channel?”
“Sorry, we don’t have any television channels. Just the videos.”
“No TV? You don’t have cable out here?”
“Pioneer Base has no cable connections. No TV, no Internet, no phone lines. It’s part of our security. We’re protected by an air gap. You know what that means?”
I roll my eyes. Of course I know. It means the base has no electronic links to the outside world. Now that I think about it, I realize it’s a sensible precaution. Sigma used the Internet to escape from the Unicorp lab and infect the computers at Tatishchevo Missile Base in Russia. And the AI may try to attack Pioneer Base next. Judging from its actions at Unicorp, Sigma is clearly aware of the Pioneer Project and recognizes it as a threat. That’s why the AI tried to kill me. So I’m relieved to hear that the base is off the electronic grid.
“Where’s my dad?” I ask the soldier. “I haven’t seen him in hours.”
“He’s still with General Hawke, but they should be done soon.” The soldier c
ollects the remains of my dinner, then heads for the door. “Just relax and watch a video until he comes back. You’ll have some time to talk to him before lights out at twenty-two hundred hours. That’s military time for ten o’clock.”
The soldier leaves the room. Frowning, I yell, “I know what military time is!” as the door closes behind him.
I press the index button on the remote control, but the selection of videos is dismal: Cats & Dogs, Mars Needs Moms, Alvin and the Chipmunks, and a dozen other old clunkers. I’m not sure I can watch a movie anyway. In less than twelve hours the Army doctors are going to inject hundreds of trillions of nanoprobes into my skull and scan my head with pulses of radiation that will record the positions of the tiny gold spheres—and, oh yeah, fry my brain cells too. When you’re facing something like that, it’s kind of hard to keep your mind on a movie about singing chipmunks.
Shivering, I drop the remote control in my lap. I want Dad to come back now, immediately. I need to talk to him again about the procedure, about the details of the nanoprobes and the scanner and the robots. I turn my wheelchair toward the door and stare it as hard as I can. Using the full power of my mind, all the thoughts and feelings that will soon be converted into data, I try to will my father into appearing.
In my mind’s eye I picture Dad opening the door and stepping into the room. I can see it so clearly—his tired face, his unkempt hair, his strong, veined hands. And a moment later, as if responding to my wish, someone opens the door. But it’s not Dad. It’s the boy with the huge, deformed head, the kid I saw two days ago in the Pioneer Base auditorium.
My chest tightens. The kid didn’t even knock; he just waltzed right in. I open my mouth, ready to yell “Hey!” in the loudest voice I can muster, but then he turns around to face someone I can’t see, someone who’s apparently standing just outside the doorway. “Come on,” he whispers. “He’s in here.” Then the tall girl with the green Mohawk follows him into my room and closes the door behind her.
I can’t help but gape. She’s even more beautiful than I’d remembered. She has two silver rings in her left eyebrow and three more dangling from her earlobe. Just above her left ear is her snake tattoo, a sinuous cobra showing its fangs on her bare scalp. Her eyes are a gorgeous brown, a shade darker than her chocolate-milk skin, but as I stare at them, she scowls and turns away. She takes an interest in the flat-screen TV, squinting at it suspiciously.
Meanwhile, the boy approaches my wheelchair. Seeing him up close is disconcerting. His head is so large I can’t believe his neck can support it. His skull is mottled with bony, hairless knobs, and his massive jaw juts down to his chest. His mouth hangs permanently open, exposing his crooked yellow teeth.
“Sorry I didn’t knock,” he says. “I didn’t want to make any noise. This base apparently has a curfew and we’re not supposed to leave our rooms.” He holds out his right hand. It’s grotesquely oversized, like a flesh-colored baseball glove. “I’m Marshall Baxley. It’s a pleasure to meet you.”
“I’m Adam,” I manage to say. I raise my good hand and Marshall folds his thick fingers around it. His left hand, in contrast, is normal size, but his legs are unusually large, especially below the knees. He’s wearing black orthopedic shoes as big as ski boots.
Marshall lets go of my hand and points at the girl. “And that’s Zia. Her flight to Colorado was delayed, just like mine. We got here so late we didn’t have a chance to meet all the volunteers before curfew. But now we’re making up for lost time.”
Zia is still inspecting the TV screen. I like her name. It sounds Middle Eastern.
“Hi, Zia,” I say, hoping she’ll turn around so I can see her eyes again.
Unfortunately, she doesn’t respond. She takes a closer look at the blank screen.
Marshall shrugs, then points at himself, splaying his giant hand across his chest. “I know what you’re thinking. Who is this handsome young man? And how does he fend off all the girls who must be fighting over him?” He widens his open mouth, which I guess is his way of smiling. “Well, I’ll tell you my secret. I was born with Proteus syndrome. That’s the disease made famous by Joseph Merrick, the nineteenth-century Englishman who was exhibited as a freak. You’ve seen the movie about him, I assume? The Elephant Man?”
“Uh, no, I haven’t.”
“Ah, that’s a shame. But I can give you a quick summary.” He takes a deep, rasping breath. “It’s a genetic disease, rare and incurable. The main symptom is uncontrolled growth of flesh and bone. My skull is growing inward as well as outward, and in less than six months it’ll squash my brain to jelly.” He steps away from my wheelchair and sits on the hospital bed, bouncing jauntily on the mattress. “But enough about me. I didn’t sneak out of my room to talk about myself. I came here to talk about you, Mr. Adam Armstrong. You have muscular dystrophy?”
From the corner of my eye I see Zia move to the other side of the room. She’s inspecting the heart monitor now. It’s really distracting to have this beautiful girl wandering around, but I force myself to pay attention to Marshall. “Yeah, I have Duchenne muscular dystrophy. That’s the most common type.”
“And there’s another dystrophy boy, isn’t there? DeShawn?”
“Yeah, but he’s in a more advanced stage.”
“I haven’t visited him yet, but I hear he’s rather unresponsive.” Marshall lies down on the bed, making himself comfortable. “It’s funny, don’t you think, how we use our diseases to label ourselves? You know, the dystrophy boys, the cancer girls, the Elephant Man. We define ourselves by what’s going to kill us.”
I shake my head. “I disagree. I’m more than just an illness.”
“Really?”
“Definitely. I’m a New Yorker. I’m a Giants fan. I’m good with computers.”
Lying on his back, Marshall slides his glovelike right hand under his skull, probably to ease the strain on his neck. “What do you mean by ‘good with computers’? Are you a programmer?”
“Yeah, my specialty is virtual reality. I’ve written some pretty cool software.”
I hear a dismissive grunt from the other side of the room. Although Zia is still staring at the heart monitor, she seems to be following the conversation. Marshall’s eyes flick toward her, then back to me. His right eye, I notice, is larger than his left. “Well, I know absolutely nothing about software. I’m terrible at all that math-and-computers stuff. I’m more of a literature-and-fine-arts type. I write poetry, believe it or not.”
It’s hard to interpret Marshall’s facial expressions because they’re so distorted, but he seems to be getting serious now. As I get accustomed to his appearance, it becomes easier to talk to him. “Where are you from?” I ask.
“A small town in Alabama called Monroeville. It wasn’t such a bad place for me, all in all. When the hospital bills started to pile up, the neighbors were very supportive of my mother. And she needed all the support she could get.”
I remember seeing his mother, the haggard, foul-mouthed woman who sat next to him in the auditorium. “Did she raise you alone?”
“Oh yes. As she often reminded me, it’s tough to find a husband when your house is a freak show.” With a groan, he heaves himself back up to a sitting position. His chunky legs dangle over the edge of the bed. “In a way, though, our poverty was a blessing in disguise. Because I was getting charity treatments at an Army hospital near Monroeville, my name got on the list of recruits for the Pioneer Project. General Hawke worked strictly with Army hospitals to keep the selection process secret.” He smiles again, widening his mouth. “But look at this, we’re talking about me again. Let’s talk about the other Pioneers instead. You know Shannon Gibbs, correct?”
I’m a little thrown by the sudden change of subject. “Yeah, we’re both from Yorktown Heights. My dad heard she had terminal brain cancer, so he told her parents about the project.”
“I talked to her already, right
after I got here. She’s a math-and-science type too. Do you like her?”
Now I’m thrown again. Marshall is doing a good job of keeping me off balance. “Uh, yeah, I like her. She’s smart, that’s for sure.”
“And what about Jenny Harris? Her father is quite important, you know. What do you think of her?”
I shrug. “I’m surprised she volunteered. Her parents were so opposed to the idea.”
“But do you like her?”
“Come on, this is ridiculous. I don’t know the first thing about her.”
Marshall lets out a snort. I can’t be sure, but I think this means he’s amused. “Of course, how could I forget? You prefer Zia, don’t you? I caught you staring at her in the auditorium.” He swings his massive head, looking over his shoulder. “Zia, you have an admirer.”
She finally steps away from the heart monitor. I see her gorgeous eyes again, but now they’re narrowed and fierce. She glares at me, her brow furrowing. As her muscles tense, the cobra above her ear stretches a few millimeters. “I don’t need any admirers. And I don’t like people staring at me.”
Her voice is low and menacing. I have no idea why she’s so angry. With my paralyzed legs and arm, I’m not much of a threat.
“I stared at you because I was curious,” I say. “You look pretty healthy, compared with the rest of us.”
“You think I’d be here if I wasn’t sick? Does that make sense to you?”
“Hey, chill out. I was trying to give you a compliment.”
“That’s another thing I don’t need.” She sneers at me, pressing her lips together. “I have cancer, just like the other girls. But you don’t see me crying about it. I’ve seen worse things than cancer.”
“You have to forgive Zia,” Marshall interjects. “She’s had a difficult past. Her parents died when she was young, and she’s been in and out of foster homes ever since. Isn’t that right, Zia?”
Ignoring him, she approaches my wheelchair. With her left hand she taps the cobra tattoo above her ear. “You see this tat? I got it done in Central Juvenile Hall. That’s the worst detention center in LA. In all of California, probably. I was doing a six-month sentence for slashing a guy’s face.” She lowers her hand and pokes me in the chest. “And you know why I cut him? Because he was staring at me.”