FAUST’S SHADOW: A Twice-Told Tale

by John Fast

  I stared at her smiling face for a moment before I could say anything.

  “Uh … uh …,” I stuttered suavely. “What about our friendship?”

  “I think,” she began, as she started unbuttoning my shirt, “it will survive.”

  We kissed deeply and I thrilled at the taste of her. When she finished unbuttoning my shirt, she ran her hand across my chest. I undid her ponytail and combed her silken hair with my fingers. Then I unbuttoned her shirt, looked into her eyes and caressed her perfect breasts. She took a quick breath of air, held it, then let go. We kissed again for a long, long time. After awhile I reached down and slowly unsnapped and unzipped her shorts, exposing her hips to the evening air. I leaned over and kissed her curves, inhaling the animal scent of her skin. Unable to lie still any longer, Alexa stood up and took off all her clothes. I followed her example. Then she put her sleeping mat on top of mine and invited me to lie down. She stretched the full length of her body on top of the full length of my body and stroked me everywhere and kissed me everywhere and I returned each one of her caresses. We enjoyed the slow burn of our arousal as long as we could until she mounted me and we swayed together into the darkness.

  *************

  We had a late breakfast the following morning and, as we were cleaning up, a group of hikers approached our campsite. They were graduate students at a polytechnic in Beijing. They sat, talked and laughed with us before they continued on their way. Alexa and I packed up and set off in the opposite direction.

  We walked in the bright sunlight until we spotted a shallow stream running beneath the Wall. We climbed down to the grassy bank where Alexa unbuttoned all my buttons again, and unzipped all my zippers. She slipped out of her clothes, grabbed a bar of soap and led me into the warm, ankle-deep water. She slid the bar of soap across my chest and torso. I slid it over her hip and down her leg. We handed the soap back and forth until we were completely clean. Then we sat in the stream and rinsed each other. I got on my knees, made a bowl with my hands and trickled some water over her upturned face. When I finished she opened her eyes, kissed me, caressed me and drew me down onto her soft, sandy bed. We turned on our sides and entwined our legs. The gentle current swept under and around our silvery thighs which pulsed with the slow, steady rhythm of spawning salmon–again and again and again–until Alexa cried out, I sighed, and we flowed with the stream.

  *************

  A short time later, I lounged, completely naked, on the grassy bank, while Alexa stood, completely naked, in the water. She finished washing her shirt and shorts and spread them on a rock to dry. She smiled at me and I smiled back. She rummaged through her backpack, retrieved her dry shirt, and slipped into it. Then she dug out her satellite phone.

  “Don’t,” I urged, wanting to keep the world at bay.

  “You have to call Takla,” she reminded me, “and I have to call my team.”

  Alexa left her shirt unbuttoned as she listened to her messages, and I thought again how exquisitely beautiful she looked. She waded up and down the stream for a few minutes, then she froze in place. A few seconds later she shut her phone and stared into the distance.

  “That was quick,” I joked.

  “Your father called last night,” Alexa replied quietly, turning to face me while she buttoned her shirt. “About Jena. They found a tumor. In her brain. They can’t get it. I’m sorry John.”

  I was stunned senseless until she slapped me with a few more words.

  “The doctors say she might have a year.”

  I jumped up and started stuffing things into my backpack.

  “With all the drugs and technologies we have now?” I said incredulously. “If those idiots can’t fix her, I will. I can adapt my quantum algarithms. I can build a quantum computer. I can evolve a neural net. I can run a pattern recognition search. I can identify the anomalous codes that generate the amorphous cells. I can target and disrupt those codes.”

  I finished packing and started to get dressed.

  “You can catch the first flight tomorrow,” Alexa said as she collected her laundry.

  I paused a moment and looked at her. Then I stepped across the distance.

  “Thank you, Alexa,” I said, holding her close. “Thank you for last night, and this afternoon. I love you.”

  “I love you too, John,” she replied. “Take care of yourself. And Jena.”

  CHAPTER 39.

  The Ocean of Nightmares

  Jena looked well. In fact, she didn’t look any different than when I’d last seen her, just a few days and many thousands of miles earlier. I found her condition very disconcerting, not because I wanted her to show any signs of her illness, but because it made the fact of her illness seem all the more surreal. I walked arm-in-arm with her on the old towpath that ran beside the old barge canal in Princeton. And I kept glancing at her head.

  It’s growing right in there, I thought. Just a couple of inches beneath her skull: a small hermit crab curled inside a borrowed shell. I was determined to coax that crab out of its hiding place and send it skittering back into the ocean of nightmares where it belonged.

  Jena finished her account of her sudden headaches, which led to the MRI, which led to the discovery and diagnosis.

  “I’m glad you’re here,” she said. “There’s so much I want to say to you, and yet I wish your father had waited a few more days before he called you. Then you could have finished your vacation with Alexa. How is she by the way?”

  “Fantastic …,” I murmured, recalling the scent of her skin.

  “I’ve always liked her,” Jena stated warmly. “But she carries a lot of weight on her shoulders. It’s a burden she can’t seem to put down.”

  “I’m in love with her.”

  “Of course you are,” Jena said, squeezing my arm. “You always have been. Does she love you?”

  “She does,” I replied with joy. “She loves me in a pure and deep way, and yet in a different way than I love her.”

  “Good for you both,” Jena said. “And if her kind of love and your kind of love can meet for a short time, or a long time, then so much the better.”

  I shared her delight, and her sorrow, and I had to speak my mind.

  “Okay, Mother,” I began. “I don’t want to spoil your good mood, but I must be blunt. They say you’re dying, but I haven’t given up hope. I don’t exactly know what my algarithms can accomplish, but I do know they can evolve neural nets and pattern recognition programs that can identify the anomalous codes that send otherwise healthy cells into these amorphous reproductive surges. And once they identify these codes, I can find a way to disrupt them. It’s the same problem I’ve been working on my entire life: deciphering code. It’s what I’m best at.”

  “My darling boy, or, I should say, my darling young man. I know I couldn’t deter you if I tried, but I don’t want you to take on my illness as your responsibility. Yes, please, pursue your cancer research because someday it may save millions of lives, but I also know how long the experts have been working on this problem, and I don’t expect …”

  “I will …”

  “I do not expect you, nor can I allow you, to personalize this random illness of mine and take it on as your crusade. You see that, don’t you? It would make me unbearably sad to watch you despair over my illness, as if it were, somehow, your fault, your failure. Don’t fall into that trap. Arrogance is the most dangerous trap for Highbrids. We aren’t gods. We have our gifts, but we are women and men like other women and men. If you cut us, we bleed. If you give us inoperable brain tumors …”

  “Not if …”

  “Promise me, John. That’s the best gift you can give me right now. Promise me you won’t take on my illness and death as your personal responsibility.”

  “I will do everything …”

  “Promise me. If you love me, promise me.”

  “I won’t make it personal.”

  “You won’t see this random genetic mutation as your failure, your fault?”
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  “Yes. I understand.”

  “Thank you. Knowledge makes us arrogant, but it should make us humble. That ‘s what staring up at the vast sky, night after night, has taught me. Also don’t forget that I have lived a full life. I have always loved your father, and he has always loved me. We have brilliant and kind children. And I have mapped the universe and the multiverse. So don’t grieve for me. And, besides, I’m not going anywhere for a long while yet. So let’s talk about other things.”

  “Okay,” I agreed, struggling to tamp down my sorrow. “How is your work going?”

  “Very well, actually,” she replied, smiling broadly. “Just the other day I came across the photograph of a fantastically beautiful deep-sea Ping-Pong Tree Sponge.”

  “A what?” I asked, wondering what she was talking about.

  “A deep-sea sponge,” Jena repeated. “You have to see the picture. It has a spiky white core and each spike forms a stem that leads to one of sixteen translucent blue spheres.”

  “It does sound beautiful, but what does it have to do with your work?”

  “Everything! The deep-sea Ping-Pong Tree Sponge looks exactly like my most recent holo-map of the multiverse.”

  “Each sphere a different universe?”

  “Connected by intercosmic stems of timespace,” she confirmed.

  “Wow! Nature generating symbolic representations of itself.”

  “That‘s what I thought. Isn’t that amazing?”

  She squeezed my arm again and we walked further north, to where the towpath ran between the barge canal and Carnegie Lake. A canoeist slipped past us on the canal, a jogger dashed past us on the path and the sun glimmered on the Lake: a perfect summer day.

  *************

  Later that afternoon I returned to the Q-Lab where I’d arranged to meet Takla. She was working at the Institute for Advanced Studies that summer. I’d promised my mother that I wouldn’t take her illness personally, while I’d promised myself that nothing would stop me from saving her.

  “What’s the plan?” Takla asked. “How can I help?”

  “Here’s my basic premise,” I replied, grateful she had skipped the condolences. “I can identify and analyze any code in the universe, if I have the right tools. So I’m going to adapt my quantum algarithms. I’m going to jumpstart the development of the quantum computer. I’m going to evolve neural nets and pattern recognition programs and decipher her cancer cells.”

  Takla looked down at the floor.

  “How much time do we have?” She asked.

  “About a year. And I know what you’re going to say. I’m not in denial. I know I can save her. The only question is, ‘Can I force time?’ And the only answer is, ‘Yes I can, because that’s what the Highbrid Protocol is all about. We force time, we force the future into the present.’”

  “Where do we start?” Takla asked in a tone of quiet determination.

  We sat side-by-side in front of my data screen and wrote and re-wrote my quantum algarithms. And when I wasn’t adapting code with Takla, I was refining the schematics of the quantum computer, reading up on the latest cancer research, and walking with Jena.

  CHAPTER 40.

  Necromancy

  It wasn’t a year, after all. It was eleven months. The entire family stood around Jena’s bed. One minute she was alive, the next minute she was dead.

  “What’s the difference? What’s the difference? What’s the difference?” I asked myself as I watched my father caress her still beautiful face.

  And then the answer came to me from the ether: All that’s missing is the spirit of life.

  I wondered where that spirit had gone, and how I could get it back. There must be a powerful charm, or secret chant, I thought. There must be a command that recalls the dead.

  *************

  After the funeral and the reception, Takla and I sat on the couch in her living room. Jack, the most rambunctious of our four, four-year-old children, stood with his back to the couch while Takla safety-pinned a thin red cotton throw to the back of his shirt. In the meanwhile, Anna, Lahi and Tenzi were setting up a toy village on the carpet. When Takla was done, Jack zoomed around the room with his arms extended and his red cape flapping behind him. And he hummed a superhero anthem. Anna waved him away from the village whenever he came too close. I sat back on the couch and watched him fly.

  “Urge and urge and urge … followed by silence,” I said to no one in particular.

  “What?” Takla asked.

  “Evolution,” I replied.

  Takla nodded.

  I felt so tired that I rolled off the couch and stretched out on the rug. I wanted to take a nap, but Jack had other plans.

  He flew over to me, straddled my stomach and sat down.

  “What’s that?” Jack said, smiling and pointing at my nose.

  He wasn’t really asking so much as he was making fun of the vocabulary games we used to play when he was younger.

  “Nose,” I said reluctantly.

  “What’s that?” He said, smiling and pointing at my mouth.

  “Mouth,” I said quietly.

  “What’s that?” Jack said, smiling and pointing at my chin.

  “Chin,” I said in a whisper.

  Jack looked at me expectantly.

  “What’s that?” I asked, giving in and pointing at his foot.

  “Banana,” Jack said, smiling slyly.

  “What’s that?” I asked, pointing at his knee.

  “Apple,” Jack said, giggling.

  “What’s that?” I asked as I tickled his stomach.

  “Ticckklle!” Jack screeched as he rolled onto his back.

  Anna, Lahi and Tenzi piled on top of us with more screams and laughter. And at that moment I felt a deeper love for my children than I had ever felt before. They weren’t just the next generation of the Highbrid Protocol, I realized, they were the mysterious continuation of the genetic stream that had flowed through Jena. In fact, they embodied the genetic history of Takla’s entire family, and mine. And as I studied their gleeful faces I wondered what other moments of joy awaited them. And I wondered how I could protect them from, and prepare them for, the infinite sorrows of life.

  PART III.

  A BRAZEN MAN

  CHAPTER 41.

  The Black Arts

  When does a youth become a man? In my case, I thought it was when I imagined I could adapt my quantum algarithms, build my quantum computer and defeat the insidious logic of cancer. That is, I thought it was when I imagined I felt the power of genius surging through my synapses.

  I sat in my office at the Turing Institute on a Saturday morning in May, 2044, a month after Jena died. I stared at the boxy schematic on my desk screen. The schematic was labeled, “CQEC,” short for, “Cavity Quantum Electrodynamic Calculator.” I picked up my white coffee mug from the window sill, took a sip of black coffee and put the mug back down on the sill. I glanced up at the rainy sky and went back to staring at the screen.

  Apparently, as I later found out, Ingrid, our Danish nanny, was in Takla’s kitchen at that exact moment making a snack for the children. Ahi, our Tibetan nanny, was scheduled to take over that afternoon. Anna, Lahi, Tenzi and Jack were playing in the living room, since it was too wet to play outside. Ingrid picked up her white coffee mug, took a sip of black coffee and put the mug back down on the edge of the counter. The mug fell to the slate floor with a loud crash and broke into several pieces.

  “Ach!” Ingrid apparently exclaimed, looking down at the mess.

  In the living room, Jack apparently heard the crash and zoomed toward the kitchen to find out what happened. As he crossed the dining room, however, with his red cape flapping behind him, he was distracted by something shiny, lying on the rug, under the sideboard. And he cut over to the sideboard to see what it was.

  In the kitchen, Ingrid apparently wiped up the spill with some paper towels and swept up the shards with a brush and a pan.

  In the dining room, Jack apparently
retrieved a paring knife from under the sideboard.

  In the kitchen, Ingrid apparently retrieved her coffee spoon from under the breakfast table.

  In the dining room, Jack apparently noticed the electrical outlet in the wall, under the sideboard, and he sat down next to it. And he used the paring knife to pry off the plastic safety cap.

  In the kitchen, Ingrid apparently noticed an errant piece of her coffee mug wedged under the oven, and she knelt on the floor to retrieve it.

  In the dining room, Jack apparently poked the paring knife into the right hand slot of the upper socket.

  “What’s that!” Jack apparently exclaimed as the faulty circuit breaker in Takla’s old house failed to break the circuit.

  In the kitchen, Ingrid apparently heard Jack’s exclamation just as the tips of her fingers grazed the razor thin edge of the errant shard. And she cut herself. And she snatched her hand back. And her blood spattered the floor.

  In the dining room, Jack apparently held onto the paring knife as a bolt of electricity careened through his body. Then he let go. Then he rolled onto his back.

  In the living room, Lahi apparently wailed.

  *************

  I returned to the cemetery with Takla and all four of our children a few days later. The rest of the family, and many friends, accompanied us. Jena’s death had been arbitrary and pointless, I thought as we walked to the grave site, but at least she had had a chance to live. Jack’s death, however, was beyond pointless. It was a sick joke played by a sick universe.

  The gift of Jack’s four-year-old genius, his unrelenting curiosity, his drive to experiment and push the boundaries, had led directly to his death. Jack knew very well that he wasn’t supposed to touch the electric outlets. Takla and Ingrid and Ahi had warned the children many times, but Jack had always been fascinated by the mysterious power that flowed from the wall, through the wires, into his desk screen, his bedside lamp, his window fan. Jack wanted to tap into that power and make it his own. He wanted it to flow into his body. An accident? I knew it wasn’t an accident, but I let Takla and the others cling to that stopgap metaphor because the truth was harder to bear.