Stubborn Seed of Hope

by Falkner, Brian;

  WEDNESDAY

  Pulling the sensors off the previous day had taken only a few minutes. Putting them back on took just as long as it had the first time, and again Charlize did it. Again, she leaned over Grant, and this time she was wearing a low-cut t-shirt.

  I mean I wouldn’t trade places with him for anything – well, maybe for a minute. He was getting a great show.

  Charlize herself had seemed a little bleary-eyed when she picked me up and drove us to the hospital. A bit upset. I’d been too excited to really think about it, or ask, and by the time we got into Grant’s room I had basically forgotten about it.

  I had left all the other equipment set up, on the table in the corner.

  Now I set the laptop on the bed where we could both see it.

  ‘Hey, Grant,’ I said.

  A flaring, swirling pattern of dots on the screen.

  ‘That doesn’t mean anything,’ Charlize said. She cradled her chin between her thumb and forefinger.

  ‘Be nice,’ I said. ‘He heard that.’

  The screen flared with what I thought was the positive response.

  ‘That’s it,’ I said. ‘That was a “yes”!’

  Charlize still wasn’t convinced. ‘Grant, please repeat the last word you said.’

  Yes.

  ‘The pattern changes,’ she said.

  ‘Of course it does. When you say the word “yes” is it always the same? If I ask you whether you’d like a cup of coffee, you say “Yes”. When your boyfriend asks you to marry him, you say “Yes!” Same word, but completely different intonations and meanings.’

  There was an abrupt silence. I turned to look at Charlize. She was shaking with emotion.

  ‘Charlize?’

  ‘We broke up last night,’ she said and swiped at her eyes.

  Damn. I should have guessed something like that. Or at least asked her why she was upset in the car. Grant would have. He was always good with people. I’ve always been useless.

  ‘I’m really sorry,’ I said. I really didn’t know what to say in situations like this, and honestly, I wasn’t all that sorry. I was sorry that she was hurt, but no more than that.

  She shook her head and was the calm and detached scientist again. ‘It’s not important. Let’s try and prove that you’re right. Can he say “no”?’

  ‘You sure you’re okay to continue?’

  ‘Quite sure.’

  I nodded. ‘Okay. Grant, are you a three-headed alien?’

  Yes.

  Huh?

  I repeated the question.

  No.

  ‘That’s it,’ I said. ‘That’s the negative response.’

  Charlize was still not convinced. Neither was I. Not as much as I had been.

  We spent the rest of that session, until the nurses kicked us out, trying to determine patterns, but with inconsistent results. The same question sometimes produced a ‘no’, and sometimes a ‘yes’. Other times a random pattern that didn’t relate to anything.

  Afterwards we drove home in her mum’s car and her personal life was obviously occupying more of her mind than our research project. I guess that was understandable. She said hardly anything and occasionally seemed on the verge of bursting into tears.

  ‘I might not be in tomorrow,’ she said, when she dropped me off at home.

  ‘No worries,’ I said.

  THURSDAY

  She didn’t come in on Thursday. I don’t know what she was doing, but in a way I was glad. It gave me time to experiment, without the pressure of someone watching. I tried repositioning the sensors slightly, which she wouldn’t have let me do if she’d been watching. They were in exactly the prescribed locations, according to her textbook.

  I was an hour into it before I managed to get another pattern on the screen.

  ‘Was that you, Grant?’ I said.

  Yes.

  Still not sure if I was having a conversation with my brother, or a random pattern generator inside his brain, I asked him to repeat it.

  Yes.

  I sat for a moment and thought things through. It seemed rude to ignore him and leave him out of what was going on, so I started to tell him what I was doing.

  ‘We appear to be seeing patterns,’ I said. ‘Do they relate to sounds?’

  Yes. No.

  I took that as a maybe.

  What I was suggesting was mind-blowing. I didn’t dare to think that it might be for real.

  That there could be a correlation between the brainwave patterns I was detecting and actual sounds.

  I set up the laptop to record the pattern sequences.

  ‘Grant, please say the word “yes”.’

  Yes.

  ‘Now the word “no”.’

  No.

  ‘Say “note”.’

  A different pattern on the screen.

  I played the sequence back. The first part of the pattern was almost identical to the word ‘no’ but it dissolved into a different shape.

  ‘I think that’s the “no” sound,’ I said. ‘Try saying “nobody”.’

  Another sequence. What I was seeing on the screen was Grant’s brain trying to speak.

  I spent the rest of visiting hours asking him to say words, and identifying the sounds that made up those words.

  The, their, though, thee. Sit, sat, set. Bad, bed, bid, bud. And so on.

  Each time I thought I had identified a sound, I stored it. I created a small database and typed in that sound phonetically, then linked it to the brainwave.

  It was long, arduous work. I never realised how many sounds there were in the English language. I was still going when the prison warder came to kick me out.

  There was a sudden flash on the computer screen as I went to shut it down. I compared it quickly to my little database.

  The hard G sound, as in golf. The ooh sound, like wood. The D sound. Good.

  I transcribed the rest of the sounds onto a notepad.

  Guh ooh Duh Bi.

  Goodbye!

  ‘Goodbye, Grant,’ I said.

  More flashes on the screen.

  W Eh Z TH UH G er L.

  It took me a moment but I figured it out: Where’s the girl?

  ‘Charlize?’

  W TH TH UH Nuh Ai S B oo B S.

  With the nice boobs.

  I laughed. ‘She’ll be here tomorrow. Do you want me to get her to put your sensors on again?’

  Yes. Yes. Yes.

  FRIDAY

  Charlize wasn’t there on Friday. She wanted to be there, but she had a progress meeting with our professor, and you didn’t miss those for anything. We agreed that she would talk to him in general terms about what we were doing, without giving away too much. It was kind of a superstition. As if by boasting about our success we would jinx it somehow.

  I fired up all the gear and smiled at Grant as I sat down. He gave me that permanent goofy grin.

  ‘It’s great to see you,’ I said, and it was. It was as if he had come back from the dead. For two years he was gone, but here I was, talking to him, knowing he was listening.

  I had spent the entire evening writing a small computer program. It took the feed from the headset, scanned it for patterns that we had already stored in the database, and automatically assigned the word sounds. Then it displayed them as text.

  ‘Are you awake?’ was my first question.

  Yes.

  ‘Good morning,’ I said.

  G ooh Duh Muh aw Nuh ING.

  Good morning.

  It was like learning another language. Within a few minutes I stopped seeing the awkward phonetic spelling that my program produced, and my mind automatically translated it into words.

  ‘Just wait till Mum comes on Sunday,’ I said. ‘She’s going to get a real surprise
.’

  Y Oo H av N T oh ld H er Yuh ett.

  You haven’t told her yet?

  I shook my head. ‘I wanted to surprise her.’

  Thank you.

  ‘You’re welcome.’

  Really. Thank you for doing this.

  ‘Really. You’re welcome.’

  I was going insane.

  It was outrageous, awesome and brilliant all at once.

  ‘Grant, you better believe how happy I am to be talking to you. It’s amazing.’

  Where’s Charlize?

  ‘Meeting with the professor. She’ll be here tomorrow.’

  Is she your girlfriend yet?

  I laughed. ‘No. She’s a bit old for me.’

  If you older than her, would be problem?

  ‘No, I guess not.’

  So go for it bro.

  ‘She just broke up with her boyfriend.’

  I know. I heard. So what you waiting for?

  I considered that. She’d never be interested in me. But I knew what Grant would say to that.

  All I said was, ‘Too soon, too soon.’

  Book book book book.

  I raised an eyebrow.

  Chicken sounds.

  I laughed.

  So what’s next?

  ‘What do you mean?’

  We talking. Now you know am alive in here. What next?

  ‘Not sure.’

  And I wasn’t. I had thought this experiment through as far as getting ‘yes’ and ‘no’ answers. The rest was unexpected. Where to from here? No idea.

  Get the doctors. Tell them what’s going on.

  ‘I will, soon. Soon.’

  I want to get out of here.

  Those words sat on the screen like a silent scream. Like an accusation. I hadn’t thought this through, but now I was thinking. And seeing the problem.

  There was no way out of here, no cure for what had happened to Grant. Maybe in the future. Maybe I’d be the one to find it. But that would take years. Decades. Even then, the chances were small.

  ‘I’m – working on it,’ I said. ‘So is Charlize. We’ll get a big research grant, involve a lot of really smart neurologists, there are answers out there. We just have to find them.’

  I’m stuck here?

  ‘For now.’

  You have no idea what it’s like.

  ‘I can imagine.’

  No you can’t. I can’t blink. The overhead lights hurt my eyes. I barely sleep. I can’t move. If I get an itch I can’t scratch it. I pee into one tube and poo into another. I get fed through a tube in my arm. Your sexy little research partner comes and sticks her chest in my face and I just want to hold her. To kiss her. But I can’t. I want to ride my bike again. I want to eat barbecue steak. I want to drink beer and go to the movies. I want a life.

  ‘You need to be patient,’ was all I could think of to say.

  Patient. I don’t want to be patient. I don’t want to be a patient. What are we talking, weeks, months?

  I was silent.

  Years? I don’t think I can stand another day of this. I can’t wait for years. I can’t deal with this.

  ‘Grant—’

  Shit bro, I can’t even cry.

  ‘Grant, I promise. We’ll get every research university in the world onto this. We just need a breakthrough. You will walk again. You’ll do all those things you mentioned. I promise you!’

  Blank screen.

  ‘Trust me.’

  Blank screen.

  ‘Grant?’

  Kill me.

  ‘Don’t be stupid,’ I said. ‘This is just for now. Not forever. You can get through this.’

  Kill me.

  ‘No.’

  Pull out the plugs, or whatever is keeping me alive.

  ‘There’s nothing keeping you alive. There are no machines. You are keeping yourself alive.’

  Then find some rat poison. Put it in my drip.

  ‘Not going to happen.’

  You owe me.

  ‘Owe you? How do I owe you?’

  I wouldn’t be here if it wasn’t for you.

  Ouch. There was some truth to that. But no way was it my fault.

  Kill me. Kill me. Kill me.

  The simple black letters on a white screen conveyed only information: no emotion; no emphasis. But I didn’t need it to know that he was screaming.

  I shut off the computer, stared at my hands, then at the ceiling. What he was asking me to do was too much. But the alternative was even more unthinkable.

  I sat for a long time in silence as the sun dropped slowly behind the trees outside the window on a world that Grant would never see.

  I started to cry. I cried for Grant.

  Because he couldn’t.

  SUNDAY

  Charlize met me and Mum in the foyer as we waited for the elevator.

  ‘Can I talk to you for a moment?’ she said.

  ‘You go on ahead, Mum,’ I said. ‘We’ll be along in a minute. Just some uni stuff to discuss.’

  Mum nodded and smiled. I think she was going to say something but the elevator doors shut it off.

  Charlize stared at me for a moment then put her hand on my arm. I liked the feel of her fingers on my skin.

  ‘It’s Paulie,’ she said. ‘Well, it’s about Paulie.’

  ‘How can I help?’

  ‘The reason we broke up—’ Her fingers slipped down my arm to my hand. She squeezed it gently. ‘It was you.’

  ‘Hey, don’t blame me. I wasn’t even there.’

  She smiled. ‘He said that all I ever talked about was you. That he didn’t even seem to figure in my thinking.’

  ‘Didn’t he understand that we work quite closely together?’

  ‘Yes. Still, it got me thinking,’ she said.

  ‘Thinking?’

  ‘All I was going to say was that if you wanted to, like, get a cup of coffee or something, sometime, outside of our uni stuff. That’d be okay.’

  I stared at her for a moment. I pressed the button to bring the elevator back down.

  I wanted to. I really wanted to. But I said, ‘I think that would make it difficult to work together.’

  ‘No, you’re right,’ she said, far too quickly, letting go of my hand. ‘Of course you’re right. And if it didn’t work out it could get really awkward.’

  ‘Absolutely.’

  That was a perfectly good reason. But it wasn’t the real one.

  The truth was that I didn’t deserve Charlize. I didn’t deserve that kind of happiness.

  The elevator arrived and we stepped into it, smiling awkwardly at each other.

  Grant was grinning at us as usual, propped up on the bed with pillows, when we entered. He had a big lipstick kiss on his forehead.

  Mum was standing in front of the pile of computer equipment. She looked up as we entered.

  ‘How have your experiments been going?’ she said. ‘Anything exciting?’

  I shook my head. ‘Sorry, Mum. Nothing. It didn’t work.’

  Charlize frowned at me.

  ‘I thought you said there were really interesting results,’ she said.

  ‘I was getting ahead of myself,’ I said. ‘Turned out to be just random brain patterns. Static. White noise.’

  ‘Oh.’ She shrugged. ‘That’s a shame. It looked so promising.’

  Grant stared at me with unblinking eyes.

  ‘You’ve got to fall down if you want to learn to walk,’ I said. ‘There’ll be lots of false leads before we make any real progress. But I promise you that I won’t rest until I find a solution.’

  Mum nodded. She thought I was talking to her. ‘You’re a good brother to him,’ she said. ‘And he knows it. He loves us visiting. Look how it make
s him smile.’

  There is no light of any kind. Not once I shut the hatch door.

  The alarm sounded just before the end of lunch. We all knew the lockdown siren: it’s quite different from the evacuation siren they use for a fire or some other kind of emergency. A series of rising tones. It sounds like something from a video game, or a cheap car alarm.

  But we all knew what this alarm meant. Whole School Lockdown. Go to your classroom or designated safe area. Lock the doors, turn out the lights, hide in the cupboards or under the desks until the all clear is given. The all clear is a much lower, continuous tone.

  The lockdown alarm is only used when there is some kind of immediate danger to students. Like a wild animal on the school grounds. Or some criminal with a gun.

  We’ve done lots of drills, and my first thought was that this was just another drill. But they always announce drills, so that we know when it’s for real.

  This is for real. There is a real threat of some kind loose on the campus. Worse, I’ve got a horrible feeling the person’s looking for me.

  I could have gone to my classroom, which is my designated safe area. I was nearby. But if it is Daniel looking for me then that’s exactly where he’ll look.

  So now I am crouched in a small wooden compartment under the stairs that lead down to the basement of the Design and Technology block.

  I don’t know that Daniel is actually looking for me, but there’s a chance. He’s one of those loner, loser kids. The kind that everybody ignores. The kind that don’t fit in because they are always trying too hard.

  I don’t fit in either, but I don’t care. I’m bigger than just about any other kid at this school and they do what I tell them to. That’s how middle school works. You only have to bash a few kids to earn the respect of all the others. Then they do what you want. Sure it costs a few detentions and a couple of suspensions, even a threat that they’ll expel me, but they can’t really do that. Not unless I commit some actual crime. Bring drugs to school, something like that.

  But somewhere along the way Daniel and I have crossed paths and crossed swords. It’s not about the doughnut. Yeah, he had a doughnut in his lunch bag, and, yeah, I wanted that doughnut. It looked nice. But it’s not about the doughnut. It’s about respect. By refusing to give me the doughnut he wasn’t showing me respect.

  So I grabbed it off him anyway. But the little moron spat on it, just as I was about to eat it. He spat on it!