The Vestigial Heart

by Carme Torras

  She cries and cries for a long time, silently, without sobbing or writhing around. She’s not looking for consolation, or even to relieve her sorrow, she just abandons herself to the extreme desolation she’s feeling.

  When she turns over the pillow looking for a dry patch, she finds the letter she’d left there last night. How could she have forgotten? She must be in worse shape than she’d thought, she’s lost control of everything, body and mind. She’s going mad. Tears spring up again from somewhere deep inside her and she doesn’t know if the letters are blurred from the damp pillow or because her eyes are once again brimming over. She dries them as best she can and reads “For our daughter Celia.” Her vision clouds over and there’s no hope of being able to read, so she’s almost pleased when a determined Lu enters with a bunch of huge violets.

  “They’re like the ones from your grandma’s lawn, the ones in the photo. Do you like them?” Celia moves closer to smell them, but Lu immediately withdraws them. “These aren’t for eating, only to make the place look nice.”

  “Yes, of course, what do you mean? I only wanted to smell them.” Now she’s really confused.

  “Smell them? But only animals do that.”

  “Maybe here, but where I live we really like the smell of flowers.” She says this with pride. “These ones don’t have much perfume though. Are they natural?”

  “They’re organic, if that’s what you mean.”

  Lu doesn’t even think about sitting down. She puts the flowers next to the photo album, which, she announces, they’ll look at later, before theatrically kissing her on the forehead and telling her that she has to go speak with the doctor, but she’ll be back in a second to devote herself entirely to Celia, so she should think about what she wants to do.

  She’s already left the room when Celia manages to recover her train of thought. She’s stunned. Núria never kisses her even though they get on really well and they’ve known each other for months. She’s a psychologist, not her aunt or her grandmother. No matter how much she goes over it, she doesn’t understand what’s going on. Mostly, she doesn’t understand what business this woman has here, in a hospital that’s so good they managed to cure her. They should have a better psychologist … you don’t have to study much to go around kissing people. But she liked it, anyway, and now she wants her to come back and give her another kiss and perhaps a hug. She needs to be fussed over a bit. She’s fed up with being in bed.

  When she turns over, she once again finds the letter and now she does feel strong enough to read it. She pauses for a moment stroking the envelope between her fingers, but it’s not the soft dampness of the paper that gives her the shivers. There are two sheets filled up with her mother’s small, regular handwriting, and a postscript of two lines with her dad’s smiling sign-off. She likes the face that he’s drawn right next to his name, with its big mouth smiling ear to ear. It looks like him as well, with a bald spot, round glasses and a funny expression. She lifts her gaze to what he’s written above it and she realizes it’s all in capitals letters. Poor Dad, he has such a complex about people not understanding his handwriting. Doctors, he says, have to write the same thing over and over again so many times that their words melt into a deformed line out of boredom and, later, without meaning to, they can no longer define them properly. “My daughter, live life to the full. If you’re happy we will be too. We’ll always be there with you. I love you.” She doesn’t recognize her father in those words, he never speaks like that. Of course, he hasn’t exactly written her many letters. When she goes away to summer camp it’s always her mother who writes. More than anything it’s the solemn tone that unnerves her, as if he really were very far away and it would be a long time before they saw each other.

  She hastily turns the pages to start reading from the beginning: “Celia, darling, how are you? I hope they’ve made you better and you’re glad you can live a normal life.” She doesn’t understand what they mean about a normal life, she’s still in the hospital. Her mom is always like that: bold words that leave you wondering where they’ll lead. Maybe if she carries on reading it’ll make more sense. “I don’t know how they’ll have explained it to you, but I’m sure that by now you understand the decision we’ve taken.” Of course she understands that they’ve done all they can to get her cured, it’s just they could have warned her first. “We would have liked to wait until you were a bit older or, at least, to be able to explain it to you ourselves, but there wasn’t enough time and the doctors have told us that knowing about it beforehand could negatively affect your progress.” And separating her from her parents doesn’t? She has a lump in her throat. The letters she got at summer camp were cheerful, full of words of encouragement from her mother, writing that when she came back they would have loads of things to tell each other and that there would be a party. She’s not sure where the sadness that once again blurs the letters is coming from. “It was very difficult to have to choose between your death and a life for you without us.” Her tears have dried suddenly, and now she’s reading so avidly she’s hardly breathing. “You’re an intelligent, brave girl, tenacious and passionate about the things that interest you, and you have many interests. Your father and I have discussed it at length: maybe this great curiosity you feel about everything will be your most valuable tool. You have the opportunity to live ahead of your time, so many people would like to, and almost certainly surrounded by fascinating advanced technology.” Where have they sent her? To another planet? “Think of it as an adventure and make the most of it. People are desperate to travel far away. You can do it by traveling through time, which is even more exciting.” She doesn’t even stop to take a breath, she doesn’t want to think, first she has to make it to the end. “Often, when you went to school or on a Scouts trip, I told you that I would love to see what you were doing through the hole in my ring, well, now more than ever. So here you have it.” The lump in the envelope, she knew it was there but she hadn’t stopped to pay it any attention. “When you wear it, it will protect you like an amulet, and it would really make me happy if, from time to time, you took it off so I could see you. In the moments when you feel sad or helpless, you just have to look through the hole: you’ll see things close up and then further and further away, and there at the end you’ll find me watching over you and comforting you; because when someone is sad they think it will last forever, and that makes them even more sad, but it’s not true; the next day you always see things differently. Most of all, don’t get hung up on it. I like that you’re an introvert and that you think about things, but it’s good for you to go out and make friends. Keep your chin up, girl! Wherever we are and wherever you are, you can be certain we’re right by your side. I love you more than anything else in the world, Celia. (I won’t say goodbye because I’m staying with you.)”

  She absentmindedly tries on the ring and twists it around her finger. She’s confused. They seem to be telling her she’s traveled to the future, but that sounds like a science fiction film. Her parents wouldn’t joke about a thing like that. She looks at the walls of the room as if she was seeing them for the first time: they’re covered in screens, controls and other devices, nothing out of the ordinary. Perhaps she’s never seen so many and all stuck together, but they had told her this was a very advanced clinic. The bed seems normal, too, and the white sheets are made of some coarse fabric. She sits up with some difficulty and swings her legs around toward the floor, but her head starts spinning and she lies straight back down again.

  When it seems like she’s not dizzy anymore, she tries to reread the letter but, toward the middle, a question hammers so insistently at her brain that she has to stop. Her parents … are they dead? Just thinking about it makes her heart beat with such force that she feels like she’s going to die then and there.

  The machines register the alteration and immediately the nurse enters.

  “What’s going on?” She’s looking at the monitors rather than at the girl. “Where’s that lady?”


  Celia doesn’t know who that lady is, nor does she have the energy to think it over, it was hard enough managing to hide the letter under the sheets. Making a great effort she asks what day it is, and, shyly, her voice hardly making a sound, she adds, “and what year?” The nurse’s angry look leaves her frozen, before she realizes it should be directed at Lu, “the lady,” as the nurse keeps calling her. It’s her who’s supposed to answer these questions, and it must be against the rules for her to leave Celia alone. She’ll have to tell the doctor, the nurse says, as she brusquely storms back out of the room.

  That’s what she wants most, for them to leave her alone, but at the same time she longs for some familiar hands and a friendly voice to reassure her that it’s all just a dream, that soon she’ll wake up with her parents at her side. The evasive response has left her with an entirely uncertain future. Or maybe she’s dead and this is the afterward that she had worried about so much on those days she got worse and they transferred her to the ICU. But the ring is here. She wraps her fingers around it to form a peephole and focuses far, very far away out the window. A section of electric blue sky hits her retina and she feels that, from out there, her mother is encouraging her to keep going. An adventure, think of it as an adventure, she wrote.

  And she has no tears left.

  7

  10:17 a.m. – Insistent request for an encrypted connection. Checking the key: it corresponds to Mr. Gatew’s ROB. We’ve been waiting for the list of preselected candidates for the E-Creative project for three days. I assign maximum priority. I open the connection straightaway and download the confidential reports.

  10:18 a.m. – I go to communicate it to the Doctor, who is seated at the dueling table with his back to me, when an internal alarm stops me in my tracks. I anticipate what he will shout at me: “You moronic heap of scrap, how dare you interrupt my mind in mid-inspiration? Before you start up your synthetic rigmarole, look at this, and you’ll be struck dumb by the blow I’m about to dole out to Hug 4’Tune. Never interrupt me again, do you hear me? Never again, you brainless heap of fucking scrap.” I have a very accurate model of my PROP, and I know that if I talk to him from behind his back he’ll react like that.

  10:19 a.m. – The learning module orders me to silently advance toward the armchair, move around it and stand right in front of the Doctor. Done. Now I must carefully observe him while he draws scrawl after scrawl on the horizontal screen set into the top of the table, hoping that he pauses so I can pass on the message. He’s so deep in concentration that he hasn’t even seen me. Today it’s riddles. And it’s going well, the scorecard shows that he’s two points up. Let’s see what he’s reading that’s putting him on edge.

  “In an enclosed monastery, where communication is prohibited and the monks only see each other at lunch time, a message is received informing them of an incurable and highly contagious disease, which reveals itself in the form of a red mark on the forehead. In order to save the community, the diseased monks commit suicide as soon as they know that they are ill. After a few days and a few suicides, the disease is completely eradicated without anyone dying unnecessarily. The question is: how do the infected know that they have the disease? There are no mirrors in the monastery, or lakes, or any reflective surface where the monks can see themselves. Three points for a correct response within half an hour.”

  Clever little brat. The Doctor has to recognize that 4’Tune has a talent for riddles, no one makes them up like he does. One might say he had a privileged source of information, a programming manual from a century ago, for example, which would explain the profusion of anachronistic elements and the peculiarly algorithmic taste his solutions tend to display. But he’s never admitted it. And since copying isn’t against the rules, why should he bother lying? What should he care, he’s a good adversary, the best in this discipline, which forces him to sharpen his mind. That’s what matters. And if, like today, the battle is a high-water mark and he comes out on top, then it’s ecstasy. He’ll have enough reserves of endorphins to last four days.

  He repositions himself in the chair and when he looks up he finds Alpha+ standing stock-still. Hallelujah! He’s learned to wait and not interrupt. More than his grandson will ever learn.

  “Go on then Alph, what is it?”

  10:22 a.m. – Friendly words, no swearing: I reinforce the last intervention to the maximum level on my learning module. I emit: “Mr. Gatew communicates that he has preselected four women and two men, of very different profiles, so that you can choose with total subjectivity, just as you asked. He has sent a confidential report for each candidate and the access path to their record on the public register. He is waiting for your reply in order to submit those chosen to Dr. Cal’Vin’s neuropsychological filter.”

  This news forces the Doctor to postpone the battle. That really was a great advance, the timeout button. Before he would simply have had to abandon the game, just when he was winning. But now this invention can deactivate the encryption database and the riddle will be erased from his memory until he decides otherwise and, most importantly, a certification will be sent to his adversary. Hug 4’Tune will rant and rave as ever as he doesn’t have the button, it’s a question of privilege, but anyway first things must come first and the creativity prosthesis takes precedence over what is purely a mental game. With the prosthesis, the neurons are in play. 4’Tune can go fuck himself!

  Alpha+ supplies him with the documentation as and when he asks for it. Two of the female candidates have renounced their right to privacy, and in the public register there’s a link where you can watch them on a live feed. Although he immediately discards their applications since his project is top secret, he connects to the feed. One is captured in a health club, having sex in order to maintain her musculature. If the brain was as fit as the stomach, he would have to hire her, he’ll go back to the feed later. The second shows a strange profile, she must have the camera stuck to her foot. No, that’s it, she’s wearing more than one camera and the image is a mosaic of her body. It’s interesting to see her from the sole, in profile and from above, all at once. It looks like an animated Picasso painting … but surely she doesn’t know that, she might not even know who Picasso is. He has a look at her CV but there are no clues there. In fact, it’s better not to know anything at all. For the E-Creative project, a rough diamond is more valuable than a highly cultivated precious stone. He’ll hold on to this one for now.

  Fucking matrix! The next candidate is Gem Matr’X, the company’s star executive. Gatew felt obliged to put her on the shortlist. What a sacrifice, to have to get by without her! All the projects that are about to fail are sent to her and they all miraculously get back on track. She’s never failed. Sus Cal’Vin calls her the “nullus defectus.” Of course Sus can’t stand her, she doesn’t fit within her ever so limiting blueprints. It would be worth selecting her just to know which horrible defect would prevent her, surely, from overcoming the famous neuropsychological filter. But he’s not interested in someone that old, no matter how many successes and good credentials she has to endorse her. He wants someone young, malleable.

  Here’s one, in her early twenties and conceived and delivered vaginally. Truly a rare breed if, as she claims, she doesn’t come from an anti-techno commune. She must be using her origins to her advantage, otherwise she wouldn’t have published them on the register. Gatew has fallen for it and maybe he’s not far off: an atypical genesis can encourage an original personality, but other factors are necessary and, as far as he can tell, there is no evidence of this girl having any other merit.

  “Let’s see, two left … well done, Alph, first the women and then the men. You’re such a gentleman!”

  11:05 a.m. – I interpret that he’s referring to the order of the candidates. I have passed them on in the order they were sent to me. I take note that, when a gentleman selects candidates, women have to come before men, and I leave open the possibility of generalizing this rule to other situations and recruiting. I deduct that being
a gentleman is positive.

  Demonstrating an exquisite dominance of 3D potentiality, a young Asian man has appeared on Alpha+’s monitor to explain to them what he’s achieved and, above all, what he feels he is able to achieve. He gesticulates a lot and paces up and down and it occurs to the Doctor that the boy may be a little paranoid. He’ll have to wait and see what Sus Cal’Vin has to say on the matter. The kid reminds him of those charismatic politicians they had two hundred years ago, who thought that just by expressing an idea the economic and arms-driven world system would be changed. How naive! The Doctor also believes in the strength of ideas, but they must always be kept secret, worked to exhaustion, polished and only at the very end brought into practice. To divulge them is to kill them off.

  And this novice, look at him, all he needs to do is attach the blueprints of these suggestive mechanisms he proposes. Wireless transmutation. Happiness app. It’s shockingly ingenuous. A person in a better position could take possession of his inventions without batting an eyelid. They’ll end up featuring among the competition’s products … Where are CraftER’s censors? So many years fighting to impose the new regulations and they’re not even applying them. Even Gatew’s seen this and let it through! How can they all have forgotten the series of judicial battles they had to go through so that the ideas of their employees would legally belong to the company?

  “Alpha+, I want a connection with Mr. Gatew immediately.”

  The manager appears on screen in a matter of seconds:

  “Hello, Dr. Craft, I was waiting to hear from you. Which files should I forward to Dr. Cal’Vin?”

  “None, for the moment. I’ve got Leo Mar’10 here in front of me. Why isn’t his entry in the public repository censored?” He wants to hold back, it’s been months since he handed this responsibility over to Gatew, but the anger is noticeable in his voice. “It’s full of product ideas that the company could exploit.”