Prospero had been mostly indifferent to the devices, labeling them as “junk,” and ultimately disregarding them because they did not help him in his “work.” He said one was a by-product and the other was an interesting side effect. Greene was trying to determine what that work was, convinced it was a key factor in understanding Prospero.
Overall, Oscar Bell was openly obsessed with his son’s genius. Bell talked about almost nothing else, and that was disturbing to Greene. He did not know how this would play out over time. Bell was the least pleasant man Greene had ever met. He was acquisitive, demanding, inflexible, and probably cruel in many ways. His household staff was terrified of him and there was a high turnover rate among them. Bell was the kind of man who had no real friends and instead relied on maintaining a network of acquaintances whose shared agendas were based on financial reward rather than personal enrichment.
“I guess you know,” said Prospero, “that Dad hates me because I actually believe in something. He thinks it’s a distraction. He accused me of losing focus.”
“Do you believe, Prospero?” asked Greene, surprised. “You’ve told me on numerous occasions that you reject the idea of the Judeo-Christian version of God. You said that Jesus and Mohammed and Buddha were all con men. Those are your words.”
“I know. I was only ten, so that was the best I could phrase it at the time.”
Greene had to suppress a smile. He said, “Would you care to restate your position?”
Prospero shot him a sly look. “Let’s just say that I’ve opened my mind to other possibilities.”
“What possibilities? Is it something your mother suggested?”
The boy seemed surprised by that. “What? No. She’s a loon.”
“Then what?”
Prospero shrugged. “Something else. I’m not ready to talk about it.” He paused, considering, then changed the subject. “Do you remember the dream I had last Christmas? About having brothers and sisters?”
“Of course. You said that you believed there were at least fifty other children like you.”
“Exactly like me. Same face,” said Prospero. “Even the girls looked like me. We were all in a big room. Not a school exactly and not a hospital. A little of both. It was a horrible place, though. The people who worked there hated us. No… no, that’s wrong. They were afraid of us.”
“So you told me. Why do you bring it up now?”
The boy looked at his hands for a moment. “I dreamed about one of them again. Last night, I mean. In my dreams most of my brothers and sisters were dead. All but one. A sister.”
Greene said nothing. He’d asked Oscar Bell about this and had been told, very curtly, to mind his own business. The encounter, and the boy’s persistent dreams, reinforced Greene’s suspicion that Prospero was adopted.
“What can you recall about her?” asked Greene, but Prospero shrugged.
“Not much. She was sad. She was older in my dream. Grown up. And she was sad. She’d been hurt. Shot, I think. She didn’t die but she was sad because she couldn’t have babies.” The boy knotted and unknotted his fingers. “That was all there was to the dream, but it was so real. More real than us talking right now. I don’t think it was just a dream. I think I do have a sister and that she’s out there somewhere. And… she looks exactly like me. Not like clones. Something else…”
His voice trailed off.
“Very well. Have you ever shared these dreams with your father?”
“No. I tried once and he smacked me across the face.”
“That was two years ago,” said Greene. “Your father told me that he’d hit you and that he was very sorry. Perhaps you could try to talk to him again. If not about your dreams, then perhaps about your relationship? About your feelings about his focus on your scientific achievements.”
“Share? With Dad?” Prospero laughed. “Dad doesn’t talk to me. Not unless it’s to ask what I’m working on and how it could be used.”
“Used?”
“You know what I mean,” snapped Prospero. “Daddy-dear’s always fishing for the next shiny toy to sell to the military. You think all of this — the mansion, the cars, the private jet, all that crap — comes from what he makes in the private sector? Please. It’s all military contracts and he’s always after me to come up with something because he’s tapped out when it comes to his own genius.”
“You’re only a boy.”
Prospero gave him a withering look. “We both know that’s not really true.”
In that moment the boy sounded like an old man. There was a world-weariness unearned by the number of years he’d already lived. It was in his eyes, too.
“So, no,” concluded Prospero, “Dad doesn’t say a lot to me. Not the way people do.”
“Your father is a reticent man,” said Greene. “Do you know that word? Reticence?”
“Of course I do. And it doesn’t really fit him. Dad’s simply an asshole.”
“He’s your father. You shouldn’t speak like that about him.”
“Really? You want me to start self-editing in therapy?”
Greene flinched. “Fair enough. My apologies.”
“Dad hates me,” said Prospero.
“You must know that’s not true,” said Greene.
Prospero gave him a pitying look. “Of course it is.”
They went back and forth on that for a bit, but Greene knew it was an argument he could not win. Perhaps “contempt” was not the best word to describe how Oscar Bell treated his son, but it was close and everyone knew it. The father even intimated as much, telling Greene in private that “If it wasn’t for his brains, the kid wouldn’t be worth the money it takes to feed him. I sure as shit can’t take him out anywhere. After what he did at the science fair? No way.”
At a national science fair for grade-school kids, an eight-year-old Prospero took out his penis and urinated all over the judges’ table, all the while loudly proclaiming that they weren’t smart enough to judge a competition for the smelliest dog turd. It was not an isolated incident. Oscar Bell had been forced to write a lot of checks to mollify the judges, the school, and, Greene suspected, the press.
“I don’t want to talk about Dad anymore,” declared Prospero.
Greene accepted it, recognizing that particular tone in the boy’s voice. “What would you like to talk about? We have plenty of time. I see you’ve added something new to your hoodie.”
Prospero raised a hand and touched the tangle of tentacles that he’d drawn with such care on the gray cloth and down onto the green jacket.
“Is that from something you read?” asked Greene. “Or from a video game?”
“I don’t play video games anymore.”
“Oh? Why not?”
“They’re designed to encourage failure,” said Prospero. “The game levels get more difficult and complicated and you waste a lot of time beating them.”
“Isn’t that the point of those games? Overcoming obstacles and—”
“No. The point of those games is to addict people to playing them and make them desperate to win. But each time you beat a level your ‘reward’ is another even more difficult level. Addiction isn’t growth. The game designers make them for sheep. I’m not a sheep because sheep are for slaughter.”
“Prospero… have you been having thoughts of hurting yourself?”
“No, and don’t be stupid. You know that’s not what I meant. I said I was not a sheep.” The boy paused. “Look, if the game designers wanted smarter kids to play there would be something better at the end of the last level than some cheap ‘you won’ graphic bullshit. I don’t have time to waste on games. It’s not what I care about.”
Prospero once more touched the tentacles he’d drawn on his hood. He shrugged again.