“Tony,” Bailey says, looking at his knees.
“Tony is the youngest and he is… what, twenty-seven? He’s the only one under thirty. All the rest of the younger people at the Center are… different.”
“Emmy likes Lou,” Eric says. I look at him; I do not know what he means by that.
“If I’m normal, I will never have to go to a psychiatrist again,” Cameron says. I think of Dr. Fornum and think that not seeing her is almost enough reason to risk the treatment. “I can marry without a certificate of stability. Have children.”
“You want to get married,” Bailey says.
“Yes,” Cameron says. His voice is louder again, but only a little louder, and his face is red. “I want to get married. I want to have children. I want to live in an ordinary house in an ordinary neighborhood and take the ordinary public transportation and live the rest of my life as a normal person.”
“Even if you aren’t the same person?” Eric asks.
“Of course I’ll be the same person,” Cameron says. “Just normal.”
I am not sure this is possible. When I think of the ways in which I am not normal, I cannot imagine being normal and being the same person. The whole point of this is to change us, make us something else, and surely that involves the personality, the self, as well.
“I will do it by myself if no one else will,” Cameron says.
“It is your decision,” Chuy says, in his quoting voice.
“Yes.” Cameron’s voice drops. “Yes.”
“I will miss you,” Bailey says.
“You could come, too,” Cameron says.
“No. Not yet, anyway. I want to know more.”
“I am going home,” Cameron says. “I will tell them tomorrow.” He stands up, and I can see his hand in his pocket, jiggling the dice, up and down, up and down.
We do not say good-bye. We do not need to do that with each other. Cameron walks out and shuts the door quietly behind him. The others look at me and then away.
“Some people do not like who they are,” Bailey says.
“Some people are different than other people think,” Chuy says.
“Cameron was in love with a woman who did not love him,” Eric says. “She said it would never work. It was when he was in college.” I wonder how Eric knows that.
“Emmy says Lou is in love with a normal woman who is going to ruin his life,” Chuy says.
“Emmy does not know what she is talking about,” I say. “Emmy should mind her own business.”
“Does Cameron think this woman will love him if he is normal?” Bailey asks.
“She married someone else,” Eric says. “He thinks he might love someone who would love him back. I think that is why he wants the treatment.”
“I would not do it for a woman,” Bailey says. “If I do it, I need a reason for me.” I wonder what he would say if he knew Marjory. If I knew it would make Marjory love me, would I do it? It is an uncomfortable thought; I put it aside.
“I do not know what normal would feel like. Normal people do not all look happy. Maybe it feels bad to be normal, as bad as being autistic.” Chuy’s head is twisting up and around, back and down.
“I would like to try it,” Eric says. “But I would like to be able to get back to this self if it didn’t work.”
“It doesn’t work like that,” I say. “Remember what Dr. Ransome said to Linda? Once the connections are formed between neurons, they stay formed unless an accident or something breaks the connection.”
“Is that what they will do, make new connections?”
“What about the old ones? Won’t there be” — Bailey waves his arms — “like when things collide? Confusion? Static? Chaos?”
“I do not know,” I say. All at once I feel swallowed by my ignorance, so vast an unknowing. Out of that vastness so many bad things might come. Then an image of a photograph taken by one of the space-based telescopes comes to mind: that vast darkness lit by stars. Beauty, too, may be in that unknown.
“I would think they would have to turn off the circuits that are working now, build new circuits, and then turn on the new ones. That way only the good connections would be working.”
“That is not what they told us,” Chuy says.
“No one would agree to having their brain destroyed to build a new one,” Eric says.
“Cameron—” Chuy says.
“He does not think that is what will happen,” Eric says. “If he knew…” He pauses, his eyes closed, and we wait. “He might do it anyway if he is unhappy enough. It is no worse than suicide. Better, if he comes back the person he wants to be.”
“What about memories?” Chuy asks. “Would they remove the memories?”
“How?” Bailey asks.
“Memories are stored in the brain. If they turn everything off, the memories will go away.”
“Maybe not. I have not read the chapters on memory yet,” I say. “I will read them; they are next.” Some parts of memory have already been discussed in the book, but I do not understand all of it yet and I do not want to talk about it. “Besides,” I say, “when you turn off a computer not all the memory is lost.”
“People are not conscious in surgery, but they do not lose all their memories,” Eric says.
“But they do not remember the surgery, and there are those drugs that interfere with memory formation,” Chuy says. “If they can interfere with memory formation, maybe they can remove old memories.”
“That is something we can look up on-line,” Eric says. “I will do that.”
“Moving connections and making new ones is like hardware,” Bailey says. “Learning to use the new connections is like software. It was hard enough to learn language the first time; I do not want to go through that again.”
“Normal kids learn it faster,” Eric says.
“It still takes years,” Bailey says. “They’re talking about six to eight weeks of rehab. Maybe that’s enough for a chimpanzee, but chimps don’t talk.”
“It is not like they never made mistakes before,” Chuy says. “They used to think all sorts of wrong things about us. This could be wrong, too.”
“More is known about brain functions,” I say. “But not everything.”
“I do not like doing something without knowing what will happen,” Bailey says.
Chuy and Eric say nothing: they agree. I agree, too. It is important to know the consequences before acting. Sometimes the consequences are not obvious.
The consequences of not acting are also not obvious. If I do not take the treatment, things will still not stay the same. Don proved that, in his attacks on my car and then on me. No matter what I do, no matter how predictable I try to make my life, it will not be any more predictable than the rest of the world. Which is chaotic.
“I am thirsty,” Eric says suddenly. He stands up. I stand up, too, and go to the kitchen. I get out a glass and fill it with water. He makes a face when he tastes the water; I remember then that he drinks bottled water. I do not have the brand he likes.
“I am thirsty, too,” Chuy says. Bailey says nothing.
“Do you want water?” I ask. “It is all I have except one bottle of fruit drink.” I hope he will not ask for the fruit drink. It is what I like for breakfast.
“I want water,” he says. Bailey puts his hand up. I fill two more glasses with water and bring them into the living room. At Tom and Lucia’s house, they ask if I want something to drink even when I don’t. It makes more sense to wait until people say they want something, but probably normal people ask first.
It feels very strange to have people here in my apartment. The space seems smaller. The air seems thicker. The colors change a little because of the colors they are wearing and the colors they are. They take up space and breathe.
I wonder suddenly how it would be if Marjory and I lived together — how it would be to have her taking up space here in the living room, in the bathroom, in the bedroom. I did not like the group home I used to live in, when I first left home. The bathroom smelled of other people, even though we cleaned it every day. Five different toothpastes. Five different preferences in shampoo and soap and deodorant.