He finally turns his gaze from the ocean. “Let’s talk about the person you’re making me forget. Let’s talk about the girl”
Roberta finishes her foie gras, unfazed. “You know I won’t discuss it, so why ask?”
“Because the closest I’ll ever come to remembering is forcing you to remember.”
Their server comes to take away the appetizers, and brings the prime rib. Cam finds he’s hungry for it, but not hungry enough to start right away. “I can still feel the worm in my brain.”
“It’s not really a worm. It’s just a clever bit of nanotechnology, and anything you’re feeling is just in your imagination.”
He begins to cut his meat, imagining how his piecemeal brain has been routed by the army of microscopic nanites crawling along his axons, leaping between dendrites, all tuned to seek out very specific memory patterns. The moment his conscious thought hits upon the targeted memory, it gets zapped. No mess, no bother. For the first few days after the procedure, Cam was plagued with that tip-of-the tongue feeling, reaching for a name and a face he thought he remembered a moment ago, but was then gone. The feeling has lessened, but the nagging sense of absence has remained. Well, not entirely. Because the nanites are also designed to tweak his pleasure receptors whenever he thinks of anything relating to the military. It’s been filling the gaps like spackle in a cracking plaster wall.
It’s the peripheral things he still knows that make it so difficult to leave his past life behind. He knows he was in Akron. He remembers helping Connor Lassiter, but the details are fuzzy. Cam also knows he chose to become a hero to The Girl, rather than be a hero to Proactive Citizenry. He could have turned them all in and done the nation a great service that would insure his place in history . . . but The Girl would hate him for the rest of his life if he had done it. So he chose to be a hero to her in a way that would outshine anything that Connor had ever done. And then maybe . . . maybe . . . when she tired of the Akron AWOL, she would see the purity of what he had done for her. And The Girl would love him. Cam chose the long play and was willing to wait. But now, he can’t remember her face, or her name, or anything about her. He never imagined she could be stolen from the inside out.
“Is the prime rib to your liking, Cam?”
“It’s fine.”
“Just fine?”
“It’s excellent. Must you always make inquiries of my taste buds?”
Roberta sighs. “Cam, please, I don’t want to fight. It’s our last week together. I want it to be pleasant.”
“You’re not coming with me?” Not that he wants her to, but as his “handler” in all public matters, he had just assumed she would.
“No one wants a doting mother at West Point,” she says.
That catches Cam by surprise. Apparently it catches Roberta by surprise as well. A slip she didn’t intend to make. It’s the first time she’s ever actually used the M word. Cam always felt theirs was a distorted parental/child relationship, but use of the M word has always been an unspoken taboo.
Roberta clears her throat and dots her lips with her napkin. “Besides, there’s too much work to do here once you’re gone.”
That piques Cam’s interest. “What sort of work?”
“Nothing you need to concern yourself with.”
He knew she would attempt deflection. The idea of her focusing her attentions elsewhere brings forth a wave of unexpected jealousy. “Will you be gathering choice parts for the new-and-improved me?”
Cam notices the way Roberta slices her meat. With smooth grace, the same way she answers the question. “You said it once yourself, Cam—you are the concept car. The perfect design. A pinnacle to strive for.” She inserts a piece of meat in her mouth, chews, and swallows before she speaks again. “Rest assured, we can’t improve on you, and won’t even try. You are our star, and always will be.”
“So, what then?”
“Extrapolate for yourself if you must, but my work is classified. Just as my work with you was classified. I won’t discuss it.”
“Yes,” says Cam with a grin, “the expression ‘eyes only’ takes on a new meaning when you’re surgically removing them from Unwinds.”
“Cam, we’re eating. That’s far from appropriate luncheon conversation.”
“Pardon my indiscretion.”
Cam considers. Extrapolates. A concept car is impractical. He’s impractical. Not what the world needs.
Dessert comes, and their conversation lapses into the mundane, but the question remains in the back of his mind: If he’s not what the world needs, then what does it need? Or what can Proactive Citizenry make it need?
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At night, Cam’s thoughts drift to Una. She is not The Girl. He knows that, but thinking of her tempers the feeling of absence in his brain. Una has never met The Girl. He knows this, because none of his thoughts of Una get scrambled, and when The Girl is attached to a memory it turns momentarily into static. Then, when he grasps the memory once more, The Girl has been surgically removed from it. He remembers conversations, but none of the gists. He remembers talking to someone, but in the memory, he’s talking to a wall, or a hallway, or just off into blank space.
That doesn’t happen when he thinks of Una, so there’s some comfort in that. Una despises him, of course. How could she not? He has the hands of her one true love. Cam has the part of his brain that feels emotion, and can render it in the soulful sound of a guitar, but Cam is not, nor will he ever be, Wil Tashi’ne. And so she hates him with good reason.
As Cam lies on his plush bed in his plush bedroom, he fills his mind, with thoughts not just of Una, but of everyone that he has encountered since being rewound. The guards who tended to him before he understood what he was. General Bodeker and Senator Cobb, who saw in him something worth paying money for. The jealous Akron AWOL and the low-cortical girl he was traveling with. What was her name? Oh yes, Grace. Cam fills his mind with everyone that was a part of his brief life, hoping that their presence will outline the shape of The Girl—like light around a silhouette—making the shape of her absence crystal clear and in perfect focus.
Amazing that Proactive Citizenry truly believes purging his memory of the girl he loved would do anything but make him hate them even more than he already does. Incredible that they actually think that stimulating his pleasure centers at the thought of a military life would lead to anything but virulent resentment. Yes, now Cam longs for his future in the Marine Corps, but he absolutely despises the people who implanted that longing within him.
Not the people, but the person.
Roberta.
As far as Cam is concerned, Roberta is Proactive Citizenry. Bringing them down means bringing her down. In flames.
But of course she can’t know that. For the time being, he must appear to be her perfect boy. He will shine like the idol they carefully designed him to be. The golden calf for all of humanity to worship. And it will be all the more rewarding to see the bewildered astonishment in Roberta’s eyes when he tears it all down.
• • •
General Bodeker needs no entourage. He cuts an imposing figure without the requisite team of toadies. The air around him seems to congeal with his formidable presence. The flowers of the entry path, wilting in the Hawaiian humidity, seem drawn to tight attention at his passing.