Bewilderment

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I WATCHED FOR SOME DIFFERENCE. Maybe I cued myself, knowing whose feelings he was learning to emulate. But it seemed to take just two sessions for the black cloud he’d sunk into after his disastrous stint at the Capitol to break up into wisps of cirrus.

I came to wake him on a late June Saturday. He groaned at the shock of consciousness and sudden sun. But now, at least, he lifted his head off the pillow and grinned as he moaned.

Dad! Am I training today?

“Yes.”

Yay! he said, in a funny little voice. Because, you know, I could really use it.

“Could you use a little paddle in the boat afterwards?”

Serious? On the lake?

“I was thinking just out in the backyard.”

He growled deep in his throat and bared his teeth at me. You’re lucky I’m not a carnivore.

Choosing his clothes for the day left him wistful. Ah, this shirt. I forgot about this one. This is a good shirt! How come I never wear this shirt? He came out to the living room half-dressed. Remember that pair of furry socks Mom gave me, with separate toes, and little claws on each one? What happened to those?

The question made me flinch. I’d trained on his old brain for so long. I was sure a squall was coming. “Oh, Robbie. That was a hundred sizes ago.”

I know. Geez. I was just curious. I mean: Are they still somewhere? Is some other kid wearing them and thinking he’s half-bear?

“What made you think of those?”

He shrugged, but not in evasion. Mom. Eerie thoughts came over me. But before I could challenge him, he asked, What’s for breakfast? I’m starving!

He ate everything I put in front of him. He wanted to know what was different about the oatmeal (nothing) and why the orange juice was so tangy (no reason). He sat at the table after I cleared it, humming some melody I couldn’t make out. The raging curiosity I felt over the source of Aly’s recorded Ecstasy that long-ago day flooded through me again. My son—her son—had glimpsed it, but he couldn’t tell me.

I took Robbie in to the neuro lab for another session with his mother’s brain print. He and Ginny fell into their familiar routine. I watched him for a few minutes as he moved shapes around on his screen by telekinesis. Then I walked down the hall and dropped in on Currier.

“Theo! What a pleasure!” He must have meant something different by the word than everyone else did. Every syllable the man spoke irritated me. I needed a stint or two in his empathy machine. “How’s the boy doing?”

I made the case for guarded optimism. Martin listened, his face reserved.

“He’s probably generating a fair amount of auto-suggestion.”

Of course Robin was auto-suggesting. I was auto-suggesting. The changes might be entirely imagined. But brain science knew that even imagination could change our cells for real.

“Is there anything new about this round of training? Changes in the AI feedback? Was Alyssa’s recording of different neural regions?”

“Different?” Currier’s shoulders rose; his mouth approximated a smile. “Sure. We’ve boosted the scanning resolution. The AI keeps learning about Robin and getting more efficient the more Robin interacts with it. And yes, Aly’s scan is of an evolutionarily older part of the brain than the target templates we worked with in the earlier session.”

“So, in other words… nothing at all is the same.” I’d asked what I came to ask. Everything except what I wanted most to know. And I was pretty sure that Currier wouldn’t be able to tell me what Aly herself had refused to say.

But then I thought: Maybe he could. The idea crept across my clammy, conductive skin. Maybe Robbie wasn’t the first to visit Aly’s brain print. But I was afraid the question might make me look crazy. Or I was too afraid of the answer to ask.