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Cam jolts awake at thirty-six thousand feet. For a moment he thinks he’s in a dentist’s chair, but no. He had fallen asleep before extending the chair to its full reclining position.
Proactive Citizenry has provided this richly appointed private jet for his speaking tour, although it’s not all that private. Roberta slumbers in her own sleeper chair in the alcove behind his, her breathing steady and regulated, just like everything else in her life. There is a concierge—which is the private aircraft equivalent of a flight attendant—but he is also asleep at the moment. The time is 3:13 a.m., although Cam is not sure what time zone that’s reflecting.
He tries to bring back his dreams for analysis, but can’t access them. Cam’s dreams have never made sense. He has no idea how much sense the dreams of normal people make, so he can’t compare. His dreams are plagued by snippets of memories that lead nowhere, because the rest of those memories are in other heads, living different lives. The only memory that is clear and consistent is the memory of being unwound. He dreams of it way too often. He dreams not of just one unwinding, but many. The bits and pieces of dozens of divisions blend together into one unforgettable, unforgivable whole.
He used to wake up screaming from those dreams. Not from the pain of it, for unwinding is, by law, painless. But there are things worse than physical pain. He would scream from the terror, from the sheer helplessness each of those kids felt as the surgeons moved closer, limbs tingled and went numb, medical stasis coolers were carried away in their peripheral vision. Each sense shutting down and each memory evaporating, always ending with a silent cry of hopeless defiance as each Unwind was shuffled into oblivion.
Roberta is in the dream, for she was there at each unwinding—the only person in the room not wearing a surgical mask. So you would see me, hear me, and know me when the parts were united she had told him—but she hadn’t counted on how horrible that knowledge would be. Roberta is part of the terror. She is the author of hopelessness.
Cam has learned to bite back the scream in his dreams, holding it inside until he drags himself from the rancid soup of his nightmare and into the living, breathing world, where he is himself and not the particulated bits of his “i
Tonight he is alone. He knows there are people around him, but in a private jet soaring through an icy black sky, he ca
Am I truly alive? Do I even exist?
Certainly he exists as organic matter, but as a sentient being? As a someone rather than a something? There are too many moments in his life when he just doesn’t know. And if, in the end, each individual faces judgment, will he stand to face it too—or will the constituents of his i
He curls his hands into fists. I am! he wants to shout. I exist. But he knows better than to voice these concerns to Roberta anymore. Better if she thinks his weaknesses lie in youthful lust.
This is the fury that fills him when no one is watching. Fury that the hecklers in the audience may be right and he may be nothing more than medical sleight of hand. A trick of the scalpel. A hollow shell mimicking life.
In these dark nihilistic moments when the universe itself seems to be rejecting him the way people’s bodies used to reject transplanted organs, he thinks of Risa.
Risa. Her name explodes into his mind, and he fights the urge to put his mind in lockdown. Risa did not despise him. Yes, at first she did, but she came to truly know him and to see him as an individual who is more than the sum of his parts. In the end, she came to care for him in her own way.
When he was with Risa, Cam felt real. When he was with her, he felt more than a patchwork of science and hubris.
He ca
Yet in many ways he feels as if she took his soul with her when she left.
Do you know what that feels like, Risa? he wants to ask her. Do you know what it’s like to be un-souled? Is that how you felt when your precious Co
Mild turbulence rattles the jet, sounding so much more ominous than it really is. He hears Roberta stirring, then settling back into the depth of sleep once more. The woman has no idea how fully she has been duped. She, so clever, so shrewd, so aware, and yet so blind.
He knows she will see though any pretense he puts forth, so all his deceits must be thickly coated with truth, like the candy coating of a Jordan almond.
Yes, it’s true Cam does enjoy the attention of pretty girls who are drawn to his unique gravity. And yes, it’s true that in his more glorious moments Cam does feel inebriated by his own existence, drunk on a heady brew of human ambrosia—the humanity that was unwound to create him. He has learned how to summon that feeling—to draw it like a bath and luxuriate in it when he needs to. It is the candy coating on the kernel of truth that only he knows, but shares with no one.
I am nothing without Risa.
So he will play the role of the spoiled star, allowing Roberta to think his hedonistic ways are real. And he will enjoy himself just enough to fool her and make her think arrogance and excess are all she needs to wrangle.
The plane begins its descent to wherever it is they’re going next. More audiences. More Mirandas. A pleasant way to bide his time. Cam smiles, remembering the secret pledge he made with himself. If the one thing that Risa wants more than all else is the utter destruction of Proactive Citizenry, then Cam will find a way to provide it for her. More than just undermining Roberta, he will wedge himself in the gears of the entire Proactive Citizenry machine. He will find a way to shut it down, and Risa will know that he was the one who did it.
Then she will truly love him, returning every last bit of his affections. And she will restore to him his soul.
14 • Manager
The Redwood Bluff Campground is sold out.
The manager of the Northern California campground should be happy, but he’s troubled in the worst way. For him, the worst way means in his wallet.
A huge portion of the campground is taken up by Camp Red Heron—a summer camp for underprivileged kids. The bright crimson camp shirts are everywhere.
The afternoon before they’re scheduled to leave, the manager comes into the midst of the campground of teens, who all admittedly look underprivileged. There are at least a hundred of them. They seem a little stressed when they see him, but quickly get back to their business. Mostly they act like kids on vacation, throwing balls, climbing trees—but there’s a fear in their eyes and a sense of distrust in their actions. It betrays something their camp T-shirts are trying to hide.
“Excuse me. Who’s in charge here?”
A girl who could have been a bouncer in a previous life comes forward. “He’s busy,” she tells him. “You can talk to me.”
“I’ll talk to the person in charge,” the manager insists. “And I’ll talk to him in private.”
The big girl sneers. “You won’t get much privacy among our campers.” She folds her arms in defiance of his request. “I’ll tell him you came by.”