UnSouled

The senator just stares at him, all jovialness gone from his voice. “Not something you want to do at this juncture . . . ,” he repeats.

And, predictable as clockwork, Roberta leaps in with, “What Cam means to say is he needs time to consider it.”

“I thought you said this would be a slam dunk, Roberta.”

“Well, maybe if you were a little more elegant in your approach—”

Then General Bodeker puts up his hand to silence them.

“Perhaps you don’t understand,” the general says with calm control. “Let me explain it to you.” He waits until Cam puts down his fork, then proceeds. “Until last week you were the property of Proactive Citizenry. But they have sold their interest in you for a sizeable sum. You are now the property of the United States military.”

“Property?” says Cam. “What do you mean, ‘Property’?”

“Now, Cam,” says Roberta, working her best damage control. “It’s only a word.”

“It’s more than a word!” insists Cam. “It’s an idea—an idea that, according to the history expert somewhere in my left brain, was abolished in 1865.”

The senator starts to bluster, but the general keeps his cool. “That applies to individuals, which you are not. You are a collection of very specific parts, each one with a distinct monetary value. We’ve paid more than one hundred times that value for the unique ma

“So there you have it,” says the senator bitterly. “You wa

Cam’s breathing is out of control. Dozens of separate tempers inside of him join and flare all at once. He wants to dump the table. Hurl the plates at their heads.

Property!

They see him as property!

His worst fear is realized; even the people who venerate him see him as a commodity. A thing.

Roberta, seeing that look in his eyes, grabs his hand. “Look at me, Cam!” she orders.

He does, knowing deep down that making a scene will be the worst thing he can do for himself. He needs her to talk him down.

“Thirty pieces of silver!” he shouts. “Brutus! Rosenbergs!”

“I am not a traitor! I am true to you, Cam. This deal was made without my knowledge. I’m as furious as you, but we both must make the best of it.”

His head is swimming. “Grassy knoll!”

“It’s not a conspiracy either! Yes, I knew about it when I brought you here—but I also knew that telling you would be a mistake.” She throws an angry glare at the two men. “Because if it were your choice, the technical issue of ownership need never have come up.”

“Out of the bag.” Cam forces his breathing to slow and his flaring temper to drop into a smolder. “Close the barn door. The horses are gone.”

“What the hell is he babbling about?” snaps the senator.

“Quiet!” Roberta orders. “Both of you!” The fact that Roberta can quiet a senator and a general with a single word feels like some sort of victory. Regardless of who and what they own, they are not in charge here. At least not at this juncture.

Cam knows that anything out of his mouth will be just another spark of metaphorical language—the way he spoke when he was first rewound, but he doesn’t care.

“Lemon,” he says.

The two men glance around the table in search of a lemon. “No.” Cam takes a bite of prime rib, forcing himself to calm down enough to better translate his thoughts. “What I mean is that no matter what you paid for me, you’ve thrown away your money if I don’t perform.”

The senator is still perplexed, but General Bodeker nods. “You’re saying that we bought ourselves a lemon.”

Cam takes another bite. “Gold star for you.”

The two men look to each other, shifting uncomfortably. Good. That’s exactly what he wants.

“But if I do perform, then everybody gets what they want.”

“So we’re back where we started,” says Bodeker, with waning patience.

“But at least now we understand each other.” Cam considers the situation. Considers Roberta, who is all but wringing her hands with anxiety now. Then he turns to the two men. “Tear up your contract with Proactive Citizenry,” he says. “Void it. And then I’ll sign my own contract that commits me to whatever you want me to do. So that it’s my decision rather than a purchase.”

That seems to baffle all three of them.

“Is that possible?” asks the senator.

“Technically he’s still a minor,” Roberta says.

“Technically I don’t exist,” Cam reminds her. “Isn’t that right?”

No one answers.

“So,” says Cam. “Make me exist on paper. And on that same paper, I’ll sign over my life to you. Because I choose to.”

The general looks to the senator, but the senator just shrugs. So General Bodeker turns to Cam and says:

“We’ll consider it and get back to you.”

•   •   •

Cam stands in his room in his DC residence, staring at the back of the closed door.

This town house is the place he comes back to after the various speaking trips. Roberta calls it “going home.” To Cam this does not feel like home. The mansion in Molokai is home, and yet he hasn’t been back there for months. He suspects he may never be allowed to go back again. After all, it was more a nursery than a residence for him. It was where he was rewound. It was where he was taught who he was—what he was—and learned how to coordinate his diverse “internal community.”

General Bodeker, for all of his ire at the use of the word “boeuf” for military youth, apparently had no problem skirting euphemisms and calling Cam’s internal community “parts.”

Cam does not know who to despise more—Bodeker for having purchased his quantified flesh, Proactive Citizenry for selling it, or Roberta for willing him into existence. Cam continues to stare at the back of his door. Hanging there—strategically placed by some unknown entity while he was out—is the full dress uniform of a US Marine, shiny buttons and all. Crisp, just as Roberta had said.

Is this a threat, Cam wonders, or an enticement?

Cam says nothing about it to Roberta when he goes down for di

At the end of the meal, the housekeeper brings in a silver tea service, setting it down between them—because Roberta, an expat Brit, must still have her Earl Grey.

It’s over tea that Roberta gives him the news. “I need to tell you something,” Roberta says after her first sip. “But I need you to promise that you’ll control your temper.”

“That’s never a good way to begin a conversation,” he says. “Try again. This time full of springtime and daisies.”

Roberta takes a deep breath, sets down her cup, and gets it out. “Your request to sign your own document has been denied by the court.”

Cam feels his meal wanting to come back, but he holds it down. “So the courts say I don’t exist. Is that what you’re telling me? That I’m an object like”—he picks up a spoon—“like a utensil? Or am I more like this teapot?” He drops the spoon and grabs the pot from the table. “Yes, that’s it—an articulate teapot screeching with hot air that no one wants to hear!”

Roberta pushes her chair back with a complaint from the hardwood floor. “You promised to keep your temper!”

“No—you asked, and I refuse!”

He slams the teapot down, and a flood of Earl Grey ejects from the spout, soaking the white tablecloth. The housekeeper, who was lurking, makes herself scarce.

“It’s a legal definition, nothing more!” insists Roberta. “I, for one, know that you’re more than that stupid definition.”

“Sweatshop!” snaps Cam, and not even Roberta can decipher that one. “Your opinion means nothing, because you’re little more than the sweatshop seamstress who stitched me together.”