‘It’s deeper than I thought it was last night,’ Father says. ‘How did you do this?’
‘It happened when I—’ Careful, Jenna. They hid your computer from you. ‘It happened when I went for a walk. I stumbled and came down on a rock.’
‘A rock did this?’
‘It had a sharp edge to it.’
‘Oh.’ I am not sure he believes me, but then again, I am not sure how much to believe of what he says either. I guess that makes us even. He swabs the now-stapled cut with gel and begins wrapping it with gauze. We sit at the kitchen table. Claire, too. She is still in the clothes she had on yesterday, rumpled now. Her usually neat hair is uncombed. She is tired, her face looking numb, like she has no energy to express anything, but still I can tell she is restraining herself from talking; she is letting Father do most of it. He holds nothing back, and I see Claire wince at some of the information.
‘If I only have ten percent of my original brain, what is the rest?’
‘It’s not exactly correct that you don’t have your brain. You do. You just don’t have the same material it was housed in. Now it’s in the Bio Gel.’
‘Then explain Bio Gel.’ I ask my questions flatly. Not committing to emotion. Not angry. Not sad. Not committing to acceptance or forgiveness. I can’t give them that.
‘Bio Gel is an artificial neural network built on a biological model. It’s a condensed, oxygenated gel that is filled with neural chips. These chips are as small as human neurons, and the wonderful thing is, they communicate and pass messages in the same way human neurons do, through chemical neurotransmitters. The typical human brain, Jenna, is composed of a hundred billion neurons. You have five times that. Every inch of you is packed with Bio Gel.’
I sense that Father thinks I should be impressed. Maybe even grateful. But what about my missing heart? My liver? I don’t want five hundred billion neural chips. I want guts.
He continues to describe his handiwork. ‘We uploaded all the information from your brain to a central sphere around your saved brain tissue—the pons—or the butterfly as it’s sometimes called. But eventually all the information will be shared with the whole network.’
‘If it’s all there, why am I having a hard time remembering?’ I don’t share that there are some things I am remembering that I shouldn’t. Like my baptism at two weeks old. I want to believe that Father has it all under control, but memories like these tell me he may be as lost as I am. He’s tampered with the unknown. What door has he opened? Will he change his mind and want to close it?
‘Your memory lapses aren’t unlike someone who’s had a stroke and is slowly recovering,’ he says. ‘The brain has to find new pathways to access and store information. That’s what you’re doing now. The neural chips are building pathways.’
‘Are you sure it’s all there?’
Mother and Father share a quick glance. Do they think I am blind?
‘Reasonably sure,’ Father says.
Reasonably. Like that is enough.
Father is done with my hand and I stand. ‘So if this is all so groundbreaking and wonderful, why are we here?’ I know the answer, but I want to push them—like a child on a playground shoving at someone’s shoulder. It feels good. I answer my own question before they can put their spin on it. ‘I’m illegal, aren’t I? That’s why we live here. We’re hiding out.’
Mother stands, coming around the table toward me. ‘Jenna, the laws will change—’
Father jumps in. ‘You’ve done nothing wrong. What we’ve done is illegal. So, yes, that’s one of the reasons we’re here.’
Mother is about to reach me, and I put my hand out like a stop sign to halt her. ‘One of the reasons?’ I ask.
Father hesitates. Another shared glance between him and Mother. ‘The Bio Gel has its limitations. We know the shelf life—the oxygenation—is reduced with extreme temperature changes, especially cold. This location was chosen because it has the most constant temperate climate in the country.’
I begin laughing. Shelf life? My God, I have a shelf life!
‘It’s not that unusual—’
‘Stop! I have a shelf life, for God’s sake! That is unusual!’
‘Call it whatever you want, but what living thing doesn’t have a shelf life of some sort? We all do. You’re twisting this out of—’
‘I can’t believe this!’ I circle around, my arms flailing over my head, but just as quickly I’m disgusted that I’m mimicking Claire’s nervous gestures. I stop cold and face Father. ‘How long does it last?’
‘In this environment, we think it may have a good two hundred years. The problem is, there is no data yet—’
‘And if I were to go to a cold climate? Boston?’
‘Again, we don’t have definitive data, but it could be reduced to just a couple of years or maybe even less.’