Because You'll Never Meet Me (29 page)

“Yeah, I guess you would be. I mean, you were the one dodging projectiles for your entire life. Heh. Good thing you've only ever gotten better at dodging things, according to the data. Your echolocation just gets stronger as you get older, and may spike again when you hit puberty. Maybe by then you'll be dodging bullets!”

“My reflexes have very little to do with my mother's research into treating cardiomy—”

“Oh, come on, Moritz,” he said. “You're a clever kid. You know your mother's not bothered much about your heart. Not anymore. I mean, you started it all! You're the reason I came here in the first place.”

If I could have scowled. “You don't know what you're talking about.”

But Merrill was steering me into an unobtrusive observation room, devoid of chairs and cupboards. At one end of it was a substantial metal vault that spanned the distance from the floor to the ceiling. I clicked at it. Iron. Durable and cold.

“Isn't she a beauty? I wanna paint her cherry red, like a Corvette.”

I crossed my arms.

“Oh yeah. I suppose that doesn't matter much to you, eh, Momo?”

“Do not call me that.”

“Lighten up, kid. This is fun! Here.”

He pushed nose plugs into my hand.

“What are these for?”

“Well, some of the insulation smells a bit funny still because it hasn't set entirely. It isn't toxic or anything, but it reeks.”

“I'd rather not.”

“Don't be a party pooper! Please. I'm so stoked about this.”

I jabbed the plugs into my nostrils. Bowed my head in defeat. I'd seen that mad gleam plenty of times before. Scientists in that state of mind cannot be reasoned with. “Fine. If we must.”

Merrill opened the door to the vault and stopped my breath.

Beyond the door was nothingness. An absence of anything. Blank space. Impulsively I clicked my tongue at the open door. Rapid-fire clicks, sharp and clear. And I experienced the impossible, Ollie: an absolute lack of feedback in reply.

I shivered. “What does it … look like to you?”

“Like a bunch of foam books stacked up in horizontal and vertical lines, sticking out of the walls and ceiling and
most of the floor. A whacked-out bouncy castle. So you really can't see it, huh?”

I bit my tongue to stop the clicking. “It's like staring into nothing.”

He smiled. “Well, come on in, then! Let's see what you make of it.”

Dr. Merrill stepped backward into the gaping quiet. The moment he entered, he all but vanished from my sight. I could only hear him and see him at all because the door was open.

“Come in,” he said.

“I don't think I should.” I could not help but notice the lack of monitors in the room. What did he mean to measure? And how? Surely some of the other staff should have been in attendance. Where was the ever-present group of women and men with clipboards? Where were the folks in face masks?

I was climbing the ladder to another water tank. Why didn't I run, Ollie?

Merrill popped his head out of the vault. I could see only the sketchy outline of his torso, so he appeared to me like a disembodied head floating in midair. The momentary shock was enough that I let him grab my elbow.

“Come in!” He yanked me forward into the chamber.

Before I could say a word, he slammed the door behind us.

And then I knew what black was.

I could not see. Could not hear. Could not sense
anything
. I was blind as I have never been.

There was nothingness around me. Creeping inside me.
I couldn't feel a solitary sensation but Merrill's hand wrapped around my forearm. I couldn't smell the chemicals he had warned me about. It was a black hole, an abyss. It was hell.

Can you blame my heart for tripping over its own beats? Can you blame my lungs for limping?

It became worse when he released his hold on me. Then I felt I was caught in the blackest reaches of outer space, falling into pitch darkness. I cried out and could only just hear my own voice, only just feel the faint echo of the vibrations in my throat.

Merrill could see well enough. There were lights in the chamber, lights that have never meant a thing to me. He didn't rely on his ears. It must have
fascinated
him, watching me flounder in that minuscule chamber. I fell to my knees. Tried to reach out to the foam walls to orient myself. To do something about the way my chest was heaving, my heart was skipping beats. To make noise enough to see by. To little avail. The walls were far enough that I could not reach them. I gasped. Clung to the platform we stood on, as insubstantial as the cold metal of it felt when I could not see it.

Merrill did not help me up. Of course he would not. He pressed fingers to my throat to take my pulse, probably taking notes on his clipboard. Then he cupped a hand against my right ear while I gasped on the floor.

“Come on, Moritz! What's with that heart rate? Get a grip on yourself! This doesn't look good for us, you know?” He was shouting, but it was coming out in whispers. It was everything in a vault of sensory deprivation. I clicked and
clicked, and there was nothing. Nothing but his distorted voice. I could only listen. “You're supposed to be our
golden boy
. Most fetuses we tweak aren't lucky enough to land supersonic hearing. Some kids end up tiny and with no legs and no arms and half a brain. They're going to cut funding if we can't prove you kids useful. And even you've still got cardiomyopathy, don't you? The initiative's a failure if you're not superhuman, Momo! Prove yourself! So click louder! Quit panicking!”

He jammed a finger against the monitor implant behind my ear; it beeped, illuminating my skull. Doubtless the device told him how my heart was failing, how my temperature was rising and my ears were straining. Could it tell him what I was trying to?

Could it tell him to stop?

Was he writing this down? What were the numbers telling him when all I was telling myself was that this wasn't worth living through?

“This is so disappointing, Momo!”

I was gasping. Light-headed. Weeping just to feel the warmth of water on my cheeks. The spikes of pain in my chest were worsening, constant. But every word that went straight into my head was more painful. He was so indifferent, Oliver.

I was a fruit fly in a vial. He would squish me between his thumb and a hard surface, to see what color my blood was.

“Please,” I wanted to say, but I could not hear my voice. I clutched at his pants.

Somehow he made himself heard. Put his mouth so close to my ear that the warmth of his breath seemed to prick the
inside of my skull. “Those women in the waiting room. They're still hoping to avoid cystic fibrosis, you know? They don't realize that we're aiming for the
future
. But if even our muse can be defeated by
foam blocks
, what am I
doing
here? How are
you
inspiring?”

The pain was unbearable now. My lungs were lifeless sacks. Breathing seemed futile. I must have been in the throes of cardiac arrest.

“Look, it's all because of you, Moritz. All those failures in the children's ward, in the name of improving you. Because even you're still diseased! So prove we haven't wasted our time!”

“Please.”
It was only a gasp in my constricting throat. Was I being crumpled by a mighty fist, ribs through lungs and bone shards through muscle? And underneath it all, what pained my heart more? My disease?

Or the knowledge that my existence diseased everyone else?

This was when I died, Oliver. If you were wondering.

I was unconscious during my liberation from the anechoic chamber.

Rostschnurrbart ran into Dr. Merrill in the elevator. Asked if Merrill had spoken to me that morning. Merrill shrugged. But on the ground floor, when Rostschnurrbart asked after me in the waiting room, the woman who smiled told him that an odd man had shown me away.

Rostschnurrbart did not hesitate. He told me while I was lying in recovery that he had long since found something unsettling about that grin. He had been careful not to leave
us two alone together. Rostschnurrbart recalled the incident with the water tank. Recalled that Merrill made no effort to save me from drowning, but instead recorded data while I flailed behind the glass.

When Rostschnurrbart pulled me from the chamber, my lungs had collapsed. I had no pulse when he lifted me out.

Rostschnurrbart had to press the defibrillators into my chest to restart my heart. I did not repel them.

My mother installed my pacemaker that same day. I did not wake for almost a week. Merrill was long gone. My mother did not listen to his claims. He grabbed her lapels. Declared that his actions were for the sake of progress, couldn't she see? The place was stagnating!
Look!

Rostschnurrbart struck him in the face. He was not grinning then.

My mother never truly looked at me. She was logical; she knew that no matter which way she was facing, in a room of sufficient sound waves I could see her. She should not
have
to look at me.

It never bothered me until I was lying in rehabilitation after the anechoic incident.

When she was switching out one of my IVs, I found the courage to speak to her. I had considered, carefully, my course of action. Which questions to ask her.

“Mother,” I said while she pushed a needle into my arm. Her fingers were icy inside her gloves. We weakhearted fools have poor circulation. “Mother, did you make me this way?”

“I did.” She pulled the needle out again. “Somehow I did.”

“Not on purpose?”

“Not on purpose. I only meant to repair your heart, not take your eyes. Genetic manipulation is a mysterious field. We are still learning.”

“Were you trying to … repair the others, too?”

She pulled medical tape from her pocket. “No. Not only repair them. I was trying to improve them. As I unintentionally improved you.”

“But why
not
only repair them? If they could have been normal?”

The threads of the medical tape she laid on the needle already pulled at my skin.

“Normal people have done little for the dying world,
mein Kind
. The world needs abnormal vision. As it stands, there are flaws in humanity that no genetic manipulation can change.” Her impassive face flickered. “Normal people are monstrous.”

“My father was normal.”

“Without a doubt.” She sighed, for once like a person. “And he left us. Too late to change him.”

I asked a final question.

“Would … would you still love me if I were …
normal
?”

“Do you have to ask?” She left the room.

I did have to ask. In a soulless house, you must ask such things.

I have wondered what would have happened if my mother had not accidentally taken my eyes from me. If her meddling
in my genes had simply fixed my cardiomyopathy and left me unremarkably normal. Utterly human. If the research in the lab had not been twisted to bizarre purposes.

Your ailment could be my fault, Oliver Paulot. I do not know how far my mother's needles reached. How many children across the world are pale, twisted shadows of superhumans. How many parents with genetic conditions applied to her testing program hoping she'd spare their children disease, not realizing she'd only do so if she could give them “abnormal vision.”

I do not deserve normalcy, Oliver. Not if my existence deprived others of it. I am the prototype of your suffering. It may be because of me that you cannot visit the garage that houses your family's grief. That you cannot go to a cinema. Or be irritated by cartoons.

If I had been born with eyes, would you be dancing to New Wave on Halloween?

Do you wonder why I could not tell you of this sooner?

You wanted me to cure your boredom. You did not want me to haunt you.

And I … I did not want to be the monster who sent you to the woods.

Moritz

P.S. You think I am leaping to conclusions. You think that your illness could be unrelated to the lab in Saxony. If only, Ollie.

I didn't want to tell you. In the laboratory that injected young women with chemicals, the man who played peekaboo with me and raised me from the dead with defibrillators:

His name was not Rostschnurrbart. I misled you.

You should know that
Rostschnurrbart
translated into English is “Rust Mustache,” or perhaps “Auburn-Stache.” He wore paisley shirts and leather shoes. He moved in a stuttering, stop-motion fashion.

I'm sorry you were locked in a dark chamber. I know the feeling.

Screw hypocrisy: you should have told me all this sooner.

The thing about Auburn-Stache—how the hell am I supposed to trust him now? How could you let me, knowing what you know about him? How do I know he doesn't spend all the time he isn't here working in Germany, jabbing needles into people?

Right from the start we became friends because we needed someone to trust in, to confide in, right?

But you still can't see me as a confidant. Even now. Even after what I told you about Joe, about Liz, you were holding back things that massively shape both our lives. I want to think it doesn't matter.

Why did you lie to me? How could you?

How could you do what everyone else does?

Ollie,

Perhaps I should have told you all this sooner. But much of our friendship is founded on encouragement. You have been such a light. You had confidence in your autobiography. Why would I take that from you?

Why would I want to reveal the horrors of me to the only person who ever saw me as heroic?

I think, perhaps, you are asking the wrong question. It should not be “Why did you lie to me?” but rather “Why did you decide to tell me the truth?”

Knowing the stakes, why should I ever risk it?