Out of my mind.
Out of sync.
“What do you know about schizophrenia?”
The gardener grins sharply. “More than you could ever know.”
HE’S IN front of the cryogenic pod belonging to Nathan Powell.
The gardener is off in the distance, tinkering, always tinkering.
He doesn’t know why he’s here. There was this longing burning in his chest, just for a mere sight of this man, this wasted drug addict who may as well have condemned himself to death. Before everything went to hell, before the baby and Jenny and all the shit slung at him, he never paid much attention to people like this. Because he knew it was a choice. Much like he chose every day to hold back the onslaught of rage that coursed through his veins at even the littlest things, he thought these people made a choice to stick that needle in their arm. They chose that, just like he chose to curl his fists at his sides rather than lash out. He wasn’t his father. He chose to be better than that. People like Nathan Powell could have chosen the same.
After the baby. After Jenny. After that shitstorm. Well. Nothing much mattered after that.
If anything, he thinks, he should have reverted to the way he was before. Having the barest amount of pity mired in disgust for people like Nathan Powell.
But he doesn’t.
Not really.
It’s all sorrow. That’s all it is.
He thinks, I could have you. If I really wanted to. If I really thought about it. I could go to Amorea. I could make you mine. I did it once. This body did, anyway. I could do it again. You could love me, just like you loved him.
And on and on it goes.
“HE CAN’T force you to do this,” Dr. King says. “No matter how much you think he can. You don’t owe him anything. I don’t know what he’s told you, but you don’t have to do anything you don’t want to. Aside from the ethics violations alone, it’s dangerous. There are no guarantees. About anything. Do you know how long people last in comas, Mr. Hughes? Not long. Stories you hear about people waking up twenty years later are mostly fairy tales. Even in stasis, the body is not meant to last. It’s not a permanent fix. One day, and one day soon, you will die. Everyone you think you love in Amorea will die. Only you won’t get a chance to mourn them, because you won’t have even known they existed. Is that worth it to you? Not to mention the stress that this will put on your own body. This isn’t normal stasis. You are not an astronaut. In order to reach the depth you’ll need for Amorea, you will need to have next to nonexistent neurological activity. That means to return, you would need brain damage. And no one, not me, and certainly not Dr. Hester, would be able to say with any amount of certainty that this would work. He’s a brilliant man. A brilliant mind. I am honored to have known him. To have studied under and with him. But he is drowning in his own mortality. He knows that he doesn’t have much time left. That the clock is ticking down to the point where he’ll tip over into his dementia
and won’t be able to come back from it. His speech will go. His mental faculties will go. His mind will go. He’s not doing this for you. He’s doing this for himself. Because if it’s successful, if it works for you, he can do it to himself. Amorea isn’t real. You said it yourself. It’s an island. A prison.”
“You’ve never been there,” Greg says. “Have you?”
She looks startled. “No. But I understand it. I understand the attraction. Greg, you can’t just—”
“How is it different than here? I’m a prisoner here.”
“We can figure out something. You won’t have Mike’s life. You won’t. Mike is gone. He was a part of you that you have absorbed. The people there won’t love you, not like they did him. We can do many things. We can make Amorea. We can put the people there. We can make them better parts of themselves. We can take everything away. But Greg, we have never been able to make them love. They will not love you. They will not know you. Mike was there for three years. You don’t know if you’ll have that much time. For anything.”
“You don’t know that either,” Greg says.
“You can’t do this for him,” Dr. King says. She sounds like she’s begging. “For Sean. He loved Mike. He synced with Mike. I can’t make you Mike again. Not without destroying every part of who you are.”
Good, Greg thinks. Because I don’t want to be him. I want to be me. And he’ll love me for me. I’ll make sure of it.
Gregory Hughes says, “I don’t want to be Mike. He’s not who I am. I would just be me. Besides, I haven’t decided anything.”
Except that’s a lie, isn’t it?
HE DREAMS of a town nestled in a valley, surrounded by snowcapped mountains. There are trees that change a brilliant red and gold in the fall. There’s a hill that they sled down in the winter. In the spring, the birds sing and the flowers bloom. The town explodes in Technicolor in the summer, and there are barbecues and reading favorite books in the park.
There is a place where all the people know and care and love each other. Where they meddle in the affairs of a waiter and a bookstore owner. Where they watch with bated breath for the first hesitant touch, the looks that linger just a bit too long, the blushing, the secret smiles.
He walks these roads and thinks, This could all be mine. I could have all of this. Every single piece and part. Mike built this life, but he’s gone now. He left the blueprints behind and I can build on top of it. Make it my own. Take what was given to him. It should have been mine to begin with.
He thinks, Yes. Yes, I think I will.
IN THE end, it’s easier to go back than he ever thought possible.