UnSouled (Unwind Dystology 3)

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 dinner. Since their meeting with the senator and the general last week, all their meals have been alone in the town house, as if being ignored by powerful people is somehow punishment.

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.”

Indignation rises in her like an ocean swell. “Oh, I’m a little more than that!”

“Are you going to tell me you’re my creator? Shall I sing psalms of praise to thee? Or better yet, why don’t I cut out my stolen heart and put it on an altar for you?”

“Enough!”

Cam slumps in his chair, a twisted rag of directionless anger.

Roberta puts down her napkin to help blot the tea, a task beyond the abilities of the tablecloth. Cam wonders if the tablecloth would resent the napkin’s absorbency were it legally granted personhood.

“There’s something you need to see,” Roberta says. “Something you need to understand that might give you some perspective on this.”

She gets up, goes into the kitchen, and returns with a pen and a blank piece of paper. She sits down beside him, folds back the tablecloth, and puts the paper down on a dry patch of wood.

“I want you to sign your name.”

“What for?”

“You’ll see.”

Too disgusted to argue, he takes the pen, looks down at the paper, and writes as neatly as he can “Camus Comprix.”

“Good. Now turn the paper over and sign it again.”

“Your point?”

“Humor me.”