He thinks, I almost feel bad for you, Mike. Knowing what you had. Knowing what I’ll have. But you weren’t real. You were never real. And I deserve this.
Mike doesn’t say anything, but that’s because Mike’s long gone.
A memory. A dream.
Nothing more.
HE’S IN an operating theater, flat on his back. He’s nude underneath the green sheet that is pulled up just past his stomach. He’s uncomfortable. The room is cold. The gurney he’s lying upon is hard. He’s got a headache. It’s pulsing behind his left eye.
It feels familiar, but he can’t remember why.
Everything’s a little hazy around him, like he’s caught somewhere between asleep and awake. There are people moving around him, adorned in scrubs, surgical masks pulled tight across their faces. He hears the familiar whir of a wheelchair up near his head before he feels fingers pressing sticky little circles to his scalp. Wires are attached and trail off his head behind him. There are murmured voices all around him, and he feels soft. Almost weightless.
“There it is,” a voice says near his ear. “Your brainwaves, Mr. Hughes. Your murmuration. It’s really rather beautiful. Most people don’t understand just how beautiful it is. We will learn so much from you. And maybe I’ll see you soon. Maybe I’ll finally get to—”
“What was that?” another voice says. He thinks it’s Dr. King. “That blip. That alpha rhythm. It was almost like he had—”
“It’s nothing,” Dr. Hester says. “It happens. The readings take a moment to stabilize.”
“I must again object to this on the record, Malcolm. You are walking a path that will lead to a place I don’t know if I can follow.”
“And your objection is noted again. Honestly, Julienne. There’s the door, should the desire to not follow overwhelm you.”
There is no response that he can hear.
A gnarled hand comes to his forehead. The fingers are cold and he wants to flinch away from them, but he can’t find the strength to move.
The voice speaks again in his ear. “It’s almost time. We will do our best. If all should go as planned, you’ll close your eyes and sleep. You won’t notice the seven days that pass before we place you in stasis. And when you open your eyes again, you will be on a road that leads toward home. Godspeed. And maybe I shall see you soon.”
He wants to open his mouth to say something, anything, but it’s getting harder to keep his eyes open, harder to formulate a coherent thought. There are little bright bursts of light above him, and the voices around him begin to fade. Before he closes his eyes, before he has his last thought in the real world, he thinks he sees a starling flitting about overhead.
He thinks, There it is. The chaos. The birds. It’s the murmur—
HE SITS with his father. He’s trying to do his homework, and his dad is on his fifth or sixth beer. The TV’s on. His dad is a warm presence next to him. These moments are few and far between, and he hoards them as if they’re treasure. His dad is loose and calm and even smiles every now and then. He doesn’t know where his mother is. He’s glad she’s gone, because his dad doesn’t usually get angry when she’s gone.
“Would you look at that,” his dad says, and it’s in a tone he’s never heard before. Like his father is in awe of something.
He is ten years old, he’s with his dad, and he looks up from his multiplication tables.
The TV’s on some nature show his dad likes for reasons he’s never understood. He likes animals as much as the next person, but his dad loves them, watches them every chance he gets. He’s got this whole National Geographic series on tape that he watches over and over.
The show—Birds of Europe, he thinks it’s called—doesn’t really interest him. He doesn’t really care about birds. But when he looks up and sees what his father sees, something changes.
“—to medium-sized passerine birds in the family Sturnidae,” the narrator intones. “Native to the Old World, starlings can be found in Europe, North America, Asia, Africa, and Australia. Extraordinarily social animals, starlings have complex vocalizations, often found to mimic sounds found in their surroundings, such as human speech and the honking of car horns.
“But perhaps the most astonishing trait of the starling is called a murmuration, a flock which consists of thousands of birds, including other species of starlings. This magnificent display is truly one of the greatest wonders in the animal kingdom.”
The birds move in a great cloud, seemingly changing direction at random, but still moving as one. It looks like smoke, but as if smoke were alive and had rational thought. It rolls over his skin in a gentle roar and he thinks, This. This is something. This is something precious.
But he’s not looking at the TV when he says it.
No, he’s looking at his father. And the expression of wonder on his face.
“Would you look at that,” his father repeats in soft voice. “Ain’t never seen anything like that before, bucko. That’s… nice. It’s just nice. Hey. Scotland, right? Those birds are in Scotland. Maybe we could go there one day, you know? Me and you and your mom. Maybe go see those birds. Those starlings. The murmurations.”
“Okay,” he says. “Okay, Dad.”
And he sits next to his father and thinks, Maybe things will be different now.