Stronger, Faster, and More Beautiful

by Arwen Elys Dayton

  “In the most ‘technical’—?”

  “Philomena, IQ was what you listed on your questionnaire as the most important trait,” Caroline says, “and in test after test, Alexios has shown us an IQ that is far above average. In a strict legal sense, the clinic has fulfilled its contract.”

  “But we were never told that—”

  “That IQ is only a small piece of the picture? That being smarter does not make you kinder, or more interested in helping others, or even more useful? That these are inherent traits or sometimes learned traits? We broke new ground here, Philomena.” Caroline uses my mother’s first name to emphasize the friendliness of Genetic Radiance. “All of the patients in Alexios’s generation surpassed the limits of scientific understanding. We are reevaluating the whole program.”

  “I’m—I’m relieved for others who are early enough in the process to make changes,” my mother says, “but where does this leave me? I’m stuck with a child who will only use his brilliance to unscramble words and calculate how many humans could be fit into boxes of different sizes and how long messages from each nearby star will take to arrive. It doesn’t seem to matter to him that there are no messages from nearby stars, and he will never be asked to fit any humans into boxes.”

  Caroline doesn’t answer. I have stopped doing the puzzles. It is twilight outside, which means that the window in my room has become a mirror. Ordinarily, I cannot see myself in that window-mirror, but Caroline shifted my bed when she came to do the tests, and now I find myself staring across the room at my own reflection.

  I am the size of a normal seven-year-old boy, if you are measuring by overall volume. The details of my proportions differ greatly from the average, however. My head is twice the size of a human adult’s. The intelligence mods that Genetic Radiance tried out on me—when I was just a few hundred cells in a petri dish—resulted in a vastly increased brain and skull size. Their intention was that my head would be slightly larger than normal—within the upper range of what would appear natural—but that this modestly increased volume would allow me to develop ten times the ordinary number of neurons. They did not achieve ten times, but they were still, for many years, pleased with the extra capacity I’d been given. The problem, which became evident around my third birthday, was that my head was much, much larger than anticipated. The other problem, which Caroline eventually explained to me, was that I didn’t seem to be using many of the extra neurons. I was employing a similar number to those existing inside an ordinary-sized brain.

  And all of this came at the expense of the rest of my body. In the window, I can see my stunted legs, which dangle beneath my torso like the legs of a doll. I cannot stand on them, let alone walk. My arms are closer to the correct size, though they look huge because they hang down far below my shortened torso. I raise one of my arms, with a fist, toward the ceiling and shake it.

  Curses and damnation.

  Scan dread mountains.

  Am Dad’s uncertain son.

  Caroline is continuing to speak to my mother in the hall, using soothing tones. “You will have to find a life for him. A job, something he will be able to do. There are options we could help you with. As Alexios grows, his mind can be directed.”

  My mother doesn’t seem to be listening very attentively. She says, “Caroline, we could have conceived a child in the ordinary way. We changed our lives to do this, in order to give Alexios every advantage. In that first consult, we were told to imagine what his life would be like with intelligence far beyond ours. New humans were coming, and our children would be disadvantaged if we didn’t do something.”

  “There was possibly some hype involved,” Caroline admits.

  “Some hype? He’s dead weight. My son is dead weight, and will be for the rest of his life.”

  “Philomena, would you consider moving Alexios out of the United States? There’s a program I’d like you to consider, run by a sister clinic in Greece. You’re of Greek descent, aren’t you? This could be perfect….”

  I can still hear them, but I choose not to. Nor do I wish to think about the modifications that came next, to my skin, to my eyes, to my legs, to allow me to live most of my life underwater. Instead, I recall the 60 percent of my attention that has strayed into the past and I lavish it upon Mr. Tavoularis in present time.

  3. THE REQUEST

  Mr. Tavoularis has finished making notes about the incident with the intruder. He rolls up his tablet, tucks it beneath his arm, and smiles at me.

  “You did very well, Alexios,” he says. He is leaning over slightly to make himself less imposing as he stares down at me in the pool. “As you know, Blessed Cures has many enemies. There are other consortiums all over the world who would pay dearly to know exactly what we are doing here, in the sea paddock you oversee for us.”

  Sea and oversee.

  See oversea.

  Same sounds, different meanings.

  “And we are saving lives,” I say, because I know that is what Mr. Tavoularis is about to say. He says it every time we speak. I sometimes imagine he says it even when he is alone.

  “We are saving lives,” he agrees, pleased. “Every chimera in the flock will rescue six to ten human beings who would otherwise die.” Perhaps he assumes I do not see the obvious flaw in his logic: If what we’re doing is to save lives, why don’t we share it freely with the world? I do not ask this, though, because I’m not sure it matters.

  Mr. Tavoularis says, “Now, Alexios…”

  I know what’s coming next. He will ask me about speaking with dolphins. No conversation with Mr. Tavoularis is complete without this line of questioning. The techs are now sitting cross-legged around the end of the pool. I feel them shift closer in anticipation.

  “You’re storing more vocabulary in the translator every week—you’re documenting dolphin language very well, Alexios. And yet when you describe the encounter with the intruder, it sounds to me as though you don’t use the translator anymore. Or rather, you use it to speak but not to understand. Is that right?”

  He is under the impression that I relied on the translator when I first came to the sea paddock. The truth is, I never found its translations very accurate or useful until I began to program it myself.

  I shrug. This has been my standard answer since I was three years old, whenever I haven’t wanted to give someone a real explanation. But Mr. Tavoularis is not having it today. He clears his throat and asks, “Can you explain how this works, Alexios?”

  He has asked me the same question, with almost the same wording, too many times to count. That is hyperbole. Truly, there is no such thing as “too many times to count,” and I happen to know that he has asked me some version of this question forty-six times. He continues to ask because I have never given him much of an explanation. Dolphin communication is a puzzle, and like all puzzles, it becomes obvious once the pieces fall into place. Yet in this case, the process of allowing the puzzle pieces to fall into place must happen in your own mind, naturally; it is not something you can force. Explaining to Mr. Tavoularis will not make him truly grasp dolphin language. He would have to live with them to do that. Also, I don’t know if I want him to grasp it.

  “They don’t communicate to me any differently than they do to each other,” I say evasively.

  “Can you elaborate on that?” Mr. Tavoularis asks. He is tenacious today. Looking from his mustache to his eyes, to his close-cropped hair, I see only a determined scientist. Perhaps he is getting pressure from his higher-ups. I will have to give him something.

  I sigh and tell him, “They used words like enemy and there, words we have already identified. And to them I said words like go and fast. That’s how we communicated when the intruder was there.”

  “Those are not a lot of words to achieve the complicated behavior of removing the camera from the man and then pushing him to
shore.”

  “They have practiced those moves before,” I point out.

  “Not in exactly this way.” His voice is growing stern. I am an unruly employee, or perhaps an unruly pet, in need of discipline. “Now, Alexios, how do they know what you mean, and how do you know what they mean?”

  “We just know.”

  “But how?”

  I could explain to him what I learned in my first month in the sea, when I was still learning to use my new legs and getting used to my new skin. I could tell him that dolphins are much more aware of each other than humans are, that dolphins speak with an understanding of context that is far deeper than humans’, that dolphins have…not a hive mind, but perhaps a “group affinity” for which there are few parallels among humans, that dolphins know more than half of what is being said simply by where and how it is being said. I could explain this to him, but I don’t want to. And even if I did, he would not really understand. Yet he is looking at me so expectantly, and the techs appear to be holding their collective breath, waiting for me to enlighten them.

  Grudgingly, I choose a small piece of the puzzle to reveal, and I say to Mr. Tavoularis, “If a little kid pointed at a toy and said, ‘Want,’ you would know what he meant, wouldn’t you?”

  “Yes,” Mr. Tavoularis agrees. “Please go on.”

  “It’s like that with dolphins, except they’re not pointing at one thing, they’re gesturing, you could say, to everything. They know so much about the environment in which they’re speaking. They know that they are in a location that’s near where something else happened, they know that the water temperature is similar to the temperature during another important moment in their lives, they know that something dangerous or fun happened in a situation that resembles the current situation. And all of the other dolphins understand all of these things in the same way. So many words are not needed.”

  Mr. Tavoularis stares at me. I can see that he is resisting an urge to stroke his mustache. Possibly someone in his family has told him that this is a habit to be discouraged.

  “But how do you know these things, Alexios?” he asks me at last.

  “I don’t know,” I say.

  Mr. Tavoularis stamps his foot lightly in frustration. The lab techs, who by now are leaning so close that they appear ready to fall into the pool, glance at each other, shocked by his lapse in control.

  “I’m not mad,” Mr. Tavoularis says quickly.

  I think he is mad, because he has turned quite pink, but it doesn’t matter. Anger comes and goes. I saw that at Genetic Radiance all the time.

  Human emotions.

  Oh, minute moans!

  “Aren’t there other people studying dolphins?” I ask him. “Can’t you ask them about dolphin speech?”

  “The ones who make their research public still know almost nothing,” Mr. Tavoularis answers, less angry now. At least he has regained his composure. “Anyone else is like us—researching privately in order to keep the value of what they learn in their own hands. You understand the concept of intellectual property, Alexios?”

  “Yes,” I say. It means knowing something and not letting anyone else know about it unless they pay you.

  Mercenary.

  Near mercy.

  “Please think more about how you might articulate dolphin communication to the rest of us.”

  I don’t answer, because I am doing what he says: I am thinking more about how to articulate dolphin communication to other humans.

  “I don’t mean right now,” Mr. Tavoularis tells me, a trace of frustration in his voice again. “I mean over the next days and weeks. All right?”

  I nod once. I have not said yes, but he is free to interpret my response however he pleases. My head is half floating, so nodding bobs my chin and mouth into the water. I am ready to go underwater completely and leave these people here. Some of the lab techs are getting to their feet. But Mr. Tavoularis is not done with me. He clears his throat again. I don’t think he knows that he has this mannerism. Maybe one day a family member will find it as irritating as stroking his mustache and will suggest that he stop doing it.

  “It’s your birthday soon, Alexios.”

  “Yes, that’s true.” I don’t think about weeks and months when I’m underwater, but some part of my mind is always calculating them anyway. Today is the 413th day since I came to the paddock. I have heard people make comments like “It seems longer than a year!” and, conversely, “Time has just flown by!” but I never experience the passing of time in either of these ways. It is a steady, immovable thing.

  Days in the sea cage: 413.

  Days alive in this world: 4009.

  “You know how old you are, don’t you?”

  “I’m turning eleven,” I say.

  “That’s right.”

  Why Mr. Tavoularis’s questions are so inconsistent is a mystery to me. He asks me to explain dolphin language and if I know what intellectual property is, and then he asks me if I can calculate my own age. Does he think living underwater washes away basic memories while leaving higher intellectual functions intact? That would be a hard theory to defend.

  An idea occurs to me. “Can I have a present for my birthday?”

  This causes Mr. Tavoularis to pause, as if he is surprised that I know about birthday presents. But I have personal experience of them, because Philomena brought me one a few times. “Perhaps,” he answers. “What would you like?”

  “I took pictures this afternoon with the camera.” I nod toward the intruder’s camera, which is sitting on the concrete nearby. “Can you make prints for me to keep in my habitat?”

  “Well,” Mr. Tavoularis says, relieved at the simplicity of the request, I think, “I’ll see what can be done.”

  He gestures to a lab tech, who scoops up the camera and disappears into the clinic beyond the pool room. I do not like to think about the clinic’s other rooms. My final skin modifications were done in one of them, and the memories are flashes of pain, the smell of iodine and alcohol, and the stinging, stinging, stinging of the new skin cells taking hold.

  “While we take a look at your pictures, Alexios, you will have your lesson. It’s long overdue.”

  “I don’t care for my lessons,” I say.

  “So you are fond of telling me,” he answers brusquely. “And yet your education is one of the stipulations of your employment here. As agreed to between Blessed Cures and your parents.”

  So, there will be no getting out of my lessons today. Perhaps my parents really are sitting in armchairs somewhere, reading reports about me. But I doubt it.

  4. THE WORLD

  “Frances will be teaching you today,” Mr. Tavoularis tells me.

  Usually I am given my lessons by Mr. Tavoularis himself, or by an older lab tech called Mark, both of whom are boring. He gestures at a young female lab tech whom I have seen only once before. She is placing a projector on the edge of the pool, but she looks at me when he introduces her.

  “Hi, Alexios,” she says. “I’m Frances.”

  “Yes,” I say, since Mr. Tavoularis has just told me her name.

  Mr. Tavoularis leans close to her to mutter a few final instructions, which I can hear perfectly well (“Make sure he actually answers your questions” and “If he acts like he doesn’t understand—he does”), and then we are left alone in the high-ceilinged room with all the sunlight.

  Frances seats herself cross-legged by the projector. She has dark hair that has been chopped off along one side and braided into strange curving patterns on the other. She has light brown skin and light brown eyes that stand out very brightly due to the large amount of black makeup she is wearing around them. She looks a lot younger than any of the other lab techs.

  “Does Mr. Tavoularis think I need someone young to teach me?” I ask her. I
have started to paddle myself slowly around the pool.

  She says, “I’m on a work-study permit here. I’m supposed to be learning about special-needs instruction.”

  “Is that what I am? A special-needs student?” I ask. My eyes and ears are just above the surface as I glide along.

  “Um…technically yes,” she says, chewing thoughtfully at the corner of her thumb. “You live underwater. That’s special, even though you’re much smarter than most other people, which is, I guess, special in a totally different way.”

  There is no flattery in her voice. She is merely laying out the facts for me. This is proved when she adds, “Also no one else likes this part of the job, so they stuck me with it.”

  Blunt honesty.

  The lost bunny.

  Hotly bent sun.

  I stop paddling and position myself upright in the water so I am looking directly at this Frances.

  “Oh, do I have your attention now, Your Highness?” she asks. That is a joke, because I am aloof. Like a king, I suppose, though there haven’t been kings in a very long time. Frances is not the first person to have noticed this about me. “That’s good, because you haven’t had a lesson in months, which means this could take forever.”

  Hyperbole. It is impossible for anything to last forever.

  “I’m listening,” I say. I am meant to have a lesson for at least half an hour each week, but I have successfully avoided it for a long time. “Can we do math?”

  “No. You’re better at math than I am, so there would be no point. We’re doing history.”

  I say nothing. History is supposed to connect me to humanity, but the attraction of this goal is limited.

  “You’ve been getting your history in random chunks, probably because Mr. Tavoularis doesn’t want to explain everything to you,” she says. “He told me to slowly bring you up to date, but considering everything that’s happened in the last six months, it makes a lot more sense to start with current events, and then fill in from there.”