Bewilderment

by Richard Powers

  There, he headed straight to his room. At dinner, I knocked. He opened the door a crack and asked if he could skip the meal. I said he could eat in his room if he wanted. I loaded up a bowl with fried apples, which he loved. But when I went in at seven-thirty, the bowl was untouched. He was lying in bed in his plaid pajamas, with the lights out and his hands behind his head.

  “Would you like a planet?”

  No, thanks. I have one.

  I sat in my study and pretended to work. A reasonable hour for sleep took forever to arrive. I woke from a nightmare with a tiny hand clamped around my wrist. Robin was standing by my bed. In the dark, I couldn’t read him. Dad. I’m going backwards. I can feel it.

  I lay there, dumb with sleep. He had to spell it out.

  Like the mouse, Dad. Like Algernon.

  IN THE SHORTENING DAYS, I worked to keep Robin at his lessons. He liked me to sit and do them with him. But the moment I turned to my own work, he lapsed into a trance.

  He and I made it through the equinox, and harder still, the holidays. I lied to Aly’s family, telling them that we were celebrating somewhere else. By mutual agreement, the two of us spent the week alone. We snowshoed through the blanketed cornfields just outside of town. Robbie made ornaments for the tree from sketches cut out of his field notes. On New Year’s, all he wanted was to play endless games of Concentration with the Songbirds of the Eastern U.S. playing cards that he’d gotten me for a Christmas present. He was asleep by eight.

  Throughout January, he slipped in small steps from color back to black-and-white. In early February, I gave him a one-week break from classes, apropos of nothing. He needed it. He began playing his farm game again on the computer, after months away. He was touchy when I told him to give it a break. Before the week was over, he wanted to get back to his school assignments. He didn’t have the focus to sit more than half an hour at a shot, but he was desperate to learn something. I knew I would have to bring him to a doctor if this went on much longer.

  Give me a treasure hunt, Dad. Anything.

  “How much of that butcher paper roll do you have left from Washington?”

  He made a face. Don’t remind me about Washington. I got you in trouble.

  “Robin! Stop.”

  I got Dr. Currier’s whole experiment shut down. And now you see what’s happening!

  “That’s not true. I talked to Dr. Currier two days ago. There’s a chance the lab will be up and running soon.”

  How soon?

  “I don’t know. Maybe by summer.” In that moment, it didn’t feel like a lie. And it made him sit up like an alerted prairie dog. I’d tell it again.

  The thought of a reprieve seemed to give him strength. Just imagining doing the training again was almost as good as doing it. Somewhere in the universe, there are creatures for whom that’s always so. He picked at his shoelaces, stilled by contrition. He told his shoes, There’s a bunch of that roll left.

  In fact, he had about ten feet. We trimmed a foot off one end. “Nine feet. Perfect. Roll it out in the living room.”

  For real? He took some persuading. He rolled out a paper path through the middle of the room.

  “All right. Nine feet, for four and a half billion years. That’s half a billion years per foot. Let’s make a timeline.”

  He rallied a little and held up a finger. He went to his room and returned with a basket of pens and brushes. Then we both got down on the floor and went to work. I penciled in the major waypoints: the end of the Hadean, one foot into our scroll. Immediately after that, the start of life. Robbie penned in those first microbes, hundreds of colored specks you almost needed a magnifying glass to see. He filled the next four feet with a rainbow of cells.

  Five feet in, I marked the moment when competition gave way to networking and complex cells swarmed the Earth. Robbie’s cells swelled a bit and gained a little texture. For two more feet, his forms unfolded into worms and jellyfish, seaweed and sponges. When I finally stopped him that night, he was himself again.

  That’s a good day, he declared, as I tucked him in.

  “Agreed.”

  And we haven’t even gotten to the big stuff yet.

  He was out in the living room when I woke the next morning, adding, refining, touching up, and waiting for me to mark the start of the main event. I penciled it in—the Cambrian explosion, just over a foot from the end of the scroll.

  Dad, there’s no room left. And everything’s just starting. We need wider paper.

  His arms flung outward, then dropped to his side. Enthusiasm and distress had become the same thing. I left him to it and took up my own delinquent modeling. All morning long he stayed at it. A parade of giant creatures fanned out across the width of the paper. He ate lunch on the floor, perched over his growing masterpiece. He stood and stepped back, mouth wide with pride and ire. A moment of study from above, and he dropped back down into the thick of things.

  All that afternoon, we worked alongside each other. I checked in once or twice, but his immense journey was flowing along at full tilt, and the last thing Robbie wanted was help from anyone. At five, cross-eyed from too much coding, I quit to make dinner. The day had been so fine that I wanted to reward him, and that meant mushroom burgers and fries.

  I put in my earbuds to listen to the news while prepping the meal. The stem rust that had killed a quarter of the wheat harvest in China and Ukraine had been found in Nebraska. Fresh water from a dissolving Arctic was flooding into the Atlantic, swirling the protective currents like a hand passed through a smoke plume. And a hideous infection was hitting cattle feedlots in Texas.

  I forgot myself, forgot that my son was crawling on the floor in the other room. I shouted something vile, and louder than I realized. Because of the earbuds, I didn’t hear Robin until he was tugging on my shirt. He startled me, and I jumped. He got flustered and defensive. Well, don’t just ignore me! What’s the matter?

  “It’s nothing.” I took out my buds and stopped the app. “Just the news.”

  Something bad? It’s something bad. You swore pretty hard.

  I made a mistake. “It’s nothing, Robbie. Don’t worry.”

  He sulked over dinner and slammed through the meal. But way too quickly, he seemed to forgive me. By the time I broke out the cocoa almonds, he was smiling again. I was stupid not to guess.

  After we finished, he went back to his spot on the living room floor while I returned to my computer. I was tweaking one of my algorithms for volcanic eruptions on water worlds when a thumping came from across the house. I cursed again. It sounded like a small mammal had gotten into the walls of Robin’s bedroom and was making a nest between the studs. I’d never be able to get it out and save my house without sending my son into another spiral.

  There was another thump, several more, too metronomic to be anything but human. It sounded like a plumber making serious mistakes. I went for a look.

  The sound came from Robin’s bedroom. I opened the door and saw him curled up in the corner holding his Planetary Exploration Transponder and banging his head against the wall. It was a slow-motion, soft, exploratory head-slamming, like an experiment in final penance.

  I rushed him, shouting. Before I could pull him away from the wall, he barreled to his feet, through my arms, and out of the room. I stopped only long enough to check the tablet. On the screen, a group of demented cows stumbled into each other. They’d lost control of their bodies. One of them slipped to the ground, lowing in confusion. The close-up cut to an aerial shot of a staggering animal mass hundreds of creatures wide.

  The story was all over the net: brain contagion, tearing through Texas’s four and a half million head of cattle, spreading from feedlot to feedlot with industrial-scale efficiency. Robin had logged in to my account and found it, using my password that I never changed: his mother’s favorite bird, flying backward.

  Screaming started up from outside, looping over the agonizing video. Stop! Enough! Stop! I ran from the room and outside. He was alone in the
dark backyard. No threat anywhere, no one at all but my wailing child. He dropped like a deadweight the moment I reached him. His screams grew worse when I tried to embrace him. That’s enough. Stop. Stop!

  I dropped to my knees and took his face. My own shouted whispers were half comfort, half muzzle. “Robbie. Hush. Don’t. It’ll be okay.”

  That word okay drew a shriek that shattered me, so out of control, up close to my ear. I recoiled, and he broke free. He was across the yard and around the corner of the house before I could get to my feet. I chased him back inside. He was coiled again in the corner of his room, battering the wall with his brain. I broke through the doorway and threw myself between the wall and his skull. But he finished the moment I reached him. He slumped in my arms. A sound came out of him as awful as his screams. A long, low gurgle of defeat.

  I cradled him and stroked his hair. He didn’t fight. Aly had stopped whispering in my ears, the moment I most needed her. My brain searched for something to say that wouldn’t make him lash out again. Every possibility felt inane. We lived in a place where feedlots were subsidized, but feedback was prohibited. I should never have brought him to visit this planet.

  “Robbie. There are other places.”

  He lifted his head to glare at me. His eyes were small and hard. Where?

  His body went limp. The rage had cleaned him out. I let him lie a while longer. Then I got him up and into the kitchen, where I iced his forehead. In the bathroom, he washed and brushed his teeth in a stupor. The lump came on, plump and dark, a thousand-year egg set above the brow of his right eye.

  He didn’t want to read or be read to. He violently rejected a trip through space. He lay in bed, staring at the ceiling. Why did you hide it from me, Dad?

  Because I was afraid of exactly what had happened. That was the honest answer, and still I hid. “I shouldn’t have.”

  What’s going to happen?

  “They’ll be put down. They probably already have been.”

  Killed.

  “Yes.”

  Won’t it spread? With animals packed in like that? And getting moved around all over the place?

  I told him I didn’t know. I do now.

  Lying in his narrow bed, he looked impossibly pale. His hand reached out from under the sheets to cover his eyes. Did you see them? How they were moving? In the stillness, his whole body jerked, like that galvanic jolt just before sleep. He grabbed my hand for balance. His upper arm felt wilted and useless.

  Last month, he said, then lost his way. Last week? I could have handled this.

  “Robbie. Buddy. Everyone goes up and down. You’ll—”

  Dad? He sounded petrified. I don’t want to go back to being me.

  “Robbie. I know it feels like the end of the world. But it isn’t.”

  He pulled the sheet up over his face. Go away. You don’t know what’s happening. I don’t want to talk to you.

  I held still. Anything I said might drive him screaming back out into the dark yard. Minutes passed. He seemed to soften. Perhaps he started to fall asleep. He slid the sheet from off his face and lifted his head from the pillow.

  Why are you still here?

  “Aren’t you forgetting something? May all sentient beings—”

  He held up a flaccid hand. I want to change the words. May all life. Get free. From us.

  THE VISITORS SHOWED UP the next Monday. It wasn’t yet ten. I was reading an email thread from folks at NASA, with the latest on the Seeker. It wasn’t good. Robbie was spread over the dining room table, learning the provinces of Canada. They rang the front bell, a woman and a man in puffy coats, he cradling a briefcase on his chest. I opened the door a little. They offered their hands and IDs: Charis Siler and Mark Floyd, caseworkers with the Children, Youth and Families Division of the Department of Human Services. It would have been within my rights not to let them in. But that didn’t seem wise.

  I took their coats and led them into the living room. Robin called out from the far side of the wall. Is somebody here? For a moment he sounded like the boy in the film. Like Jay. He tumbled into the living room, confused at the sight of daytime strangers in the house.

  “Robin?” Charis Siler asked. Robin studied her, curious.

  I said, “I’ve got visitors, Robbie. How about you take a bike ride?”

  “Sit for a minute,” Mark Floyd commanded.

  Robin looked at me. I nodded. He climbed into Aly’s favorite swivel egg chair and swung his legs against the ottoman.

  Floyd asked Robin, “What are you working on?”

  I’m not working. Just doing a geography game.

  “What kind of game?”

  Something he made. Robin aimed his thumb at me. He knows a lot, but he gets things wrong sometimes.

  Floyd grilled him about his studies, and Robin answered. If the state meant to check on his curriculum, they had a satisfactory answer. Charis Siler watched the volley of questions and answers. After a bit, she leaned in and asked, “Did you hurt your head?” And everything clicked at last. She stood and crossed the room to examine the bruise, which protruded from his right brow like a blue carbuncle. “How did that happen?”

  Robbie demurred, reluctant to tell a stranger what his animal self had done. He shot me a look. My head barely inclined. Siler and Floyd saw it, I’m sure.

  I hit it. His words were tentative, almost a question.

  Siler held his hair back with two fingers. I wanted to tell her to get her hands off my son. “How did that happen?”

  The fact spilled out of Robin. I hit it against the wall. Honesty was his downfall.

  “How, honey?” Siler sounded like the school nurse.

  Robbie snuck me another sheepish look. Our visitors intercepted it. My son touched his bruise and looked downward. Do I have to say?

  All three turned to me. “It’s okay, Robbie. You can tell them.”

  He lifted his head, defiant for five seconds. Then he let it drop again. I was angry.

  “About what?” Charis Siler asked.

  About the cows. Aren’t you angry?

  She stopped in mid-prosecution. I thought for an instant that she felt ashamed. But the tiniest muscles in her face said bafflement. She didn’t know which cows he meant.

  The situation was heading south. I caught Robin’s eye and tipped my head toward the front door. “You want to go check on the owl?” He shrugged, defeated by adult stupidity. But he murmured goodbye to the guests and slipped from the house. The door closed behind him, and I turned on my prosecutors. Their masks of professional neutrality enraged me.

  “I have never laid a finger on my child in anger. What do you think you’re doing?”

  “We received a tip,” Floyd said. “It takes a lot for someone to phone in an alert.”

  “He was frightened. Really, really upset over this bovine viral encephalopathy. He’s sensitive to living things.” I didn’t add what I should have—that we all should have been terrified. It still seemed a child’s fear.

  Mark Floyd reached into his briefcase and retrieved a folder. He opened it on the coffee table between us. It was filled with two years of papers and notes, everything from Robbie’s initial suspension from third grade to my arrest in Washington for a public incident in which I’d employed my son.

  “What is this? You’ve been keeping files on us? Do you keep files on all the troubled kids in the county?”

  Charis Siler frowned at me. “Yes. We do. That’s our job.”

  “Well, my job is to take care of my son the best way I know how. And I’m doing exactly that.”

  I don’t remember what transpired after that. The chemicals flooding my brain prevented my hearing much of what the caseworkers said. But the gist was clear: Robin was an active case in the system, and the system was watching me. The next suggestion of abuse or improper care and the state would intervene.

  I managed to stay contrite enough to get them to the door without more drama. Out on the stoop, watching their car pull away, I saw Robbie a
t the end of the block, astride his stopped bike, waiting for the moment when he could come safely home. I waved him in. He got up in the saddle and pedaled full-out. He did a flying dismount and left his bike lying in the lawn. He trotted to me and clasped me around the waist. I had to peel him off before he’d talk. The first words out of his mouth were, Dad. I’m ruining your life.

  THE RIVER OF FORMS IS LONG. And among the billions of solutions it has so far unfolded, humans and cows are close cousins. It wasn’t surprising that something on the fringe of life—a strand of RNA that codes for only twelve proteins—was happy, after one small tweak, to give another host a try.

  Los Angeles, San Diego, San Francisco, Denver: none of them matched the density of an industrial-scale feedlot. But human mobility and relentless commerce made up for that. And still, back in February, no one was all that worried. The virus tearing through the beef industry was being upstaged by the President. Week after week, he kept pushing back the rescheduled elections, claiming that digital security in several states was not yet adequate and that various enemies were still poised to interfere.

  When the third Tuesday in March came along, it surprised the entire fatigued country when the polls did open at last. But it shocked only half of us when another wave of irregularities were declared insignificant and the President was named the winner.

  THE SIGNAL CAME FROM XENIA, a small planet in a modest star system near the tip of one spiral arm of the Pinwheel Galaxy. There, at the start of a night that lasted for several Earth years, something like a child held up something not quite a flashlight to something quite unlike the Earth’s night sky.

  Near the child stood the closest living thing to what might be called its parent. On Xenia, the entire species of intelligent beings contributed a little germ plasm to birth each new child. But each Xenian was given one child to raise. On Xenia, everyone was everyone else’s parent and everyone else’s child, everyone’s older sister and younger brother all at once. When one person died, so did everyone and no one. On Xenia, fear and desire and hunger and fatigue and sadness and all other transitory feelings were lost in a shared grace, the way that separate stars are lost in the daytime sun.