Seeds of Change

by John Joseph Adams

  I was ten at the time. I can see it: me and Steve and Keeley on the playground at recess. We’d gone behind the tall eucalyptus trees past the blacktop. Keeley had pigtails, a blue dress, and black Mary Janes. Her eyes were squeezed tight against the light sifting through the leaves and the curled bark.

  “Like this,” she said.

  And pressed her fingers against her eyelids.

  Hard. For about ten seconds. I counted. Then she removed her hands from her face, but kept her eyes closed, looking very serious, the way she did whenever she played Ouiji.

  “What do you see?” Steve asked.

  “The future,” Keeley said.

  “Bull.” He brushed it off, but looked uncertain.

  “I see you kissing Myrtle Bumgirdle.” Myrtle’s last name was Baumgarten, but no one called her that. Not since Steve coined the nickname.

  “You’re full of shit.” Steve sounded uneasy about the prediction, as if it hit a little too close to home.

  “Try it,” Keeley said. “You’ll see.” Her eyes were still closed.

  It was a dare. What could we do?

  I shut my eyes, certain that Steve would do the same. I pressed my fingertips to my eyelids and started to count to ten.

  By the time I reached five, colorful patterns began to emerge out of the darkness. I saw purple blobs, green swirls.

  I lost track of how long I kept my fingers pressed to my eyes. I sometimes wonder if I pressed too hard, or too long.

  A face formed out of the shapes. It formed like a photograph developing in my father’s closet darkroom—dim, at first, but growing more distinct as the details darkened and filled in.

  * * * *

  “HOW DID YOU know it was me?” I asked, the first words out of my mouth since I’d picked Keeley up at the airport. We were on the drive down from Portland. We’d been quiet for the first half hour of the trip, an uneasy silence that eventually relaxed under the cloud-streaked sky and docile waves that lapped the rugged Oregon coast.

  “Your hair,” she said. “It hasn’t changed a bit.”

  “Seriously,” I said. She’d never liked my hair. My hair was a joke to her.

  “I am being serious,” she said.

  I looked at her in the passenger seat. On the surface she didn’t seem any different. I didn’t know whether to believe her or not. “What if I’d gone bald?” I said. “Or grown a mustache?”

  “There would’ve been other clues.”

  “Like what? I mean, what do you really see?”

  “I see noses, eyes. But they aren’t any particular shape. They aren’t thin or wide, or round or almond-shaped. They aren’t any shape. They’re just there. Mouths, too, and lips. They’re there, but they’re not.”

  “The same for everybody,” I said. “One size fits all.”

  “Pretty much.” She wrinkled her nose, which was petite and upward curving, lightly sprinkled with freckles she had once tried to convince me were in the shape of a distant and as yet undiscovered constellation.

  “So how do you recognize people?” I said.

  “Well, like with you, a lot of times I recognize people by their hair. Or their height, weight, and body shape. Things like that. There are other indicators, too. That’s what they were teaching me at the center. But they aren’t tied to any particular racial or cultural background.”

  “But you’re not color blind when it comes to things other than skin,” I said. “Right?”

  She nodded.

  “So what do you see when you look at a person’s skin?”

  “I don’t know,” Keeley said. “I don’t know what color I see when I look at people. It’s like there isn’t any color.”

  “How can there not be any color?” I asked.

  “I can’t explain it,” she said. “That’s part of the problem when you try to paint it or describe it to people. You have to see it to believe it.”

  “I’m sorry,” I said. She looked beat. “You’ve probably heard the same questions a million times before.”

  “You don’t have to apologize,” she said. She turned her head to look out the window at a passing beach house and the waves beyond. “People are afraid of what they don’t understand.”

  As we entered town, a large group of protestors stood outside of the library. The protestors—White, African American, Hispanic, Asian, you name it—brandished signs that had catch phrases like ERASIST and support DIVERSITY, not PERVERSITY. A couple of them wore featureless white masks, hockey masks with white cloth over the eye and mouth holes.

  “So how’s Fran?” Keeley said, as if the protestors had made her think of my wife.

  “Are you wondering what you’re in for?” I said.

  A laugh, oddly carbonated, bubbled up from deep in her throat. “I still don’t know what you see in her,” she said.

  I shrugged.

  “Come on.” She pretended to jab me in the ribs, pulling back as soon as I flinched. “You can tell me.”

  “I’m not sure I can.”

  “Okay. Then what don’t you see in her?”

  My fingers tightened on the wheel. “Good question,” I finally said. “I’ll have to get back to you on that.”

  “Same old Trev.”

  I couldn’t tell if it was disappointment I heard, or affection. “So why’d you really leave?” I asked.

  “You don’t think it was just to become faceblind?”

  “No.”

  She thought for a moment, staring out at the beach cottages on her side of the road. “I guess you could say I left for the same reason you stayed.”

  I assumed she was talking about Fran, but then she added, “I didn’t want to be the person other people had made me into.”

  “And I did?”

  She turned from the cottages to me. “Didn’t you? Generous Trevor. Level-headed Trevor. Never-loses-his-temper Trevor.”

  “That’s not true. You know that.”

  “It doesn’t matter. People don’t care how you see yourself. It’s who people think you are that matters most to them. Turn against those expectations, and they turn against you.”

  * * * *

  WHEN OUR PARENTS first heard about what Keeley had done—she had sent an email to them, the same as me—they tried to talk her out of it. They flew from Prescott, where they’d moved a couple of years earlier for Mom’s emphysema, to Boulder, where Keeley was staying at a VFP post-op center.

  Less than a day after their arrival—it could have been hours—my mother called in a panic. “You have to do something.”

  “Like what?”

  “Talk to her. She listens to you.”

  “It’s her choice,” I said. Besides, I was pretty sure nothing I said at this point was going to change it.

  “What are you saying?” my mother asked. “Are you saying you won’t help? That you don’t care?”

  “Of course not.”

  “I’ve tried to reason with her.” Earrings rattled as my mother shook her head. “But these people she’s with, they’ve got her brainwashed. She refuses to listen to reason. Your father is about to have a heart attack.”

  “I told you going down there was a bad idea.”

  “It’s all right. He’s sedated. But I have to tell you, my blood pressure is acting up. I feel lightheaded.”

  “What do you want me to do?”

  “Talk some sense into her.” My mother’s breath shuddered, loose as an unhinged door. “I just wish I knew what we did wrong.”

  “You didn’t do anything wrong.”

  But she was inconsolable. “I don’t know what we could have done any differently. I really don’t.”

  “Take it easy, all right? Calm down. I’ll see what I can do.”

  But of course it was too late. There was no way to reverse the procedure. It was like having a stroke, a bullet, or a piece of shrapnel, rip through that part of the brain. Once the microvilli were implanted, that was it. There was no going back.

  I’d researched the procedure
as soon as I heard from her, trying to find out as much as I could about what Keeley had done to herself.

  The microvilli—nanoscopic synapses and neurons—rewired the fusiform face area of the visual cortex. This area was essentially a computational machine, wired into the visual cortex, that had several subcomponents. There were subcomponents for gender, skin color, features, and emotional expression. It turned out that you could short-circuit the neuroprocessor for skin color, while leaving the synapses for happiness or gender intact. In the same way, you could short-circuit the pattern recognition synapses for the nose, mouth, and eyes. The nanosurgery was very precise. Any of these features could be selected for. Most VFPs chose to have a standard set of facial elements grayed out—“blinded.” But in theory any of the subcomponents of the cortex could be reconfigured.

  “I don’t know what we did to deserve this,” my mother said when I called to tell her the news.

  “You didn’t do anything,” I said.

  “We should never have moved.” It had been a major decision to relocate to Arizona. She hadn’t wanted to go, but my father had insisted.

  “She would have done it even if you’d stayed,” I said. But it was no use, my mother was determined to blame herself, and by extension, my father.

  “You don’t know that,” she said. “If we were still there, we might have been able to stop her.”

  “There are worse things she could have done,” I said.

  “Like what?”

  “You know.” Out of habit, I offered up a shrug. “Drugs. Prostitution. At least this is socially responsible.”

  “It’s selfish, if you ask me.”

  I didn’t ask her to explain. I didn’t want to encourage her. I wanted her to accept what had happened and move on. It wasn’t any of her business what Keeley or anyone else did. It was Keeley’s life, not hers. But, like a lot of people, she didn’t see it that way. She saw what Keeley did as a reflection of herself, something for which she would ultimately be judged.

  * * * *

  “REMEMBER THAT TIME on the playground?” Keeley had said after our parents flew back to Prescott. She’d called to thank me for supporting her by not flying out and attempting to deprogram her. That was the word she used.

  “Back in grade school?”

  “Yeah. Behind the eucalyptus trees.”

  “Not very well,” I said. Hoping she’d let it go at that.

  “What did you see?”

  I’d never told her. I’d never told anyone. “Nothing,” I said.

  “I don’t believe you,” she said. “We all see things. Whether we want to admit it or not. Things that embarrass us or scare us. Uncomfortable things. Things we’d rather forget.”

  “What difference does it make what I saw?”

  “Because seeing isn’t just believing,” she said.

  I waited for the other shoe to drop. But it didn’t. She seemed lost in thought, and after a minute or two she let it go and we hung up.

  * * * *

  FRAN WAS ON her best behavior. I had to give her that. She smiled when Keeley first walked up to the front door and into our house. Made polite inquires about the flight. Asked if Keeley wanted anything to eat or drink. Even so, she couldn’t keep a lid on it. Not completely. Questions bubbled up.

  “I don’t see what you hope to accomplish,” Fran said. “Who are you doing this for? That’s what I want to know.”

  “Fran,” I said. “Please.” I had a bad feeling. I didn’t know where this was headed. We sat in the living room, me and Fran on the antique sofa she had inherited from her mother, Keeley on a restored wingback chair, watching the coffee Fran had poured send up tendrils of steam.

  “No,” Keeley said. “It’s all right.” Her tone suggested that she’d prepared for this, willed it even. Being here was a test. If she could convince Fran, then she could convince anyone. That was why she’d come, the real reason she asked to stay with us. It didn’t have anything to do with me.

  “I’m doing this for myself,” Keeley said. She stirred cream and sugar into the cup on the table in front of her.

  “Even when the people effected by it don’t want you to do it?” Fran asked. “Even if it’s not how they want to be seen?”

  “Some of them do.”

  “But not all. What about the people who don’t? Shouldn’t their wishes be taken into account?”

  “I’m not stopping them from doing what they want,” Keeley said. “I’m not preventing anyone from being, or expressing, who they are.”

  Fran cradled her coffee in her lap. She held it with both hands, wrapping her hands around the warmth. “By not seeing people the way they actually are, aren’t you denying them their true identity?”

  “Identity is more than physical appearance,” Keeley said. “It’s language and a lot of other factors. The surgery doesn’t get rid of that.”

  “Then what’s the point? I mean, what do any of the people you look at gain by you being faceblind?”

  “Well for one thing I don’t prejudge people the way I used to. I don’t automatically assign a whole bunch of cultural baggage to someone based on a bunch of misconceptions, preconceptions, or stereotypes.”

  “Not everyone has that problem,” Fran said.

  “I’m not saying they do. All I’m saying is that I did, and I took steps to correct it. I didn’t want to see the world the way I used to. Before the surgery, I’d look at a person sometimes and misread them, see things that weren’t there. Now, there aren’t any facial miscues. I see people for who they really are.”

  “What about people who pretend to be something they aren’t?” Fran asked.

  “People lie about who they are all the time,” Keeley said. “That’s not my responsibility.”

  “It’s not.” Fran agreed. She paused. “I’m sorry you feel that way. I’m sorry you feel like you have to put the past behind you.” She glanced over at me. “For some of us, the past is a source of strength, a way of knowing who we are.”

  “I’m not threatened by the past.”

  “Maybe not. But you haven’t escaped it, either. Not really. You might see people differently, but people still see you the way they always did. That hasn’t changed.”

  “If it makes you feel any better,” Keeley said, “I’ve paid a price. I’ll never see the faces of my children. I’ll never be able to look into their eyes or see them smile.”

  Fran bit her lower lip. “I’m sorry for that, too.”

  And so on. It was hard to keep up with both sides of the discussion. One moment I leaned one way, the next the other. After a while, my head hurt.

  “All this food for thought is making me hungry,” I said. We’d been sitting there for almost two hours. It was getting close to six. “Is anyone else ready for dinner?”

  “I could eat,” Keeley said.

  Fran, biting her lower lip, rose to clear the empty coffee cups from the table, taking them into the kitchen.

  “We could go out for Chinese,” I said, standing up to give her a hand.

  Keeley trailed after us. “I’d like to stop by the library first,” she said. “If that’s all right. I want to drop off a couple new drawings I brought with me.”

  “I’ve never seen any of your stuff,” I confessed. I’d been curious, sure. I could have looked it up online. But I hadn’t. Why? Fran. I didn’t want to rock the boat—ruin what we had.

  “It’s not all that different from the stuff I did back in school,” Keeley said. She’d contributed to the quarterly webzine put out by the English department. Charcoal sketches. Drawings. A water color or two. She’d done people, mostly. Faces, up close and personal, that expressed an unsettling but vaguely familiar feeling, like the distorted but recognizable reflection in a funhouse mirror. That had always been her interest. The inner lives of people.

  “You know what I mean,” I said. “The stuff you’ve done since the surgery.”

  Keeley shrugged. “I didn’t think you were interested.”

&n
bsp; Fran, wiping her hands on a dish towel, said, “I’ll meet you out at the car. I want to get a jacket.”

  * * * *

  THE GROUP OF protestors in front of the library looked smaller. I didn’t see the two wearing the hockey masks.

  “You think they’d get tired or hungry,” I said.

  What the group had lost in number, they made up for in enthusiasm.

  Keeley nodded. She had been edgy on the drive over. Every time I glanced in the rearview mirror, I saw her peering out the window, the portfolio with her paintings clutched tightly, almost protectively, in her lap. As I parked in a space close to the main library entrance, an anxious face peered out at us from behind the tinted glass doors.

  “Collin,” Keeley said. “He’s in charge of setup.”

  The man was small and nattily dressed, sporting a triangular goatee on a round, wire-rimmed head devoid of hair. He moved like a tap dancer, skipping in and out of view when Keeley opened her car door to get out.

  “This won’t take long,” she said. “I’ll be right back.”

  I opened my door. “I’m coming with you.” I cut a glance at Fran.

  “I think I’ll wait here,” Fran said. She was hunkered down in the passenger seat, the collar of her jacket pulled up around her neck and ears.

  “Are you sure?” I said.

  “Yes.”

  “Sure you don’t want to at least check it out?” I said. “See for yourself what so many people are all up in arms about?”

  “I can read about it.”

  “It’s not the same as seeing it in person.”

  “I’m going to go on ahead,” Keeley said, growing impatient.

  “Fine,” I said to Fran. No way I was going to let Keeley walk past the group on her own.

  I slammed the door, locked the car, and hurried after Keeley. Behind me, I could feel Fran stewing, embarrassed and angry at me for having dragged her into this mess.

  I kept my gaze lowered as we approached the protestors. “Don’t look at them,” I said under my breath. Looking at them, I imagined, would only provoke them. Like meeting a growling dog in the eye, it would be regarded as a challenge, an invitation for violence.

  But Keeley did look. Not only that, she smiled and even waved. As an ambassador, it was her job.