The Divide

by Robert Charles Wilson

  “Fatal?”

  “Often. The decline was always permanent.”

  “I don’t suppose you ran PETs.”

  “I didn’t have access to a machine. You know what it’s been like.” Funding had dried up decades ago and the work he had performed in the fifties was still tightly classified. Following the cortical growth into maturity and old age in a primate population had been his own idea—an impulse; it would not only satisfy his curiosity, but would be useful if the publication bans were ever lifted. “We did autopsies,” he told Collingwood. “The symptoms were vaguely Alzheimer’s-like, but there was no specific loss of acetylcholine neurons, no neurofibrillary plaques. Our suspicion was that the new cortical growth was sufficiently distinct—in some way—that it eventually triggered an autoimmune response. Mortality depended on how essential the new growth had become to the organism.”

  Collingwood shook his head. “All those years ago, doing synthesis protocols—I never really imagined we would have to face this. Him, I mean—a human being, an enhanced adult human being. Are his symptoms severe?”

  “Intermittently.”

  “Advanced?”

  Maxim shrugged.

  “Well,” Collingwood said, “we might be looking at tiny lesions, peppered over the frontal lobes. But there’s so much activity, Max, it’s just difficult to say.” He turned back to the video display. Maxim saw him stand suddenly erect as something caught his attention. “Hold on—wait a minute—”

  The attending nurse in the PET room picked up a microphone; her voice was relayed to the speaker grille over Collingwood’s head. “Doctor,” she said, “the patient is convulsing—shall I pull him out?”

  Maxim hurried to the window. He could see John lying with his head in the mouth of the PET scanner, as if he were being devoured by the machine. His pale, long limbs were trembling slightly.

  Collingwood looked at Maxim; Maxim shook his head.

  Collingwood said, “Hold him steady a few more minutes.”

  There was silence, punctuated by the whirring of disc drives. Maxim looked over Collingwood’s shoulder at the video display.

  The butterfly-wing image of John’s brain was changing, subtly but distinctly. The bright colors began to fade; in particular, the hot band of the frontal lobes faded toward shadow. Watching, Maxim felt a cold hollowness at the pit of his stomach. “What’s happening?”

  “His glucose economy is suddenly down. Behaviorally, you mean? Jesus, I don’t know—I’ve never seen anything like it.”

  Maxim said, “He’s changing.”

  “That’s obvious!”

  “I mean, he’s not John anymore. I think he’s becoming Benjamin.”

  “The secondary personality you mentioned?”

  “I believe so.”

  “This is radical,” Collingwood said. “I’ve never seen this kind of bottoming-out. Is this voluntary?”

  Maxim began to shake his head, then reconsidered. It was a tremendous coincidence, that Benjamin should manifest just as John was in the PET scanner. It was as if John wanted to show us this, Maxim thought. John’s way of cooperating with the test.

  Or Benjamin’s.

  “Not exactly voluntary,” he told Collingwood, “not on the conscious level. But John is a unique individual. Not voluntary, but perhaps not an accident.”

  “The patient is febrile and convulsive,” the nurse reported, “but he seems to be coming around… Doctor?”

  “Pull him out,” Collingwood said.

  He switched off the intercom and looked at Maxim. Video images were still cycling through on the monitor behind him. Cool blue butterfly wings. Icy Rorschach blots. “Jesus Christ, Max,” Collingwood said tonelessly. “What did we do to this man? Just what kind of thing is he?”

  16

  Benjamin was back. But Benjamin had changed.

  Amelie was deeply pleased, at first, to be with him again. She realized how much she had cherished the time before Benjamin went away—before Roch moved in and took his place. Having even a fraction of that life restored was like an answered prayer. She worried that there might be some conflict with Susan or Dr. Kyriakides, but there was not; aside from the time Benjamin spent in therapy sessions with Kyriakides and a few medical tests, Amelie was allowed to have him to herself. Susan maintained a polite, somber distance; and after a few days she left the city on some mission for Dr. Kyriakides.

  In the beginning, Amelie was shy with him. Things had changed, after all. She knew so much more than she used to … maybe too much. She knew what Dr. Kyriakides had told her: that Benjamin was an invention of John’s, a puppet creation that had somehow, like Pinocchio in the old Disney movie, come to life. She accepted that this was true; but she couldn’t bring herself to believe it … not really believe it … certainly not when she was with Benjamin, who was, after all, a person, a living human being; more alive, she thought privately, than John Shaw had ever been.

  But this new knowledge saddened her and made her timid; it meant that things were different now.

  Mostly, she waited for Benjamin to come to her.

  He did, one cold Wednesday after a therapy session with Kyriakides. Benjamin came to her room. He touched her shoulder. “Let’s take a walk,” he said.

  * * *

  The snow had drifted into blue mounds and dunes across the lawn. Benjamin took her by the hand and led her down the front path to a lane that wound in from the main road, along a column of snowy birches. “It’s pretty here,” he said.

  Amelie smiled. He was always saying things like that. Simple things. She nodded.

  He walked a few more paces. “You know all about me now.”

  “Not all about,” she amended. “I wouldn’t say that.”

  “About John and me.”

  “A little, I guess.”

  “About what I am.”

  She nodded.

  He said, “I never lied to you, you know. But it was hard to explain.”

  “John wasn’t around much in those days,” Amelie said.

  “A few nights at the doughnut shop. I remember some of that now.” He looked at her somberly. “More of John’s memories are spilling over. Getting mixed up with mine. Dr. Kyriakides thinks that’s a good thing.”

  Amelie didn’t respond.

  “Back then,” Benjamin said, “I thought he might just fade away. Otherwise—if I’d known what was going to happen—I would have told you more. I guess I thought one day he’d just be gone. There would just be me.”

  “It’s hard to understand,” Amelie ventured. “How that must feel.”

  “I remember a lot of John’s childhood. I think those memories were always there … but they’re closer now. I remember his time with the Woodwards. They were good people. Ordinary people. John was never what they expected—but how could he be? In a way, they were always my parents. Never his.”

  “Is it true what Kyriakides said, that John invented you?”

  “That I’m a figment of his imagination?” Benjamin smiled, not altogether happily. “It doesn’t feel that way.”

  “How does it feel?”

  “It feels like I live inside him. It feels like I’ve always lived inside him. You know what ‘Benjamin’ means? It’s an old Hebrew name. It means ‘son of the left hand.’ In a way, that’s how it feels.”

  “You are left-handed,” Amelie observed.

  “And John’s right-handed. I suppose it’s true, he ‘invented’ me. But I think I’m more than that. Dr. Kyriakides agrees. It’s like invoking a spirit. John believes he made me up, but maybe he just found me … maybe I’d been there all along, and he just opened the door and said, ‘All right—come out’ ”

  Amelie looked at Benjamin with dismay—not because of what he said, which seemed true and obvious, but because of the way he said it.

  Benjamin had never talked about himself this way. It wasn’t like him.

  He’s different, Amelie thought.

  He’s changing.

  * *
*

  She went to his bed that night, cuddled with him under the blankets. The furnace was roaring away in the basement, but this old house was hard to heat. She liked his warmth; she liked being held.

  They made love. But when he was inside her, and she was looking up at him, at his big eyes strangely radiant in the dim light, Amelie felt suddenly afraid. She could not explain it, even to herself. It was not just the fear that he might be John, or partly John. It was the depth of his eyes. She was afraid of what she might see there. Something unfamiliar. Something she would not recognize. Something no one would ever recognize.

  Afterward, she slept with her back to him. He curled around her with his arm across her belly, and her apprehension vanished into sleep.

  * * *

  Really, she had been living with two men all along, John and Benjamin. The thing was that she had never admitted it to herself.

  She would wake up some mornings with a stranger beside her. She always knew at once when John was manifesting. He looked different; he had a different face. But he manifested seldom, and she had learned to anticipate his appearances. Even so, inevitably, there were times when she would wake up and find John in bed with her; and then she would feel frightened and confused. It was nothing she could ever explain to anyone. It was not a topic that came up on Donahue—“What to do when your lover is actually two people!” There was no one she had even tried to explain it to—except Susan, who was a special case. But Susan, when you came right down to it, was a pampered California preppie who could not help condescending even when she tried to be Amelie’s friend. Amelie forgave this … it was predictable … but she despaired of any real contact. Besides, Susan was obviously messed up over John.

  So I’m alone.

  Amelie awoke with this bleak thought echoing in her head. She turned and regarded the face of the man beside her. It was Benjamin. Absolutely no question. But the uneasiness lingered. She stood up, pulled her nightgown on, walked back down the silent corridor to the room Dr. Kyriakides had assigned to her.

  There was a little Sanyo stereo they’d bought to replace the one Roch had trashed. Amelie slid a Doors tape into the player and plugged the headphones into the jack. The tape was L.A. Woman. She boosted the volume and flopped down onto the bed.

  Thinking of Benjamin. Thinking of last summer, when they’d been together—before Roch, before Susan. Hot days in that crummy little apartment. Hot nights.

  Thinking of wrapping her legs around him. Of his weight against her … of his gentleness, even when he was close to coming. Of the way he laid his hand alongside her cheek, intimate as a kiss.

  Thinking of his eyes.

  Wondering where she would go … because it was over, wasn’t it? No way to crank back the seasons. No way to make it be new again.

  Morrison performed his familiar death wail. The sound seemed to come from inside her head. She reached over to slide the volume up but her hand slipped and she hit the reject button instead. The tape popped out. The silence was eerie and sudden.

  She went to the window and stood gazing out, without music or thoughts … as empty as she could make herself, watching the snow fall.

  * * *

  Dr. Kyriakides: Do you remember your childhood?

  Benjamin: Yes.

  Kyriakides: But it wasn’t your childhood.

  Benjamin: It was a shadow. I remember faces. I remember moments. Is it so different for everyone else?

  Kyriakides: You were another person then.

  Benjamin: No. That doesn’t make sense. I can’t say, ‘I was John.’ I was there all along … with him. In the shadows.

  Kyriakides: And then you came into the light.

  Benjamin: Yes.

  Kyriakides: When he created you.

  Benjamin: If you say so.

  Kyriakides: You were always yourself—is that how it seems?

  Benjamin: I was always myself. I came into the light, I lived at home. I went to school. Then I was back in the dark awhile. And then I woke up and I was on the island, John’s island. I knew what he’d been doing and why he was there.

  Kyriakides: And why you were there?

  Benjamin: I knew that, too. [Pause.] You have to understand, it was the end of his road. He’d gone as far as he could. [Pause.] He wanted to die, but he didn’t want to kill himself.

  Kyriakides: I can’t imagine John saying that.

  Benjamin: Oh, he would never say it. Especially not to you. He doesn’t trust you. He’s never forgiven you.

  Kyriakides: For making him what he is?

  Benjamin: For leaving him alone.

  Kyriakides: But surely—it’s possible now that he is dying. And yet he fights it.

  Benjamin: The funny thing is that he’s changed his mind. He thinks maybe there is a reason to go on living.

  Kyriakides: Can you tell me that reason?

  Benjamin: No.

  Kyriakides: He doesn’t want you to.

  Benjamin: Right.

  Kyriakides: You know that about him?

  Benjamin: I know a lot of things about him.

  Kyriakides: Have you always known these things?

  Benjamin: Known them, maybe. Never thought about them much. Never used to do this much thinking!

  Kyriakides: Is that because of the way you’re changing?

  Benjamin: Could be. [Another pause.] He’s all through me now, you know. We’re sort of mixed together. There used to be a kind of wall. But that’s breaking down.

  Kyriakides: Well, I think that’s good, Benjamin. I think that needs to happen.

  Benjamin: Well, it isn’t easy for him. He’s fighting it.

  Kyriakides: That’s unfortunate. Why is he fighting it?

  Benjamin: The same reason he wanted to die, back on the island. Because he hates me. Didn’t you know that? He hates all of us. [A longer pause.] Almost all.

  * * *

  Benjamin came into the room while Amelie was packing.

  Amelie ignored him—just went on emptying the big chest of drawers into her ragged Salvation Army suitcase, pretending he wasn’t there.

  After a time, watching her, he said, “Where will you go?”

  It was a very Benjamin thing to say. Straight to the point, no bullshit, kind of little-boy innocent. It reminded her of what she had loved about him and what she still loved, and that was painful; she winced. She looked up at him. “I don’t know. Maybe back to Montreal. It doesn’t matter.”

  He said, “I wish you wouldn’t go.”

  She turned to the window. The snow was still falling. Fucking horrible winter. That was the thing about winter in this city. It was likely to do any fucking thing. If you were ready for snow you got rain; if you were ready for rain you got ice. “I thought you understood.”

  “You’re leaving me.”

  She turned to him. “So? You left me.”

  “No. John left you.”

  “But you were talking about leaving. Even before that. And when you finally called, you called Susan.”

  He shrugged, as if to say: Yes, that’s so.

  She said, “Things had already started to change, hadn’t they? Even then. You knew we couldn’t stay together. You knew what was happening.” He did not answer, which was answer enough. Amelie nodded. “Yeah—you knew.”

  “I know a lot of things I don’t want to know. A lot of it is John. There’s more John now than there used to be.” His frown was huge. “I wish you would stay a while longer.”

  “Why?”

  “Because it’s cold out. Because you don’t have anywhere to go.” That helpless look. “Because there’s nothing anyone can do about this, about what’s happening to me.”

  Amelie narrowed her eyes. “How do you know?”

  “John knows. Kyriakides was lying all along. He lied to Susan about it. But John can tell. Kyriakides wanted to do the tests, and maybe he thought there was a chance that something would happen, something miraculous. But there’s nothing. He knows it, John knows it. That’s not why t
hey’re here.”

  “Why, then?”

  “Kyriakides is here to finish his experiment, and because he feels guilty. John is here—well, it’s an experiment of his own. But for me, I think it’s only the end. I’m scared of that.”

  “Goddammit, Benjamin!”

  She held out her arms for him. He put his head against her shoulder.

  She was blinking away tears. But who was she sorry for? Herself or him? Maybe both of us, Amelie thought. Two fucked-up losers. She just felt so sad.

  “Nothing is the way it used to be,” he said. “I love you.”

  “I’ll stay a while longer,” Amelie said. “It’ll be okay.”

  Not believing either of these things.

  * * *

  After some time had passed he helped her unpack again. He was about to leave the room when he reached into his back pocket and said, “Almost forgot—this came for you today.”

  It was a thick manila envelope bearing the return address of the Goodtime Grill on Yonge Street.

  He held it out.

  Amelie took it from him, frowning.

  17

  After the humiliation involving his sister, Roch had checked himself in at the Family Practice Clinic at Toronto General Hospital. A few days later and he might have run into Amelie while she was in town for John’s PET scan. But he wasn’t looking for Amelie—at least, not yet.

  His chest was a mass of bruises where the car door had slammed into it. The clinic sent him up for X-rays, but there was no evidence of any significant fracture to the ribs, which was good; it meant he wouldn’t have to be taped. Hurt like shit all the same, though. The doctor, a woman about as tall as Roch’s collarbone, asked whether he’d been in a fight. He said, “A fight with a fucking Honda.”

  In return she flashed him a skeptical, condescending look … which burned, but Roch kept carefully silent; this was not the place or the time. He was getting older, developing an instinct for these things—when to hold his tongue and when to act. He merely stared into the female doctor’s wide green eyes until she frowned and looked away. Roch smiled to himself.