Dark Humanity

by Gwynn White

  Enough.

  I unhook the mouse and put him back in the box. The box goes in the trash bin. I’m tidying my workbench when Grandma opens the garage door and peeks in.

  “Yum. Someone must be grilling.”

  Step number one for Needle and Thread: Can I incorporate something not of my body into my body?

  First, I need to know if I can feel an object inside of me. I already know I can feel bacteria and viruses, but they integrate seamlessly on their own, attaching themselves to my cells. What about a foreign body that’s inside me, but not actually connected to any of my cells?

  I lock myself in the bathroom. I insert a cotton swab into my ear canal, far enough that it’s uncomfortable. I close my eyes. I can feel the cotton tickling the cilia, the little hairs in my ear. I can feel that the cotton is close to my eardrum, but that’s all the information I can gather.

  Next, I take a marble out of my pocket. It is small and blue and smooth. I thought about using a coin, but knowing that the object must come out once it goes in, I wanted something smooth and easily passable.

  I wash the marble in the sink with hot water and anti-bacterial soap. I pop it in my mouth, far back on my tongue, and swallow. There’s a moment where I feel like I’m choking, then I force my throat muscles to contract, and I chase the marble with a gulp of water. It slides down smoothly and drops into my stomach.

  Bile immediately floods my stomach with no prompting from me. I doubt it will have any effect on a glass marble. I try to feel my stomach. I sense a hard glob resting on the bottom left of my stomach lining. I sense the water I swallowed. There’s a bit of mostly digested food—probably the apple I ate after school. But I don’t feel the marble as a marble. It could be anything.

  I force my body to expel the contents of my stomach into my intestines and beyond. It’s interesting. I’ve never actually followed the path of my food before. I squat on the toilet and let everything come out. I suppose I won’t be gaining any nutrients from the apple.

  I examine the contents of the toilet for curiosity’s sake. Mushy, liquidy apple, complete with bright green peel. One blue mottled marble. I’m tempted to rescue the marble but decide against it. I’m not a squeamish person, but poo marbles are just gross. I flush it away.

  Grandma’s stew is bubbling happily on the stove when I come out. She gives me a heaping bowlful, and I hold my nose and dig in. It’s for a worthy cause.

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Grandma has a doctor’s appointment today.

  “Just a checkup,” she says.

  “Why do you need a checkup?” I ask while I pack my lunch. “Just feel inside yourself.”

  “We are not infallible, Thomas, and we are not doctors. It doesn’t hurt to check in with an expert.”

  “I think we’re pretty much experts on our own bodies.”

  “That kind of arrogance will get you in trouble. I’m an old lady. I’ll take the help.”

  I hug her. “Whatever will keep you here with me.”

  I have my third presentation to give today, this time on the lungs. Grandma bought me a package of balloons, and at recess, I open the package and set a single balloon on each person’s desk. I’ve learned that when my presentations are interactive, the kids are more engaged.

  I talk a bit about our lungs, how they function, then ask everyone to blow up their balloons with a single breath. Half the class can’t do it. I tell them that lung capacity and the force of your breath is something you can increase with practice. I tell everyone to take their balloons home and practice every day. At my next presentation, we’ll all try again. Anyone who can blow their balloon up will receive a lollipop. And the person who expands theirs the most will win a special prize.

  Another good presentation. Before I even finish up, though, I start to worry about the next one. I need to research nerves. I’ll just have to think of some way for that topic to be interactive, too.

  “How was the doctor?” I ask when I get home from school.

  Grandma is sitting on the couch, drinking her afternoon tea. She offers me some every day, and I always turn her down. Why would I want to drink a cup of liquid grass? And why can’t she remember that I don’t like tea?

  “Hello, my darling,” she says with a smile. “How was school? Can I make you a snack, a cup of tea?”

  See?

  “I’m fine. School was great. The balloons were perfect. Thank you.”

  She pats the space on the couch next to her. “Tell me all about it.”

  I do. Grandma laughs at my description of Abbey, red-faced, cheeks blown up like a puffer fish as she tried in vain to blow up her balloon.

  “So tell me about the doctor,” I say again.

  Grandma blows gently into her teacup and takes a small sip.

  “Not much to tell. Standard physical. Everything’s tip top.”

  “Grandma,” I say slowly, “if something were wrong, would you tell me?”

  “Thomas, there is nothing wrong with me.”

  “But would you tell me,” I insist, “if there were?”

  She bows her head. “My instinct would be not to tell you.”

  “I know that,” I say. “What I’m really asking is for you to fight that instinct and please be honest with me.”

  She sighs, then meets my eyes. “If anything ever goes wrong, I promise to tell you. You know, though, that I would prefer it the other way. You don’t need to worry about me in addition to everything else.”

  “Too late, Grandma. This conversation has already given me ulcers.”

  She smiles. “I promise you I’m completely healthy.”

  “Then I believe you.”

  “Good,” she says, sipping more tea. “Now why don’t you tell me about all these experiments you have brewing.”

  “Pardon?” I say, and if I were drinking tea, I think I would have choked on it and spewed it all over Grandma’s lap.

  “Come now. You are the one who demanded honesty. Let’s make it reciprocal, shall we?”

  “I need a drink first,” I say. I go to the kitchen and pour myself a stiff glass of orange juice. Then I return to my seat next to Grandma.

  “You know when I asked you about Frankenstein the other day?”

  She nods. “You tried it on the mouse.”

  “You…how did you know that?”

  “I smelled it, both rotten and fried.”

  “Damn it,” I say.

  “Language.”

  “Sorry. So the smell gave me away?” I ask.

  “Confirmed it, but your questions give you away. You never ask a question without a purpose. And, honestly, a light circuit? You could build one in your sleep. And beef stew? You are intensely visual. Anything that looks like dog food is on your do-not-eat list.”

  I’m frustrated, but also a little flattered. Grandma hasn’t been here that long, but already she knows me.

  “It would have worked on Mom,” I say sadly.

  “Your mother trusted you. As did I. I let you carry on with your elaborate scheme, remember.”

  “It wasn’t all that elaborate,” I say. “I was kind of winging it with that stew bit.”

  “Brilliant improvisation.”

  “Thanks.”

  “So what’s up next? Please don’t tell me you need a bigger test subject.”

  I laugh. “No, I’ve abandoned the electricity. I have a better idea, but it’s kind of dicey.”

  She nods for me to continue.

  “You might not like it,” I say.

  “Try me.”

  “Well, my goal is to be able to heal other people. To bring our abilities outside of our own bodies. But to do that, I figure I have to bring another person to me. Into me.”

  “Hmm. How would that work?”

  “I think I could hook them up to me, like make neural connections to their neurons. If I can connect to their brain and to their spine, I’d have access to their whole nervous system. I could re-grow their tissue, heal tissue, whatever neede
d to be done.”

  “How would you…you mean to surgically attach a sick or damaged body to yours?” she squeaks out. Her lip is curled and she visibly leans away from me.

  “Why not?’ I say. “I mean eventually. I wasn’t planning on cutting you open while you sleep and attaching myself to you like some parasite.”

  “Thank God.”

  “I’m serious,” I say. “This could really work.”

  “No.”

  “Yes, it could.”

  “No. I don’t care if it will work or not. I forbid you to do this.”

  “I’m not doing anything at the moment, and I wasn’t planning on doing it all the way. I just have a little experiment planned to see if it could be done.”

  “I’m afraid to ask.”

  I sip my orange juice. “So do you want to hear it?”

  She nods.

  “I have these fake claws that I wore for Halloween a couple of years ago. They’re like plastic nails, the kind where you peel off the backing and press it on top of your nails. You know what I mean?”

  She nods again.

  “I thought I could remove the nail from my pinkie finger, then put the fake one in its place. Then I would tell my body to attach itself to the fake nail, and I would try to make my nail grow again. But what I really want to know is if I attach myself to the plastic, can I feel the plastic as part of my body.”

  “Interesting. You could do that. I don’t know how much you’d be able to sense about the fake nail, though. There’s not much to sense about our real nails.”

  “True,” I say, “but that’s only the first step.” I take a deep breath. “The second step would be to cut off my pinkie toe.”

  “What?!”

  “My pinkie toe. It’s pretty much a useless appendage. Some scientists believe we’re already evolving to lose it.”

  “Dear Lord,” she says. She takes a deep swig of tea.

  “Then, you know, I would attach something else in its place.”

  “Like the foot of a Barbie doll?” she offers.

  “You just said plastic doesn’t offer much in the way of information. I was thinking of something else, like a frog’s leg or something.”

  Grandma gets up and goes to the kitchen. She comes back with a bottle of whiskey, and pours a few fingers into her teacup.

  “A frog’s leg, you say?”

  I lie in bed thinking about my experiments. Grandma is adamantly against them, and I already promised myself I wouldn’t be difficult for her. So I won’t carry them out. Yet.

  I have plenty of research to do. Nerves, neural regeneration, axons and growth cones, and that’s about all I know, so I have a lot of learning to do. I’ll make notes on everything and practice on my own body without the tissue of other living things.

  Grandma says I’m dangerously close to playing God. She suggested that I give up all these notions of grandeur and focus on being a six-year-old boy.

  If only I knew how to do that.

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  I start my research with a simple Internet search on neural regeneration. If I ever hope to grow nerves in other people, I need to learn about the process, even if I can do it in my own body with barely a thought.

  I start with a Wikipedia article. Normally, I’m not too high on Wikipedia, but it’s a decent place to begin.

  The article on regeneration divides the nervous system into two parts: peripheral and central. Nerves are routinely regrown in the peripheral nervous system. If you slice your finger with a knife, or crush your toe under a rock, the nerves will grow back, though full recovery is dependent on the type of injury. Crushing or stretch injuries are more difficult to heal than cut-type injuries.

  Nerves in the central nervous system—the spine and the brain—do not regenerate.

  I have to read that part again to make sure I read it correctly the first time.

  Nerves in the central nervous system do not grow back.

  But I do it all the time. I grow neurons in my brain. I attach them where I want them to go. I healed my spinal cord after I fell off the jungle gym.

  I shouldn’t be able to do that.

  I shut my laptop and lie on my bed.

  I am a freak, I’ve always known it. I can do a thousand things that the average person and even the exceptional person cannot do. But this, this is something that universities and private research firms have been spending billions of dollars to learn how to do. And I can do it.

  People in wheel chairs could walk again. Quadriplegics could be taken off respirators. Millions of people could have a life again.

  I pound my pillow. Why am I only six years old? Why can’t I be an adult?

  I have to know if I’m the only one.

  I find Grandma and ask her if she can grow neurons in her brain.

  “I’ve never tried,” she says.

  “Well, try it,” I say impatiently.

  She’s quiet for a minute, and her face goes blank. I wonder if my face does that when I’m feeling inside.

  “I can sense the neurons,” she says. “I can trace them. I can tell you where they are connected, how they are connected. But I can’t grow them. It’s…there’s a block. A protein, maybe? Something is blocking their growth.”

  “I can do it,” I say.

  “Interesting,” is all she says.

  “Interesting? Is that all? If scientists could figure out why you have a block and I don’t, they could heal brain injuries!”

  “You don’t have to scream,” she says calmly. “I understand the implications.”

  “Can Dad do it?” I ask her.

  “I don’t know.”

  “I’ll ask him,” I say, going back to my room and my laptop. I bring up Skype and call Dad. Grandma comes in as I wait for an answer and hovers in the doorway.

  Dad doesn’t answer.

  “Damn it,” I say, closing my laptop.

  “Language,” she says. She pulls me up and hugs me. “Patience. Dad will be home next week.”

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  This has been the single longest week of my life.

  We’ve been studying owls at school. They are nocturnal. They hunt. They hock up pellets. Hoo, hoo. Hoo cares?

  This week’s spelling list consists of irregular plurals, like dresses and messes. God help the person who writes down dresss.

  Dad comes home tomorrow. Maybe. He’s taking whatever flights he can, some military, some commercial, from wherever he is, and we don’t know exactly when he’ll be home.

  The only thing that keeps me from jumping out of my own skin in impatience is my meeting today with Dr. Rumson. Our meetings have become something I look forward to, more even than play dates with Tessa.

  The last play date we had was on Tuesday. I wanted to sculpt, since Grandma had bought us some actual clay, and Tessa wanted to color. I asked her why she wanted to color in someone else’s drawings.

  “I like to color,” she said.

  “But you already know how to color,” I said. “You even stay in the lines, most of the time.”

  I remember how Tessa narrowed her eyes at me. “I color beautiful pictures, and I know how to stay in the lines just fine,” she said.

  “Yes, but you’re not creating anything,” I said.

  “I am,” she said. “I’m making a colored picture.”

  She didn’t get it. I’m finding that she doesn’t get a lot of things. That’s okay, I guess. Grandma says it’s okay and I need to be more understanding. Tessa is a normal kid. When I hang out with her, Grandma says, I need to do normal things. I should not expect anything more from her.

  That conversation with Grandma frustrated me at the time, but I’ve thought about it a lot this week. If I want to avoid being frustrated or disappointed, I have to have realistic expectations where other people are concerned. I cannot expect everyone to act, or react, as I would. Case in point? Dad. I figure I need to give him a very small break.

  But anyway, unlike Tessa, Dr. Rumso
n gets it. I can talk to him about anything, and he has a pretty reasoned opinion. I’m not sure I agree with all those opinions, but he gets me thinking.

  Today Grandma drops me off at the church and says she’s going to run errands. Dr. Rumson ushers me into his office himself, and we take our normal seats.

  “So, what did you think of my sermon last Sunday?” he asks.

  “I thought it was a little dry, to be honest,” I say.

  Dr. Rumson chuckles. “Indeed?”

  “And I’m not the only one who thinks that. Mr. Komanski fell asleep and was snoring in my ear.”

  “Oh dear,” he says. “I’m sorry to hear that.”

  “Well, I talked to him, so I don’t think you should make a big issue of it. He was very sorry. And his wife pulled on his ear to get him to wake up in time for the end.”

  Dr. Rumson smiles. “Thank you for taking care of that.”

  “No problem,” I say.

  “So if my sermon didn’t raise any questions for you, what’s on your mind, Thomas?”

  I sit up on my knees. “Do you remember during our first talk, you said that God has a plan for each of us?”

  “Yes.”

  “I’ve been thinking about that this whole time. What’s God’s plan for me? What could He possibly expect out of me?”

  Dr. Rumson nods.

  “And I’m not one hundred percent sure of that yet, but I was wondering, if a person has certain talents, certain abilities, do you think God means for that person to use them?”

  “Of course. Talents are meant to be exercised and developed.”

  “What if it’s a bad talent? Like, say you’re good at stealing things?”

  “I would not call that a talent,” he says, frowning. “If someone has some initial talent, say in stealth, or slight of hand, or planning and organization, those do not necessarily result in thievery. A person could put those talents to some positive use, but a thief is not doing God’s will. He has turned from the path.”

  “Okay,” I say, “what about a good talent that’s not used? My mother used to play the piano, and my dad said that she was amazing. She would play at parties and at the holidays, but when her parents died, she stopped playing. I never got to hear her play. Was she going against God’s will?”