Wake

Chapter 35

LiveJournal: The Calculass Zone

Title: No such thing as bad publicity

Date: Tuesday 2 October, 20:20 EST

Mood: Anticipatory

Location: Soon to be on the map of the stars’ homes

Music: Fergie, “Taking Off”

So where is all the media coverage related to me, you might ask? “Gorgeous girl regains sight!” “Blind genius can see!” “The Hoser still hoping for a second date with Calculass!” Where the heck is Oliver Sacks when you need him?

And, most important of all, where are all the offers to buy my life story for millions?

Good questions! Dr. K’s been keeping a lid on things, waiting for some approvals from the University of Tokyo. But he says we can’t hold off going public any longer. I’ve been flocking posts, and y’all are totally cool, of course, but all those kids at school now know that I can see, too, and some of them have been blogging. And so we’re going to have a press conference. Dad’s arranging for it to be at the Mike L Theatre at PI which is a cool place.

Apparently, I’ll have to speak as part of the press conference, so I’m working on my jokes. PI’s full name is the Perimeter Institute for Theoretical Physics, so I thought I’d start off with this, in honor of my own kitty: “Hey, folks, just think: if Schrodinger’s cat had been radioactive, he’d have had eighteen half-lives…”

Then I’m going to use this one, which The Mom came up with a while ago when Dad was grousing about “peer review.” She said whenever she sees the word p-e-e-r, she reads it as “one who pees,” which, she says, makes publish-or-perish a pissing contest…

Oh, and here’s one I like, but I don’t know if I want to tell it in front of my parents: The difference between a geek and a dork is that a geek wonders what sex is like in zero gravity; a dork wonders what sex is like.

Thank you, thank you, I’m here all week!

[And seekrit message to BG4: check your email, babe!]

This other entity existed in a bizarre realm that challenged my thinking at every turn. Most objects I saw were inanimate; they stayed put unless something acted upon them. But some objects were animate, moving apparently of their own volition. This was a staggering concept. That there was one other entity besides myself had been an overwhelming notion, but now there seemed to be countless others: mobile, complex, and varied in form. Their actions were so erratic, so seemingly random, that it only slowly dawned on me that perhaps these were also beings with their own individual thoughts, separate from mine.

There were other odd facts to absorb about this realm that also had no parallels in my world. For instance, there was a force, apparently, pulling things in a specific direction (another arbitrary coinage: down). And objects seemed to be illuminated by a source or sources of light that was usually up. I struggled to make sense of it all.

And yet these physical realities were easy to deal with compared to the complexity of the animate objects. I had real difficulty making out what I was seeing when the datastream showed me one of them. The images were indeed sharp and clear now, but the forms were so elaborate and random I had trouble figuring out the details. There seemed to be four long projections from a central core and one smaller … lump. But the structure of these lumps was constantly changing, not just as the perspective changed, but as the lump itself … did things.

Oh, for the simplicity of a world of just lines and points! Despite my breakthroughs, despite the few things I had figured out, I still often felt utterly, completely lost…

Caitlin couldn’t stop looking at her father, thinking that it might prompt him to look back at her. But he never did. He just looked away, or, as he was doing now, he stared out the living-room window at the gray sky and the trees, which were now losing their leaves.

She had hoped that when she finally saw him, his face would be … animated, that was the word; that he would smile frequently, that his eyebrows would move up and down as he spoke, that she might even see that he was affectionate toward her mother, touching her forearm at odd moments, maybe, or even stroking her hair.

“Caitlin.” Her mom’s voice, very soft. She turned. Her mother was doing something with her head, and…

Oh! She was gesturing with it, just as her dad had earlier to Kuroda: she was indicating Caitlin should come with her. Caitlin got up and followed her to the kitchen, on the far side of the intervening dining room, leaving her dad sitting in his favorite chair in the living room.

“Sit down, sweetheart.”

Caitlin did so. She was still just beginning to learn to interpret expressions, but her mother’s seemed … agitated, perhaps. “Have I done something wrong?”

“You can’t stare at your father like that.”

“Was I? Sorry. I know it’s not polite — I’ve read that.”

“No, no. It’s not that. It’s — well, you know how he is.”

“How?”

“He doesn’t like to be looked at.”

“Why not?”

“You know. I told you.”

“Told me what?”

“It’s nothing to be ashamed of,” her mom said. “And maybe it’s even why he’s so good at math and things like that.”

Caitlin shook her head a bit. “Yes?”

“You know,” her mom said again. “You know about your father’s…” She lowered her voice, and turned her head, perhaps, Caitlin thought, to glance through the door. “…condition.”

Caitlin felt her eyes going wide — but, as she’d already discovered, that didn’t really expand her field of view. “Condition?”

“I told you years ago. Back in Austin.”

Caitlin racked her brain, trying to recall any such conversation, but—

Oh. “I asked you why Dad didn’t talk much, and you said — at least I thought you said … oh, cripes.”

“What?”

“I thought you said he was artistic. I hadn’t known that word then.” She swallowed and found herself looking through the kitchen doorway, too, making sure they were alone.

“Well, he is artistic. He thinks in pictures, not words.”

Caitlin felt herself go limp in the chair. It made sense, she realized, her heart pounding; it made perfect sense. Her father — the renowned physicist Malcolm Decter, B.Sc., M.Sc., Ph.D. — was autistic.

Shoshana had heated up a couple of sacks of Orville Redenbacher’s in the microwave, and she, the Silverback, Dillon, Maria, and Werner were now seated in the main room of the bungalow, facing the large Apple computer monitor, munching away.

“Okay,” said Shoshana, touching a button on the remote, “here we go.”

She had footage of Dr. Marcuse from earlier projects, including one bit in which he’d done an amazingly protracted yawn. She’d thought about putting that in a circle, with the letters M-G-M above, and the caption “Marcuse Glick Movies” below, but she’d decided not to risk it. Instead, the little video began with white letters over a plain black screen that said, “Ape Makes Representational Art,” followed by the URL of the Marcuse Institute.

Next there was footage of the blank canvas, and then a reverse angle to show Hobo. “This is Hobo,” said Marcuse’s voice over top of the pictures, “a male…” There was just the slightest hesitation, Shoshana noticed. She hadn’t been aware of it when they’d recorded the audio; she’d take it out in the final edit. “…chimpanzee,” continued Marcuse. “Hobo was born at Georgia State Zoological Park, but was raised in San Diego, California, under the care of primatologist Harl P. Marcuse, who…”

The narration continued, and Hobo’s second painting of Shoshana took shape on the canvas. She ate some popcorn and watched the faces of the little audience as much as she watched her video, gauging their reaction. And then came her own big moment: the image divided into a split-screen, with the colored canvas on the left and new footage Dillon had shot on the right: a long pan around her head, and then holding on her in profile, the portrait Hobo had made side-by-side with the genuine article.

“The money shot!” said Dillon. Shoshana threw a little popcorn at him, which he batted out of the air with his hands.

When the video was over, Dillon and Maria clapped politely, and Werner nodded his head in satisfaction. But it didn’t matter what they thought, Shoshana knew. Only the Silverback’s opinion counted. “Dr. Marcuse?” she said, a bit timidly.

He shifted in his chair. “Good work,” he said. “Let’s get it online — and then see what the response is from the Georgia Zoo.”