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Reluctantly, the girls get up. They all leave in their own personal manner, one strutting, another strolling, and the third sneaking, trying to suppress her unending case of the giggles. The guard follows to make sure they don’t linger and closes the door behind him. Now Roberta’s glare is aimed at Cam. He tries to hide his smirk.
“Spanking? Time out? Bed without supper?” Cam suggests.
But Roberta is certainly not in a teasing mood. “You should not be objectifying those girls.”
“Double-edged sword,” Cam says. “They objectified me first. I was just returning the favor.”
Roberta growls in exasperation. “Did you believe anything you said out there about being a ‘model’ for others to strive for?”
Cam looks away. The things he tells audiences is certainly what Roberta believes—but does he believe these things himself? Yes, he is made of the best and the brightest—but those are just parts, and what do parts truly say about the whole? What he wants more than anything is to make the question go away.
“Sure I believe it.”
“Then show some common comportment.” She takes his shirt and tosses it to him. “You’re better than this. So act it.”
“And what if I’m not better?” he dares to suggest. “What if I’m nothing more than ninety-nine compounded adolescent lusts?”
“Then,” says Roberta, taking the dare, “you can slice yourself back down into ninety-nine pieces. Shall I give you a knife?”
“Machete,” he answers. “Much more dramatic.”
She sighs, shaking her head. “If you wish to impress General Bodeker, this type of behavior won’t fly.”
“Ah yes, General Bodeker.”
Cam isn’t quite sure what to make of the man and his intentions, but he can’t deny that he’s intrigued. Cam knows he would be shepherded through his training directly into officership, like some American prince. Then, once he was wearing the crisp, sharp dress of an officer, all pressed linen and brass buttons, the bitter voices that suggest he has no right to exist would be silenced. No one can hate an honored Marine. And he’d finally have a place to belong.
“Irrelevant,” Cam says. “The general won’t care about my personal downtime adventures.”
“Don’t be so sure,” Roberta tells him. “You need to be more discerning about your choice of companions. Now get your shirt on. The limo is waiting.”
* * *
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* * *
Cam jolts awake at thirty-six thousand feet. For a moment he thinks he’s in a dentist’s chair, but no. He had fallen asleep before extending the chair to its full reclining position.
Proactive Citizenry has provided this richly appointed private jet for his speaking tour, although it’s not all that private. Roberta slumbers in her own sleeper chair in the alcove behind his, her breathing steady and regulated, just like everything else in her life. There is a concierge—which is the private aircraft equivalent of a flight attendant—but he is also asleep at the moment. The time is 3:13 a.m., although Cam is not sure what time zone that’s reflecting.
He tries to bring back his dreams for analysis, but can’t access them. Cam’s dreams have never made sense. He has no idea how much sense the dreams of normal people make, so he can’t compare. His dreams are plagued by snippets of memories that lead nowhere, because the rest of those memories are in other heads, living different lives. The only memory that is clear and consistent is the memory of being unwound. He dreams of it way too often. He dreams not of just one unwinding, but many. The bits and pieces of dozens of divisions blend together into one unforgettable, unforgivable whole.
He used to wake up screaming from those dreams. Not from the pain of it, for unwinding is, by law, painless. But there are things worse than physical pain. He would scream from the terror, from the sheer helplessness each of those kids felt as the surgeons moved closer, limbs tingled and went numb, medical stasis coolers were carried away in their peripheral vision. Each sense shutting down and each memory evaporating, always ending with a silent cry of hopeless defiance as each Unwind was shuffled into oblivion.
Roberta is in the dream, for she was there at each unwinding—the only person in the room not wearing a surgical mask. So you would see me, hear me, and know me when the parts were united she had told him—but she hadn’t counted on how horrible that knowledge would be. Roberta is part of the terror. She is the author of hopelessness.
Cam has learned to bite back the scream in his dreams, holding it inside until he drags himself from the rancid soup of his nightmare and into the living, breathing world, where he is himself and not the particulated bits of his “inner community.”
Tonight he is alone. He knows there are people around him, but in a private jet soaring through an icy black sky, he cannot help but feel alone in the universe. It is in these moments of profound loneliness that the questions posed by the more judgmental audience members haunt him, for their questions are his own.
