Naomi in the greenhouse, pinterest.com.
The next morning Scout and I were up before everyone else. We each had a bowl of oatmeal, then straight to the library where I was eager to try out our new reading plan. I abandoned the idea of slowly levelling her up each day. Why waste time. I wanted to see if she could understand the best and most complex in English literature. Besides that, I had an ulterior motive. Everything I was reading now I was memorizing and able to view in my mind at any idle moment. So I wanted to peruse some of my old favorites and commit them to memory while I taught her. “We can both be enjoying ourselves” I thought, “profit and pleasure combined.”
I took down a folio volume containing John Milton’s poetical works and read to her the poem ’Lysidas’ and then ‘Comus, a mask,’ or rather she read them to me in her pleasant child voice. She was seeing through my eyes and drinking in all the rich allegory and mythology which I supplied, sensing and sharing my delight at the poetry and the sublime levels of thought. She didn’t tire while I did, and the thought occurred to me (and to her also) that she might far outstrip me in stamina for learning as she was at the perfect age for it.
She read slowly and carefully at first but soon picked up the pace to as fast as I could scan the page, which was twice as fast as it was the week before. Then she went beyond that, to speed reading, and yet with every word I imagined her saying it aloud and she also, so fast were our brains collaborating and colluding, even merging to a large degree, with a sense of kinship in itself as exhilarating as the poetry was elevating, doubling our joy. We moved on to ‘A Midsummer’s night dream,’ by Shakespeare, and were about halfway through it when there was a tap at the door, and Jane came in with a grave face.
“Roland you have to come right away. Naomi has just pulled up in a taxi, and she looks extremely ill. She wants to see you. She’s sitting in the kitchen.”
Scout and I followed her to the kitchen.
Naomi did indeed appear like she was at death’s door. She looked pale, almost grey, and fragile, trembling a bit. We sat down and she told us in a weak, pitiful voice of her going to the hospital three days ago for some tests. They kept her there in a room with a dying old lady who moaned and cried all night. This morning she snuck away at the change of shift, just to see her mother and me as she put it, ‘one last time.’ She said she had been diagnosed with stage four cancer, spread throughout her body and beyond treatment. There was nothing anybody could do. She was in tears.
“Wait a minute.” I said, getting up. “Jane pour Naomi a large glass of water.”
Returning from my office, I walked up to her and said, “eat this, it will more than help.”
As she looked up to me with her sad face I told her again, “please, just take it, I promise you it won’t hurt you in any way. Please do it for me, and I’ll explain what it is to all of you.”
Naomi swallowed the wafer.
“Thank you” I said with a sigh of relief.
“Now there’s one more thing I have to ask of you, that you stay with us for the next several hours while I describe in detail what I’ve given you. You’ll begin to feel it’s good effects soon. Will you do this?”
“My mother, I have to see my mother. I don’t know how much time I’ve got. I came here first because I felt so bad about not calling you and I wanted to stay just a moment, to apologize and say goodbye. She doesn’t know how sick I am. I didn’t want to call anyone from the hospital. It was such a dreadful place. I didn’t want anyone to visit me there and see me in that room. News like this you have to tell people in person.”
“Call your mother now and have her take a taxi here right away. She should hear this too.”
Naomi did as I said.
“What I’ve just given you is a powerful tool that enhances the brain and allows it to repair the body in amazing ways. I’ve taken one myself and given one to Scout, at the beach. I don’t think there are going to be any goodbyes today, not for a long time.”
Mary and Jane both had a puzzled look on their faces, perhaps even Scout. At the distance we were sitting I couldn’t read her mind. So I went into a long explanation of my friend Jaime’s work, the closure of his lab, my obtaining the chips and how I first dosed myself and felt the effects. Then I explained to Naomi Scout’s previous condition, while both Mary and Jane nodded in assent, how I figured from my own experience that it might benefit her, and how it did.
The front doorbell rang, and I answered it alone. I wanted to have a word with her mother before she saw Naomi, to lessen the shock and to instill the hopes I had of her recovery.
“It’s been so many years since I’ve seen you, Roland, and this beautiful house. I remember it so well. My daughter hasn’t called for three days. I was worried. But I’m glad to find her here, safe with you.”
“She just arrived from a hospital” I told her, “and she’s not looking well right now but the good news is that she’s been given a potent cure and if you could just stay with us this afternoon I think you’ll see a great improvement. It’s not as bad as she thinks it is so don’t let her discourage you. I think she’ll be completely recovered in a few days.”
I knew I was going out on a limb in my prognostications. But when I considered my case and Scout’s, and how even my scars disappeared, how all my senses increased tenfold, how I looked five years younger overnight, I realized that the wafer fully empowered the mind to cure and regenerate the body almost miraculously. And for Naomi’s mind, blasting away the cancer cells with a thousandfold improved immune system, her health should quickly repair. I just needed to keep her here to see it with my own eyes.
Naomi stood up and met her mother with a hug. Her mother, Lucille, sat down and listened to the story of her daughter’s sad hospital stay, and asked when was the last time she’d had a good meal. Then she turned to us to find out what we had on hand. There wasn’t much, so she began a grocery list, mostly fresh vegetables, and Mary volunteered to get them. Jane added dandelion tea to the list. I provided the money.
It was over an hour now since Naomi had eaten the wafer and I asked if she felt anything changing.
“I feel a bit better. Could we move to another room? This chair is beginning to be uncomfortable. The light in here seems too bright.”
We moved to the living room and had her lay, half propped up with pillows, on a long sofa. I closed most of the curtains. We pulled up chairs around her and made light talk. When the groceries arrived Lucille went to work on a large pot of soup, with Scout and Mary as her assistants, while Jane and I sat with Naomi as she sipped on the dandelion tea. When she dozed off, we snuck out of the room to the kitchen with someone checking in on her every few minutes. But she slept soundly, softly breathing, long after we’d enjoyed our portion of the soup. I told the others it was a good omen as sleep was when most of the healing occurred. We decided that Lucille spend the night with us sitting at her daughter’s side so she could feed her when she awoke. Jane and Mary offered to take turns and stay up also, as a rotating watch, so that Lucille would have any help she needed.
I sent Scout to bed with the field guide to birds to read. That’s the book she asked for. She could read it on her own just fine now, and I was sure she would memorize a long list of words she didn’t know and ask me in the morning, as I was still her dictionary. I lay in bed and wondered about the unfolding drama, about why Jaime hadn’t been by to retrieve his envelope and how lucky it was that he hadn’t last Saturday. We would know the fate of Naomi by morning, and if it was good, what a miracle drug this would be, how much sought after, how much the rich and greedy people and powers in the world would want to control it and profit by it or just keep it for themselves, denying the many. I had a strong urge to call Jaime on his cell and tell him everything, as a friend. But this matter was so complex. I decided to wait a few more days to see how Naomi fared. He was probably in Yosemite on some mountain peak. I had to consider what I might do with what I had in my hands, for the good of others. I had nine wafers left, and there were a million ways I might use them.
The fact that I’d used some of them, without his knowledge, didn’t bother me a bit. He told me right off that he could have gotten by in his lab with just six. So they couldn’t be that hard to produce, and I didn’t care a fig for the cost. I had millions in the bank and could reimburse his lab for any expense. Besides, these were saving lives. What was more important than that?
He also told me they were worthless, being unprogrammed. Well I disproved that theory and brought their whole project to a successful completion. He and Eileen just didn’t know it yet. What was that worth?
As I nodded off I imagined the whole team of scientists in their white lab coats, closely huddled around an intricate lock to a titanium vault where their treasures lay. They were all trying to decipher the codes or somehow cheat the lock to open the door, arguing among themselves. But in its intricacy it baffled them.
I come along and walk past them and around the back of the structure where I find a simple wooden door wide open. So I step in and pick up the treasure while they were still debating out front, a ridiculous scene.
All along they were on the wrong path. They were trying to ramrod all knowledge into a person’s brain in the blink of an eye. But they’d skipped the vital step. The human mind would never suffer such an assault, such an insult. What it contained, what it owned, it gained by its efforts like a day laborer his wages, by honest sweat. It couldn’t handle, and never wanted oceans of foreign data plugged into it. But it would digest what it acquired itself, what it was curious about, what it saw, what it liked, a labor of love.
So all that I, or anybody else, needed was the processor itself, empty but ready to be employed by my own volition. The scientists would have thought that I had nothing with no data. But in reality I had everything: the power to read and think much faster and further than anyone else, to make whole fields of interest my own, with the ability to build my own realm with all the riches of the past in my pocket. I was provisioning a large vessel already, preparing to raise the sail and leave the shores of our beleaguered world.
These were my thoughts before I awoke. But my sleep these last nights was such that I couldn’t tell what parts was a dream or a waking reflection. They merged now in a sort of ballet. Even as I rose from bed, until I splashed cold water on my face, I thought I might still be dreaming.
I stepped into the kitchen to find Jane and Mary and Lucille standing there, all smiles. I knew I was about to face another barrage of hugs and weathered the storm.
“Where is she?” I asked.
“In the garden, walking with Scout. Go to her. She wants to thank you” replied Mary.
I found them in the greenhouse walking hand in hand at the far end, the morning light bathing their backs as they strolled away from me. It could hardly be called ‘walking’. It appeared as if they were gliding on ice, drifting along an aisle of plants and flowers, so perfect and in unison were the smooth motions of their legs. They weren’t conversing out loud, but they were internally.
I made my presence known with a ‘Good morning’.
They turned, and Naomi’s face was astounding in the light, even from a distance. It was angelic, framed in her long blond hair, her wide brow, her blue eyes, her nose pointed and slender, Norwegian-like, like some Viking queen, her mouth wide and beautiful and her neck long. I could see she was well, better than that, radiant.
The closer she came, the prettier she looked, and this was a kiss I couldn’t refuse and didn’t want to. After that greeting, she said, “I’m all well, thanks to you. You saved my life. I owe you everything.”
“You owe me nothing. Chance put it in my way to help you, and I did. I’m so glad you’re better.”
“I’m more than better” she replied, “and Scout here is the most remarkable child I’ve ever met. She knows every bird in the sky, even their Latin names. She’s so curious that I’ve been teaching her the names and properties of all these plants the last half hour, and we don’t have to talk. When we hold hands, we share our thoughts.”
“May I hold your hand for a moment.”
She took my hand while still holding onto Scout’s. Some mutual childhood memories flashed before our eyes. Scout saw me now as a ten-year-old boy in shorts, legs dangling below a swing, with Naomi the same age on the swing next to me, and she imagined herself next to us, kindred, with an overpowering emotion of closeness.
“I think the three of us are a very special breed, a ‘rara avis’ as they say in Latin.” We proceeded back to the house arm in arm, intensely happy. It was breakfast time.
That breakfast, under Lucille’s guidance, was not to be matched. It was a banquet. We pulled the table from the kitchen wall to seat six, and the regal spread was laid out and enjoyed for over an hour, Naomi showing the most voracious appetite.
“During the night” Lucille told us, “my daughter slept well. Then at two in the morning, she woke up. Mary was with me, and we fed her a half bowl of soup. Then, without saying a word, she fell asleep again. She woke just after dawn much better, just as you told me she would Roland.”
Jane broke in, “Roland, these wafers you have, Mary and I have been talking. We want one too. I have arthritis in my hands and wrists, so bad some days I can’t even sew. And Mary gets migraines at least twice a month, which are terrible.”
When they presented this request, I’d already had an inkling of it and contemplated the pro’s and con’s in my multitasking brain. I had nine chips left, and I wasn’t about to give them away to everyone. Still, I did have an experiment in mind, so my answer was quick.
“Look” I told all at the table, glancing at everyone’s faces, “I have only nine wafers left. And I’m not going to be handing them out for a paper cut. But I will do this. Jaime told me that the nanochips on the wafers were evenly distributed and all mixed up. So if I take one and slice it into four pieces, it will be one-fourth the dose of a full one. I’m willing to give each of you a portion, just to see the results.”
They readily agreed.
“Now before you eat a piece, in full honesty I have to warn you of the side effects, so listen closely. It will change your lives. It will cure your ailments but heighten your senses sometimes to an unbearable degree.”
“What do you mean by that” Jane said.
“Well I’m not quite sure because I’m not that sensual a person. But I can tell you this, your sense of smell goes off the charts. I can smell every one of you right now, your clothes, your bodies. Perfume can almost make me faint. But I can also turn it off, just as one averts his eyes from a spotlight. The good news is that I enjoy pleasant scents, the same with tastes. I sip wine and relish savory foods with ten times the flavor and appreciation I used to.
“But Jane, there are other things. You won’t be able to binge or get drunk anymore without a mental battle. My mind shuts me down after three or four glasses of wine. Like a guardian angel, it won’t let me damage myself. Lights are bright and I often feel like wearing sunglasses in my own house. The tactile senses are a whole different matter. I don’t know how you two will make out with tenfold sensitivity. I’m sure you’ll make out, but I don’t know the results. Also, you’ll never be able to tell a lie again. When you’re close together, you can see all of your partner’s deepest secrets. Your minds will be just as naked as your bodies. If you can’t live with that don’t do it. But I’ll get one wafer and divvy it up now.”
I did just that. I went to my safe, took one wafer out of the envelope and sliced it twice on the kitchen counter, giving Mary and Jane a quarter each, putting the remaining two pieces in a slip of paper in my wallet.
Without a pause they each ate their share.
Mary asked me: “Will I be able to read Scout’s mind as you can?”
“I think you might, especially if she lets you. But your heads have to be close together, within a foot, then it happens. And remember, she’ll be reading your mind too. You’ll know tomorrow. It takes sleep for all the effects to kick in.”
“Here we go” I thought to myself, “a house full of telepathic geniuses and super-humans. And all of them women, except me. I hope I’m not disturbing Mother Nature’s grand scheme of things.”
