Samantha unsplash.com by Zachary Kyra Derksen

As Mr. Tanaki began feeling the exhilarating perks of having his brain power increased a hundredfold and his daughter in a similar Elysium, they decided to stay with us for a while.  We passed the afternoon on the back deck discussing the world, sipping wine and enjoying each other’s company, serene leisure and delightful conversation, as it was a beautiful summer day.  Scout and Akiko and Naomi would disappear at times in pursuit of their own interests, always happy and smiling, often holding hands.

I told Mr. Tanaki, whose given name was ‘Toshio,’ that I would try to set up a meeting with my friend from the lab the next day as I had important news for him.  I also told him that most of the effects of what he’d taken would show up the next morning, just as he’d witnessed with his daughter.  From that perspective, we could have a more enlightened conversation.  He thanked me again and again for all I’d done for his child and for including him in this business.  We both saw the earth-shattering implications of the scientific breakthrough, a sharp, directional turn in the course of human evolution, almost an overnight redefinition of humanity, a re-engineering of our species much to its advantage.  Or so one would think.

We touched lightly on these subjects that afternoon but not deeply, like a child gingerly dipping his toes into a cold lake, debating whether or not to go in for a swim.  We didn’t dive in, not yet, though we both knew it was coming.  We wanted to celebrate the day, perhaps our last in a state of pure, ‘joie de vivre’, and we did. Toshio invited us out to a private restaurant in San Francisco for dinner in a very long limousine, seating all , where the wine and the food and talk overflowed to a late hour, after which the driver whisked us home, while Toshio and Akiko retired to his hotel suite at the Claremont, near the hospital, promising to visit the next afternoon.

Friday began much like the earlier days of the week with Mary and Jane in high spirits, making breakfast for Scout and me and afterwards doing chores of their choosing around the house.  Scout and I repaired to the library for a knowledge fest.  I wanted to introduce her to the best of Latin and did so, to the fourth book of Virgil, Catullus, the ‘Pervigilium Veneris,’ and then the ‘Dum Diane vitrea’ one of the most poetic creations of the human mind.  This was something that we possessed above any A.I., perhaps unique in the entire universe, the ability, at stray moments to create a perfect song out of nothing.

I felt a strange sense that we were living in the bubble of a few halcyon days, a bubble soon to burst, things were changing so rapidly.  I decided that I’d better make the most of it with Scout, for whom I now felt the deepest affinity, like a parent.  My goal was to pass on to her every gift I could before the dream ended.

About noon the doctor came by.  He’d been very quiet in our conversations the day before, almost brooding.  And now I figured it would all spill out.  It did.

“Roland, I have several more patients with critical conditions whom I think you could save.  I hate to ask you another favor, but you’ve been so kind, so generous, that I can’t help but ask one more.  Their lives are at stake.”

“There are probably millions of lives at stake this very minute.  I can’t save them all.  And my being so kind is no excuse for you to importune me.”

“I know, I know and I apologize.  But if you could just see them, I know you would help.  Both are young and very intelligent.  They go to our university.  One’s a T.A. in history and the other is a graduate in computer science, a brilliant young man.”

“I must admit” I thought to myself, “this doctor sure knows how to pick his subjects to pique my attention.”

“What do they have?” I had to ask.

“Samantha has a severed spine from a skiing accident.  She’s in a wheelchair, dead from the waist down.  Jason is the computer genius.  He’s in the middle stages of multiple sclerosis, also in a wheelchair.”

I reflected a moment, leaning back in my plush, leather chair as the doctor sat across from me in my office.  I had six chips left in the safe and my policy so far was to hand them out, magnanimously, to every comer.  I knew I had to make a call to Jaime that afternoon.  I also knew that when he came here he would immediately take back what was left and stuff it in his pocket, give it back to the lab, to Eileen, and into the hands of a billionaire sponsor who would control it only to become richer.  It was a system I was now smart enough to see and despise.

I realized right away that I would have to get both Jaime and Eileen together for any meaningful conference and I also realized that the more wafers I deployed before that meeting, the more ammunition I had, the more backup, the more people power.

Wanting even the doctor entirely on our side, I began: “I only have a few chips left on hand, and they’re not entirely mine by rights.  But I know what good they do and as a fellow mortal, I won’t deny your request.  Let’s see them right now.”

I took two more wafers from the envelope in the safe.  There were only four left.

He drove me in his car, well over the speed limit, so great was his excitement.  We arrived first at Samantha’s house, a cute, pink bungalow in the hills of Albany, near the university.

She was sitting in her front room, much like a parlor, in her wheelchair with a book in her lap as we entered.  The volume, as I swiftly inquired, was a history of the crusades by Steven Runciman, a book I knew and loved.  She was petite, slender, wearing a white camisole and skirt, with long, straight blonde hair, much like a blonde Mona Lisa, only prettier, with watery eyes and the same half-bemused smile, her useless, crooked, atrophied legs bare, almost showcased in front of her.  I felt so much empathy my heart fluttered.

The doctor did all of the talking.  He engaged her with a detailed and excited description of Naomi’s case and then Akiko’s, lasting a good fifteen minutes.  It was three years since her accident and he told her she might be able to walk again in a day.  I simply proffered the tiny wafer in my palm at the end of the speech, standing up from the couch, holding it to her view.  She took it in her delicate fingertips looking into my eyes, beseeching trust, and she saw it.  She then put it to her lips and swallowed.  We told her we’d be back in an hour as this was a revolutionary breakthrough and we had another patient to see as soon as possible.  By then she would begin feeling the first effects and we would tell her more.

We rocketed off to Jason’s place, a much cheaper unit in the slums of Oakland.  He wasn’t having a good afternoon.  The doctor practically fed him the pill without a speech.  We packed him up in the doctor’s car, folding his wheelchair into the trunk and drove back to Samantha’s.  I helped her into her van and we all quickly repaired to my place, where one big, world-changing conference was about to begin, with no politicians or functionaries present, no cameras, no bright lights, no reporters.  This is how it is with our current existence; you might watch the news twenty-four seven, but the real changes that radically alter your future are not on it.

Back in my parlor we rolled the two wheelchairs in, and fresh rounds of introductions were made.  Mr. Tanaki had arrived with his daughter.  He stood up as I entered, came to me and took my hand, saying that he did feel ten years younger today and that he owed me eternal gratitude.  Tea was served up by Mary and Scout.  While the rest sat and chatted I excused myself from them to make the phone call.

Pacing in my study, I reached Jaime on his cell.

“Jaime you have to get over here right away and bring Eileen with you.  This is the most important day of your lives.”

Jaime could tell by a tone he’d never heard from me before that something important was up.  But all he could say was, “what’s up?”

“They work.  Beyond your wildest dreams, they work to perfection, curing everything.  I’ve got the witnesses here to prove it and a doctor and a billionaire.  Get over here right away.”

“Are you talking about my wafers?  Did someone eat one?”

“Yes, I took the first, and I realized it could cure anything and it did.  Look I’ve got to explain all of this to you and Eileen in person, right away, because news of this is going to get out any hour now and cause an internet and international sensation and you two don’t want to be the last to know about what you created.”

“On my way.” I heard, just as he ended the call.

It wasn’t twenty minutes before there was a knock on the front door.  The gate was open.  Jaime and Eileen stepped into the living room and almost into a crowd with astounded looks on their faces.  Another round of introductions, a sofa for them to sit, more tea brought out and I began: “Who wants to be the first with their wafer testimony?”

“I’ll begin” Naomi spoke in a quiet, sweet voice, which was good enough as the room was dead silent, “and the doctor here will back me up on the truth of my story, as he was a witness to much of it, and Roland also, who saved my life.”

And so all the stories were told in a round robin, mine being last.  Eileen and Jaime listened the whole time intently, asking no questions, the look upon their faces changing quickly into one of awe and wonder, something akin to the reverence one sees in nativity scenes from the early Renaissance.

When the narrations were over the questions began, thick and heavy, like some presidential press conference.  I handled them with all the ease and nonchalance of a practiced press secretary because I had anticipated every one of them in my mind over the last few days and my replies could only be described as ‘polished’.

The first and hardest, of course, came from Jaime.

“How could you betray my trust in you and take and eat one of the wafers you promised to keep for me in your safe?”

“Here,’ I began, ‘I admit a small sliver of guilt with no excuse, other than that I was at a very low ebb in my life and desperately needed some radical change.  But you told me yourself that these chips, not being programmed, were next to worthless, just test wafers and that your lab could easily have gotten by with six, though you made and gave me twelve.  If there’s any cost to these things, I’ll reimburse you right now.  But I’ve already done that tenfold by saving you the clinical tests that would have taken months and years, and endless data collection.”

“This act allowed me to save Scout here from a living hell a few days later, allowed me then to save Naomi’s life from cancer, Akika from a coma, and as you’ll see with your own eyes, Samantha will be walking tomorrow morning and Jason too, free of two incurable disabilities.  I’ve brought your whole, years-long project to a resounding success, saved human lives, delivered others from hell and even brought here, before you, an investor ready to fund you one hundred percent while you were blindly chasing down a wrong path because of some initial success with animals.  You might have gone another two years down that dead end with funding dried up, a total failure.  You gave me what you called nothing.  I give back everything.  You’re so naive; I won’t say hard-headed, that I strongly recommend that both of you, right now, each eat one of the four remaining wafers we have left.”

I went to my safe and delivered the envelope into Jaime’s hand.  Then I spoke in a tone of heightened emotion:

“Don’t be so foolish as to hand these over to your manipulative, greedy financier.  Eileen, please eat one of these right now and tomorrow you’ll have the smarts to do the right thing with this world-changing discovery.  If you don’t, I guarantee you, it will be abused and the thousands or tens of thousands of lives it can save won’t be saved.  It will disappear into some rich man’s pocket for greedy ends and benefit only the rich.”

Mr. Tanaki chimed in: “Although I’ve only been on board for two days, I can tell you this, everything my most gracious host says is true and any financial backing you need to produce these chips I can and will provide.  My perspective on the world, since yesterday, has changed quite a bit and I see the good this breakthrough could be for so many, what a better world this would be, ‘a giant step for mankind,’ as someone once said.  I also implore you to partake of this miracle of your own making.  It will explain itself to you in your heads as it has done in mine and it will elevate you to decide the questions at hand wisely.”

There was a dumbstruck look on both Jaime’s and Eileen’s faces, so astounded they had nothing to reply.  They looked around the room at all our glowing faces, seeing everyone nodding in agreement.  Then they gazed at each other in equal wonder.  Jaime slowly opened the envelope and ate one of the wafers, handing another to Eileen, which she also swallowed.

“I’m only doing this because of a deep gut feeling”  she said.  “I never envisioned it this way.  But as I look around at all your faces, I’ll trust you for now.”

“Congratulations, you’ve just become a member of this happy and enlightened family’ I said.  “Let’s have dinner here.  I want you to stay the night.  I have one spare bedroom on the second floor and I’m sure I can make accommodations for three more.

“Samantha can have my room” Scout spoke out eagerly, “and I can sleep on the couch in my mother’s room like I did the first night.”

Samantha beamed her a warm smile.  There was chemistry happening between the two of them which I first noticed as Samantha was wheeled through the front door.  Scout had run up to her and stopped, startled at her bare, crippled legs, staring at them and then her with almost tearful eyes.  I’d never noticed the correlation before, but now it dawned on me.  The wiser you are, the kinder you are and the more disposed to commiserate and help others.

I thought of some of our best world leaders, Gandhi, Mandela, Lincoln.  They were all reputed to be very wise, but they were also exceptionally kind, understanding of others, sympathetic.  And I saw how the two go hand in hand.  To understand the human condition is to accept and embrace it and to come to its aid.

“Jaime, Eileen” I began, “you are about to undergo a transformation, a chrysalis, and you’d better stay here the night.  The best I can do is put you in the maid’s quarters upstairs.  But I need you to see as soon as you wake up Jason’s and Samantha’s improvements.  Then you’ll know the full extent of what this wafer can do.”

They both nodded in agreement, dumbfounded by the rapid procession of unfolding events.

Mr. Tanaki broke in, “let me order dinner for us all.  It would be my honor.  I would invite all of you out, but I see that Samantha and Jason might not feel comfortable in a public setting, so, Roland, as you have so wisely suggested, let’s eat in.  I’ll call one of my aides at the Claremont to handle the matter.”

And so it was.  An hour later a white van pulled up to the gate and platters were wheeled into my dining room and set on the table as if we were in some hotel suite.  We all sat down to another feast of food and wine and talk.  Mr. Tanaki, during the dinner, posed many questions, politely of course, to Eileen, about the history and foundation of the laboratory.  She answered them just as demurely, with a few facts as to its size and age and scope, Jaime sometimes chiming in.  But the real question, the only question, remained unanswered:  Were there more of these chips available now, how fast could they be produced, in what quantities, at what cost?

After dinner, Mr. Tanaki, Eileen, Jaime, the doctor and I retreated to the library, to the leather chairs by the hearth, where I started a fire.  We all sat down and enjoyed some fine aged cognac from my father’s cabinet.  All the younger set went downstairs to the game room, lowering the two wheelchairs carefully down the steps.  But Samantha and Jason were already feeling better, in good spirits and wanting to partake in the joy of the company.  From their wheelchairs they practiced billiards with Scout while Jane and Mary and Naomi and Akiko put on records, sipped liqueurs and passed between them a cigar from my father’s collection, sitting on the long couch cramped together, laughing and giggling like teenagers in the backseat of a car on a moonlight drive.

Upstairs, I proposed a toast to a better, more intelligent, more humane world soon to come with this chip.  We raised our glasses.  Eileen and Jaime were already feeling some pronounced effects and told us so, excitedly.  Jaime claimed he could clearly see in his head some of the complicated algorithms to the wafers.  We had to calm him down with another glass of spirits.  After several more hours of talk and drinks, mildly inebriated, I showed them to the beds in the old servant’s quarters.  The doctor drove home.  Toshio and Akiko headed back to the Claremont.  As for all the girls downstairs and poor Jason, so outnumbered, I left them to their fates not even wondering what might happen.  Don’t ask, don’t tell.