Unwind: UnWholly Part 17

His questions make Roberta impatient. "I'm sorry," she tells him, "but I don't deal in the unanswerable."

"So you don't believe in souls?" Cam asks her.

"I didn't say that, but I don't try to answer things that don't have tangible data. If people have souls, then you must have one, proved by the mere fact that you're alive."

"But what if there is no 'I' inside me? What if I'm just flesh going through the motions, with nothing inside?"

Roberta considers this, or at least pretends to. "Well, if that were the case, I doubt you'd be asking these questions." She thinks for a moment. "If you must have a construct, then think of it this way: Whether consciousness is implanted in us by something divine, or whether it is created by the efforts of our brains, the end result is the same. We are."

"Until we are not," Cam adds.

Roberta nods. "Yes, until we are not." And she leaves him with none of his questions answered.

Physical therapy has evolved into full-on training sessions with machines, free weights, and cardio. Kenny is the closest thing Cam has to a friend, unless you count Roberta and the guards who call him "sir." They talk openly about things that Roberta would probably want to monitor.

"So the great girlfriend search was a bust, huh?" Kenny asks while Cam pushes himself on the treadmill.

"We have not yet found a consort for the creature," Cam says, mimicking Roberta's accent.

Kenny chuckles. "You got a right to be choosy," he tells Cam. "You shouldn't accept anything less than what you want."

Cam reaches the end of his workout, and the machine begins its slowdown. "Even if I can't have what I want?"

"All the more reason to demand it," Kenny advises. "Because then maybe they'll get closer to the mark."

Sound logic, perhaps, although Cam suspects it will do nothing but set him up for disappointment.

That night he goes alone to the tabletop computer screen in the living room and starts digging through photo files. Most of it is random stuff-the images Roberta still tests him on, although not as frequently as before. None of it is what he's looking for. He finds a file that features the head shots of all the girls who interviewed. Two hundred smiling, pretty faces, with attached resumes. After a while, they all begin to look alike.

"You won't find her in there."

He turns to see Roberta standing on the spiral staircase, watching him. She descends the rest of the way.

"Deleted?" he asks.

"Should be," Roberta says, "but no."

She touches the screen, logs in, and opens up files that had been locked to Cam. In just a few seconds she drags out not just one, but three photos and sighs. "Is this who you were looking for?"

Cam looks at the pictures. "Yes." The other two photos, like the one he had already seen, seem to have been taken without her knowledge. He wonders why Roberta is now willing to show him these pictures of the girl in the wheelchair, when she was so much against it before.

"Bus," says Cam. "She was on a bus."

"Her bus never made it to its destination. It was run off the road and hit a tree."

Cam shakes his head. "I didn't get that memory." Then he looks to Roberta. "Tell me about her."

20 * Nelson

The Juvey-cop turned parts pirate has outdone himself this time! Not one, but two AWOLs!

Nelson attributes his success to the ingenuity of his tactics. He caught the girl at a food court by posing as a resistance worker. Gullibility has always been his greatest ally. The girl's hair isn't quite red, as Divan requested, but it could be strawberry blond in a certain light. As for the boy, Nelson used the girl as bait, securing her to a drainpipe near an abandoned factory in an umber neighborhood that was known to be AWOL-infested. He waited until her cries drew someone from the dark recesses of the building, and he watched as the boy freed her. Then, from his vantage point in a building across the street, Nelson tranq'd them both as they ran.

His DNA a.n.a.lyzer pegged them both as known AWOLs, which is always better for his conscience than catching kids who actually had a life to go back to.

The drive back to Divan's auto dealers.h.i.+p is filled with antic.i.p.ation for Nelson. He was never an overachiever, so doing twice the job with half the effort is a rare thing indeed!

When he arrives, Divan is surprised but thrilled to see him so soon after the last delivery. "What a catch," he exclaims, and for once, doesn't even d.i.c.ker-he gives Nelson the price he asks. Perhaps because Nelson doesn't ask for his trophies this time. The girl's eyes have fading purple pigment injections that are just plain ugly, and Nelson never did see the boy's eyes. He rarely covets what he doesn't see.

In a rare show of grat.i.tude, Divan treats Nelson to dinner in the kind of restaurant he hasn't frequented in quite a while.

"Business must be picking up," Nelson comments.

"Business is business," Divan says, "but prospects are good."

Nelson can tell that the black marketeer has something on his mind. He watches and waits as Divan dips a spoon into his coffee, stirring slowly, methodically. "At our last encounter," Divan says, "I spoke to you of rumors, did I not?"

"Yes, but you failed to share them with me," Nelson says, drinking his own coffee much more quickly than Divan. "Are these rumors something I'll enjoy hearing?"

"Not at first, I'm sure. I've heard it spoken of more than once now. I didn't want to bring it to your attention until I had heard it from more than one source." He continues to stir his coffee. Not drinking, just pondering the swirling liquid. "They are saying that the Akron AWOL is still alive."

Nelson feels the little hairs on the back of his neck rise and embed themselves in his collar.

"That's impossible."

"Yes, yes-you're probably right." Then Divan puts down his spoon. "However, did anyone actually see or identify the body?"

"I wasn't at Happy Jack. I imagine it was a mess."

"Exactly," says Divan slowly. "A mess." Then he picks up his coffee and takes a long, slow sip. "Which means that any number of things could have happened." Then he puts down his coffee and leans closer. "I believe these rumors may be true. Do you have any idea how much the parts of the Akron AWOL would go for? People will pay obscene amounts for a piece of him." Then he smiles. "I'll pay you ten, maybe twenty times what I paid you for today's catch."

Nelson tries not to react, but he knows that by not saying anything, his greed has expressed itself. But for him, this particular moment of greed is not about money. Bringing in Connor La.s.siter wouldn't just be about the cash, it would even out a very imbalanced score.

It's as if Divan can read his mind. "I am telling you this before any of my other suppliers. It would bring me great pleasure if you were the one to catch him, considering your history with him."

"Thank you," Nelson says, genuinely grateful for the head start.

"Word has it that there are some sizable AWOL populations in hiding. It would be wise to find those places, as there's a good chance he's working for the Anti-Divisional Resistance now."

"If he's alive, I'll catch him and bring him to you," Nelson tells him. "One thing, though."

Divan raises an eyebrow. "Yes?"

Nelson levels his stare, making it clear that this is nonnegotiable, and says, "I get his eyes."

Part Four.

Leviathan.

SURGEONS HARVEST ORGANS AFTER EUTHANASIA.

by Michael Cook, May 14, 2010, BioEdge web journal How often is this going on in Belgium and the Netherlands? Bioethics blogger Wesley Smith drew our attention to a conference report by Belgian transplant surgeons about organ procurement after euthanasia. As the doctors from Antwerp University Hospital explained in the 2006 World Transplant Congress (in a section called "economics"), they killed a consenting forty-six-year-old woman with a neurological condition and took her liver, two kidneys, and islets.

In a 2008 report, the doctors explained that three patients had been euthanased between 2005 and 2007. . . .

At the time of writing the article, the doctors were enthusiastic about the potential for organ donation in countries where euthanasia is legal. . . .

The curious thing about this is how little publicity this has received, even though the Belgian doctors published their achievement in the world's leading journal of transplant surgery. ~ Transplantation, July 15, 2006; Transplantation, July 27, 2008.

Full article is available at:.

http://www.bioedge.org/index.php/bioethics/bioethics_article/8991/.

21 * Lev.

It's a very rare thing that a clapper doesn't clap, because by the time one gets to the stage of being willing to make one's own blood explosive enough to take out a whole building, that soul is far beyond the point of no return.

There had still been a spark of light in Levi Jedediah Calder, however. Enough to ignite a powerful change of heart.

The clapper who didn't clap.

It made him famous. His face was known nationwide and beyond. WHY, LEV, WHY? magazine headlines read, with his life story spread out like a centerfold, ready to be ogled and gobbled by a world greedy for dirt and personal tragedy.

"He was always the perfect son," his parents were quoted as saying more than once. "We'll never understand it." To see their teary interviews, you'd think Lev had actually blown himself up and truly was dead. Well, maybe in a way he was, because the Levi Calder he had been on the day he was sent to be t.i.thed no longer existed.

Almost a year after his capture at Happy Jack Harvest Camp, Lev sits in a detention center rec room on a rainy Sunday morning. He is not a resident of the detention center; he's a visitor on a mission of mercy.

Across from him sits a kid in an orange jumpsuit, his arms crossed. Between them are the sorry ruins of a jigsaw puzzle left from the last person to sit at the table, one of many unfinished projects that plague this place. It's February, and the walls are halfheartedly hung with Valentine's Day decorations that are supposed to add a sense of festivity but just seem s.a.d.i.s.tic, because in an all-boys' detention center, only a select few are finding romance this year.

"So you're supposed to have something useful to say to me?" the kid in the orange jumpsuit says, all att.i.tude, tattoos, and body odor. "What are you, like, twelve?"

"Actually, I'm fourteen."

The kid smirks. "Well, good for you. Now get out of my sight. I don't need spiritual guidance from baby Jesus." Then he reaches out and flicks up Lev's hair, which, over the past year, has grown to his shoulders in a very Jesus-like way.

Lev is not bothered. He gets this all the time. "We still have half an hour. Maybe we should talk about why you're in here."

"I'm in here because I got caught," the punk says. Then his eyes narrow, and he takes a closer look at Lev. "You look familiar. Do I know you?"

Lev doesn't answer. "I would guess you're sixteen, right? You're labeled a 'divisional risk,' you know that, don't you? It means you're at risk for being unwound."

"What, you think my mother would unwind me? She wouldn't dare. Who'd pay her friggin' bills?" Then he rolls up a sleeve, revealing that the tattoos visible on his wrists go all the way up to his shoulder. Bones and brutality painted on his flesh. "Besides, who's gonna want these arms?"

"You'd be surprised," Lev tells him. "People actually pay extra for ink as good as yours."

The punk is taken aback by the thought, then studies Lev again. "Are you sure I don't know you? You live here in Cleveland?"

Lev sighs. "You don't know me, you just know of me."

Another moment, then the punk's eyes go wide with recognition. "No way! You're that t.i.the kid! I mean the clapper! I mean the one who didn't blow up! You were all over the news!"

"Right. But we're not here to talk about me."

Suddenly the punk seems like a different kid. "Yeah, yeah, I know. I'm sorry I was an a.s.s before. So, like, why aren't you in jail?"

"Plea bargain. Not allowed to talk about it," Lev tells him. "Let's just say talking to you is part of my punishment."

"d.a.m.n!" says the kid, grinning. "They give you a penthouse suite, too?"

"Seriously, I'm not allowed to talk about it . . . but I can listen to anything you want to tell me."

"Well, all right. I mean, if you really wanna hear it."

And then the kid launches into a confessional life story that he probably never told anyone before. It's the one positive thing about Lev's notoriety-it gets him respect among those who usually don't give it.

These kids in detention always want to know all about him, but the terms of the settlement were very clear. With so much sympathy from some people, and so much anger from others, it was "in the public's best interest" to get Lev out of the news as quickly as possible and keep him from becoming the national voice against unwinding. In the end, he was sentenced to house arrest, complete with a tracking chip embedded in his shoulder, and 520 hours of community service every year, until his eighteenth birthday. His service consisted of picking up trash in local parks and ministering to wayward youth about the ills of drugs and violent behavior. In return for the relative lightness of his sentence, he agreed to give them all the inside information he knew about clappers and other terrorist activities. That part was easy-he knew very little beyond his own clapper cell, and the other members were all dead. He was also put under a permanent gag order. He could never speak in public about unwinding, t.i.thing, and what happened at Happy Jack. He was basically sentenced to disappear.

"We should call you the little mermaid," his brother Marcus had joked, "because they let you magically walk, in exchange for your voice."

So now every Sunday, Pastor Dan picks Lev up at Marcus's town house, and they share their own brand of spirituality with kids in juvenile detention.

At first it was painfully awkward, but within a few months Lev became very good at reaching into the hearts of strangers, figuring out what made them tick, and then defusing them before the tick became a countdown.

"The Lord works in mischievous ways," Pastor Dan once told him, taking an old adage and giving it a necessary tweak. If Lev has any heroes, they would be Pastor Dan and his brother Marcus. Marcus not just for standing up to their parents, but also for going the distance and taking Lev in, even though it got him cut off entirely from their family. They were both outcasts now from a family so rigid in their beliefs that they'd rather pretend Marcus and Lev were dead than face the choices the two had made.

"It's their loss," Marcus often tells Lev, but he can't say it without looking away to hide the sorrow it makes him feel.