The Silent History: A Novel (27 page)

First, I got access to the implant wait list through a friend at the NIH. There were thousands of families on it, pages and pages of names—ten years’ worth, it seemed like. I decided to pick an unsuspecting family at the bottom of the list, and go in deep and gritty, firmly embedding myself in domestic life to get the real slice-of-life desperation, and then, whenever it all seemed most doomed, I’d reveal the true purpose of my mission: to give little Frida or Diego a free, no-strings-attached implant operation. And if the camera happened to catch the family’s subsequent tears of joy and gratitude, well, that would probably make a compelling credit sequence, wouldn’t it? I had inroads to Burnham since the
Twenty Years of Silence
miniseries, so it was easy to get him on board. I randomly put my finger down on the last page of the list and landed on the O’Connell family in Wauwatosa, Wisconsin—Judy and Clay, parents of Ampersand, an eleven-year-old silent girl.

I flew to Wisconsin with a bag of underwear and a toothbrush and let myself in to the O’Connells’ house. They were as shocked and appalled as you’d think they’d be, having a stranger barge in and set up camp in a corner of their living room behind the recliner, but that was all part of the plan. I sat down on my sleeping bag and told them about my methodology, that their sacrifice in keeping me on as an uninvited guest would help silent children everywhere, and eventually they sort of just got it. And that was the first day of a two-month stint where I did literally everything with the O’Connells. That type of total immersion is the only way to really get at the truth. For example, would Judy O’Connell have told me that she’d felt sexually abandoned by Clay ever since Ampersand was born if we weren’t both getting a Brazilian wax at Locks & Awe? She hoped that if Ampersand was cured, she’d be able to rekindle the flame that had brought her and Clay together at the bowhunting convention where they’d first met. And I never would’ve seen Clay shed the single tear that rolled down his cheek as he let me in on his dream of reading the Cabela’s fish-and-game catalog with Ampersand if we hadn’t been perched in the canopy of a massive northern pin oak waiting for a buck to wander into view. He never let on, but he was devastated by the fact that his daughter would be twenty-three before she’d make it to the top of the implant list. “Her whole childhood, just gone,” he said, drawing a bead on a magnificent twelve-point that was gnawing on a jack pine branch in the distance.

I spent most of my time with Ampersand, who was an incredible kid, very talented for someone in her condition. She competed in statewide Junior Misses Silent MMA tournaments, and I spent hours with her every day after school, sparring with her and holding the heavy bag. I rented a van so that the whole extended family could go to the state championship in Madison, where Ampersand owned her division, placing competitively in three different categories. I also did the special effects for her school’s Noh performance of
Terminator 2
, where Ampersand played one of the T-1000s in the future sequences. I became a sort of third parent to Ampersand, much to my surprise, because I’d never been a first or second parent and in fact always sort of hated children. But she was a real diamond in the rough. Never let her silence get in the way.

At the end of the eighth week of my stint, I rolled up my bag and tossed my laundry in the kitchencinerator and waited for the family to come downstairs for breakfast. I had an envelope ready on the table, and when they were all assembled there in their morning clothes I asked Judy to open it. It was so quiet in the kitchenette you could hear the autofocus servos whizzing as the cameras recorded everything. Judy scanned the certificate twice before registering any emotion at all. I’ve never seen anyone in such a state of disbelief. Clay sidled up to her and put his hand to her shoulder, and when he read the certificate he whispered, “Sweet Christ almighty,” before collapsing into Judy’s lap. Ampersand watched the whole thing, not sure what to make of her parents’ behavior. I went up and gave her a hug and showed her in the best way I could that something big was about to happen. A week and a half later, even though the wait list was already bloated with dignitaries and jai alai stars and underage models, Ampersand was out cold on a gurney in the operating room with Burnham standing over her, guiding the nanocapsule along the spline toward her left perisylvian region, where it would take root and change her life forever.

PATTI KERN

HAYWARD, CA

2036

I felt stray voltage the moment I walked into that medi-park, an ugly ecstatic clamor. A miracle, everyone said. Hook all the native speakers up to machines, snuff out their instinctual language so that they can join the great jabbering din. Never mind that what they’re communicating can’t be translated into words, that it’d be like trying to reproduce a sequoia with popsicle sticks. A night sky with yellow crayons.

I left Monte Rio for Hayward after I heard about the lottery at Nu Ware. Buried my kombucha mother, blessed the baby from afar, and set out on foot—driving would’ve been too easy—all the way down to the East Bay. I stuffed hamburger wrappers in my shoes to reroute the discharge from my heel blisters. Twice someone yelled, “Put some clothes on!” I was still wearing the cleansing glove, which was pearl white with a flap in the back for solid-waste evacuation. From a distance I guess it made me look naked. I was honoring the baby’s immaculate birth by reverting to my most natural state, physically reacquainting myself with my body. Which of course can inspire fear in self-estranged individuals.

After three days of walking, I arrived at Nu Ware Systems. The parking lot was full of parents nervously clutching their applications. Nu Ware, the war profiteer, was holding a lottery to determine who’d be accepted into the phase-two trial for their new prototype. A trial! A farce. I was emitting waves of righteous energy. The security guards at the medical park wouldn’t come near me. Neither would their dogs. Neither would any of the gathered parents, some of whom had brought their poor, oblivious infants in hopes of somehow erasing their native consciousnesses right then and there. I was witnessing the early moments of a psychic genocide.

One implant says, “My plate is empty and I am full.” And the other implant nods and says, “Yum.” And you call that a miracle. But you can’t fathom all the nuances of fullness, and the dozens of degrees of yummy. These two have spoken but they haven’t communicated—they’ve said what’s necessary, but not what’s sufficient. And this is the simplest of exchanges, nothing like actual heart-communion.

I wanted to talk to as many of the parents as I could, to let them know some people out there haven’t given up on finding a harmonious coexistence with the native speakers. But no one wanted to engage. I must’ve looked pretty irregular after my walk. Plus, the body sock always caused a mixed reaction.

“Please. Honor your children,” I said to the women in the parking lot. I pushed my way through the crowd. “They’re not defective. The only implant they need is love.”

What did I see in their collective faces? Fear, misplaced trust, future humiliation. I didn’t spite them. There was love in their hearts—they’d just chosen the easiest path. And the easiest path is almost always the incorrect path.

“Even if you end up winning the lottery,” I said, “what you’ll hear when they turn on those things won’t be the true voice of your child. Believe me. Go home. Turn off everything and just look at your children and listen with your eyes.”

One of the security guards finally approached me and grabbed me roughly by the elbow. He walked me to the edge of the medical park, asking me all sorts of questions. Why was I bothering all those sleepless parents? Was I the one who’d liberated the rats in their sensory deprivation lab a few years back? What was up with my idiotic space leotard?

All my unreciprocated love finally congealed into something more fleshy, and I just hauled off and smacked the security guard across the face. He let go of my shoulder and held his palm to his chin. I said, “Leave me be or I will grind your craving-fucked samsara-dwelling ass into a chunky paste and smear what’s left of you across a brick wall somewhere. And then I’ll lead every stray cat and dog I can find to lick it clean.” My voice wasn’t mine. It came from somewhere black and true. The security guard scuttled off.

Clearly my campaign of love needed to travel in an armored carriage. The next day was a blur. I allowed my plan to evolve on its own. I bought a few things: a rope, votive candles. Then, at a junkyard, I found a length of reinforced chain, the kind used for hauling trailers, and the oldest, fattest, ugliest padlock I’d ever seen. I unlocked it and threw the key out over a stack of flattened motorcycles.

Back at Nu Ware, I waited until the sun went down. By now the crowd had doubled, tripled. The whole parking lot was filled with tents and people, cooking meat on portable grills, sitting in collapsible chairs, coveting. I felt a rush of pristine emotion.

I slowly made my way to the doors, the lock and chain thrown over my shoulder. The news of my arrival traveled quickly, but I was quicker. I made it to the front doors of Nu Ware, which were tinted black with guilt, and before the security guards could arrive I’d wrapped the chain around my body and through the door handles, then again so that I was wedged against the glass.

The same security guard approached with his gun drawn. I held up the lock for him and everyone to see, threaded it through the chain, and clicked it closed, and then he shot me.

I awoke who knows how long after that. Apparently his gun was a cattle prod or something, because I was as alive as ever, more alive, successfully blocking the entrance to the lab. The crowd didn’t look as angry as I thought they would. Maybe the parents knew that I was suffering so they wouldn’t have to. Maybe they were already grateful.

The parking lot wasn’t as bustling as it had been earlier. Then I noticed the remaining crowd was filing off forty feet to my right. Apparently the building had another doorway, where the parents were assembling. Smiling, excited, deluded. “We won, we won,” some of them were saying. A few of the older brothers and sisters of the silent infants came up to me and poked at me with branches. They dumped crumbs out of their potato chip bags so squirrels and crows would root around by my feet.

I was where I needed to be. I wasn’t going anywhere.

CALVIN ANDERSEN

NEWARK, NJ

2036

Dr. Burnham turned on the prototype, and then he said my name. “Calvin.” It was a sound I recognized from before the implant. Maybe more than any other sound. But all my life I had thought of it as a song, or part of one. It was just a note that people would sound out whenever they aimed their faces at me and made the timbral breaths that I now know are sentences. But when Dr. Burnham turned on the prototype and said, “Calvin,” it wasn’t music anymore. It was a force, a thing, a heavy weight in the center of my mind. “Calvin” was a sound-picture that other people could use to represent me even when I wasn’t in the room. It was a name. My name. I knew this instantly, somehow. Early on, in the first few tests, I would sometimes hear a word before the Soul Amp could catch up, and it would sit there in my mind, this unknown thing that was part music, part abstraction. I don’t have the means to describe it. But “Calvin,” I knew immediately, was me, and I was it. We were inseparable, my body and this idea that could be transmitted through the air on a human breath. Dr. Burnham said, “Calvin, can you understand me?” And I could understand him. I saw his brow arching to a peak and his lips slightly parted and I knew what he was asking, and when I said, “Yes,” it came out so suddenly that I nearly choked on it. I laughed, and Dr. Burnham’s face showed a great cloud of anxiety passing.

The time of discovery that followed was overwhelming. Dr. Burnham would take me around the examination room and have me name all of the objects. He’d hold up a notebook and I would say, “Notebook.” And he’d point to the clock and I would say, “That’s a clock.” I’m at a loss to tell you how it felt to look at a thing and know its name. The power of it rippled through me. I felt like I’d been running all my life in a deep trench, only able to see the mud walls around me, and that the implant had lifted me up above the treetops and allowed me to soar freely in the sky, where I could take in the whole endless horizon. Everything had the feel of magic, which scared me. I told this to Dr. Burnham. He just expanded his entire face and then contracted it, and told me I’d understand in time. He told me that the joy of discovery would fade, and that I should just revel in the newness of the world for as long as possible. It was an easy thing to do. The world had sharpness, edges, handles. The connections between things became clearer. The categories, the relationships. Everything was vivid. So much so that it sometimes hurt my head. But in a good way. I was reveling. I reveled.

At the end of the first week Dr. Burnham suggested that I try out the Soul Amp “in the wild.” That was his term for downtown Rahway, a place I had never visited. It was not actually very wild, but still it was amazing. I walked down Cherry Street, listening to the conversations happening all around me. There was something so easy about the way people traded their thoughts with one another. It was frightening and exhilarating both at the same time.

I went through a door and sat on a stool. A waiter with a shaved head and a bushy beard approached and leaned his head toward me. I opened my mouth and said, “Tek 9.” I wasn’t entirely sure what a Tek 9 was until the man placed the highball glass neatly on the bar and poured in the shots of Pisco and tritium flakes. It was the same drink that my roommate at the assistance house served at parties. Without even thinking about it, I had gotten the thing I wanted. I drank it quickly and asked for another.

After my second drink I saw a particular talking woman across the room. I have had intercourse only with silent women and I have always wanted to see if it is different to be with a woman who talks. I’ve always been attracted to women who talk, because they are much more difficult to read than silent women. Their faces are always working hard to keep something hidden, whereas when I look at a silent woman’s face it is like all of her insides are spraying out from every pore in her head. This woman in the Rahway Gizzard Gulp had very expressive, perfectly symmetrical cheeks that flushed to punctuate her thoughts. She looked like an apple with eyes. I watched her from across the room for a long time as she talked to another woman, who had recently lost someone important to her. The woman I was observing examined her friend’s expressions with the same level of scrutiny. She seemed capable of great depths of empathy, which I found powerful and stimulating. I would have been happy to just sit there watching, but I knew that Dr. Burnham would be disappointed if I didn’t approach her and strike up a conversation.