The Vestigial Heart Read online

  “What are those figures they keep bumping into, they look like mannequins.”

  “They’re for practicing socialization.” She stops for a moment as if she can’t be bothered to explain it. “They stage a situation and the kids have to practice until they learn to behave properly automatically. It’s one of the most innovative activities in the school, they call it social-conduct training; they recommended it for Celia and it’s been good for her, in just a few days she’s caught up with the rest.”

  It occurs to Silvana that it’s like learning to drive, only that instead of controlling a machine that navigates among other machines, it’s navigation among people that is automated, but again she holds back the comment. Who knows, maybe this practice isn’t so stupid, considering how bad things have gotten. Nothing could be more pathetic than the statues she’s encountered recently in her classes; maybe mechanizing certain things would unblock them.

  The monitor is switched off and ROBul communicates that Celia has left school and, taking into account the state of the traffic, it estimates that she will be home in seventeen minutes.

  “Perfect, I can wait until she gets here,” Silvana jumps in, anticipating a possible intervention on Lu’s part.

  “We agreed the therapy would start next week. I haven’t said anything to the little girl yet.”

  “Don’t worry, we’ll start the sessions like we said, today will just be an introduction. And do me a favor, don’t say anything about therapy. She must have been through enough already with her illness without people calling her ill again now.”

  “How should I introduce you then?”

  “Leave it to me.” She’s taken control of the situation and, for the next few minutes, she hopes to push the conversation toward what she’s interested in.

  This way she finds out that the teacher has labeled Celia a rebel because, ignoring his advice, she insists on competing with machines. She wastes time playing at being a calculator and a spellchecker instead of making an effort to learn the content she’s been assigned. Among her classmates, of course, she’s become known for her skills of deduction, which has made her a leader. But that doesn’t help her academic attainment, which is very poor.

  It was the EDUsys that started sending out alarm signals because she didn’t use it as she was supposed to. Apparently she hasn’t taken to the net’s search mechanisms and, faced with a question, she stops and thinks about it, trying to make up an answer, instead of trusting what other people have thought before. “Imagine if we all had to start from scratch!” the teacher exclaimed, annoyed. He himself doesn’t have most of the knowledge they are working on, he told her with pride, that’s what EDUsys is for, lesson planning and doing the tedious work of evaluation, writing reports and keeping a record of each student. It also suggests to the teacher where he should invest his time in order to effectively facilitate interaction between the group and the system; but it’s him who makes decisions, and the delicate subjects, like negotiating with other schools to hold joint sessions on advanced topics, are managed by him personally. It’s a cutting-edge school, capable of reprogramming activities in real time according to how the day is going; she won’t find a better one, and she doesn’t want to look for one either.

  Caught up in the academic issues, Lu won’t let herself be pushed into the emotional and familial ambit where Silvana wants to take her. On the contrary, she makes it very clear that Silvana’s being hired to help her daughter adapt to school. Nothing more. Just making her a little more docile will solve most of her problems. She has no doubt there is a great range of techniques available to mold character, and hopes that Silvana will be able to put them into practice. Indeed, she imagines Silvana will have to work hand in hand with ROBbie, because everyone knows that if the child turns out to be a rule-breaker, the robot must learn to restrain them, to counteract their impulses, put them on the right track … Robots are customizable for a reason, they have to complement their PROPs to make a good team.

  That’s the last thing Silvana expected to hear, that she’ll have to train a robot! It’s really hard to bite her tongue and not let her different point of view spill out. She’s afraid that, if she contradicts the woman, she’ll be fired before she’s started, and she would at least like to meet Celia. What an ordeal she must be going through with this mother, the poor thing. Or maybe not, in which case, she would have to give up the job herself. Although it’s interesting for her investigations, there’s always a limit.

  She glances at her watch impatiently and, as if responding to the signal, ROBul comes in to announce the girl’s arrival. They stand up at the same time, but only Lu goes to meet her daughter, having gestured to Silvana to wait a moment.

  Perhaps because she’s been staring at the opening for some time, partly expectantly and partly because she’s seeking a refuge from the offensive yellow walls, or maybe it’s because the dark silhouette that suddenly appears there is nice to look at, Celia’s shy entrance, full of curiosity, makes a great impression on Silvana’s retina and beyond. Without the turban and with her shining hair tied back in a braid, she looks taller and more slender than she’d imagined from the pictures. What’s more, since she’s used to seeing her students’ rigid and inexpressive bodies, she finds the flexibility with which she moves fascinating. Behind her, Lu initiates the introduction:

  “Silvana was interested to meet you, she’s …”

  “I’m an emotions masseuse,” she says, standing up. “It sounds a bit weird right? But we call it that.”

  Celia’s black pupils seem to X-ray her, stopping her in her tracks: she mustn’t make a wrong move.

  “She’ll help you with your studies,” Lu intervenes, uncomfortable with the silence and making it clear that she does not intend to sit down.

  “Yes, of course, but you’ll have to help me out as well.”

  A note of naivety cracks Celia’s serious stance, and the little girl she really is peeks through:

  “Pardon?”

  “You see, I’m interested in people who lived a long time ago and maybe you can help me to understand them better,” she admits, ignoring what Lu may or may not think about it.

  “Didn’t you say you were a masseuse?”

  “Yes, but that has a different meaning now …”—she searches for the right words—“than before you traveled through time, I mean.”

  She’s obviously said the right thing, because, abandoning all her reticence, the girl comes closer and asks, curiously:

  “You know how to travel through time?”

  Lu’s impatience has reached its limit.

  “You can talk about that during your sessions. Silvana was waiting to see you, but she has to go.”

  If she wants to come back she would do well to follow this instruction, and it’s come at an opportune moment, because she has no idea how to answer. As she moves toward the door, she notices that Celia wants to follow, but her mother stops her, and the girl resigns herself to a goodbye wave, which she hurriedly returns.

  Against all odds, Lu doesn’t let her leave accompanied only by ROBul; instead she joins them and, before Silvana gets onto the platform, she holds her back for a second: she wants to ask her something. Silvana didn’t see this coming, before they had time to kill and now there’s something urgent to talk about.

  “I just got a communication from the clinic saying we’ve been invited to a get-together …”—she looks at her ROB’s embedded screen uneasily—“an inter-century adoption get-together. Do you know what it’s for?”

  “Well, no … but I have some idea,” she rectifies quickly. “It’s good to meet other children who are in the same situation. For them and for their mothers. They tend to have similar problems, and seeing how other people have resolved them can help.”

  “So you would advise us to go.” She looks concerned. “Could you come with us?”

  “Of course, I’d love to.” It would be an opportunity to make contact with other unfrozen teenagers, she thinks, before
immediately withdrawing the thought, as if it were a betrayal of Celia.

  After reserving Sunday two weeks from now in her calendar, confirming that they have four sessions before then, and finally saying goodbye to Lu, Silvana allows herself to think over what has just happened. What kind of commitment has she made with this child that could possibly stop her from meeting other kids? It makes no sense at all, but she felt it. She must have gotten so involved with obsolete sentiments that she’s entered into their orbit herself. But her reading isn’t the cause, it’s more likely the black pupils that had captivated her, clearly communicating that all their fragile hopes rested with her. She feels she can’t fail them and, at the same time, she feels she’s in unknown territory where her own baggage won’t be of much help. She’s the newcomer here.

  15

  7:34 p.m. – I observe that the Doctor is still absorbed in the CraftER monitor. Forty-eight minutes have passed without him giving me any orders, not even to curse at me. I speculate that he may have fallen asleep. I move closer, making sure not to make too much noise and I confirm that he is still consumed by what is happening on the screen, where the same boy as always is talking to the robot copy of me. This project takes up all of his attention to the point that he has practically abandoned the dueling table. And today there is a face-to-face soirée at the club.

  7:38 p.m. – A couple of minutes more and I will notify him. I calculate that this way at 8:00 p.m. he will start getting ready and thus will arrive on time, not like the other day when I notified him with the correct amount of time to spare and, since he repeatedly shot me down before paying attention to what I was saying, he was late and I was severely reprimanded.

  7:40 p.m. – I emit: “Time to get ready for the face-to-face soirée, Doctor.”

  “What?” He takes his eyes off the monitor for a second and fixes them on Alpha+’s clock. “It’s not even eight yet! Maybe rust is slowing you down, you heap of scrap, but not me. Go on, start getting ready, and shut up, I’ll be ready when I need to be.”

  7:42 p.m. – The first round went as expected. I will get out of his sight and in two minutes I will come back.

  That oaf has a talent for bad timing, a failure that is difficult to predict and even more difficult to fix. The damn thing had to interrupt just when ROBco was informing Leo of everything he’d collected on his journey around the data banks. Now he’ll have to catch up with what they were saying a minute ago and at the same time watch the live images, a tiring task that requires great concentration. This is an area in which he does notice the loss of his faculties, before he could follow up to four recordings at once. And now … he’s not even capable of beating Hug 4’Tune in two battles in a row. Since the monk riddle he hasn’t won any … He needs this kid to hurry up with the prosthesis. It seems that his thought process, caught up in a vertiginous decadence, is a funnel that always leads to the same place.

  On the screen that’s transmitting recorded images ROBco is saying:

  “… Following your instruction that ‘a genius is someone who looks and lives beyond their time,’ I went to the inter-century adoption clinic.” Leo’s clueless look makes him add: “Explanation: Children who were frozen because they suffered from incurable diseases are now cured and put up for adoption. Exactly what you asked for, right? People from the turn of the century transplanted into the present.”

  The Doctor, born in the first half of the twenty-first century, is sure everyone from his generation isn’t a genius just because they were born then. What drivel. Hoping that the boy won’t buy it, he’s surprised by the answer:

  “Wow, you’re a genius! But they must be really little, right? Have they lived long enough to really be considered people of the last century?”

  They were doing so well introducing records taken from artists, inventors and truly unique people, and now they’re losing their way with this digression into kids’ stuff, which was never a more appropriate phrase.

  “Details: Lately they have been unfreezing fairly old ones, eleven or twelve years old, there is even a girl who is thirteen. Proposal: Next week there is a get-together for adopted children; if you authorize it, I will go.”

  Alpha+ interrupts at a bad time again, and receives another rebuff, while the screen continues showing their wayward dialogue:

  “Yes, of course I authorize it. I’ll go too.”

  Having reached the end of his tether, the Doctor interferes without thinking it over, which is against the rules.

  “Leo, stop that rubbish right now and get to work.”

  The kid looks at him, worried, from the live feed screen, and he realizes he was watching him on the recorded screen. It’s obvious that he’s been back to work for a while. He redirects his ill-timed interference as best he can, and ends up making him walk back his promise to go to the gathering. Instead of running around after snotty little kids with no substance, Leo should introduce the Doctor’s own records: he really is a verified genius. He’s gone overboard with the bravado, and in the end he has to accept Leo’s rather reasonable argument that the idea is to complement his creativity, not duplicate it.

  8:00 p.m. – “If you do not let me change your clothes and smarten you up right now, Doctor, you will be late.”

  For once, Alpha+ has been opportune, showing him to be a busy man who has to cut off the communication—one that he pretends is insignificant but deep down bothers him—in order to attend to more important matters.

  As he is used to dressing scruffily around the house, agreeing only to bathe himself and be massaged, but never to be shaved or have his nails cut, the task of getting him ready to go out has become extremely tiresome. Every time he feels less inclined to do it. What’s the point anyway? To go around showing off his wrinkled skin? It wouldn’t be worth it if it weren’t that these face-to-face gatherings are his domain, the last bastion where he can reign happily. In long-distance battles, his brain has started to beat itself into retreat, but face-to-face, his aplomb and his gift for simulation and trickery glow brighter than ever. He’s ground everybody down and beaten their will. In betting games he has no rival.

  He engineers all manner of strategies in order to undermine the spirit of his opponents. Just today he considered painting a red mark on his forehead to intimidate Hug 4’Tune, by reminding him of his spectacular defeat, but it occurred to him that he would also be lowering himself by awarding it so much importance, and so decided against the idea.

  Despite having gotten him into a presentable state in record time and expertly driven him to the club in the aero’car, Alpha+ receives a historic scolding for having arrived seven minutes early. He doesn’t stop cursing it and calling it a saboteur during the two detours he makes it perform to waste time, far from the entrance. When has the great master ever arrived before his acolytes? This has never happened to him before. While it could be him losing his flair, this ROB certainly isn’t learning anything. Gatew will hear about this.

  When he finally gives the order to approach the entrance, it angers him to discover that a line has formed, so he sends Alpha+ to find out what’s going on.

  9:14 p.m. – “They are asking for a password to enter, Doctor.”

  “WHAAAT???” His cry is so loud and sustained that everyone becomes aware of his arrival.

  Immediately Hug 4’Tune comes over to explain. He says that it’s part of the activities they’ve programmed for today: the speed with which the code is deciphered determines the position that you will occupy at the poker table. It’s vengeance for the person who’s in penultimate place in the ranking, it was his turn to organize and he’s decided to use it to his advantage; he has the rulebook on his side. He shouts out a number from zero to twenty over the speaker system and a number must be called out in response. It’s like a raffle: a simple guessing game. It must be something trivial, because the man in charge is the slowest of the group, but up to now only two players have been able to enter.

  The Doctor’s initial anger has turned into imp
atience and he cuts Hug off brusquely: he should limit himself to giving the details and forget about the backstory. The boy shows signs of being hurt, but soon pulls himself together and continues. One of the players has had a stroke of luck responding “six” when the number twelve was called; then everyone started halving the numbers, but the door didn’t open; until six was called and some fool tried the strategy again answering “three” and, to everyone’s surprise, was let through. Next they called seventeen and seven, but there was no luck with the prime numbers; and the last number to be called was one, which was also answered unsuccessfully. There’s only one girl in front of them and then it will be their turn.

  Just then he hears “nineteen” over the speaker and the girl replies “thirteen.” There is no response, apart from a metallic voice from behind them that takes them by surprise.

  9:20 p.m. – “If you want to prepare, the next number will be nine.”

  This causes some commotion, since it’s prohibited to accept a ROB’s help, and, faced with the Doctor’s threatening stare, Alpha+ feels obliged to clarify that the order of the numbers coming from the speaker has nothing to do with the correct response, revealing it has not broken any rules.

  Unaware of what’s going on around it, the speaker emits an implacable “nine,” and the Doctor, surprised by his ROB’s correct guess, gives Hug 4’Tune a complicit look just as the boy answers “four” and is invited to go inside. From his apologetic gesture he’s not sure whether the strategy of dividing by two and rounding down worked for him by chance or if the son of a bitch had deciphered the code and was playing an act. He shouldn’t get worked up: a duel’s a duel. Puzzled by what has just happened, the Doctor has let two numbers pass by, and only tunes back in when he hears Alpha+ say:

  9:23 p.m. – “The next number will be five.”

  As fast as he can the Doctor pulls up all the examples he has: twelve/six, six/three, nine/four, and now five/ …? Like an epiphany, he sees the five/ superimposed on the nine/, both of them the same length, four letters. Ah, nine/four, that’s it, “nine” has four letters, and “six” has three, and “twelve” … the speaker hasn’t yet finished pronouncing the word “five” when he replies “four,” and they show him inside.