The Vestigial Heart Page 2

  3

  SILVANA

  If they hadn’t known her, the people who crossed her path in the corridors of the ComU would have seen a mature woman, getting on for fifty, blonde, with watery eyes and that falsely careless appearance of someone who knows they possess an innate beauty. Everyone does know her, however, and above all what they see in her is the wife of Baltasar, leader of the “Stop the Boomerang” movement, and the reason they’re all there. People know she’s a woman of character, an experienced fighter, and that no one will ever get a taste of her … despite her having a smile for everyone, touching a nerve with her contagious optimism, and awakening in more than one person the thrill that anything is possible.

  On the way to work, aside from greeting people here and there, she only stops to collect her order from the bibliographic agency. While it hands over two of the volumes she’s ordered, the dispensing machine advises her with its metallic voice that it hasn’t been able to get ahold of The World of Yesterday by Zweig yet, because there aren’t any copies in the Public Collection and it’s had to ask for the digitalization rights. As long as there are no problems from the owner she’ll be able to collect it in a couple of days.

  This small inconvenience revives her desire to dive into those old books and forget about the time and day. Or, even better, get the day to forget about her. It’s not exactly that she dislikes the emotional stimulation sessions, on the contrary, within an hour she’ll be physically and spiritually immersed in it and she won’t be able to imagine having done anything better in her whole life. But in this particular moment she gets the impression that Gandhi’s biography and, especially, that little book with the suggestive title, A Man, by some author called Fallaci, will provide the key to unlocking the feeling that she’s spent months searching for, and that, up to now, has proved so elusive. Yesterday, she thought perhaps that feeling was not captured by the concepts and categories she was working with, and that the descriptions of twentieth-century people would help her discover the elements that were lacking.

  When she goes into the health center she heads straight to ask Sebastian, the incident manager for her unit, if she can skip the clinical case session this afternoon. Sebastian, the only founding member who has known her since before she got together with Baltasar, puts his arm around her shoulders and invites her to sit down for a while. He wants to make sure that everything’s going well and, briefly, to find out what’s on her mind.

  “Don’t worry, there haven’t been any emergencies in your area.” He sits down at touching distance: his legs are never-ending and his torso is slightly inclined to act as a counterweight. “But we like you to be there, and lately you’ve not shown up so often.”

  “I’ve shown up plenty of times over the years.” Her tone is firm without being scornful. There’s no way she’ll let her afternoon of reading be snatched away now that she knows it’s within reach.

  “That’s a pity. You were the one who pioneered this, the heart and soul of the discussions.” Their arms, very close, lightly brush against each other. “You said that dissecting a case, comparing the latest scientific findings with clinical experience, confronting different opinions … basically, poking holes in one another’s arguments”—he pretends he’s going to prod her, and instead strokes her breast—“for young people it was the best kind of education, remember?”

  “Yes, I still think so. It’s just that those young people have grown up, and now it’s up to the next generation to take up the gauntlet. I have other challenges now, other projects …”

  “Damn! What a way to talk. Next you’ll be telling us you’re joining the corporations on the other side.”

  “I need some time, Seb.” She lowers her tone an octave and searches for his pupils with her own eyes. “I’ve been chasing after the same idea for months and, finally, it seems I’m about to get to the bottom of it.”

  “You and your dreams, Silvana. In thirty years you’ve not changed a bit.” Now it’s him who takes her by the arms and locks his pupils onto hers. “When I look at you I still see the eighteen-year-old girl ready to take the world by storm.”

  Suddenly immersed in an enchanting musical score, a duet engraved on their bodies on a level beyond thought, they stand up and embrace, their lips soaring toward each other until they meet. For a few seconds they spin, little by little, savoring the moment, before they sit back down and resume the conversation as if nothing had happened.

  “Of course I’ll take the world by storm! Maybe not today’s, but the world of a couple of centuries ago.” She crosses her legs seductively.

  And he takes the bait:

  “Go on then, tell me, which new feeling has you in its thrall now?” His hand is on her leg and her reaction is condescending. “‘New’ is a turn of phrase. Come on, I haven’t forgotten that you’re only interested in anachronistic emotions, and better still extinct ones.”

  “I’d love to explain it to you another day when I have more time. Today I’m wanted elsewhere.” His hand is on top of hers, stroking it. “But I will tell you that it was an affection that required distance; weird, isn’t it? Exactly the opposite of what we preach here. Neither beauty nor physical capabilities, neither touch nor any other sensation have anything to do with it. And don’t get the wrong idea, it’s got nothing to do with an electronic connection either.” She’s so serious that he instinctively withdraws his arm and attempts to meet her on an intellectual level.

  “But was it attractive or repulsive? Dominant or …? Where does it fall on the psychogenetic scale?”

  “I’ve not managed to situate it yet, I’m still trying to work out its exact composition. I’m sure the frontal lobe, the amygdala and part of the limbic system are involved, because there are elements of ambition, respect and a capacity for suffering. It would be categorized as an attraction if it weren’t that, oddly enough, it doesn’t permit bodies to get too close to each other. Maybe it’s because it tended to flow from a younger person to an older one … with some exceptions, of course, which always complicates things. So you see, Seb, it doesn’t fit in our frame of reference.” She places both feet on the floor, ready to stand up.

  “And is there any trace of it left in the current population?” Absorbed in the topic through those magnetic eyes, he resists abandoning the subject.

  “Not one. That’s why I’m not sure I’ll be able to get my head around it without references, context, the right biochemistry, perhaps even without the appropriate organs.”

  “Has it really been extinct so long that the substrate has atrophied? Is it not susceptible to your stimulation programs?” The questions flow out of him.

  “That would be nice, but I’m afraid it won’t work. It’s got nothing to do with jealousy or honor, which are much closer to us on the evolutionary ladder. Nor with patience …” She stands, mechanically kisses him on the forehead and leaves the room without looking back at him. “Mine has been stimulated too much.”

  She knows a decent group of candidates is waiting for her in ESZ, desperate, as always, to offer up their skin in order for her to open up new horizons for them with her hands. She used to be so proud, but now she finds herself asking more and more often what right she has to change their lives. They come because they want to, of course, almost certainly unsatisfied with the day-to-day monotony of their work and electronic relationships. They’ve been told or they imagine that experiencing new feelings will be fun and, no matter how much they’re warned, they won’t believe that they’ll be taking a leap into the unknown. She threw herself into it because of her beliefs, seeing it as a necessary first step on the way to recuperating lost emotions, but most volunteers aren’t looking for that. It’s hard enough to get them to understand that here “e-motion” doesn’t refer to the movement of electrons.

  She speeds up to escape the thought that’s hot on her heels, the accusation thrown at her before she left the last session by that English girl who was in a dreadful state: “in the old days people put the
ir hands on each other to heal, but you only cause pain.” A few months ago she would have replied “no pain, no gain,” and left it at that. But now she sees it differently. Not everyone longs for knowledge and it’s not fair to make them suffer with little possibility of a reward. Even if they are volunteers. They invest a level of trust in her that is much more than she can accept. Before she used to feel certain of what she did, confident she was familiar with the propagation pathways, the neural mechanisms … but now she knows that the only thing she actually dominates is the detonator. Once the process has been set off, she becomes an attentive and conscientious guide, that much is true, but without having a lot of control over the deeper dynamics, and less over any bifurcations.

  She passes, as usual, through the S in the middle of the enormous holographic ESZ sign that marks the border of the Emotional Stimulation Zone, which takes her straight to where she needs to be. Benjamin has already sorted the participants into pairs, one lying face up and the other kneeling at their feet, fanned out before Silvana. The floor is made of a soft, smooth material that hardly adapts at all to each person’s anatomy, making them squirm uncomfortably, searching for a better position. Not one person returns her gaze when she lets it linger on them, trying to work out who will be able to offer her a good response, and who will end up reproaching her for their suffering. No one. Each new batch has less character: they really are lost, it’s too much even to ask them where their feet are. She takes the foot of one of the participants who’s closest to her and, dexterously pressing on it, she traverses the kid’s big toe and then moves down toward the heel in a zig-zag motion. The boy writhes like an eel, Silvana literally has his body’s remote control in her hands. When she asks him what happened, he looks at her, disoriented, and tells her nothing happened, he’s not aware of having moved a muscle.

  For her, on the other hand, the relationship between the pressure points and the resources unleashed was so clear that, in one sweep, she has identified a whole, miniature blueprint of the body, with each major organ marked on it. With a tactile pointer, she indicates the references on his foot and then guides his partner’s hand over the same route she used before. From there an adventure game begins in which they must collaborate in a profound exploration of the path, mutually orienting each other, until they’ve used up all possible variants of this basic exercise.

  She takes advantage of the time spent showing each couple the same exercise to warn them:

  “Tactile stimulation is only the first step on a long journey … which can be very painful for some,” she adds, remembering the English girl. The statistics show that half of those here will leave the program after three sessions and only a couple will finish the course.

  Poor kids, she feels sorry for them while she’s preaching to them, every day they seem more defenseless. To think that amoebas are born adults and deer learn to run and feed themselves within a couple of days, whereas these idiots … they haven’t even realized they have a body yet! The Peter Pan generation, as Balt calls them, are already here: the ones that were born among the ROBs and, in actual fact, have been brought up by them. The sensitivity awareness campaigns, massages and emotional stimulation courses won’t be of much use to them. We’re too late. More drastic action is required to stop the boomerang effect. If not, soon the invalidity phase will last a whole lifetime and people will get old and die without ever growing up. It is true that the longer it takes an animal to grow up, the more complex it is, but there’s a limit to everything, and, in the end, the most developed species on the planet will die of over-evolution. Silvana’s own grandiloquent thought shocks her, and, focusing her gaze on a belt full of sensors pressing down on the prominent belly of the boy in front of her, she tells herself that they will die, more prosaically, of a glut of technology.

  4

  CELIA

  What’s going on? Someone’s come to wake her up … or is it just a noise? She’s extremely tired and her eyes are so heavy she can’t open them. And she can’t move either. Mommy! She shouts internally, but her voice doesn’t come out and her mouth isn’t doing what it’s told. Maybe she’s dreaming. What happened last night? All she remembers is that they gave her another one of those injections … that’s why she’s so exhausted. She wants to sleep a little more. Her mom will wake her up when it’s time. She’s uncomfortable but she can’t roll over. At least the pressure in her chest has been relieved and she doesn’t have a headache any more … only this fog. She can breathe fine: up, down, up … oh, there’s a strange smell here, like cough syrup, it reminds her of Nancy. She was so excited when her dad brought her back from Andorra! Where would she be now? It’s been a long time since she’s played with dolls, but she still loves her, a lot. She’ll ask him to look for her and bring her here again: she’ll put her on the bed by her side for company. Ah, her arm has twitched. She tries moving it again, and yes, it twitches! So she’s not dreaming. She can hardly open her eyes, with such a bright light, it’s blinding her.

  “Psst! She’s awake.” The nurse pushes Lu closer to the bed and, with the dexterity of someone who does it often, places Lu’s hand on top of the girl’s, immediately retreating into the background and adding loudly with an overly sweet tone: “Hello Celia, darling, how are you feeling?”

  Whose is that hoarse voice? It could be her grandma … but … did she just call her “darling”? No, she calls her sweetie or lamb or … how’s my little girl today? Anyway, she said goodbye yesterday with lots of kisses because she was going back to Gurb: she had to prepare the house for … she hadn’t really properly understood for whom. Whomever it was, she wasn’t very happy about it, because you could see she was upset and, when she said goodbye from the door, her eyes were brimming with tears. Poor Grandma, still having to do things she doesn’t want to at her age. Again the voice and that cold hand. It must be a new nurse … maybe if she pretends to be asleep she’ll escape the injection. Or are they bringing her breakfast already? She’s not hungry at all. Though she’s not nauseous like the other day, her stomach feels strange: it feels like her heart has sunk down to her bowels to stir things up. Maybe she’s getting her period. Her mother says the pain feels very different, unmistakable, but for Celia, the two times she’s had it, she’s not known how to tell it apart from a stomachache.

  “Say something to her, go on,” the nurse whispers into Lu’s ear. “I’m sure she can hear us; the signals”—she points toward the monitors—“show she’s conscious.”

  “Celia, can you hear me? I’m here, by your side.” She stretches her neck out so that her face is right in front of the girl’s. Several times the psychologist had said it was absolutely fundamental that when she opened her eyes she saw her. It’s written in our genes, he insisted, the newborn becomes attached forever to the first person it sees. Celia’s not an infant, but it’s like she’s being reborn.

  Ah, now there are two of them. The assistants who come to change her sheets, probably. But what a strange time to do it. Maybe it’s already mid-morning? She definitely hasn’t had breakfast … and where’s her mom? She decides to pretend to be asleep until her mother wakes her up. But that annoying woman won’t stop rubbing her hand. She would like to know what they’re saying to each other in such quiet voices, it seems they don’t want her to hear it. Maybe she’s got worse and they’ve taken her to another room. That gives her the shivers. But her parents would be here, they wouldn’t have left her on her own.

  “Celia, don’t be afraid, I’m here to help you.” She says it more to please the nurse than the girl, but the effect is conclusive: eyes as big as saucers open like black holes in a face that suddenly has panic written all over it.

  Who is this scarecrow with the distorted face and straw-like hair? Why is she so close? Her hand is sticky and it’s making her shudder. Go away! Go away! She doesn’t want to see her. Where’s her mom? And that wall … Where have they taken her? What a strange brightness. She’s very cold and everything’s spinning. She feels like she’s g
oing to be sick. Mommy, come here!

  “Calm down, Celia, don’t wear yourself out.” The low, silky voice of the doctor acts like a balm on the girl’s face. He comes out from behind the machines so the girl can see his face and his white coat, comes closer and, stroking her forehead, adds, “That’s better, relax and listen carefully to what I have to say: the treatment was successful, you’re totally cured. The suffering, the injections, having to stay in bed, that’s all over … you don’t notice any pain anywhere, right?”

  “Yes, doctor, my stomach hurts.” They’re her first words and she says them with the seriousness of the most adult patient who completely trusts in the infallibility of medicine and is ready to give all the necessary information.

  “Of course, during the treatment your bowels were stopped and it’s taking them a while to get going again. But as soon as you take the serum and start eating again the pain will go away, you’ll see.”

  “And where are my parents?” Now she moves her head from side to side, looking for them.

  “It would be a good idea not to move around too much, love.” The nurse strokes her hair. “You’re still very weak.”

  “They’ve had to move you very far away, because cases like yours can only be treated in this clinic.” Again the nice voice. “Your parents authorized it, of course, and, so that you felt at home, they prepared this box for you. It’s full of photos and toys.” Seeing that the girl wanted to open it already, he adds, “During your convalescence, Lu will stay with you to help you with everything you need.” He pulls a chair up to the bed for Lu to sit in. “Now, if you like, you can show her what’s inside. We have to continue with our visits; if you need anything, press the red button.”