The Orphan Master's Son_ A Novel - Adam Johnson [209]
“This used to be a place,” I told him, “where meaningful work was done. Here, a citizen was separated from his story. That was my job. Of the two, it was the story that was kept, while the person was disposed of. I was okay with that. In this way, many deviants and counterrevolutionaries were discovered. True, sometimes the innocent fell with the guilty, but there was no other way to discover the truth, and unfortunately, once a person has his story taken, by the roots if you will, it can’t be given back. But now …”
Ga craned his neck to look at me. “Yes?”
“Now the person is lost along with his life. Both die.”
I adjusted the output dial of his autopilot. Ga had a strong mind, so I set it at eight.
“Tell me again how intimacy works?” I asked.
“It turned out to be easy,” Ga said. “You tell someone everything, the good, the bad, what makes you look strong and what’s shameful as well. If you killed your wife’s husband, you must tell her. If someone tried to man-attack you, you must tell that, too. I told you everything, as best as I was able. I may not know who I am. But the actress is free. I’m not sure I understand freedom, but I’ve felt it and she now has it too.”
I nodded. It was satisfying to hear again. It restored my inner calm. With my parents, I had finally been intimate. And Commander Ga was my friend, despite the lie about the actress being alive. He’d so fully digested it that it had somehow become true to him. By his twisted logic, he was telling me, his friend, the absolute truth.
“See you on the other side,” I said.
He fixed his eyes at some point that didn’t exist.
“My mother was a singer,” he said.
When he closed his eyes, I flipped the switch.
He made the usual involuntary motions, eye flashing, arm levitation, gulping for air like a carp at the surface of a meditation pond. My mother was a singer were his last words, as if they were the only ones he could trust to describe who he’d been.
I climbed into the next blue chair, but didn’t bother with the restraints. I wanted the Pubyok to know that I’d chosen my own path, that I’d rejected their ways. I hooked up my own wiring harness and turned my attention to the autopilot’s output dial. I never wanted to remember a thing about this place, so I set it at eight and a half. But then again, I didn’t want a lobotomy, either. I adjusted it to seven and a half. And if I was being intimate with myself, I could also admit I was afraid of the pain. I settled for six and a half.
Trembling with hope and, strangely, regret, my finger flipped the switch.
My arms rose before me. They looked like someone else’s arms. I heard moaning and realized it was me. A tongue of electricity licked deep inside my brain, probing, as molars are inspected after a meal. I’d imagined the experience would be one of numbness, but my thinking was hyper, thoughts flying. Everything was singular—the gleam of a metal armature, the violent green of a fly’s eye. There was only the thing itself, without connection or context, as if everything in your mind had become unlinked to everything else. Blue and leather and chair, I couldn’t put them together. The scent of ozone was without precedent, the incandescence of a lightbulb lacked all antecedent. The fine hairs in my nose stiffened. My erection stood abominable and alone. I saw no icy peak or white flower. I scanned the room for them, but saw only elements: shine, slick, coarse, shade.
I became aware of Commander Ga moving beside me. Arms aloft, it was all I could do to roll my head slightly to observe him. He had an arm free from its restraint, and he was reaching for the dial. I saw him turn it to maximum, a lethal dose. But I could worry about him no longer. I was on my own voyage. Soon I would be in a rural village, green and peaceful, where people swung their scythes in silence. There would be a widow there, and we would waste no time on courtship. I would approach her and tell her I was her new husband. We would enter the bed from opposite sides at first. For a while, she would have rules. But eventually, our genitals would