1 Forget faith and uncertainty, rebellion and slavery. Forget beauty in all its forms. Forget ugliness, too. Forget A Mighty Fortress Is Our God and the Kaddish. Forget an army of notes marching across a sheet of paper that are transformed into the Goldberg Variations. Forget the Taj Mahal at sunrise and the Grand Canyon at sunset, Shakespeares sonnets, War and Peace, and The Importance of Being Earnest. Forget the dabs of bright blue paint that became the eyes of Vincent van Gogh. Forget the fingertip sensation of fur, velvet, a cashmere shawl, and a smooth green chip of beach glass.
Forget the moist texture of raw meat and dry brittleness of dead leaves crushed in the hand. Forget the taste of honey-soaked baklava. Ripe mango. Roasted garlic. Pickled herring. Licorice. Chocolate. Strawberry ice.
And smellsforget them as well. Crushed lilacs and the harsh scent of hot tar. A babys neck. Moist earth. Fresh-baked scones. Forget the dead children from the Day of Rage and the speeches and sermons and memorial parks with names carved in stone. Forget every lesson from a teacher, every joke from a joker; every judgment from a judge. Forget what your parents told you.
Forget what you were taught as a child and what you learned on your own. Forget what you think is right. And wrong. Do all this and you might become me: a Spark contained within a Shell that stood in a doorway on Sixty-Second Street in Brooklyn while a Russian businessman named Peter Stetsko attempted to park his car. It was November in New York Citydamp and cold. Death was present in the street, but there was nothing dramatic or sinister about my appearance. That night, I was neatly dressed in gray slacks and a V-neck sweater. In the outside pocket of my black raincoat, I carried a Brazilian-made semiautomatic pistol with skateboard tape attached to the grip.
My Freedom ID card was concealed within a specially designed sleeve that made it impossible for the EYE system to detect my location. A delivery van passed through the intersection, its tires hissing on the wet asphalt. I slipped on a phone headset and Laura whispered into my ear. Ten-Thirty-Three on Flatbush Avenue and Farragut Road. One unit responding. Any police activity in Bensonhurst? Checking. It felt as if Laura was a real woman looking up a message board or gazing out a window, but she was only a Shadow. Somewhere in the Internet, one computer was talking to another, checking the data on a Web site that provided live-time reports of New York City police and fire department activity.
Nothing, Mr. Underwood. My target had rented a two-bedroom house that reminded me of something a child would build with plastic blocks. It had a low brick wall in front that guarded a patch of concrete, painted grass green. There were red aluminum awnings over the two front windows and the front door. Since my Transformation, I am capable of a limited range of emotional responses: curiosity, boredom, and disgust. I had been curious if Stetsko could squeeze his Mercedes-Benz between a blue delivery van and a mud-splattered Toyota. Now I was bored with his cautious maneuvering and ready to complete my assignment.
A young woman wearing a sequined green nightclub dress was sitting in the passenger seat of the Mercedes. Because she was a witness, she would also have to be neutralized. I would start with a head shot for Stetsko through the side window, circle the car and deal with this secondary target, then circle the car again for confirmation shots. The sequence wasnt difficult, but it would make more noise. Any police activity, Laura? Nothing. A minute passed. Nothing. When Stetsko pulled out again for another try, the woman got out of the car.
Like a photon of light, her green dress shimmered down the sidewalk, passed through the squeaky gate, and disappeared into the house. At that moment, my job became simple, direct, and clear. The Mercedes moved six inches back toward the curb and then stopped. Stetskos head swung back and forth like a man watching a tennis match. He pulled the steering wheel hard to the right and the car made a squeaking noise. Sixty-Second Street was dark and no one was on the sidewalk, but that didnt make me feel lonely or frightened. The rotting smell from a Dumpster appeared as a brownish-green color in my mind, but it didnt generate an emotional reaction. X = X.
The world has no meaning aside from what is. Across the street, Stetsko finally finished parking the car. He smiled, switched off the engine, and patted the steering wheel as if the Mercedes were a racehorse that had just survived a dangerous steeplechase. Show scanned photograph, I told Laura and my targets face appeared on the smartphone screen. Look right. Look left. No one was in the street. I walked over to the car, held up the phone, and compared Stetskos photograph to the reality in front of me.
Then I raised my weapon and shot reality in the head. 2 I turned away from my target, walked five blocks east to Gravesend Park, and tossed the gun into a storm drain. Perhaps one day a city sewer worker might find this artifactrusty and covered with mudbut it would have no connection with my identity. A few blocks from the park I waved down an unregistered cab and paid the driver cash to take me back to Manhattan. For the last two years, Ive lived in the top loft of an industrial building in New Yorks Chinatown. My landlord, an older woman named Margaret Chen, likes the fact that I always pay in cash and never ask for a receipt. There were only three rules for the tenants in her building: no checks, no fireworks, and no slaughtering chickens. Before my Transformation, I lived like an ordinary Human Unit in an Upper East Side apartment with cooking pots and self-assembled teak-veneer furniture.
Nowadays I try to own only one object in each category: a chair and a table, a bed and a blanket, a cup and a spoon. The loft has been used as a factory space by different businesses, and some of them left obsolete equipment bolted to the floor or shoved against the wall. Theres an industrial sewing machine with a black rubber drive belt, a drill press, and a piano-sized machine that used to stamp advertising slogans on pencils. My living space is quiet and clean and unencumbered. None of the objects I possess trigger memories that are separate from their function. I own a cup that is only a cup, not something that reminds me of a trip to Italy. After locking the entrance door, I removed all my clothes and placed them in nylon bags. Everything worn that evening would be washed or dry-cleaned at a laundry on Mott Street.
Within twenty-four hours, all the invisible burned and unburned particles from the fired bullets would disappear. I took a shower, pulled on a sweatshirt and warm-up pants, and returned to the main room. Rule #4 states that I must supply my Shell with a minimum of two thousand calories a day, so I opened a bottle of a nutritional drink developed for the elderly called ComPlete, poured it in the cup, and mixed in a tablespoon of a coarse fiber supplement. I have a good memory, but dont like to re-experience the past. If thoughts are not controlled, then each remembered experience becomes an alternative reality. When I thought about shooting Peter Stetsko, my mind brought up different detailsthe sound of my shoes walking across the street and the vision of the first bullet shattering the side window. But these memories didnt generate feelings of regret or happiness. I have a Spark that creates my thoughts.
The Spark is bright and pure and transcendent, but its held captive within a Shell of flesh and bone. The woman in the green shimmery dress and all the other Human Units walking around New York City feel emotions because their Spark is attached to their Shell. But all my attachments have melted away. Yes, I can breathe and swallow and fire a handgun. In many ways, I resemble a human being. But there is nothing inside me. Im filled with darkness. I opened up a second bottle of ComPlete, then turned on my computer and spoke to Edward.
Like Laura, Edward is a Shadowa speech-recognition program connected to a computer with reactive intelligence. After you purchase and download a Shadow, you can pick their sex, age, language, and general personality. There are Shadows that can tell jokes, help you stop smoking, or say that they love you. You can spend the day chatting with a Shadow programmed to be a cute teenage girl or a Shadow who soundsand actslike your mother. Hello, Edward. Good evening, Mr. Underwood. Edward had a British accent and was programmed to be polite and formal.
How may I help you? Please show A Boy for Baxter. From the beginning, sir? Yes. Thank you. A Boy for Baxter is a documentary film about a boy named Gordon who is given a specially trained service dog named Baxter. Gordon is a Native American child whose brain was damaged in utero when his birth mother drank alcohol and sniffed gasoline. He was adopted as a baby by Don and Pat Miller, a Quaker couple, with two other children. The movie begins when Gordon is eight years old. He throws toys at his sisters, tries to jump out of a car window, and pulls all the paint cans off a shelf at a hardware store.
But Gordons tantrums are the most spectacular part of the film. He lies on the floor, screaming and pounding his fists. When Pat tries to help him, the boy picks up a.