SATURDAY, SEPTEMBER 29. 5:02 P.M.
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Adam settled into the same chair that Juzo had made him sit in to tell him about the project. He put the supermarket purchases aside and checked his phone for news about deserters and stolen files related to Markabia or the Edda Peninsula.
Nothing. Of course. What had made him think that he would be lucky this time if he hadn’t been lucky the previous times he had tried?
He looked up at the small wooden box that rested on a hanging shelf on the living room wall, near the picture of him on the cliffs by the sea.
“What are you gonna do with his ashes?” Sarah had asked him the day before.
“I’ll take care of him,” Adam had said, taking the box. Ironically, Juzo’s remains rested now next to an image of him that had not been well received by his brother’s scrutiny the only time he had been in his house.
He put on some music, went to the fridge, took a can of beer, sat down on the largest couch in the living room, in front of a large window, and with his eyes on the buildings that stood in front of his apartment, he drank it in sips.
Until it was time to go pick up his date. He had arranged to go to dinner with one of the pretty nurses he met at the hospital.
He got into the car, and anxiety tightened his legs. He feared the situation experienced that Friday would repeat itself. Well, at least the blue compact’s start button was running smoothly, and everything indicated that the engine wouldn’t play another trick on him like that night when it had refused to start for no apparent reason other than the presence of that bellicose Cyclops. That morning he had had it checked after having taken it from the Proxima Traffic Department and paid a fine to the damned traffic robot for having left it abandoned in the middle of the avenue. As if he had done it on purpose!
Drove the 08.09 through the Yellow Area, and entering the Red one, took a detour that made his trip longer; all so as not to go down the fourteenth avenue and pass by Liberty Park and thus avoid the route he had taken with Juzo.
He picked up the nurse at her house, and they went to a fancy restaurant located in Ciccone, an area that instantly put Adam in a good mood—or, at least, it used to.
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Adam and the nurse chatted while they waited for the main course.
The conversation revolved around how she lived with three cats in a studio apartment without her super noticing them. He nodded now and then as if he were listening to the most interesting story in the world, although the memories of Juzo wounded in the park, the old pictures that illustrated the horrors of the project, and the fear he’d felt when the Cyclops android stood in front of him, just before losing consciousness, kept playing over and over in his head like a tune on loop mode.
So, he excused himself and went to the restroom.
While peeing, the first encounter with Juzo at the B-Crush nightclub came to his mind, and again, the chills.
He washed his hands, and when he looked in the mirror, frowned.
First, he thought that his imagination was playing tricks on him, and careful not to get his pants wet with the water around the sink, he got close to the mirror to look better. He rubbed his chin, and it felt rough: the shadow that covered his face was not an illusion but a real stubble.
He tried to remember the last time he had shaved, and weirdly enough, he realized there was no such recollection in his memory. How was it possible not to have seen that hair repopulation before?
He washed his face as if that would make them disappear and stared at his own reflection for a while. He started to panic. Then he realized that something was wrong above his head as well. His always well-groomed mane looked untidy, as if someone had been pulling it, his brown hair somewhat darker. It didn’t look bad on him, but it made him look different. It wasn’t him. He, Adam White, had become Juzo Romita.
Sullenly, he went back to the table. The girl was waiting for him, but he had lost not only his appetite but also the desire to continue with the date. Striving not to be rude and ruin the evening, he waited to finish the dessert and pay the bill, and then he offered the girl to take her to her place and leave the business of having a drink in the privacy of his place for another time. He didn’t care what her wishes were; he wanted to go back to his loft and try to understand how he’d gained that awkward similarity with Juzo.
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An hour later, he did.
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That night, the doorman on duty was a boring guy Adam never spoke to. Luckily, the old man Ruben Blue wasn’t there; he didn’t feel like talking or listening to silly jokes.
He opened the door to his loft, turned on the light, and a spark burned the lamps. Stress overload, he told himself; it wasn’t the first time that happened.
Thanks to the street glare coming through the windows, he guided himself into the dark and went to the kitchen area to switch on another light. He took a deep breath before pressing the button, waiting for his static energy to subside, but it happened again. He cursed. Went to the living room lamp, and this time he not only blew up the bulb, but he also received a shock that glowed in the dark.
“Shit!” he yelled and shook his hand until the unpleasant tingling was gone.
Staying away from any electrical outlet, he took off his shoes to touch the floor with his bare feet; one of his lady friends had told him that way one could get rid of excess static energy. A tingling sensation touched the soles of my feet as if they were numb, and after a few steps, the discomfort worsened so much that he had the sensation of walking on needles.
“Now what?!”
Stitches pierced his joints. He stumbled, and before he could topple, he unleashed bolts that shot out like vipers made of light, shimmering in the shadows in search of unseen prey. The energy that poured from him strangled his heart with its sparkling venom.
And it occurred to him how to stop that scourge. If it had worked for Juzo, even if they were different things, maybe if he…
He stretched out his arm and contracted his fingers, mimicking the gesture his brother had made. The discharges stopped dancing around him and accumulated in his hand, taking the shape of a ball of fire, of white fire. And the suffering ceased.
Frightened—and very astonished—he discovered he had created a Photia.
It wasn’t a Photia like Juzo’s; this wasn’t just a bunch of electric shocks but a real ball of fire, a white fire that crackled in his hand but didn’t burn his skin. A little white sun, what astronomers knew, based on documentaries he had once seen at the orphanage, as a white dwarf.
Once again, imitating what Juzo had done that time, he contracted his fingers twice and made the fireball disintegrate.
Adam’s hand tingled, a tingle from the shock of the moment… or from carrying a mass of fire. He waited for the feeling to fade and repeated the act. However, this time, to make it disappear, he didn’t contract his fingers, only thought about it. The fireball disappeared.
“Right, right…” he whispered, gasping and excited. “You don’t have implants in your wrists, Adam. But then, how—?”
The mind.
Yes, the mind. He controlled it with his mind.
Looking to repeat the fireball a third time, now with the other hand, he stretched out his arm, took a deep breath, thought about doing it, and ZAP! Electricity reawakened in the form of white flames. And it shot itself like lightning against the ceiling.
Adam screamed and shielded himself from the pieces of the ceiling that fell over him. Covered with bits of debris and paint chips, he spit the dust out of his mouth, rubbed his eyes, and stared at the gaping hole above his head. He gritted his teeth in fear.
“Although late,” his own voice said, “the Binary Atavistic Project has finally concluded.”
It wasn’t the voice of his thoughts; this new voice had come from his lips. In that instant, Adam realized that there was someone else nesting inside him, another person in his thoughts, a hidden spirit under the big noses of his consciousness.
Immersed in the darkness, he looked at himself in the living room mirror; perhaps to make sure he was alone and that the voice he was hearing was indeed coming from him. In the murk, he found his reflection and watched it as if he were watching someone else.
His mouth was the one that moved, but it was Juzo who spoke through it.
“Now, you and I are one entity,” Juzo told him.
“What do you mean by that?” Adam asked, and when he saw himself speaking to his reflection, he felt stupid. No, more than stupid; he felt insane.
Electric flames sprouted between his fingers again as if it were spontaneous combustion. He tried to make them disappear with a thought, but this time they were so out of control, they ignored his orders. He sought to put them out by shaking his arms; and while those mysterious Photias were harmless to him, brushing them against his legs caused the sparks to set his pants on fire. He screamed, and in response to his despair, the ball of energy disappeared. He took off his jeans as fast as he could, threw them on the floor, and stepped on them until he put out the small fire.
On his thigh, where the fire had kissed him, there was a red stain. He touched it, and it burned.
He went to get the burn ointment in the bathroom and stopped feeling the contact with the floor; he looked down and found himself walking on air, five feet above the ground. Down there was the parquet floor. He was flying.
And with the grace of a free-falling lead bag, Adam returned to the floor, hooked his foot on one of the dining room chairs, and tipped it over on himself. Aching and nauseous, he got up and ran to the bathroom to return what he had eaten. He stumbled on the way, though he managed to make it to the toilet in time.
He used his hand to wipe his mouth and slumped back against the shower wall; his eyes puffy from retching, his heart squeezing in his throat, the shock of the moment, and the fear of dying racing through his head.