Peter David - After Earth

Jon considers the possibility. He doesn’t feel disappointment.

He doesn’t feel anything at all.

That evening, Doctor Nizamani, too, makes the observation that Jon has been distanced from his emotions.

“This is a challenge,” he says, “not only because you’re incapable of feeling but because you’re incapable of perceiving emotions in others. If you’re going to work with other Rangers, you’ll have to have some idea of what they’re feeling.”

“How can I do that?” Jon asks.

“Emotions are most often conveyed through facial expressions. I’ll arrange for an automated tutorial on the subject. It’ll be part of your daily regimen.”

Jon agrees to participate in the tutorial. He wonders what he will learn.

It’s an unusually warm morning in the desert. Jon has been given permission by Doctor Nizamani to sit outside in the medicenter’s courtyard, a place with ocher-colored ceramic pots full of colorful desert flowers. He’s watching the second sun top the horizon when he receives a visitor.

It’s neither one of his doctors nor one of his nurses nor even one of the injured Rangers on his ward. This visitor has a round face and curly red hair. She wears a dark blue robe clasped at the throat. She asks: “Do you know who I am, Jon?”

“Yes,” he says. “You’re the Primus.” He has seen her many times before on his computer screen but never in person. “Your breath smells like cinnamon,” he observes.

“How… kind of you to say so,” says the Primus. “Would you mind if I spoke with you for a little while?”

“No, I wouldn’t mind.”

Her mouth turns up at the corners, but he knows what that means now. The Primus is smiling .

In the brief time Jon has spent with Doctor Nizamani’s tutorial, he has learned to recognize a half dozen facial expressions. The smile is one of them.

“Now,” the Primus continues, “you’re probably thinking I’ve come to talk to you about your decision to undergo brain surgery. Heaven knows I made my position on that subject known to the Prime Commander when it was first contemplated. In fact, I spoke to him about it every day—both him and the Savant.”

Jon doesn’t know what to say to that.

“As you can imagine,” says the Primus, her expression hardening, “I was against it.”

Jon doesn’t imagine anything these days. He only observes and reacts.

“But what’s done is done,” the Primus says. “The only thing we have to talk about now is what effect the surgery has had on you.”

“I have discussed the effects with my doctors,” Jon says.

“I have no doubt of it. But their concern, and the Prime Commander’s, is how useful you can be as a weapon. My concern is your humanity.”

“I’m still human,” he says. “It’s just that I’ve been altered.”

“You have been altered; on that we may agree. But…” She shakes her head. “You see, Jon, we’re all born with souls—you, me, and everyone else. But your surgery, for which you volunteered, seems to have cut you off from the part of you that feels .”

“So I’ve been told.”

“It was exactly what I feared.” She leans forward. “Feeling is what makes us who we are, Jon. Do you believe that?”

“I haven’t thought about it.”

“Well, it’s true. Without compassion, without love, we’re no different from the animals. Or, for that matter, from the machines with which we surround ourselves.”

Jon isn’t an animal or a machine. He wonders why the Primus would imply otherwise.

“This isn’t the first time we’ve ventured into new territory, child. Technology constantly conspires to strip us of the qualities that make us human beings. This challenge is only the latest in a long history of such challenges.”

“But I am a human being,” Jon insists.

“Not in the way that matters most,” the Primus says. “So why am I here? What’s the point if you’re no longer one of God’s chosen creatures? The point, Jon, is that you can still be redeemed. You can still pray to heaven—and I mean pray —to be remade in the image God intended for you. And if you want to do that, I can help.”

Jon isn’t inclined to be remade in such an image, not even enough to inquire about the effort involved. “That won’t be necessary.”

The Primus sits back in her chair. A tear grows gradually in the inside corner of her left eye and tumbles down her cheek.

“Very well,” she says, her voice trembling slightly, “you may say that now. But there may come a time when you understand what you’ve done, a time when you fear for your soul. And when—”

“I’m beyond fear,” Jon says.

The Primus looks at him for what seems like a long time, her eyes wet and shiny. Then, without another word, she gets up and leaves him sitting there.

As alone as he was when she appeared.

Jon graduates to the machines with the yellow signs in the gym. Yada says she’s proud of him. She also says she’ll be leaving the hospital soon.

“I can’t go out in the field anymore,” she tells him, “but I can still make a contribution. I’ll be working with the Prime Commander’s office to educate the public about Ursa attacks.”

She smiles with the half of her face he can see. “I expect to hear good things about you.”

Jon looks at her until she looks away. To do otherwise, he has been told, is rude. Then he begins exercising on the yellow machines.

They turn out to be more demanding than the machines he’s been using. When he finishes, he’s more fatigued. However, he knows exercise is necessary if he’s to get out of the medicenter and do what’s expected of him.

That night, Jon has a dream.

There are two people in it. They look familiar, but try as he might, he can’t seem to identify them.

When he wakes, he can still see them. One is a male, perhaps fifty years old, with a long face, dark eyebrows, and a thick shock of silver-gray hair. The other is a female. She, too, is about fifty years old, but her hair is light brown with only a few streaks of gray.

When Doctor Gold comes to see him, he describes the dream to her. She doesn’t comment right away. She instead brings up a picture on her data tablet and asks, “Are these the people?”

They are. “Who are they?”

“They’re your parents, Jon. Adabelle and Gregory Blackburn.”

He looks more closely. He has seen himself in a mirror. He looks for evidence of heredity in the picture—and finds it.

“You have your mother’s eyes,” says Doctor Gold as if she can read his mind.

“I seem to,” he agrees.

“And your father’s chin.” She points to it. “You see the cleft?”

“Yes.” My parents . He looks to the doctor. “Is it possible for me to see them?”

As on other occasions, her eyebrows, which are very fair, come together in a bunch of skin. He knows now that this is an expression of consternation.

“I’m afraid it’s not, Jon. They’re dead. They were killed in an Ursa attack six months ago.”

He turns back to the data tablet. “Dead,” he echoes.

“Yes. In fact, it was their deaths that spurred you to volunteer for the surgery. You said it was the only way you could make their deaths count for something.”

Jon continues to study the image on the tablet. He doesn’t feel any anger now. But something—curiosity, perhaps—draws him to the people in the picture.

“I’m sorry,” Doctor Gold says.

Jon recognizes the expression as one of sympathy. “Your condolences are acknowledged,” he tells her.

Days pass, an alternation of light and shadow punctuated by visits from Doctor Nizamani, Doctor Gold, and occasionally other doctors as well.