Richard Powers - Bewilderment

The grad students loved to tutor him. Checking in after a long October morning seminar, I caught Viv Britten, who was working on the small-scale crisis inherent in the Lambda-CDM model of the universe, sitting across the desk from my son, holding her head.

“Boss. Have you ever considered what is going on inside a leaf? I mean, really thought about it? It’s a total mind-fuck.”

Robin sat smirking at the havoc he’d unleashed. Hey! Curse word!

“What?” Viv said. “I said freak . It’s a total mind-freak, what you’re telling me.”

It was all that, and more. The green Earth was on a roll, assembling the atmosphere, making more shapes for itself than it could ever need. And Robin was taking notes.

We were down on the shores of the lake over lunch, fish-spotting. Robbie had discovered that polarized sunglasses let him see into a whole new alien world beneath the mirroring surface. We were looking, hypnotized, at a school of three-inch intelligences when someone called, four feet from my shoulder.

“Theodore Byrne?”

A woman my age stood clutching a brushed-silver computer to her chest. She wore a fair amount of turquoise hardware, and the folds of her gray tunic fell over skinny jeans. Her controlled contralto voice seemed baffled by her own boldness.

“I’m sorry. Have we met?”

Her smile hung between embarrassed and amused. She turned to my son, who, in a favorite animist ritual, was patting the almond butter sandwich he was about to eat. “You must be Robin!”

A flush of premonition warmed my neck. Before I could ask her business, Robin said, You remind me of my mom .

The woman looked sideways at Robin and laughed. Alyssa’s and my ancestors had come from Africa, too, only from somewhat further back. She turned to me again. “I’m sorry to intrude like this. Would you have a moment?”

I wanted to ask: A moment for what, exactly? But my son, trained up on ecstasy, said, We got a million moments . Right now we’re on fish time .

She handed me a business card spattered with fonts and colors. “I’m Dee Ramey, a producer for Ova Nova .”

The channel had several hundred thousand subscribers, with individual videos topping out at a million views. I’d never watched a minute of it, but I still knew what it did.

Dee Ramey turned to Robin. “I saw you in Professor Currier’s training clips. You’re amazing.”

“Who told you about us?” I couldn’t keep the anger out of my voice.

“We did our homework.”

The penny dropped. For a guy who’d grown up on science fiction, I’d been amazingly naïve about what artificial intelligence, facial recognition, cross-filtering, common sense, and a quick dip into the planet’s aggregate brain could do. At last I freed myself of stupid civility. “What do you want?”

My rudeness to a stranger shocked Robin. He kept patting his sandwich, too hard and fast. Ova Nova , Dad. They did that story about the guy who let the botfly hatch under the skin in his shoulder?

Dee Ramey shouted, “Wow, you watch us!”

Just the ones about how cool the world is .

“Well! We think what’s happening to you is one of the coolest things we’ve seen.”

Robin looked to me for explanation. I looked back. Realization spread across his face. Influencers wanted him for the perfect three-minute episode, one that could earn a million thumbs from strangers across the globe: Boy Lives Again, Inside His Dead Mother’s Brain . Or maybe it was the other way around.

LIFE ASSEMBLES ITSELF on accumulating mistakes. By the time Dee Ramey showed up with plans to turn my son into a show, I’d lost count of how many parenting errors I’d already made.

Robin thought it would be fun, to become an episode alongside all of Earth’s other strange inhabitants. He put his case to me over ice cream, hours after I sent Dee Ramey packing. Honestly, Dad, think about it. I was super-miserable for so long. And now I’m not. People might like to know about that. And it’ll be educational. You’re all about education, Dad. Besides, it’s a cool show .

Two days later, Dee Ramey called me. “You don’t understand my son,” I told her. “He’s… unusual. I can’t have him turned into a public spectacle.”

“He won’t be a spectacle. He’ll be a subject of legitimate interest, respectfully treated. You can be there as we film. We’ll avoid anything that makes you uncomfortable.”

“I’m sorry. He’s a special child. He needs protection.”

“I understand. But you should know that we’re going to make the film, whether or not you want to take part. We’ll be free to use all the materials already available, in whatever way that makes sense to us. Or you can participate and have a say in things.”

Smartphones are miracles, and they’ve turned us into gods. But in one simple respect, they’re primitive: you can’t slam down the receiver.

My son was still technically anonymous. But what the Ova Nova researchers had discovered, others could soon find out. I’d made a mistake, and doing nothing now would only make it worse. At least I could still try to manage the way the story went public. Two days later, when my anger subsided, I called Dee Ramey back.

“I need a say in the final edit.”

“We can give you that.”

“You are not allowed to use his real name or say anything that would make him easier to identify.”

“That’s fine.”

My son was a troubled boy, hurt by seeing what the sleepwalking world could not. An offbeat therapy had made him a little happier. Maybe showing him on camera being himself could beat whatever sensationalism Ova Nova might create out of Currier’s clips and sales talks.

Robin sat curled under my arm on the living room sofa and explained it to me, on a night when we decided to stay home on Earth. Like Dr. Currier says. Maybe it could be useful .

I DIDN’T GRASP WHAT WAS HAPPENING TO ROBIN until I saw the rough cut. In the video, his name is Jay. He comes into the frame, and the shot begins to breathe. He turns to look at the ducks and the gray squirrels and the lindens along the lake, and his gaze turns them into aliens for the camera to reappraise.

Next, he’s lying in the fMRI tube in Currier’s lab, moving shapes around on his screen with his mind. His face is round and open but a little devilish, pleased with his skill. Dee Ramey, in voice-over, explains how Jay is learning to match another set of frozen feelings laid down years before. But her explanation is beside the point. He’s a child, in the full grip of creation.

Then he’s sitting across from Dee Ramey, on a bench under a spreading willow. She asks: “But how does it feel?”

His nose and mouth twitch a little. His excited hands twist with explanation. You know how when you sing a good song with people you like? And people are singing all different notes, but they sound good together?

The journalist looks sad for half a moment. Maybe she’s thinking how long it has been since she sang with her friends. “Does it feel like talking to your mother?”

His brows pinch; he doesn’t quite like the question. Nobody’s saying anything out loud, if that’s what you mean .

“But you can feel her? You can tell it’s her?”

He shrugs. Vintage Robin. It’s us .

“You feel like she’s there with you? When you train?”

Robin’s head swivels on the stalk of his neck. He’s looking at something way too big to tell her. He reaches one hand above his head to catch the lowest branches of the willow and let it slip back through his fingers. She’s here right now .