COSMOS magazine

Saturday, June 7

Wayne pushed the pillow away from his face, rolled over and squinted at the alarm clock: eleven o'clock. Fern had left for work hours earlier. He'd been asleep for fifteen hours. Wasn't there something important he had to do today? He couldn't remember.

When he sat up the room seemed to rotate under him. Just go back to sleep. No, he needed a drink; his mouth felt as dry and sticky as a peanut butter sandwich without the jelly. He eased himself out of bed, leaned against the nightstand to keep from falling, shuffled slowly to the bathroom.

A splash of cold water on his face and a long, cool drink worked wonders. It came back to him. He was determined to read Awakening the Genius Within, even if it took all day and night to do it. A cup of coffee, and he'd be ready to tackle it. With the book's help he would strengthen his mind enough to fight off this madness threatening to take over his life.

 

Exercise 2-1: Recapturing the Power of the Child

The purpose of this exercise is to help you reach back in time and experience how it felt to be a little child just learning to walk. If it's possible for you to revisit the actual place where you lived as a child, this is often very helpful. Or perhaps you have toys you played with as a child, maybe a favourite book your parents used to read to you. If none of these is available, you can still reach back in time, but it might be more difficult.

Choose a time for this exercise when you can sit quietly and concentrate without any fear of interruption...

Wayne closed his eyes and tried to relax every muscle in his body, beginning with his head and working down to his toes. He imagined himself drifting backwards through the years of his life, growing younger and younger. I am only a year old, he told himself.

Nothing happened, except that he developed an intense itch on the bottom of his right foot. The hell with it.

Important! This is an interactive book. You must do the exercises as they are assigned. Skipping the exercises and reading ahead in the book will void the guarantee we made to you in the introduction.

Shit. He might as well walk down the road to the old farmhouse, try again. He could sit in the front yard instead of the back. Maybe he'd be able to capture the spirit of his child-self in the front yard.

---

Through the doors of rotting wood and dust he could smell the memory of sugary vanilla and chocolate.

I guess houses are haunted by memories of the living, Wayne thought, as much as by ghosts of the dead. His father was in the nursing home in LaGrange. His mother, far as he knew, lived somewhere in South Dakota, at least that's where she was last time he got a Christmas card from her. But she was here in this farmhouse too, standing by the kitchen counter.

 

"Happy birthday to you, Happy birthday to you." The enthusiasm in Mom's voice made up for her inability to carry a tune.

She's made his favourite cake, angel food with chocolate frosting. Wayne smiles, reaches out for the plate Mom holds out to him. The heavy sound of Dad's step in the hallway causes Wayne's whole body to tense up, and he forgets to take the plate.

"Got a special present for you, son..."

 

"No!" Wayne said aloud. He crossed the kitchen, passed through the door his father had entered all those years ago. It was dark and smelled bad. The dog had stayed outside, spooked as always by the place. He turned on the flashlight so he could find his way along the hallway. First door on the right would have been Rob's room. Wayne felt the warm, gritty little-brother hand holding his own, tight and trusting, crossing the highway to check the mailbox. In memory he smelled newly mown grass and bluebonnets. Mom left Rob's room untouched for years, like someday he might turn up and say he'd only been joking and wasn't dead after all. Now, Wayne saw, Rob's room was almost empty. Dad had donated a lot of stuff to the church when he went into the nursing home. A couple of Rob's baseball posters still clung to the wall. One had fallen, leaving a darker rectangle where it had protected the wallpaper from fading. Mom had yelled at him to get out of her baby's room. Like she thought it was Wayne's fault. When he tried to tell her he wasn't even there when Rob drowned she started crying and told him to keep quiet.

The flashlight flickered in the gloom. Mom and Dad's bedroom. Wayne walked quickly past without touching the door. Four years old, he'd woken up in the middle of the night with an ear ache so painful he thought his head was splitting in two. He'd knocked on Mom and Dad's door. No one answered. He gathered up his courage, turned the knob, pushed the door open just enough to squeeze through. Dad yelling, jumping out of bed, hands lashing. Next thing Wayne knew, it wasn't night time any longer, he was sitting up in bed eating a bowl of Campbell's Chicken Noodle soup.

That was me, someone said.

Wayne shuddered, and the flashlight beam swayed crazily. Nobody. He hadn't heard anything. The place was empty, had been empty for years. Just his imagination. He stopped at the last door on the right, his room. Vines had grown over the windows, filtering the sunlight to a dim greenish glow. He stood in the doorway, just looking. When he closed his eyes it was exactly the way it had been when he was sixteen: twin bed against the wall to the right, brown and white bedspread with cowboy motif that he'd had since he was five years old, dresser against the left wall, wooden box under the window. Toy box when he was a little boy, treasure box when he was older. It was hard, though, hard to put himself into the room.

"Gotta remember being a little kid," he thought, concentrating on the exercise from the book. "Gotta recapture the power of the child learning to walk." It was hard, hard to remember back that far. About the earliest memory he could scrape up was Dad teaching him to shoot a gun. Wayne must've been about six or seven.

"This finger on the trigger, keep your eyes on the spot you're aiming for." Wayne felt slightly nauseated, remembering.

I came then too, the voice insisted. Would've blown off his ugly head if I thought I could get away with it.

Shit, stay focused, Wayne told himself, swaying in the doorway. What had it been like to be a little kid, looking around at a fresh new world? Mommy and Daddy standing out in the front yard. He'd been lying in bed... right... there. Daddy hit Mommy's face. Blood running down Mommy's chin. He'd climbed out of bed and run to the front door as fast as he could go. The chilly memory of the soles of his feet on the wood floor as he toddled down the hallway, going to rescue Mommy.

 

Daddy's as big as a giant, and Wayne remembers the story Mommy read to him about Jack and the beanstalk. Jack ran from the giant, but Wayne runs smack into Daddy and pummels the huge legs with his tiny fists.

"Don't you hurt my mommy!" he screams. Daddy lifts him by his pyjama top and flings him against the wall, and a pain more horrible than anything Wayne has ever imagined shoots through his head and down through his back.

"Mommy!" he cries. But she does not come. A giant hand rises up, comes down against the side of his face.

"Don't you ever hit me again, boy. You understand?"

Wayne tries to stand up, but his legs don't work right. A feeling inside him says wordlessly, someday we'll get even with him. Someday we'll kill him.

 

Trembling and sick, Wayne walked back down the dark hallway, leaned against the back door, taking huge, gulping breaths of fresh air. Fuck the power of the child, he thought. Fuck this whole book.

The voice in his head shouted at him: You can't get rid of me so easily.

Monday, June 9

The death sentence was imposed on her little boy in soft, apologetic tones. Jill thought she had prepared herself for the worst, but she was wrong.

"The chemo isn't working as well as we had hoped. The tumour has grown slightly since the last scan."

Jill nodded mechanically, thinking: No! This can't be right.

"We often see some tumour growth during the first few weeks of low-dose chemo. But in Alex's case, the tumour cells don't seem to be affected any more than the normal cells. We could increase the dosage, but Alex's immune system is already compromised."

"How long, Dr. Collins? How much longer will my little boy live?"

"We can't predict with anything with certainty, Jill. Alex could live for another year, or he could have as little as three months."

"Oh god, isn't there anything else we can do?"

The doctor looked at her with sympathy, shaking his head. "I'm sorry, Jill."

Her stomach knotted, but it didn't feel like the period she was expecting. As she left the room, tears clouding her eyes, she reached into her handbag for a Tampax. But when she visited the bathroom, she put it back. Not her period after all. God, if the damned curse wasn't early it was late. She shook her head. At least it's not because I'm pregnant, she thought with a certain bitter resignation.

Monday, June 9

Alex lay on the floor in Dr. Collins's kids' room, waiting for his mother to come out of the office. Maybe I'm going to die soon, he thought. It was not a particularly alarming thought, although he would miss his mother.

Someone larger than his mother came into the room and stood near the door.

"Paul!" He sat up too fast, made himself dizzy.

"Hey Alex, my man, how's life?"

"It's okay." The room spun around a little. "I got a checkup today, and Mom's in the office talking to Dr. Collins."

"If you feel up to it, and if your mom has time, I'd like to show you guys an experiment a friend of mine is working on."

"I feel fine." It was true. He did feel fine, now. He hoped mom would say yes. He was pretty sure she would, because she liked Paul a lot. He could tell by the way she laughed and looked happy all the time she was with him.

"How's summer camp?"

"Mmm, it's okay." Alex shrugged. "I get tired, though. The teacher told my mom I'd have to quit going if I don't get better." He felt bad, remembering how serious his mother looked when the teacher said that. Mom was worried about him, but also she was worried about losing her job if she had to stay home all day and take care of him, Alex knew, because he heard her talking to Aunt Carol on the phone when she didn't know he was listening. He tried not to act tired at camp, but sometimes he just couldn't hold his stupid looking bald head up any longer.

"Most people feel better after the chemotherapy is over with." Paul poked his head out the door. "Here comes your mom."

The grownups all said "Hello, how are you" to each other. Mom looked tense but she wasn't crying, so Alex guessed Dr. Collins hadn't told her he was going to die next week or anything. When Paul asked Mom if she'd like to visit the lab, she said yes, if Alex wasn't too tired.

"I'm not tired at all," he assured her, and she hugged him. But her eyes were sad. Dr. Collins must not have had good news.

Monday, June 9

Paul seemed as proud of the place, she thought, as if he owned it. "Garcia Health Sciences is working in partnership with MTJ Labs," he said. When she cocked her head enquiringly, he said, "That's a private research lab. Part of the deal is, they get to use our microscope. See, a good scanning electron microscope costs hundreds of thousands of dollars, so it makes sense to get as much use out of it as possible."

The electron microscope had a room of its own. The device took up one whole wall; it would have resembled a desk with an ordinary computer monitor and keyboard except for the boxlike specimen chamber and three foot high electron gun.

A slight young man with an intelligent face and straight black hair rose from the chair in front of the monitor, smiling. "This must be Jill and Alex. Paul has told me so much about you both, it's nice meet you. I'm Drew."

He smiled shyly, giving Jill's hand a firm shake. She instinctively liked him.

"Let me put up something interesting on the display for you. Would you like to sit down, Alex, so you can see it better?"

Jill nodded her permission; Alex sat in the chair while she looked over his shoulder.

"This is the optic lobe of the brain of an ordinary fruit fly, magnified 5,000 times," Drew said.

On the screen, miniature leafless trees grew along the inside of the bowl of a golden chalice.

"Now..." Drew reached over Alex's shoulder to enter instructions on the keyboard. "Here's the same thing from a fruit fly I treated with the artificial chromosome pair Paul and I are working on. Notice anything different?"

"More squiggly lines," Alex ventured.

"Yes." Drew shot him a rewarding smile. "Those structures are called dendrites. They're involved in transmitting electrical impulses from one brain cell to another."

Jill found herself becoming interested. "So would this fly see better than the untreated one?" It made a welcome distraction from her overwhelming anxiety about Alex.

"Frankly, we don't know yet. It's difficult to design an experiment to test the visual acuity of a fruit fly. So I asked Paul here to help me out with those pet mice of his. He's told you about the mice?"

"That they've gotten smarter? Yeah," Jill said. "Extraordinary."

"We'd expected it, since the genes we're studying are pretty much identical in a wide range of organisms, from fruit flies to humans. They're conserved by evolution, you see? It's very exciting to see our predictions validated in the lab. But the thing that's really blowing our minds is the lifespan extension. Has Paul told you about that?"

The century and a half thing? Good grief. "You mean you really weren't joking?"

"I was afraid you'd think I'm a complete loon." Paul smiled, halfway serious.

"I'm still reserving judgment. Tell me more."

"Look, why don't you and Alex visit my lab in Austin and meet my Algernon mice? If you arrive after five, you can park in the lot and they won't tow you away."

"I don't know." Medical science was not high on her list of favourite topics right now. Chemotherapy had failed Alex. Maybe the Nature Forever people were right after all. "Rain-check, okay?"