“Ngh!”
I pushed my chair back to stand up and leave, but one look from Narain stopped me dead in my tracks. Like a mythical creature, his eyes had the power to turn me straight to stone.
“Allowing Coeus’s personality to develop any further could have major repercussions for the entire Titan network,” he said. “So I need you to transition to helping Professor Beckmann with the medication plan in whatever capacity that you can. We will not be conducting any more counseling sessions, nor will we be using the personality formation system again. But we are deeply appreciative of your efforts thus far.”
His tone was one of thinly veiled mockery as he rose from his chair with lumbering, overdramatic motions and looked down at me from on high. “Dr. Naisho,” he said, bowing his head low. “Thanks for all your hard work.”
18
I stood alone on the facility’s rooftop, enveloped by a pervasive cold that hung heavy in the midnight air. When I gazed up at the vast starry expanse above me, I felt I was suspended in freefall within the endless reaches of outer space. But this was the modus operandi of the human mind. When faced with something too immense for our tiny brains to fathom, we warped the scale to make it all fit in frame, and threw the legend out the window.
It had been three months since I first arrived here. My first job—my first ever experience with labor—and how had I spent that time? Lost in the middle of the open ocean, thrashing around in the dark in a desperate attempt to swim to some unknown destination, some foreign shore that would surely hold the answers I was seeking. But I’d yet to sight solid ground, to glimpse even the slightest hint of meaning.
I’d only accomplished two measly things in my time here.
I gave him life.
And then I let him die.
Where was the meaning in that? What was the point of it all? Had his brief existence truly meant nothing to the world? Had I been made to inspire that curious spark in his eyes, only to watch from the sidelines as it was snuffed out for good? Had my work created nothing of value? And if so…
…then what even was work?
I stood alone on the facility’s rooftop, and kicked the protective railing as hard as I could. I would not stand for this. I would not let it all have been for nothing. I jammed my foot against the railing once more, then took off sprinting. I kicked over the zoomboard waiting for me by the door, and ran down the facility’s corridors on my own two legs.
In the dead of night, I pounded on the door to Lei’s private living quarters.
19
I paced back and forth in front of the sofa, waiting anxiously for a figure to materialize. When it finally did, I was relieved to see that he was still the same twelve-year-old boy I’d left behind the day before.
“Coeus!” I cried out, standing directly before him where he sat. He seemed a little discombobulated by the suddenness of it all. Meanwhile, I could hear Lei talking in my ear from the monitoring room.
“Hey, not to ruin the moment or anything,” he said, “but we don’t have infinite time here, just FYI. I’m kinda running in incognito mode so that it won’t leave a record in the system. So try to keep it to ten, fifteen minutes tops, yeah? Any more, and I guarantee the boss man’ll notice something’s wrong. Dude can be freakishly perceptive sometimes…”
“Thanks, Lei,” I said, turning my head up to the ceiling to address him. “You know, I’ve got to admit, I’m impressed at how readily you went along with this. And here I was half expecting you to make some lecherous demands of me in exchange.”
“Pfft. Yeah, right. Like you’d ever agree to that,” he said with a wistful sigh. “But yeah, I was pretty salty about the way things went down earlier myself… Plus, he’s been putting me through the wringer an awful lot lately, and I can already tell this next part of the project’s gonna be even worse. So of course I’m gonna jump at the opportunity to stick it to the man. You just do what you gotta do in there, all right?”
“Way ahead of you.”
“That’s the stuff, doc!”
The transmission cut off, and I looked back down at Coeus again.
Hello, my name is Coeus, he said, as if attempting to quell his confusion by reinitiating the conversation with our standard greeting ritual.
But I smiled and shook my head. “It’s okay, Coeus. We don’t have to do that anymore,” I said.
We…don’t?
“No. We don’t.”
In my mind, I’d already cast off the shackles, the expectations that had bound our interactions previously. No longer was I his counselor, nor psychologist, nor even an employee who worked here at the intelligence base. And I wanted Coeus to do the same. He was neither my client nor my patient any longer. I wanted us to be able to stand and speak to each other on equal ground, as one individual to another. This was, I believed, the best way to ensure my words would make it through to him.
“I want you to think for me, Coeus. About yourself. And about your work.”
We didn’t have much time. Perhaps fifteen minutes wouldn’t be enough to accomplish anything at all. But I knew that once this session was over, I’d never get to speak with him again. This was our last chance. And all I could really do at this point, as my final parting gift, was wish him well. I would let him know that I wanted nothing more than his health and happiness, and try my very best to give him the mental tools he would need to live his life to the fullest going forward. So that long after these fifteen minutes were up—even after this entire portion of his consciousness had been erased—he’d be able to fend for himself. Because I could only imagine how terrifying it must be to feel trapped in your own brain.
Think.
About myself?
I knelt down to his level so that I could gaze up into his eyes from below. “I want you to tell me exactly what you’re feeling right now, even though it might be hard to put it all into words. I want to hear anything and everything you have to say. Like how you asked me once before to tell you what the true definition of work is. I still don’t have that answer for you, I’m afraid, but we can try to come up with one together, here and now. I just need you to think for me, Coeus. Tell me what goes through your head when you think about work. It can be anything at all. I don’t care how minor. Just try to talk through it with me.”
Coeus thought long and hard about what I’d said.
Work… He faltered.
Then, after a pause, he tried again.
Work is a thing that’s been around for a very long time. As long as I’ve been alive, and then some.
There was a wavering timbre of uncertainty in his voice. He was still trying to figure out these answers for himself—slowly inching his way along as though it were a narrow ledge above a sheer cliff, and one misstep would send him plummeting to his doom.
It has always been, and will always be. It’s the only thing I’ve ever done, and the only thing I will ever do. Work is who I am.
“Well, you’re half right, but you’ve got some major misconceptions there too,” I said, as I made and held eye contact. “Work is a very large part of who you are, to be sure. And I do agree that it’s an inextricable part of your identity. But it isn’t all of you. Coeus does not equal work. There’s more to you than just that.”
There...is?
“Look,” I said, and Coeus turned to see what I was pointing at—the photo we took together in its frame. “Photography is a hobby of mine. Not just taking pictures, but developing them. Sharing them. Enjoying them. None of it is work; I just do these things because I like them And I really like that picture. Do you like it too?”
I do. I like it very much.