He wants to deny the fear, but he can’t. He thought he was stronger. He wishes he had someone to do for him what he did for Starkey. Take him out before UNIS could get its claws into him.
“Would you like me to repeat the choices? Please say yes or no.”
“Shut up!” Connor yells, unable to control himself. “Just shut the hell up!”
“I’m sorry, that’s not a valid response. Since you seem to be having trouble selecting, I’ll select for you. Your choice is . . . landmarks of the world.”
Images soar before him, changing with a slow, relentless rhythm. Mount Rushmore. The Eiffel Tower. Golden Gate Bridge. The anesthesia blurs the line between what’s part of him and what’s not. The images invade his mind as if they’re being projected inside his head.
“You may now begin to feel a flurry of activity in your extremities, most noticeably in your wrists, elbows, knees, and ankles. This is entirely normal, and no cause for alarm.”
Great Wall of China. Rock of Gibraltar. Angkor Wat. The sun never sets on Connor Lassiter. Thousands of miles between every part of me. Western Wall. Leaning Tower. Niagara Falls. Will I be going to those places? Not if I can help it.
“I can also play your choice of musical genre. Please make your selection now, Connor Lassiter. You can say things like ‘techno-dance’ or ‘prewar rock.’ ”
All hope is now with Argent, and with Risa.
Risa . . .
He holds on to the image of her, projecting it out, even as the world is projected in. Back in the room where Divan had him, he was bound so tightly to that bed, Connor couldn’t touch her. He’d have given anything to have brushed her cheek one last time. He didn’t care whether it was his hand or Roland’s.
“Please make your musical selection now. . . .”
He knows that his life was a life worth living, and he lived it remarkably well these past two years, in spite of the bleak cards he was dealt. He knows what it means to save countless lives. He knows what it means to end a life. But more than anything he knows what it means to love. He has to believe he will take that with him, wherever it is he now goes, whether it be oblivion, or the proverbial “better place,” or an impossible web of global destinations.
“All right, I can choose for you. Your musical genre is . . . twentieth-century disco.”
He must leave the battle now. Let others take over for him. All this time he recoiled at being called the Akron AWOL. Now he embraces it, and in defiance of his unwinding, he shifts his identity from himself, to his legend. His absence will only make his presence greater.
“Won’t you take me to . . . FunkyTOWN?”
Connor doesn’t know what became of the organ printer. He can only hope that it will be repaired and find its way into the right hands. And that Cam will bring down Proactive Citizenry, and that Lev will find his peace. All the things worth hoping for. He’s amazed that even here, in the bowels of the beast, he finds a way to hope.
“You may feel unsettled by a sudden inability to breathe. Do not be alarmed; the need for you to breathe is no longer required.”
Perhaps it’s the anesthesia, but a sense of calm begins to come over him. Instead of the despair of things slipping away, Connor feels the empowerment of letting things go.
“We will soon be ending the audiovisual portion of your experience. Let me take this opportunity to say what a pleasure it has been to serve you, Connor Lassiter, on your special day.”
He stops imagining the parts of himself that he can no longer feel, and focuses on what he still can, living within each moment until the moment is gone. Until the beat of his heart is a memory. Until the memory is a memory. Until the core of all that he is, is split like an atom, releasing its energy into a waiting universe.
56 • REM.
Do the Unwound dream? There, in the chill twilight between being, and being part of another, does an Unwind’s fragmented mind struggle to bridge the distance? To the Unwound, that distance must be greater than the space between stars.
Still, if they live, as the law insists they do, they must dream just like everyone else. Many of the “traditional living” insist they don’t dream, but that’s only because they refuse to remember their own surreal worlds of rewound hopes, fears, and memories.
• • •
For Risa, the night that follows Connor’s unwinding falls quickly due to the Lady Lucrezia’s eastward heading. Risa’s dreams that night are fitful and fraught with despair. She dreams that she’s having tea with Sonia in the middle of her shop, in the midst of earthquakes. Fragile porcelain figurines fall from their shelves and shatter, but Sonia pays no heed. Everywhere are age-old clocks of every shape and size, all of them ticking in anxious arrhythmia.
“They’ve unwound him,” she tells Sonia between tremors. “They’ve unwound Connor.”
“I know, dear, I know.” Sonia’s voice is sympathetic and comforting, but all of that comfort is swallowed by the pit of Risa’s distress.
“Sometimes,” says Sonia, “the random events I spoke of work against us, and there’s nothing to be done.”
“I have to get the printer!” Risa insists over the din of clocks and crashes. “It’s what he would want.”
“Not your concern anymore,” Sonia tells her, “but rest assured, dear, I’ll fight the good fight as long as I have air left in these lungs.”
And Risa finds herself filled with an even deeper anguish, for she suddenly realizes that there is no air left in Sonia’s lungs. She’s already dead. Their attacker was not the kind of man to leave witnesses.