Coming of Age – Harvey Kurzfield
April 1st, 2009 | Published in Volume V: Antiheroes
I am in a small, plain room.. On one side of the room is a window. There are metal bars on the outside. Beyond that I see a wall.
On the opposite wall there is a large mirror. I see myself sitting in a chair. I do not look comfortable; yet feel no discomfort. I see that I am a young male. I appear to be immobile, apart from a constant jerking of hands and head. I see, yet am unaware of these movements.
I do not recognise this room.
Why am I here?
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Dr Stephens sat on the other side of the mirror watching the almost still form of the young man called Andrew. The technician beside her was also watching, but with less interest. He had been on this shift for three hours and had been able to record very little of any significance.
“Fascinating!” said Dr Stephens suddenly.
The technician turned to stare at his superior. “What?” he asked.
“Look how bright and intelligent his eyes are; see how they are constantly moving.”
The technician checked his chart. Yes, he had ticked the ‘eye movement’ boxes several times. And the ‘hand movement’ and ‘head movement’ ones too. That was all.
“What am I doing here…?” he wondered.
I wonder how long I have been here? It may have been hours, days or even years. Or minutes. Time means nothing to me. Not in the sense that I myself can easily understand. I know that I exist in a form that has been given the name ‘Andrew’.
How long I have known this I cannot tell. It may be that the discovery was made long ago. Or have I only just realised it?
Where is my mother?
Why am I here? This is not a place that I recognise. I concentrate my attention on that window. I focus with all my will upon the bright, clear glass…and it is clear no longer. I can see its molecular structure. I can see the way each atom is linked together to form the whole sheet. It is a fascinating world. I adjust my vision and the glass is plain, but beyond there are metal bars. I focus on one bar in particular. It is different from the others. The structure is ageing; the chemical balance within is breaking down and in time millions of iron particles will fall into another sphere of existence. I run my sight up and down the bar and the ions within react. My eye is like a magnet, drawing metal filings into intricate patterns. I do not know how I do this… but it is… fun?
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The technician, sitting behind the mirror, was wondering what it was that he had noticed. He had begun to lose concentration but was dedicated enough to be aware that something was different. Before he could register the vital clue, he saw the pool of urine beginning to form at Andrew’s feet.
“Damn!” he muttered, and pressed the intercom.
“Hello, what is it?” came the response.
“It’s Andrew,” he said. “He’s wet himself again.”
A figure has entered the room. I scan it, but it is not my mother. It has a similar form and shape, but it is not my mother. The figure comes close to me. I concentrate hard as I feel that I should know what is happening in this strange place.
My form has been active. I seem to have little control over these functions. They just happen. Always in the past my mother has seen to this. Now… someone else is performing my mother’s task. I sense that enormous changes have taken place. I feel strange. I want to hide deep within this form but my old hiding places no longer seem accessible.
Mother, where are you?
Janet Symons came into the office.. She went to her desk and opened Andrew’s file. She ticked the box that indicated that Andrew’s bladder was functioning normally and that the urine contents were normal. She checked back through her charts. Everything was normal. Everything about Andrew was normal – except for Andrew himself.
More figures have entered the room. I do not know where they have come from. There must be a means of access, which lies behind my range of vision. They come closer. I concentrate.
The figures around me are checking instruments. I turn my sight downwards and see that something is being pushed into my arm. I concentrate. The effort is worthwhile as I watch a liquid being drawn from my arm. On the surface it is red, but as I look further, I can see a myriad of colours and substances awash with life and energy. I realise that it is this substance that somehow nourishes me. Suddenly I feel the urge to experiment. I stare at the red liquid and watch it change.
“This is impossible.”
Dr Stephens looked up as her research assistant spoke.
“What’s impossible, David?” she asked.
“This sample I’ve just collected from Andrew.”
“Yes, what about it?”
David stared helplessly at the tube into which he had just inserted some of Andrew’s blood. He shook the tube, stared at it: passed it across to Dr Stephens. She looked at it for a second or two, then asked coldly “Is this your idea of a joke?” David shook his head. “They’re all like that,” he whispered.
The tubes all contained samples of dust instead of blood.
“Take these down to the lab for immediate testing, and get the results right away. Now!”
The doctor cogitated. She was a scientist and hated to use clichés, but, nevertheless, she wondered if this was the breakthrough they had been waiting for.
Suddenly I feel elated. I am becoming more aware of what I am able to do. I do not know why this should be so, though something tells me that it may have something to do with the non-appearance of my mother. I try to conjure up a memory of her, but am unable to do so. I only know her when she is with me. There is something that links us.
I stare at the mirror. I see through at the face of a figure that watches. I see straight into its eyes. This is fascinating. It is as if the glass barrier is helping me to focus. I quickly withdraw contact. I turn my attention, instead, to the window and beyond. The wall becomes a pattern of red brick canals, each one teeming with tiny creatures biting away at microscopic pieces of dust. How long will it take them to eat the wall away? I concentrate and watch as the dust within begins to crumble.
“Nothing! What do you mean nothing? How can you take down six samples and come back with nothing? What happened?”
Dr Stephens was gripping the edge of her table, fighting back disappointment and rage.
“I’m sorry doctor,” said David, almost in tears, “but the stuff just disintegrated on contact with the air. Every time we tried to take it out for analysis it just… disappeared!”
“Then you should have worked in a vacuum chamber you idiot!”
Dr Stephens walked across to her cabinet and removed a file.
“Well, don’t just stand there.. go down and do an air analysis in the lab. Quickly, before it’s too late.”
Dr Stephens bit her lip. She hadn’t meant to snap like that, but somewhere in that autistic body there lurked something that her sister had brought back from the last Mars mission.
Oh yes, they had all got back safely, but her sister, Gillian, had come back pregnant, and since the rest of the crew had been female, no one quite knew how she had accomplished it. She had been kept in quarantine for two years. Andrew had had a normal birth, but as an infant had shown a complete lack of attention to anything. It had taken them months to find out that he wasn’t blind or deaf. After the two years of quarantine, Gillian had cried “Enough!” and had taken Andrew home. She had devoted her life to him, turning her back on science and space exploration. She had refused to allow any further experiments to be conducted. For the next 16 years she had taken on the role of dedicated motherhood. The years of seemingly, unrewarded devotion had, however, taken their toll and she had died, prematurely aged. As her sister’s only living relative, Dr Stephens had taken on the guardianship of her nephew and she was determined to take up where they had finished all those years ago. She was going to discover what secret Andrew held. She strode now, purposefully, towards his room.
I am growing. I feel as if I have been asleep for a long time and that I am ready to awaken. I want to tell mother, but where is she?
I sense a presence in the room. It comes closer. It is very familiar… and yet strange. The presence comes into my line of vision. I concentrate and see a figure that is like my mother. I look further and see that the structure is very similar to that of my mother, but that the neural patterns are quite different.
Who are you?
I have thrown much concentration into this and the figure staggers back. I increase the levels of power and the figure falls against the far wall and slides down to the floor. A bright light flashes above the mirror in the room next door and I see that more figures are staring at me. They are shouting. I push them away and seal the wall.
Now I turn my concentration to the window. The glass breaks down into its constituent parts and falls into dust, the bars rust away and vanish, the wall beyond blends with the earth beneath. Now I feel the time has come for release. I search into my own structure and marvel at the form that has been my home. It too will share my universe. Together we blend and change. Through the window on the lightest of breezes we fly. Past what had once been bars, over the heaps of dust that had once been a wall. Together, my form and I split into millions of cells and those cells into millions upon millions of atoms…
Together we are free… FREE…FREE!
In a tiny churchyard is a recently filled-in grave. It is too new for a permanent headstone to have been placed… but a bowl, marked “In Memory of Gillian Stephens”, is filled with summer flowers.
It is a very hot, dry day. The air is completely still. Even so, the dust around the grave is vigorously disturbed and then the flowers move . . . as if gently caressed.