"Well, let's hear it, then," said Dr. Wily. He settled into his chair, crossed one of his ankles over his opposite knee, and held the camera up to his face.
Blues put his fingers down on the keys and listened for the beep which meant the camera had started recording. The study was still and quiet, and the curtains were drawn. He glanced to his side at Dr. Wily, whose posture, so unlike his own, was relaxed and receptive.
With a raise of his eyebrows, the man waved his hand at him. "Go on," he said. "What are you looking at me for?"
Blues turned toward the piano, closed his eyes, and began to play. The piece was Chopin's etude 10, part 3, and a wave of relief washed over him as soon as the first few notes reached his ears. He loved the slow progression of the melody, followed by the ecstatic series of chromatic fourths, and most of all the gentle reprise at the end. And after only two days of practice, he could now play it all from memory.
It had been only a small step from his early appreciation for music to the realization that he could reproduce those beloved sounds on the upright Yamaha piano in Dr. Light`s study. Light especially had been happy to oblige, and he supplied Blues with heavy binders full of sheet music: Schumann, Beethoven, Scarlatti, Liszt, and of course Chopin. Among these, the last was his favorite, and he spent long hours sitting at the bench pouring over nocturnes and mazurkas, committing finger movements to memory.
The study became his favorite room in the house. Sometimes, when it was time for bed, Dr. Light was unable to pull him away from the piano. So, instead of tucking him into the futon in his bedroom as usual, he would bring the generator, set it down on the bench, and leave Blues to himself—and after practicing deep into the night, exhausted, Blues would curl up and let sleep overtake him in the armchair where Dr. Wily now sat.
Dr. Light was excited by his rapid progress, even as he reasoned out loud to himself that it made perfect sense. For him, Blues's interest in music, and the fact that he had taken taken up the hobby of his own volition, was valuable evidence of his humanity. For Blues, it was a welcome escape. As long as he was here, with his mind occupied by musical transcendence, he was able to forget he was a prisoner.
The piece came to an end. After the last chord had faded into silence, Blues heard the beep which signaled that the camera had stopped recording. He turned toward the man in the armchair.
"Your technique's not bad," said Dr. Wily, putting the camera down in his lap. "You even nailed the difficult bit in the middle. But there's no feeling behind the notes. You play like a..." He smirked. "Like a..."
"Like a what?" said Blues.
Dr. Wily doubled over in hysterics.
Blues continued to stare at him, his fingers still resting on the keys. He didn't have a clue what was so funny.
Dr. Wily turned off the camera, got up, and sat beside him on the bench. "Dear boy," he said. "That serious, wide-eyed expression of yours—it looks just like Tom's. There`s no question which of us you spend most of your time with. Kind of a shame, really.
"You know, after Catherine died, I thought this piano would collect dust here forever. Thank you for bringing it back to life." He smiled, and planted a fatherly kiss on Blues`s forehead.
The small gesture of affection took Blues by surprise. Dr. Wily didn't usually do things like this. Blues wasn't sure how to react, so he did nothing; but he decided just then that, if he was ever forced to choose between the two—the kind, earnest, but distant Dr. Light, or the glib and playful Dr. Wily, he would cast his lot in with the latter.
"Anyway," said Dr. Wily, "of course you can't play this piece with feeling yet. Chopin was nostalgic for his native Poland, but what could you possibly be nostalgic for?"
"There is something," said Blues.
Dr. Wily raised his eyebrows at him. "There is?"
"The forest simulation."
"You don't say?" He leaned back and crossed his arms. "But it wasn't real."
"It seemed real." Blues lifted his head and looked around the room, until his eyes settled at last on the pair of drawn curtains in front of the window. "Sometimes, I think it was more real than this."
Dr. Wily's smile broadened. "You have a point," he said. Then he gazed down at Blues`s fingers on the keys, and was silent for at least a minute. His smile slowly faded. Blues watched him with a tinge of paranoia, wondering why the man's expression had suddenly become dark. When the man tried to speak again, his voice cracked. "I'm... I'm sorry, Blues."
"Sorry for what?" Blues knew better than to expect a forthright answer, but hoped for one all the same.
Dr. Wily looked down at his camera and forced out a laugh. "Damn it all," he said. "Your little display of existential doubt just now—it would have been good 'evidence.'"
"Wait," said Blues, and leaned closer. "What are you sorry for?" The question took on a sudden sense of urgency. Dr. Wily often apologized to him for no apparent reason, and since the end of summer the frequency of "sorrys" had started increasing. "Unless... there's something you haven't told me."
Blues thought he saw a little spark of satisfaction in Dr. Wily's eyes, but it fizzled out as quickly as it had appeared. "Well, I'm sorry about your name," Albert said at last. "I'm the one to blame for it. Blues: it's an old kind of music. Sad, like this etude you're playing. You see, Tom hasn't been himself for a long time—most of the time we were putting you together. It started out as a joke, but it just took. Now you're stuck with it. It's even written into your code."
Blues looked down at his lap. He'd never thought, or cared, about the meaning of his name before.
"You can change it if you want, I suppose," said Dr. Wily. "You can be a Taro, or a Ren, or whatever."
"I don't mind," said Blues, disappointed. Though he was grateful for Dr. Wily's story, he knew it had been nothing more than an attempt to distract him. "How about going for a walk?" in a slightly more sophisticated form.
He wanted to protest, to press further, to tell Dr. Wily that he knew—but when he tried to open his mouth it just wouldn't obey. Blues had long ago accepted that it was futile to ask Dr. Wily directly for anything.
And yet, to him, Dr. Wily seemed to be in possession of facts which he yearned to know—and the man hinted at them here and there, especially when Dr. Light was preoccupied at his netscreen downstairs on mornings like this one. Although those bits and pieces—intimations of bad things looming in the future, suggestions that Blues had been created for a sinister purpose, those constant sorrys—had not yet formed a coherent whole, Blues had begun to realize that one day they would.
With a disarming smile, Dr. Wily picked up his camera, rose, and went back to his chair. "Anyway, I want you to play that piece again," he said. "From the top. Think of your dream forest while you do it. One more time, Blues. With feeling."
They were hiding something from him. He couldn't imagine what it was, but he knew it had to be important. It was as obvious as the fact that they were hiding him from the world. But one day, he began to make their job more difficult.
It wasn't intentional at first. It started with small acts of defiance, like when he climbed the cherry tree in the garden to get a peek over the top of the stone wall, and Dr. Light had to ask him more than once to come down. Or how, during one of their usual walks in the forest, he suddenly sprinted ahead, leaving the scientists shouting and huffing behind him.
When at last he gave in to their commands to come back, Dr. Light grabbed him by the arm. "Blues," he said, almost at a growl, "you have to obey the rule."
"What if I don't?"
He was surprised to hear a straight answer. "Then there will be no more walks."
"Better listen to him, young man," said Dr. Wily, and lowered the camera to wink at him. "I know you'd miss these trees."
They tightened the reins. They watched him constantly, and even followed him sometimes when he moved from room to room. The security system was left activated even during the day. His netscreen access was restricted—which was like seeing yet another window to the outside shut and concealed behind a curtain.
Just as his thirst for knowledge was reaching its peak, Blues's his world was shrinking around him, but he tried to keep his anger in check out of fear of seeing it shrink even further.
He began to resent their tests and puzzles. He was even starting to tire of his netscreen correspondence with Judith, who since summer had been encouraging him to talk about whatever he wanted. She listened to him with a nonjudgmental ear, her face was warm and kind, and her voice was full of love—but he knew that she was meticulously recording their every interaction, and whenever he asked her a forbidden question about himself and his life, she was just as silent as her colleagues.
One day in November, he refused to participate. Instead, he went out alone into the garden where he sat glaring at the stone wall, willing it to disappear. When he looked behind him, he saw Tom and Albert standing on the other side of the sliding glass door, whispering to each other. Just then, a noise above him caught his attention, and he glanced up: a flock of honking ducks in V formation was making its way slowly across the sky. He experienced a rush of excitement at these new creatures entering his awareness, but the feeling was soon replaced with bitter envy.
He hated the cameras most of all. He knew he was being kept in the dark about their true purpose, and they were intrusive and omnipresent. Just when he had calmed his mind enough to concentrate on something he enjoyed, like the penciled shading of a tree branch in one of his sketchbooks, or an attempt to sight read a new etude, beep went the camera, followed by a flash of light that blinded him.
"Stop it," he said, multiple times each day, but they explained in regretful tones that they could not.
If he couldn't get them to stop, he thought, he could at least sabotage their efforts to get the evidence they wanted.
"Tell me about this picture you sketched today," said Dr. Light, a few days after Blues had first seen the ducks. "What were you thinking as you did this?" It was a sketch he had drawn from memory of the V drifting toward the southern sky, and in the foreground was the maple tree in the right hand corner of the garden, each individual leaf filled in brilliantly in red colored pencil.
Blues was annoyed by the question. He looked toward Dr. Light's video camera without expression. "Nothing," he said. "I wasn't thinking anything."
Dr. Light took a deep breath and forced a patient smile. "I see," he said. "Well, what made you want to draw this, instead of the pine trees, or the camellia, or something inside the house, for example?"
"It's just what I saw," said Blues.
Dr. Wily, who had been watching their exchange in silence from his chair on the other side of the room, jumped to his feet, yanked the camera out of Dr. Light's hands, and shut it off.
"Kid, let me clue you in on something." Dr. Wily loomed over him, so close that Blues could smell a trace of the previous night's whiskey on his breath. "I know what you are, and so does your 'daddy' here, and your netscreen 'mommy.' You've got nothing to prove to us anymore. The rest of the world, on the other hand, is going to need some convincing. That's where this comes in." He patted the camera as if it was a beloved cat. "Considering all that advanced processing power we gave your CPU, when the camera's rolling, at least, you could do us a favor and act like there's something going on in there."
Dr. Light bristled. "For God`s sake, Albert, I've asked you not to talk to him like that."
"I'm just helping you out, old friend." Dr. Wily placed his hand on his chest in a mocking mea culpa gesture. "It's what you're thinking anyway, isn't it?" He sighed, and put a hand on Blues's shoulder. "No matter how much it tortures the boy, these videos have to get filmed, and the evidence has to be compiled. After all, this is about the advancement of your career."
"That's enough," said Dr. Light in a rising voice. Then he turned to Blues, and the look in his eyes transformed from anger to fear. "Don't listen to him, Blues. What he said just now—that's not how I feel about you. Not at all."
"You have a choice, Tom," continued Dr. Wily, unfazed. "I believe you're not quite as kind as you'd like him to believe you are. You can either admit I'm right, or accept that you're just a puppet—and that you've given up all accountability whatsoever. Which is it?"
What happened next took Blues completely by surprise. Dr. Light, his face beet red, grabbed Dr. Wily by the back of his shirt and dragged him out of sight into the hallway. There was a scuffle, followed by a door slam. Blues ran after the two men to find that they had gone downstairs into the lab with the door locked behind them. He heard muffled shouting—first the deep and booming voice of Dr. Light, and then Dr. Wily's response, a little higher in pitch but just as forceful.
Frightened, but at the same time filled with nervous excitement, Blues put his ear against the door in hopes of catching some of the content of their argument. He knew it held the key to some of his questions—but the lab was huge, Tom had pulled Albert away into the farthest corner, and their voices seemed to be filtered through several layers of cotton gauze.
Then two sets of heavy footsteps pounded up the stairs, and Blues jumped aside. The door flew open and out came Dr. Wily, sweaty and flustered, with his sleeves rolled up to his elbows. His eyes settled on Blues, and with a sudden wink meant only for him he turned away and scurried toward the door. Tom burst into the hallway after him, fists clenched, with a look of murder in his eyes.
"Get out, get out!"
"Calm down, Tom, would you?" Dr. Wily crouched in the foyer in front of his shoes, shielding himself with his hands. Compared to Dr. Light, who was towering over him, he looked surprisingly small and frail. "I was only trying to be helpful."
"Shut up, and get out of this house!" Tom said.
Dr. Wily yanked his shoes on, threw his coat over his shoulders, and placed his hand over the doorknob. He hesitated. "One more thing," he said, and pointed a shaking finger at Blues. "This mess we've all gotten ourselves into—it's bigger than him. Remember that."
He turned and flung open the door, and the blaring wail of a siren pierced the air. Blues put his hands over his ears. Dr. Light gritted his teeth, rushed forward, and pushed a wincing Dr. Wily out the door.
Dr. Light punched a few numbers into the panel on the wall to stop the noise. Still red, and taking deep labored breaths, he steadied himself against the wall, then cast a terrified glance in Blues's direction. He opened his mouth as if to say something, but nothing came out.
Blues turned and walked away. He went into the study, sat down at the bench, and started to play. He knew Dr. Light wasn't going to give him an explanation for what had just happened, so he didn't bother asking for one.
That evening, Blues lay down on his futon as usual, and Dr. Light wished him good night and slid shut his bedroom door. But instead of giving in to sleep, Blues stared up at the ceiling and waited. He heard the familiar clinking of glass and the sound of drinks being poured one after another. An hour passed, then two. Finally, he heard Dr. Light's footsteps retiring to his own room, followed shortly by the man's gentle snoring.
Blues got up, slid open the door, and tiptoed out into the hall. He was determined to have an hour or so to do whatever he liked in peace, without the clicking and flashing of cameras to disturb him. The house was dark except for the faint glow of the paper andon lamp in the living room, which cast long shadows across the floor. He went to the window next to the foyer, parted the curtains which had been, of course, drawn, and peered outside. He saw the still grey expanse of the field in front of the house, the dirt road swerving off to the left, and Dr. Light's car parked to the side. Far in the distance was the opening to the forest, a line of sugis whose tops were black against the night sky, and hovering over them, a brilliant full moon.
He realized he wanted his sketchbooks and pencils. He went to the cabinet in the living room, where the art supplies were kept; but when he opened the door, a strange feeling came over him. All of his sketchbooks but one—the one containing the picture he'd been compelled to talk about on camera today—were gone. The collection of video disks Dr. Light had been compiling since the day of his activation was gone too.
Blues then combed through the items on the bookshelf on the adjacent wall. Unsuccessful, and increasingly unsettled, he stepped into the hall, and his eyes came to rest on the darkened outline of the door that led downstairs into the lab.
He hesitated at the top step, staring down into the pitch black below. A rush of cold air rose up to meet him. He felt his way along the wall with his right hand, and his fingers brushed against a switch. He pushed it, and the room beneath his feet was flooded in humming fluorescent light. He was careful to shut the door quietly behind him, and he descended the stairs one wary step at a time.
Dr. Light's lab spread out in front of him. There was the netscreen mounted on one wall, flanked by half a dozen framed diplomas, above a desk littered with papers; a massive bookcase crammed with files and disks, and a few unused tables that had been pushed into one corner beneath the room's one tiny window up near the ceiling. Off to the side, behind a door Blues knew would be locked, was the storage room where Dr. Light kept all his tools and materials. There was the kerosene heater, unplugged and stowed under the desk, and four large tanks of fuel next to the staircase. And near the middle of the room was the stainless steel table, with its circular work lamp hanging above it, where Blues had first awakened eleven months ago.
He shivered. He had never liked this room, and rarely came down here. The fluorescent lights were grating, the walls dull white, and in the winter it was always freezing cold. On the other hand, as the place where he had been assembled and activated, he regarded it with a kind of terrified awe.
Steeling himself, he descended the final step, and his bare feet met ice cold concrete. He remembered his objective. He ran to the desk and leafed through the papers. Then he scoured the bookcase. Finding nothing, he haplessly made one last circuit around the room, finally lowering himself, defeated, into Dr. Light's desk chair. Ready to give up, he put his head down into his hands and let his confusion overtake him.
Just then, he felt a slight warmth in his midsection, tinged with pain. The sensation radiated slowly outward until it reached his fingers and toes, and he shuddered. He had never experienced anything like it before. Even after the original shock of pain was gone, it lingered on afterwards at a subdued intensity, and his head and limbs felt strangely heavy. He had the sudden urge to go upstairs and plug himself into his generator, although it had been only three days since his last charge.
For now, however, he pushed his feelings of discomfort out of his mind. In front of him was Dr. Light's netscreen, silent and dark, which he needed a password to access. He placed his fingers on the keyboard, and the screen lit up and sprung to life. A black line appeared on the screen, waiting to be filled by the right combination of characters. He'd long dreamed of breaking in. Just now a swirl of information had coalesced in his mind, and he had a theory he wanted to try—and with Dr. Light asleep and oblivious upstairs, now was his chance.
He remembered the time, early in the summer, when he had discovered an old photo album on the living room bookshelf: pictures of Catherine as a girl, a young woman, and, later, as Tom's wife. Although Blues had never met her, and in fact knew very little about her, the photographs fascinated him as an artifact of Dr. Light's previous life. He knew the man had loved her deeply, and loved her still—that much was apparent—and one of the photos of Catherine's eighth birthday yielded an important piece of information. At the bottom of the picture, which captured a lanky, long-haired little girl blowing out the eight candles on her birthday cake, was a handwritten date: May 12, 2016.
It was too easy. All he had to do was subtract eight years, convert the month to digits, and Blues had the password he needed.
He was in. The pain in his midsection returned to gnaw at him, but he did his best to ignore it. He felt a surge of triumph. The netscreen was going to give up its secrets—and Blues, at last, was going to learn some answers.
Little did he know that his struggle for the truth about his life would soon be eclipsed by the spectre of its abrupt and early end.
