The Virtual Swallows of Hog Island(5)

Over Self-Helen’s shoulder, Child-Helen watched Klaus kneel next Mommy and wedge his arm under her.

Soon they were all out on the front lawn—massive and green with an empty fountain. Daddy was passed out on the grass. Klaus was easing Mommy onto a black wrought iron lawn chair. Self and Child were holding on to each other tightly while Duchess tore around the yard, yapping.

The screen went blank.

Klaus Han had gone into the virtual reality. He had entered a patient’s World. He had blurred levels. He’d let Self save Child.

It was dangerous and groundbreaking.

I heard someone running and skidding down the hallway. My office door flew open.

Klaus was beaming. “Who says you can never go in? Huh? Huh? And the two of them! Am I right?” He was breathless and triumphant. His hair slick with sweat, he was one ebullient bear. “How did I look?”

“Pretty good.”

“God damn it, you’re right!” He spun around then and headed quickly back the way he’d come, leaving my door wide open. (Helen was technically still mid-session.) How did he know I’d watch? He just knew.

His voice rang down the hall. “I’m going to present this at the next conference! Bobbies! Did you hear that? Renegade!”

I will never smell like the DNA of Klaus Han.

*

I set to work then because I knew what I needed.

I worked until the last session of the night. It was the Everly boy patching in from his house, which was often the case with minors. I cued up his World from my desk and uploaded a prerecorded video of Klaus reading the rules of the level from the information I’d sent him.

Soon enough, the Everly boy was peering out from within the massive robot helmet, eyes blinking. He walked through green fields as the winds picked up and the sky turned gray. He clomped heavily through the high grass, over the rocks, searching for white-throated swallows caught in fishing nets and plastic bags.

He squatted down when he found one, the hydraulic gears of his robotic suit hissing, and he delicately cut it loose with a small knife that popped from a toolkit embedded in his arm gear. Then he found another swallow and another. The birds’ wings fluttered wildly. Pale chests, intricately patterned wings, blunt tails. I coded each of the swallows individually, changing something infinitesimal in each of their wet black eyes, shifting the fine yellow dots and stripes on their heads. I remembered how I’d always loved the pictures in my father’s Audubon books. I admired him now for having a soft spot for puffins even though it had embarrassed me at the time. I remembered Klaus waving his fat-knuckled hand and heard his voice in my head. It is what it is.

We are who we are. We need what we need.

As the game went on, the boy collected points for each swallow he set free.

But, eventually, he came upon one that seemed dead. Still and dry-eyed, its wings were lifeless. The boy cut it loose, but it didn’t move. He held it in his large robotic hand, feathers ruffling, and stared at it from behind his shielded helmet. He looked like he might start to cry.

Don’t cry, I urged him. Don’t.

As a boy, I would go for walks on Hog Island alone and I’d let myself cry because I could always blame it on the wind. I was lonesome then in a way that feels so familiar now.

But the Everly boy didn’t cry. He trusted the game. He lifted his metallic hand in the air, and the bird shuddered. Its wings twitched and it hopped to its delicate pinkish claws, shook its head, and batted off into the air.

I watched that moment again and again. I watched it as many times as the boy had saved swallows. Maybe more.

And then I walked out of my office and down the hall, past Bobbies A and B and Marcy, who were joking as they shoved themselves into their coats, heading home for the night—to lovers or not. I didn’t know.

I slipped by them, unnoticed, and made my way to the row of gaming rooms. None of them were occupied. I opened a door and stepped inside. I put on a pair of goggles hanging from the peg, tightened the rubber strap and thought—ever so fleetingly—of my father’s rubbery bathing suit and how he had seemed part-seal.

I used the computer in the wall to cue up my game.

(I’ve told no one about my game and I won’t. The secret rises inside of me, all yeasty ferment. Sometimes I imagine how it shows on my face—a puffed-up, blanched unspoken.)

It’s a simple game with only one level.

I go to Hog Island alone and drown myself over and over again.

I intend to play it until I don’t need to play it anymore.