“Yes,” Currier said. For him, it was almost apology. He watched my face, psychologist by training. I was busy proving to my own satisfaction that the bird’s nest was broken and couldn’t be solved. “But he has given a lot of people hope. People are moved by this story.”
“People are moved by gangster films and three-chord songs and commercials for cell phone plans.” I was getting worked up again. Panic did that to me. Currier just studied me, waiting, until I opened my mouth and words came out. “I’ll ask Robin. None of us gets to decide this for him.”
Currier frowned but nodded. Something in me appalled him, and for good reason. I felt as if I were my own son, about to turn ten, seeing through adulthood for the first time.
ROBIN WAS THOUGHTFUL but cautious. Do they want me, or do they really want Jay?
“They definitely want you.”
Cool. But what do I have to do?
“You don’t have to do anything. You don’t even have to say yes if you don’t want to.”
They want me to talk about the training and Mom’s brain and stuff?
“Dr. Currier would describe all that, before you went on.”
So what am I supposed to do?
“Just be yourself.” The words turned meaningless in my mouth.
His eyes got that faraway look. My timid boy, who spent years avoiding contact with strangers, was calculating how much fun it might be to spill the secret of life to the general public from the lip of a large stage.
A week before the event, I started to decompensate. I regretted letting him agree to anything. If he bombed, it could scar him for life. If he crushed it, he’d climb up the ladder of COG regions and be loved by ten times more people than loved him now. Both possibilities made me ill.
The evening before the event, after Robin finished the day’s last math packet, he came to me in my study, where I sat behind a stack of ungraded undergrad exams, vigorously doing nothing. He walked around behind my chair and put his hands on my trapezius. Then he called out the commands I used to get him to relax, back in the day. Jelly up!
I let my body go limp.
Jam tight!
I tensed again. We did a few rounds before he came around to sit sidesaddle on the arm of the chair. Dad. Chill! It’s all good. I mean, it’s not like I have to make a speech or anything.
The moment he went to bed, I called the local COG organizer—a Trotsky-looking guy Martin and I dealt with. “I have one more stipulation. After you film the talk, if I’m not happy, you don’t post it.”
“That’s up to Dr. Currier.”
“Well, I need veto rights.”
“I don’t think that’s possible.”
“Then I don’t think my son is going onstage tomorrow.”
Funny how you can always win negotiations you’re not crazy about winning.
THREE HUNDRED PEOPLE filled the auditorium, with folks still drifting in as the morning’s presenters finished. Fifteen minutes before showtime, the three of us went backstage. A techie wired up Currier and Robin and walked them through their marks.
“You’ll see a red clock down on the front of the stage. At four minutes and forty-five seconds . . .” The tech drew his index finger across his throat and gurgled. Marty nodded. Robbie laughed. I wanted to puke on the floorboards.
I didn’t realize the talk was under way until Currier was standing center stage in the audience applause. I held my arm around Robin, as if he might dash onstage if I let go. The tech stood on his other side, brandishing a handheld monitor and whispering into a headset boom.
Currier sounded fresh, given how often he’d pitched his research in public. He still talked about the work as if the results mystified him. He took fifty seconds to describe neurofeedback, another forty to explain the fMRI and AI software, and half a minute to summarize the effects. Minute three went to the clips of Robin. The audience was audibly impressed. So was my son, seeing them again, standing next to me in the wings of a dark, packed theater. Geez. That’s what happened to me?
Minute four brought the reveal. Currier dropped it as if it were just another data point: the same mother whose death sent the boy into a downward spiral has returned to nurse his spirit into health. Robin twitched, under my arm. I looked down at the compact planet next to me, whose shoulder I was clasping too hard. But he was grinning, as if the boy saved from that downward spiral fascinated him.
In his last half minute alone onstage, Currier succumbed to interpretation. “We’ve barely glimpsed the potential of these techniques. Only the future will reveal their full possibilities. Meanwhile, imagine a world where one person’s anger is soothed by another’s calm, where your private fears are assuaged by a stranger’s courage, and where pain can be trained away, as easily as taking piano lessons. We could learn to live here, on Earth, without fear. Now please say hello to a friend of mine. Mr. Robin Byrne.”