“Can I see the Anti-Vision again?” he asked, and everyone groaned.
Another night, their father played for them his return to the professors’ apartment. The lesson here was the importance of coming clean and expressing gratitude, even when it was hard or—in this case—contentious. A professor named Fern kept interrupting as he tried to explain why he’d worn a disguise the first time. “You lied to us once,” she said. “Why should we trust you now?”
“Shut up,” Gregory’s sisters yelled at her from beneath their headsets. “Let him finish.”
Gregory’s father ended by thanking the group for having occasioned an idea that would direct the next phase of his work. The host, Ted Hollander, who turned out to be an uncle of their mother’s friend Sasha, erupted, “How marvelous! We helped you to shift a paradigm without knowing who you were or what you were grappling with! You were right not to tell us; fame is distracting.”
“Feels a bit biblical, doesn’t it?” said English-Accent Guy. “We took in a weary traveler, and lo, he turned out to be Christ our Lord. Lucky us!”
“We didn’t take him in,” said Kacia, the Brazilian animal studies professor. “We were all strangers, remember?” Gregory’s father ended up hiring Kacia a few months later, and she’d come to lead a division of Mandala.
“It almost feels like we were a focus group for Bix, not a gathering of peers,” said Portia, Ted’s wife.
Rebecca spoke up a little shyly. “This whole experience has helped me finalize my dissertation topic,” she said. “Authenticity as problematized by digital experience. So thank you all.”
She and their father had never met again, but Rebecca Amari had gone on to write many books—in fact, it was she who’d coined the term “word-casings” in Eating Our Tails: Craving Authenticity in a Hyper-Mediated World, which Athena had assigned in workshop.
“You should interview my son Alfred,” Ted told Rebecca. “He’s obsessed with authenticity. He screams in public just to watch people react.”
“Wow,” said Rebecca. “Definitely.”
“What do you want from us?” Fern demanded of Gregory’s father.
“He wanted to join a discussion group,” Ted said. “And after one meeting, he overcame a mental block. I say more power to him.”
In that instant, Gregory felt his father’s joy: a giddy infusion of promise alongside a faint cadence of thought: I’ve got it. I’ve got it. I’ve got it. He was about to change everything, yet again, but no one knew it yet.
“What bothers me,” he said, “is that I might’ve derailed this group.”
“If we let ourselves get derailed, that’s on us,” said Broken-Glasses Guy. “We’re supposed to be professionals.”
“We’re supposed to be professors!” said English-Accent Guy with an arch glance at Rebecca.
“I can go anytime, no hard feelings. Do you want to finish tonight’s session without me?”
There was a long pause. “Why does everyone look at me?” Fern asked.
“Stay,” Ted said. “Please.”
3
Athena opened her door wearing a long dark purple kimono. The apparition of Gregory on her threshold disrupted her cool demeanor only slightly, like a faint tinkling of glassware. “He walks,” she said. “He moves. He lives.”
“Hi, Athena.”
“He talks.”
Gregory handed over Dennis’s red bag and said, “Hey, do you mind if I sit down a minute?” During the walk, his head had begun to feel like a balloon floating above his body.