Untangling Future Memories

By Floyd Merrell

Untangling Future Memories is a sci-fi story set in 2032. Jack, a young adult, lost his short-term memory because of an accident at age thirteen. Cody Jaeckel, director of the Ultragenetic Institute, devises a grand design for uploading Jacks mindhe is genetically endowed with remarkable innate intelligenceand downloading it to a host of citizens for work in factories, corporations, services, hospitals, schools, and homes. Dr. Jaeckel believes the recipients of Jacks mind will prove supremely qualified for relatively simple, repetitive labor, thus providing an income for citizens who lost their jobs because of downsizing, cheap labor abroad, and robots. Jack, however, undergoes a self-healing process that puts a strain on Dr. Jaeckels project. Complexities arise, ambiguities and paradoxical issues abound, leaving Dr. Jaeckel, Jack, and the institutes investors in a bind, which leads to a bizarre turn of events.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: Aug 26, 2017
• ISBN: 9781543446067

Book preview

Copyright © 2017 by Floyd Merrell.

Library of Congress Control Number:   2017913040

ISBN:       Hardcover       978-1-5434-4608-1

                 Softcover         978-1-5434-4607-4

                 eBook               978-1-5434-4606-7

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the copyright owner.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to any actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Thinkstock are models, and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.

Certain stock imagery © Thinkstock.

Rev. date: 01/19/2018

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Contents

Strange Aspirations?

Aspirations Gone Mad?

Caught in the Act

Futile Futureless Days to Come?

Into the Past

Natural Born Loser?

Complementing Visual Thinking

Jack’s Dilemma: More than Meets the Eye

Scheme or Scam?

Essential Ruminations?

Essential Addenda

Ambiguity’s Footprints

Visual Ambiguities

Antagonizing Doubts

Into the Cosmic Flow

Gender and Identity Enigmas Prevail

Escape on His Mind

Becoming New Becoming

Escape … Again

Qualifying the Conundrum? … Perhaps

Back to Future Considerations

A Makeover is in the Air

Dreaming His World Dreaming Him

Perpetually Fixating on Escape?

Becoming, Somewhere Else

Never Ceasing to Amaze

Jack’s Uncanny Otherness

Ambiguity’s Becoming

Future Conditional Memories

Reconditioning Past Memories

Numberless Paths to Nowhere

All in His Mind?

What Was, and Will Have Been

Travails of Self-Recovery

Change in the Horizon?

The Puzzle Becomes All-Embracing

A Thought-Choking Dose of Semantic Blending

Underneath the Verbal Maelstrom

Escape Continues Losing Its Charm

Wandering and Wondering

Never Ending Dilemmas

Within the Context of Jack’s Dissolving Dilemma

The Dilemma Continues Dissolving

Into the Current, Swimmingly

Some Things Insist on Staying the Same

Somewhere to Anywhere; Somewhen to Anywhen

What is Real?

Who He Is Becoming?

Or Who He Could Have Been Becoming?

Or the Way He Will Have Been Becoming?

Strange Aspirations?

JACK detects an erratic cadence of dashing tennies behind him. He pivots. Sees two corpulent bodies and one slim and trim frame heading in his direction. Senses they are after him.

Unnerving questions pop into his mind, Who are they? What do they want? Why me? I—

No time for claptrap, Jack. Make tracks. Fast!

Why?

Just do it!

He runs.

At six foot one, sleek, wiry, and lithe, his long smooth strides appear effortless. Remarkably so, since he is encumbered by a tightly strapped backpack weighing in at twelve pounds.

They’re catching you, Jack. Turn on the afterburner!

He accelerates.

He knows not that those chasing him have orders to locate him. Latch onto him. Throw him in the car trailing along behind. And take him to dingy makeshift living quarters at the Ultragenetic Institute. Where a team of specialists under the leadership of Doctor Cody Jaeckel designed a bold project that includes exploiting his mind.

He dashes down a side street.

Doolittle, head of Doctor Jaeckel’s so-called security police, pulls to a stop. The others follow suit. Doolittle extends his index finger. This is a dead-end lane. Follow him Kull. Gross, you go down the next street, around to the rear, and intercept him if he gets over the barrier at the end of the lane. I’ll keep an eye out for him here.

Jack’s legs churn at a frantic pace.

A jackrabbit chased by a couple of wily coyotes follows his instinctive nature. One coyote gives hot pursuit while the other one veers off at an angle in order to intercept her prey at a probable future spot. The jackrabbit reacts according to his inherited software program. Zigging and zagging in his effort to elude his pursuers. Along a wide curve that will eventually reach the spot where he began.

Like the fleeing hare, Jack can neither rhyme about nor reason out his taking flight. All he knows is: Run!

As if out of the blue, Jack cringes, slows down a bit, and asks himself, Where am I? My backpack … Map notebook …

You don’t have time, Jack. Get the lead out!

He renews his pace.

His fleet stride carries him to the end of the alley. He puts on the brakes to avoid colliding with a wall.

KULL wheezes and gasps for breath. Pulls to a belly-jiggling stop at his point of origin. Doolittle growls, Where is he?

Kull avoids eye contact. He disappeared.

What do you mean disappeared?

I reached the end of the lane and he wasn’t there. He just disappeared.

Doolittle bellows, Are you forgetting he was a high school track champ?

Well—

You overweight moron!

Gross enters the scene with his tongue hanging out. Doolittle scowls. How many times have I told you that if you want to keep your jobs you’ll have to get in better shape?

Gross frowns. I ain’t seen you on no treadmill lately.

Hey! Get smart with me and you’re on your ass, Doolittle growls.

Kull grimaces. If we don’t catch him soon, Doctor Jaeckel will replace us with robots.

You think I don’t know that? We have to outwit him, set a trap for him.

What kind of trap? Kull raises his head and meets Doolittle’s menacing glare. He’s got a bloodhound nose, eagle eyes, and runs like mountain lion.

Let me think something up.

Machado struggles with his obese flaccidity in an effort to leave the front seat of the institute’s top-of-the-line 2032 self-driven vehicle. He painstakingly accomplishes his task, and waddles over to join his fellow cronies.

Doolittle wrinkles his brow and looks up at the clouds, trying his best to simulate heavy concentration. They remain silent, while giving him an occasional glance.

CYBER-SURGEONS at the Ultragenetic Institute think they know Jack’s condition to the letter. They got word of his rare brain disorder. Visited the Copper Country Hospital. Checked his records. And claimed they had a remedy for what to a selected set of appearances is a bizarre case of short-term memory deficiency. The hospital released him to the institute.

The following day, he escaped.

The institute’s ambitious project entails running a series of tests on Jack. If he qualifies, they will download the content of his mind to a computer and upload it to a handpicked group of jobless welfare dependent individuals, converting them into optimal candidates for repetitive assembly-line work, grunt labor, and general service employment. The assumption has it that the recipients of Jack’s mind will become a community of compliant workers in schools, factories, shopping malls, supermarkets, restaurants, farms, food processing plants, government bureaucracies, and such.

Folks at the institute are confident their project will be a boon to the country’s economy, ailing for over two decades since 2008. Doctor Jaeckel proudly proclaims at every opportunity, "We will once again become competitive with Latin American, African, and Asian labor. And we will bow down to no developed nation. America will be número uno again."

Jaeckel believes workers equipped with minds donated by Jack, like Jack, will have no recent past. Nor will they have any future worth speaking of. They will exist in the perpetual present. Nothing will be new under the sun for them. But as far as their flickering awareness goes, everything will be new. While at work, what they think and do will be all there is during the moment. Then the next moment will usher itself in. And in automaton fashion, they will repeat moves appropriately entrenched in their brains. Thanks to Jack.

A couple of weeks in the past, Jaeckel had an online interview with Lisa Cox from Digital News at Stanford California.

After Jaeckel outlines the institute’s project, Lisa is quick to ask, Why Jack?

Because, Jaeckel smiles with his patented patronizing demeanor, "he has no past beyond his early years, sparse expectations regarding his future, and to all appearances virtually no short-term memory. He lives in the present, while jumping from one moment to the next, improvising as he goes along. Above all, because in spite of his mental impairment, he shows signs of extraordinary intelligence. Hence his progeny—those who inherit his mind-works through computer assisted cyber-transfer—will be magnificently conditioned for repetitive labor, and they will no-nonsensically get their job done, accomplishing what their minds command of them."

How can you be so sure of the young man’s inborn intelligence?

Verbal dexterity is beyond him, of course. So we did tests on his spatial orientation, his sense of musical harmony and dissonance, and his associative power with respect to images. He performed beautifully.

If he is so intelligent, is your project for using his talents morally and ethically feasible?

Indeed it is. With millions of disgruntled citizens in this country unemployed, they lash out at those they call elitists, overeducated eggheads. They disparage citizens of other ethnicities and newly arriving immigrants they believe are taking up the few jobs available. Of course, under the Right To Eat Law, the unemployed receive a monthly check from the government in lieu of wages they would receive if work were available. But it’s a mere pittance, less than today’s minimum wage. Jack’s progeny, holding down slightly above minimum wage jobs, will believe they’re on top of the world. They will enjoy what they consider the best of all possible conditions.

Lisa squints. In spite of what you say, will your critics not insist on branding your project exploitation?

Exploitation? Those down and out souls will find themselves with a job and the most comfortable lifestyle they’ve known for years.

Lisa’s eyes tell Jaeckel she remains unconvinced. I think I see, Doctor Jaeckel. But for the record, please explain in layperson’s terms how you will accomplish your mind-transfer feat.

Jaeckel’s condescending smile repeats itself. Back in 2013, President Obama funded Brain Research through Advancing Innovative Neurotechnologies, or BRAIN, a continuation of the Human Genome Project. It involved mapping the neurons contained within a human brain, making a copy of the whole concoction, and thoroughly investigating it. By 2029, micro-neural mapping pointed toward the possibility of downloading the life of a mind’s fifty terabytes of memory—which by the way is equal to over a million books—to a computer.

Incredible!

We began locating an ideal mind with the objective of transferring it to a community of unemployed working-class individuals. The mind transfer will endow them with mental means and methods enabling them effectively to carry out their assigned tasks. Jack has that mind. And our chosen subjects will become his faithful progeny.

Why not use robots and be done with it?

Today’s robotics is not what it was during the second decade of the twenty-first century, when machines packing artificial intelligence could carry out most of our economy’s menial jobs.

So what is the problem?

Robot manufacturers now face big demands for human-size insect-like bots with six arms at the assembly-lines. Lithe bots with four arms in business offices typing at two keyboards simultaneously. Four-arm stockers in markets placing merchandise on the shelves. Friendly bot assistants in clinics and hospitals. Comforting sweet-talking bots in therapy. Charming consultant bots in businesses. Teaching bots in schools. To say nothing of bot-accountants, bot-surgeons, and white-collar bots of all sorts.

Lisa’s skeptical eye continues drilling in on Jaeckel. So why buck the trend?

Demand for androids recently zoomed into the stratosphere, putting a strain on the availability of scarce commodities—called rare earths—used in robot construction. Many of these commodities petered out in this country, and prices zoomed through the roof. As an alternative to our bot workers, specially prepared humans equipped with Jack’s mind will provide a less expensive labor force.

But, Lisa counters, will these workers not become a poor excuse for citizens in the larger society if their lives consist of nothing more than mindless robot labor?

Jaeckel grins. Definitely not. Workers equipped with Jack’s mind will replace many—though not all—bots, and they will take on the positive image our working class enjoyed after World War Two.

What about bots programmed with DNA computing that is now paying dividends? To say nothing of molecular and quantum computing that hold remarkable promise for the future. Will they not?—

Jaeckel butts in with a shrug. Cost again

End of interview. Jaeckel’s tough-minded disposition once again earned its customary dividends.

KULL says, Well, Boss, we’d better come up with a good excuse for Doctor Jaeckel—

I’m thinking! Doolittle snaps back. "You don’t like the wait? Then you come up with something?"

I got an idea, Machado says. Since Jack has nowhere to go, he must be living on the street and hungry. Let’s bait him with some chips or something, like it fell out of someone’s shopping bag. Ambush him when he comes over to grab it, and haul his ass off to the institute.

Doolittle glares. Am I surrounded by incompetence you idiot? He might not pass a particular spot for days.

Kull suggests, Tomorrow maybe we can find out what his schedule is. Homeless people usually follow the same path daily.

Gross says, He’s right—

Doolittle shoots back, For now, I have to give Doctor Jaeckel a report. What can I tell him? Nothing!

Machado frowns. "Nada won’t be good enough for him."

What’s our option? Kull frowns.

Let me think. Doolittle goes back to his face-contorting mode.

They gape at him with shuffling feet and head scratching. After a half-minute or so he announces, We’ll go back to Doctor Jaeckel’s place and tell him about our trick for apprehending him. That ought to get us off the hook until tomorrow.

Aspirations Gone Mad?

NOTHING is stable in Jack’s world. It is a hodge-podge series of moments pushing their predecessors aside and replacing them. As far as Jack’s limited awareness goes, he quickly takes each moment as it appears. He creatively acts on it. Then his mind is a clean slate. Ready and waiting for the next moment’s arrival.

The institute’s psychologists baffle over Jack’s ability to accomplish this task so quickly. Especially since as far as his verbal expression goes, he is hardly more than a bumbling idiot. After considerable discussion over his aberrant behavior, they agree to continue labeling it short-term memory deficiency. Adding a footnote that it is a hitherto unknown sporadic condition, somehow entering and leaving his brain with a staccato cadence.

In contrast, Jack’s future progeny, that is, Doctor Jaeckel’s projected community of single-minded workers, will simply do what they do. Mindlessly, from one moment to the next. Yet, as far as they are concerned, everything will be what it has to be. They will lack Jack’s capacity to develop an imaginary response to each passing moment, and try it out to see what happens. They will have virtually no curiosity, because they will bear no expectations regarding future moments that never cease flashing by. Thus, they will efficiently perform their repetitive menial tasks, devoid of Jack’s creative moments and responses.

At least so Doctor Jaeckel believes. Time will tell the tale.

THE institute’s cyber-surgeons believe their BRAIN endowment and funds from wealthy investors will liberally finance their endeavor to compute the mind-transfer workers’ brains with algorithmic precision for monitoring purposes.

In this manner, the technicians will map out the workers’ minds, hone their capacity to its logical end, and effectively keep tabs on their brain states. Thus, the ideal world will be at hand. Consisting of haves living the good life while keeping the have-nots properly monitored, and have-nots providing mindlessly repetitive work that will keep the economy booming. Since the have-nots will enjoy no vision of a more comfortable world, they will remain as content as robins in a morning meadow.

Indeed, Doctor Jaeckel thinks his project is a vast improvement over Aldous Huxley’s failed utopian Brave New World, which he often quips, is his Anti-Bible.

TALL, clean shaved, pistol toting Doolittle stops short. Wait a minute. We have almost an hour before quitting time. Let’s split up, see if by chance we run onto that numbskull, observe him from a distance, and map out what we can of his route from that spot forward.

Machado thrusts a fleshy fist into the air. Yeah! Let’s get this thing done.

This way, Doolittle throws a frown at Machado, we’ll have something positive for Doctor Jaeckel. Who knows? We might save him from another tantrum.

Boisterous guffaws give support to the suggestion.

Kull, you go north. Gross, head south. Machado, cover the eastern area. I’ll search the west. At four-thirty sharp I want to see you at this spot.

Gross opens hopeful eyes wide. If we spy him, shall we chase him down?

You tried that and failed, dimwit! Map out his routine with what time you have left. Tomorrow we’ll set a trap for him, take him into custody, and Doctor Jaeckel will have nothing to bitch about.

They depart with renewed confidence.

THE cyber-surgeons’ project to endow Jack’s replicants with an ordered series of moments, rather than Jack’s scattered momentary improvisations during each particular moment, is of utmost importance.

Why? Chiefly due to the fact that Jack is capable of recalling his remembering self when he was a young lad before a devastating accident shredded his short-term memory. But the replicants will not inherit this capacity. Jack’s pre-accident years will be conveniently deleted from his uploaded mind-works—thanks to a slick operation the cyber-surgeons invented. Thus, the replicants’ transitory moments will begin when they become recipients of Jack’s specially inculcated and solemnly baptized cerebral organ.

Beautiful, they smirk. Who could want more? The replicants will not be of a mind-set to question their lot in life. And we will have no reason to question our motives.

The cyber-surgeons eventually conclude that they ought to construct a map of the replicants’ behavior and form of life.

Why? To understand their nature as a community of laborers, and chisel it to near perfection as time goes by. How will they accomplish the task? Elementary, they believe. Statistics can do the trick. The community of workers function like a vast collection of atoms in an enclosed vat obediently following statistical averages. Ask one of the atoms if it has a will of its own and it will answer, Of course I do! I am captain of my own ship. So also regarding the replicants.

However, a proud individual replicant, like each atom, will be captain of nothing. Along with his companions, he will do what he does according to statistical averages that govern the entire community of replicants. For practical purposes, his actions will be effectively calculable according to those same statistics. In this manner, each replicant, like each atom in the vat, will act as one among many. At the same time, all of them as a collective whole will function as many making up one.

The institute’s spin-doctors assume the replicants’ drab mechanical world and their masters’ sunny world of consumption and good times will resonate with one another to a marvelous complementary rhythm. Thus, there will be no rigid class distinctions of a grave new world sort.

We and the replicants will enjoy separate existence, Jaeckel jubilantly declares at every opportunity. Yet, we will be one, and equality will prevail for all. That’s what democracy is all about!

PLODDING, heaving Kull and Machado return from their mission to gather information regarding Jack’s daily rounds.

Jaeckel raises a brow in expectation, saying, Find anything out?

Kull grimaces. Not a sign of him.

Dammit! Doolittle growls. We’ve got to get on top of this.

Kull spits on the broken concrete. Here comes Gross.

What do you have? Doolittle shouts.

Nothing.

Doolittle scowls. This isn’t good.

Machado shakes his head. It’s less than that.

Gross pulls a grimace. If we can’t trail the bastard along his daily coming and going, what’s the next move?

Machado grits his teeth. The next time I see him I have a mind to put a slug in his goddamn kneecap and take him in.

No! Kull growls. Doctor Jaeckel doesn’t want him ruffled up.

I don’t give a rat’s ass. We’ll tell him it was the only way to bring him in.

Doolittle bellows, Don’t so much as think what you’re thinking.

Gross looks at his MyWatch. We still have a bit of time left.

Doolittle nods. Okay. Spread out again and keep searching. Make sure you’re here by four-fifty sharp.

They leave with waning hopes. Find nothing. And reluctantly head for the institute to face Doctor Jaeckel’s wrath.

Caught in the Act

THE next morning Doolittle, Kull, Machado, and Gross are out searching for Jack. Again. After Doctor Jaeckel’s brutal reprimands and threats to fire them. Jack, of course, has no recollection of the pursuers on his tail during the previous day.

In fact, at this moment Jack is thinking. Or perhaps more appropriately said, given his condition, his thinking is thinking him, What am I doing here? … My backpack. Map notebook … Here it is … This is where I was, when I wrote it down … I guess … Center of ‘Morristown.

He looks up, State Street … Like the sign up there says … Now what do I do?

Wait a minute. Who’s that running at me like a freight train? … Someone grabbing me from behind! … Poking me. Aaay! … Black car … Shoving me in … Going … Where to?

Ask them, Jack.

Ask them what?

Anything …

What … you want? Jack groans.

A voice bellows, Shut your goddamn mouth!

Another voice rings out, What luck! We left the institute, came to Morristown, parked the car, and a few blocks later there he was. Simple as shit.

Where … you take me?

The roughneck at the left side of the back seat with a Zuni image tattooed on his right cheek growls, I said shut up. Meanwhile, in the middle of the seat, Switchblade—or so Jack mentally labels Doolittle in his customary effort to remember him—gives Jack’s rib cage a nick with his sharp instrument.

Ooooh! … Hurts!

Zuni—Jack’s epithet for Kull—says from the front seat, You don’t know what hurt is, you fuckin’ fag. Open your mouth again and you’ll find out.

Jack remains in his mute-mode for a few seconds. Switchblade pokes him again for good measure.

Like lightning, Jack opens the door and jumps out. His legs buckle when his feet slam onto the pavement. The vehicle screeches to a halt. Backs up. Disgorges two of its passengers. Jack scrambles in an effort to elude them. They grab him, now sporting skinned knees and a bloodied forehead. Throw him back in the car. And they’re off again. Machado—Jack later dubs him Catman, given his lightning reflexes in spite of his grotesquely protruding belly—becomes impatient with the self-driven car’s lethargy, and stomps on the emergency gas pedal. It rambles along pot-holed streets. Heads jostle. Bodies sway. Catman giggles. Nine minutes later, the car stops at the gate leading to a large building.

Mandala—that is, Gross, sporting a proud tattoo on his forehead—motions to a robot at the gate leading to the three-story structure, formerly the town hall. The gate opens. The car stealthily moves along the driveway and stops. Mandala flops out of the car. Opens the back door. Grabs Jack by the neck. Jerks him out of the car. And shoves him toward the front door of the building. Switchblade opens it and pushes Jack inside.

They proceed along a hallway. Zuni opens a door to the right and points to a chair at the end of a long coffin-shaped table. Jack walks over. Sits. And tenderly touches the wound on his forehead. Switchblade takes out a handkerchief, wipes the blood off his weapon, pockets it, and motions to the robot at the door surveilling the scene that all is well.

Jack watches the bot exit, then focuses on his abductors as if he had never seen them before. They are from six-one to six-four. Hefty to near obese. Except Switchblade, who is slender and well groomed. They gaze at the elongated tabletop. Likely expecting somebody important. Jack looks around the room. Plush furniture, expensive art, thick carpet, terribly expensive chandeliers. He looks at the door from whence they entered. Obviously hand carved. Jack’s mind turns back to his dialoguing inner thoughts.

JACK was once in this room before he took his first escape from the premise. Now, he remembers not a bit of it. Yet, strange as it seems, lately Jack’s inner thoughts have been in the process of recovering minute portions of their flowing coherence.

Doctor Jaeckel sensed so much when he asked Jack to put his thoughts on paper instead of giving verbal responses to the questions asked of him. What Jack painfully yet deliberately wrote was far beyond his hesitant, stammering, verbal disaster each time the cyber-surgeons set out to interrogate him. Jack’s verbal incompetence coupled with his writing capacity bewildered them. That is, until they analyzed his nonverbal intelligence.

While in wait along with Jaeckel’s goon squad that brought him in, Jack says to himself, Maybe I can escape through the door … What if it’s locked? They’ll clobber me … But if it is unlocked, I can make a run for it.

Of course Jack remembers nothing of the grounds outside the building. The bots in perpetual surveillance. The drones overhead. The tall wrought-iron enclosure.

Jack’s thoughts resume, Shall I go for it?

It’s a no-brainer, Jack. Just do it.

What do you mean IT? What IT?

Forget your damn curiosity and scram through the door. Your chances are better than if you stay here. Do it Jack! Now!

He bolts. Mandala hollers, Goddamn! Catman’s jaw falls open but no sound comes out. Switchblade yells, Get after him! Jack is out the front door, with Mandala, Zuni, and Catman in rambling pursuit.

Switchblade runs into the next room. Returns with a LaserTaser in his hand. In time to catch a glimpse of Jack leaping to the ground on the other side of the wrought iron fence.

The gatekeeping bot remains forty yards away. Looking around as if confused by the ruckus.

Jack’s paunchy pursuers heave, while clomping toward the gate.

Switchblade runs to the car and jumps in. Its engine fires. Tires leave rubber on the pavement. The car stops at the gate. Switchblade frantically motions to the bot. The gate opens. The car lurches. Accelerates into the street.

Jack is out of sight. He rounded the curve past the huge lot adjacent to the institute.

The self-styled security police will have hell to pay with Doctor Jaeckel. Again.

JACK’S mind hazes in contradistinction to his body in frantic motion. While running, he makes a Herculean effort to fathom the situation surrounding him. Though the task is arduous.

Nobody’s following me. Why would they follow me? What did I do? What do they want?

Cease your answerless questions and tell me where you’re going, Jack?

I need my notes.

Don’t stop now. Keep running!

I am. I run to fight boredom, to keep in shape. I run for the hell of it.

He enters decrepit Sunburst Park.

MEMORIES are here, because they existed before he got his head caved in and his short-term memory abandoned him. His mother used to bring him here often when he was a kid. He remembers how he went up the ladder to the tunnel at the top of the slide steeply angling toward the ground. He sat there. Frozen.

His classmates below screamed. The kid behind him pushed him in an effort to keep the show going. Jack resisted. The kid pushed harder. Jack’s mother at the foot of the slide motioned him to go into action. The kid gave him a shove with all the force he could muster. Jack tumbled down the slide and ended up with a bloody cheek. His classmates laughed at him. His mother scolded them. He sensed the height of embarrassment.

That he remembers. Vividly. How could he forget it?

Jack also remembers a soccer match in the park five years later. The ball came his way. He saw a goal close by and kicked the ball toward it. Ran after the ball. Kicked it again. Then again. And through the goal to the right of his team’s goalie with arms waving like a frantic windmill and screaming, No, you idiot!

Jack raised a clenched fist high,