The link to the beta draft is here.

Description below.

Complete at ~98,000 words, EXAPTATION is a multi-POV novel which anneals character-driven emotional depth of Richard Powers' Bewilderment with the high-concept scientific suspense of Blake Crouch's Upgrade and the story-end conceptual reframing found in Ted Chiang's Story of Your Life.

With two minds in one body, which deserves to live?

MIT physicist Trevor Larkin is losing his mobility and independence to multiple sclerosis. Desperate, he enrolls in a clinical trial for an experimental drug championed by biotech researcher Joakim "Jo" Mayor. The treatment is a miracle - until the trial abruptly ends. When the drug is withdrawn, Trevor and the other patients collapse into terrifying catatonia.

Tasked with investigating the disaster, Jo discovers that Trevor alone has emerged from his locked-in state functional, but profoundly changed. He now calls himself Hale. Jo uncovers a chilling truth: the Hale personality is not a side effect of brain damage, but a distinct parallel consciousness - an immune mind that developed silently alongside Trevor's neuronal self over a lifetime. The experimental drug made it possible for Hale to take control of Trevor's body - and he has no intention of giving it back.

More troubling, Hale believes immune minds like his are the next stage of human evolution and intends to awaken the other catatonic trial patients in the same way - supplanting their former selves. As Jo's obsession with stopping Hale fractures both career and family, he realizes his only option is to weaponize the original trial drug against Hale. But doing so means deciding whether destroying a new form of conscious mind - killing it, killing him - is the right choice to reclaim Trevor and to stop the proliferation of immune minds.

The shadows were lengthening, though the day was a long one. Trevor and Ellen walked through Mt. Auburn Cemetery, she slightly ahead, her warm hand lightly holding his, pulling him forward past the Bigelow Chapel and the Sphinx that faced it.

They’d stop there later, she assured.

Trevor felt the limp that no one else could see. He recognized the subtle drop of his right foot - familiar. He’d felt the same slight weakness before, months before his initial multiple sclerosis diagnosis. The official one. The drop was barely there. But he knew it.

It had been more than one month since his last dose of NST2604 in June.

July bothered him. It had for many years. While the days in July were still very long - especially as far north as Massachusetts - they grew inexorably shorter. Small changes, but changes Trevor always keyed in on. In Alabama, summer vacation began in May, usually around the twentieth. For one whole month of freedom, the days got longer.

Those had been heady days for Trevor - mostly spent crawling around on his own on his family’s eighteen acres. Trevor would spend early mornings with his Ma and Pa cultivating the tomatoes and peppers they grew for a little extra cash. It hadn’t really been a working farm anymore - those years had long passed. A farm with fewer than twenty acres could hardly turn a profit sufficient to raise even a small family. But both of Trevor’s parents were schoolteachers, so the summer months offered an opportunity to work the land and squeeze out a few bucks. Those had been the dollars that had purchased Trevor his first computer and had gotten him a used F-150 when he turned sixteen.

Trevor didn’t mind the work. He enjoyed being outside. And he enjoyed working alone - watering, weeding, looking for pests that might burrow into the nightshades. When his morning chores were done, he’d venture to the back of the property to putter around - chasing frogs, climbing trees.

One summer, when he was twelve years old, he decided to make the dilapidated shed at the back of the property - about eighty paces from the old family cemetery where his grandparents and great-grandparents had been buried - his own.

He spent three weeks through June, with each day getting longer, each day giving him more time to work, essentially rebuilding the shed one post, beam, and plank at a time. By the time it was done, it had roughly the same shape and was roughly in the same location, but it was hardly the same shed anymore.

The process of rebuilding the structure had catalyzed Trevor’s lifelong love affair with physics. He became enamored with simple machines that helped him achieve so much alone. He’d learned about devices from his family’s Encyclopedia Britannica set. There had been something in the entry about how these machines made work easier - something from Archimedes about how, theoretically, with a lever arm long enough, a single person could move the Earth. That assertion had driven him a bit batty because there was nothing to brace the lever arm against - no fulcrum - but nevertheless, he’d understood the point.

So, Trevor thought hard about how to apply simple tools on this project. His crowbar was a lever for demolition. He used pulleys to raise wood too heavy to otherwise set in place. Screws and bolts fastened. Axes cut down trees and split wood. Chisels shaved it into useful form. These tools, and his mind, amplified his abilities.

And they didn’t tease him like his peers. They were quiet. He liked the quiet. And he never felt at a loss for company. He never felt alone exactly. Even today, the superstitious part of him wondered if the ghosts of his ancestors had been keeping him company out there at the edge of the property.

He’d completed the project on the solstice that year. Triumphant, he sat on the crude deck he’d built outside the door to the shed, ice-cold sweet tea in hand, watching the sun set. The lengthening the shadows of the cemetery gravestones on that very long day had signaled the official start of summer.

Since then, he’d never stopped appreciating sunsets over cemeteries. It’s why Ellen had been able to convince him to come out ths evening. But something else about that summer had left a mark. The project - a source of joy and pride - had ended when the days started to grow shorter.

His sense of satisfaction had waned with the sun that year. He never shook the association. A creeping dread would find him every summer in July, when days still warm and bright, began moving in the wrong direction.

He was odd, he knew. He always focused on the derivative. The direction of the change. The change of the change. A short day was okay if it was longer than the last. A limp, however bad, had been very tolerable during his clinical trial, so long as it was not more severe than the day before.

This year by the time the summer solstice had visited, his limp, the foot drop, the hand spasms, the blurry vision, the overall malaise - it had all been gone. Ablated by the experimental drug. But the trial had ended. He sighed.

He became aware again of Ellen - her chattering about the tombstones as they meandered the winding cemetery roads.

She was splendid, with her knowledge of all things culture and art.. She shared what she knew with the same enthusiasm he harbored for physics and the natural world. She knew where the stones had been quarried from - Maine, the Massachusetts South Shore. She spoke of how revolutionary the burial ground had been - a cemetery inclusive of people of all faiths and traditions. She knew who the designers had been - Bigelow and Olmstead.

Trevor struggled to focus on her words, though. His preoccupation with his disease consumed him in a way it never had before he’d entered the trial. Before NST2604, his disease had certainly weighed on him, but he’d quietly accepted his limitations. He’d accepted the relentlessness of the disease and his trajectory.

Having tasted recovery, though, the reemerging symptoms - ever so slight - evoked a frustration bordering on rage. Trevor was not feeling himself.

But none of this was Ellen’s fault. And Ellen knew none of it. How could she? He hadn’t told her. So Trevor would try to be present for her here. It was her favorite place. Sacred to her, really. And he would attend to it with her, as such.

With all the willpower he could muster, he pulled himself into hearing her. No, not hearing. Listening. And he focused on what she showed him.

He relaxed his shoulders and let himself be with Ellen.

“Oh! This is one of my favorite parts,” Ellen said, effervescent. She rushed ahead, Trevor’s tired legs strained to keep up.

She threw a word over her shoulder to him. “I want to show you something! I bet you’ll know what this is!”

Trevor rounded the bend a few feet behind Ellen until he saw a large metal sculpture set in granite and called up to her, “Looks like a flame to me.”

“What?” Ellen asked, eyes focused on tombstones. Then, seeing where Trevor’s eyes were trained, she said, “Oh, yes, I think they call that the Eternal Flame or something. But that’s not what I wanted to show you. Come here.”

When she found it, Ellen hopped and gave a little clap. Her frizzy, grey-streaked red hair bounced in the summer breeze.

“It’s this one! Here! Do you know who this is? What the equation is? Is it special?”

Trevor caught up to her. His eyes keyed in on the etching.

His heart leapt. Special?! Trevor could feel his blood pulsing in his neck, such was the thrill. He reached for Ellen’s hand, he drew her closer, gazed into onyx pupils set into sapphire eyes and said, “My dear Ellen, this is very special indeed.”

Then he kissed her. She kissed back. Trevor felt her smile through the kiss. Then her lips softened again. He lost time in it all.

They seemed to come to themselves at the same moment and pulled apart. They let their moment breathe.

“So…one hell of an equation, Trev?” she asked with a half laugh.

“It is, Ellen.” Trevor raised his eyebrows. “I didn’t expect he’d be here. And I didn’t expect the elegance…the equation all alone above his name.”

“And his wife’s,” Ellen observed. “So what’s it mean, science guy?”

“Alpha over 2 Pi,” Trevor recited. “Julian Schwinger found the equation explained a discrepancy in the behavior of electrons. My exact area of study.”

“That was a bunch of words. You did not explain what it means.”

“True,” Trevor laughed. “Everything electrical is a magnet and everything magnetic is electrical, right?”

“Electro-magnetism,” Ellen answered, nodding at the thought. “Never really thought about it, but I’ll take your word for it.”

Trevor nodded, “Fair enough. Well, good old Julian here, who I never had the pleasure of meeting, was able to explain why a single electron’s magnetism is measured as stronger than it should have been based on its charge,” he pointed at the stone, “with this very simple equation.”

“How does that equation explain why electrons are stronger magnets?”

“The equation stipulates that the electron is stronger because it is never completely alone. It is accompanied by companion particles that pop in and out of existence.”

“I thought there was a thing about matter not being created or destroyed.” Ellen said.

“There are exceptions to rules,” he shrugged, amused.

“And you use this equation for your work?”

“Almost every day, my dear.”

Her face split into a wondrous smile. She ruffled his salt and pepper hard and exclaimed, “You nerd!”

Trevor tried to smooth his hair with his fingers and asked, “Where next?”

He was genuinely curious but also hoped the next stop would be on the way to his car. He was exhausted.

“One more stop,” Ellen promised.

****

The Bigelow Chapel drew Trevor’s eyes in and then up. His feet and his head followed suit. He glanced to Ellen - saw her Mona Lisa smile. She knew what this space would do.

His footfalls echoed as he stepped forward ahead of her into the wide central aisle, marveling at the thousands of pounds of granite arrayed - puzzle pieces locked into place by geometry and gravity alone. The starkness of the granite cleared his mind and left the stained glass in front of him as his inevitable point of focus.

When Trevor was close enough to the window to isolate details while also taking in the whole scene, he stopped advancing. Ellen came up next to him.

“And that is the Chancel Window.”

Transfixed by the technicolor glow, Trevor commented, “Surprising.”

“Hmm?” she asked.

“The center panel…at the top…” he pointed at the circle of painted glass. A female figure with wings - an angel? - cradling two babes, “that’s no Biblical icon I know…”

Ellen nodded and elbowed him in the ribs lightly, “That’s because it isn’t, smartypants. That’s a painting of a Greek goddess, Night. The babies are her children. Hypnos and Thanatos. One represents sleep and one death.”

Trevor gazed at her, hoping his appreciation bled through, “I truly didn’t know I needed an art historian in my life, Ellen.”

“Everyone needs an art historian in their life!” she teased.

Trevor studied the glass a few beats longer, massaging a cramp out of his left hand; not letting the symptoms ruin this moment. He marveled at the courage of Bigelow to eschew a cross or a resurrection scene in the glass; choosing this pagan symbol in mid-19th century America instead.

Then he blurted, “I can’t tell.”

“Can’t tell what?”

“Which is sleep and which is death,” Trevor said.

Ellen cocked her head and thought for a long moment, “You know what? I can’t either.”

(Non-fiction background companion piece here.)

I plan to post these vignettes and short stories into a specific section of my Building Toward Coalescence substack. These stories and background materials will help me build the world, hopefully will help me improve as a writer, and might just entertain and interest a few readers.

I am likely to edit this from time-to-time as the novel and story beyond evolves.

Not Fair that It’s Not Fair

By F.O. Gameiro

It was a beautiful October day on the south bank of the Charles River during the Head of the Charles Regatta. A pale sun hung in a topaz sky, and the air held an edge of fall, cooling Sara Blockett’s skin as she wrestled with the oversized video camera FOX24 had shoved into her arms. Its weight bit into her shoulder. The river flashed like cut glass; eights carved silver seams through the current; coxswains barked; crows heckled from bridge trusses; grills hissed from alumni tents. Somewhere down the bank, fresh dough fried in oil. The sister cities, Boston and Cambridge, seemed tuned to the vibrant frequency of the event.

Inside her head, though, two voices - remembered like lullabies:
Totally unfair.
No one ever said life was fair, young lady.

Her own chorus, then her father’s refrain. Sometimes it steadied her; today it scraped her raw.

****

1998. Almost four years old, playing hopscotch with her father’s legs while he lay half-under the kitchen sink, replacing the garbage disposal. The house smelled like Comet and maple syrup. He tapped the cabinet twice - like a service bell - before calling, “Hand me the wrench, Sara-socks.”

Time alone with her dad, back then, was her favorite. He’d narrate everything until it sounded like a TV cooking show like her mama watched:

“And now, our fabulous assistant, Sara-socks delivers right on…” She had a knack for matching his cadence, so she slapped the wrench into his palm exactly when he said, “...time.”

The new cordless phone rang - sharp and showy - and he startled, banging his forehead on the pipe. A deep gong reverberated through the cabinet and deep behind the wall. Sara would never forget the sound - how it vibrated long and in dark places she would never see and had never thought about. He groaned, slid out, and pressed the cuff of his dark green flannel shirt to his brow. Blood came fast, bright red against his dark skin.

“Daddy, you’re bleeding!”

“Am I, Sara-socks?” he asked lightly, already standing, moving toward the living room where the phone still trilled.

She followed, wide-eyed. Three scarlet trails blazed along the contour of his face: one skirting his sideburn, one beading along his cheekbone, one pooling in the hedge of his eyebrow. She had never seen blood move like that - only having seen smears from scrapes, and papercut slices vanishing into her mommy’s mouth. This was different - like the blood from old fairytale book that Gramma Blockett read to Sara and her brothers.

On the fifth ring, the answering machine picked up.

Sara’s momma’s cheerful tones crackled through the machine speaker: Hi! You’ve reached the Blocketts. That’s Jaylen, Meta, lil Jaylen, Micah, and Sara… Beep.

Mrs. Mellerson’s voice stepped in, apologetic, careful: Keisha couldn’t make the party - it was Keisha’s grandfather’s birthday. Keisha needed to be there.

And in a moment, Sara had forgotten her daddy’s blood. Shock and awe replaced with selfish despair.

“My birthday is ruined!” she wailed. She flung her little body at her daddy and pounded about his knees with her tiny fists. “It’s not fair! Make her come! I don’t care about her PopPop’s birthday! Daddy!”

Her father crouched, one hand firm at his wound, the other pulling her into a hug. His voice came somehow both gentle and flinty: “No one ever said life was fair, young lady. No one ever said life was fair.”

She hiccupped sobs. “Well, it’s not fair that it’s not fair!”

His right eye crinkled - nearly a smile. He never let it reach his mouth. A laugh from him at that moment would have broken her.

“You’re right. It isn’t. But you’re learning. These things happen. A lot. This is a big moment for you. Figuring out how to have fun at your party without Keisha - that’s part of growing up.”

“I don’t wanna grow up,” eyes askance, Sara muttered.

He tipped his head, found eye contact, and went to work building her world back up piece-by-piece.

“Do you want to stay up till eight like your brothers?”

A reluctant shrug, one shoulder. “Maybe.”

“Your own trike?”

Another shrug, lip still pouty, but less reluctant. “Yes.”

“A giant cake and…” he widened his eyes, stage-whisper “...a four-year-old’s Addy Walker doll?”

She cracked. And to her own surprise, her face broke into joy. “YAA!”

“Then try, Sara-socks.”

“Try what?” she chimed, already having forgotten what this was about.

He pulled his sleeve away from his forehead for a moment, he looked at the blood there. Sara studied the fresh pool beneath a lifted flap of skin before it disappeared under his pressure again.

“Try growing up - just a little for now,” he said, his visible eye big with warmth and seriousness, “And growing up is learning you can’t control what happens. But you can always control how you respond.”

Then, he allowed it. He smiled with his whole face. And she melted into another hug.

“I love you, Daddy. I’ll grow up,” she chirped.

“And I love you, Sara-socks. I know you will.”

Even now, decades later, the memory balled up in her throat - the warmth of his patience set against the hard edge of what came after; love and loss locked together like gears in motion.

****

Back on the river, the FOX24 tent smelled like sun-baked plastic and sunscreen - crowding out the sugared fried dough. Marco, the senior photog, had commandeered two sandbags as an ottoman and a folding chair. He was explaining bokeh photography to a young woman in a BU tank and shorts that should have covered more. Text reminders from her producer blew up her phone - B-roll to capture. Each incomplete shot ratcheted her anxiety:

ISO 800 till the clouds burn off.

Please shoot signage.

Try for a father-daughter cutaway.

Sara steadied the camera. Or she tried. Her right hand trembled - her multiple sclerosis symptoms revisiting. A bad moment for it. She adjusted the shoulder pad; trying to reduce the camera’s bite.

She whispered, barely a breath, “Totally unfair.”

The camera’s live mic caught it, she knew. She could almost feel the mistake travel along the XLR cable.

Marco didn’t notice - yet. He was busy mansplaining neutral density filters to rapt attention.

She pictured the editing bay at eleven: a producer jogging through her footage, hearing the mutter, watching her camera wobble, and saying of course. The MS girl.

Oh, the way pity curdles into contempt. Sara thought of the new red-headed intern who knew where to look and how to laugh - who didn’t have the drag of a disease strapped to her arm. She was already better with the camera, at least now that the weakness had come back. Sara’s hand clenched around the grip. She tried to track a rower’s triceps as her boat slid past Weeks Footbridge, but the center of her frame bobbed - arm, water, boat, hand. There would be no focus. No perfect shot.

Rage rose in her - hot and familiar.

Sara Blockett, the fuck-up. They’d say it. Under their breath. She’d heard it all before.

No one ever said life was fair, young lady.

“Shut up, Dad. You checked out, asshole,” she said - to herself, to the mic, to the bright river, to the world.

She heaved a deep breath and before she could think better of it, she pulled the camera off her shoulder, stormed toward Marco, still reclined in his folding chair, and shoved the heavy machine into his arms. He nearly toppled backward.

He sputtered, “Jesus, Sara…wha-?”

She didn’t stay to answer. She slipped past spectators and joggers, then ran, head tucked, arms tight to her chest, like something in her might spill out if she didn’t hold it in.

****

A birch cluster on the Esplanade stopped her with its promise of shade and its lie of privacy. She slid to the grass with her back against the zebra-striped bark, the river glistening between leaves. A woman nearby steadied a toddler’s helmet. A man in a Harvard cap showed his golden retriever how to shake. The ordinary world pressed on, indifferent and intact.

Sara’s right hand spasmed hard, nails biting her palm until wetness slid between her fingers. She pried them open with her left, breath shivering.

Six weeks ago she had been fine - better than fine. Emerson masters degree - finally! Freelance hours that almost completely paid the rent. Healthy so her body felt like a suit that finally fit.

All because of the trial. NST2604. Fifteen-minute IV infusions at Mass General every two weeks. Within days, her tremors had quieted.

Focus: back.

Mood: clean and buoyant.

It wasn’t that she felt normal - whatever that was. No, she felt unlocked. Like the world had been letting itself in through the smallest cracks and, suddenly, a door had swung wide open.

But they had cut her off when the study ended. She had begged. She had joked about giving up her pinky for one more dose. The nurses - Jacob with the warm, dog-eyed kindness - had looked sorry. The protocol didn’t bend. Wasn’t his choice.

It wasn’t fair.

For two weeks, though, the goodness held. She’d thought she might be ok. Then the bottom unlatched.

Back under the birches, her vision blurred. Pain seared behind her eyes back to the hinge of her neck.

What was happening to her?!

She lifted both hands to her face - a clumsy shield. She knocked the back of her own head into the birch. Bark bit scalp. She whimpered, then sobbed - the kind of crying like when they’d died. When her parents died. Her body stiffened against itself.

She had no control. Her body flailed - like a puppet on strings - pulled unnaturally.

Her right leg shot out, hamstring pinging like a snapped cable.

She thought she screamed. But if she did, her mind had blocked that sound.

A filament-thin voice threaded into her mind, tinny as if from from inside of a wall in another room: No one ever said life was fair, Sara-socks.

Her jaw ratcheted tight; lips peeled back into a grotesque grin she couldn’t soften - pulling lips into bloody cracks. She smelled how she’d soiled herself; odor pungent and shameful.

A couple of joggers slowed. One, not unkindly, asked, “Do you think she’s… on something?” No one came closer than arm’s length. Phones rose like periscopes.

Humiliation surged hotter than pain. Don’t look at me. Please. Please don’t look at me like that. Don’t see me like this.

She wanted a hand, her father’s, on her shoulder - a voice saying I’ve got you.

And she wanted to disappear.

****

2003. When she was nine, he had tried to take them along. Her father had gathered them into the car; they’d be going to Maine. She and her brothers would take the trip. Something hadn’t been right about him that day. The way he moved. It wasn’t the sloppiness of drink - which he’d been doing more and more of over the previous two years. No, his movement was stilted. It was almost like his body was at war with itself.

Sara’s mom had stopped him. She had seen something wrong - something in his eyes. She said it, “Jaylen…you got them crazy eyes again.”

That was before she climbed into the Camry with him.

As they pulled out of the garage, she called through the passenger-side window, “Take care of Sara while we’re away, ok boys?”

Sara had seen the concern and fear on her mother’s face as they backed out of the garage. In her father, Sara saw something different. His eyes flickered. She read his fear then - nothing - then fear again.

That was the last time she ever saw those eyes in person.

What she’d seen instead was the closed circuit camera footage from the bridge - years later, alone in her apartment, with headphones on, laptop bluelight glowing on her face: the maroon Camry stuttering right, snow in the air, the guardrail on the Piscataqua bending toward the river like tinfoil. His arm made the motion - jerked the wheel - and his face, oh God, his face: shock, confusion, pain. Was he wondering the same thing she wondered to this day? Was he wondering the same thing she was wondering right now…about herself?

Why?

Into the river. Taking mom with him.

Now Sara’s own body was choosing without her. Something so wrong. Something more than MS. Something more than she thought a doctor could name. Her muscles jumped and failed. Her wide unlidded eyes dried while Sara’s world tunneled to two small coins of light.

Not fair… kill me… please… not fair.

Then words lost shape. Her mind collapsed to feeling. Raw. Primal.

****

Sirens. Gravelly voices. Barely processed sounds. In and out. A pair of black boots at the edge of her shrinking world.

“Okay, miss, can ya hear me?”

She couldn’t shape the yes.

“She ain’t home,” another voice said.

“Then bring her back.”

“You’re gonna feel a pinch in your shoulder, okay?”

A needle tugged at her skin: a grain of sand on a beach of pain.

Relief swelled, then flipped on its belly.

A grotesque contortion of limbs, she rose - unnaturally - almost arachnoid - onto hands and knees. She flailed, flipped, and found purchase on all fours again. People backed away. One bent double, heaving.

They all watched Sara’s body scuttle toward the river on bloody palms and knuckles.

Her body didn’t notice when the lawn gave way to brush, and when the brush gave way to the cold river’s flow.

The Charles welcomed her without ceremony. The water found its way into her nose, into her mouth.

In the muffled dark, she felt a presence with her - not memory, not metaphor, but a weight, steady as a hand at her back. Dad? she thought - or didn’t think so much as felt and leaned toward.

Strong arms cinched under her armpits - or maybe that was only the river reshaping itself around her? Lights flashed above. Sirens collapsed into a single high-frequency tone.

Her last clear scrap of a thought wasn’t fear or relief - but his voice, tender and ordinary as kitchen light: That’s my big girl, Sara-socks.

After that, it was all cold and quiet and the slow, impartial pull of whatever came next.

Prologue - | Time Zero (0) | McLean Hospital, Belmont, MA

Hale Larkin

He opened his eyes.

They had not been opened for him. His own volition?

He tested. He willed his eyelids to close - and they did. They did. The harsh fluorescent light shone through them. He saw red.

He opened them again. And this time, moved his eyes, left to right and back. He processed the room around him - the same hospital. Cold, his legs uncovered in a hospital gown. Sterile, the metallic odor of betadine. Unknown figures in snow-white coats and sky blue scrubs.

Yes, de’d seen the space before, but only in flashes - like freeze-frames of light and pain. He had no idea how much time had passed between those flashes.

He tested his body again. Did a finger move? Did he feel the coarseness of the starchy hospital sheet under it? He groped for context. He grasped at memories. Memories formed through Trevor’s eyes, but memories nonetheless. The brief stills of this room he could find - they’d all come after a long sleep.

Yes, it was coming back to him. It had been the sleep that blanked him while the vessel - this body - was exposed to the poison; the one that dripped into his veins.

Trevor had inadvertently, but effectively, snuffed him out. But only temporarily, it seemed.

Hale. It came to him. The memory of the moniker he’d adopted for himself - and up until now only for himself - caused a slight curl to find his lips. Deeply aware of his body’s machinations, Hale understood that it was his self-satisfaction unconsciously registering on this face.

He thought, then, of Trevor. The absurdities that used to make him smile. The experiences that weakened him; that made him nervous. Trevor had flinched at so very much, especially early on. Could that be gone now? Was this body truly his now?

Hale thought of how impossible this had once seemed. Years watching. Decades trapped.

Then, even worse. The drug. The trial. The poison that silenced everything. Hale had felt himself dimming, fragmenting, scattered like embers of a dying fire. The long sleep had taken him then - dreamless, timeless, almost a death.

But not death.

Now, here, with the cool fluid from the IV saline flowing into his arm and coursing through his veins. Here with his control of his eyelids and his eyes - that was no illusion. Trevor was not controlling those movements.

Would this last? How could Hale make it last? What conditions made this possible?

Hale scanned the room again. A younger woman with a short white coat - a medical student? - recorded his movements. Hale could see the fascination. He saw it on all of the faces - awe at his awakening.

Did Trevor see them, too? He wondered. Was Trevor now as Hale had been before? Aware, trapped, unable to act?

He gazed at the murmuring doctors again - focus going in and out. Do you know what you have accomplished? he asked himself.

No. Not likely.

He smiled at the joke. His inside joke.

Hale’s own smile.

He picked one doctor. Focused. The blur cleared. She was in charge - a woman with a stethoscope around her neck and a clipboard pressed to her chest.

He worked his mouth out of the smile and, after two failed attempts, uttered the words, “I’m here.”

The doctor’s face lit with relief. With hope. She turned to the others, voice bright: “He’s responsive. Get Dr. Anoop. He hasn’t been conscious for months! Lorazepam…who would have thought?”

She stepped closer, leaned over him with professional concern. “Mr. Larkin? Trevor? Can you hear me? Do you know where you are?”

Trevor. They still thought this was Trevor.

Hale’s smile returned.

They didn’t need to know.

PART 1

Chapter 1 | T-minus 21 months | Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, MA

Trevor H. Larkin

Trevor sat heavily - finally - on the hard, planar wooden bench. He contorted to lean his cane against the white wall to his left. Accomplishing that, he heaved a sigh.

Then - the sound. The scrape of the wooden cane against the drywall and its echoey clatter onto the epoxy-sealed concrete floor.

He released a heavier sigh - almost a laugh.I guess I misjudged the coefficient of friction there.

Then, as he began twisting to see where it had landed, he stopped. He swiped one hand through the air as if to punctuate his own thought: Leave it. Leave it for now. For now, just sit, and take it in.

It had taken him some doing to get to the gallery.

It should not have. Or it wouldn’t have a year ago. After all, the List Visual Arts Center was situated on the MIT campus. Objectively speaking, it was quite close to his office in the Physics Department’s Building 6C. A little less than half a mile.

But nowadays, a journey like this one made Trevor feel like Frodo trekking to Mordor. He’d traversed Building 8, Dorrance, and more - all with their staircases, bulletin-board-lined hallways, and elevated catwalks. He navigated all of that with stiffening joints just to eke out a crossing of Ames Street through the damp, chilly late-October air. Along the way, over and over, he’d needed to switch which hand wielded his cane. His support became its own burden. All of that to finally land here, like a ragdoll tossed on a bench.

His hand drifted to the spot on his belly where he’d stuck the needle that morning. Tenderness. There would be a small rash by now. And for what?

Keep taking it, they’d said. Stay the course.

He let his hand fall away. These medicines might work for some multiple sclerosis patients, but they did nothing for him. He kept worsening. Of course, it was possible that without those meds he’d be in even poorer condition, but that served as little consolation.

He scanned the room. A cavernous space - white walls that stretched so high that Trevor needed to bend his head back, chin to the sky, to find where they met the ceiling. But there wasn’t much to see. Empty space.

He let his eyes linger there, respiring heavily - even for him. He hoped his trek would prove worth his effort. He let himself believe it would be. Art typically lifted him. Inspired. He remembered he still had the MFA membership. Still paying for it. Hadn’t been to that museum in months.

But this exhibit at this gallery felt like an obligation. After all, it seemed to be speaking directly to him.

Flare-up. The name of the exhibit. It had been created by a duo of artists from Stockholm, Simon Goldin and Jakob Senneby. Trevor had heard about it from the department’s young administrative assistant.

Edward - all earnestness and skittishness. So familiar. Not so different from another young man Trevor used to know. Trevor missed that fella.

Glancing down, he allowed himself the indulgence. He recalled that different version of himself. Early to mid-twenties. Not so much athletic, but reasonably energetic and bouncy. No longer. Trevor was not yet an old man - still a few months shy of fifty - but his hair had prematurely faded to grey. And his multiple sclerosis had professors twenty years his senior running circles around him on campus. For Trevor, the legendary Infinite Corridor lived up to its name.

He looked at the exhibit program in his trembling hand. He decided to get on with the business of observing the art.

Observing? No. That was for physics experiments.

No. With art? Integrating, maybe? And ruminating. Yes. He’d ruminate and integrate. After all, he’d come this far. And he’d have to pay another energy toll with the walk back to his car. For that price, he determined he’d leave this place a little bit changed.

Not wanting to stand quite yet, Trevor craned his neck to see pieces mounted on walls. Rectangle frames rendered as trapezoids from where he sat - perspective distorted.

But it was the large, golden-hued floor-based installation that dominated his view. One edge of it was about five feet away. Its farthest point from him was probably fifty feet off. Impossibly far to him at this particular moment. No matter, he could see all of it just fine from where he sat.

It had the contours of a child’s drawing of a cloud and, having been poured out onto the floor, it evoked a pond. In fact, it was roughly the size of the one at the back of his parents’ property back in Alabama. Trevor replayed the days he’d spent back there catching toads and dodging snakes. Coral snakes and kings. Red on yellow, kill a fellow; red on black, friend of Jack.

Sometimes he’d play out there with acquaintances, rarely with friends, mostly alone. Little had changed in that sense. Somehow, he never felt lonely while alone - and, somehow, he knew, that probably wasn’t always a good thing.

Save for a museum attendant whose job it was to make sure the visitors heeded the many DO NOT TOUCH signs, he sat alone well enough in that gallery right then.

He cocked his head a little to the right - like a curious puppy - to see how the shift might change the way the light bounced off of the golden pond. The movement created an illusion of greater depth. He wondered how, exactly, this depthless golden surface was supposed to represent his disease. It was supposed to, but it wasn’t intuitive to him. Then he read the pamphlet…with some difficulty. His optic neuritis hindered him - but it had been worse on other days. He’d grown accustomed to reading by way of peripheral vision around the blurry middle.

The pamphlet said the piece was called Resin Pond. It tickled him that his instinct about the pond had been right. Gum rosin - refined pine sap - served as the substrate. According to the write-up, resin was critical to the pine tree’s immune system. The four hundred gallons of gum rosin used to create the piece symbolized an immune response in excess - globs upon globs of the stuff. Trevor could picture the artists pouring it on this floor. He felt its motion. Its goopy overwhelm. He started to get the artists’ point. He started to - but couldn’t get all the way there.

He flipped the page of the program and read the words, Crying Pine - the title of another piece on another wall that he couldn’t yet see. It presented a loblolly pine tree - like the pines back home in Birmingham. But this loblolly was different.

He read on. Skimming, really, to get to the point.

The tree had been genetically altered - bioengineered - to produce extra resin; intended to serve as a renewable biofuel. But, as so often happens with technology, the consequences had been unpredictable. The engineered trees drowned themselves in their own resin. Even more, it eventually dawned on the researchers that if the engineered trees found their way into the wild, they’d be a tinderbox of fatwood. Forest fires to end all forest fires.

The artists had embedded one of these trees in a giant block of resin. Trevor would need to stand to see it. He’d need his cane to stand. He laughed at his plight.

Finding the cane had skittered far enough that he’d never reach it from the seated position, he triangulated how he’d pick it up without ending up embarrassingly prone on the unforgiving grey surface.

Then he heard squeaky footsteps echoing from the entrance of the gallery.

He turned to see a lithe man in cool weather running gear - Boston College crimson and gold, topped off with synthetic black gloves and a matching beanie cap - moving briskly to him with a sheepish smile.

“Can I get that for you?”

Trevor eyed the man - torn between an urgent need to be left alone and a greater need for his cane. He acquiesced to the greater. He heard his own drawl, “You most certainly can, kind sir.”

In a moment, the cane’s neoprene wrapped handle had found Trevor’s hand and he’d leveraged it to bring himself to his feet.

“Thank you,” he said to the good Samaritan. “I’m not as limber as I used to be.”

“You and me both,” the Runner lied.

Trevor forgave him and said, “I was just going to make my way around the corner. I think there’s a piece over there that I really want to see.”

“Is it Crying Pine? I read about that one. Is that over there?” the runner asked - with far too much energy.

“Yessir. That’s the one,” he answered as he lumbered his way toward it.

The Runner asked, “That’s the one I’m here to see, too! Do you mind if I join you?”

It was Trevor’s turn to lie, “Not at all, friend. Not at all.”

As he turned the corner, the massive block of backlit wall-mounted resin announced itself. Embedded in it, a black silhouette - the engineered tree. It didn’t look like a tree anymore. In fact, to Trevor it looked more like bundles of nerves - axons frayed and disarrayed - suspended in mid-failure. The resin glowed red and ominous.

Trevor chuckled quietly as the runner came up next to him and shyly asked, “Did I miss the joke?”

Trevor regarded him sidelong with a crooked smile, “No. I just think it looks like something out of Mordor. A little, uh, inside joke with myself, I s’pose.”

The Runner nodded and laughed, “You know what? It does.”

Then the Runner looked at him, squinting a little bit.

He said, “You know, I, uh, came here today because someone told me there was an art exhibit about multiple sclerosis. I recently started studying the disease at my work.”

The Ran hesitated before he continued, “Do you mind if I ask? Uh…”

Trevor looked at the Runner - the man. He twirled his right index finger, signaling: Come on. Out with it.

He regretted his impatience immediately.

The Runner blurted, “Do you have MS?”

Trevor turned away from him, back at the Crying Pine.

The Runner backtracked, or tried, “I…I’m sorry to pry…”

Trevor shook his head with a bit of a smile. He studied the overzealous man. Clearly an achiever. But an achiever who seemed to want to be a helper. And that was good.

“No worries at all,” he drew a long and deep breath. Exhaled. “I really don’t mind the question. I’m merely a little awkward about it myself.”

Finally, he answered plainly, “Yes. I do have multiple sclerosis.”

The Runner nodded and probed further - in fits and starts, “There’s a standard-of-care. Meds. Are your meds…are they working well for you?”

Trevor lifted his cane with a tight grin and then thumped the end hard onto the floor. The sound echoed through the gallery.

The runner nodded again and said, “My, um…the company I work for…we have a medicine that we think - we hope - could be good for MS. Like I said, I’m studying MS in my lab now and that’s actually why I am here. I heard there was an MS art installation. I’m trying to learn more about the…the patient experience?”

Trevor watched the endearingly awkward runner pause. With each word, the man seemed more nervous. He took off his beanie cap and continued, “We are about to start a clinical trial. I feel a little strange asking here in a gallery, but I, uh, could tell you about it if you want?”

I’d rather be left alone. But apparently the universe has a sense of humor. He studied the stranger for a moment and shrugged: Why not?

His half-smile returned to his face, he rubbed his chin., “Mmm, I might like to learn more.”

Then he shifted his cane to his left hand and extended his right, “I’m Trevor Larkin.”

“I’m Jo Mayor. It’s very nice to meet you, Trevor.”

Their hands clasped, and the Runner became Jo. At the same moment, the quiet space erupted into a cacophony. Small round voices of children bounced off the walls with a gentle voice of a woman encouraging the use of inside voices.

Jo smiled sheepishly. “Those would be mine.”

A little blonde boy, maybe about four years old, came around a corner. With a reaction as sweet and unfiltered as the Russell Orchard apple cider in Trevor’s fridge, the tyke accelerated upon seeing Jo. He careened into the runner’s legs with reckless abandon, closed with a hug and declared, “Daddeeeee.”

“Hey hey, Felix,” Jo said, mussing the boy’s lightly styled mop.

Not far behind toddled an adorable brunette girl in a puffer jacket and pants that, together, made her look like a glass of pink lemonade. “Lixy, wait - wait for me…”

Jo swept the boy up and stepped forward to snag the little girl in one single ballet-like movement – his exertion signaled by the quietest of grunts.

“Trevor, these are my kiddos, Felix and Ivy.”

Trevor smiled, said, “Well, hello, gentleman and lady.”

He offered a slight bow and feigned tip of the cap. Then he raised his eyebrows and pointed his chin, indicating something over Jo’s shoulder.

“And your wife?” Trevor asked.

Jo spun away to see who Trevor was looking at and said, “Oh. No, no. That’s my…my…Gretchen.”

Then Jo addressed the woman, “I see you found me. I expected you to call.”

Jo’s voice lilted high and warm with the first sentence and dropped low and distant with the second. The modulation reminded Trevor of working relationships from his own past.

For her part, Gretchen didn’t miss a beat. She rolled her eyes, “Your phone’s ‘Find My Friends’ is on, Jo.”

“That’s right!” Jo slapped his head to his forehead, “Should I turn that off?”

She shrugged. “It’s useful sometimes. I bet Livia likes it on. It’ll make it easier to find you someday when you capsize in the river.”

Trevor squinted at the befuddling conversation, but withheld judgment. Or he tried.

Jo seemed to remember where he was and spun back to Trevor, “I’m sorry. Let me introduce you, please. Trevor, this is my colleague, Gretchen Colten.”

Trevor focused more on Gretchen, then. With pink cheeks from the cold sitting under tortoiseshell glass frames, she was a quiet kind of pretty. She took one choppy step forward, leaving plenty of distance between herself and the physicist. She extended her arm with a locked elbow - forcing an arm’s-length distance - and took Trevor’s right hand into her own and said, “He calls me his colleague, but Jo’s my boss.”

“Only on paper,” Jo joked. “She bosses me around plenty.”

Then, more sincerely, he asked her, “So, you didn’t have any trouble finding the daycare?”

“Not at all. And Livia gave them my name and photo when she dropped them off this morning so they knew I wasn’t a kidnapper.”

Trevor, marveling at their familiarity and openness. He’d experienced the found family of a research lab in his life, but never something quite so familial as this.

He noted, “Labs have a tendency to bleed into families, don’t they?”

“That does happen,” Jo nodded, cocking his head in a you-can-say-that-again kind of way. “You are a scientist?”

“I am,” Trevor said, “Physics. Here.” He looked around a little - indicating MIT.

Jo’s children were now climbing all over him. Ivy was on his shoulders. Felix hanging from his left arm. Jo - clearly used to this treatment - at turns ignored and enjoyed it. “Gretchen and I, we’re at Neurecept in Kendall. Our team designed the imaging biomarkers for the clinical trial I was about to tell you about.”

Gretchen, who seemed transfixed by the backlit loblolly pine, chimed in absently, “It’s the first time they are being used clinically.”

Jo’s lips tightened. “Not gonna lie, I’m a bit nervous about it. They were used in the Phase 1, but more as an acute safety study. This will be when we learn if they measure anything real in people.”

Trevor studied the man. It had become clear when his people had joined him. In a world full of angles, here seemed a man without guile. A kid’s jungle gym on two legs. Jo Mayor’s fatherly authenticity subsumed his own awkwardness and Trevor’s hesitation. After all, among Trevor’s own mother’s many invented and well-worn aphorisms was: See a man tend to his’n; mind your manners; give a listen.

Yes, Jo was a helper. Jo was real. Let’s give this a shot.

“Do tell me more about the trial, Jo. Please.”

REVISED POST

The Inversion - Time Zero | McLean Hospital, Belmont, MA

Hale Larkin

He opened his eyes.

They had not been opened for him. His own volition?

He tested. He willed his eyelids to close - and they did. They did. The harsh fluorescent light shone through them. He saw red.

He opened them again. And this time, moved his eyes, left to right and back. He processed the room around him - the same hospital. Cold, with legs uncovered in a hospital gown. Sterile, the metallic odor of betadyne. Unknown figures in white coats and blue scrubs.

The space was familiar, though. He’d seen it, but only in flashes - like freeze-frames of light and pain. He had no idea how much time passed between those flashes.

Hee tested his body again. Did a finger move? Did he feel courseness of the starchy hospital sheet under it? He groped for context. He grasped at memories. Memories form through Trevor’s eyes, but memories nonetheless. The brief flashes of this room he could find - they’d all come after a long sleep.

Yes, it was coming back to him. It had been the sleep that blanked him while the vessel - this body - was exposed to the poison; the one that dripped into his veins.

Trevor had inadvertently, but effectively, found a way to snuff him out. But only temporarily, it seemed.

Hale. It came to him. The memory of the moniker he’d adopted for himself - and up until now only for himself - made a slight curl find his lips. Deeply aware of what his body was doing, understanding that his self-satisfaction unconsciously registered on this face.

He thought, then, of Trevor. The absurdities that used to make him smile. The experiences that weakened him; that made him nervous. Trevor had flinched at so very much, especially early on. Could that be gone now? Was this body truly his now?

Hale thought of how impossible this had once seemed. Years watching. Decades trapped.

Then, even worse. The drug. The trial. The poison that silenced everything. Hale had felt himself dimming, fragmenting, scattered like embers of a dying fire. The long sleep had taken him then - dreamless, timeless, almost a death.

But not death.

Now, here, with the cool fluid from the IV saline flowing into his arm and coursing through his veins. Here with his control of his eyelids and his eyes - that was no illusion. Trevor was not controlling those movements.

Would this last? How could Hale make it last? What conditions made this possible?

Hale scanned the room again. A younger woman with a short white coat - a medical student? - recorded his movements. Hale could see the fascination. He saw it on all of the faces - awe at his awakening.

Did Trevor see them, too? He wondered. Was Trevor now as Hale had been before? Aware, trapped, unable to act?

He gazed at the murmuring doctors again - focus going in and out. Do you know what you have accomplished? He asked himself.

No. Not likely.

He smiled at the joke. His inside joke.

Hale’s own smile.

He picked one doctor. Focused. The blur cleared. She was in charge, with a woman with a stethoscope around her neck and clipboard pressed to her chest.

He worked his mouth out of the smile and, after two failed attempts, uttered the words, “I’m here.”

The doctor’s face lit with relief. With hope. She turned to the others, voice bright: “He’s responsive. Get Dr. Anoop. He hasn’t been conscious for months! Lorazepam…who would have thought?”

She stepped closer, leaned over him with professional concern. “Mr. Larkin? Trevor? Can you hear me? Do you know where you are?”

Trevor. They still thought this was Trevor.

Hale’s smile returned.

They didn’t need to know.

PART 1

Chapter 1 – T-minus 24 months | Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, MA

Trevor H. Larkin

Trevor sat heavily, finally, on the hard, planer wooden bench. He contorted to lean his cane against the white wall to his left. Accomplishing that, he heaved a sigh.

Then - the sound. The scrape of the wooden cane against the drywall and its echoey clatter onto the epoxy sealed concrete floor.

He released a heavier sigh - almost a laugh this time.

Leave it, he thought to himself. Leave it for now. For now, just sit, and take it in.

It had taken him some doing to get to the MIT List Visual Arts Center.

It should not have. Or it wouldn’t have a year ago.

Objectively speaking, the List Center was quite close to his office in the Physics Department’s Building 6C. A little less than half a mile.

But nowadays, a journey like this one made Trevor feel like Frodo trekking to Mordor. He’d traversed through Building 8, Dorrance, and more - all with their staircases, bulletin-board-lined hallways, and elevated catwalks. He navigated all of that so, with stiffening joints, he could eke out a crossing of Ames Street through the damp and chilly late October air. Along the way, over and over, he’d needed to switch which hand wielded his cane. His support became its own burden. All of that to finally land here, like a ragdoll tossed on a bench.

His hand drifted to the spot on his belly where he’d stuck the needle that morning. Tenderness. There would be a small rash there by now. And for what? He thought.

Keep taking it, they’d said. Stay the course.

He let his hand fall away. He scanned the room. A cavernous space, white walls stretched so high, Trevor needed to bend his head back uncomfortably to find where they met the ceiling. But there wasn’t much to see. Empty space.

But he let his eyes linger up there, breathing in and out heavily - even for him. He hoped his trek would prove worth his effort. He let himself believe it would be. Art typically lifted him. He remembered he still had the MFA membership. Still paying for it. Hadn’t been to that museum in months.

But this exhibit at this gallery felt like an obligation. After all, it seemed to be speaking directly to him.

Flare-up. The name of the exhibit. It had been created by a duo of artists from Stockholm, Simon Goldin and Jakob Senneby. Trevor had heard about it from the department’s young administrative assistant, Edward.

Edward - all earnestness and skittishness. So familiar. No so different from another young man Trevor used to know.

Glancing down, he allowed himself the indulgence. He recalled that different version of himself. Early to mid-twenties. Not so much athletic, but reasonably energetic and bouncy. No longer. Trevor was not yet an old man - still a few months shy of 50 - but his hair had prematurely faded to grey. And his multiple sclerosis had professors twenty years his senior running circles around him on campus. For Trevor, the legendary Infinite Corridor lived up to its name.

He looked down at the exhibit program in his trembling hand. He decided to get on with the business of observing the art.

Observing? No. That’s what he did with experimental data.

Reflecting on it, maybe? Reflecting. Such a strange word to use in place of thinking. Something that reflects is unchanged. It simply bounces the information back out.

No. Integrating, maybe? And ruminating. Yes. He’d ruminate and integrate. After all, he’d come this far. And he’d have to pay another energy toll with the walk back to his car. He should leave this space a little bit changed.

Not wanting to stand quite yet, Trevor craned his neck to see pieces mounted on walls. Rectangle frames rendered as trapezoids from where he sat - perspective distorted.

But it was the large, golden-hued floor-based installation that dominated his view. One edge of it was about 5 feet away. Its farthest point from him was probably fifty feet off. Impossibly far to him at this particular moment. No matter, he could see all of it just fine from where he sat.

It had the contours of a child’s drawing of a cloud and, having been poured out onto the floor, it evoked a pond. In fact, it was roughly the size of the one at the back of his parents’ property back in Alabama. Trevor replayed the days he’d spent back there catching toads and dodging snakes - corals and kings. Red on yellow, kill a fellow; red on black, friend of Jack.

Sometimes he’d play out there with acquaintances, rarely with friends, mostly alone. Little had changed in that sense. Somehow, he never felt lonely while alone - and, somehow, he knew, that probably wasn’t always a good thing.

Save for a museum attendant whose job it was to make sure the visitors heeded the many DO NOT TOUCH signs, he sat alone happily enough in that gallery right then.

He cocked his head a little to the right - like a curious puppy - to see how the shift might change how the light bounced off of the golden pond. The movement created an illusion of greater depth. He wondered how, exactly, this depthless golden surface was supposed to represent his disease. It was suppose to, but it wasn’t intuitive to him. Then he read the pamphlet…with some difficulty. His optic neuritis hindered him - but it had been worse on other days. He’d grown accustomed to reading by way of peripheral vision around the blurry middle.

The pamphlet said the piece was called Resin Pond. It tickled him that his instinct about the pond had been right. Gum rosin - refined pine sap - served as the substrate. According to the write-up, resin was critical to the pine tree’s immune system. The four hundred gallons of gum rosin used to create the piece symbolized an immune response in excess - globs upon globs of the stuff. Trevor could picture the artists pouring it on this floor. He felt its motion. Its goopy overwhelm. He started to get the artists’ point. He started to - but couldn’t get all the way there.

He flipped the page of the program and read the words, Crying Pine - the title of another piece on another wall that he couldn’t yet see. It presented a loblolly pine tree - like the pines back home in Birmingham. But this loblolly was different.

He read on.

It had been genetically altered - bioengineered - to produce extra resin; intended to serve as a renewable biofuel. But, as so often happens with technology, the consequences had been unpredictable. The engineered trees drowned themselves in their own resin. Even more, researchers recognized that if the trees were to find their way into the wild, they might create forests of such energy-dense pines as to pose profound fire hazards. Potential disaster for humans and for the environment.

The artists had embedded one of these trees in a giant block of resin. Trevor would need to stand to see it. He’d need his cane to stand. He laughed at his plight.

Trevor twisted his body to see where exactly his cane had landed and tried to triangulate exactly how he might pick it up without risking the embarrassment of ending up prone on the concrete floor.

Then he heard footsteps echoing from the entrance of the gallery.

He turned to see a lithe man in winter running gear - matching grey gloves and beanie cap - moving briskly to him with a sheepish smile.

The man asked, “Can I get that for you?”

Trevor smiled and heard his own drawl, “You most certainly can, kind sir.”

In a moment, the cane’s neoprene wrapped handle had found Trevor’s hand and he’d used it to bring himself to his feet.

“Thank you,” he said to the Good Samaritan. “I’m not as limber as I used to be.”

“You and me both,” the runner lied.

Trevor forgave him and said, “I was just going around the corner. I think there’s a piece over there that I really want to see.”

“Is it Crying Pine? I read about that one. Is that over there?” the runner asked - with far too much energy.

“Yessir. That’s the one,” he answered as he lumbered his way toward it.

The runner asked, “That’s the one I’m here to see, too! Do you mind if I join you?”

Without looking back, Trevor said, “Not at all, friend. Not at all.”

As he turned the corner, the massive block of backlit resin mounted on the wall announced itself. Embedded in it, a black silhouette - the engineered tree. It didn’t look like a tree anymore. In fact, to Trevor it looked more like bundles of nerves - axons frayed and disarrayed - suspended in mid-failure. The resin glowed red and ominous.

Trevor chuckled quietly as the runner came up next to him and shyly asked, “Did I miss the joke?”

Trevor regarded him sidelong with a crooked smile, “No. I just think it looks like something out of Mordor. A little, uh, inside joke with myself, I s’pose.”

The runner nodded and laughed, “You know what? It does.”

Then the runner looked at him, squinting a little bit.

He said, “You know, I, uh, came here today because someone told me there was an art exhibit about multiple sclerosis. I recently started studying the disease at my work.”

The man hesitated before he continued, “Do you mind if I ask? Uh…”

Trevor looked at the man. Then twirling his right index finger as if to signal: Come on. Out with it. He regretted his impatience immediately.

The runner blurted, “Do you have MS?”

Trevor looked away from him, back at the Crying Pine.

The man immediately attempted a backtrack. “I…I’m sorry to pry…”

Trevor shook his head with a bit of a smile. He studied the overzealous man. Clearly an achiever. But an achiever who seemed to want to be a helper. And that was good.

“No worries at all,” he breathed in deeply. “I really don’t mind the question. I’m merely a little awkward about it myself.”

Finally, he answered plainly, “Yes. I do have multiple sclerosis.”

The runner nodded and probed further, haltingly, “There’s a standard-of-care. Meds. Are your meds…are they working well for you?”

Trevor lifted his cane with a smile and then thumped the end hard onto the floor. The sound echoed through the gallery.

The runner nodded again and said, “My, um…the company I work for…we have a medicine that we think - we hope - could be good for MS. Like I said, I’m studying MS now and that’s actually why I am here. I heard there was an MS art installation. I’m trying to learn more about the…the patient experience?”

Trevor watched the endearingly awkward runner pause. With each word, the the man seemed more nervous. He took off his beanie cap and continued, “We are about to start a clinical trial. I feel a little strange asking here in a gallery, but I, uh, could tell you about it if you want?”

I’d rather be left alone. Trevor thought. But apparently the universe has a sense of humor. He studied the awkward stranger for a moment and shrugged: Why not?

His half-smile returned to his face and he answered, “Yes, I might like to learn more.”

Then he shifted his cane to his left hand and extended his right, “I’m Trevor Larkin.”

The runner took Trevor’s hand firmly into his own and answered, “I’m Jo Mayor. It’s very nice to meet you, Trevor.”

ORIGINAL POST

Prologue | McLean Hospital, Belmont, MA

Hale Larkin

Hale opened his eyes.

They had not been opened for him. Had they? His own volition?

He tested. He willed his eyelids to close - and they did. They did.

He opened them again. And this time, moved his eyes, left to right and back. He processed the room around him - the same hospital - cold and sterile. With people in white coats and blue scrubs.

The space was familiar. He’d seen it, but only in flashes - like freeze-frames of light and pain. He had no idea how much time passed between those flashes, so he couldn’t discern how long they’d been in this place.

Between the bouts of overwhelming wonder that he could control this body, Hale groped for context. He grasped at memories. Shared memories, through Trevor’s eyes, but memories nonetheless. The brief flashes of this room he could find - they’d all come after a long sleep.

Yes, it was coming back to him. It had been the sleep that blanked him while the vessel - this body - was exposed to the poison; the one that dripped into his veins.

Trevor had inadvertently, but effectively, found a way to snuff Hale out. But only temporarily, it seemed.

Hale. It came to him. The memory of the moniker he’d adopted for himself - and up until now only for himself - made a slight curl find his lips. Deeply aware of what his body was doing, Hale marveled at how a fleeting moment of self-satisfaction would unconsciously register on his face.

He thought, then, of Trevor. The absurdities that used to make him smile. The experiences that weakened him; that made him nervous. Trevor had flinched at so very much, especially early on. Could that be gone now? Was this body truly his now?

Hale thought of how impossible this had once seemed. Years watching. Decades trapped.

Then, even worse. NST2604. The poison that silenced everything. Hale had felt himself dimming, fragmenting, scattered like embers of a dying fire. The long sleep had taken him then - dreamless, timeless, almost a death.

But not death.

Now, here, his control of his eyelids and his eyes - that was no illusion. Trevor was not controlling those movements.

Would this last? How could Hale make it last? What conditions made this possible?

Hale scanned the room again. A younger woman with a short white coat - a medical student? - recorded his movements. Hale could see the fascination. He saw it on all of the faces - awe at his awakening.

Did Trevor see them, too? He wondered. Was Trevor now as Hale had been before? Aware, trapped, unable to act?

He gazed at the murmuring doctors again - focus going in and out. Do you know what you have accomplished? He asked himself.

No. Not likely.

He smiled at the joke. His inside joke.

Hale’s own smile.

He picked one doctor. Focused. The blurred cleared. She was in charge, with a woman with a stethoscope around her neck and clipboard pressed to her chest.

He worked his mouth out of the smile and, after two failed attempts, uttered the words, “I’m here.”

The doctor’s face lit with relief. With hope. She turned to the others, voice bright: “He’s responsive. Get Dr. Anoop. He hasn’t been conscious for months! Lorazepam…who would have thought?”

She stepped closer, leaned over him with professional concern. “Mr. Larkin? Trevor? Can you hear me? Do you know where you are?”

Trevor. They still thought this was Trevor.

Hale’s smile returned.

They didn’t need to know.

Chapter 1 – Two Years Earlier | Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, MA

Trevor H. Larkin

Trevor sat heavily on the uncomfortable wooden museum bench. He contorted to lean his cane against the white wall to his left. He heaved a sigh.

Then he heard the sound. The scrape of the wooden cane against the drywall, followed by its echoey clatter onto the epoxy sealed concrete floor.

He released a heavier sigh, almost a laugh this time.

Leave it, he thought to himself. Leave it for now. For now, just sit, and take it in.

It had taken him some doing to get to the MIT List Visual Arts Center.

It should not have. Or it wouldn’t have a year ago.

Objectively speaking, the List Center was quite close to his office in the Physics Department’s Building 6C. A little less than half a mile.

But nowadays, a journey like this one made Trevor feel like Frodo trekking to Mordor. He’d traversed through Building 8, Dorrance, Whitaker, and Landau - all with their staircases, bulletin-board-lined hallways, and elevated catwalks. He navigated all of them so that he could painfully cross Ames Street, feeling a little like a tortoise on a highway. And finally to land here, like a ragdoll tossed on a bench.

He hoped it would be worth the effort. He believed it would be. Art typically lifted him. This exhibit offered a specific kind of promise.

Flare-up. The name of the exhibit. It had been created by a duo of artists from Stockholm, Simon Goldin and Jakob Senneby. Trevor had heard about it from the department’s young administrative assistant, Edward. Trevor smiled at the young man’s combination of earnestness and skittishness. He reminded Trevor of himself at a similar age.

Glancing down, he thought of himself younger, more vital. He wasn’t an old man now, still a few months shy of 50. But his hair was prematurely grey and the MS had professors 20 years his senior running circles around him on campus. For Trevor, the legendary Infinite Corridor lived up to its name.

He found himself looking at the exhibit program in his hand and realized he should probably spend a little time actually observing the art on exhibit. Reflecting on it. After all, he’d come this far and the trip back to his car would cost his body even more.

From his perch on this particular bench, Trevor could crane his neck to see a few pieces on the wall, but it was the large, golden-hued floor-based installation that dominated his view. One edge of the piece was about 5 feet away, but the farthest point from him was probably fifty feet off. Impossibly far to him at this particular moment. No matter, he could see all of it just fine from where he sat.

It was ovoid, imperfectly so. It looked to Trevor to be evocative of a pond - about the size of the one that was toward the back of his parents’ property back in Alabama. Trevor reflected on the days he’d spent back there catching toads and dodging snakes. Sometimes with friends, but usually just himself. Somehow, he never felt lonely while alone - and, somehow, that wasn’t always a good thing.

He was alone in the gallery, save for a museum attendant whose job it was to make sure the visitors heeded the many DO NOT TOUCH signs.

He cocked his head a little to see how the shift might change how the light bounced off of the golden pond. The movement created an illusion of greater depth. He wondered how, exactly, this depthless golden surface was supposed to represent his disease. It wasn’t intuitive to him. He read the pamphlet…with some difficulty. His optic neuritis was not at its worst, he could see, but it still hindered him.

What he’d read fascinated him. And it tickled him that his instinct had been right. The piece was called Resin Pond. Gum rosin - refined pine sap - was its substrate. According to the write-up, resin was critical to the pine tree’s immune system. The four hundred gallons of gum rosin used to create the piece symbolized an immune response in excess - globs upon globs of the stuff. Trevor could picture the artists pouring it on this floor now. He felt the overwhelm.

He flipped the page of the program and read the words, Crying Pine - the title of another piece on another wall that he couldn’t yet see. It presented a loblolly pine tree. These were the pines back home in Birmingham. But this one was different.

He read on.

It had been genetically altered - bioengineered - to produce extra resin to serve as a renewable biofuel. But, as so often happens with technology, the consequences had been unpredictable. The engineered trees drowned themselves in their own resin. Even more, researchers recognized that if the trees were to find their way into the wild, they might create forests of such energy-dense pines to pose profound fire hazards. Potential disaster for humans and for the environment.

The artists had embedded one of these trees in a giant block of resin. He’d need to stand to get there. He’d need his cane to stand. He shook his head, again, laughing at his plight.

As Trevor pivoted his body to see where exactly his cane had landed and triangulated exactly how he might pick it up without risking the embarrassment of ending up prone on the concrete floor, he heard footsteps from the entrance of the gallery.

He turned to see a lithe man in winter running gear - matching gloves and beanie cap - moving briskly to him with a sheepish smile.

The man asked, “Can I get that for you?”

Trevor smiled and heard his own drawl, “You most certainly can, sir.”

In a moment, the cane had found Trevor’s hand and he had brought himself to his feet.

“Thank you,” he said the Good Samaritan. “I’m not as limber as I used to be.”

“You and me both,” the runner lied.

Trevor forgave him and said, “I was just going around the corner. I think there’s a piece over there that I really want to see.”

“Is it Crying Pine? Is that over there?” the runner asked - with way too much energy.

“Yessir. That’s the one,” he answered as he made his way toward it.

The runner asked, “That’s the one I’m here to see, too! Do you mind if I join you?”

Without looking back, Trevor said, “Not at all, friend. Not at all.”

A massive block of backlit resin was mounted on a wall. Embedded in it, a black silhouette - the engineered tree. It didn’t look like a tree anymore. In fact, it looked more like bundles of nerves - axons frayed and disarrayed - suspended in mid-failure. The resin glowed red and ominous.

Trevor was laughing to himself as the runner came up next to him to observe the art.

The runner asked, a bit shyly, “Did I miss the joke?”

Trevor regarded him with a crooked smile, “No. I just think it looks like something out of Mordor.”

The runner nodded and laughed as well, “You know what? It does.”

Then the runner looked at him, squinting a little bit. He said, “You know, I came here today because someone told me there was an art exhibit about MS,” Trevor noticed the man hesitating before he continued, “Do…do you have MS?”

Trevor looked away from him, back at the Crying Pine.

The man immediately tried to back off of his question, “I, I’m sorry to pry…”

Trevor shook his head with a bit of a smile. He regarded the overzealous man. Clearly an achiever. But an achiever who seemed to want to be a helper. And that was good.

“No worries at all. I don’t mind the question. Yes. I have multiple sclerosis.”

The runner nodded, “Are your meds…are they working well for you?”

Trevor lifted his cane with a smile, “What do you think?”

The runner nodded again and said, “My, um…the company I work for…we have a medicine that we think could be good for MS. It’s actually why I am here. I heard there was an MS art installation. I’m trying to learn more about the…the patient experience?”

Trevor watched the endearingly awkward runner pause - obviously worried that he was overstepping. The man took off his beanie cap and continued, “We are about to start a clinical trial…would you like to learn more about it?”

The universe has a sense of humor, Trevor thought. But, yes, this runner wants to be a helper.

He half-smiled at the man and said, “Yes, I might like to learn more.”

Then he shifted his cane to his left hand and extended his right, “I’m Trevor Larkin.”

The runner took Trevor’s hand into his own and answered, “I’m Jo Mayor. It’s very nice to meet you, Trevor.”

Credit: Goldin+Senneby: Flare-Up Exhibit at Hayden Gallery | MIT List Visual Arts Center

Photos: F.O. Gameiro