Chapter Text
PROLOGUE
Mike Hanlon’s eyelids fluttered open. Flashes of sterile white strobed his eyes as he struggled to focus, but he was too tired to lift his lids fully.
“His cerebral cortex has been loaded.” Announced a kind sounding man’s voice, full of love, satisfaction, and fatigue.
“Can he hear us yet?” asked a woman.
“Hear, see, understand, and identify more that 500 0bjects.” he answered, delighted. “If I keep filling his brain with more information, in two weeks, he’ll have all the typical intelligence and physical capabilities of a typical fourteen-year-old.” he paused. “Well, okay, maybe a little smarter than that. But he’ll be fourteen.”
“Oh, Will this is the happiest moment of my life.” The woman sniffled. “He’s perfect.”
“I know.” He sniffed too. “Dad’s perfect little man.”
They took turns kissing Mike’s forehead. One smelled of chemicals and an underlying farm animal smell. The other smelled of gardenias. Together they smelled of love.
Mike tried to force his eyes open. This time, they barely fluttered.
“Will! He blinked!” the woman explained. “She’s trying to see us! Mike, baby, I’m Jessica, your mommy. Can you see me?”
“He can’t,” Will said.
Mike’s body tensed at those words. How could someone else decide what he could and couldn’t do? It didn’t make any sense to him.
“Why not?” his mother asked for both of them.
“His battery pack is almost drained. He needs a charge.”
“So charge him!”
Yes! Please charge me! Charge me! Charge me!
More than anything else, he wanted to see all 500 objects his dad had put into his mind. Wanted to see his parents faces while they identified objects for him. Wanted to come to life and explore the world he’d been born into. But he couldn’t move.
“I can’t charge him until his bolts set.”
Mike’s mother sniffled.
“It’s okay sweetie,” Will cooed. “A few more hours and he’ll be stable enough to charge.”
“It’s not that.” Jessica inhaled sharply
“Then what?”
“He’s so beautiful and full of potential, and it…” She sniffed again. “It just breaks my heart that he’s going to have to live the way we do.”
“And what’s wrong with us?” he asked. Yet something in the way he asked suggested he already knew.
She snickered. “You’re kidding right?”
“Jess, things won’t always be like this.” Will said. “Times will change. You’ll see.”
“How? Who’s going to change them?”
“I don’t know. Someone will. Eventually.”
“Well, I hope we’ll be around to see it.” she said sighing.
“We will be,” Will assured her. “We Hanlons tend to live long lives.”
Jessica giggled softly
Mike desperately wanted to know what his parents meant. What were these “times” they were talking about? He needed to charge. But asking became impossible once his battery completely drained. Feeling both light headed and heavy all over, Mike fell deeper into the darkness, settling in a place where he couldn’t hear his parents anymore, nor could he recall any of what his mom and dad spoke of.
All Mike could do was hope that by the time he woke up, whatever that thing that Jessica wanted to be “around to see” would be there. And if it wasn’t, that Mike himself would have the strength and courage to get it for her.