False Idols - Published Version

Chapter 4

                  

"Nurse," said Dr. Arora in faintly accented English, after scanning a number of holographic medical readouts projected in midair near the cot. "Let's remove the surgical dressing."

As the nurses approached, Nick Lal ran his hands over the strange bulges underneath the bandages that were wrapped around his skull. Before the operations, he'd gazed at diagrams explaining what those lumps were. But he still couldn't quite imagine what his head looked like now.

Nick's parents were sitting on benches about five feet above the operating room, watching the scene unfold below them from behind a reflection resistant Plexiglas barrier. Next to his parents sat Peggy. He was relieved that she had come. Before being put into a medically induced coma six weeks ago, he'd though she was leaving him.

One of the female nurses picked up a pair of scissors and Nick cringed at the coarse sound the blades made as they cut the outer layer of bandages. He noticed his mother, father and Peggy leaning forward, almost pressing their noses against the Plexiglas in anticipation.

One nurse began unwrapping the cotton bandages and spooling them to her colleague, who wound them around her hands neatly. Nick felt a strange sensation as if an unnoticed burden was being loosened and removed from his head. At the top of his field of vision, he could see layer after layer of pure white cotton gauze being unwound from his skull. His head felt unnaturally cool as the fabric that had covered it for weeks was removed.

Nick had wanted this brain implant since Dr. Arora had developed it a few years ago, and had spent months considering asking his parents about it. But the expense involved was breathtaking - equivalent to the cost of a Manhattan skyscraper - so Nick had never summoned the courage to broach the subject. Then, his father had announced the implants would be Nick's 17th birthday present.

That his parents had freely offered him the prohibitively expensive gift he secretly wanted was not happy news for Nick. Instead, it made him bitter. His parents' suggestion meant they weren't satisfied with him as he was. 

And not for the first time. Before Nick was born, his parents had decided they would not be content with a natural baby, one carrying the genetic imperfections of a normal human. So they had invested a significant part of their large fortune in genetic engineering. That was why Nick had fair skin and green eyes despite having a father from Amritsar and a mother from Rio de Janeiro. Why he stood more than a foot taller than his parents. Why his IQ was a couple of standard deviations higher than their genius level scores.

Their investments in creating a superhuman child were just facet of his parents' hypocritical lives. A few years before Nick's birth, they had prevented a global famine by developing super-efficient food factories. They sold the food cheaply, with a tiny profit margin, and soaked up public praise for doing so. They also made huge donations to charities ranging from wildlife preserves to orphanages. His father pointed to his Sikh religious obligation to contribute to communal meals as inspiration, and his mother to her Catholic belief in charity.

But his parents were no aesthetes. His mother lived a life of ultimate luxury and complete exclusivity. She ate the finest foods, travelled in the fanciest cars and planes, and lived in the grandest lodgings, all the while avoiding any contact with the masses she claimed to love. His father, who loved playing the role of self-sacrificing entrepreneur and philanthropist, was ruthless when it came to amassing and preserving power. Whenever the Lal family's near-monopoly on global food production was challenged by a new competitor, he used his immense financial resources and political influence to destroy the threat.

By now, the nurse had unraveled several coils of bandage and Nick could see that the dressings were no longer pure white. There were dark red spots of dried blood on them, and lighter stains that look like tea spilled on linen. He felt a tightening in his stomach as he realized the stains had been made by fluids that had seeped out of his skull.