The Gift Read online

his feelings of abandonment, he would have coldly listened to the story and welcomed it. William remembered how he felt about his father’s death.

  “It’s complicated,” were the only words he found himself saying.

  The boy looked skeptical.

  “Go on. Take it,” William urged.

  Larry hesitantly went over to pick the thing up. There was an inscription on it from his father to him. Sentimental stuff. The words ‘I love you’ were there. Larry looked back at William.

  “It’s an heirloom,” William said. “It’s meant to be given from father to son. He wanted you to have it and one day pass it on to your son.”

  “Why?”

  William locked eyes with him. “He may not be the best father. But he cares.”

  “I care, Zalea,” William shouted at his girlfriend as he grabbed her arm.

  “About what, William? Money? Fame? None of that matters because what you’re doing is wrong!”

  They were arguing about the chip he created. Inserted into the human brain, it supercharged a person’s ability to think and organize, eliminating things like Alzheimer’s and Autism. It could also be programmed to help the body heal itself and reverse diseases like Cancer and Diabetes. Even for those who didn’t have any medical problems it could give an advantage boosting their ability to learn, boosting their ability to create, even boosting their athletic ability, creating productive super humans in a world of ordinary people. It was barely the size of a mustard seed and nearly everyone was calling it the newest World Wonder that would change the face of humanity. Other people were calling it the spawn of Satan.

  The chip had a small fault. It was delicate and unpredictable, and could short- circuit at a moments notice if not properly maintained. Their company had a solution for that. A monitoring system would keep tabs on everyone who had the microchip implanted to make sure their brains didn‘t get fried.

  Zalea yanked her arm away, so hard that she stumbled against the wall behind her but he didn‘t notice. “You helped me create the damn thing and now you’re saying you want me to destroy it. Those nature freaks got to you, didn’t they Zalea?”

  “They didn’t have to! There’s not enough research to justify putting in on the market right now. We don’t know what the long term consequences will be.”

  “It will change the future!”

  “It’s ending ours and you‘re too blind to see it!” She started to cry when he turned away from her. This microchip was his life’s work and he wasn’t going to just to throw it all away.

  William found himself unraveling just the same, though. He only wanted to give Zalea everything she ever wanted and the money from this project would allow him to do that. They could have the large home they always wanted with space for the baby she always wanted. She should be standing by him now, but there she was abandoning him. They had been arguing for months now. She had packed her bags. She was about to leave.

  In a rage he swiftly picked up her suitcase and hauled it out the front door, startling her. “Go on, get out! I don’t need you!” He didn’t need anyone, he thought as he watched her go.

  Time would prove him right, he thought, and then she would come crawling back to him. But time proved him wrong instead. A few years passed by and he had gotten rich with more money than he could ever imagine, and everyone knew his name. That’s how everyone knew who to blame when everything suddenly came crashing down.

  The implants had only been approved for adults, but there were some people who had begun planting the microchips inside the heads of children. Those chips had exploded, unable to handle the growth and rapid neuron firing of their developing brains. The deaths were gruesome, and his chip was the cause. He would have gone to jail, no matter how much he protested his innocence, except when the company went bankrupt because of the scandal, the maintenance network for the chips were compromised. Billions of people all around the world short-circuited all at the same time and he lived through the horrifying aftermath as anarchy ensued.

  And what happened to Zalea? He found her apartment a few days later. The stink of death and disease littered the halls that led to her door. The microchip victims still lay where they fell along with the assault victims, the arson victims, and countless others who would never be named.

  Zalea’s door was open. She wasn’t inside, thank goodness, but her clothes and her furniture were all scattered about and broken. There was blood in the kitchen. Her bedroom seemed to be the only thing untouched and there in the middle of her bed was Lady Butterfly.

  “I didn’t think this would happen,” he told the old doll. She merely looked at him with sad eyes.

  He didn’t believe in voodoo. Science had been his friend but he was willing to forsake her. He wished he had more faith in Zalea, he missed her. He asked the djab doll to help him bring her back, hoping she wasn’t out there all alone for he had abandoned her.

  When he was younger, he had this thing about not being like his father. It seemed like he was about to die just like him. William closed his eyes with that thought, and when he opened them everything was different. He had been given another chance…

  Larry looked back up at him, not knowing what to think. He never heard the words ‘your father’ and ‘he cares’ in the same breath before. He never saw any evidence of his love. He felt a warm, sort of blankety warmth growing inside of his heart, though at twelve, he would never admit it. He had to have something in common with other kids his age, after all. But William could see the change already taking place inside him. He knew it was a change for the better.

  William began to walk back to his car but Larry called out to him.

  “Who are you?” he asked.

  “You don’t want to know, kid,” he said as he got back in the driver’s seat and drove off.

  Larry watched him travel down the road for a while until his mother came out on the porch.

  “Lawrence William Robinson! I’ve been calling you forever. Get in here and clean up your room!”

  Larry hated when his mother used his full name. “But it’s my birthday, Mom!”

  “And if you want any more, you’ll clean up that mess. I’m your mother, not your maid!”

  Larry kept his eyes on the road although the car had finally grown tiny and disappeared. He’d always been called an odd sort of kid, and right now he felt it the most. He knew something significant had just happened in his life, but he couldn’t understand what. Maybe only time could tell, he thought, as he turned his gift over in his hands, inspecting it for defects and finding none. He tucked the tiny football in his pocket and went back inside his house.

  “Lawrence William Robinson! I’ve been calling you forever!”

  The only person that he allowed to use his full name besides his mother, was his wife, Zalea. She used it more and more these days, but he didn’t mind. Growing another person in one’s body had to be frustrating at times, and if Zalea needed to vent then she could vent. He would never abandon her.

  “I’ll be right there in a second, Zee,” he called back to her as he signed his name on the documents that had been sent to him.

  There, he was done. Now he had complete control over the marketing of the microchip that he had developed. The company had wanted to get it out to the public in the next few months but something told him that it wasn’t quite ready. They just needed more research to find out how to keep it stable, the monitoring system the company thought of was just dumb, and then it would change the world.

  He got up and was about to head for the door when, he saw something strange on top of his file cabinet. He took it down and was confronted with -

  “Lady Butterfly! There you are,” his wife exclaimed as she took the djab doll from his hands and kissed his mouth. He held her lips with his for a few moments longer than necessary because he missed her kisses, although he didn’t know why.

  “Thank you for finding her for me, William,” she said.

  “I think it was the other way around,” he to
ld her and Zalea laughed.

  “So you were trying to steal my husband away,” she told the doll, “Shame on you Lady.”

  William shook his head. His wife was beautiful, but she had an odd sense of humor. He couldn’t imagine being stolen away by anyone. He couldn’t imagine his life without her…or his soon to be born son. He smiled at that, putting his hands in his pockets to make sure his gift was still there. Zalea could go into labor any minute now and he wanted this to be the first gift he ever got. He had long since come to terms with his parent’s divorce and his dad’s death, and this gift was an heirloom, meant to be passed on from father to son for generations to come.

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