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First light. Through the panoramic sweep of wall-size picture windows
(engineered for maximal view, minimal distortion), snow-crowned peaks, at the
world’s reputed rooftop, thrust up to impale a quintessential sky. Frozen in
time, or rather set to the clock-before-clocks of geologic intervals, glaciers
creep under veils of blue-grey mist centimeter by centimeter, season by season,
imitating stillness throughout a realm in constant flux, distance so deceptive
that the foreground and the background seem equally distinctive:
gooseflesh
rising on contact with thin air so spare of oxygen that breath becomes laborious,
laughter leads to panting, lungs expand in vain, grateful for the rarefied gasps
high-altitude grants;
warble,
twitter, whippoorwill, chirp, and coo regaling ears as feathered residents gaily
herald the fast-approaching daybreak, their separate songs comprising one
melodious choir;
heather,
mountain hyacinth, poppies, jonquils pollinate nose hairs, every whiff a sweet
infusion, seductive as nepenthe, transient sorrow perfumed by mix-‘n-match
bouquets;
while taste
buds, in anticipation, yearn for fresh-brewed coffee, the elixir giving alpine
life its boost, its zest, its flair, the caffeine rush making isolation (for the
most part) pleasurable.
Nana re-examines her cloistered situation:
Procured, if truth be told, by a wealthy philanthropist, whose
benevolence, without question, has done more good than ill—having furnished her
a livelihood, a first-class education, not to mention room and board in the lap
of ostentatious luxury (two vocations, in fact, her skill as sculptress no less expert than her skill as
an in-house paramour), Nana feels obliged... albeit a trifle disconcerted.
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Accidentally or intentionally? For most people, this means, ‘did my parents
conceive me on purpose’? Yet even when the answer is yes there remains an
element of 50/50 chance: 23 chromosomes from mother / 23 chromosomes from father,
gender a coin toss.
Results are always heads or tails
when the reproductive method is copulation, luck the overriding principle, parents only “half”
responsible
for their offspring
(many disclaiming
that). When I first came into being, such was the norm—a norm from which I must have
deviated, radically, to have formed the way I did... either accidentally or intentionally; I might well ask myself—though unlike most I add:
‘conceived by whom?’
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Back inside her quarters—having bathed, groomed, and breakfasted, having chased
away the twins upon delivery of demitasse and samovar—Nana alternately sips
virile coffee and converts thoughts to ink, the crow quill pen she uses as
out-of-date as her journal’s handmade parchment, both endearingly tactile, and
much
preferred to her Module's ergonomic keyboard, despite the latter's capacity for
high-resolution VR.
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Not
that lacking parents, in the usual sense, is all that troubling. Those of us
manufactured are nonetheless human, are more human, in a way. Choices typically
left to kismet are deliberate choices when one is manmade, as in manipulated.
My genes are your genes are everything else’s genes, simply rearranged. The bond
I feel is to life, not to life’s most celebrated species. Who we are is
connected to all the biomass ever created. By God, for those so inclined. I, for
one, have focused on a creator less enigmatic, more immediate, and unequivocally
mortal. Someone, for instance, living in Boston, Massachusetts, USA, almost a
quarter century ago who worked at the hospital where I was born. A
doctor, perhaps—though I have ruled-out most. Or a nurse—there were a few male
nurses on staff at the time; but none of them seem likely. Or an intern—harder
to trace, yet several remain possibilities; one in particular was enrolled as a
graduate student at an affiliated university. It is upon this shady character
that my inquiry now is fixed.
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