Hereditary Expressions
by Joseph Lagorio
part 1
The breadth of Tom’s insecurities looked up at him with the wide eyes of an infant nestled into a boppee next to him. On the last day of his paternity leave, Julie had left Tom alone with little Karl for the first time. She had gone out, ostensibly to get groceries. The reason to leave the house hadn’t mattered. She just wanted some time out and alone. It was her last chance for a few weeks, after all.
* * *
Reconciliation was a disaster, and Tom’s trick knee did not see that as reason enough to offer quarter for breaking the rules. No standing for more than an hour at a time, not even for family. The chair accepted Tom’s weight with a groan that mimicked his own relief. He fought off showing any sign of discomfort in front of Karl and the young man’s wife, Cora. His knee was the metaphor. It was the culmination of all of Tom’s failures as a father, the embodiment of too many shifts taken. When Cora and Karl took their seats on the couch beside him, Tom nearly gasped for surprise.
The meal he’d planned for them at Norman’s Grillhouse had been a disaster. The ambient noise of the patrons and music had drowned out any attempt of conversation deeper than cursory remarks. Cora’s back and movement had unmistakably stiffened more and more throughout the night. Karl’s dad always manages to screw something up, she must have thought. Why did I ever expect anything else?
The three of them had walked back from the restaurant in thick silence. He’d chosen Norman’s for the walk. It would be quaint. It would make him seem spontaneous. He should have scouted the establishment itself ahead of time to make sure the environment was suitable for a father’s penance to his grown son.
He’d moved to Oakland to be closer to his son. Julie had separated with Tom years ago, but her sudden death highlighted how alone he was. Full reconciliation with Karl and his young wife seemed too foolishly optimistic to hope for, but he could still be better than he was before.
“It’s a nice place,” Karl said, looking around Tom’s new apartment. Tom followed his gaze with resigned curiosity. The uniform color of the walls, entitled “Crisp Beige” per the apartment’s brochure — as if crisp beige was even conceptually possible — lent the entire living space an institutional feel. Like a jail.
Maybe Karl saw something Tom did not. Or maybe he was trying to be nice.
Tom turned back to Karl and cleared his throat. “I could make some tea.”
“Oh,” Karl said with a look to his wife. Cora didn’t shake her head. The side-eyed look was enough. Karl tilted his head back to Tom. “I don’t think we’ll be staying that long, actually.”
“Of course. Well, before you leave, at least tell me about this procedure you mentioned.” Tom gave a meek chuckle. “I couldn’t hear very well the first time.”
The half-smile that had marked a permanent feature on the young man’s face, even over the dinner fiasco, widened to return to the subject after its abandonment during the meal.
“It’s complicated, but the short of it is that I’ll have a direct link to my computer.” He lifted a finger on his left hand. “I’ll be able to plug in right here, and then I can access the files on the device, compose new work, direct different apps and devices that are linked to it all with signals from my mind.”
Tom sat back deeper into his chair and gulped to wet his throat. Technology had a different connotation with his son’s generation. Karl never knew a world where it was restrained in devices. With the emergence of smart bands and the popularization of embedded NFC chips as security devices, the line between self and tech had begun blurring decades ago. Even then, to undergo a procedure to actually replace a finger with a plug seemed a new level of bold.
“They used to call people like that cyborgs in the movies. Back when I was growing up.”
Karl rolled his eyes. “They’re called transhumanists, Dad. It’s not like I’m the first.” He reached out to Cora and gripped one of her hands. “I’m doing it for us. We’ll be able to afford a house, now. We can start a family.”
* * *
“Surely, there’s something I should be doing,” Tom said to the baby at his side. “Something you need?”
Little Karl waved an arm and Tom cocked his head with a shrug. “Okay. Well don’t be afraid to ask for anything, okay? We haven’t known each other that long, son, but I’m not a babysitter, right? I’m your father.”
The child gurgled at him.
Tom chuckled. “I don’t know why I was so anxious about Julie leaving us two alone. You don’t really do much. It’s not like you’re gonna run off.”
* * *
Karl and Cora’s house twinkled with the myriad LEDs of computers and devices, and periodic tweets and beeps accompanied them. Songs of systems signaling completion, or that they needed attention, or just beeping to remind everyone that they were powered on.
Tom took a long breath and savored the scent of fresh cookies. Even that could not completely dispel the stagnant weight of reused air that had been ventilated through machined fans and components a thousand times. Just then, Cora walked in with a plate of cookies in one hand, while the other cradled the swell of her stomach. She paused in the doorway. “They’re still warm, so we’ll want to give them a few moments to cool.” Her eyes flicked to the corner of the room as she spoke. Karl was there.
“There” was a relative term. Karl’s body was in the corner, with three additional memory units lining his now shaved head, and he was connected via cybernetic finger to one of the many computers that lined the back wall of the living room. If not for the flickering of movement beneath his eyelids and the deep regular breaths, Karl might otherwise have been some imitation of a person, molded from clay, while he lent his brain power to directing computations of corporate projects.
“Thank you,” Tom replied. “I don’t mind waiting a bit.”
Cora set the plate of cookies on the table with a clatter and straightened. She took a long sigh. “I can show you the nursery while we wait.” She didn’t specify which wait she referenced.
“I would like that.” Tom leveraged himself from the couch and followed her down the hall. She’d evidently finished decorating only a day or two ago. The crib featured a wood finish that gleamed in the light from the window, and the back wall was painted with pink, yellow and blue flower petals as if they were falling from some unseen garden above the room.
She’d chosen to forgo the current trend of holographic mobiles for one that was tactile. Instead of dynamic and dancing images of whales floating through empty space, this one would carry physical butterflies hanging from string around the baby’s head as she drifted to sleep. Next to the room’s only window and placed on a shelf high enough to thwart curious young hands, a potted lily gave off a faint floral aroma.
“It’s wonderful!” Tom said. “I can tell you put so much care into it.”
Cora eyes scanned the room again, as if confirming that his praise was sincere. “Yes, thank you.”
“What did Karl think of it?”
Cora blinked and sucked in a breath. Her lips parted to respond but she faltered. “Actually,” she finally said, “we should head back out there. He really should be arriving soon.”
Tom settled on the couch with a sigh of relief, and Cora took a seat on the opposite side after only the briefest hesitation. They spoke for a time. She talked about their daughter, while absentmindedly rubbing at her stomach. They had everything they needed, but she was worried whether she’d installed the car seat correctly. She mentioned that she hoped little Larissa would pick up soccer as Cora had played when she was in school. Maybe she would even volunteer to coach when Larissa was still young, if she could spare the time from her work.
Eventually the conversation drifted to work and how tiring it was to come home to so much preparation. After a few minutes of explaining projects that needed to be finished both at work and at home before Larissa came, a series of beeps sounded from the corner.
Karl’s eyes opened and he sucked in a deep, wavering breath before pulling his fingers from their outlets. Lights danced around the bay of computers, new ones igniting while others dimmed. Karl blinked and shook his head, then noticed Tom on the couch.
“Dad,” he said, surprise evident in his voice, “you’re early.”
“No, honey,” Cora said from her side of the couch.
Karl glanced to a display on one of the computers, confirming the time. “Oh, I’m sorry I’m late.”
Cora stood. “Feel free to reheat the cookies if you want them warm.”
“That’s fine, love.” He stood from his chair and approached her.
Cora looked down and offered her cheek to him. After his kiss, she took a long breath. “I’ll get started on dinner now that you’re here.”
“I... yes. Sorry again for unplugging late.” Karl looked back to Tom and motioned to his new memory drives. “I can take on so many projects with these that I sometimes lose track.”
Cora turned and left for the kitchen. Karl watched her and sighed. “She’s upset,” he said.
“Does she cook most nights?”
Karl’s eyes narrowed. “No, father, I cook as well. Not as much recently but, with Larissa on the way, I'm trying to do as much as I can at work to make it easier once she’s here.”
Tom nodded at the words. They seemed hopeful. Noble even. He recognized their flavor of poison. He pulled his hand from his knee, where he’d been massaging at it. “Pregnancy is hard. Women go through hell with their hormones. Of course, your daughter deserves everything you can offer, but you don’t want to leave Cora without support. She’s still your teammate.”
Karl’s gaze darkened. “You think I don’t support her because I’m not cooking dinner?”
Tom cleared his throat with a nervous chuckle. “I just wanted to give another perspective.”
Karl motioned to his memory units again. “That’s why I did this. I get to stay home where I can help out the most, where I can be present. When Larissa is born, she’s not going to understand the concept of an absent dad. I’ll be there with her all the time. That’s why I’m making these sacrifices.”
Tom only looked away. Karl didn’t directly reference Tom’s own minimal direct presence in Karl’s childhood, but the meaning was plain.
“I’m glad,” Tom said.
* * *
“You don’t really do much. It’s not like you’re gonna run off.”
Karl furrowed his brow to a thoughtful look, a perturbed look. Tom lifted his hands, disarmingly. “I’m not trying to diminish your experience. I know you’re learning a lot right now, and you don’t have a ton of established information to contextualize it. Hell, people my age still screw that up easily enough, but your coordination is still a work in progress. That’s all I mean.”
Karl’s face wound through several meaningless expressions as Tom talked. When Tom reached the end of his apology, his son’s cheeks lifted into a wide smile that pinched at the boy’s eyes.
“You think that’s funny do you? Well, if that’s all it takes to get you to smile, then we’re going to get along. Trust me, your old man is one of...” He stopped when the smell hit him. Little Karl had pooped.
* * *
Copyright © 2021 by Joseph Lagorio
