Chapter 19
Night had fallen in Harbingers Falls. The India-ink sky was dappled with stars that seemed to float rather than remain fixed, as if humming and buzzing with nervous energy. The stars mimicked the way Gabriel felt. He no longer felt part of the canvas he’d been created upon. He no longer felt a part of his maker’s plan. In fact, every part of him felt disconnected from the house he lived in and his existence with Terzini. All he could think about was his new life, and the new relationship developing between him and Melissa.
Melissa. Her name whispered through him and made his stomach flutter. Sitting on the edge of his full-sized bed staring out into the indigo abyss, he struggled to remain still. Excitement pulsated within him. Spending an entire afternoon with Melissa, talking with her, eating with her, holding her hand, had left him invigorated, enlivened. He felt a sense of drunken euphoria he had only read about. But alcohol was not responsible for the way he felt. Melissa was. It was all her.
Melissa had awakened something in him that he had been devoid of, something he never knew he was capable of experiencing. The inebriating thrill was not accurately described in the written word, nor was it correctly portrayed in movies. It was so much more. He closed his eyes and pictured every feature of her face: her pellucid green eyes, her delicate nose and full lips and her hair, like liquid copper, spilling over her shoulders and down her back. He envisioned her smiling and laughing as she so easily and often did. He could almost hear the sound, pleasant and charming.
But it was not just her outward appearance that enthralled him, though it did personify her greatest attribute. Melissa had a quality that transcended her looks. She had grace. Gabriel believed her grace to be where her truest power rested; she was the embodiment of grace. Every facet of her personality seemed effortless, fluid. And while she did not seem aware of this gift, he was. Even under duress, she managed to maintain a sense of decency and dignity. In his eyes, she was the kind of girl that moved artists to create and writers to write. He wondered what attracted her to him. After all, he knew what he was.
Thoughts of his creation, the implications of it, spun like a never-ending wheel in his brain. It was nothing new. He wondered since his first days. But his previous thoughts had been less personal than they were now.
As he sat awake in his bed, his creation, the method by which he’d come to be, troubled him again. In the dark recesses of his mind a question had arisen and nagged at him unendingly. He had pondered it often, but it had taken on new meaning now that Melissa had entered his life and awoken feelings in him, feelings he was not supposed to have. He wondered whether he was, in fact, human.
Gabriel knew he was not like other humans beings. He was fashioned from superior DNA, designed to be free of all human sentiment as his creator believed that sentiments were responsible for all the ills of society.
He was not the product of a man and woman uniting their genetic material. He was not born of love or lust or anger or violence. Gabriel had been manufactured by a selective process. His chromosomal components had been handpicked, chosen for supreme function not by God, but by the geneticist Dr. Franklin Terzini. Terzini’s genius constructed him to reject conventional sentiment and, instead, use the area of his brain that was used by most human beings for setting their emotional state for higher cognitive function.
For most of his existence, he believed that his maker had succeeded, that what other scientists and geneticists could only conceive of, Terzini had attained. Gabriel had grown and absorbed knowledge at a much faster rate than the most advanced human being. His creator had documented every milestone of his development. He had read every record for himself. He knew of his many feats and cerebral prowess. Included in every file was his inability to exhibit any form of emotion despite being provided with ample stimuli.
His maker had been thorough in his experimentation. Gabriel had been exposed to every literary genre available – poetry, novels, short stories, and plays – all by authors who employed various tones, styles and lengths for their material and covered a wide range of subjects. None of the works had generated an emotional response of any kind.
His exposure did not stop with literary heavyweights. He was given religious reading material as well. He had been provided with the Holy Bible, the Qur’an, the Torah, the Vedas, the book of Mormon, the Guru Granth Sahib, the Avesta, the Zhuan Falun and various books by L. Ron Hubbard, author of Dianetics and founder of the Church of Scientology. Religious conviction did not sway him either. In truth, they confused him further.
Each work spoke of a spiritual essence of a person, a soul. Supported by the world’s greatest thinkers including Aristotle and Plato, the soul had been presented as the personification of a being. It had been believed to directly affect one’s earthly actions and was thought to function as the guiding force behind one’s thinking, emotions, memory, desires and will.
This idea of a soul was the antithesis of what Terzini had taught him. His maker had instilled in Gabriel the uselessness of emotions and the baseness of desires.
Until recently, he found himself without reason to disagree. History indicated that countless atrocities had been committed, wars had been waged, all in the name of religion, politics and greed and all fueled by impassioned people. So moved were these groups, so convinced of their righteousness that each clung vehemently to their convictions despite the loss of human lives. Before he’d met Melissa, Gabriel had embraced his maker’s philosophy, despite being perplexed by the mystery and mysticism surrounding the soul of a human being, what it means to truly be human. Now, however, he challenged the concept of his creator’s core thesis. He was confronted with the possibility that Dr. Terzini was a sanctimonious madman hell-bent on transforming the human populace into an emotionless, utopian society.
The significance of such a dilemma weighed heavily on Gabriel. He allowed himself to fall back on his bed. When he did, his mind reverted to thoughts of Melissa. He felt very human. He felt moved by vastly human forces in him that superseded the teachings of his maker.
Against Terzini’s revolutionary developments and techniques, and despite his preaching, emotions had evolved in Gabriel. Though unexpected, they had emerged and developed as rapidly as he absorbed, processed and retained information. He reasoned that this progression of sentiment was inherent in human beings, not mere creations. Yet despite such rationalization, he viewed himself as a monster. How he’d come into existence shamed him.
Cupping his head in his hands, he agonized over his existence, whether he was human. Flooded with uncertainty, he began to wonder whether Melissa, too, would see him as a monster if she were made aware of the truth. Entertaining the notion of her not just rejecting him, but repelling him, caused an ache in his chest so profound it caused him to wince aloud. He could not bear the thought of her eyes on him disapprovingly, disdainfully, with disgust.
He sat upright and rose to his feet. He walked across his room to his bureau and retrieved his cell phone.
Without hesitation, he dialed Melissa’s cell-phone number.
The phone rang just two times then suddenly her voice was on the other end. He had not concocted an excuse for calling, especially this late in the evening.
“Hello?” asked the melodious voice on the other end.
“Hi Melissa,” he said nervously. “Um, it’s Gabriel.”
“Oh. Hi Gabriel,” Melissa answered. The tone of her voice suggested that she was smiling. “What’s up? Is everything okay?”
“Uh, not much. I was just, you know, uh, here in my room, uh thinking about stuff…you,” he said and hated how idiotic he sounded. He was slobbering all over a call he had made impulsively. He wished he would have thought it through.
“Oh,” she said and he could not gauge her tone.
He swallowed hard and took a deep breath then blurted, “I’m not going to lie. I just needed to hear your voice. I’m sorry for calling so late. I was just sitting here thinking and I wanted to hear th
e sound of your voice.”
A moment of silence hung heavy in the air.
“I’ll let you go,” he said and felt so foolish for calling, his cheeks blazed with embarrassment.
“No, don’t go!” she said quickly and his heart skipped a beat. “And don’t be sorry either. It’s not too late to call. I mean, I wasn’t sleeping or anything. I’m glad you called.”
“You are?” he said and his stomach flip-flopped.
“Yeah, I was sitting here thinking about you, too, actually.”
Gabriel closed his eyes and savored the new and exhilarating feelings flickering through every part of him. He was hot and cold at the same time, dizzy and nauseous yet he could not stop smiling.
“I had a good time today,” Melissa continued. “I mean, except for that whole Kevin thing and the fact that everyone at school hates me now.”
“No one at school hates you,” he reassured her and felt his smile droop.
“I don’t know about that. I’m pretty sure Kevin and his friends would disagree with you on that one,” she teased and the fact that she was attempting to joke about it reinforced his belief that grace was her finest attribute.
“I guess you got me on that one,” he laughed softly. “But seriously, don’t worry about those guys. I won’t let them give you a hard time. I promise. And as far as the rest of them are concerned,” he continued, “anyone who is dumb enough to go along with that ridiculous story Kevin is spinning, doesn’t deserve a second thought. They’ll forget about this as soon as the next drama unfolds.”
“Yeah, I guess you’re right. I just can’t help but feel nervous about tomorrow,” she began. Hearing that she was worried made his heart clench. “I mean, I appreciate that you want to stick up for me, and I’ve seen you in action. But I have to deal with this on my own. You’re not in all my classes. You know?”
He understood and respected that she wanted to be able to get a handle on the situation with Kevin and the vicious rumors he was circulating, but he felt an inherent need to protect her. He could not explain it; just felt that she needed protection. He struggled to suppress the anger that mounted within him at the actuality of what had happened, the brutality that Kevin had perpetrated against her, and the cruelty he continued to perpetrate.
Swallowing the bitter rise of rage, he said, “I know. But I am always a call away. If you need me at any point during the day, just hit the send button on your phone and I’m there, no matter what. I won’t let him hurt you again.”
She seemed to understand the gravity of what he was saying. She responded with a solemn, “I believe you, and thank you.”
“Listen why don’t we do something this weekend?” he said and shifted their conversation. “We should go out, you know, on a date.” Gabriel heard the words come out of his mouth without thinking them through. He hoped he wasn’t being presumptuous.
“I’d love to, but I thought you were grounded. I mean, didn’t your dad freak out about the Kevin thing?”
Gabriel breathed a silent sigh of relief after hearing her say she wanted to spend more time with him.
“He did, but there’s always a way around things,” he said. “We have a few days. In the meantime, I’ll try to figure out a way for us to do this. The only problem is my car. He always knows when I’ve used it.”
“Maybe we can enlist some help from Alexandra or Daniella,” she suggested.
“They would do something like that for you?”
“Well, yeah. I guess. I mean, they’re like sisters to me. We would do anything for each other. So, it couldn’t hurt to ask, right?”
“Sure, why not.”
Infused with hope and inspired by courage born of optimism and deep emotions, he felt compelled to share his true feelings with Melissa.
“Listen, I need to tell you something,” he began and ignored the doubt trying to edge its way into his mind. “I feel something for you, something that I’ve never felt before,” he began before suddenly, he lost his words and much of his courage. He no longer felt brave enough to tell her what he needed to say, at least not on the phone.
Fearing rejection, he completed his sentence with “I just miss you, a lot. I can’t wait to see you tomorrow.”
“I can’t wait to see you,” she said then paused. “Gabriel, are you sure you’re okay? You sound like you’ve got something on your mind. Anything I can help with?”
Melissa’s voice, so pleasant and full of compassion, affected him deeply. He wanted to tell her; tell her everything, tell her he wasn’t supposed to have any feelings whatsoever yet he felt everything for her. He wanted to explain his existence and that despite the ugliness of it, he felt sure he was falling in love with her. But the words were lost on his lips.
Instead, he answered her question with a simple, “I’m fine, really.”
“Okay. I mean, if you say so,” she said but sounded unconvinced.
“I’ll see you in the morning,” he replied and knew he’d be counting the hours until sunrise.
“Yep, looking forward to it,” she said simply.
After saying good-bye, Gabriel turned off his phone. He replaced the cell phone to its charging cradle, and lay in his bed only to return to his troublesome thoughts.