“Not so bad, yeah?” Leif chewed. “We call it finnbiff. An acquired taste, but then everything is acquired north of the Arctic Circle.”
“I have a sensitive nose, that’s all,” she said.
“Alas, I’ve never had a sense of smell,” said Leif. “Though one gets used to it and seeks pleasure in other delights.”
Radar licked at the meat on his plate and then recoiled. “Ewwww, ’lectric poop,” he said and hid his face in Charlene’s lap.
Leif laughed.
“Sorry,” said Charlene. “He can be so picky.”
“Not at all. The boy knows what he wants, that’s all. An admirable quality.”
Charlene took a breath. “Thank you, Mr. . Dr. Holtsmark, for all of your hospitality.” She swept her arm around the room.
“Please,” he said. “Call me Leif.”
“Okay,” she said. “Leif, then. May I ask what you propose?”
“Propose?”
She looked at Kermin. “To do with our son.”
He wiped at his lips with a napkin. “Let me show you something.”
He got up and fetched a smooth, white rectangular cube with four bolts protruding from two of its sides. He handed it to Charlene. “Do you know what this is?”
Charlene glanced at the cube and then handed it to Kermin, who inspected it closely. After a moment he said, “It looks like voltage switch, but what is this. . this white box?”
“This is the world’s first organic semiconductor bistable switch. Made of polyacetylenes, or melanin—the pigments in our skin,” said Leif. He took the switch back from Kermin. “The human body is really a wet-tissued machine. It runs on electricity. We’ve been studying the organic circuitry of the human body for some time, particularly the chemical properties of melanin as a semiconductor. It’s such a beauty of a substance. It’s not just in the skin — we have melanin in the brain, in the substantia nigra. You find this in the basal ganglia — it’s the focal site of learning, reward, addiction, eye movement. But of course, melanin’s most visible role is in the dermis, where it performs some of its most remarkable functions, interacting with the environment around us. We’re basically covered in a thin coat of ‘light radios’ that react to UV radiation waves and convert these waves into different energies.”
Kermin was sitting very still. Charlene felt compelled to reach out and hold her husband’s hand. She felt suddenly close to him. As if the two of them were confronting the world together for the first time.
“So what does this mean for Radar?” she said.
“We’ve been doing some research of our own here. We were investigating how we might turn a human being into a puppet. To rewire the body so that it is completely controlled by another. You can imagine the theatrical and philosophical fallout from such a discovery. We were deathly excited about the idea, but it never quite panned out. At least not yet. But during the course of our electrochemical experimentation, we did stumble upon several accidental discoveries. We found that with certain electromagnetic adjustments, we’re actually able to tune the dial of our melanin light radios — I could turn you into a shortwave radio, for instance, or a telephone, or a television — and we’ve done this with a couple of our own people. We’re pale-skinned, so it’s a little more difficult, but Thorgen, one of the puppeteers, was playing Shostakovich for two days straight — except only he could hear it, and it nearly drove him nuts. At first we couldn’t figure out how to turn it off, but we’ve learned more with each experiment. We keep getting better at this.”
“His skin was playing music?”
“In a manner of speaking,” he said. “His dermis was translating radio waves from a station in Murmansk into pulses that resonated throughout his endoskeleton. His body had become a radio, with receiver, speaker, and no tuning dial, unfortunately. This may come later. But this isn’t even the end of what we can do. What’s even trickier is to actually manipulate the physical composition of these melanosome radios to our liking. We can change their structure. And thus their appearance.”
“Meaning you can change a person’s color?”
“Exactly.”
“So what’s wrong with him, then?”
“You mean what’s wrong with your son? This I cannot tell you. Nothing, as far as I can see. But then, it’s all how you view it. I cannot diagnose. What I can do is manipulate the proteins in his skin and change the molecular composition of his dermis.”
“And you’ve done this before?”
“Only once, but it worked beautifully.”
“Who was it?”
“As a doctor, I’m not at liberty to give you his name, but I will say he was a Negro boy living with the Sami. I’m not sure how he got there. He spoke their language perfectly. And they had heard through the Finnmark grapevine that we were doing these kinds of experiments. And so they came and asked for this. They said it was the child’s choice.”
“How old was he?”
“Nine or ten.”
“And he wanted to change his color?”
“Apparently so. Afterwards, his appearance changed dramatically.”
She considered this. “Why did he do it?”
“I think he was confused. He was the only one who looked like he did. He wanted to be one of them.”
“But he was only a kid!” Charlene exclaimed. “How could he know what he wanted? You shouldn’t just be allowed to change him like that. What if he. . came to regret it later?”
“I didn’t give counseling in this regard. I was merely fulfilling their request.”
Kermin shifted in his chair. Radar began to sing quietly to himself, touching his fingers together: “Halfway oop or down stairs, halfway oop or down stairs. .”
Charlene looked at her son.
“Is it dangerous?” she asked.
“I don’t want to mislead you. Everything in life is dangerous. But we’re careful men here. I wouldn’t expose your child to undue harm. For this I give you my word.”
“You electrocute him?”
“It’s more like a reverse electrocution. A negative electromagnetic pulse. We call it electro-enveloping. We would uncharge his subcutaneous layer — specifically his melanosomal proteins — using very precise bilateral voltage switches. We couldn’t guarantee final coloring, but”—he leaned back, eyeing them—“we could get it close to his parents. If that’s what you want.”
Charlene held up her hands. “Well, to tell you the truth, we hadn’t even gotten that far. We haven’t even discussed it at all.”
Leif nodded. “Of course, of course. If it helps to think in these terms: we would be merely correcting a glitch in the system.”
Without warning, Kermin stood up, overturning his chair. Radar stopped and stared at his father.
“We don’t want,” he said. “Thank you, doctor, but we are saying no. To all of this. To everything: thank you, no. Come on, Charlene. We are going.”
“Kermin!” said Charlene, standing with him. “The man is just trying to—”
“This man is crazy,” Kermin hissed. “Jebeno lud. I work with electricity all my life and this man has no idea what he talks about. You cannot uncharge this thing. He will kill him. Do you understand? He will kill him. Dead. On je manijak.”
Kermin picked up his son, who was looking worriedly back and forth between mother and father, sensing the bloom of anger. The knots in their voices.
“Kerm—”
“We are gone,” said Kermin, and he walked out the door with Radar in his arms. They heard Radar’s quiet cry before the door swung closed.