When you’re a teenager and they ask you why you look so freaking weird, never tell them the actual sincere truth. Tell them a joke so you all can laugh together. The topic will vanish in the air and they’ll think of something else to mock. I wish I’d done that. Maybe I’d have more friends and none of this would’ve happened to me.
Don’t get me wrong. It’s a cool gig. Frankly, it can’t get much greater than this. And it all began when our Cessna crashed five years ago.
My dad carried me out of the burning Cessna. Wait, I’ll explain later why he had to carry a nearly grown man. Then he dropped me on the lawn and ran back for mom who had been knocked unconscious when we crashed in a field. And they never got out. There I was, wriggling around in the grass like some ugly primeval worm, unable to stand up because I had a massive flare-up that week. So bad I couldn’t stand. Then the plane blew up.
I’ve got a genetic syndrome called Marfan. Basically I’m tall, skinny and my connective tissue sucks. It doesn’t hold me together. It sucks. So I need medical care to stay functional. Think of your organs as good rubber bands that stretch and contract wonderfully as needed. Mine are old, slack, and weak rubber bands that never fully retain their original shape. I fall apart sometimes. That’s why I was slithering around on the grass. Until the fire crew found me.
Since dad was pretty high up in the ranks, and mom a former pilot, they took care of me. I mean the Air Force. I had all I needed; a place to stay on the base, medical care, food and — well, that was about it. I had no siblings or friends to speak of. Like most other weirdos and self-professed nerds I lost myself in obscure research of things like ancient civilizations, quantum physics, the rise and fall of the Swedish band ABBA, and due to an unfortunate online bet; learned Esperanto in six months. There are people, or bots, online who are interested in stuff like that, so it wasn’t as if I had no social life. It was, however, all online and I always created anonymous accounts that were pretty hard to trace.
I had a sort of girlfriend online, Caroline, but I wasn’t sure if she was a bot or a human. She was the only girlfriend I ever had. We would face time for hours and nerd out on strange things like old movies, like The Day the Earth Stood Still and The Parallax View. Caroline had the ability to make me laugh out loud. She always remarked that my eyes glittered when I was happy. I never saw any glitter in my eyes, but it made me feel content for a few minutes.
I missed my parents terribly, but I found no way to grieve so I pushed it aside. Maybe that’s stupid, but I had to find a way to survive. Because I wanted to live. I wasn’t depressed or anything, despite my ridiculous genetic state. I actually loved living.
I’d always dreamed of being an actor. It would be the only way I could ever become someone else than myself. They had a drama club on the base, and I joined it. I was actually good, maybe good enough for Hollywood one day. For some reason I’d always been into fantasy and sci-fi. The character Gollum became my alter ego. A twisted remnant of a human turned into a pitiful being that only wants one thing, its Precious. But I wasn’t quite sure what my Precious was.
There was a girl I really liked, Sophie, an actress in my drama club. We talked a lot and dreamed about going to Hollywood. One night we were hanging out and I leaned in to kiss her. She pulled away and laughed. Said she thought of me as “only a friend.” It broke me.
In the drama club I was always stuck with the weirdest parts. But I didn’t really mind because, let’s face it, I was different from everyone else. And strangely enough, I was at peace with that.
I finally got a good role when I was cast as Puck in “A Midsummer Night’s Dream.” Imagine a freak like me, in a Shakespeare play? But a flare-up kept me bedridden the day of the big premiere. The Sophie thing and now this, well, I just didn’t have it in me to keep at it. I realized I was never going to Hollywood.
After some time, the Air Force probably figured I had “grieved” enough and asked me if I was interested in participating in a secret learning project. I’d have to sign a contract promising never to tell anyone. I asked, about what. They said languages. I sighed. Of course they’d tracked all my online activities and knew about that Esperanto thing. I was so bored at home so I said yes. They told me I’d begin the next day.
First they taught me and nine other people how and where sounds are formed on the tongue and in our mouths. We spent weeks sounding like insane sheep and cattle while attempting to master all phonetic variations and becoming the captain of our tongue. They always served us ice cream at the end of the day, because our tongues were drooping like a dog that’s run five miles.
Next we learned the International Phonetic Alphabet. They had us sing a Georgian lullaby using phonetic transcripts until we sounded decent. They tested us in linguistic limitations to see who was best at replicating sounds. Turned out my overly stretchy vocal chords enabled me to make the most crazy sounds. They seemed to like that because they gave me another task. They had me learn how to run segment analysis of an extinct language to figure out separate words. This whole language thing sort of grew on me. I was, and I don’t mean to brag, good at something.
I had another flare-up of Marfa, and this time they took me to a clinic on the base. Two weeks later I felt better that I had in years. It was some kind of combined physical therapy and injections that did the trick. I could even see and hear better. They kept asking me if I still could pronounce unusual phonetic sounds, and kept giving me test after test. I still could, and they were happy. That’s when I asked them what all this was for. A few days later I got called into a meeting.
They wanted to invite me to join a special research project to rehabilitate weak connective tissues through a special physical therapy process. My ears perked up. Would this make my body stronger? Yes, they said, much stronger. Would I have less flare-ups? Yes, virtually no more flare-ups, they said. Would I be able to walk further than a mile without having to sit down and cough up half a lung? Yes, absolutely. I wanted to sign up on the spot but they firmly and kindly stopped me. There were a few more details I needed to know.
They told me this was a fork in the road offer. I could continue on the regular path, live on the base, keep studying regular university courses, and receive regular health care. Or, I could select a new path, a fork in the road. The greatest adventure of my life. This path would only be open to me for the next 24 hours, after which it would close forever. They told me I was a perfect candidate for something that would change the world forever. Why did they pick me? They said I had an unusual combination of features and skills that was perfect for this job. I felt like Liam Neeson in “Taken.”
Since I was never going to be able to join the Air Force or any military branch in the usual way, this was my one and only offer to serve my country. In a strange way it felt to me like an opportunity to thank my Air Force dad for saving my life. He was a rebellious spirit who felt that was what America was about. Not just doing what you were told but what you felt was right.
I asked them why they made such a big deal out of this particular project. It took them a while before one of them said: “Because once you sign the contract you will never be able to speak with any other human beings about anything, other than those we permit you to communicate with.”