Second Nature

Chapter 32

32 

Gen sat at the wrought iron breakfast table on the porch with Jimi and Lana. She had not slept after her fiasco with Cade. Lana had come downstairs at six-thirty, and found Gen pacing on the porch, crazy to find out what Jimi had learned from his Internet research. So Lana went out to the cabin and returned with a bedraggled Jimi in tow, still in paisley cotton pajama bottoms. 

He studied Gen across the table, adjusted his eyeglasses on his sunburned nose. Thick lenses magnified pale blue, bloodshot eyes and individual arterioles, like red threads in paper dollars. Auburn hair spilled loosely over thin, freckled shoulders. 

Jimi shifted the eyeglasses up and down his nose, and then held them out at different arm lengths, peering through the lenses. "Damn. My prescription isn't working."  

Lana grabbed the eyeglasses from his hand and flung them to the far side of the porch. They skipped once and flipped through the railing into an azalea bush.  

"What the...?" 

She laughed. "I've been wanting to do that to those butt-ugly glasses for five summers," she said. "You've got pretty blue eyes, Jimi MacGregor. That is, when you haven't been staring at a computer screen all night." 

He blinked and gawked at his hands; surveyed the porch, the pond, the palm trees. His face stretched into a huge grin. "Hey, I can see! Everything's crystal clear."  

Lana smiled. "Hallelujah." 

Jimi swiveled his head, examining objects near and far, rediscovering his world in sharp focus. "My gosh, Lana, you've got African heritage-and all this time I thought you were a platinum blonde." He laughed. "No truthfully, you're even prettier than I thought. I really mean it. You too, Gen. The whole world is."  

Gen's anxiety made her impatient. "Last night, you said you realized what the Abundance is. I need to know." 

He nodded, took a deep breath. "I'm afraid what I have to say is going to sound very far-fetched....and it may come as quite a shock." 

"Try me." 

"Well...hmmm." He shoveled a mounded teaspoon of sugar into his creamy coffee, stirred. "How about if I start with my conclusion, and then work backward to show you how I arrived at it?" 

"Fine." 

He took a sip, watching her over the rim of the coffee mug. "Okay, Gen, here goes: I'm convinced that you are a very sophisticated probe. Or at least the mitobots inside you are. They're probes." He cleared his throat. "From another world, I mean."  

"Jimi, good God," Lana said. "Aliens?" 

Gen felt her heart beating faster. Jimi searched her face. "You're not laughing," he said. "You have a hunch I may not be totally full of it." 

"I'm ready to believe anything, other than that I'm normal," Gen said. "If you were to tell me I'm just an ordinary woman who happens to have mitobots living in my tissues, then I'd laugh in your face." 

He nodded. Lana reached over and took Gen's hand. "The mitobots are extraterrestrial probes," Jimi said. "Bio-engineered explorers that blur the line between machinery and biology. Their purpose is to voyage to new worlds, gather genetic data, transmit the data back to their home-world and also replicate themselves to travel onward to new planets." He sipped his coffee, studying her reaction. "Ever heard of John von Neumann?" 

She shook her head. 

"He was a mathematician who-" 

The kitchen door banged shut. Cade stepped through onto the porch and slumped into a chair at the table. He didn't say a word or meet anyone's eyes.