“You’re sweet,” Madeline says. “Honestly. But that is the wildest idea I’ve ever heard, and I’ve heard my share of wild ideas.”
Linus leans back with his arms crossed, smiling openly. “Here we go.”
Dubbs scratches her head. “How can you operate?” she asks.
I take a deep breath and plunge in. “First of all, we’ll need another one of those helmets for me to wear, so I can get visual input on what’s happening in my brain at the same time we’re watching Thea’s,” I say. “Then we’ll need to be connected up, she and I, brain to brain, with a supply of the nanobots that I can control. Or probably it would be better if Orson controls the nanobots in case I fall asleep. I can give him some guidance until then.” The procedure seems perfectly obvious to me, now that I have Arself outlining it for me. Her thoughts are so quick and so confident that I’m beginning to feel like we’re wasting time with these explanations.
“This is preposterous,” Ma says. “You’re not a doctor!”
Orson is frowning pensively. “What she’s saying about a transfer is possible, in theory,” he says. “I hadn’t considered a direct transfer of dreams. Berg used to hypothesize about it, but I’ve never had a fully live dream host side-by-side with a patient before. I’m still not sure it will help Thea, but it has a chance. It would also be dangerous for Rosie.”
“It’ll work,” I say. “You know her brain and mine are compatible. This is the best way.”
I’m watching Orson closely, and I see the deeper focus in his gaze when he shifts from doubtful to interested. It’s the same look my dad used to have when he was excited about a new game we’d invented.
Madeline, Diego, and Ma are stuck between unconvinced and outraged, but Orson gradually outlines a potential process to them, the same one I imagined, and they talk it over. Ma’s stubborn, but I can see her coming around. Orson puts in an order for an extra helmet and other supplies, and Tito asks him to start all the way over from the beginning again and walk them through it once more.
Burnham snags me by the sleeve and I follow him over to the windows, where Linus and Tom join us. Baby Vali is asleep in the crook of Tom’s arm, and her perfect little face only adds to my determination. This baby needs both her parents. I know Thea would want me to fight for her life. She once told me she would give me her dreams if I needed them, and I only wish I’d felt as generous toward her then as I do now.
“Are you sure you’re up for this?” Burnham says. “You know you could die, right? That’s what Orson means by ‘dangerous’ for you.”
“What am I supposed to do? Let her die?” I ask.
Burnham coughs briefly into his fist. “There are worse things than dying.”
I arch my eyebrows high. “For her or for me?”
“For any of us,” Burnham says.
He is the last person I expected to be arguing against the surgery. Tom’s gaze is pinned on his daughter, and I can’t guess what he’s thinking. I turn to Linus.
“Burnham just doesn’t want to lose you,” Linus says.
“It’s not that,” Burnham says.
“Then what?” I ask. “We have a chance to save Thea. What’s wrong with you?”
“It won’t work,” Burnham says. “Why do I even have to say this? You’re not a surgeon. You have no idea what you’re doing. People don’t do brain surgery on themselves. There’s a reason for that.”
The adult voices go silent, and tension hovers in the room. I can feel the others listening to us from across the room.
I glare at Burnham. It bugs me that he’s actually being reasonable, but he doesn’t know how powerful Arself has become. He doesn’t realize who we are inside now. “We’re not going to let Thea die because of fear,” I say.
“This isn’t about fear,” he says. “It’s about common sense.”
“Then we’re not going to let her die because of that, either,” I say. “I’ve got this, Burnham. Really.” I lower my voice. “Arself’s helping me. She knows what to do.”
He stares back at me, and then shakes his head. “That is exactly what I did not want to hear.”
I smile.
Tom looks confused. “Who’s Arself?”
“You don’t want to know,” Burnham says.
*
When I slip into Thea’s room a few moments later, she’s resting exactly as she was before. My friends follow after.
“I’m not going to do anything yet. I just want to take a look,” I say.
In one of the cupboards, I find the scan helmet and lift it toward the window. This version is as light as a bike helmet, with delicate, retractable prongs. It’s strange to hold the device that I associate with helpless terror and recognize its potential as a tool I can use. While I’m fitting the helmet to Thea’s head and settling the nubs in her ears, I’m conscious of Linus and Tom watching. Tom, still cradling Vali, takes the chair by the window. I start up the computer and plug in the helmet. Linus brings a tall chair for me so I can sit beside the bed, see Thea’s face, and work on the laptop at the same time.
I can still hear the grown-ups discussing details in the outer room.
“Close the door, will you, Burnham?” I ask.
He steps farther in and closes the door.
I slide the computer closer and pull up Thea’s live brain scan with the typical cauliflower-like contours. Lights pulse on the screen, and it doesn’t take me long to get familiar with the controls. I can turn the image 360 degrees, and I can zoom in to find her hippocampus, then her amygdala, and then the gyrus. Though I never learned these things myself, Arself’s knowledge has become a seamless extension of my own mind, and I trust it implicitly. We focus in further on the dark spaces, the holes, and strategize a pattern for where we’ll go first, starting with a pocket of damage that’s the worst.
Engrossed, I hardly notice when Orson comes in the door behind me. Apparently, hours have passed. My mother has agreed to the surgery, and everyone else is also on board. The extra helmet has been delivered. There’s no reason to delay.
After we move an extra bed in beside Thea’s, I lie propped up beside her and hold my breath while Orson puts the second helmet on me. He carefully connects me together with Thea, and he has a series of a thousand nanobots ready to inject into my bloodstream. He has one computer, and I have another on my lap.
Thea’s parents, and Ma, and our friends, line the back wall where they can watch. Linus gives me a tight smile of encouragement. For a fleeting second, I wonder if this is the last time I’ll see him, and then I feel a rise of excitement with Arself inside me. We’re near the top of a roller coaster, teetering before the plunge.
“Ready?” Orson asks me.
“Yes,” I say.