The PRL Event: Darker Resurrection 11
When Giovanni Montovanni was young, he would stare at birds in his yard and listen to the sounds they made. He was captivated by their music and he would stare blankly into the lush scenery of his yard that his father tended dutifully throughout the temperate spring and into the hot summer months of Raleigh, North Carolina. His eyes would dart to the bird that was calling when he heard their sound and he would fixate on their features; each trill of their voice became the slope of their feathers, the curve of their beaks. Giovanni’s parents noticed his fascination with birds and they bought him books that he would stare at when he was in his room and he would do his best to whistle the sounds in the shapes of birds he recognized. His father had tried to connect with his son by introducing him to sports, but Giovanni wasn’t particularly coordinated and when his father took him to baseball games, Giovanni wouldn’t concentrate on the game for looking at the birds that flitted through the park. Giovanni’s parents worried that he did not talk very much and that he had no friends; they were not surprised at his Asperger’s diagnosis.
His parents understood that Giovanni could not be cured, they’d read literature on coping with the disorder throughout life, but they never gave up hope that their son would be able to enjoy a life like other children had. He was a very smart student and though his parents knew that he would be able to find a job because of his proficiency with computers, they doubted that he could make friends or find love.
Giovanni found work at an electronics store after earning a degree at a local community college. He was an excellent programmer, but his job did not allow for the expression of those skills, and he mostly spent his down time at work whistling bird calls and recalling their shapes. By that point in his life, he had a stronger bond to his parents and they would take vacations to see exotic birds in exotic locations. And then his father stumbled on information about a trial for Aspergers and he brought it to Giovanni’s attention because he hoped his son could find a wife who could take trips with him; Giovanni’s parents were in their forties when he was born, an only child, that they had tried for years to have and he was their miracle though they feared for him in adulthood after they had died. Giovanni considered it, and he worried that he could be changed so much that he would not recognize himself, or the call of birds and the elegant design of their bodies that allowed for flight. But he joined the trial at the Institute for Brain Function when he was almost thirty and he was happy that he got along well with the doctor who oversaw his treatment.
Dr. Thomas Eakran, with a face so smooth that it defied convention, and Giovanni saw the curl of his smile, the way the corners of his lips curled up, as elegantly as he saw the birds. They talked alot about birds. Dr. Eakran spent considerable time with Giovanni even when they weren’t monitoring the effects of the gut bacteria specimen that he had introduced to the colony in Giovanni’s stomach, and the subsequent effect on his neurochemistry, and they filled hours of conversation in the basement of the IBF with talk of their favorites.
“I was born in North Carolina,” Giovanni explained, “and I consider it a privilege to share a yard with cardinals. They are the avian kings of their domain.”
“You have an excellent read on them,” the doctor said, appreciating the dramatic irony of the situation. As an alien of the planet Druont, that is an unfathomable distance from Earth with technology far more advanced than even the most impressive technologies on Earth, Dr. Eakran possesses a device called the Universal Translator that allows him to translate the sounds and actions of sentient beings into his native language. For this reason, the doctor knows very well that cardinals occupy a vaulted position among their bird compatriots.
This bond led to Giovanni’s miraculous transformation, though only Eakran is aware of the man that he has made, the man that he had altered. He is very much Eakran’s son now, he had started with the introduction of his own gut bacteria, but Druintes of Druont are unparalleled geneticists who have learned their lessons and have largely backed away from the practice, but Earth is a veritable laboratory to Eakran and he has spliced his own DNA with Giovanni’s. He appears to be the same man with improved social awareness that makes his parents happy, but Giovanni Montovanni is the first Earthling/Druinte hybrid, though only Eakran is aware of this.
Today, Giovanni is worried about his father, the doctor. He has been sitting very gravely in his basement office, surrounded by the austere wooden furniture, the big desk and the bookshelves, the volumes of medical books, like he is thinking very intently since the old woman had escaped the basement, and Giovanni had failed to secure her like he knew he should have, but he had been worried about the doctor. He couldn’t imagine that Helen could have escaped the basement, but it slipped his mind that she had somehow found her way there in the first place. Eakran was struggling with the patient Nebuchad and Giovanni rushed to help him, aware that he had no assistant.
But Eakran is not upset with Giovanni, and he knows this. Giovanni wishes that he was, then he could try to make up for it and change his mood, but Eakran is unsettled by the return of Dr. Donna Moss in the body of the old woman Helen.
“The soul is a real thing?” Eakran puzzled. “If this is true, Giovanni, then I am not an iteration. I am me. I am Eakran,” he thought for a second, then said, “Thomas Eakran.”
Giovanni cannot understand Eakran’s dilemma, his understanding of himself had been fundamentally altered by the confrontation with the spirit of Moss and he has taken his time to mull it over, alone in his office.
Giovanni stands at the end of the hallway just next to Eakran’s office giving him privacy but wanting to be close, and suddenly he feels a punch to his mind that floors him. The blow knocks him out of his body and when he is aware again and in control, not spiraling free from his body, he is in a park. A giant woman approaches him and as she gets closer she shrinks to his size. The he recognizes her.
“Alia!”
“I need to see the doctor. Wherever is good for him.”
“He will be happy to see you again. Maybe you can get him out of his funk.”
“Just set it up.”
She flicks his forehead and Giovanni tumbles again, this time back to his body.
Giovanni interrupts his father with the news that does indeed change his mood.
“Have her meet me at my home. Come with me, the Alia has always been unpredictable.”
Giovanni has never seen the doctor’s home before and he is excited at the prospect.
PRL Serials 