Thought Crimes (13 page)

Ed:
Not at all. We adored Philip. But we understood the purpose of the experiments. The acceleration program was about hot-housing a standing army. Philip was designed to live fast and die young. If you let sentiment intrude, you'd foul the scientists' findings, and everything he experienced would be wasted.

Dana:
We had a duty, and we respected that duty better than some other couples. The doctors told us to be loving and involved, but not to cosset the boys, or do anything that might add stress to their lives.

AM:
Were you concerned about being seen to be cruel?

Ed:
Us, personally?
No. We worried that the experiments might be cruel, that the boys were being put through too much.

Dana:
We never thought that
we
were cruel … Philip had a complete life. His life was very different to the lives we lead, and it was often hard to imagine how he understood life. But trying to make sense of those things was the whole point.

Ed:
It could make you dizzy …

AM:
What was the most difficult thing?

Dana:
College …

Ed:
When Philip was taken away to the academy …

AM:
At two?

Dana:
Just before his second birthday.

AM:
Which was what in terms of his physical development?

Thirteen?

Ed:
The same as dogs. Each year Philip aged the same as we do in seven.

AM:
Did he seem like a thirteen-year-old boy?

Dana:
Physically … He was big and strong. He'd started shaving and having wet dreams. He went through puberty at twenty months. Earlier than the others.

AM:
Emotionally?

Dana:
There were issues. He knew he was different. Philip saw our surprise and alarm … In some ways, their world moves terribly quickly, but in others, the slowness is excruciating.

Ed:
Philip coped OK … Better than most.

Email from:
Astrid Mirch, Marginal Films
To:
Will McAllister, McAllister & Marr Investigations

Will, would you please see what you can find about a BERENSON or BARON or BARRAND, James Henry, believed to be living in the inner eastern suburbs of Melbourne. Age circa 80 to 100. Word has it this JHB was participant in a shadowscheme where age-acceleration was halved. Has either ‘escaped' or been given (services rendered) permission to live out the rest of his days in the community. Treat this with utmost discretion. May be our only chance to speak to a participant. – A.

Fiona:
I kept a diary while Eric was alive. Re-reading it now, it makes little sense. His time keeps confusing my time … The parents were the real subjects of the experiment. Absolutely.

They were testing our capacity to adapt, seeing whether dealing with these boys would overwhelm us with a sense of our own mortality.

Eamon:
It did. I couldn't settle for three years after he died … Imagine how chilling it is to see your son as a frail 83-year-old … I was thirty-six or thirty-seven then, and it was like,
Take a deep
breath, you've still got the best part of your life ahead of you.

Fiona:
We're not over it. We're better than we were, but we're still fucked-up. We'd planned to have other children. It's something we always meant to do. But now, it's like, hey, not yet, we've both been through something massive.

Eamon:
You'd think the money would compensate. There's no compensation …

Fiona:
You give birth to a normal, beautiful boy. At ten weeks, he's beginning to talk and walk. At fifteen weeks, you start toilet training. He's eating. Always eating. Has the energy of seven boys. Runs till he drops, then sleeps like a dead man. At eight months, he's reading, at nine months, he goes to school. Just after his first birthday, you're teaching him to ride a bike.

Eamon:
… And growing the whole time. I'm not kidding. You could hear his bones stretch.

Fiona:
The voice breaks, wet dreams, smelly underarms … all that stuff when he's twenty-one months … And that's the easy bit. You can find a way to assimilate those things …

Eamon:
Before we knew it, the organisation carted Eric off to boarding school, and we could only see him every term break, which was what? Ten weeks for us, but a year and a half for him …

Fiona:
You've just got used to being parents, and your son's a man of twenty-one …

Eamon:
Physically
… But in their heads, the boys were all over the shop. Clinging to their one or two perfect Christmases and birthdays … And blaming you for the shit they're getting.

Fiona:
They know what's going on. They know that they can't have children, that they're being kept away from girls, though no one ever tells them that girls will be off-limits till science is finished with them.

Eamon:
Make the mistake of getting seriously ill and they'll have your organs cut out before you can blink.

Fiona:
Astrid … You're a mum. Can you imagine being twenty-seven and having a four-year-old son who looks twentyeight? The way that fucks with your brain?

Eamon:
Eric was angry. We'd let him down.

Fiona:
I know what you're thinking,
These two are well taken
care of, what are they whinging about? They barely saw Eric
between the ages of two and seven
… But not a minute passes that you're not thinking,
What have I done to that boy?

Eamon:
And what is he doing to us?

Fiona:
And, don't forget, I'd be seeing Eamon in Eric. Physically, they were so similar. Through Eric, I'd see Eamon ageing. In six months, our son went from having a full, thick head of hair to having virtually none. Doctors said those six months felt like three years to him, but I don't believe that.

Eamon:
Altering growth rates and life expectancy and the intensity of your life experience doesn't mean that all your perceptions of time will automatically fall into line.

Fiona:
Tell me what I was like when I was a little boy.
This is a nine-year-old, who looks and moves like a 65-year-old man …
Tell me what I was like when I was little.
By that stage, I could hardly remember. It went so fast … And he'd beg you to sing one of those songs.

Eamon:
Bananas in pyjamas are coming down the stairs …

Fiona:
… And he'd cry and cry, and bail-up in his room, singing the songs … Nothing can compensate you for going through that. Not when you love them.

Email from:
Will McAllister, McAllister & Marr Investigations
To:
Astrid Mirch, Marginal Films

A, no hits on BERENSON/BARON/BARRAND, though a BARRETT, James William, aged eighty-six, died at South Yarra eighteen months ago. Neighbours describe a wealthy, nervous man, sometimes visited by younger women, possibly escorts. Also regularly visited by a couple, late-fifties, who were introduced as daughter and son-in-law, but fit parent profile. BARRETT is said to have aged rapidly in the four years he occupied a ground-floor apartment, this consistent with your understanding of a subject hot-housed at 50 per cent. Will continue to seek information re. visitors. Alex has recently met an informant who can put us in touch with a former Axcel doctor, previously WILKINSON, Michele Therese, now living under an alias. Wilkinson is said to have been prominent in policy formation and program assessment at Axcel International for ten years prior to acrimonious departure. Both intermediary and subject request (substantial) remuneration. Doctor would also require strenuous guarantees re. identity-protection. Await further instructions. – Will

Kellie:
They're torn in two. Is the world too slow, or are they moving too fast? For them, the world seems so permanent. Yet they have this nostalgia for everything they've lost. How could you build an army from young men so desperate to cling to their lost youth?

Michael:
Mickey was high-strung … You expect people to gather wisdom as they grow older, to mature emotionally. Mick went the other way.

Kellie:
He was determined not to be mature … Maturity was the enemy.

Michael:
The denial of sexual intimacy was tougher for them than it would be for normal boys … Their passions are that much more intense.

Kellie:
And Mick's memory couldn't cope with the information he had to take in.

Michael:
Even as a kid, he was vague. Like he'd been smoking dope. But his brain was broadbanding information, and chemical changes, and fluctuating emotions.

Kellie:
Mick was so spaced. You'd tell him everything three or four times.

Michael:
He could deal with it. But he didn't want to. Whenever he got the chance, he'd be reading
The House at Pooh Corner
, or doing scribble-patterns with pastels.

Kellie:
We didn't know how to help him.

Michael:
They call themselves Sea Monkeys … Add water and they spring to life. No time to get bored with them before they're dead.

Kellie:
Mickey hated anything old, anything that had been there for generations. Banks, public buildings … And he hated how songs on the radio would never change. They'd keep playing the same songs for what seemed like years at a time …
Always
the same fucking songs.
He hated cricket. The idea that people could be so cavalier with time …

Michael:
Queues …

Kellie:
Queues sent him ballistic.

Michael:
Now, with Felicity and Luke, it's agonising. Everything seems so slow. We have to stop pestering them, trying to rush them on to the next stage of development.

Kellie:
It's messed up our sense of time. We're emotionally confused … Are we giving them too much attention, or too little?