Substitution - Chapter 14
#14 of Substitution (TF Themes)
Substitution - Chapter 14
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Miss Lake had told Brantley that Roman Kyle had been somewhat anxious on that day. When the junior wolf stepped into his father's room, he discovered that it had been something of an understatement from the therapist.
"Oh there you are!" Roman Kyle gasped. "I've been waiting for you, they just won't tell me...I'm so glad you are here, I'm sure you can tell me!"
Brantley decided that his father must've had one of his 'busy' days. Maybe he'd been doing imaginary work at the office once again, or dwelled on some long past family holiday from a decade ago.
"What's up, dad?" the younger wolf asked from his father.
"I can barely think about it..." the bigger wolf shook his head. "It's just too horrible..."
"What's going on?" Brantley asked.
He sat down, and waited for the answer. Roman Kyle paced around, his tail and ears moving anxiously.
"They're saying there's another me!" Roman Kyle yelped.
Brantley tensed.
"What do you mean, dad?" he asked cautiously.
Roman Kyle rubbed his paws over his chest, as if trying to hug himself and not quite knowing how to do it. There were still nervous twitches to his wrists when he was trying not to move.
"That dog was here..." he said, "Doctor...K...K..."
"Cordon?"
"That's him!" he declared.
"Yeah? What did he say?" Brantley asked cautiously.
"He said..." Roman Kyle muttered, "he said that...that...that there's another me...the dead me..."
Brantley felt sick.
"Dad - " he breathed.
His father looked at him imploringly.
"Is it true, Brantley?" he demanded. "There's another me?"
"I don't know what to say, dad."
"Well just tell me!" Roman Kyle yelled.
He was suddenly very close, face to face with his son, bent down so that they were at eye level. He had jumped across the room in a matter of a second.
"Brantley...is it true?" Roman Kyle breathed.
"What?" Brantley whispered. The cold weight in his stomach only seemed to grow.
"Is it true that I was so hurt that they had to make another me? To fix me?" Roman Kyle moaned. "T-tell me!"
"What do you want me to say, dad?" Brantley bit his lip.
Roman Kyle grasped his son's shoulders.
"Just...tell me if there is another me...if...if I'm the r...r...real me or n-not?" his father almost begged.
Brantley shivered. This kind of intensity wasn't something he was used to, coming from his father. His strange, disjointed recombinant version was alien in so many ways while being so painfully familiar that the wolf often had trouble knowing what exactly he thought about it...or wanted to, either.
"You took that special life insurance, dad, remember?" the young wolf decided to try that approach. "Some years ago, and you didn't tell me."
He didn't want to bring up his bitterness over his father keeping such a secret, not now when his father was already anxious and on the brink of having some sort a mental breakdown.
"I...I don't know..." Roman Kyle scowled.
"You paid them so that in the case of serious injury, they would use your DNA to grow a...a...a new body," Brantley explained, "either to help to heal your injuries or to replace you."
"Re...place?" the wolf hissed.
Brantley felt his throat burn while he contemplated the fact.
"...if you couldn't be...fixed."
His father stepped away from him and stomped the ground.
"The Cordon told me all that!" he said. "He said they did a...a...a something!"
He waved his paws anxiously.
"That they...fixed..." Roman Kyle said.
"They used your DNA to make a new body," Brantley said, "don't ask me how they do it, they just know how to. And then they took your...your...thoughts, memories...and they put them...into your new body."
Roman Kyle growled.
"This body?" he flexed his paws. The gesture was aggressive, and made Brantley concerned. He knew his father had broken some items in the room during some of his anxious spells in the past.
"Yes, dad," Brantley said.
"It doesn't feel like me," Roman Kyle said. "Everything...like...like..."
He stammered for words.
"...everything is like...distant..." he said.
"What do you mean?" Brantley asked.
"I can't explain it," Roman Kyle muttered. "I...no words."
"The speech therapy - "
Roman Kyle hissed. His tail was bristled like a bottle brush.
"Am I real or not?" the wolf questioned his son.
Brantley sighed.
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....he wants to know if he's real or not."
Miss Lake looked back at Brantley with the kind of annoying, detached calmness that the wolf could barely stand at the moment. His father's antsiness appeared to be infectious, and Brantley had taken more than his fair share to the psychologist's office after his feeble attempts at comforting his father.
"He has expressed this question many times in the past few days," Miss Lake replied after a thoughtful beat. "It appears that your father has entered the next phase of recombination dysphoria."
Brantley remembered reading that term somewhere in the seemingly endless amount of material he had been given in regards to rehabilitating the people who had undergone the extensive procedures at the Institute.
"Existential anxiety?" he made a guess.
"Quite so," Miss Lake nodded, "it is a feeling not unlike survivor's guilt, the literature and my own experience suggests."
Brantley shook his head.
"I can't help but get the feeling that this has been a terrible idea," he said.
"What do you mean?" asked Miss Lake.
Brantley shrugged.
"We're probably fooling around with things that should not be," he said.
He should not be.
Miss Lake tilted her head while looking at him.
"Are we now talking about your father's existential anxiety or your own misgivings over the procedure, Mister Kyle?"
"What's the difference?" Brantley snapped back. "He's crawling the walls because he doesn't feel right in his own body, and I have to watch him and - "
He felt the tightening in his throat become worse. He had to swallow painfully to get past it.
"And what, Mister Kyle?"
"...and I have to get used to the fact that sometimes he's there and sometimes he's not there," Brantley said.
"Your father has made great progress in these past few weeks," Miss Park said. "There is nothing unusual about his feelings regarding his post-recombination status."
"I don't want to see him like that!" Brantley snapped.
"Neither are your feelings unusual, either, Mister Kyle."
"I don't CARE!" the wolf growled. "I just want him to be alright!"
"Your father is doing perfectly well under the circumstances," Miss Kyle said. "And so are you."
Brantley glared at her.
"I assure you," she said. "I have seen much worse."
Brantley did not feel reassured.
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