The Curiosity Killers by K W Taylor Read Free Book Online Page B

like to bring back as your successor?”
    “Virginia Dare.”
    “Don’t think I’m familiar. Surprised you’d want a woman.”
    “I don’t want a woman,” Claudio explained. “I want a child.”

Part II: The Scholar

I’ve built walls, a fortress deep and mighty, that none may penetrate.
    –Paul Simon

Monday, March 14, 2095, Avon, Vermont, NBE
    Benoy Jonson took the trolley back to his home, a large brick affair built in the late 1800s that survived through two civil wars and countless natural disasters. Throughout his stalled academic career, Ben spent nearly half of every interest check from his trust fund restoring the house to its original Queen Anne glory, installing embroidered furniture, doilies, and marble-topped tables in every room. The trend toward Victorian rebirth slowly migrated into the former New England states from the end of the war in 2082, when Ben was still working on his undergraduate degree. Now it was less fashion and more necessity, as the neighboring country labored to prevent the importation of silicon-based technology this far north.
    Today’s return home was a joyless one. Ben didn’t understand being told “no.” He knew there were people in the world—people on the same continent, in fact, and people who weren’t his indulgent parents or teachers—who might not love him on sight. But he’d also always thought that was for stupid reasons, bigoted reasons that spoke to the unreachable minds of the less educated. He never thought it was because he was actually not lovable, not brilliant. Of course, his family suffered for being Indian in a nation settled by Europeans, but only intermittently, and their brilliant careers mitigated much.
    And yet today, he was being rejected for the very thing he prized the most—his innate need to understand the world’s deepest mysteries. It was Ben’s mind that was being rejected, not the color of his skin or his personality quirks or even prejudice against his family money. It was what made Ben Ben , and it stung like a slap in the face.
    “I don’t have the sense that you feel your work,” his advisor told him. “You understand history cognitively, but there’s no passion, no sense of its rich, living qualities.”
    Ben shook his head. “No, no, I can assure you. These issues matter to me. They haunt me, even.”
    “That explains your fascination with the more macabre eras.” Professor Summit rested a fleshy jowl on the palm of her hand. “I mean, really. Unsolved serial killings?”
    “Doesn’t it bother you,” Ben said, “knowing these mysteries have never been solved?”
    “Not particularly.” She closed Ben’s file and handed it back to him. “I’m sorry, Ben, but I just don’t see this edit as being any more promising than the last three. The chair is going to ask that you reconsider your ability to defend by December. I don’t honestly see any way to it unless you have a breakthrough and vow to abstain from sleep.”
    A stone seemed to drop into the pit of Ben’s stomach.
    Last chance . This was my last chance, and I blew it.
    Professor Summit rose. “I worry that the department accepted you in the first place because of your family’s accomplishments.” She smoothed the sleeves of her jacket and kept her eyes from Ben’s. “Perhaps I shouldn’t speak so frankly, but having the last son of a legacy of esteemed scientists choose to study a humanities discipline was a coup.” She gave Ben a sad smile. “Did you go this route just to rebel?”
    He thought of his father’s long, painful death, tethered to oxygen in a quarantine tent. Their goodbye was through clear plastic with layers of latex and paper masks between them. That was what the great Biren Esh Jonson’s bravery led him to—dying of the diseases he traveled the world curing. A man of action and science could not pursue his noble ventures long and would cough up blood in a sterile hospital ward at fifty-six, already a widower, not yet a