GreaterMind
Something's not right with Deshawn's dad
Previously: Deshawn’s mom is acting weird at dinner. She reveals her new chosen name: Professor Truth.
○ Opening Era: Spring, 2026, Manhattan
Deshawn finished his third lap around the block. The yellow streetlights that looked like teardrops were turning on.
Over dinner his mom had lifted the ban she’d put on Deshawn after the Ren Faire. Now he was allowed to be in places other than the apartment and school. She said he was a “sovereign individual.” He had “a right to free movement.” Deshawn had decided he’d exercise that right to be with the crazies in the street instead of the crazies in his home.
As Deshawn turned onto his street, the usual homeless guy was there, hanging on one of the stoops he hadn’t been kicked off of yet. Deshawn called him “Fist Bump Guy.”
“Ayyyy,” the guy said, getting up for a fist bump.
Deshawn felt drunk just being around him. But this time, thinking about his mom’s speech on common humanity, he actually went for it. He fist-bumped the man back while trying not to psi the man too much.
“Ayyy!” he said, in pleasant surprise. He only ever said Ayyyy, and sometimes, Big guy!
Deshawn too was surprised. It felt good.
He on continued to his own stoop. It was a nice building, with stone bannisters then went up to an ornate wooden door. He went in and up.
He was surprised to see the living room empty. Even though his dad and mom had been bickering these past few weeks, they always ended up cuddling on the couch or playing boardgames. Or now: writing “protest poetry” together.
“Mom? Dad?” he called. No answer.
He went past the sliding doors to the dining room. The dishes were still on the table, with crumbs of burnt tofurky. Weird. Maybe they were in their room still hashing it out. Anyway, it was none of his business.
He went back to his own room to play guitar. Except when he opened the door, his guitar was missing. He stood there for a second, looking around his room, making sure he didn’t accidentally leave it somewhere else (but of course he didn’t; he wouldn’t). Then he knocked on the door to his parents’ room. There was no answer.
“Dad? Mom?” No reply.
He opened the door. No one was there.
The only room left was his dad’s office – which, since his injury, had been less of an office and more just a place for him to escape.
“Dad?” Deshawn knocked. Still nothing. What the hell was going on? He opened the door.
The room was dark except for the glow of his dad’s computer. His dad was there hunched over it. There was some kind of headband ringing his bald head.
Deshawn got closer. It was the same sleek headband he’d seen Jen wearing earlier today. Glancing over his dad’s shoulder, he saw that his dad was rapidly clicking through images of apartments.
“Dad?”
His dad didn’t react.
He tapped his dad on the shoulder. “Dad?”
“Woah! Hey, Deshawn. Sorry, I got really in the zone there for a minute. What’s up?”
“Have you seen my guitar?”
“You know, I told her not to, but your mom took it.”
“Mom took it? What for?”
His dad scratched his cheek. “Said her gig tonight was a big one, so she needed ‘the real thing’,” he said, making scare quotes with his fingers. “So she took the Rickenbacker.”
“Mom had a…gig?”
“Yeah, she’s been doing gigs again for the past few weeks. Built up a pretty big following, believe it or not. People get popular real fast these days. As I’m sure you’ve noticed. She didn’t tell you?”
Deshawn frowned. “No, she didn’t.”
“Normally she’s been taking them late at night while you’ve been asleep or with those big headphones on. But whatever her special gig was tonight, it was an earlier one.”
“She just left while I was walking around the block?”
“Yup.”
That was very unlike his mom.
Deshawn looked at his dad’s screen. “And what are you doing?”
“Oh this…yeah, I got a little side hustle going. You know, with where the economy’s at, I figured I better make us a bit more dough. I’m working part time, remote, with one of those new AI companies, GreaterMind. I figure I’ve got this real estate background, so I’ve been classifying images of apartments for them.”
“Uh, no offense, but isn’t that boring?”
“Contributing to the future of artificial intelligence? D, can you really think of anything cooler than that?”
“I thought you were working on that book of old schematics.”
“Yup, still working. Still working on that. Making faster progress than ever, in fact. I’ve been using GreaterMind’s research chatbot – they hooked me up with free access. But like I said, this AI job is just a side-hustle. Hey, do me a favor though and don’t tell your mom about it. I don’t need her busting my balls about how ‘AI is taking away human autonomy’ or whatever, heh heh!”
“So you’re doing this because…of the economy?”
“Yeah, something like that. That, and your mom’s been talking about quitting her job at Colombia.”
“But mom’s a tenured professor.”
“I know. I know. But I’m not about to tell that lady what to do. She said she rejects the paradigm of private institutions now. Wants to spend her time teaching for free and making music again.”
“…OK…”
“Hey, you wanna talk to her about it, be my guest. But you know how she is when she’s made up her mind.”
His dad’s eyes looked more crossed than usual.
“What are you wearing on your head, dad?”
“Oh this! Hehe! I love this thing,” he said, petting the headset affectionately. “The company sent it to me. Came with a coupon code for that game I showed you. Neuroblitz. It reads your friggin’ mind! Well, kinda. Main thing is that this headband gives you little zaps so you can focus better. It helps me ignore the pain and get concentrated.”
His dad had experienced phantom limb syndrome ever since he lost sensation in his legs. Occasionally one of his illusory legs would get stuck in a painful position. And once everyone became psychic, phantom aches were the price that he and his mom paid to spend time with their dad – extra limbs growing out of their hips, bent at cruel angles while suspended in mid-air, defying physics.
Deshawn wished he could do something for his dad.
If this headband was helping him, Deshawn guessed that was a good thing? There was something weird about it though. He could feel his dad straining to maintain conversation with him, as if there were a giant magnet drawing his head back toward the screen. His dad’s eyes kept straying off. And there was that same weird numbing vibe that he had felt with Jen.
“OK, dad…”
Suddenly Deshawn’s hand was pulled to the pendent around his neck, his fingers running over the circle of carved letters – or, the sigil, as that group in the park had said: STLNNYRLS. Deshawn had a vision: the clouds parting to reveal a vast mechanical eye. It stared down at his dad. His dad’s wheelchair lifted off the floor, pulling his dad through the window, drawing him upward toward the eye. Then the eye turned to Deshawn.
Deshawn had a very strong urge to leave the room. “Well, I’m gonna go make some maps then,” he said.
“All right,” his dad replied, already turned back around. “Enjoy, D.” He was silhouetted by the bright screen. But the screen’s glow enveloped his edges, as if the light were eating them, devouring the darkness.
—
After trying and failing to map-make for an hour, he gave up. Deshawn checked his phone once more before turning off the lights in his room. There as a new message from Sandeep:
MoYeetO: bro r u really not allowed outside?
Mapmaker: No I am now – Deshawn quickly typed.
MoYeetO: oh sick, see you Wednesday then
Deshawn froze, then wrote – Mapmaker: I didn’t mean that I could come
MoYeetO: ok so…you’re not coming then?
Deshawn tossed his phone across the room. He flicked the light-switch off. Then he laid in the dark staring at the glow-sticker map of the solar system that he’d pasted on his tin-foil ceiling. Deshawn had spent over an hour using a ruler to make the distances between planets accurate on a logarithmic scale.
His mind felt like it was simultaneously being pressed from all sides but also sprinting a marathon in all directions. He found himself sinking his teeth into a pillow and screaming. Psi had made the whole world go bananas, and now the bananas were making their way into his own home.
He stared at the glow-sticker solar system as if it might give him the answer. Nothing came. He started the “yogic breath” that his mom had taught him, even though doing so might stir the ironically possessive new age brainworms: Visualize all the stress from the day forming a big bundle as you breath in. Then let it disperse into the air as you breathe out.
Despite his weird version earlier, Deshawn wasn’t that good as visualizing. But in this moment he was able to imagine all his stress taking the form of bananas. Piles of bananas. He breathed in as bananas filled up the valleys between buildings, poured through front doors, filled up stairwells, burst into apartments, and thudded against the door to his room.
Then he breathed out and the bananas all shot into the air, taking roofs with them as they cleared the atmosphere and spun through space. He saw bananas smashing that big mechanical eye in the sky, bananas destroying satellites, bananas making tiny craters on the moon, bananas spreading across the reaches of empty space to be devoured by the sun.
He breathed in and he saw the sun, the moon, the earth, and the stream of bananas connecting them all.
He breathed out and saw the entire solar system.
He breathed in and became it all.
Then he flicked the lights back on and tore all the tin-foil off his walls.
Next release: Astra and Crowley are on the run.