The Flicker Men Read Free Page B

the work.
    â€œI am a simple farmer,” he liked to say when someone complimented his research. “I like to challenge the dirt.”
    Satvik had endless expressions. When relaxed, he let himself lapse into broken English. Sometimes, after spending the morning with him, I’d fall into the pattern of his speech, talking his broken English back at him, an efficient pidgin that I came to respect for its streamlined efficiency and ability to convey nuance.
    â€œI went to dentist yesterday,” Satvik told me. “She says I have good teeth. I tell her, ‘Forty-two years old, and it is my first time at dentist.’ And she could not believe.”
    â€œYou’ve never been to the dentist?” I said.
    â€œNo, never.”
    â€œHow is that possible?”
    â€œUntil I am in twelfth grade in my village back home, I did not know there was a special doctor for teeth. Since then, I never went because I had no need. The dentist says I have good teeth, no cavities, but I have stain on my back molars on the left side where I chew tobacco.”
    â€œYou chew.” I tried to picture Satvik hawking a plug like a baseball player, but the image wouldn’t come.
    â€œI am ashamed. None of my brothers chew tobacco. Out of my family, I am the only one. I started years ago on the farm. Now I try to stop.” Satvik spread his hands in exasperation. “But I cannot. I told my wife I stopped two months ago, but I started again, and I have not told her.” His eyes grew sad. “I am a bad person.”
    Satvik’s brow furrowed. “You are laughing,” he said. “Why are you laughing?”
    *   *   *
    Hansen was a gravity well in the tech industry—a constantly expanding force of nature, always buying out other labs, buying equipment, absorbing the competition
    Hansen labs only hired the best, without regard to national origin. It was the kind of place where you’d walk into the coffee room and find a Nigerian speaking German to an Iranian. Speaking German because they both spoke it better than English, the other language they had in common. Hansen was always hungry for talent.
    The Boston lab was just one of Hansen’s locations, but we had the largest storage facility, which meant that much of the surplus lab equipment ended up shipped to us. We opened boxes. We sorted through supplies. If we needed anything for our research, we signed for it, and it was ours. It was the antithesis of most corporate bureaucracy, where red tape was the order of the day.
    Most mornings I spent with Satvik. We’d stand side by side at his lab bench, talking and keeping busy. I helped him with his gate arrays. He talked of his daughter while he worked. Lunch I spent on basketball.
    Sometimes after basketball, as a distraction, I’d drop by Point Machine’s lab in the North building to see what he was up to. He worked with organics, searching for chemical alternatives that wouldn’t cause birth defects in amphibians. He tested water samples for cadmium, mercury, arsenic.
    Point Machine was a kind of shaman. He studied the gene expression patterns of amphioxus; he read the future in deformities. The kind of research my mother would have liked—equal parts alarm and conspiracy.
    â€œUnless something is done,” he said, “most amphibians will go extinct.” He had aquariums filled with salamanders and frogs—frogs with too many legs, with tails, with no arms. Monsters. They hopped or swam or dragged themselves along, Chernobyl nightmares in long glass jars.
    Next to his lab was the office of a woman named Joy. Like me, she was new to the lab, but it wasn’t clear when she’d started, exactly. The others only seemed to know her first name. Sometimes Joy would hear us talking, and she’d swing by, delicate hand sliding along the wall—tall and beautiful and blind. Did acoustical research of some kind. She had long hair and