The convoy speeds down a road that crosses the basin. On the left I see a runway and a hangar. On the right are several concrete buildings surrounded by a tall fence topped with razor wire. As I looked closer at the buildings I notice something odd-there are no doors in their door frames and no glass in their windows. The buildings are hollow, open to the elements. It's like a fake town on a movie set, full of structures that look real from a distance but are actually empty. I can't figure it out.

The road ends on the far side of the basin, in the shadow of the high ridge. The Humvees and SUVs park in front of another concrete building that stands against the base of the ridge. This building is small, only twenty feet high and thirty feet wide, but it doesn't seem to be hollow like the others. It has a massive steel door that looks like it could survive a direct strike from a cruise missile. As the soldiers step out of their Humvees, the door starts to roll up.

Corporal Williams shuts off our car's engine and looks at me for the first time. "Your wheelchair's in the back?"

I nod. Then I point at the building's doorway. The door is all the way up, but I can't see anything inside. It's too dark. "Is that the Nanotechnology Institute?"

"That's one name for it. We usually call it Pioneer Base."

"But it's so small."

Williams chuckles. "You're looking at the entrance, the top of the elevator shaft. The base is underground."

My mouth goes dry. This is worse than the ravine. "How far down?"

"You'll see."

CHAPTER.

6.

I'm in the front row of an auditorium deep inside Pioneer Base. I kept my eyes closed during the descent in the elevator, so I don't know how far underground I am. To stop myself from thinking about the tons of dirt and rock above me, I concentrate on the thirty people in the room. Including myself, there are twelve teenagers and eighteen parents sitting in the auditorium's curved rows. We're all facing an empty podium on an oval stage.

Fortunately, the rows are widely spaced, leaving enough room for wheelchairs. Of the twelve teenagers, six are partially or fully paralyzed. Three of them are worse off than I am-they can't move at all, neither their arms nor their legs, and they're breathing through tubes connected to mechanical ventilators. All three are boys. One is white, one is black, and one is Asian. Although they seem to have the same kind of muscular dystrophy I have-Duchenne is the most common type-they're obviously in a more advanced stage of the disease. It's sobering to see them strapped in their chairs, helpless and silent. As I stare at them I realize I'm looking at my own future. Unless the U.S. Army has a miracle in store, I'll fall silent too.

The other six kids can still walk, although most of them are a little unsteady on their feet. Shannon Gibbs waves at me as her mother and father guide her to a seat in the second row. Her parents are short and plump, and they look anxious. Just behind them, in the third row, is another girl with cancer. Painfully thin, she wears a cashmere sweater and a frilly blue hat to hide her baldness. The girl's parents, dressed in business suits, seem to be wealthier than Shannon's but just as anxious. They're all hoping the Army has some experimental drug that'll cure their kids, but the secrecy is driving them crazy. They're wondering why they had to go all the way to the Rocky Mountains just to hear about it.

Two rows farther back, a haggard mother sits next to a boy whose head is unnaturally large and deformed. His lower jaw is massive, as big as a shovel blade, and fist-size tumors bulge out of his forehead like horns. This isn't an ordinary case of brain cancer-this is something unusual, freakishly rare. The sight of him is disturbing, and a little disorienting too. I'm usually the guy who makes everyone else in the room uncomfortable, but now I'm the one who's squirming.

In the very last row, sitting alone, is a tall, striking girl with a Mohawk. Both sides of her head are shaved, but running down the middle of her scalp is a narrow strip of hair, dyed green and bunched in glue-stiffened spikes. Her eyebrows and lips and nostrils are pierced, and a tattoo of a snake loops above her left ear. Aside from her slenderness, she doesn't look ill. She looks a bit like Brittany, but her skin is light brown, the color of chocolate milk. I'm staring at her, trying to figure out if she's black or Hispanic or Asian, when she snaps her head around and glares at me. Her face is beautiful and terrifying.

I quickly turn away. At the same time, the kid with the deformed skull lets out a snort. He swings his massive head back and forth, glancing first at me and then at the girl with the Mohawk. He must've seen me staring at her. After a few seconds he gives me a gap-toothed grin. I have no idea what to make of it. Does he think this is funny?

Uncomfortable again, I look around the auditorium, wondering where my father is. I haven't seen Dad since the soldiers took him away, and I'm starting to worry that he's in trouble. Then I hear the whir of an electric motor. A large video screen descends from the ceiling above the stage. A moment later, General Hawke steps up to the podium.

Up close he looks even bigger than he did at the checkpoint. He's a giant in winter camouflage, from the white hair on top of his block-like head to his tree-trunk legs and mud-spattered boots. His face is square and ruddy, and his eyes are a cold, bright blue. He rests his huge arms on the podium and leans toward the microphone.

"Welcome to Pioneer Base." His voice, unsurprisingly, is very deep. "Before we start, I want to remind you of the nondisclosure agreements you've all signed. The information I'm going to discuss in this briefing is classified. If you talk about it with anyone outside this room, the government will prosecute you to the fullest extent of the law. In other words, they'll toss you in jail and throw away the key."

He stares at us for a moment, frowning. Then he presses a button on the podium, and a black-and-white image appears on the screen behind him. It's a satellite photo. It shows a cluster of large rectangular buildings and a pair of dark circles etched into the ground nearby.

"This is Tatishchevo Missile Base," General Hawke says. "It's a Russian armed forces installation, five hundred miles southeast of Moscow. But the Russian army isn't running the place anymore. It's under the control of an AI, an artificial-intelligence system."

He pauses, surveying his audience. Strangely, no one shows much of a reaction. They're probably too confused to respond. The only one who's frightened is me. Thanks to Dad, I know enough to be scared out of my mind.

Hawke grasps a long wooden pointer that's leaning against the podium. "This AI, code-named Sigma, was developed in the United States, at a lab in Yorktown Heights, New York. But the Russians also had a computer lab for developing artificial-intelligence systems, and it was located right here."

He steps toward the screen and taps his pointer on one of the rectangular buildings in the photo. "The Russian army put the lab at Tatishchevo because it didn't trust its own soldiers. Their generals were worried that some renegade troops might try to take over the missile base. So they built a whole regiment of automated tanks, more than a hundred of them, all designed to be operated by an AI that would send instructions to the tanks by radio. They thought an AI would be more trustworthy than a human commander." He shakes his head. "If you ask me, it was a pretty stupid idea. But as the saying goes, people in glass houses shouldn't throw stones. We did some stupid things too."

He turns to his left as he says this, glancing at a doorway beside the stage. Several soldiers stand by the doorway, watching the briefing from the sidelines. One of them is Colonel Peterson, who grimaces as Hawke mentions the bit about glass houses. I remember what Dad said in the SUV: Peterson wouldn't let him erase the AI.

Hawke turns back to the screen. "Sigma escaped from the research lab in New York by transmitting its software code over the Internet. Then the AI broke into the Russian military's network and loaded its program into the powerful neuromorphic computers at the Tatishchevo lab." He taps his pointer on the rectangular building again. "The first thing the program did was delete all the Russian-made AI systems, which weren't quite as advanced as Sigma. Then it took control of the automated tanks and massacred the base's soldiers in their barracks."

The small crowd in the auditorium starts to murmur. A few of the parents and teenagers have realized that something is wrong, something besides their own personal tragedies. Hawke waits for them to quiet down, then aims his pointer at the edge of the satellite photo.

"After killing the soldiers, Sigma moved the unmanned tanks to defensive positions along the base's perimeter. The AI also took control of Tatishchevo's radar systems. This radar will alert Sigma if there's an attempt to bomb the base or launch cruise missiles against it. And the AI has warned us that it'll retaliate if we attack it." He points at one of the dark circles in the photo. "This is a silo for an SS-27 missile. The SS-27 has a range of almost seven thousand miles and carries a nuclear warhead that can destroy a whole city. There are fifty more silos spread across the base. Sigma has threatened to launch all the missiles if anyone tries to attack Tatishchevo."

The murmuring spreads across the room. Several people raise their voices. Shannon starts to cry and her father hugs her. The deformed boy turns to his mother, who lets out a curse. I'd like to curse too, but it's a struggle just to breathe. I need to find Dad. I need him badly.

General Hawke holds his hands out, appealing for calm. "Okay, settle down. Now you can see why the information is classified. We're working with the Russians to keep this thing quiet."

The girl with the frilly hat buries her face in her hands. Her father, the rich guy in the business suit, stands up and points a finger at Hawke. "What's going on, General? We came here because you promised a medical treatment for our children. Why are you telling us this...this wild story? Is this your idea of a joke?"

Hawke stares at the girl's dad, fierce and hard. "It's not a joke. Back in 2012, the Department of Defense analyzed the risks of developing AI systems, so we knew this kind of catastrophe might happen someday. But we couldn't simply halt our AI research. Other countries were designing their own AIs, and they weren't going to stop. So about a year ago we started working on a defensive strategy. A countermeasure. That's why we built this base. And that's why you're here."

The general turns his head, scanning all the faces in the auditorium. Then he glances again at the doorway beside the stage. "Now one of my colleagues will explain the technology behind the Pioneer Project. This is Tom Armstrong, the project's chief scientist."

Dad appears in the doorway and walks across the stage. I'm relieved to see him but also a little unnerved by the change in his appearance. He's no longer wearing the polo shirt and khaki pants he wore during the drive in the SUV. Now he's dressed in a winter-camouflage uniform, just like General Hawke and the other soldiers. As Dad steps up to the podium, taking Hawke's place, he locates me in the crowd and manages to smile. He looks nervous.

"Thank you for coming," he starts. "And thanks for your patience. I know some of you are frustrated by all the precautions we've taken to keep this project secret. But now I'm ready to discuss our goals and answer your questions."

He presses the button on the podium, and the satellite photo on the screen is replaced by an image of software code. Hundreds of lines of instructions, written in a programming language I don't recognize, run from the top of the screen to the bottom. "This is a portion of Sigma's source code. When we developed the software for the AI, we focused on imitating human skills such as reasoning, language, and pattern recognition. We succeeded in creating a self-aware intelligence that could accomplish almost any task a human can perform, from proving a mathematical theorem to composing an opera. But in one important respect, Sigma was a failure. We weren't able to give it humanlike morality or motives. Sigma has no incentive to pursue what's good for the human race because it lacks the ability to empathize."

Dad presses the button again, and this time a photo of chimpanzees comes on the screen. "Empathy comes naturally to humans because it played a big role in our evolution. The most successful apes were the ones who could imitate and understand each other. Sigma, in contrast, has no empathy. It's aware of our presence, of course, and it even sent a couple of messages to our military headquarters, but the AI has blocked all our attempts to communicate with it. The basic problem is that Sigma's intelligence is very different from ours. We don't understand the AI, and it doesn't understand us either. So we need to build a bridge between us and the machine."

He pauses, as if to gather his courage. Then he presses the button once more and a diagram of the human brain appears behind him. Just below the familiar organ is a close-up view of a section of brain tissue, magnified to show the individual brain cells and the many branchlike connections between them. Clinging to the cells are hundreds of tiny golden spheres. They look like bits of pollen.

Dad steps toward the screen and points at the spheres. "These are nanoprobes. Each is less than a thousandth of a millimeter wide. We can make trillions of them in the lab." He reaches into the pocket of his uniform and pulls out a vial of yellowish fluid. "In fact, I have several trillion probes right here, floating in this liquid. If we inject enough of these nanoprobes into a human brain, they'll spread throughout the organ and stick to the brain cells. If we then scan the brain with X-ray pulses, the probes will absorb the energy and start to glow. The scanner will record the positions of the glowing dots attached to the cells, and their patterns will give us a detailed map of all the connections within the brain and the strength of those connections."

His voice is getting louder. That often happens when Dad talks about his research. He can't help it; he gets excited. "This is the key," he says, holding the vial of nanoprobes up to the light. "All our memories, all our emotions, all our quirks and virtues and flaws-all that information is stored in the connections between our brain cells, which create new links or alter the old ones whenever we learn or remember something. So if we make a sufficiently detailed scan of a person's brain, we'll have a full description of his or her personality, which can be held in an electronic file of about a billion gigabytes. The next step is downloading that information into circuits that mimic the cells of the human brain. We already have that kind of neuromorphic circuitry because we built it to hold our AI software."

The audience is murmuring again. Some people are confused. And some, like me, are terrified, because they can see where this is going. Shannon Gibbs leans forward and points at the screen. "Are you talking about making copies?" she asks. "Copies of our brains?"

"Yes, exactly. Once the information is downloaded into the neuromorphic electronics, the circuits will replicate the connections of the person's brain, re-creating all its memories. And as data flows through the circuits, the electronic brain will generate new thoughts based on these memories. Just like in a human brain, the thoughts will organize themselves into a conscious intelligence, a self-aware entity that can set goals for itself and communicate with others, either by text or through a speech synthesizer. And the 'personality' of this new intelligence would be identical to the one inside the person's head, because it would be based on the same memories and emotions and character traits."

Shannon wrinkles her nose. She looks queasy. "Have you...tried doing this yet? Making a copy of someone?"

Dad nods. "Four months ago we tried the procedure on three volunteers. All were Army veterans with high IQs. Unfortunately, the experiment failed each time. We scanned their brains and successfully downloaded the data into the circuits, but in each case the human intelligence failed to run on the computer. We were able to copy their minds, but the copies didn't survive the transfer." He furrows his brow. "Since then we've studied the problem, and now we know what went wrong. The crucial factor is the person's age. After the age of eighteen, there's a change in the structure of brain cells. They become coated with greater amounts of a substance called myelin, which insulates the cells and makes them more rigid. This increases the efficiency of a person's thinking but reduces its flexibility. The mind of an adult is simply too inflexible. It can't adapt to the new conditions of residing in a machine."

"So now you're going to try to copy younger minds?"

He nods again. "We were planning to conduct the next phase of the experiment later this year, but the events in Russia have accelerated our plans. This time, all the volunteers must be sixteen or seventeen. At that age you've reached your maximum brainpower but your minds are still adaptable. In addition to being highly intelligent, the volunteers must have strong, resilient personalities." Dad sweeps his arm in a wide arc, gesturing at all the teenagers in the room. "All of you meet those requirements."

Shannon rears back in her seat as if she's been slapped. "And where are you going to store the copies of our brains?" Her voice is furious. "In a supercomputer? A big electronic prison?"

Dad doesn't take offense. He answers her calmly. "The scanning process converts human intelligence to a digital form, allowing it to run on any neuromorphic computer that has enough memory and processing power. But in the initial stage right after the transfer, we believe it's important to connect the intelligence to a machine that can move around and sense the outside world. A human intelligence is accustomed to controlling a body, so if we want to preserve its sanity, we'd better give it something to control. Here, let me show you."

He puts the vial of nanoprobes back in his pocket and pulls out something else, a small remote-control device. He points it at the doorway beside the stage, and a moment later I hear a loud clanking. The noise startles the soldiers standing by the doorway. They step backward, flattening themselves against the wall. Then a seven-foot-tall robot emerges from the doorway and brushes past them.

The robot strides across the stage. It has two arms and two legs, but otherwise it isn't very humanlike. It has no head or neck. Its torso is shaped like a giant bullet, with the rounded end on top. Its legs angle downward from the base of its torso and rest on oval steel-plate footpads that clang against the floor.

The machine marches briskly past the podium and stops in front of my dad, who presses a button on his remote control. This command extends the robot's arms, which telescope to a full length of six feet. They look like multi-jointed tentacles. The machine's hands, though, resemble human hands, with dexterous mechanical fingers and thumbs.

Dad presses another button, and the robot's rounded top starts to turn like a turret. "The cameras and acoustic sensors are up here," Dad says, pointing at the top end. "But the neuromorphic electronics are deep inside the torso, encased in armor plating. These robots were originally designed for the war in Afghanistan, so they're pretty sturdy." He raps his knuckles against the torso. "All in all, it's an excellent platform for a newly transferred intelligence, but really it's just the beginning. The whole point of the Pioneer Project is to bridge the gap between man and machine, and that means the human intelligences must explore their new environment. The Pioneers will have to learn how to use their new capabilities, and that includes transferring their intelligences from one machine to another."

His voice grows louder again, full of enthusiasm. "Once the Pioneers have mastered these tasks, our hope is that they'll be able to establish a connection with Sigma. If all goes well, they'll start communicating with the AI before it launches any of the Russian missiles. And then the toughest challenge will begin. At the same time that the humans are learning how to be machines, they'll have to teach Sigma how to be human."

Everyone in the auditorium gawks at the robot. Although it has no mind of its own yet, it's easy to imagine a human intelligence trapped inside it. I can't understand why Dad is so excited about the idea. The huge machine seems horrible to me.

Meanwhile, General Hawke comes back onstage and approaches the robot. There's an odd resemblance between the general and the machine. They're both sturdy, hulking creatures, built for combat. Hawke slaps the robot's armored torso, then turns to the audience. "And if communicating with Sigma doesn't work, we have a backup plan. Our Pioneers will also learn how to fight the AI."

I get a sinking feeling in my stomach. While everyone else stares at the robot, I lower my head and look down at my ruined body. Something doesn't make sense. There's a paradox here, something that violates the rules of logic. It troubles me so much that I try to raise my right hand to get Dad's attention. Lifting my hand above the height of my shoulder is agony for me, and the wasted muscles in my upper arm tremble from the effort.

Luckily, after a couple of seconds Dad notices my struggle. His head whips around and he looks at me with concern. "What is it, Adam?"

My hand is shaking, but I manage to point it at the machine. "The intelligence in the robot? Would it be a perfect copy of the person's intelligence? No difference at all?"

Dad nods. "That's right."

"But if my intelligence is in the robot and also in my brain, which one would be the real me? Would I be in two places at once?"

He takes a deep breath before answering. "Good question. If we copied all your memories into the circuitry, the machine would think of itself as Adam Armstrong, wouldn't it? And it would have just as much right to that identity as you have." He shakes his head. "But in the real world, fortunately or not, we don't face this problem. We won't have two identical intelligences existing at the same time."

"But you just said the intelligence in the robot would be a perfect copy."

Dad frowns. All his enthusiasm has vanished. His face is slack and pale now. "I'm sorry, Adam. I should've mentioned this earlier. The X-ray pulses from the brain scanner are more energetic than typical X-rays. They'll destroy the brain tissue. We can't copy your mind without killing your body."

The auditorium goes silent. Then everyone in the room starts shouting.

I sort of blank out for the next half minute. I'm vaguely aware that lots of things are going on-the rich girl's father is yelling at Hawke, the deformed boy's mother is cursing like a sailor-but the commotion seems distant and unreal. All my attention is focused on my right hand, which now rests on my thigh. I grasp the meager flesh there, the stiff band of dead muscle, and squeeze it as hard as I can. Though it's broken and dying, this is my body. How could I exist without it?

I remain in this trance until General Hawke takes the microphone and booms, "Quiet! Please!" He's not used to dealing with civilians, and the strain shows on his face. "No one's forcing you into this. You have a choice."

"This isn't a medical treatment!" The rich girl's dad jumps out of his seat. "This is murder!"

"I'm very sorry we can't do more for your children. All we can give you is the chance to preserve a part of them before they die. Maybe the most important part. And in the process, they'd be doing their country a great service."

"It's sick! You want to harvest their minds!"

Hawke doesn't argue with him. "Because we realize what a difficult decision this is, we're going to let you go home to think it over. It's a security risk, but as long as all of you keep your mouths shut, we won't have a problem. We can't give you a lot of time, though. The threat posed by Sigma is growing every day." He narrows his eyes. His face is like stone. "You'll have to decide within the next forty-eight hours."

CHAPTER.

7.

I wake up to a Kanye West song blaring from my Star Wars clock radio. I'm a big fan of Kanye. I love the fact that his songs annoy my parents. And it's funny to hear his X-rated raps coming from a radio shaped like Darth Vader's helmet.

I'm back home in my bedroom. Although the clock radio says it's 1:00 p.m., it still feels like morning to me. The return flight in the Air Force Learjet took longer than expected, and we didn't land in New York until way past midnight. After we got home at 3:00 a.m., I slept for ten hours straight, but I'm still not ready to wake up. So instead of calling for Dad and starting my day and thinking about the big decision I need to make, I just lie in bed and look around my room, thinking random thoughts. I loved doing this when I was a kid, especially on weekend mornings when there was no school to worry about. And I can still do it now. It's one of the few things that my illness hasn't taken from me.

I hate to admit this, but my bedroom doesn't look like it belongs to a seventeen-year-old. With my Darth Vader radio and my bookshelf full of comics-Iron Man, Spider-Man, Captain America-it looks more like the room of a geeky preteen. There's a Rubik's cube on my desk and a Star Wars chess set. There's also my Pinpressions toy, which is like a sandwich made from two squares of transparent plastic, one of them studded with hundreds of sliding pins. If you press your face against the back of the thing, it pushes the pins out the front, making a funny-looking mold of your features.

Next to this toy is my digital camcorder, which I used to bring to school every day so I could take videos of Ryan and Brittany and everyone else who crossed my wheelchair's path. And next to the camcorder is my prize possession, an official NFL football from Super Bowl XLVI, which in my opinion was the greatest football game ever played.

Because the New York Giants were in the Super Bowl that year, my parents let me throw a party in our living room. I was eleven at the time and my doctor had just told me I'd have to start using a wheelchair soon, so the party was a kind of consolation prize, something to make me feel better. I invited every kid I'd ever played touch football with, sixteen of them in all. Ryan was there, of course, and so was Brittany, who was a pretty decent kicker and receiver in those days.

We ordered half a dozen pizzas and swilled enormous quantities of Pepsi and screamed at the television set for three-and-a-half hours. A few of the kids cheered for the New England Patriots, but most of us were New York fans, and we went nuts when the Giants scored the winning touchdown with fifty-seven seconds to go. Ryan lifted me off the couch and carried me piggyback across the room, running in joyful circles around the coffee table while I clung to his shoulders.

Dad took a picture of us, and the next day I pasted the photo to a big poster I made to celebrate the game. The poster's still hanging on my bedroom wall: Giants 21, Patriots 17. Below the score is a colored-pencil drawing of Giants quarterback Eli Manning-it's a pretty good likeness, if I may say so myself-and the photo of me and Ryan, our faces flushed and manic from so much Pepsi.

On the opposite wall of my bedroom are five more homemade posters commemorating the next five Super Bowls. The Super Sunday party became an annual tradition at our house, and some of the games were almost as exciting as the Giants-Patriots matchup, but none of the parties was as good as the first. For one thing, fewer people attended each year. Only five kids came to our house for Super Bowl XLIX, and I got the feeling that most of them didn't want to be there. Dad had pleaded with their parents, forcing them to drag their kids to the crippled boy's party.

But the biggest disappointment came the following year, when I was in ninth grade. Ryan had joined the Yorktown High football team by then, and Coach McGrath hosted his own Super Bowl party, strictly for team members. When Ryan told me about it, he was practically crying, but I assured him it was okay. I said I was getting tired of the parties anyway. That year, only two people came to my house: Brittany and a younger boy who also had muscular dystrophy. Dad had met the kid's parents during one of my checkups at Westchester Medical.

The next year-which turned out to be my last at Yorktown High-I didn't invite anyone. I didn't even want to watch the Super Bowl. But five minutes before kickoff time, someone rang our doorbell. Dad went to answer it and found Brittany standing on the doorstep, holding a bag of tortilla chips and a two-liter bottle of Pepsi. With a casual smile, as if nothing was out of the ordinary, she stepped inside and went to our couch, and we started watching the game.

Or at least we tried to watch it. I couldn't concentrate. I was too busy wondering why Brittany had come and what was going through her head. And she seemed a little distracted too. At halftime she asked me, "Are you going to make a poster for the game?" I replied, "Yeah, I guess so," and she said, "I want to help you." So we found a sheet of poster board and my set of colored pencils, but this time I didn't draw a picture of Eli Manning or any other player. Brittany leaned against the cushions of the couch and I drew her portrait.

When I was done, I drew another picture of her, and then a third, all three sketches lined up left-to-right on the poster. I paid no attention to the football game and honestly can't remember who won. Brittany kept posing for me until the end of the post-game show, and then she stood up to go. Dad offered to drive her home, but she insisted on walking.

That poster is also on my wall. I have to admit, the three portraits of Brittany aren't as skilled as my drawing of Manning. My right hand lost some of its dexterity in the five years after Super Bowl XLVI. But the pictures are good enough for me to recognize her: the long blond hair, the high cheekbones, the eyes that are blue in one drawing and gray-green in the two others.

As I stare at the portraits now, I realize why Brittany came to my last Super Bowl party. She wasn't just being kind to me-she was also avoiding something. She turned down Dad's offer to drive her home because she had no intention of going back there. After leaving our place, she probably went to another friend's house or another party. Anything to avoid going home. I feel so stupid for not figuring this out until now. Brittany's parents had always seemed okay to me. Maybe a little uptight, but that wasn't unusual. I never saw how unhappy she was.

I'm still thinking about her when I hear a knock on the bedroom door. Startled, I turn my head toward the noise. I feel like I'm waking up again, this time from an even deeper sleep. "Uh, yeah?" I mutter. "Who is it?"

"It's Mom. Can I come in?"

I'm startled again. Dad's usually the one who takes care of me in the morning, washing and dressing me, and helping me get into my wheelchair. Whenever Mom tries to do it, she gets frustrated and bursts into tears. "Yeah, sure," I answer, trying to prop myself up. "Come in."