Sole Survivor

losses in Colorado.
        By the time he is forty-two months old, SSW-89-58 possesses the language skills of the average first-year college student and is able to read a three-hundred-page volume in one to three hours, depending on the complexity of the text. Higher math comes to him as easily as eating ice cream, as do foreign languages from French to Japanese. His physical development proceeds at an accelerated rate, as well, and by the time he is four, he stands as tall and is proportionately developed as the average seven-year-old. Paranormal talents are anticipated, but researchers are surprised by 89-58's great breadth of more ordinary genius-which includes the ability to play any piece of piano music after hearing it once-and by his physical precocity, for which no genetic selection has been made.
        When 89-58 begins to exhibit paranormal abilities, he proves to be phenomenally endowed. His first startling achievement is remote viewing. As a game, he describes to researchers the rooms in their own homes, where he has never visited. He walks them through tours of museums to which he has never been admitted. When he is shown a photograph of a Wyoming mountain in which is buried a top-secret Strategic Air Command defence centre, he describes in accurate detail the missile-status display boards in the war room. He is considered an espionage asset of incalculable value-until, fortunately by degrees, he discovers that he is able to step into a human mind as easily as he steps into distant rooms. He takes mental control of his primary handler, makes the man undress, and sends him through the halls of the orphanage, crowing like a rooster. When SSW-89-58 relinquishes control of the handler and it is discovered what he's done, he is punished severely. He resents the punishment, resents it deeply. That night he conducts a remote viewing of the handler's home and enters the handler's mind at a distance of forty-six miles. Using the handler's body, he brutally murders the man's wife and daughter, and then he walks the handler through suicide.
        Subsequent to this episode, SSW-89-58 is subdued by the use of a massive dose of tranquillisers administered by a dart gun. Two employees of Project 99 perish in this process.
        Thereafter, for a period of eighteen days, he is maintained in a drug-induced coma while a team of scientists designs and oversees the urgent construction of a suitable habitat for their prize-one which will sustain his life but assure that he remains controlled. A faction of the staff suggests immediate termination of SSW-89-58, but this advice is considered and rejected. Every endeavour is at some point troubled by pessimists.
        Here, now, come into the security room in the southeast corner of the first floor of the orphanage. In this place-if you were an employee-you must present yourself for the scrutiny of three guards, because this post is never manned by fewer, regardless of the hour. You must place your right hand on a scanner that will identify you by your fingerprints. You must peer into a retina scanner, as well, which will compare your retinal patterns to those recorded in the scan taken when you first accepted employment.
        From here you descend in an elevator past five subterranean levels where much of the work of Project 99 is conducted. You are interested, however, in the sixth and lowest level, where you walk to the end of a long corridor and through a grey metal door. You stand in a plain room with simple institutional furnishings, with three security men, none of whom is interested in you. These men work six-hour shifts to ensure that they remain alert not only to what is happening in this room and the next but to nuances in one another's behaviour.
        One wall of this room features a large window that looks into the adjoining chamber. Frequently you will see Dr. Louis Blom or Dr. Keith Ramlock-or both-at work beyond this glass, for they are the designers of SSW-89-58 and oversee the exploration and the utilization of his gifts. When neither Dr. Blom nor Dr. Ramlock is present, at least three other members of their immediate staff are in attendance.
        SSW-89-58 is never left unsupervised.
        They were transitioning from Interstate 210 to Interstate 10 when Rose interrupted herself to say, “Joe, could you find an exit with a service station? I need to use a restroom.”
        “What's wrong?”
        “Nothing. I just need… a