I'm Not Cam Sonnet

This is going to be a weird letter.

There are going to be a lot of questions. Too many. Or, who knows, maybe nobody will care. Maybe we’ve sunk low enough that nobody will even notice. Or maybe, because we’ve sunk so low, everybody will make sure I get pushed as low as they can get me. That will probably happen, come to think of it, so it’s best I get this written down before life gets too crazy.

I hope the award has my name on it, otherwise I’ll have to re-think the beginning of my speech on the fly. You’ll have already heard the speech before reading this, of course. You’ll probably have read a whole lot of other stuff about me also, but in this letter I’m sticking to the facts, to my story. There’s also a really good chance the speech will go horribly and I’ll be ushered out for my own safety after 30 seconds, so please let this letter stand as the more official record.

Here’s the beginning of my speech:

“Thank you. I’m very proud of all the work we’ve done here, and I think you all know that this award is for all of us, not just me. In fact, I wish it didn’t have the name Camron Sonnet printed here, because I have something to tell you. I’m not Cam Sonnet. The real Cam Sonnet is probably dead, as far as I can tell. He probably died, as many others did, on the trip from the mainland. That was before the Fans, and a lot of people died on the trek. Cam would have been helping his father along also, who had undiagnosed Stage 4 PKS at the time, and that would have made the trip all that much harder. In all likelihood, Camron Sonnet died a hero.

That was the beginning of the dark times, before anybody really knew anything about what was happening.

To any friends and family of the real Cam, I sincerely apologize for using him like I did. I walked into his life by accident, and always tried to do his name proud because I thought it was only a matter of time before I got found out. Before somebody came up to me and said: “Nah, I know you, motherfucker. You ain’t Cam Sonnet.” But it never happened.

I have Cam’s death certificate. His father never mailed it in when he arrived in Upper Haven.

How many people do you think are killed by something they’ve invented? Probably a lot.

My name is Remy Memol. My parents both worked for Hema-Tek in the 2050’s when they were first manufacturing the Bio-R, long before anybody knew any of the long -term affects. My childhood from age 3 to 12 was spent watching them descend into madness while the Hema doctors tried to keep them functional with different drug cocktails and surgeries, implants, and beta tests. And I watched, and I tried to help them remember things. I was really trying to help them survive, but I didn’t realize that at the time.

I’m not sure why I feel I need to come forward right now. My name isn’t special, it just no longer feels right to be living a lie. I no longer feel OK being somebody else’s life.

The early stages, the “fun stages” if you will, lasted about 4 years for them. They were young, and really smart, and they had the best doctors and scientists trying to cure them before the rest of the world found out what Hema-Tek had already done. The mean stages, the angry stages, those lasted longer, for all the same reasons. They died when I was twelve, but by then everybody was getting it so nobody noticed when I got lost in the shuffle.

Nine long years of my childhood, while Hema tried their best to right the wrong they had done to me, hoping they hadn’t wronged the whole world. But I didn’t spend it fucking around. I ran away. A lot. And I was always sent back home to my parents, whom the authorities kept insisting were just fine. To survive them, I figured some things out, and those became the cognitive half of The Sonnet Method, and the reason we’re here today.

But then something magical happened. All those times I ran away to Lower Haven? Those people saved me the first time. On the street, people knew my name. They’d seen my hustle, they knew how I grew up, they probably figured my parents had been dead for years. Most of theirs probably had been. And people did come to respect me on the street. I always helped out when I could, and my clean innocent kid look comes in handy when you’re breaking the law. So, I was popular, and when I got older I became a pretty good driver so whenever something really bad was going down, whenever something really had to get through the checkpoints, they had me drive. And somehow, I always got through. I look back on that now and wonder how the hell that’s possible, because we stole a lot of shit.

Because of my parents, I grew up wealthier than most people on the street. Most of them were lifers. I was better than everybody else at fitting in, being included. Also, I understood rich people, and their stuff, in a different way than everybody else around me. And because when I wasn’t running around I was either hiding from my parents in the attic or the basement, I was really observant when I was around people.

I developed a reputation immediately and everybody started coming to me for advice. I wish I could say people asked me how to emulate and think like rich people so they could work hard and get there one day, but that’s not what they asked. They asked how to steal shit and not get caught, and I was good at it. Really, really good at it.

When I say “in the street”, please understand I loved it there. Still do. It was my getaway at first, more fun than staring at walls, and when I got good at it, I grew up. It was how I became the man that was able to develop the Sonnet, to win the awards, to love my wife.

Why am I telling this story now? I keep avoiding that, don’t I?

There was one person with more to lose than me and she just died. My wife’s real name was Dayanna Mozt, and at the time we went into hiding at Gus Sonnet’s house, she was wanted by both the police and the mafia for her role in the Gabray Firebombing back in 2067. Another world, another life, but if you don’t know, it was a pretty big deal at the time. Killed some local politicians and the heads of two crime families. They were working together of course, and controlling the police, so she was best off hiding.

Gus Sonnet saved me the second time.

The night we got to Gus’ house, we were being chased by 10 cars of Monte family henchmen and the entire Upper and Lower Haven Island Police Department. We got away on a couple old scooters, and got past the guards into Upper Haven, which I still knew how to do. Probably not possible to get through there now. So, we ride into the darkness and jump this wall and we’re just hiding and we hear this voice calling from the back door “Cam? Cam? Is that you? The garbage is still here.” And I could pick out the tingle in his throat, the one I spent my childhood listening to, and so I took out the garbage.

And he thought I was Cam and Dayanna was Emily and we stayed the night and played cards, and I taught Gus and Day the tricks I’d learned with my parents, and we drank his wine and it was one of the best nights of our lives. And Gus? He smiled. I don’t think he had smiled in a long time.

And then, we kinda just stayed, and figured out his finances. He had rent checks coming in from back in Lorry, and we managed them. We sent out late rent notices, found new renters, hired plumbers, all of that was us. He had completely fallen apart. The bank would have taken everything he owned and sent him to one of those crazy-shacks they used to send people to, so we figured we were doing something right. We gave him a reason to get out of bed, and that must be worth something to an old man slowly losing his mind.

Also, she did it. She was always proud of that job a little bit. Not supposed to be proud of killing, she understood that, but that day turned the tide of the war a little bit. The corrupt cops were less organized and they definitely had less money. It wasn’t much later the Police Reform Act was passed, but that obviously didn’t last long either. No, she wasn’t perfect. Yes, a bunch of innocent people died. She was ready to be judged, and she told me to come clean.

Dayanna was also an anxious, nervous wreck, and when we got to Mr. Sonnet’s house, she was almost out of pills and everybody was looking for us. Our best bet was to just continue eating Gus’ food, cooking for him, ordering more groceries, keeping out of sight, and trying to stay alive.

And her pills, her Z, anybody who knew us knew where we got them. There were only so many places to get Z on the island back then, and there weren’t a lot of safe ways off. Our best bet was to let everybody think we died on a boat getting off the island.

We didn’t come out for five years. She obviously didn’t need the Z. Mr. Sonnet was on Medi-Plan, and his box of “brain pills” arrived every month in the mail. Nothing for Dayanna in there, and his medical forms didn’t give options for anything else.

All the breathing exercises, the stretches, the weird movements of the diaphragm and spine that support the memory recall portion of the Sonnet Method? That’s her, that’s all Dayanna. Gus loved to watch her and copy her while I was teaching him and building that first deck of Sonnet cards. We noticed how much it helped him stay on his toes, both literally and figuratively. He was smarter, moved around better, we stopped worrying about him all the time, and his PS score went from 300 to 100 in six months. It was crazy. Also, we started fucking, a lot, and we didn’t really care about the past anymore. It didn’t matter who we were. We knew what we were destined to be.

At that time, we thought we could cure him, get him back to normal. We thought we were the biggest geniuses of all time, figuring out in 6 months what all the doctors and scientists and gazillions of dollars couldn’t figure out in decades. Our strengths were:

1. A complete lack of drugs (Dayanna).

2. A lot of time to waste.

3. A strong desire to have a lot more sex (me/Day).

So, we stayed. At that time we weren’t thinking we could stay in those lives forever. We thought Mr. S would eventually get good enough to realize I wasn’t his son, and Dayanna wasn’t his Cam’s girlfriend Emily, who may or may not exist. Or, she could be out there somewhere, living her life.

Unfortunately for Mr. S, but fortunately for us, he never got better than that. We now know, of course, somebody with Stage 4 PKS doesn’t just get better, but we thought people might doubt us if we didn’t cure him.

A lot of reasons to stay, and none to leave, none to tell the truth.

In the seven or so years between her life as Dayanna ending and the day the world knew her as Nilo Vella, CEO of Nest Enterprises, we worked on the Sonnet Method. Nilo Vella was just the coolest sounding fake identity we could buy with the first little Sonnet Method payday I got. Everything after that, you already know. The Sonnet works, and I’m proud of my role in it. Dayanna was proud of her role in it until the day she died. We both always thought it fitting that it does not bear our names.

Gus Sonnet was the man who saved us, who took us in, kept us safe. He deserves the praise, not us. It was his life after all, and Gus worked harder than we did.

I don’t think this will all make it into the speech, so let me just say what I really want to say: be willing to give it all up, to leave it all behind, because love will find its way. When it feels like the world is ending, put your trust in somebody good, and ride it out together, because you never know what you’re capable of, and the world needs all the help it can get.