Temperament
A novella

A violinist's hands are his voice. Jon Finn has both, until a car crash leaves him with a stroke, a silenced tongue, and a right side that will not answer. He can understand every word spoken to him and produce none of his own. He cannot even hold a bow, or draw it across a string.Then there is Gen.Grown, not built. An organic implant seeded into the wound in his brain, designed to find errors, rebuild, and repair. Miraculously, Gen gives Jon back his speech. His fluency. His impossible, virtuosic playing.But only Jon notices that something is wrong. The man who returns plays more beautifully than the man who left. The woman he loves can no longer tell whether what he says is what he means. And as Gen reaches deeper, Jon begins to wonder whether he is being healed, or quietly, lovingly, replaced.Temperament is a literary novel about consent, identity, and the terrifying tenderness of being remade by something that has no will of its own. It asks the oldest question in a wholly new key: if everything that made you can be restored by another hand, are you still the one playing?For listeners who love quiet, interior, unsettling fiction. Klara and the Sun, Never Let Me Go, Flowers for Algernon. Told in a voice as precise and aching as a held note.By K. Aurum.