Project Human

by Sean McKenzie

once his body began to ache, trembling violently. He could not control his movements. Nothing had ever hurt so deep, so intense.

  “What’s wrong?” Adelle gasped. She could hear his body thrashing. The sounds he was making made her believe he was dying. He was turning into those in the cage, she thought. He had been wrong.

  She scrambled, trying to find him, trying to get close enough to assist him somehow. But it was dark and the tight quarters hindered her movements. As she reached him, she was aware of his flailing limbs. He was making too much noise.

  “Sh. Calm down. What’s wrong? What can I do?” She grabbed his hands and held them tight, preventing them from knocking into the vent walls. “Talk to me.”

  Barton groaned painfully, mumbling something inaudible, words fragmented with groans. Adelle did her best to silence him, to keep their concealment unknown. But he was too strong. His head struck the side of the chute too many times. Someone had to have heard.

  Then all of a sudden he stopped. His body calmed.

  Adelle reacted quickly, placing a hand against his mouth, feeling the warmth of the exhale. He was alive. Somehow he had survived.

  Then she heard them. They were searching anew, alerted by his thrashing.

  Adelle placed her hand over Barton’s mouth. She could hear the guards yelling from somewhere below. She sat motionless for several minutes. She tried a few times to wake the doctor, but failed. She decided then to leave him for a minute, crawl over to where the guards were and see if anything could be discovered. Barton could be out for hours, she knew.

  “I’ll be back,” she whispered in Barton’s ear.

  She crawled out of the dark recess towards the light. Conversations grew louder. She was over a room that held at least three guards talking. She positioned herself over an air vent and listened. The vent was long and had a series of mesh openings angled down towards sections of the room.

  Adelle heard and saw the guards clearly. She learned only that Barton had made enough noise for them to continue their search. The guards had not given up anything useful before walking out of sight.

  Adelle sighed. It had been a wasted trip.

  The room had gone quite for several long minutes when she realized there was no reason to linger. She would go back and wait for Barton to wake. If he wouldn’t on his own, she would help. He would not have the comfort of sleeping for hours.

  Adelle turned herself around and had just started back the way she had come, when the vent cover disappeared and she was falling down. She hit the floor hard; the metal of the vent cover shattered the stillness.

  Adelle grunted in pain, the wind knocked out of her lungs leaving her helpless. Already there were voices rushing from further away. Anyone in the hall would have heard the crash. They were coming. She would be discovered in seconds. Her hands and knees ached from the fall. But nothing hurt more than knowing she would be captured.

  She rose eagerly. Her eyes searched the room for a hiding place. The voices came quicker. Guards were yelling directions. They were coming straight for her room.

  Adelle panicked then, her body freezing in place. She looked up into the ceiling where the blackness of the vent shaft stared back in betrayal.

  S I X T E E N

  I sit next to my mother’s feet as she stands at the sink washing dishes. Music plays softly from a radio on the counter. I press my back against her leg, feeling the end of her long, blue and white striped dress dangle across my neck, tickling my ears. I push my car around the black and white checkered floor, trying not to drive on the white squares.

  “Do you want to be a race car driver when you get older?” my mother asks. “They drive in circles for hours and hours. Racing so fast.”

  “Faster than dad?”

  She smiles back. “Well…he does think he has to be the first car, doesn’t he?”

  I nod. My father yells something from another room, which only makes my mother laugh.

  She rubs her hands across my head. I don’t mind her wet hands. “In about twelve more years you’ll be out there driving, too. Then you’ll find out what it’s all about. There’s more to driving than just turning the wheel, or in your father’s case stomping the gas pedal and scaring turkeys back into the woods.”

  Another response from my father and they’re both laughing. I look up to my mother and stare at her happy face. Her hand comes down to mine, full of suds.

  “Go give this to your father,” she grins.

  I take the bubbles and run towards the couch.

  My mother’s laughter drowns out my father’s yelling.

  I’m eighteen. I fix my hair in the mirror as my mother straightens my tie. The rest of my suit is perfect. She can’t tell I’m slightly nervous.

  “Did you get the flowers?” she asks.

  “Five red roses.”

  “Why five?”

  “It’s our fifth date.” I shrug nonchalantly. “It just so happens to be prom, too.”

  I watch her nod proudly. She stands away and just stares. For a second I can see that she’ll be crying soon after I leave. “What is it, mom?”

  She shakes her head. “I was just thinking how small you were when we took you home from the hospital. All wrapped up in that blanket. You were so hairy, and fussy. But you never cried long. All I had to do was put you in my arms and rock you a little and you were just fine.”

  “Are you going to be okay, mom? It’s just a dance. I’ll be home just after midnight.”

  I see the tears well up in her eyes.

  Hands clap like thunder. I walk up the steps to the podium. My friends cheer, lost in the crowd. Walking to the valedictorian, I turn, looking at my classmates. Proudly, I reach for my diploma.

  I close my book in exhaustion. I flop back onto the pillow and set the book on the lamp stand next to the bed. My roommate enters and talks me out of studying, again. Out to the pub, I know. But I can use the distraction. College is hard for me.

  I hold her hand firm, feeling how frail it is now, knowing how hard it will be to lose her too. I feel her squeeze my hand back. Her weeping is quiet. The reverend finishes his prayer and the casket lowers into the ground. Now the weeping really begins. Not just from my mother, but from all around them; everyone that knew my father closely. They are all there; all of them crying.

  “I love you, mom.”

  She cries too hard to speak. She rests her head onto my shoulder.

  I wish I could be a kid again, to just go back and start over. I want to feel like my father is invincible again. It hurts. It hurts so bad to watch him go. I miss him so much already.

  I let go and cry too. I’ll be strong for mom later. Right now, there’s no controlling my emotions.

  Barton’s body withered in pain. His eyes opened slowly. Still delusional, still lost somewhere in a blanket of memories that have rushed back to him in a sweeping whirlwind, he deciphered nothing in the darkness. Someplace deep inside him, it hurt.

  The solution he perfected was working. The nano-machines were working at a drastic pace to tie the human DNA strands back in line, removing the alien at the same time. It was the cure he sought from Whitmere; the cure he would never have been given. They would have used his insight, his formulas and wisdom, until they grew tired of him, or didn’t need him further, and then he would have been removed. They either would have killed him, or changed him entirely. One way was no worse than the other; both left his soul for dead.

  As his physical changes were underway, his mental and spiritual health was returning as well. His memories came at a frantic pace, showing him quick glimpses of what and who he was, where he’d been, what he’d accomplished, pains and loves, all of it before vanishing into his vault where they could be recalled at his own choosing. He was becoming whole again.

  For a split second he remembered where he was. He remembered everything. And now with his human emotions returned, his humanity given back to him, he began to feel the remorse for what he had done. Patient’s faces flashed; faces screamed
silently, pain filling their eyes. His stomach churned with something new, something cold and unforgiving. The weight of his sins crushed him, stealing the very air he sought to grasp. He felt hollow. He wanted to disappear; he wanted to hide from his own existence. He could feel the darkness drawing him in, wanting to sweep him into a coma where he would not have to face himself. It was soothing. He could hear it call to him to let go. His eyes blinked slower; his eyelids feeling heavier.

  But he snapped out of it and felt the stale hot air of the ventilation shaft for the first time. He panicked then, realizing how close he was to losing everything again.

  He forced the faces away, straining with the effort to focus. He fought the emptiness that threatened to swallow him. He balled his fists, growing angry. The trapped feeling came back, and his hate for them returned.

  But he was too weak to keep up the fight. Reality mixed with the waves of flooding memories and suddenly he was swept back into a dream-like state. He closed his eyes against the pain, slipping back into unconsciousness again.

  Adelle’s whereabouts never occurred to him.

  “Mom, I want you to meet someone.”

  I rush Jada through my mother’s house, nearly pulling her arm too hard. Excitement fills her eyes. I hear my mother shout from the backyard and we exit the back door of the house to see her rising from her tulip garden. Sadly, I can tell she’s too old to be toiling around in soil on her knees. It’s all she has, I know.

  “Mom, this