by Nancy Kress
Phineas Gage had spoken just a few minutes after his accident, had walked around, had not even experienced pain in his head.
The researchers in the back of the room muttered excitedly to each other: hippocampus, amygdalae, thalamus, new neural pathways . . .
The daughter burst into tears.
And now Emily stood beside Margaret’s bed. Emily, who’d been such a disappointment all her life. Margaret had named her for the self-sufficient and musical Emily Dickinson, not for the current crop of flashy young movie actresses, and Emily had turned out to be . . . well, tinny. Like the sound of music played through cheap speakers: nothing wrong with the basic tune, but the result was thin and weak in the treble, and missing bass notes.
“I might have had those bass notes if you had let me grow up,” Emily said.
“What?” Margaret, outraged, tried to sit up. She failed.
“You didn’t, you know, Mummy. You always knew best, always dictated what I was supposed to do and be, which was exactly like you. But I wasn’t.”
Of course she wasn’t. From infancy Emily had been timid and pallid. Margaret had had to protect her from the world, a wearisome task she’d been secretly glad to turn over to her son-in-law when Emily, in the only act of defiance in her entire rabbity life, had run off and married him at nineteen.
“If you had only let me grow up, make some of my own decisions, not been so damn suspicious that I would fuck up—”
“Vulgarity only reveals your lack of vocabulary,” Margaret said, but all at once she wasn’t so sure. Had she refused to let Emily make any of her own decisions? Something was happening in Margaret’s head, something monstrous that she didn’t understand. These people, they were controlling her just as she’d always suspected they would—“No!” she screamed. “I won’t! I will not!”
“Did she try to speak just then?” the daughter asked. “I thought she made a little noise!”
“Maybe she’s coming around,” said the son-in-law.
Dr. Turner moved toward the patient’s bed.
A researcher said, with awe, “Look at the spikes in frontal lobe pathways to the amygdala.”
The daughter said, “What’s an amygdala?”
Her husband answered. “I think it involves thinking. Making judgments, maybe? But I might be remembering wrong.”
He was remembering wrong, Dr. Turner thought. The frontal lobe made judgments. The amygdala governed fear, anger, and hostility. After the iron rod had destroyed much of Phineas Gage’s left frontal lobe, plus structures not identifiable to nineteenth-century medicine, his behavior had changed completely. His friends saw him as “no longer Gage.” Supposedly, he’d become fitful, obstinate, profane, incapable of holding a job.
Margaret refused to open her eyes. If she didn’t open her eyes, she wouldn’t have to see, not any of it.
“You can’t escape that way,” Beth said.
Margaret squeezed her eyes shut tighter.
“The light hurts, doesn’t it? But you can’t escape it, Maggie. Not me, or Emily, or that student, or the Buick driver.”
“Go away.”
“I will, you know,” Beth said. “But you won’t. And now you see yourself, too.”
“Go away!”
“ ‘Mithridates, he died old.’ You used to quote that at me, do you remember? But did Mithridates have any fun at all while he was alive? Always taking poison, always slightly ill from it, his stomach sour, his guts constipated. His face all pinched, trusting no one.”
“Leave me alone!”
“You will have to learn everything all over again, Maggie. You can do it.” Beth moved closer, and a moment later Margaret felt her sister’s kiss on her forehead.
It was the kiss that did it. Margaret screamed in fury, in frustration, in anger. Her whole body thrashed and flailed, which sent agonizing pain through her head and then through her right arm, which had struck the metal bed rail. She was being flayed alive, her skin stripped off her in layers, make it stop make it stop—
“Make it stop!” the daughter cried. Dr. Turner sprang forward, and additional staff rushed into the room. A nurse tried to pull the daughter and son-in-law out, but with surprising power the daughter threw off the nurse’s grasp. The patient continued to thrash. She was geriatric, there was risk of fracture, why hadn’t anyone thought to strap her down, they were going to lose her—
Slowly the patient quieted. She opened her eyes. Tears flowed from them. The daughter leaned over the bed and grabbed the patient, risking further injury—damn fool woman! No—women, plural.
But the patient did seem fully released from coma. Dr. Turner elbowed the relatives aside.
“Mrs. Lannigan—can you hear me?”
No response. The patient kept gazing at her daughter and shedding useless tears. Dr. Turner, as a trained professional, automatically noted the nature of that gaze, and was startled. He hadn’t usually seen such humble beseeching, as if asking the daughter’s forgiveness for something—what? The daughter hadn’t been driving the accident car. Maybe Social Services better send a caseworker.
“Mrs. Lannigan, please answer. Can you hear me?”
“Y. . . yes.”
“What is your first name?”
“Margaret.”
Was it? Dr. Turner didn’t remember, but the relatives didn’t object. “How many fingers am I holding up?”
“Three.”
He had never seen such a trusting smile. But then she winced in pain. “My arm. . .”
The arm was broken. The numbers on the monitor shot up farther, in response to pain. Briefly her eyes rolled back in her head and he opened his mouth to call for the crash cart. But she rallied.
“Mrs. Lannigan—”
“What smells of gardenias?” she said. Then she began to cry in earnest, reaching out to clutch her startled daughter’s hand.
Although for a century and a half, medical books taught that Phineas Gage had been completely changed by what was done to his brain, the most recent research suggested that the behavioral changes had not in fact lasted. That made more sense to Dr. Turner. People were what they were, and anything else was just naive and wishful thinking.
Margaret Lannigan had indeed broken the osteoporosis-thinned bones of her arm while thrashing around after her coma. And her severe headache had lasted for nearly two days, impervious to painkillers. Dr. Turner’s suspicions had all been justified. As for the patient babbling on and on about “trust”—well, painkillers often caused babbling.
On the Clinical Trial Sheet he wrote: “Experimental drug too hard on patient. Not recommended for approval.”
He underlined it twice.
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Nancy Kress is the author of 30 books, most recently After the Fall, Before the Fall, During the Fall, a standalone novella from Tachyon. Her work has earned four Nebulas, two Hugos, a Sturgeon, and the John W. Campbell. She writes often about genetic engineering and is best known for her Sleepless trilogy, beginning with Beggars in Spain. Kress lives in Seattle with her husband, writer Jack Skillingstead, and Cosette, the world’s most spoiled toy poodle.
MY PRISON NAME is FMA16549EW. ‘F’ for female, ‘MA’ for maximum security, ‘EW’ for eastern Washington state, 16549 for who-the-fuck-knows. This is stenciled on my coverall, db-ed in my records, and tattooed on my butt. I own this number—or it owns me—for perhaps thirty more minutes. Today I am getting out.
I don’t need to tell you my name. The whole world already knows it.
The steel gate clangs as it slides open, triggered by the guard in the booth. Clanging gate, silent electronic trigger: old technology manipulated by new. But of course that scenario doesn’t always end well. The whole world knows that now, too, due at least in part to me.
Two more clangs and I reach the lobby. A clerk hands me the personal effects I surrendered fifteen years ago: lipstick, pocket flashlight, cheap watch, massively outdated cell phone. I’m already wearing my own clothes. Jeans and sweatshirt don’t date
that much.
The clerk smiles. “Good luck, Ms—” he glances at his tablet “—Jaworski.”
Incredibly, he does not recognize me. But, then, he appears to be about fifteen, although surely that can’t be true. So perhaps the whole world doesn’t recognize my name, after all.
The only man who matters will recognize it. He shares it.
Wayne is waiting at the prison gates, at the wheel of a sleek black car. He’s grown a short beard, which oddly enough gives him the look of an Edwardian dandy. He’s fifty now but still looks good; he’s one of those men who only get better looking as they age. He leans over to kiss me, then answers my disapproval before I can even voice it. “Electric, not gas, and the juice comes from the Green River Dam. No carbon footprint, no resource depletion.”
“And the rubber tires will never end up in a landfill? You’ll paint them white and plant daisies in them on the front lawn?”
He grins at me. “Prison hasn’t changed you, Caitlin.”
The fuck it hasn’t. But Wayne doesn’t need to know that. He has another girlfriend now, and she’s pregnant, and anyway he’s too valuable an eco-fighter to risk. Despite the car.
“So who does it belong to?”
“Friend of a friend.”
“Dangerous, Wayne.”
“This one can be trusted.”
“None of them can be trusted. You used to know that.”
He doesn’t answer. Fifteen years ago, it was someone we trusted who tipped off the CEO of HomeWalls, Inc.
I say, “Are we going to the compound?”
He glances over at me. “Would you rather I take you somewhere else?”
We both know I don’t have anywhere else to go. I gaze out the window at the shimmer in the distance and yes, as we speed along the highway toward Spokane in traffic even lighter than when I went into prison, there is the first of them. The shimmer takes form, an upside-down translucent bowl. Wayne speeds up and I say sharply, “No. Pull over. I want to look at it.”
“Caitlin—”
“Do it!”
He does, and I look my fill, letting the look sink deep into my mind, where it can become rich fertilizer to nourish equally rich hatred.
The dome, a singleton, covers perhaps thirty acres: Model C-2, then, the largest possible. Sunlight striking at just the right angle glints off it, as if it were solid. It is not. The HomeWalls dome is a force field, proprietary to the corporation. It keeps out objects, including projectiles, air, and selective wavelengths of electromagnetic radiation. Visible light can get through; X-rays, gamma rays, microwaves cannot. The bowl shape is open at the top, to allow air exchange and weather, and through the opening rises a single communication tower. I stare a long time at that curve up to the opening, which is as small as the engineers deemed feasible.
The dome entrance, with its heavily guarded double-door access chamber, must be on the other side, at the end of the road merging into the highway. Through the translucent wall, which is precisely 1.8 inches ‘thick’, I see the blurred outlines of houses, a few shops and restaurants, a small apartment building, trees and flowerbeds and a tennis court. Two people on bicycles ride on the bike path that circles fairly close to the wall. The translucence gives everything the wavery, magical look of an impressionist painting.
Outside the dome the squatters have erected ragged tents, shacks of tin and old lumber, piss pits beside which children play. Most of the squatters, I know, will be on the other side of the dome, hoping to someday rush the access chamber. It’s a stupid and futile hope. If they do, they will be shot by the guards. The courts have upheld these shootings as “legal defense of one’s home and person in the face of credible threat.” But still the squatters try, wanting more than the miserable little they have.
What hurts me the most is the gardens. Some of these squatters have planted corn and vegetables. In the summer heat the plants are spindly and brownish. There must be a public well here somewhere, or the people couldn’t be here, but water would have to be hand-carried to water these brave little attempts at self-sufficiency. In the closest plot, a woman hoes weeds by hand. She raises her head to stare at the car.
Wayne and I have only minutes. He steps on the gas as the first of the squatters rush the road ahead of us, waving clubs and shovels. They can’t take out their rage on the people in the domes, but we will do, in our luxurious car. Wayne revs the engine and we easily outdistance them without hurting anyone.
Moments of silence, while the dry plains of Eastern Washington roll by. Finally Wayne says, “We can’t do it the same way, Catie.”
“I know that.” And then, “Why haven’t you been trying a different way? For fifteen fucking years you haven’t tried anything real!”
“We’ve tried what we could. Broadcasts, rallies, education—”
“And look at all your great results!”
Wayne doesn’t answer. Truth roils between us like deadly gas.
“THE COLORS OF the spectrum, Catie,” my father said.
“Red, orange, yellow. . .” I froze. What came next? Then the right color popped into my six-year-old mind and I shouted, “Green! Blue, indigo, violet.”
“Very good! Now the name of the glass triangle that breaks light into all those pretty colors.”
“Prism!”
“And the instrument that lets us study those colors.”
This was one of the hard words, but I was sure. I said it extra carefully. “Spec-trom-e-ter.”
My father smiled at me. We sat in the back seat of his big car, while Desmond drove with Ray, the bodyguard, beside him. When Daddy took me to school in the car on his way to work, it was our special time. Mama was in heaven and Daddy was usually busy, so busy, inventing things to keep people safe. I hardly ever saw him. Mostly I just saw my nanny, who pinched me to make me be good.
“Daddy,” I said, “today in school we’re going to start learning Chinese!”
“Good,” he said, still smiling at me. “Study hard. Make me proud of you.”
“I will!” I liked school. All the kids there were smart, and most of them were nice, and the school was safe behind its high fences. Not every place was safe, I knew. We were driving right now through a part of the city that wasn’t safe, but we had to go through it to get to my school and Daddy’s work. This place was ugly, too, with litter on the streets and men—“the lazy out-of-work,” Daddy called them—sitting on sagging porches and steps in their undershirts. I saw a house with broken windows, the glass lying all over and nobody even sweeping it up.
“Opaque the windows,” I begged.
Daddy pressed a button. The car windows opaqued, and we were safe in our own cozy world, with its exciting smells of leather and aftershave, its quiet hum of the powerful car engine carrying us along.
THE COMPUND HAS indeed changed in fifteen years. It’s shrunk.
How many of us had there been when I was here last, just before my arrest? Nearly a thousand. We hadn’t been like the naïve commune-founders of two generations before mine. We assigned roles, established a working government, used appropriate technology even if it wasn’t green, until the time came when the eco-war would be over and we could dispense with our toxic cell phones and tablets. We even recognized that the war might never be over.
Now the compound holds fewer than a hundred die-hards. Many of the buildings are boarded-up. The radio station still works, and in prison I managed to hear a few of Wayne’s careful, chicken-hearted broadcasts on Washington state’s one public channel. The news channels, of course, are state-dominated ever since the Rescue that put the United States under military rule. What was supposed to be rescued was the economy, but of course it hadn’t been, except for those who already had enough. They just ended up with more.
A woman comes toward us from the closest ramshackle building. She walks with the swaying waddle of the heavily pregnant, and she is very young. Her gaze on Wayne is soft and adoring. Her gaze on me holds no sexual jealousy—he must not have told h
er of our history together. Probably wise. It no longer matters, although once my passion for him flamed just as strong as both our passions for justice.
“This is Tara,” Wayne says, putting an arm around her. “Tara, Catie Jaworski.”
“Welcome,” she says, and I hear the fear in her voice, and below fear, the hostility. So she is brighter than she looks. She knows that I could threaten her precarious security. And I will.
“Hi,” I say. And to Wayne, “Let’s get to work.”
“DADDY, IT HURTS!”
“I know it does, Catie. I know. But the operation was a success and you’re fine now. The pain is just the stitches.”
He stands beside my hospital bed, holding my hand. I am furious at him. “It hurt worse before and you weren’t even here!”
“I came as soon as I could. I had to come from the other side of the world, pumpkin.”
“I don’t care! I hate you!”
The nurse, a scrawny old woman in stupid clothes with teddy bears on them, smiles at Daddy. “They always want more parent than they can get, Dr. Jaworski.”
“Shut up!” I say. I hate the nurse, too.
“Caitlin, apologize,” Daddy says.
“I’m sorry,” I say, but I don’t mean it. I don’t mean that I hate Daddy, either. I know he was on the other side of the world, doing important work in physics. Everybody knows who Daddy is, and everybody knows about the new thing he invented, the clear energy walls to keep bad people from hurting little girls. It’s wonderful and important, but I wanted him here when my appendix broke. Before that, I didn’t even know I had an appendix. He never told me.
Daddy says to the nurse, “Can’t she have more pain killers?”