“Precise as ever, Sixteen,” Paxton told the bot, and when it had finished tending to everyone, it simply vanished back behind the doors recessed into the alcove.
“We’re all very happy for you, kid,” Zurri sighed, forking the greens listlessly around in their bowl.
Senna couldn’t concentrate on what he was saying. It was rude to stare, but she couldn’t help herself. How could he not recognize her? Where was the rage she had seen in his eyes at the office on the station? How could he be so . . . so calm? So unbothered? She expected him to lunge across the table and pour his hideous green drink all over her head, but instead he kept on eating and talking, launching into a speech about the technology, the design, the implementation, the experience!
“I expected it to be kinda scary, you know?” he said in closing, polishing off his fries and moving on to the buns. “Thought I would feel weird after, but I feel fine. Great. Hungry, maybe, but I feel great.”
Down the table, the blond woman dropped her spoon. It clattered noisily to the table, and Paxton shot her a glare. Slowly, she picked up the utensil, and let it hover over her bowl while she stared with concentrated intensity into space.
“It is a relief to hear that,” Brea told the boy, smoothing the napkin across her lap. “User experience is so crucial! We will have to take a vid of your first impressions. Merchantia PR will be delighted.”
But her words sounded a million miles away. Senna tore her eyes away from Han, fixing them instead on Paxton. He went on eating, ignoring her, but she could tell it was deliberate. Avoidant. They hadn’t discussed the crash and come to some resolution, Paxton had used the LENG technology to change Han’s memories and avoid a tense interaction. Even if it was what the boy had come for, even if he wanted to forget those things, it didn’t seem right. Or it didn’t seem right just yet.
This was only supposed to be the welcoming dinner.
The room was spinning. The crystal chandelier above them seemed to sway, threatening to detach from the ceiling and drop, crushing them, making them blood and glass and powder. She never ate meat, and now the smell of it, cooked and sweating its juicy, pungent heat, sickened her. When she breathed, the smell came with, filling her mouth, gagging her. She climbed unsteadily to her feet. Everyone was staring at her, again. Always.
“I don’t f-feel well,” she stammered. “I think the trip . . . unsettled my stomach. E-Excuse me.”
She knew Paxton would try to keep her there, so she ran. Through the big open doors and back into the humid embrace of the leafy courtyard, then left following a slowly curving white ramp up to a balconied second level. Zone 2. She had seen it while studying the materials during her trip. It was rude to bolt, but Senna’s frequent panic attacks had taught her the warning signs. Leaving ruined it mostly for her, staying would have ruined it for everybody.
Senna approached a coral-red door off the balconied area overlooking the courtyard. When she came close, it swished open. She clutched her nylon bag close to her chest and wandered down the L-shaped hall. The doors were unlabeled, blank and dark, and she huffed, confused. Then she noticed a door to her right glowing faintly as she passed, and when she took a step toward it, the light grew brighter and a name appeared across it.
ZURRI
She backed away and tried the next door and the next, turning the corner to the right to find that the next door glowed, and her name was there.
“Hi,” a pleasant male voice greeted her.
Senna gasped, stumbling backward, then searched above and behind her for the source of the voice.
“My name is Genie, if you need anything during your stay, you can just ask me. Would you like to enter your rooms, Ms. Slate?”
“Y-Yes.”
“Perfect. Should I call you Ms. Slate or would you prefer Senna?”
Pushing inside, Senna gasped again—the cozy, clean apartment had been decorated in muted ocean tones. A heavy shag rug covered the hall directly ahead, and moving farther inside she found a kitchen to her right with a counter, table and some chairs, modern but not stark, a glazed vase centered on the table with a spray of white tulips.
“Senna is fine,” she told the invisible man. Marin and Jonathan had something similar in their condo, an in-home assistant, and they shouted orders at it night and day, telling it to change the temperature or turn off the lights. At first, when all that was new and she was still fresh from the compound, she had imagined a hundred fairies hidden behind the walls, rushing to do as they asked.
“Paxton tells me your pronouns are ‘she’ and ‘her,’ is that correct?”
“Yes,” Senna said, walking slowly down the hallway and into the living area. The creamy ivory sofa there smelled incredible and strange. She touched it. “Is this real leather?”
“It is. Paxton’s family owns and operates one of the last seven cattle ranches in Colorado.”
“And this mural . . .” Senna turned to admire the impressionist painting on the wall facing the front door—just gazing at it lowered her blood pressure. She sighed at the foamy sea, the sliver of beach, and gulls like lazy checkmarks slashed across the sky. A spindly dock in the distance clung to an outcropping of rock, threatened by the crashing tides. “It’s beautiful.”
“You were a difficult one.”
It wasn’t Genie who spoke, but a different male voice. Senna dropped her nylon bag on the couch and spun to find Paxton Dunn, hands in pockets, observing her from the doorway.
His smirk bordered on a grimace. “Zurri and Han were easy. They’ve got online shopping carts and search histories going back years and years. But you? You’ve only been with the land of the living for a year.”
“I was alive before that,” insisted Senna, crossing her arms. “You didn’t need to follow me.”
“You’re upset.”
“You could’ve just . . . sent a messagey thing.” She jostled the wrist with her VIT monitor.
“Right,” he chuckled, taking a few bold steps into her apartment. He didn’t go any farther than the table in her kitchen. “And knowing how much you love that thing, would you have seen it and responded to my messagey thing?”
“Probably not,” Senna admitted. “About Han . . .”
“It’s handled,” Paxton replied bluntly, slashing his hand horizontally through the air.
“You keep saying that,” she said. “And I keep not believing you. Isn’t it all too fast? We just got here, we hadn’t even eaten yet and already . . .” Senna chose her next words carefully, watching the way he flinched as she rambled on. “And you already changed him.”
Paxton pulled one hand out of his pocket and pressed it to his chest. “Isn’t that what you’re here for? And I didn’t change anything, LENG did. No offense, but Jesus, it’s awfully presumptuous, implying Han doesn’t know what he wants. He knows what he wants to forget, he tells me, and then LENG helps him with that. He went through the neural mapping just like you, he signed the contracts, this is all consensual.”
It sounded so simple. Clinical. Senna glanced at her feet, the small feeling cresting over her again. Living in isolation with the brood, behind the walls of the compound, had robbed her of so much knowledge, so much of the easy way people barked at in-home assistants, and ordered food through their VITs with their minds, and didn’t vomit when they raced up and down in the station elevators at what felt like light speed. The ignorance kept on astonishing and shaming her, and she wondered if it would ever stop.
“I explained everything about your shared connection before he made his decision,” Paxton continued. His tone, she realized, was slightly apologetic, and she looked up from her feet. “He was surprised, obviously, and mad, but we had a talk. A good talk. He came around. He’s a tech head like me, he wanted to be the first of you to try it. Teenagers, right?”
“Right,” Senna agreed, not really knowing what he meant.
“He
y.” He waited until their eyes met, and she could feel his curiosity, his interest, like gentle hooks behind his pupils tugging on her. “Your first session is scheduled for tomorrow morning. Is that okay? Having second thoughts?”
Senna pursed her lips and wondered. Was it okay? She thought of Han, of the way he looked at her across the dinner table. No rage. No pain. Whatever they were doing here, it worked. She considered, selfishly, what it would be like to be that way—emptied out of all the hurt.
“I just need to rest,” she finally replied. “I’m sure it will all seem clearer in the morning.”
Paxton grinned and nodded. “It usually does. I’ll have Servitor Sixteen bring up something for you. Maybe just some porridge?”
“The meat was ambitious,” Senna murmured, embarrassed.
“Ha! Yes, very ambitious, but that’s good. You took a big swing, we like big swings here. Porridge it is. You rest up, okay? And then I’ll see you bright and early . . .”
He turned to go, and as he passed through the door, she noticed a dark halo flicker across his body. An image she’d like to capture. We like big swings here.
“Paxton?” Using his first name felt strange. She didn’t know him at all.
“Yeah?” he paused, his back to her.
“I’d like to paint again. Is there any way . . .”
He put up a hand. “Say no more. We’ll find you something to use.”
Before she could thank him, he was gone.
* * *
—
Someone was there with her in the dark. She didn’t know who, couldn’t see them, but she knew she wasn’t alone. Senna opened her eyes with the bleary reluctance of a child peeking above the covers, dreading what they might see. Being a picky sleeper wasn’t an option in the compound. You slept practically on top of one another. If someone snored, you dealt with it. If you hated the thin, poky mattress, you got over yourself and learned to ignore it. Most nights she was so exhausted from service and chores that her body didn’t give her a choice; every sinew simply gave up and her brain followed suit, lights out and lights out.
But nights were bad now. Hard. Daylight hours could be filled with vids and music, eating and drinking. In Marin’s apartment she had fancied herself a space-age Rip van Winkle, waking up after so many years to a universe she couldn’t possibly digest all at once. They were allowed history vids and documentaries on the compound, and the more creative of the brood would make up little stories to amuse everyone before bed. Kiri and Alex had lovely voices, so they would sing while everyone scrubbed floors or set out the washing to dry in front of the massive exhaust vents belching heat from the Hydroponica levels.
Senna had missed out on not just the pop culture of her day, but of all the days before. It drove Jonathan nuts, because she never got his references, and each exasperated reaction of his would send her down a new rabbit hole of investigation. That was how she found out about Rip van Winkle, but only after educating herself on what a Jumanji was and why Jonathan thundering, “What year is it!?” sent Marin into a paroxysm of giggles.
But nights were hard. There was no more labor during the day to grind her down to weary dust, and no familiar, squirming bodies packed in around her to provide comfort and security. There was no hum of the steam vents, no rhythmic snoring from Somchai, no pointed cough from Preece when he caught younger brood members gossiping in the dark.
If she did sleep, the nightmares came. Nights were hard.
And nights in Marin and Jonathan’s condo, and now the apartment on Ganymede, were spent alone. After a year, Senna knew alone. But she was not alone anymore. Before bed, she had tentatively asked Genie to lock her door, and she had heard a helpful chime indicating it had been done. In her fitful sleep, she felt sure she would have heard someone entering, or noticed the swishing sound of the door. But there was none of that. Just the thin specter of sleep and then a chill that swept across her torso, her left foot giving an involuntary spasm.
Senna carefully peeled the covers back and bunched them by her waist. With the portal window blacked out for sleep, the impenetrable darkness robbed her of everything. When she moved her hand across the mound of sheets, she couldn’t see it. Shivering, she waited for her eyes to adjust.
It was by the door.
“Oh,” she heard herself say.
It wasn’t moving, just waiting. Watching. It stood in a ready position, arms flexed as if it was surprised at being caught. Just a shape. Just a silhouette. Darkness stamped against darkness, but the fuzziness around its edges gave it away. A presence. A poised and watchful thing.
Her voice was jittery as she spoke. “Hello?”
A flood of soft, pink light filled the room, and Genie’s voice broke the close silence. “Hello, Senna. How can I help you?”
She blinked rapidly, blinded for a moment by the sudden clarity. There was nothing by the door. The suggestion of it remained, but only when she blinked her eyes. It had left its impression there.
“Am I alone?” she asked Genie.
“Yes,” he told her, with confidence and speed that should have soothed her, but didn’t. She was ignorant of many things, but she trusted her eyes. She knew what she had seen.
“Is the door locked?”
“Yes.”
A beat. “Are you sure?”
“Yes, I’m sure,” said Genie. “Is everything all right, Senna?”
“No.”
“I see. Is there anything I can do to assist you or make you more comfortable?”
She sighed. “No.”
Senna twisted toward the bedside table, and picked up the tablet there that Paxton had provided. It was just a white outline with a sheer substance in the middle, but when she touched the center, a holographic display shimmered to life.
“Can you lower the lights just a bit?” she asked Genie, her eyes traveling back to the door. When she blinked, the dark silhouette lingered. “I think I’ll be up for a while.”
13
In the end, it was just a very plain chair and a rolling cart with a few tubes, a canister and an IV prepped and laid out on a small tray.
Senna laughed, her throat rocky from lack of sleep. The grit in her eyes when she rolled out of bed a few hours earlier had come out in greasy chunks. “How does it work?”
It didn’t seem as scary, now that she was there. She had expected wires and cuffs and a big metal helmet coming down over her head, but the room with the LENG technology was small and cave-like, cool air pumped in, circulating in pleasant, scentless puffs. Both the dense carpet and insulated walls were painted flat black. An ambient projection of a star field played on the wall across from the single white chair.
Now she knew why Han had agreed to try it so quickly, it didn’t look intimidating at all. She had hoped to question him about the experience at breakfast but he wasn’t there, and she had eaten alone at a new white table under the crystal chandelier, this one sized just for her. Microgreens and avocado with fresh lemon and dill had been spread across a whole-wheat bagel. The cost of such food must have been astronomical.
Paxton hovered behind her near the door. He had found her at the breakfast table and taken her on a brief tour of the labs outside where they housed the LENG technology. It had gone fast; he was eager to begin. He wore baggy pants that would have been at home on the beach and a tight black polo shirt. That day his glasses had clear rims, and she thought he looked better with the black ones.
“A memory is just a series of connections,” Paxton told her. He smiled, at ease, and she wondered if he had practiced this speech for just such an occasion. Tapping his VIT, the star-field projection disappeared, replaced by a web of three-dimensional, filmy crimson lines, almost like a central nervous system but all clustered into one glob. It rotated slowly, sections of the web lighting up as he spoke.
“We can’t look at your neural map and zap just one
thing,” he continued, then thought about it and paused. “Although that would be nice.”
Senna smiled.
“Instead, we have to weaken the connections between memories and events. Once those connections become more vulnerable, we can rewrite the way you associate those memories.” As he explained, some of the ropy lines on the projection turned blue, then pale blue, and then the connective tissue between them dissolved. “We reconnect A and B to D, instead of C. If C, for our purposes, is pain, and D is happiness, or just neutrality.”
Different blue ropes attached themselves to the floating bit, and once the bond was strong again, the whole blob turned red again.
“So you’re not erasing anything,” Senna murmured, genuinely fascinated. “Just changing our associations?”
“In some cases,” Paxton replied. “The more complex the memory, the more difficult that rewriting becomes. The more reconnections we have to find and reforge. Time complicates things, too. Older memories are easier to tamper with, because those bonds are already fragile. Newer memories are harder to change.”
He lowered his wrist and the image vanished, the star field returning. “It will take a degree of trial and error for each of you. With Han, LENG simply had to change his association with you specifically. Helping him overcome the night of his mother’s death will require more finesse.”
“But you think you can do it?” Senna asked, half turning to gaze at him.
“I’m reasonably confident LENG can do it.” His smile was supremely confident. He nodded his messy mop of dark curls toward the IV tray. “After we’ve isolated the correct memory junctures, we flood your system with HDAC inhibitors. It promotes new connectivity in the brain, turns on your genes, so to speak. Just gives them a kick up the ass and tells them, hey, we want to do something else with these connections, you old bastard brain, let’s try something less terrible, eh?”
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