Seneca Element

by Rayya Deeb

  I got to her door, knocked, and waited.

  After a few moments the door opened.

  “Hi, Mom.”

  “Doro!” She threw her arms around me. “Oh my god. Doro.”

  “Campbell.” A man’s voice said with way too much pep.

  I looked behind my mom.

  Gregory Zaffron!? “What are you doing here?” I snapped.

  My mom was confused by my reaction. “Whoa, honey, it’s okay. This is Gregory.”

  “I know. Wait.” I shook my head in disbelief, trying to shake off the shock. “How is this happening, how do you two even know each other?”

  This wasn’t how this moment was supposed to go. This couldn’t be. Not now when we were so close to being back together as a family.

  “Great to see you, too,” Gregory smirked.

  “They sent Gregory to notify me after you disappeared, and he has been nice enough to stop by to check on me ever since,” my mom said, smiling back at Gregory. Totally clueless.

  No.

  No!

  No!!!

  I wasn’t seeing this. Oh god, please tell me my flex implant had already slipped back into the hack and I was hallucinating and this couldn’t be! It was. It was happening! Gregory Zaffron befriending my mom! My entire world was suddenly crushed by a boulder. But I held back every bit of emotion I could, keeping it all held tightly inside in a little box so Gregory couldn’t see that he affected me.

  My mom didn’t take her eyes off of me. “I don’t understand,” she said, and looked to Gregory. “If it wasn’t for his concern, I would have been all alone here, Doro.”

  “She’s right, kiddo,”

  “Don’t call me kiddo!”

  “Whoa, relax tiger.” Gregory reached for my elbow, and I yanked away. “I just want to make sure your mom is okay. You’ve had us worried sick,” he said, all fake nice.

  Us?! I couldn’t stand another second. All I could do was turn away and take a huge breath as I felt all the oxygen inside of me had been sucked out.

  I couldn’t tell my mom that my dad was alive. I wanted to turn around and scream it so bad. So, so bad. To announce at the top of my lungs that my dad would be back for us after he had saved the world. But in the moments just before I walked away from my dad, he had said, “The only way to keep your mother safe is to keep her out of it.” I heard his words echo in my head. He wanted to protect her, and here she was being duped by this scumbag, Gregory. The exact opposite of what my dad wanted.

  “Excuse us for a moment, Gregory,” my mom said and she stepped outside the door with me. She commanded it to close. I kept my back to her. I couldn’t bear to look at her. She stood behind me and took my hand. My impulse was to pull away.

  We were alone in the big empty hallway. The doors to the residences were flush with the walls, which were all stark gray and that suddenly felt ironic because we were in some crazy gray area. It hit me that my mom and I were perpetually stuck in an undefinable hallway to somewhere else. It hurt so bad that our liberation was within reach, but then, in the blink of an eye, it slipped further away than it was before. There was nothing I could do to bring us closer, even though I was standing there with her.

  “Doro. He’s just been a friend. Nothing to freak out about.”

  I shook my head. I didn’t want to hear any more about this. I just wanted it to stop. I turned around to face her. “He’s no friend of ours, Mom. Don’t be fooled.”

  “Okay, you know what? Who cares about him? Where have you been?! Where?! I came here to be with you and then you were gone.”

  I couldn’t shake this image of Gregory acting buddy-buddy with my mom. There were such sickening ulterior motives going on that I couldn’t explain to her and I wanted to puke. Instead, I stood up straight and took a stance. “I’ve been on my own now for a while in Seneca and I’m going to be making major choices as an adult now, too.”

  I could see this stung my mom. I was her only child, telling her I was a child no longer. This wasn’t tit for tat, though it might have appeared that way. She looked intently at me as I continued, “There are some things going on here that you can’t know about, that you won’t understand, and I am committing my life from this point forward to fighting for what is right.”

  All I really wanted to say was that Dad was alive and that he and I were going to fix everything and all be back together, but I couldn’t and it killed me. Dad was alive and she could have him back soon but she was closing that door. This was horrendous and could be an absolute disaster.

  “I wish you wouldn’t do this.”

  “And I wish you wouldn’t do that,” I motioned towards Gregory.

  My mom clamped her lips and shook her head.

  “Well… I guess at this point we each do what is right for ourselves. So good for you, you’re not lonely anymore,” I said before turning and walking away.

  “I love you, Doro,” she said quietly. I didn’t stop and say it back and I think that actually hurt me more than it hurt her.

  29

  BECAUSE IT WASN’T safe to flex, I went straight to the youth residences to look for Dom, but he wasn’t there. Of course he wasn’t. Session had just started. I knew I would find no such desired results by going to Reba’s either, because he was most certainly in session, too. To make matters worse, he was probably in the Aboves for the rest of the morning, on some on-location Intuerian assignment, so I wouldn’t get to see him before I set out to Claytor Lake with Ellen.

  My breath was short, my heart raced, and my hands were jittery. This was awful. I couldn’t get the image of my mom and her ‘buddy’ Gregory out of my head. The skin around my eyes was raw from crying after I left my mom’s place and I just couldn’t undo this terrible clenching in my gut. I wiped my sweaty palms across my pants. This was not the mood I needed to be in before entering a serious neurological undertaking. All I had wanted to do was see my mom and spend some real moments with her, reconnecting and hearing about how much she loved exploring Seneca. But now I didn’t want to hear anything about that. Not at all! I knew enough to know it was freaking gross.

  I leaned back against the wall next to Dom’s door and just sank to the floor. My stomach had dropped there before the rest of my body. My forehead rested on my knees and a toxic moan bubbled up from within the depths of me. My chest was filled with the sack of filth I’d just witnessed, but I wasn’t going to let myself cry any longer. Gregory Zaffron could not have that control over me. I had already beat him fair and square, but he was coming back for more. Bringing my mom into this was just plain fighting dirty.

  I was going to wait here until Dom got back.

  After quite some time, a body plunked down next to me.

  I didn’t want to look.

  My breath stopped at the top of an inhale.

  “Campbella,” rolled off his tongue.

  I released my breath and on my next inhale, as I lifted my head, a spark of joy dropped in my lap. I threw my arms around Reba and practically knocked him over.

  “Hey, chica! Happy to see you, too!”

  I didn’t want to let go. It felt so darn good to have him with me. My mind, body and soul full-on grabbed this guy and sucked up the cup of positivity inside of me that had been dumped out at my mom’s door moments ago. I squeezed him so hard. “Thank god you’re here. I thought you’d be in session.”

  “Yeah, well, according to my schedule I should be there but I had something else in mind.”

  “You knew. Of course you knew.”

  “And you know I’m always here for you.”

  “I do,” I said, still squeezing him. “What happened to you guys after we split up? Is Dom okay? And Anika?”

  “We parted ways with Anika in Lima, and don’t know what happened to her because we flew old school jet back to Dulles, and she stayed to catch another flight. But I think she is okay.”

  “I hope so.” That stressed me out, not knowing.

  “Don’t worry,” Reba said, and he was right
. Anika was tough and smart and would want me to stay positive. “And Dom is putting on a face like he’s fine, but he’s freaking out until he knows you’re back.”

  “I wonder where he is. He should be home by now; sessions are out.”

  “I am actually not sure.” Reba was surprised with himself. “But I do know what we should do in the meantime,” he said with delight in his voice.

  We gave each other knowing grins.

  Half an hour later Reba and I were sitting across from each other over two steaming hot plates of chilaquiles.

  “I knew we were going to be friends from the moment we met,” I said to him and took my first bite. My eyes closed and my soul instantly warmed up. The lime. The cilantro. The green chile sauce. Heaven!

  “And I knew even before that,” he replied with a whole body kind of smile.

  “Thank you, Reba… for everything.”

  “You don’t need to thank me. Isn’t this just what friends do?”

  I nodded and looked at him as I chewed. This guy was so genuine, it killed me. I mean, how incredible would the world be if there were more people like Reba in it? Innocent, yet full of wisdom, love, loyalty and so dang cute, too.

  I swallowed my bite and all I could think to say to him was, “I love you.”

  Reba blushed. He wasn’t shocked to hear it from my mouth because I was sure he already knew I loved him, and I knew that he loved me, too. I guess you could say I was part Intuerian when I was around Reba.

  “I love you, too, Campbella.”

  He hadn’t touched his food yet and half of mine was already halfway digested and on its way to the poo-renew system to make more energy for this advanced society. “Watch out, Reebs. If you don’t eat that, I will.”

  He pushed his fork around his plate, but clearly didn’t have an appetite and couldn’t hide his state of unease.

  “Maybe we need to go get you a tuna sandwich and a cookie?”

  That got a smile out of him, but he kept his eyes on the plate of food.

  “What’s up?” I asked.

  “I just feel… worried about you.”

  “I can tell, and I realize we’re going to have to talk about this.”

  He looked up at me with those puppy dog eyes. “Don’t do it, Doro.”

  I put my fork down, and with the softest tone I could find in me, I tried to let him down easy. “I don’t have a choice.”

  “You always have a choice.”

  “Well, then, this has to be it.”

  “But you’re making a choice without knowing all the facts.”

  “I thought facts weren’t what you dabbled in.”

  “Here’s the thing—”

  “You think I haven’t thought long and hard about this?”

  “I know you have.”

  “I could just stay as is and do nothing about what I now know. Yeah, sure, I’ll remember meeting my dad but what good does that do me in this world? We still won’t all get to be together. Beyond that, there is too much riding on this… I can’t get into the details, Reebs, I think you know that.”

  Reba nodded his head with an annoyed little scrunch in his lips. So I added, “You know what you know, I know what I know, and that’s just the nature of the beast.”

  “I understand.”

  “Do you also understand that my inaction would be a detriment to the whole society?”

  I could tell that he got that. But something else was playing into his visible emotions. Doubt filled his drooping eyes.

  I continued, “When I go through with this I will forget meeting my dad and all that transpired down there in Hub 48, but we will meet again— as long as I stay on this path.”

  “There are many paths. You have to be careful which one you choose to go down.”

  I sat forward. “Reba, I am sorry this feels unsettling to you, but to me it is exactly what I need to do.”

  “I understand your motivation, Campbella, I really do. But I just want you to consider this. Your soul will always be, but where it goes could be in jeopardy with the decisions you make right now.”

  I had made my mind up, but he was really insistent in his opinion and I wanted to understand why. “Okay. Please explain.”

  “So, your soul exists inside you and outside of you at the same time, right?”

  He was speaking a foreign language to me, but I had to listen to my friend, because if anyone was fluent in this language, I knew it would be Reba. I sat back, placed my hands in my lap and peeled open the door to my mind.

  “You are right here with me. We are both experiencing this living, breathing consciousness together, largely in part because of the quantum mechanics inside our brains that serve as a vehicle for our consciousness here on earth. Right?”

  “I’m with you. I’m going to finish my plate while you continue to explain. And, if you’re not careful, I will finish yours next.”

  He pushed his plate in my direction. “You mess with the inner-workings of your brain, you could also mess with your consciousness— and without consciousness, this experience here, as you know it, will cease to exist. Your soul will find its way out into the great wide open, and your human body will become nothing more than a robot… or dust in the wind.”

  The gravity of Reba’s wisdom tugged at my certainty. He didn’t want to lose what we had here— an organically grown fondness for one another’s beating heart. While I got it, I believed that potentially losing our connection, along with all the other great relationships I had built, was the gamble I had to take.

  30

  “GOOD MORNING, DORO. You ready to go?”

  It was par for the course that Ellen arrived spot-on-time at seven in the morning. I lugged myself through the door, hadn’t even brushed my hair. “This is where I say I was born ready, right?” I pushed a smile through, wishing I could pretend I was bright-eyed and bushy-tailed, but the truth emanated from my heavy eyelids like a dense fog.

  “Too bad you weren’t able to get a good night’s rest before your big day,” Ellen said.

  “This is where I wish I could say sleep is overrated. But it’s not. I would kill for some sleep right now.” I couldn’t sleep because after my meal with Reba, I went back to wait for Dom outside his residence. I wasn’t going to flex him and have anyone monitoring us, so I just waited and waited. Dom didn’t return to his room by the time the acoustic carriers stopped running to my residence hall, so I had to take the last ride home without seeing him.

  “You just have a lot on your mind,” Ellen said. “A little more than the average teenager, I’d say.”

  “Yeah. Totally the opposite of my childhood when I didn’t have a care in the world. That just feels like a distant memory now.”

  We were both quiet for a moment as we walked to the acoustic carrier. I kept thinking about it, though— how life was astronomically harder now. “Jeez, those were easier times. How is it that we all thought it was so tough? We had it good.”

  Ellen smiled. “You wouldn’t be the first to wish for going back to when times were easier. Life is hard for a lot of people right now. Humanity is suffering deeply on so many levels, and it will take a tremendous force to heal us.”

  “It’s just so sad.”

  “Indeed it is, but, Doro, you just remember our goal is to bring everyone with us into better times and I think you’ll muster up all the energy you need to carry through and be instrumental in seeing to it that that happens.”

  I tried to be mindful of that. All too often I was wrapped up in me like a little cocoon. What was happening to me, what had happened to me, and what was going to happen to me? I had to find a balance between doing this for me and the collective good, not just one or the other. Truth is, although I wanted peace and love to prevail on earth, I wasn’t a pawn in anyone’s game. I was human and I wanted my family back, too.

  Ellen and I were en route to The Center for Quantum Neurology and Consciousness Experimentations at Claytor Lake, otherwise referred to as C-QNCE. It was a part
of that secretive hub I had yet to see and I was excited, to say the least, but I also knew I needed to stay vigilant. I sat back in my seat in the flighter and got strapped in. As we flighted along, I thought about everything that was going on. Ellen quietly jotted notes on her FlexBoard.

  My challenge had grown in the past twenty-four hours. Not only did I have the whole enemy-of-the-Repairers I was preparing to take down, but now I also had this issue with my mom. She was moving on right before my eyes. Now that I was away from Seneca City and my mom, it left more space for her relationship with Gregory to progress and that horrified me to no end. I swallowed and a lump formed in my throat. I was the only one who could stop their connection from fully blossoming before it was too late. I didn’t want to even imagine what “too late” looked like. Chills shot up my spine and I literally shivered. Would I feel different when I forget my dad is alive?

  Rather than dwelling in the dismal abyss of my thoughts, I shifted to soak up the world outside of my head. The plump spinachy land that Ellen and I traveled through wasn’t just a backdrop painted by Mother Nature. It was a bathtub for the soul and I needed a soak.

  Spring was alive and kicking on the east coast and, coming from a lifetime in the desert, the musky, thick air was still a novelty to me. I ran my fingers up my arm to feel how moisturized my skin felt. It was like silk. My racing mind slowed. I remembered to be aware of my breaths, a practice my mom taught me.

  “We’re going to see a Quantum Neurologist under the premise of a follow-up on your brain aneurysm,” Ellen said. “Short of political details, she has top secret clearance enough to know the bio-tech reality behind the cover, and why we must do this procedure, but her crew does not know any details, or who you are. They will be following her instructions. So just keep that in mind and answer all questions accordingly. I’ll do the majority of the talking.”

  “Got it.”

  Ellen Malone always knew what she wanted and where she was going. I had to give her that. She never gave the impression that she was confused or even trying to figure things out, while she kept information close to the vest like a champion. She was a real mentor in this sense. But I was confused as to how it was even possible for this to be allowed, considering I was still a minor. “Ellen, how is it that they are even allowed to operate on me like this, without my mom’s consent?”