by Rayya Deeb
The wall opened up and I stood there like an alien stepping off a spaceship. I slowly walked towards the group with my arms pressed tight to my body. Nobody even reacted the way I felt they would have. I’m sure they could all tell this was uncomfortable for a teenage girl to basically be naked and center stage in front of an audience. It was like the most cliché nightmare ever was happening to me and it made my heart race. I couldn’t stop scanning everyone’s eyes to see if they were looking at me, judging me. They weren’t. They were focused on their work and I was just highly sensitive data for the time being. Phew.
Richard ushered me onto a small round platform parallel to the NeuroQuE. Once on it, we were both elevated to the top. It was open and the water inside was perfectly flat and calm. He placed a plug over my nose and a mouthpiece into my mouth that connected via a tube so I could breathe.
“When I give you the cue, you will swing both legs over and insert them, then slide yourself in,” he directed. “Don’t resist, just let yourself submerge into the saline bath. It will simulate weightlessness. The water is a comfortable 98.7°. When you emerge, you will be yourself, but you will be confused. You won’t know where you are. Now I am going to put these special goggles on over your eyes. They will be registering a range of activity, while also sending in messages. Do not take them off.”
I closed my eyes and said a prayer because, in many ways, this was an act of faith. I didn’t know what was about to happen next, and in a matter of moments, I would have absolutely no control.
Richard referred to his monitor. “Okay. All set for submergence in three, two, one…”
32
I RACED THROUGH memories of my time in Peru as my toes slipped into the NeuroQuE’s lukewarm saline. Over and over, I recalled the memory of seeing my dad. My hope was that it would be one memory that I could retain in the reboot. In two seconds I was fully submerged. I was instantly transfixed by the serenity in the liquid’s hollow silence. A meditative moment came over me as my mind and body felt at ease, but that floated away as moments always do. I was on the brink of having my brain tweaked and that was terrifying. I was unsure of my decision to do this. How could I get out of it now if I wanted to? Should I get out of this?
Streams of red, yellow and blue lights started to emit from the suction cups that were all over my body. The lights hit and rippled up and down the glass that enclosed me. I couldn’t see beyond the glass, but I didn’t need to. This showcase of lights was stunning. My whole self seemed to blend with the texture of the H20 and sodium chloride mixture and the movement of the lights. This suddenly felt absolutely right.
My body began to glide along in the water like it was being guided through a tunnel of lights. Before I had the chance to wonder what was happening, I was swiftly sucked down into a heap of nothingness. I couldn’t see, hear or feel a thing. My mind was all that was left of me, but slowly, it, too, was being sucked away. The sensation was as if the second I had the beginning of a thought, it would be vacuumed into a funnel and squeezed tight into nothingness. Then there were no more thoughts. Only light.
Bright white light. Nothing but light.
Seconds became minutes became hours became days became years became free of time and on the continuum of the infinite. My being suddenly knew no bounds.
Bright white light.
Bright white light. I was hovering.
Bright white light. I soared at hyper speed.
Bright white light. I was far away from the life I knew.
Bright white light. I disconnected.
Bright white light. I connected to everything.
Bright white light. I took my last steps on the edge of time.
Bright white light forever and ever.
“Uhhh…” I moaned as I stirred awake from a deep sleep that felt like it lasted all winter.
I was underneath a muted, orange spotlight. My squinty eyes blinked to acclimate. One, two, I took a breath in and felt the air in my lungs spread into my veins and the blood streamed through my body. A tear trickled down from the corner of my eye. This life was miraculous and here I was in it.
But where was I? Had I passed out in the backpacking shop? My eyes had come to and I could now see that I was not where I was only moments ago. I was somewhere else. Panic entered my space. I looked at my hands. They were empty. Where was the eggplant backpack I was just holding? Where was the salesman that was just helping me decide between raincoats?
I lifted my head to a wave of vertigo and let it rest back down again. I turned my head to see the outlines of several people next to me. For some reason it took me a moment to gather my words, but I finally got them out. “Where am I? Who are you?”
A figure leaned in next to me. My vision came to and I saw her—
“Doro, it’s me, Ellen.”
“Ellen?!”
“Shh, yes, try and take it easy.”
“How did you get here?”
I was beyond confused. Had she caught me here in Lima and brought me to the hub?
“Can you give us a moment?” Ellen asked several medical-looking people that surrounded us in the room.
I looked down at my body. Why was I under a sheet on an exam table?! I tried again to lift my head and I realized I was strapped down. My instincts made me squirm but I was definitely locked in hard.
A mature female doctor in an intricate black, robotic chair was looking at 3D holographic charts in the space in front of her. The whole contraption looked familiar— like Anika’s BioNan mechanisms. It freaked me the heck out. Had they been messing with my implant?
“What is that? Who are they, Ellen? What is going on?! Let me off of this table!!!” I pleaded for dear life.
“Doro, if you calm down, I can explain.”
The doctor stood up and approached Ellen Malone. “I understand that my team does not have clearance for the subject you wish to discuss with Ms. Campbell, but it's my obligation to provide reason for my concern.”
“Please,” Ellen suggested.
“The activity registering in Ms. Campbell’s brain is highly unusual and I think it is imperative that we don’t break from monitoring her.”
“Why are they watching my brain?! Ellen!”
I started to heave. I was freezing yet my body broke into a sweat.
“Doro, you need to keep it together. Panicking won’t help you,” Ellen sternly warned me.
I was in no position to relax, though, and I just couldn’t control my body from squirming.
Ellen turned back to the doctor. “Can you explain a little more?”
The doctor looked at me and then back to Ellen. The doctor was visibly disturbed by something she was watching on the monitor. “There are some erratic frequencies in her microtubules that we need to keep an eye on.”
“Okay, I understand,” Ellen said, “but I’m going to need twenty minutes with her right away, so unless it is a dire circumstance, I am going to have to ask you to give us this time.”
“Alright then,” the doctor replied reluctantly, then looked at me worriedly and back to the charts. “I will be watching your stats closely from the other room.”
Ellen suggested to the doctor, “If you could, just wait in the wings on standby.”
I wasn't sure that I wanted to be left completely alone with Ellen. Part of me believed I needed witnesses when I was incapacitated like this. It was times like these I could reflect upon the extreme value of autonomy.
The doctor agreed to Ellen's request. She and her team walked to the brick wall. It opened up for them. I watched them exit and the wall closed behind them. Ellen and I were alone. I was mad. I was confused. I wanted to be released from these cuffs.
“I’m going to unlock you now, Doro.”
Without making a peep or a move, Ellen looked at the watch on my wrists and ankles, and just like that they melted away. That was some crazy mastery of the flex implant. I jolted up to a seated position, and felt like I was going to faint. I braced myself on the table and starte
d to shiver. It was suddenly freezing. I struggled to gather the sheet around my body. Ellen took her blazer off and tried to put it around me. I resisted her help and took it from her to do it myself. I pulled it over my shoulders. I had no words to say to her. She needed to be the one to do all the talking, and if she didn't have answers, then I was going to remain mute until someone told me exactly what was going on.
“I know this is incredibly bizarre, Doro.”
I couldn't help but let out a nervous laugh.
“Last thing you knew, you were in Lima, Peru, and now suddenly you’re here, with me, in a room with all this medical equipment and strange doctors. First let me tell you where you are. This is Claytor Lake’s Center for Quantum Neurology and Consciousness Experimentations.”
“What?!”
“You and I both knew that when this moment came along there would be nothing I could say to make you take my word, so we decided it would be best to let you tell yourself.”
My eyes narrowed and I clenched my teeth together.
Ellen removed her flexer from her wrist and handed it to me. “Why don't you go ahead and put that on?”
In a way, this felt like she was extending an olive branch. A person’s flexer is such a personal thing, and this one was tied directly to her implant. She really had to have faith in me to let me get my hands on this thing.
I took it and put it on.
“Retrieve FigureFlex video library,” Ellen commanded.
A 3-D thumbnail library containing all of Ellen Malone’s FigureFlex videos appeared hovering above Ellen’s flexer on my wrist.
I looked up at her, slightly intrigued yet still skeptical. I looked back at the content library. One 3-D thumbnail was me in an outfit I didn't remember having ever worn.
“I don’t understand.” But I kind of did. It had appeared I recorded a FigureFlex of myself. But maybe they had created it to trick me, as if they had simulated it in a holographic computer program or something. I was no fool and I knew anything was possible here.
“You feel like you were at that outfitter in Peru moments, even seconds ago, but that was actually many days ago, and since then you have made a great many discoveries. The reason you feel it is still May 20th, is because we had to reboot your memory to that day through your Veil. Today is actually June 29th.”
I started digging through my brain for any fragment of information to validate this, but I found nothing.
“That’s… impossible.”
“I know one thing you surely haven't forgotten is that in Seneca nothing is impossible.”
I eyed the 3-D hologram of myself and I noticed a scar on my arm— a scar that I didn’t have before. That was puzzling. I slipped my hand under Ellen’s blazer that I was wearing to feel that exact spot on my arm and was surprised to feel a healed scab where there was obviously a weeks old wound. I had no recollection of getting hurt.
“You recorded a message to yourself, to explain why you went through with this, and what you need to do next,” Ellen said.
“How do I know it’s real?”
Ellen smiled, “You asked the same question before you recorded it. How will I know it’s real when I watch it? I'm going to leave you alone now, with yourself, and you can find out. Once I am out of the room you can press play.”
“Okay.”
Ellen left the room through the same wall that the doctors exited moments ago. I was alone now in this isolated chamber. My pale, clammy feet hung inches away from the stone floor. I shivered. In the silence I decided that, instead of seeking answers in my mind at this point, I would try to feel it in my gut. Should I press play? I stared eye to eye with the still of holographic me.
I slowly moved my finger to the play button and hovered over it for a moment before hitting it. The FigureFlex video began.
What's up, past but also present me? This is such a trip isn't it?
I was clearly in a much more chipper mood than I am now and it was obvious to me I wasn't under duress in the making of the video. That, I would have been able to tell.
Before I get into details, I just need to let myself be certain this is actually me and not some crazy S.O.I.L.-created, computer-simulated version of me, because we both know that would be the first thing we’d think.
I squinted. Ha. I know myself so well.
So here are a few facts: Killer will do anything for a marrow bone from Romeo’s.
I laughed, and funnily enough this holographic-video-version of me paused for a beat for me to do so.
The ratio of two shots of espresso to one pump of mocha is the ultimate sweet spot.
“True”
Dave Grohl is a god.
I nodded emphatically, “Absolute fact.”
I know you're agreeing with me right now and starting to enjoy this. We could go all day, but there is some very serious stuff to cover and the first, most important thing that I want you to know is that… Dad is alive.
I stood up from the exam table. I was eye to eye with myself and the heavy mask of doubt that covered me was crumbling. As I stared deep into the eyes of holographic me I could see the truth emanating from my soul. This was real. My dad was alive. I knew it. I knew he was.
Holographic me started to cry.
He's alive and he needs us.
Over the next fifteen minutes I listened as holographic me explained to current, yet past version of me, what my dad's involvement in Seneca was, the purpose of Doromium and what I needed to do to return to present me. I was in tears, but they had become tears of happiness.
Without a shadow of a doubt, I believed.
33
AFTER A SOLID six hours on that exam table, they couldn't seem to determine the reason for the erratic activity in my microtubules. I kept playing back the word “erratic.” I felt particularly stable considering how weird this was— I wasn’t the erratic one, this whole situation was erratic!
I watched Ellen grow impatient, quite out of character for her. She was progressively checking the time more often, taking deeper breaths and asking more and more questions. “Wouldn't we be aware if something calamitous was going to happen by now?” she asked.
The doctor, whom I came to know as Dr. Cairncross, had also grown more impatient, mostly with being questioned. Ellen and Dr. Cairncross stood on either side of me, discussing my well-being. “You're asking me to speculate. That is against my code of ethics,” Dr. Cairncross quipped.
“I'm not suggesting unethical practice, but I need to assess her level of danger and measure it against the overall danger we face if we do not proceed immediately.”
“I understand. Regardless, what you decide will be based upon assumptions.”
Ellen put her hand on my shoulder. “Get up, Doro. It's time to get dressed.”
“Senator Malone,” the doctor interjected.
But Ellen was in fierce mode, standing tall and resolute. “Listen, I understand your concern and I am concerned, too, but all we can do is monitor the situation as we move forward. So whatever you need to do to make that happen, do it.”
“Very well.”
Dr. Cairncross headed back to her seat. Ellen motioned for me to get up and for one of the doctor’s assistants to take me to let me get dressed again.
Several minutes later, Ellen and I left C-QNCE. Dr. Cairncross had equipped me with a device that would track my brain activity while I was off-site. She also dedicated her main physician’s assistant to observing my chart twenty-four-seven and reporting to her on the hour.
Ellen and I took a private acoustic carrier to the computing center where Dom and I had completed Operation Crystal. I knew that the reason Ellen didn't say much to me was because of the bug, but she did brief me on Mars, the Departers and the Repairers.
Being here made me feel sad and nostalgic. This is where Dom and I were when we first discovered the DNA of my father and it indicated his presence in the Colombian Seneca hub. It was during Operation Crystal that our love deepened. Dom and I were so distant now
and it was my own fault for not telling him that he had been blamed for the flighter crash. I wondered if he was over me by now. The thought of that killed me. It had been so long since I left for Peru to find my dad. I wished I knew more details of that meeting with my dad. But I realized that the sooner I could complete this task, discover the perpetrator on my flex implant and pave the way for Ellen and Gilroy to uncover their motivation, the quicker I could get back to my actual, current self and those memories.
I hoped with all my heart that I would also still have a chance with Dom. There could never be a love like that again and I imagined that when we revived it, it would be more powerful than ever. On that note, I turned my attention to the joystick.
First things first, I pulled all my current data to the FlexOculi screen in front of me. Once it was up, I pinpointed my implant’s incoming and outgoing signals. In a normal functioning implant the signal would just be coming in and going out of my brain to spots I had determined. In this case, it was sending and receiving to a remote location. The message pathway was clear. For now. Still, I had to find out where it was coming from, so I would send a message out and track its path.
This kind of code breaking was normally a cakewalk, but for some reason I hit a brick wall this time. Or, more like a signal wall that tried to bounce the signal back to me like a mirror instead of allowing it to complete its one-way path.
I fidgeted in my seat and squeezed my fists together. Ellen noticed I was becoming irritated.
“What’s up?”
“Nothing. Just a little hiccup.” I closed my eyes and tried to extinguish my frustration. Frustration would only stimulate the part of my brain that obstructed my problem solving capabilities. It always did, but the older I got, the better I got at dealing with it by acknowledging it and getting it under wraps.
I remembered back to when I had broken a code in Eastern Europe that held the gaming algorithm I piggybacked for my poker account. It felt like another lifetime even though it was less than two years ago that I had broken the world’s biggest gaming algorithms and funneled the money to an offshore account. I was fifteen and pulling in millions, but was too naive to cover my tracks. This was going to be different.