“I oversaw preparations. Mercer, Terra, and Romesh are more than capable of managing the procedures themselves. In my opinion, I have a more important responsibility.”
“Breakfast?”
“You.”
I snort.
“I’m well beyond your responsibility,” I say. More feet clunk past the doors, and I chew on a nail absently, wondering who was summoned next. “Kind of a missed opportunity, really. You could have used this as a great excuse for altering our memories all over again.”
The plausibility of this hits me as well, but Shiffrin’s laugh is easy.
“Well, I think we all know that the Revisions can’t go on without Adam.”
“Right,” I mutter. “One less self-serving person to worry about. Had enough of those to last a few lifetimes.”
“Like your parents?”
For a second I think I misheard her. “E-excuse me?” I say breathlessly.
“Of course, I know all about them,” she says, holding my gaze. “I was your therapist—even if I didn’t do a very good job, given the circumstances.”
“My parents are none of your business.”
“Perhaps,” she concedes. “But then, I think you’re very familiar with the burden of truth you cannot share. Such as last night, with Chloe.”
I feel the blood roll out of my face, replaced swiftly by fire.
“What, are the cameras still on?”
“She came to see me,” says Shiffrin softly. “And I think it only fair to tell you the same thing I told her. That over time, you may reconcile. That you both might grow to a place where you can be friends. Maybe part of the reason your parents were unloving to you was because they never knew real love themselves. You might have been the one to change that.” She pauses. “Of course, in the case of your parents, I’m sorry to say this is all hypothetical. But I thought it may come as some comfort.”
“Comfort,” I say with a bitter laugh. “Yes, well, did you consider that my parents and I may have just had a toxic relationship? That they might’ve grown worse with age?”
“It’s possible,” she says.
I fold my arms, feeling old resentment and anger creeping into my shoulders. “Yeah. Well, I guess we’ll never know, will we?”
“No, I guess we won’t.”
Silence settles in. More feet pass. Shiffrin rises and ambles into the kitchen. When she returns, she’s holding a fresh cup. Without a word, she sets it down in front of me.
“What’s this?”
“Hot cider.”
I frown, filled with suspicion.
“We still have cider?” I ask, smelling the fragrant mixture. I’ve always loved hot cider. Especially when it comes with fresh donuts. But since it isn’t likely that she’s about to start pulling pastries out of her lab coat, I settle for circling my hands around the warm plastic.
The heat radiates up my arms, more soothing than I expected.
“You know, for a therapist you aren’t very consistent. You attack me, you give me a treat. You erase my memories, you help me escape. You try to sedate me, you give me Verced.”
“As Adam was fond of saying, there are versions of the truth. Perspective can change a lover into a thief or an enemy into a friend. But just so we understand each other, I’ve always hated the Revisions. Even when I first had the idea, I hated them.”
Yet again, I feel I must have misheard.
“Wait—are you saying the Revisions were your idea?”
“They were. The first time.” She stares into her cup. “After the ruin of Earth, the cadets didn’t know how to carry on. We were unable to console them, and we began to fear for their health. I presented my idea as a theory, but we waited. Then a cadet took his own life. A boy named Jacob. So we decided to use the Stitches to reshape their memories. And it worked—for a time. But then they became troubled, expressing feelings of loneliness, frustration, anxiety. Only now they didn’t have a reason for those feelings.”
“Because you erased them,” I say impatiently. “Dosset already told me all this.”
She leans back in her plastic chair, away from the table.
“I’m sure he did. He may have also told you that he was the one who suggested we repeat the process on a regular basis. In his mind, doing so would allow us to monitor how well the cadets were doing mentally, and also to clean up any lingering troublesome memories. We all put it to a vote.”
“And you all agreed.”
“No,” she says.
“No?”
“No, we did not all agree.” Her sigh is heavy. “At the time I was colony director, and Adam was our neurologist. The Stitches were his, brought to study the mental health of not only the cadets, but the doctors as well. To be sure we weren’t developing cabin fever, among other things. But that was before Adam became the surrogate for the Memory Bank.”
“Hold on… you were the colony director?” I say in disbelief.
“Adam was as brilliant as he was cunning,” she says wryly. “The day before the vote, he went about his routine check-ups. And when we gathered the next morning, I found that my fellow doctors no longer believed me to be the director, but rather Adam. The vote was, not surprisingly, in favor of the Revisions. Unanimous, except for one.”
“You.”
She takes another long drink from her coffee.
“Why did he let you keep your memories?” I ask, bewildered. “Why not just tie up loose ends and be done with it?”
“On my own, I was powerless to stop him. And I believe he trusted me. Over time, he felt, I’d see the sense in it all. I think it was also some comfort to know that at least one person could be honest with him—really, truly honest.”
“Even if it meant a disagreement.”
“Especially if it meant a disagreement,” she replies. “With my administrative experience, I helped him devise a plan to carry out the Revisions week by week. Meanwhile, he knew the science behind the Stitch. Once we had a roadmap of each cadet’s mind, we let the brain work to our advantage. Any phantom memories that were missed in a procedure would be thrown out as an idle dream or the workings of the imagination.” She stares out over the cafeteria as if lost in the memories. “It would’ve never worked without both of us.”
“And so time moved on,” I mutter, not bothering to hide my contempt.
“It did. The cadets continued their weekly therapy sessions. The doctors took notes and monitored behavior. Adam compared the notes with the Memory Bank, of which he kept a copy in his mind. He told the psychologists what to watch for, where the cadets were struggling. In turn, the doctors focused on those topics, asking questions for Adam to review. Gradually it becomes routine. Habits formed to make the process run more smoothly by the week. And so the entire population was kept happy and docile. Except for Adam, I suppose.”
“You mean Dosset wasn’t happy with his little utopia?”
“The constant strain took a toll on his body. Perhaps because he shouldered the burden of an entire colony. Or maybe because his mind endured the constant upload of new memories. First came the fatigue, then the oxygen tank. After a while, he ceased to leave the Helix at all.”
I think back to when I first received the Memory Bank. How much pain it caused me; how the doctors said it could have been fatal.
What quantity of memories did Dosset have stored in his mind? He told me he had everything—surely even secrets he kept from the Memory Bank. Could that have been the reason for his frailty?
Did such a powerful strain on his mind end up crippling his body as well?
Shifting in my chair, I feel the creak of joints, the hiss of cuts, the dull torment of aching bruises. And they don’t even include the stress my body received at the hands of my headaches.
“Poor him,” I grunt, giving voice to my thoughts. “I guess that’s the price of manipulating everyone on the planet.”
She gives me a strange look, scrutinizing my face like a jeweler looking for faults. I shift uncomfortably in
my chair again, running a finger around the rim of my cup.
“Then what?” I finally ask, trying to make her stop staring. “You came to your senses at last when you gave me the inoculator?”
“Long before that, actually. I knew shortly after you evaded Adam the second time that he’d met his match. Yet I needed to protect the cadets. That was always my primary concern. That’s why I did my part when Adam asked it of me. Because all along, in spite of everything he did that I couldn’t agree with, I knew he was doing the right thing.”
“The right thing?” My hands grow still and I stare at her, incredulous. “He manipulated everyone. He stole their memories. We’ve all been his slaves.”
“For your good, Lizzy. It was always for your good. He did what he had to do. And now more than ever, what we still have to do.”
All at once I’m cold with nerves, though I don’t entirely know why. What she’s saying doesn’t make any sense.
“Still need to…?”
“Without the Revisions, the cadets are prone to self-destruction,” Shiffrin says calmly. “Adam showed me that. And you proved him right. Your actions nearly destroyed the entire colony. Since Saturday night we’ve been careful not to risk anything that could arouse suspicion. Especially as it relates to you. You must know how valuable you are.”
Threads of a terrifying idea are unspooling in my mind, knotting loosely as they meet. But there are strands that don’t make sense yet.
I push away from the table, almost tripping over my chair as I whip my head over my shoulder, expecting to find Sarlow and McCallum lurking behind me. But we’re still alone.
“What are you saying?” I demand, and my voice cracks. “I don’t get what you’re saying.”
“Simply that your fellow cadets will need you now more than ever,” Shiffrin replies, still seated as she rolls her empty cup in her hands. I think of Romie saying almost exactly the same thing, and I feel sick. “We are the last of humanity. It is simply too high a cost and too great a risk to leave these things to chance.”
“You’re wrong,” I shout. “The lies, the tricks, the secrets—they’re the reason! They’re the reason Dosset is dead!”
“No, Elizabeth,” says Shiffrin gently. “You are.”
I recoil as if she hit me.
“Me?”
“If you hadn’t released Atkinson and helped him overthrow the system, Dosset would still be alive. Now we must build a better system. One that you sustain and I control.”
“I will never help you,” I spit, again looking for more assailants to come forward, to force a Stitch around my head. But still, the cafeteria is empty.
“Perhaps not now,” says Shiffrin patiently. “But once we adjust your memories, I think you’ll help us in any way you can, like the other doctors do. Your friends certainly will, once we inoculate them and finish the Revisions.” She glances at her watch thoughtfully. “Which should be any minute now.”
On top of everything else she’s said, I don’t immediately take her meaning. But some intuition is humming through my thoughts, and like an echo in a cave, it builds steadily louder until the truth hits me in a rattling shock—
The doctors aren’t returning the cadets’ memories.
They’re erasing them.
My whole body has gone hollow. They plan to continue the Revisions now. And so they’ll get healthy cadets with no dead parents, no guilt, no baggage to weigh them down.
I can almost see the sense in it.
Shiffrin’s eyes bore into mine, hard and black as onyx. And suddenly all I can think about is Noah and his golden eyes and everything I didn’t get a chance to explain.
“What have you done?” I say weakly.
“Only what is necessary,” she replies.
Without thinking I turn on my heel and charge the doors, blasting into the hallway as Shiffrin calls behind me. Her voice fades, sucked into a vacuum.
Empty. All empty. I charge the Wheel, a desperate weight hanging in my throat. How could I have let this happen? How was I so blind, so distracted that I didn’t even think about what Shiffrin might be wanting? What she might’ve been waiting for all along.
Please… please don’t forget me. Please, don’t let Noah or Chloe or Romie or even Terra have forgotten me. I’ll learn from my mistakes. I’ll untangle my selfishness and put my old habits to rest.
Just don’t let them forget.
The halls fly by, and then I burst into the Polar domes. But I’m going too fast, and I ram right into a pair of doctors. We fall, and I scramble back to my feet just as I recognize the cadet they were helping toward the Wheel.
“Noah,” I gasp.
He’s awake. If he hasn’t been inoculated, maybe he hasn’t had his memories changed. Maybe we can still get away. “Did they—?”
My words fail. He slowly climbs to his feet, looking confused. Speechless, even.
And then I feel tiny teeth pinching my arm, and I turn to see Sarlow holding an inoculator against my skin. She pulls it away, keeping me steady as my knees turn to water. My body is abruptly drifting.
I look at Noah, who still stares at me in shock.
“Do I… know you?” he asks.
My whole world stutters as if it spun off its axis and tumbled out of orbit. I can’t make sense of anything. If he doesn’t remember me at all, that means… that means…
“Relax, Lizzy.” Shiffrin’s voice brushes my ear. “As our new surrogate, we need to keep you in good health—mentally, emotionally, and physically.”
I’m falling into waiting arms. And then I know—
They’re never going to stop. To make it work, they just need someone like Dosset, like me, to interpret the memories and predict what comes next. Until they’re absolutely certain that our race will survive, they’re going to keep us living in the smallest bubble possible. Away from anything that might upset the balance: hardship, betrayal, fear… even love.
And the fee for that prison will be my body. My freedom.
My mind.
Gently I’m being pulled back, away from Noah, who blinks after me until Zonogal takes him by the arm. And that’s the last I see of him. I try to resist, but the drug makes everything fuzzy, and I know I don’t have long.
Someone bends my knees and lifts me up. I think it’s McCallum, but the ice-cold numbness is trickling through my ears. My eyelids beat one last flutter like the wish of a dying moth, and I look up into Shiffrin’s eyes.
In those eyes, I see grim intention. I know I’ll be seeing her again. I’ll be seeing all of them again.
I just don’t know what I’ll remember.
TO BE CONTINUED.
Acknowledgements
I never liked the term “self-published.” In my mind, it hinted at amateurism—and more perplexing, at isolation. Writing is an inherently solitary business. Before Biome, the notion of also undertaking marketing, design, proofreads, and a thousand other small tasks on my own sounded like a special kind of masochism.
Yet for several very good reasons, self-publishing ended up being my path. And I was surprised (perhaps naïvely) to find that, when I shared that path, I was joined by an enthusiastic tribe of machete-wielding companions.
To you incredible individuals, this is where I say, “Thank you,” rather than sending you an elderly bottle of bourbon. (For that, I’ll need more sales.)
In the truest sense of the word, to my “partner,” Carissa. This story—from its content, to its personality, to its distribution—could never have happened without you. Thank you for the endless nights, the feverish work, the laughter, and the frozen yogurt. Oh, and for marrying a novelist even though you don’t like fiction.
To Jill, my dearest mother and fellow author. You quite literally taught me to write, for which I am ever grateful. (You also taught me to hold a pen incorrectly, but whatever, you know?) I can never thank you enough for all the help you’ve provided over the years. This book could not be what it is without your insight and homemade pie.
To Jeff, my brother. For the conversations that could go on for another hour; for being an editor, a sounding board, a steadfast videographer, and a generally awesome fellow. Thank you for the overwhelming support.
To Chris, my other brother. For nurturing some ideas, and rejecting others. Thank you for the beautiful artwork and the rye—and for the drive to the airport that meant so much.
To Kevin, my long-time writing companion. Thank you for always listening, beta-reading, contributing, and falling asleep halfway across the prairie.
To Christian, who slept on my couch. Thank you for the wordplay, for going to bed early, for avoiding the black hole, and for being cut from the same cloth.
To Kathryn, for the avocado-inspired desserts. Thank you for throwing that snowball, and for reading another book about Mars. Your encouragement warms my heart.
To Masen, my kindred spirit. Thank you for the chess, the poetry, and the inspiration. Our talks will always nurture my soul—no matter how early they come.
To Beth, John, and baby, the kindest people I know. Thank you for being among the first to read Biome. I will never forget your baked goods.
To David, for reading twice, for taking meaningful walks, and for shared depth. You set a wonderful example.
To Danae, for loving literature and thinking critically. Your perspective never ceases to surprise and delight.
To Katie and Joe, for being the coolest people in the city. Thank you for helping make this a reality in so many ways. Also, thanks for making me look good. It’s quite a feat.
To Molly, for always keeping me on my toes. Thank you for the phone calls, the open invitations, and for sharing so much of your partner.
To Anne Elisabeth, India, and Cheryl, for being among the first to give these ideas a chance. Your kindness is one of the reasons I’m writing this. Thank you for being incredible.
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