She was wearing the standard in-patient ensemble ... faux satin, lemon chiffon pajamas, matching grip-sole, ankle-length socks, and a plastic bracelet around her wrist with her name and a number, which she couldn’t get off. She’d been in this room for several hours, seven or eight at least, she guessed, her sense was over the course of a night, but, the truth was, she had no idea. The room was a windowless holding cell, upholstered in pink, indestructible Naugahyde. There was some kind of rubbery padding behind it. The video camera and an intercom speaker were mounted out of reach in the corner of the ceiling.
Barry had advised her at regular intervals that her transport would be just another few minutes. He sounded like one of those teenage waiters you got at Giggles or the Salad Consortium who were always so happy to be your server and tell you all about the awesome specials. Valentina imagined Barry, sitting at a console in the nurses station, watching her dance around and clap, talking, seemingly to no one at all, but in actuality talking to his girlfriend on a Strauss-Chen Industries Cranio-Implant. The SCI 227.8 was probably out of Barry’s price range, so Barry would be wearing a 226, which wasn’t all that different from the 227s, except for a few superfluous features. Barry was likely still in school. Valentina put him in his mid-to-late thirties, which meant he was definitely Variant-Positive, and on some form of pharmatherapy, probably Zanoflaxithorinol H, or one of the earlier versions thereof. Something like seventy to eighty percent of the Variant-Positive population was on some version of Zanoflaxithorinol. The rest were on some other stabilizing agent, Lamictotegratol, Oxcarzenadrine, Olanzatriperidone, or one of the others. Barry was certainly on Zanoflaxithorinol. He spoke in that indefatigably cheery, slightly superior tone of voice, the hallmark of Zanoflaxithorinol patients. It made you sound, not totally obnoxious, but like you were privy to some secret wisdom you wished you could share with the others who weren’t, but you knew, if you tried, they just wouldn’t understand.
Valentina tried to remember how she had sounded when she’d sounded like that. She knew she must have sounded like Barry, and her husband, Kyle, and Susan Foster, but she couldn’t play it back in her mind now ... her voice, in that supercilious tone. It wasn’t as pronounced as that of the Clears, whose condescension was of a whole other order, but it was close, and it was causing her to grind her teeth, and to painfully clench her masseter muscles. She hated it now, that tone of voice. When exactly had she come to hate it? Hate ... hatred. That was the word ... it must have been, for what she was feeling. She imagined Barry with a sucking chest wound, flopping around on the floor like a fish, panicking, trying to cry out for help, but not being able to make a sound. The mental image of it made her sick. And yet she couldn’t seem to erase it. What kind of monster was she becoming that imagined people with sucking chest wounds?
The day before, or whenever it was, before they transferred her into the waiting room, she had lain awake in four-point restraints and imagined gouging the tips of her fingers deep into Doctor Hesbani’s neck, closing her hand around his laryngeal prominence, and ripping it clean out of his body. Doctor Hesbani was kneading her abdomen in different places with his first two fingers. He asked her whether it hurt ... there. And there. And what about there ... and there? Yes, it hurt. There and there. Valentina hurt all over. Doctor Hesbani nodded and smiled, like he’d just performed a magic trick, which he was waiting for Valentina to acknowledge. He looked like a giant badger or something. Valentina wanted to rip his throat out.
This part had happened in the S.I.C.U., or what they’d told her was the S.I.C.U. It didn’t feel like an S.I.C.U. Then again, she was heavily sedated. She figured she’d been there about a week, or ten days maybe, or maybe longer. She’d woken up out of a dreamless nothing. Doctor Hesbani was hovering over her.
“Hello, Ms. Briggs. I am Doctor Hesbani.”
It sounded like he was shouting, or singing. Droplets of mustard clung to his whiskers, which grew untended from below his eyes to the top of fleshy laryngeal prominence .
“You are in the Surgical Intensive Care Unit. We have managed to stop your internal bleeding. You are experiencing some severe discomfort. We are giving you palliative care for this.”
Valentina remembered thinking whatever they were giving her wasn’t working. She felt like she was trying to defecate something the size and shape of a toaster. She couldn’t remember where she was, or why she was there, or what was happening. She opened her mouth to try to ask, but a pulsating pain that started in her bowels radiated through her entire body, and paralyzed her, and she must have passed out. The next time she woke it was much the same ... excruciating pain, fog of sedation, a few confused thoughts, then unconsciousness.
That’s the way it went for a while, exactly how long she could not say. Then, one day, whenever it was, she’d woken up again, still in the restraints, and the Hadley Security Consultants were there. They were standing on either side of her bed, far enough up toward her head so that she had to turn from side to side to see the face of the one who was speaking.
“How are you feeling today, Ms. Briggs?” The one on the left, the man, asked her.
She rotated her head toward him, painfully.
“My name is Winston. This is Alicia. We’re here to help arrange your transition.”
Both of the Consultants had perfect skin, smiles full of flawless, bright white teeth. The whites of their eyes were utterly bloodless, the irises milky, infant blue.
“The doctors tell us you’re recovering well ...”
Valentina rolled her head to the right.
“... which means it’s time to start getting you ready.”
Alicia smiled like a flight attendant who really needs you to return to your seat.
Valentina, although no longer in agony, was weak, and still quite heavily sedated. She fought to get her mind to focus, but she didn’t know what to focus it on. She scanned the room as best she could. She was looking for something. She didn’t know what. The S.I.C.U. room, or whatever it was, was painted this horrible Creamsicle orange, like the color of a ten-minute tan gone wrong. The visitors chair was stacked with clean sheets. The shelf on the wall above it was empty, except for a plastic water pitcher. There weren’t any flowers or cards or anything. Apparently no one had been to see her.
“We’ve got some release forms we need you to sign. But first let’s just confirm your vitals.”
Winston read out her name and address, her husband’s name, her place of employment, her Login IDs, and bank account numbers, each of which Valentina confirmed. Winston and Alicia were definitely Clears. Both of them were in their mid-to-late twenties. They looked like A-list fashion models and spoke like Human Resources people.
“All right, good,” Winston said. “Once your doctors have approved your release, you’ll be moved to an interim transfer facility. Your ID bracelet is being prepared. You’ll receive your bracelet at the transfer facility. Your old ID card, and all your other cards, have been deactivated and are no longer valid.”
“The ID bracelet is just for transit,” Alicia interjected cheerfully.
Valentina rolled her head to the right.
“You won’t have to wear it indefinitely or anything.”
“Your network logins and related passwords,” Winston continued, causing Valentina to jerk her head back over to the left, “have been deactivated and are no longer valid.”
“You’ll be issued one mid-sized bag of clothing, hygiene articles, and other personal items.”
“Personal funds in any bank accounts bearing your name, and your name alone, have been transferred into an escrow account for disposition at a later date.”
“Normally, any such personal funds are used to offset the costs of your transport and housing during the quarantine period.”
“Personal funds in any bank accounts bearing both your and your husband’s names are heretofore deemed the property of your husband, and no claims or liens shall be set against them.”
Valentina was jerking her
head from side to side as fast as she could as Winston and Alicia took turns spitting this verbal boilerplate back and forth at her. She felt like she was going to pass out. Fortunately, just as she started to do that, Alicia stepped toward her and started undoing the artificial fur-lined safety restraint that was pinning her wrist to the aluminum bed frame, which for some presumably legal reason Winston felt he needed to narrate.
“Alicia is undoing your right-hand restraint.”
Valentina nodded gratefully. She smiled. It seemed like the thing to do. Alicia reached over, took hold of her wrist, lifted it up and out of the restraint, and pushed a plastic inkless pen the size of toothpick between her fingers. She held out a tablet with a screen at the top and an isolated capture pad at the bottom. The screen was displaying what looked like a contract. The print was way too small to read.
“This is a standard acknowledgment form. You, the Patient, hereby acknowledge your non-responsiveness to pharmatherapy, and freely elect to enter quarantine, effective as of your date of transfer.”
Valentina signed the pad. Alicia smiled her Clarion smile ... warm, yet unmistakably superior. Then she clicked the tablet, producing another form that Valentina could not read.
“You hereby acknowledge that, in your present condition, you pose a danger to yourself and others, and hereby agree to remain in quarantine until such time as a medical doctor determines you no longer pose such a danger.”
Valentina signed. Alicia clicked.
“You hereby indemnify, and forever release, the Hadley Corporation of Menomonie, Wisconsin, and all of its affiliates and subsidiaries and assigns, in respect to all claims of damage or injury arising from your treatment and quarantine period.”
Valentina signed. Alicia clicked.
Valentina Constance Briggs, if one didn’t count the last five months, had led a perfectly normal life. She’d enjoyed a perfectly normal childhood, had attended perfectly normal schools, and had blossomed into a perfectly normal if somewhat striking and buxom young woman with burnt orange hair and eel green eyes, which she got from her mother’s side of the family. After university, she’d interned a bit, gone back and got her PhD, started her career, dated a while, and then met her future husband and married him. They’d honeymooned up on Hudson Bay, a popular, overcrowded resort for moderate- to fairly-abundant couples. Valentina’s husband, Kyle Bentley-Briggs (he’d taken her name, she hadn’t his) was the G-Wave Industries Associate Adjunct Semi-Permanent Assistant Professor of Info-Entertainment Content at the Bloomberg Virtual Community College of Communications and Informatics. It wasn’t Oxford or Yale or anything, but it wasn’t anything to sneeze at either. They lived in a three-bed, two-bath condo at 3258 Marigold Lane in the Pewter Palisades Private Community, whose accent color was Persian green. Valentina, until a few months back, had worked in the Histopathology Department of the Breckenridge (Senior) Medical Clinic, a high-end, mostly geriatric outfit that made a killing on phenomenally expensive cancer screenings and advanced cancer treatments for the affluent over one hundred demographic, and was part of the Hadley Medical Group. She and Kyle were very happy. They owed about thirteen million on the house and ate out two or three times a week, usually on Pewter Palisades’ Main Street, often with Bill and Susan Foster, who lived next door on Marigold Lane and had a time-share in the Arctic Circle. In addition to the more or less standard package of company-sponsored retirement vehicles, they maintained a diversified, if rather conservative, portfolio of primarily blue chip stocks, the usual mix of pharmaceuticals, Security, insurance, bioengineering, financial services and global redevelopment. Although quite young, being both in their forties, the trajectory of their lives was clear. Kyle, whose IQ was 101, or 103, depending on the test, but who compensated for his average intelligence with a natural gift for networking and politics, was a rising star at BVCC, and was already being aggressively headhunted by global educational and marketing firms, who were always on the lookout for bright, young talent. Valentina, although less ambitious, certainly enjoyed her work at the Clinic, which she planned to resume in some capacity, probably in her early seventies, once the children both she and Kyle wanted had reached the age of independence. They’d agreed on three, two boys and a girl, and had chosen a palette of traits for each of them, accentuating personal characteristics while preserving both filial and intra-sibling similarity. This was to be the year they started. The next six years would be the childbirth years, which would be followed by twenty to twenty-five years of childcare, education, and so on. Their youngest boy, Marlough, they thought, would be off to college at the age of twenty. Valentina would be in her prime, sixty-eight, or seventy maybe, and would still have a good thirty years ahead of her to pursue her histopathological career. Assuming their investment strategies were sound, and Kyle’s career remained on track, they’d be able to cover the children’s education, healthcare, and other basic needs, maintain a comfortable standard of living, prudently setting some funds aside to cover the routine joint replacements and organ transplants that everyone got, early-retire at ninety-seven, and move to a Flex-Care Seniors’ Community somewhere north of the 50th Parallel ... or, at least, that had been the plan.
“You hereby consent to indefinitely forfeit, and hereby forfeit and waive any claim to, any and all rights, entitlements, and benefits accruing to Variant-Positive Persons as defined in the Cooperative Security Agreement, U.T.S. §1067, Paragraph 1 of the Global Civil Code.”
Valentina signed the pad. Alicia lifted the tablet away, tucked it up into her armpit, and refastened the restraint around Valentina’s wrist.
“Thank you for your cooperation,” Winston said, examining his necktie. “Sorry to bother you with all this paperwork ... but, you understand, it has to be done.”
Alicia had finished redoing the restraint, and now she appeared to be standing there staring fixedly into space at nothing. Her breathing had slowed. Her eyes were open, but her brain was in some meditative state, or semi-sleep state, or hibernation mode. She looked like a totally different person, or a perfect simulation of the person she was.
Winston glanced at his expensive wristwatch, and that seemed to snap Alicia out of it somehow. Valentina felt their energy changing. She didn’t quite understand what was happening, or wasn’t happening, but she thought was happening, but whatever was or wasn’t happening, obviously, this session was coming to an end.
Valentina was glad it was. She was feeling tired, extremely tired, and confused, and her lower abdomen hurt, and she needed a nap before Kyle came to visit ... she wanted to be awake for that.
“Do you have any questions for us, Ms. Briggs?” Alicia asked, and smiled professionally. She seemed to be back to the first Alicia.
Valentina thought for a moment.
“When will I be going home?” she asked .
Alicia stared at her for several seconds.
“By home you mean to Pewter Palisades?”
Valentina nodded. That’s what she meant.
Alicia and Winston looked at each other, the way that the Clears so often did, like they couldn’t believe how stupid you were but they didn’t want to say that and hurt your feelings.
“I’m afraid you’re not going home, Ms. Briggs.”
Winston turned away and cleared his throat.
“I’m sorry. We thought you understood ...”
Alicia’s eyes were oozing compassion. The Clears could just turn it on like that ... like flipping a switch, that total compassion, an unbelievably creepy attribute that, once upon a time, centuries back, only enlightened sages had possessed. It was like they were looking right into your heart, and could feel the sadness, or pain, or fear, or whatever feeling you were currently feeling, and wished more than anything, at least in that moment, that they had the power to make you stop feeling it. The creepiest thing about it was, it wasn’t fake. It was utterly genuine. So much so that you felt ashamed for even considering the possibility that it wasn’t. You knew their hearts were just breaking for you (in s
ome deeply profound and impersonal way) as they stood there staring into your insides, wishing they could give you their gift, the knowledge, the peace, of total detachment, but knowing, of course, that they never could, and that that too was all part of the plan.
Valentina looked up into Alicia’s beaming, compassionate eyes ... she wanted to cry, but she didn’t know why. Alicia gently placed her hand on Valentina’s forehead and let it rest there, as if she were going to check her temperature. She smiled a beatific smile.
“Don’t you remember how you got here, Ms. Briggs?” Alicia asked, in a childlike voice.
“No,” Valentina answered, trembling. She was telling the truth. She didn’t remember. Then ... maybe ... she was starting to remember ... which, OK, she realized almost immediately, she really did not want to be doing. It wasn’t that she remembered details. It was more just this horrible, helpless feeling that rose up inside her like a wave of nausea, as if everything solid had begun to dissolve, like the simulated world of a defective Immersion .. .
Winston took a few steps back.
“Are you sure you don’t remember, Ms. Briggs?”
Alicia’s hand was warm, dry, radiating heat into her forehead. Her hand wasn’t moving and yet it seemed, to Valentina, whose eyes had closed, and who felt like her head and neck were paralyzed, as if its energy were entering her brain, tingling, stinging, pinpoint streams of microscopic electric needles, stabbing precisely into her synapses, redirecting their electrical processes ... and now she was flying through a shopping district where the streets were all coated with raspberry syrup, flying the way you do in dreams, so not really flying, more like floating, two or three meters above the ground, flanked by rows of faceless faces, featureless, eerily fetal masks ... flying past signs too fast to read them, gliding toward the massive screen of a video billboard running an ad for some new procedure where the doctors replaced your internal organs with synthetic linguine ... she flew right at and through the screen, and now she was in some dream environment that vaguely reminded her of Paul & Pomona, the upscale chain where she normally shopped for things like tablecloths and kitchen accessories, except that all the Sales Assistants were these gulping, brainless goldfish people with bulging fish eyes and goldfish mouths, some of whom were amputees, with sickeningly suppurating surgical wounds that were dangling fiber-optic ganglia, and these Sales Assistants had formed a circle around this screaming naked woman, who was down on her knees in the middle in the circle, and whose body was smeared with raspberry syrup ... and now, like it sometimes happens in dreams, Valentina became this woman, and she pushed one hand into her abdomen, right through her skin like a Hindu fakir, and pulled it out and held something out for the mutilated Sales Assistants to see and ...
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