Forager (Forager - A Dystopian Trilogy)

by Peter R Stone

  "Hey Ethan," Nanako said as she passed me a block of scrambled egg tied together with seaweed. "Why don't you come back to Hamamachi with us and join one of our foraging teams - maybe even ours - we can use all the foragers we can get."

  "Can I leave the town when I want to?" I asked, worried I may be walking into another prison.

  "Of course," she answered, and then, after making meaningful eye contact with me, added, "If you want to leave, that is."

  My head jerked unexpectedly, tearing me out of the dream. For a moment I was so disorientated I had no idea where I was. Nanako's presence, however, quickly brought me back to reality. She was still snuggled against my chest, legs draped over mine, fast asleep.

  I don't know how long I slept, but it had must have been at least a couple of hours for apart from the flickering light and shadows caused by television, the room was almost completely dark as it was night time now.

  My mind raced frantically as I tried to process what the dream revealed, for it was clearly a memory from my missing year.

  Although my father told me I spent all of '20 in hospital, the neurologist told me this wasn't true - that I wasn't admitted into hospital until November that year. Now I knew what really happened that year. I had run away from Newhome in January '20 and headed east until I bumped into Nanako and her foraging team, where upon they invited me to go to Hamamachi with them.

  I guess I had been willing to run away at that time because it was before my younger sister got sick. And perhaps father lied about what really happened because he was afraid I would run away again if I found out I had done so previously.

  I ran my fingers through Nanako's silky black hair and contemplated the most puzzling revelation of the dream, that Nanako and I did not meet on Monday as I had supposed, but three years ago.

  Now I understood why she kept staring at me after we saved her and Councillor Okada from the Skel. She must have been so surprised that out of all the people in Newhome who could have rescued her, it just happened to be me. Yet at the same time she must have been so disappointed I didn't recognise her.

  But why didn't she greet me by name as soon as she saw me? If I had responded by saying I didn't know her, she could have explained to me how we'd met before. Instead, she greeted me as a stranger. And in all the times I have seen her since then, she has not given me any indication that we had met previously. Well, except for being excited when I told her my memories were returning, and being disappointed when I said I hadn't remembered any people yet. She was obviously hoping I remembered her.

  But why was she hiding the truth from me? Was there something she didn't want me to find out? Yet to think of it, her behaviour made more sense if she already knew I had amnesia. That thought, however, made me wonder what kind of relationship or friendship we had in Hamamachi. I mean, I know she had been in a relationship with a guy two years ago - the one who dumped her and broke her heart - so at the most we could have been friends and probably workmates as well.

  Yet, she most definitely had feelings for me now, for she told me that she liked me and whispered under her breath that she loved me.

  That I had gone to Hamamachi solved another mystery. Nanako said that everyone in Hamamachi, from fifteen to fifty-five years of age, served in the Militia, so I must have served in it too. That would explain how I learned to use a gun and fight in hand-to-hand combat, confirming King's suspicions that I had been properly trained. It also explained my memory of assembling an Austeyr assault-rifle.

  The doctor said I had been operated on before I was brought to him in November, so after I was shot I must have been operated upon in Hamamachi. And that led to another puzzle I desperately needed answers for - how did I get shot?

  And this of course lead to the next question, and this one was quite significant - who brought me back to Newhome? Whoever it was, they brought me back because they didn't have the means or knowledge in Hamamachi to treat the bad seizures I was having. So they must have suspected or known that Newhome had a better hospital and neurosurgeons.

  I recalled the discharge paper from the hospital the neurologist had in his folder. It had listed my father as the one who had checked me out of the hospital. There had also been an admission sheet, but unfortunately, I hadn't been able to see any of its details. Suddenly, I had to know whose name was written on that sheet. There would be other information in that file I needed to know too, perhaps even a record or details of how I was shot.

  I could sneak over to the hospital right now, pick its lock, and find out the information. I considered waking Nanako, confronting her with what my dream had revealed, and asking her if she knew the answers I sought, but would she tell me the truth?

  My father had lied to me about what happened in 2120 for two years, and although Nanako hadn't actually lied, she hadn't come forward to tell me the truth either. And that meant I couldn't trust either of them. On the other hand, I figured I could trust the hospital records.

  I pulled my left arm out of the sling and stretched it out, grimacing from the pain that stabbed through my chest. I gently lifted up Nanako's legs, slipped out from beneath them, and placed them back on the sofa.

  After that I changed into black jeans and a black hoody. I stuffed a torch into my belt and armed myself with a set of lock picks I had smuggled in from the outside. That done, I slipped out the front door.

  Chapter Twenty-One

  With my left hand in my pocket to minimize the pain I felt every time I moved the arm, I made my way to the hospital, having to go to ground twice so that passing Custodian patrols didn't see me. If they spotted me I could spend up to a month in prison for breaking the curfew.

  Due to Newhome’s small size, I was soon in front of the hospital’s main entrance, which was of course locked. The emergency department would be open all night, and its entrance was to the left, but not wanting to be seen by hospital staff or patients, I decided to tackle the front doors, and soon had them open with the assistance of my lock-picks. For the first time I was glad the town council had never bothered spending money to modernise the hospital - the building was decades old, and the locks were very old fashioned. I had picked many such locks out in Melbourne's ruins.

  I closed the doors quietly behind me, and then taking great care to avoid bumping into any of the hospital’s night shift staff and a roving Custodian security detail, made my way to the neurology department, which was closed and only partially illuminated by the occasional light. Finding my file in the receptionist's office proved quite difficult using only a torch, as there were multiple metal filing cabinets, and piles of papers stacked everywhere, but I eventually found the cabinet that contained the files of patients admitted into hospital in ‘20. Filing by date instead of alphabetically, what was that about, anyway?

  My hands were shaking when I found and removed my file - I had a good mind to put it back and walk away, but I had to know what secrets it could divulge.

  I sat on the floor behind the receptionist's desk and began to go through the file. As the neurologist had said, there were no references to my bio-engineered abnormalities, or any copies of MRI or EEG scans they had taken.

  The first disturbing thing revealed by my file was the report on the bullet wound, which said I had been shot at point blank range. Fear’s cold tendrils snaked through my stomach and into my head. How had this happened? How could someone have gotten that close to me without me knowing about it or trying to stop them? Did someone try to kill me in my sleep, or while serving in the Militia? With my sensitive hearing, it just didn't make any sense.

  I breathed deeply and turned the page. There was no point getting all worked up and worried about something that could not be resolved by guesswork. I kept shuffling through the file, looking for the patient-admission form, and finally found it. It recorded:

  Patient: Ethan Jones

  Admission: 16 Nov 2120

  Signed in by: Nanako Jones

  Relationship to Patient: Wife

  I don't kn
ow how long I sat there, staring at the admission form, simply trying to comprehend the stupendous truth it revealed. And as the truth sank slowly into my mind, my perspective of my life, of myself, slowly unravelled until I felt like I no longer knew who I was.

  Nanako was my wife?

  That meant I must have married her after I went to Hamamachi with her. Furthermore, she was the one who brought me back to Newhome to receive the operation that stopped the grand mal epileptic seizures.

  But if this was true, why did she leave me? If she was my wife, why did she abandon me and go back to Hamamachi without me? She didn’t even wait to see the results of the operation.

  Anger at this betrayal slowly turned to rage, driving away the confusion and all other emotions.

  I put my file back in the cabinet and stormed angrily out of the hospital, pausing only to lock the front doors - you could set them to self-lock from the inside.

  It was raining incessantly now, and the rain soon soaked through my clothes and bandages, chilling my body but not my mood.

  "Why, Nanako? Why did you leave me?" I whispered to myself in an endlessly repeating loop.

  Running on adrenalin alone, I dodged two Custodian patrols and eventually reached my apartment. Upon barging through the front door I saw the flat was still lost in darkness with the flickering TV as the only light source, so I switched on the lights.

  Nanako was still asleep on the sofa, a picture of gentle innocence. Yet also the picture of a girl who had abandoned her husband when he needed her most.

  She stirred when I stomped over and stood over her, slowly opening her sleep-heavy eyes. She blinked frantically and gasped when she saw me. "What's wrong, Ethan, why are you soaking wet?"

  "I just broke into the hospital," I snapped angrily.

  "What, why?" she asked, wide awake now, and bewildered by the naked anger on my countenance.

  "I dug out my file in the neurologist's office, and you'll never guess what I found in it. I was signed into hospital in November '20 by one Nanako Jones - relationship to patient: wife. Why didn't you tell me, Nanako, why didn't you tell me?" I demanded, deeply wounded and enraged almost beyond rational thought.

  Her face paled and her eyes widened in shock. "I was going to tell you when the time was..."

  "Why did you leave me, Nanako?"

  She stepped off the sofa and reached for me. "Please let me explain..."

  I stepped back from her angrily. "Why did you bring me all the way from Hamamachi to have the operation and then just abandon me?"

  Tears filled her eyes but she still took a step towards me. "It wasn't like that..."

  "You didn't even wait to see the result of the operation," I said, my anger suddenly dissipating as agonising heartache tore me apart. Tears streaked down my cheeks.

  "I couldn't..." she began.

  "You left me when I needed you the most," I almost shouted, cutting her off. "I woke up from that operation totally bewildered and confused, with a massive hole in my mind, not knowing how I had gotten there, knowing something was missing but having no idea what it was. And then I had to do rehab with no one but male nurses who didn't care a fig about me. And you went back to home to Hamamachi without even leaving me with a letter or memento of you. And now two years later you come back, playing all these mind games, not once telling me that you are my wife."

  And with that outburst, the sense of betrayal and heartache became so strong that I bolted from the apartment. She ran after me, calling my name repeatedly, but I ran down the stairs and escaped into the welcoming darkness of the night, quickly losing her amidst the trees and shrubs that grew between the blocks of flats.

  And as I ran in the pouring rain my thoughts veered slowly into an entirely different direction. From what I had seen of Nanako this week, she seemed so genuinely kind and caring, with a strong sense of right and wrong. Her behaviour this week was at complete odds with the apparent callousness of her actions after I was wounded, of bringing me back to Newhome and then abandoning me to my fate.

  I slowed to a jog, and wondered if I was I reading this situation all wrong? What if she had a perfectly good explanation to why she left me and went home?

  And then something she said hit me with the impact of a sledgehammer, driving me to my knees on the wet grass as the full implication of her words sank in. She said she had a man in her life two years ago, a man who told her that he never wanted to see her again.

  And that could mean only one thing - that I was the one who said that to her. I told Nanako I never wanted to see her again. I was the insensitive fool and ugly brute who broke her heart.

  Yet even so, Nanako had proven without doubt this week that she was a woman of character who would stand up for me, even going head-to-head with my father. So there was no way she would have run back home with her tail between her legs just because I said that to her, especially considering I had said it while gravely wounded and ill. And even more so because I hadn't had the operation yet, the very operation she had brought me here to receive.

  Something was missing. There was another piece of the puzzle, a piece that would explain everything when I found it.

  And then I had it.

  The missing piece was my father.

  He had obviously been there, and he must have met Nanako. In fact, that would explain what he said when she came to the door. Not, 'Can I help you?' but 'What are you doing here?' And then there was the issue of the considerable amount of animosity between them.

  And she had goaded him, asking how he was going to make her leave his home, even asking if he was going to get the Custodians to throw her out.

  That was it - the missing piece. There was no way in the world a girl as devoted and loving as Nanako would walk away from her wounded, sick husband. She would have stuck it out right to the end. And that lead me to the obvious conclusion - my father had asked the Custodians to expel her from Newhome. And then taking advantage of my amnesia, he had the audacity to arrange for me to marry someone else when he knew full well that I was already married to Nanako.

  I rose to my feet and headed for my parents' flat - I was going to have this out with him right now - forget the curfew.

  * * *

  I was utterly drenched, panting for breath, and exhausted, when I reached my parents flat a few minutes later. Running around at night in the rain was not what I should be doing when I needed to rest to recuperate from the wound.

  I banged on my parents' front door with the flat of my hand.

  "Who is it?" came my mother's frightened voice a moment later.

  "Open the door, Mother, it's me," I commanded her none too kindly.

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Mother opened the door and quickly pulled me inside.

  “What are you doing out after curfew? You want to go to prison?” she scolded me. “And look at you - you’re soaking wet and as white as a sheet – are you trying to get pneumonia?”

  “I have to see Father,” I replied as I stepped past her and strode towards his room.

  “If you wake him in the middle of the night there’ll be all hell to pay,” my mother said as she rushed after me.

  “He’s the one who’s gonna pay,” I assured her.

  My older sister stood in her bedroom door, putting on a night-gown, but I ignored her and barged into my father’s room, which until recently had been my room as well. I switched on the light and shook him roughly until he woke.

  “What on earth are you doing, Son - do you know what time it is?” he barked angrily as he sat up.

  I glanced at the bedroom doorway to make sure Mother and Elder Sister were there, for I wanted them to witness this, and then I launched my attack. “Why did you lie to me, Father?”

  “What are you blabbing about, Son? Whatever it is, it can wait ‘til morning. Now get out of my room!”

  “You aren’t going to fob me off this time, Father. Explain why you told me I was in hospital from January to December '20 when you knew it wasn’t true.”


  His anger vanished instantly, replaced by wide-eyed fear. “What are you talking about, Son? I’ve never lied to you.”

  “No? Then tell me why you hid from me the fact that I got married back in '20, you know, when according to you I was in hospital.”

  His eyes narrowed suspiciously. “You’ve been speaking to that wretched nuisance of a Japanese girl, haven’t you? Don’t believe a word she says.”

  “That ‘wretched nuisance of a Japanese girl,’ Father, is my wife! And for your information, she didn’t tell me. I saw my hospital file today, and it said that I was admitted to hospital by a Nanako Jones, with the relationship to patient listed as wife.”

  His face now as white as a sheet, my father climbed out of bed and stood before me. “Okay, I admit I’ve been hiding a few things from you, but it was for your own good.”

  “Lying to me that I had been in hospital for a whole year when I was actually in Hamamachi, not telling me I had married Nanako, and telling me a ceiling had fallen on my head when I had been shot, was for my own good?” I demanded heatedly.

  “Yes, it was!” he shouted back. “When she brought you back to Newhome you were in a very, very bad way. Yes, not only had you been shot while in Hamamachi, but they didn’t even have the medical expertise to treat you properly. You were having severe epileptic seizures every day and woke every morning with no memory of the previous day, or of anything that had happened after you started foraging back in January.”

  “You had no right to hide any of that from me,” I fired back at him.

  “There’s more,” he said, but this time he spoke softly, and with deep emotion. “Every morning when you woke, you were so confused and disorientated because of the amnesia. And every morning that girl would tell you she was your wife and what had happened, and every time she did, you said the same thing - that you didn’t know her and couldn’t have married her because you weren't going to marry until you were thirty. And every time you said that, she’d start panicking and tried to make you believe her. Your answer was invariably to tell her to leave you alone and that you never wanted to see her again. Sometimes the nurses even had to take her out of the room just to calm her down. And when you woke the next morning, the whole cycle started again.”