The Norma Gene

by M. E. Roufa

  He took a bite.

  It was the most delectable not-turkey he had ever tasted.

  All of it was delicious. He wasn’t even certain anymore that it wasn’t real. If anything, it was more real. It didn’t taste like anything he had ever had before, the textures were all wrong, and they didn’t really taste the way he had always identified as “turkey,” “potatoes,” “peas,” but now that he had eaten these, he was ready to be told that they were the way that those foods were supposed to taste, and that the foods he had always called by those names were actually pale copies. Clearly they had to be drugged. Or the water was. It was all he could do not to lick the plate.

  Without even looking away from his plate, he could tell that Ed, Nita, and the steam-table woman in the hairnet were wearing ear-to-ear smiles. Well, Ed and the steam-table lady. Nita just cocked her head to the side an extra two degrees in satisfaction.

  Ed spoke up, “Not bad, right? That’s the real deal. Genetically-sampled cloned specimens direct from the late nineteenth century. Lincoln’s time. No pesticides were used, purely organic soil, the turkey was even fed historically correct genetically cloned grain. These are the way that those foods are supposed to taste, Abe. The foods we’ve always called by those names are actually faint copies.”

  Abe shuddered. Had he read his mind?

  “Jog any memories, Abe?” Ed asked.

  “What? No,” Abe answered.

  Ed looked disappointed. “Well, it was worth a shot. They’ve been breeding these over in the horticultural wing for a few years now, and I thought it couldn’t hurt to try. Cost a small fortune.” He took away Abe’s plate and dumped it in the trash. A pair of cafeteria workers had already begun clearing away the contents of the steam table out of the room. Abe sighed as he watched them go.

  “We could always try again…” Abe suggested, hopefully, watching them leave the room. He wished he had licked the plate. Or at least asked for seconds.

  “Yeah, well, I wouldn’t get my hopes up.”

  “So wait,” Abe said. “Am I here to tell you about what happened to me? Or to try to make it happen again?

  “Well, both,” Ed answered. “We believe that someplace inside you is the clue to how the real Abraham Lincoln really thought and felt and, well, was. We’re trying to get to him.”

  “All because I blacked out for two seconds on national TV.”

  “Well, all because of what happened before you blacked out, yes.”

  “But what if I was making it up, just to get attention?”

  “Were you, Abe?”

  Say yes, Abe, Abe thought, willing himself to say the magic words that just might let him go home. Say yes, say you were making it up. Say you did it for an endorsement deal, or to get some girl’s attention, or because Harold dared you. Say yes and maybe this will be the end… He looked Ed in the eye, trying to look as sincere as possible. He had Abe Lincoln’s unfailingly honest grey eyes; he could do this.

  “Were you really making it up, Abe?” Ed asked again

  Their eyes locked. He opened his mouth, the lie right there on his tongue, ready to save him. The turkey decided to speak first.

  “BUUUUUUUUUUURRRP!”

  So much for that.

  32

  If the morning’s discomforts of Ed’s inane repetitive questioning and Nita’s unspoken menace weren’t fun, the indignities of the afternoon were even less of a joyride. The two silent-but-beefy shadows rejoined them at the door of the cafeteria, appearing to be no more congenial with the knowledge that he was now well fed and they weren’t. “They were extremely small portions,” Abe found himself telling them, trying to deflect any ire. They simply linked their arms through his once again, and continued their walk onward. At times, their speed was such that Abe could feel his feet being lifted off the ground when he didn’t keep up. This was not a good sign.

  The series of Not Good Signs that followed were like the ending to a fireworks display—one followed another in such a spectacular succession that you almost couldn’t remember the last, you were so busy being bowled over by the one that followed. There was a large wooden chair parked just outside the room, directly opposite the door, in which one of the large men took a seat. Bad sign. The room itself had no windows. Bad sign. There was a doctor’s examining table. Bad sign. There was a hospital gown neatly folded on the examining table. Bad, bad sign. He also noticed that this room had no large mirror. Which at first he took for a good sign, but then realized was possibly a very bad sign because if no one was watching, anything could happen. Bad, bad, very bad sign.

  One of the large men looked at him and nodded toward the robe suggestively.

  Abe looked back at the man, nodded toward the robe, then shook his head no.

  The man looked back at Abe, nodded toward the robe, and decided to use his right hand to see what it was he had brought with him in one of his inside pockets that Abe now noticed was bulging.

  Abe looked toward the man and picked up the robe with a meek smile.

  The man smiled back, and nodded again—toward the table, making the sequence of events clear to Abe. It was the smile of a man who understood the meek, and didn’t hold a lot of stock in the whole “inherit the earth” thing. He did understand the earth and the meek’s place in it in the here and now, however. And that place was on the table, in the robe.

  Satisfied, the man left the room.

  Abe picked up the robe. He held it up. It was a typical hospital gown, powder blue and imprinted with “PROPERTY OF.” Thrilled to finally get a clue to where he was, Abe searched to see whose property the robe belonged to. But maddeningly, whoever had constructed the robe must have printed the identifying marks directly onto the fabric before the garments were made, because in a wholly inexplicable coincidence, every single “OF” led directly to a seam. At least he assumed it was a coincidence. For someone to be so diabolical as to purposefully make a “Property Of Anonymous” robe, knowing that its wearer would be driven insane with the mystery… It was a gown tailor-made for an asylum. Literally.

  Or for a person without an identity.

  Or, okay, Abe thought, calming down, for a place that didn’t want to be identified.

  He put on the robe. Mercifully (thank God for small blessings), the cotton canvas strings were long enough and the gown itself sufficiently large that he could tie it around himself without any unnecessary posterior display. This was a tiny Good Sign. And just in case, he had left his boxer shorts on underneath. Nothing in his huge escort’s pantomime had in any way suggested “boxer,” “shorts” or “off.” There, finally, was something positive to be said for silent but deadly.

  There were no chairs in the room, and the only counter was covered in random standard medical equipment, so he folded his clothes and tucked them under the table. This was a bit of a relief, as it felt almost like he had hidden them. And even though they would immediately know where they were, at least it would make it harder for them to take them away. With no chair to sit on, he perched hesitantly on the table. The protective paper cover crinkled under him. Why there was a need for a protective paper cover was beyond him, but it was still reassuring. They cared for the sterility of the room. Therefore they cared for the sterility of the patient’s nether regions. Here was another Good Sign. He tried not to think that it was there as a protective sheath to prevent whatever happened to patients from staining the chair. Still, the Good Sign was screechingly downgraded to Neutral. He had to stop looking for signs.

  He waited on the table, but no one came. Which was another good sign (stop it, Abe), another good indication that no one was watching him. He thought about putting his clothes back on and trying to make a run for it, then remembered the second bodyguard in the chair outside. Not to mention the first one, who was probably not much farther away. Still, with no one around, there had to be something he could do. He got up and looked around the counter hopefully. Other than the large machines, he could see nothing he could make any use of. It was al
l standard physician’s-office stuff. Tongue depressors. Cotton balls. Gauze. If he’d had a jar of paste he could have built a little arctic fort like in second grade, but that was about it. Not very helpful.

  He went back under the table for his clothes. Was there anything there he had missed? He checked his pockets again for anything he could use—a house key, some money, a remaining piece of that crayon… a business card…

  He had a business card? What was he doing with a business card?

  Cursing his luck that the only thing that had managed to stay in his pocket was also the one thing he was certain he had absolutely no use for, he pulled out the card and examined it.

  It was worse than he thought. It wasn’t even a business card. It was some sort of perfume sample card. Probably part of some practical joke from one of his students that hadn’t come to fruition. Maybe he could still use it as a weapon. He could papercut them to death. He examined the card again. It featured a hologram of a wisp of smoke that became a woman’s torso. There was something very intriguing about it, and incredibly sexy. Even crumpled and worn with some age, it still smelled nice. Really nice. The fragrance was called Illusions. He quickly ran through a mental tally of all his female students who might have slipped him the card, either as a joke or as a come-on, but none of them seemed the type. Or at least he hoped not, seeing how every last one of them was jailbait. Not that jail might not be a step up from wherever he was now, but still—he crossed his students off his list. That left—Nita? He looked at the shifting female silhouette on the card with its seductive fragrance and tried imagining Nita slipping it into his pocket in one of their closer, less-threatening moments. But he couldn’t imagine it. If Nita wore any perfume, it was probably squeezed directly from the skin of other women.

  He turned the card over, expecting to see the same image repeating. Instead, he found a blank surface. And across it there was scrawled a name and phone number in decidedly female handwriting. Someone named Norma TransAmerica. It was the strangest name he had ever seen. He didn’t know any Normas. And what kind of last name was TransAmerica…? It sounded like it should be the name of a bank, or an insurance company, not a person. Wait. In a rush it all made sense. It—she—the invisible woman. The beautiful invisible woman who hit his car with her dress. Of all the things in his pockets he had been forced to surrender, the one thing he had managed to save was a miracle. A completely and utterly useless miracle, but still a miracle. Not as miraculous as a knife or a pen or his cell phone to call anybody, including her, but it still gave him a sense of hope. Norma. Whatever they were going to do to him, if he ever got out of here, he had one thing left that they couldn’t take away. Someplace out there was a woman named Norma, who had hit him with her car, and if they ever let him make one final phone call, it would be to her. She would probably hang up on him, because after all, she had hit him with her car, but he wasn’t going to split hairs. He knew her name. He knew her number. He knew what she smelled like. He knew her insurance company.

  He knew someone was coming into the room. Before the door handle finished turning, he had stuffed his pants back under the table. But he slipped the card underneath the protective paper on the table under him. Just in case.

  33

  The door opened and Abe was surprised to see a pleasant-looking woman come in wearing a long doctor’s coat. She was tall, nearly as tall as he was, dressed in a simple turtleneck and skirt under the jacket, her look completed with a stethoscope and pocketful of standard physician’s tools. She had long straight hair and wore sensible polished loafers. Everything about her radiated calm professionalism. She introduced herself as Dr. Butcher. So much for feeling 100% calm.

  “Just try to relax, Abe, I’m only going to take some standard tests. I’m here to make sure you’re in good health before the real tests start.” She put her hand on his wrist and began measuring his pulse.

  “Um… what are the real tests?” Abe asked, trying not to show any alarm but guessing from the expression on her face that his pulse had sped up already. She was making notes on a chart. He could see some notebook papers sticking up out of the file. Were those Ed’s notes? Nita’s? He wondered if there was a way to get his hands on them. Was there a way to ask that would get this doctor to tell him? She was the first person he had interacted with who seemed at all considerate in her treatment of him, who did not seem in any way menacing.

  “Oh, just tests. You’re lined up for an MRI next, which is again probably just routine, but after that I can’t really tell you anything about them.” She took a sphygmomanometer down from a hook on the wall, and started rolling the sleeve of his gown up, fastening the cuff around his arm. “I don’t work for the government.”

  She opened his gown just enough to slide the bell of the stethoscope in against his heart. The cold of it made him wince. Either he hadn’t realized how warm the room was, or he was more stressed than usual, his body temperature higher than normal. Maybe he was running a fever, he thought hopefully. Maybe that would be enough for him to mark on his chart that he wasn’t in good enough shape for the “real” tests. The cuff quickly tightened around his upper arm as she watched the gauge.

  “So…” he said, “if you don’t work for the government, does this mean that this is a government outfit that you’re not working for? Ouch!” She had tightened the rubber cuff far beyond a normal amount of constriction before letting the pressure release.

  “Sorry about that.” She sounded sincere, but answered a half-second too late to be completely believable. “I meant I don’t work for the government. Say aaaah.”

  “Aaaaah.” She held his tongue down and looked into his throat, then took a culture. The rest of the session continued in a similar way. She went through every standard test he could ever remember having gone through as part of a standard physical. Height, weight, ears, nose, throat were checked. Blood was taken and labeled. She was as devoid of nonsense as his first impression had suggested, and she was certainly thorough.

  “You kept your shorts on,” she reproached him, pulling aside his robe. “Didn’t they tell you…?”

  “They didn’t say anything. I didn’t think I needed to… You don’t really have to…”

  Unfortunately she did really have to, she said, pulling on a pair of rubber gloves.

  34

  The MRI room was just across the hall, a larger room than the exam room, but which seemed even more claustrophobic from the oversized machinery filling its space. Looking something like a cross between the hero’s spaceship on any sci-fi TV series and a giant gaping mouth, the MRI unit gawped open, quietly menacing in the way that only the most impersonal things can truly menace. When someone hated you, it was personal. There was passion behind the emotion, even in a negative way. When someone—or especially something—didn’t care about you in any way, it was hard not to feel intimidated. At six foot four inches tall, Abe didn’t feel small very often. Next to this MRI machine’s vast blank surfaces, though, he was dwarfed.

  A technician in scrubs stepped out of a side chamber and held a hand out to shake. “Hi, Abe, I’ll be doing your scan in just a moment, but I need to ask you some questions first.” Abe noted that the man knew his name but hadn’t given his own, but otherwise couldn’t find anything particularly threatening or even unsettling about him. Expecting yet another round of “What does it feel like” explorations, Abe was surprised by what came next.

  “Do you have any prosthetic limbs, metal plates in your body, any surgical screws?”

  “Not last I checked,” Abe said.

  “Pacemaker? Ear implants?”

  “No, nothing like that.”

  “How about any piercings we might not have seen?”

  “No… Frankly, at this point I don’t think I even have any body parts left you haven’t seen.”

  The technician chuckled appreciatively at Abe’s joke. “Well, just the one. Hop on up there.” He motioned to the white cushioned table perched at the edge of the scanner’s op
en maw. Abe half expected to have his mouth opened and checked for fillings, but either they wouldn’t be a problem or the tech forgot to look.

  The technician handed him a pair of headphones and smiled reassuringly. “You won’t feel anything, and it shouldn’t take more than about a quarter of an hour or so. It gets pretty noisy though. Try to tune it out. Hope you’re not claustrophobic any.”

  Abe wasn’t, but that didn’t make him less apprehensive. He climbed gracelessly up onto the table and lay down, putting the headphones over his ears. Stirring orchestral music played, heavy on the horns and piano. He didn’t recognize the piece, but wondered at the choice—surely a brain scan would call for something more relaxing? He shut his eyes and merely felt, rather than saw, his head and upper torso disappear into the machine. Then the noises started. No wonder they had chosen loud percussive music—anything softer wouldn’t have stood a chance of breaking through. It was remarkable that a machine that looked so glossy and sleek could emit such gothic clanking sounds. If he hadn’t been warned, he would have been convinced something was wrong—that a gear was loose in the works, or something more sinister. As it was, he tried to tune out the noise and focus on the music. Then he heard the voice.

  It was a quiet voice, a woman’s, placed at regular intervals that almost but not quite blended within the rests within the music. He could barely register the words over the music and the clanking, but when he was finally able to focus he recognized her speech within a few words. She was reciting the Gettysburg Address. After this there was a pause, and then she was reading nursery rhymes: Mary Had a Little Lamb, Humpty Dumpty, A Tisket, A Tasket. And then one he didn’t know, very odd, that sounded something like,

  “For Reuben and Charles have married two girls,