The Soul Continuum

by Simon West-Bulford

Praynia breaks off her counting with uncontrolled giggling and Melista nudges her. Candice is still watching me, now gritting her teeth, breathing hard and fast. Though I am certain she has given this performance before and knows exactly when to jump away, every part of me wants to tell her not to be so stupid and just stop this, but I can feel myself smiling and loving every second.

  “. . . eighteen . . . nineteen . . . twen—”

  Another streak bursts out of the summer sky to crackle angrily around the peak of the tower, and I find myself taking several steps back to look up. Keitus Vieta is still watching me, the eyes drilling down and hating me. Then, out of the corner of my eye, I notice the shuddering and trembling of a body. The two raven-haired girls scream, but I am simply watching, enjoying the convulsions of my friend Candice as her arms and legs twitch and dance like puppet limbs with tangled strings. I even laugh when I see the slow crawl of saliva ebb from lip to ear, her panicked eyes pleading with me for help. Now I know exactly why my mother wants to cure me of this disease. I am a monster. If I have any conscience at all, it is powerless—a feeble thing imprisoned within this heartless little girl—and only now, I can see it.

  The twins have already started running away, both in different directions, so I doubt they are going to get help. My instinct is to rush forward, but I saunter slowly toward Candice, disgusted at my own sense of fascination at her trauma, and kneel over her.

  “Candice? What are you doing?” I ask her. “Was it the lightning?”

  For an instant, her eyes focus on mine, and then she stares past me blankly. Her body is still.

  “Candice?” There is not a jot of concern in my tone. “Should I go to get help?”

  “Why bother? Clearly I’d be long past help before anybody got here.” She’s sitting up now, elbows in the muddy sand, her eyes scolding me with incredulous skepticism. “You really don’t feel any fear at all, do you?”

  “No, I—”

  “Melista, Praynia!” she shouts. “Where are you? You’d better get back here, right now.”

  “Are you hurt?” I ask.

  Candice huffs a laugh. “You think they wouldn’t put protective shielding around the tower? Of course I’m not hurt.”

  “Then . . . ?”

  “You ran away?” Candice is ignoring me now, chastising the twins with her eyes. Melista and Praynia have drawn up tentatively beside me to regard Candice with wide-eyed apology. “You actually ran away.”

  “You frightened us,” Melista chided her back.

  “So you’re not hurt at all?” I ask.

  “No, I was pretending.”

  “Why?” Praynia asks.

  Candice observes her for a few seconds. “Can’t you work it out?”

  “I’m only six,” the twin says.

  “And cleverer than you’d have everyone believe.” Candice smiles slyly and gets to her feet. She brushes sand from her dress. “I wanted to show you just how strange Salomi is,” she says, “but you ran off!”

  Melista casts a curious eye over me. “What did she do that’s so strange?”

  “It’s not what she did,” Candice says. “It’s what she thought about that’s strange.”

  Praynia walks right up to me and wrinkles her nose as she stands on tiptoe to look hard into my eyes. “How are we supposed to know what she’s thinking?”

  “You don’t have to be a genius to work that out,” Candice says. “If you’d stayed to see her reaction, you would know what I mean.”

  “Why?” Praynia is still examining me.

  “I don’t feel things the same way you do,” I tell her. “I never feel sad.”

  “Why?”

  Melista takes Praynia’s hand to pull her away. “Leave her alone. She doesn’t want to hear you asking questions all day. I’ve got used to it, but she doesn’t know you yet.”

  “I don’t mind.” But although I’m telling the truth, a part of me obviously does mind. It’s me who needs answers to questions: about the tower statue of Keitus Vieta, about why Candice wanted to do something so cruel, but most of all, about the peculiarity of my own emotional state and why I am not able to express it.

  Thankfully, we leave the beach after that and go to the hydrobarns for a swim, but for the remainder of the day, until I return home to my mother, these questions plague me. It’s only when Father finally arrives home, covered in blood, that my cares turn a darker corner.

  FOUR

  I’ve been asleep for only an hour when I wake with a heightened sense of confusion about my feelings. As always, there is the usual burst of excitement and joy for no valid reason, but mingled like bitter medicine in the juices of a good meal, there is this inescapable anxiety, as if an unknown part of my soul has been woken from a long slumber. It doesn’t feel like me, but it does. And I feel like I shouldn’t be here, but I am.

  I dreamed, too. I never dream, but I did tonight. Hideous aberrations: a crooked old man with a blue-jeweled cane and a smile like death, thunderous explosions of stars reaching out into an endless void like claws, and sparkling ice melting under the ooze of freshly spilled blood in the shape of a hand.

  I stretch into a long yawn, plucking at my bedsheets and nuzzling them closer to my cheek before the slam of a door downstairs nudges me closer to a full waking state. I am ready to drift back to sleep again, and then I hear my father’s voice. It takes me a moment to process the fact that it is him. We were not expecting him to arrive yet; Mother told me he had a lot to do before he could join us here on Saliel.

  “Get Salomi,” I hear him say. His tone is calm and authoritative, as it always is, but then he says, “Pack some essentials. We have to leave. Now.”

  I cannot hear Mother’s hushed response, but Father replies with, “No, no, don’t concern yourself; it’s not my blood. Now, please. It doesn’t matter if she’s asleep, you have to get our daughter and—”

  A few seconds of silence pass as Mother counters with something I cannot quite hear. I creep out of my bed, sneak from my room, and edge down the stairs to the second-floor door, where I hunch down to peep through the crack. I risk widening the door slit and watch Father flop into his chair. He winces at noticing he has smeared its leather arm with blood. His sleek charcoal suit is ripped at the shoulder, a tear snakes from one lapel diagonally down to his waist, and a jagged gash stretches from his right eyebrow to the top of his lined forehead. Blood is smeared over his graying roots, and a film of sweat spoils the calm repose of his noble face.

  “I don’t think you understand the gravity of the situation,” he says with an obvious effort to restrain his emotion. “I had no choice but to come here early and warn everyone. The government sent a second team of investigators into our labs.”

  Mother stiffens. “What?”

  “A team of five this time. Remember the principal laboratory investigator? Well, he went missing around the time you left, and a full investigation has been launched. They think something has happened to him, and they are convinced someone in our team knows something. They started by interrogating me, and then they worked through the rest of the staff, and with that level of scrutiny it doesn’t matter how well I covered our tracks in the database; sooner or later they will know we came here and everything we . . . you’ve built here will be in serious danger.”

  Mother says nothing in response, but she watches him. She looks at me that way sometimes, when she is worried for me, I think, but Father doesn’t seem to notice.

  “They were so brutal, Elba.” He looks into the middle distance, as if the few seconds of rest have given him space to think. “God knows Kelling was a wreck when I rescued her from her interrogation. She . . .” Father looks at the dried blood on his hands. “It’s why I’m in such a state; she was hallucinating, violent, tortured, covered in cuts and bruises. I thought she was going to—” He shakes his head. “My God, Elba, it’s all spiraling out of control. If only the principal investigator would show up, all of this would be over, but I’m beginning to think they are right.
Perhaps something has happened to him. I don’t know what we’re going to do or where we’re going to go, and this is all . . . this is all . . .”

  Father buries his face in his palms, and Mother crouches down to comfort him. It’s such a thrill! I have never seen him like this. Nothing makes Father cry. Ever.

  “Ravian,” she says, pulling his head to her chest, “there’s something I should tell you.”

  Father pulls away and lets out a single cough. Almost formally, he wipes his eyes. “Forgive me. I shouldn’t have—” He sees the look on Mother’s face. “What? What is it?”

  She stands up, takes a deep breath. “It’s about the principal investigator.”

  Father seems to stop breathing. “What about him? You know where he is?”

  Mother’s lips are trembling. She is holding back her own tears now.

  “What? Did he question you before you left?”

  “Yes, but it’s not that.”

  “Then what? Tell me.”

  “He—” Mother gulps and straightens her neck. “He won’t be coming back.”

  Father stares at her, expressionless but for the muscles tensing in his jaw. “Tell me,” he whispers.

  “I . . .” But she cannot get any more words out.

  Father nods slowly and sighs deeply, then says quietly, “We’re wasting time. We need to—” He glimpses me peeping through the crack in the door. “Salomi!”

  His voice breaks as he holds back fresh tears. “Salomi. You shouldn’t be here. How long have you been listening?”

  “Not long,” I say, pushing the door fully open.

  Before I have a chance to rush at him for a hug, he shows me his palms, indicating the dried blood on his hands, and clears his throat in a renewed effort to pull himself together.

  “Do you want me to tell Father where the laboratory investigator went?” I ask Mother.

  She looks at me, alarmed, blinking away tears. “No!”

  “You don’t have to say anything,” Father says. “In fact, please don’t. I think I can figure it out.”

  Something passes between them as they gaze at each other. An understanding, or maybe even a moment in which they realize that something has changed between them. Neither of them wants to say in front of me what is upsetting them, and I am reminded again that I still don’t understand why people find some things harder to say than others. I know it has something to do with feeling guilty or making others feel bad, and killing a man might do that, but I don’t know how those feelings work.

  “Do we really have to go, Father? It’s nice here,” I tell him. “It’s just like home. Mother did such a good job.”

  He takes another moment to observe Mother, and then his eyes soften. Not for Mother but for me. He observes me quizzically, as if my request has somehow melted away the last ten minutes of tension, but I know his cheerfulness is an act.

  “When did I change from Daddy to Father, young lady?”

  “This morning. I’m growing up fast, you know.”

  “Is that so?” He glances back at Mother with a forgiving flash of a smile, and I can see I am just the distraction they need.

  “Of course,” I say, nudging my chin a little higher. “Which means I can help. I heard what’s going on, but I don’t want to leave my friends.”

  “Does that bother you?” Mother asks.

  “I like them.”

  “But does it . . . bother . . . you? I mean, can you feel . . . ?”

  Father rests a calming hand over hers. “I take it the nanodrones aren’t working?”

  She squeezes her eyes shut and sniffs hard. Father stares at the floor.

  “There’s something I don’t understand,” I say. “Why have you programmed home to be so nice if you’re trying to cure me of happiness?”

  Father looks shocked. “You think that’s what we’re doing?”

  “Mother keeps asking if I can feel bad things.”

  Father sighs, and his mouth flattens into a grim smile. “You’re right, Salomi, you don’t understand. We’re not trying to make you feel bad with this treatment. We’re trying to cure you of the illness that has shortened your life, and if you start to feel things like fear, or you start to get upset about anything, it’s an indication that the treatment is working. Do you see?”

  “I think so.”

  He nods, looking me deep in the eyes. “Good. Your mother and I love you very much. You understand that too, don’t you?”

  “Yes.” I’m smiling more now, and Father smiles back.

  “Now,” he says, moving Mother’s hand from his chest and standing up, “I want you to go back to your room and start packing away your favorite things, yes? Will you do that for me?”

  I glance at Mother, who looks undecided but nods her agreement all the same.

  FIVE

  I can hear them talking with raised voices as I open my wardrobe to gather my clothes. I wonder if Mother has told him about the investigator. She didn’t want to kill him, but he was trying to stop us leaving for Saliel. There were twelve children waiting on the transport, and he was standing in the doorway of the shuttle so that we couldn’t take off. I remember he had a kind face, and he was pleading with her not to go, telling her that the experiments being performed on the children would better the lives of millions. She hesitated when he told her that, but she still shot him in the stomach, then told the pilot to take off. They pulled his body onboard, then jettisoned it out of the airlock once we were on our way. She cried so hard.

  The little red dress is my favorite, so I fold that up first. I have a teddy bear, too. It’s almost as big as me, and I don’t know if it will be too big to take. I suppose I can get another one when we get to wherever it is we will be going, but it won’t be the same as Vincent. I have had him since I was two, when they first found out I had the disease. I don’t really know why it is that I am going to die. It has something to do with my nervous system. They told me that, one day, it would just give up telling my heart to pump. Like I am dying of contentment. That’s when they gave me Vincent. I think they thought it would comfort me, but I wasn’t upset about it. It was more for them than for me, I think.

  Vincent is looking quite threadbare now. He has an eye missing, and the stuffing has all come out of his stomach, a bit like the investigator’s. The energy blast put a big hole there, and a lot of stuff dropped out, but it wasn’t as bloody as I thought it would be. It was sort of black and lumpy where his insides were all burnt and fused. He tried to hold it in with his hands, but that lasted only a few seconds, and I thought he said something, but I couldn’t quite hear with all the screaming. My mother was loudest, but she went very quiet for a while after it all stopped, especially when I said that if there was a next time, I should do it, because it wouldn’t bother me. I realize now that was a mistake; it makes people think I don’t have a soul. And perhaps I don’t. I don’t even really know what that is, but one of the scientists in the lab said it once after I had been through some weird tests, and my mother slapped him in the face straight afterward.

  I pack my reading tablets next. I have lots of books. Mother doesn’t know about most of them because they are horror. I wanted to see if they would frighten me, but of course, they didn’t, and I think I knew they wouldn’t anyway. One of the scientists convinced me of that. He put me in a dark room one day and showed me lots of pictures on a big screen for six hours. “Incremental Repulsion Imagery” he called it, and all I did was smile the whole time. The scientist was shaking when he brought me back to Mother.

  It’s gone quiet downstairs, and I am thinking about sneaking back down again, but there is a noise at the window. It’s dark outside apart from the moon and the occasional flash of lightning. I jump up onto my bed and look through the glass, but I can’t see anything except the stars and the silhouette of buildings near the beach.

  The tower is there too. It’s still the same as earlier. Keitus Vieta’s wizened form, bent over a mile high, is lit by snaps of lightning, and I�
��m suddenly feeling terrified again. But the same as before, I’m not responding to it. There’s no bodily reaction again, and the sense of feeling trapped is making it worse. All I do is squint out to see what might have made the noise. It sounded like a branch hitting the window, but there are no trees close by. It’s hard to think, and I don’t know why I’m opening the window. I want to stop. I want to take a moment to calm my mind, but I have no control. I can’t stop! I can’t stop!

  I lean out of my window and look down. It’s Candice.

  “Hey!” She has her hands cupped around her mouth, directing her whisper toward me. “Get down here. There’s something you have to see.”

  She’s wearing black tracker bottoms and a black top, so it’s hard to see her clearly, but her pumpkin hair is visible in the moonlight, bleached to a ghostly pale blue.

  “I can’t. I have to pack my things.”

  “Why?”

  “We’re leaving.”

  “What? Where are you going? You’ve only been here two weeks.”

  “I don’t know.”

  Candice drops her hands and slaps her thighs angrily. She looks around her, lips tight with frustration. Then she cups her hands to her mouth again and hisses up at me. “Ten minutes. That’s all we need. I have to show you this.”

  I can feel the excitement bubbling up again, enveloping the fear I had a few moments ago. “And you can’t tell me what it is?”

  “You’ll see.” She grins and waves me down.

  “They won’t let me out. I’m supposed to be packing, and it’s really late.”

  “Quickly, then. Climb out the window. You have to come.”

  “Why? What’s so important?”

  “Come down and you’ll see.”

  I can’t hold the excitement any longer, and before I know what I’m doing, my knees are on the window ledge and my hands are gripping the frame. Carefully, I edge my way down onto the roof of the utility porch and slide down the tiles before dropping deftly down to the gravel driveway. Candice has her hands pressed against her mouth to stifle a giggle as she hops up and down gleefully.