by Various
“The scan doesn’t hurt,” Ava says.
My mind is chewing on the autopsy information. Something doesn’t add up, but I have to stop thinking about it or I’ll relapse, and this time Eddie will tell the captain the truth about me wrongfully suspecting Dr. Ennis.
I tap my fingernails on my teeth. “I’m not worried.”
We go into the building, and this time the security guards let me into the elevator. I skirt around them, flinching when I get closer, but they don’t even acknowledge me.
Dr. Reg greets us before we can even sit in the waiting room and we are ushered right into the scan room. The walls are grey and the floor is tan Berber. It should calm me, the plain colors, but the fluttering starts in my stomach when the nurse motions for me sit on the exam table. I lie down on the table, breathing evenly.
“We’re going to have to take those goggles off.” Dr. Reg says.
My heart thumps hard. “Can you dim the lights?”
The technician dims the lights and leaves the room to prepare the equipment.
Ava leans over and helps me.
“We have good news.” Dr. Reg turns to Ava. “We have approval from the research committee for a small subset of test subjects, and your file came up as a candidate. I’ve got the redesign in my office, and we can start the treatment.”
“Right now?” Ava asks. She bites her lip and looks at me.
“You can go.” My voice breaks at the end.
“Are you sure?”
“You’ll just be waiting outside anyway.”
She leaves with Dr. Reg, and I try to lie still while the scanning technician insists that I’m in fact not still.
When I get situated, I think about the autopsies and the parts of the brain affected. Depression in the frontal and temporal lobe areas, PTSD in the amygdala. It clicks. Those are the parts of the brain that would need to be “redesigned.” I wonder if all seven absent halo cases were candidates for the redesign. How many of Dr. Reg’s patients got a redesign?
I wiggle off the table and the technician calls for me to stop.
I push away from the nurses and dart for the hallway.
The hallway is lined with exam rooms, surgical rooms, and a room marked Transfer. There’s a commotion down the hall as the nurses call my name. I slip into the transfer room before they see me, and lock the door.
I’m relieved by the darkened room.
I trip on a cord and my shoulder jams into a metal cage. The cage clatters and a high-pitched squeal pierces the air. Cedar shavings spill onto the floor. Then there’s a flurry of activity. Rats bang against their cages, running along squeaky wheels. I hug myself, humming.
A light from a door at the other end of the room blinks like a beacon. Stop blinking, stop blinking, stop blinking. There’s canvas hanging over the top half of the door, obstructing the light from what appears to be another room. I pull it down.
I peek through the window and see Ava lying back in a chair. Wires snake out from her head and wrap around her neck like a noose.
“Just one more minute,” Dr. Reg’s voice says to her.
I hear Ava moaning inside, but the door is locked.
I yell through the door, “Leave her alone.”
Dr. Reg startles and holds up his hand. “This is a very delicate procedure. Stay back.”
“The other patients didn’t have halos.”
The doctor looks confused, so I try to think of how the goggles would tell me to explain it. I pat my pockets and then remember that my goggles are in the exam room.
I try again. “The other patients died.”
“The other patients didn’t get the correct treatment. I’ve fixed it,” Dr. Reg explains, his voice muffled.
“I don’t want to do this.” Ava is crying now on the table, wires tangled in her hair, her face contorted in pain. A machine beeps next to her and the doctor connects another wire from the machine to Ava.
“She wants you to let her go.” I flap my hands, slapping at my neck, imagining the wires around my body, trapping me.
Dr. Reg adjusts the dials on the machine. “She’s in pain now, but I’ve given her a solution to help her forget the pain after the treatment.”
I think about the skips in Sera Turner’s file. I repeat Sera Turner’s case file number over and over.
Someone knocks on the door to the rat lab behind me.
Dr. Reg pulls out a remote from his pocket. He flips the lights up to full brightness, and the doors to the transfer room lock with a rapid, resounding click, trapping me inside.
I cover my eyes and collapse against the wall.
“Howard, help me,” Ava begs, her voice fading.
I want to reassure her, but now someone is banging on the door. The sharp noise scares me and I press my body into the wall, shivering and rocking.
“The treatments should be working.” Dr. Reg leans against the window between us. “My daughter was diagnosed bipolar.” His eyes are round and red. The ends of his mouth point down, twitching before he pushes off the wall and paces the room.
I scratch at the door and realize I’m never going to get out.
Dr. Reg knew about the deaths of his patients. Dr. Ennis must not have known, otherwise why did he send the paperwork?
Dr. Reg won’t let me leave; if I leave people will know. I imagine the images the coroner will siphon after I die.
The doctor continues stammering about the treatments and I struggle to look at Ava, who is trembling, staring up at the ceiling. Her hand breaks free from the restraints and she reaches for the wires, pulling at them. Dr. Reg continues pacing, preoccupied.
I clench my fists and throw myself at the door, scratching and clawing. My mind rages in blind panic as sensations assault me, but I force myself to focus on Ava. I have to save Ava. I yell at her to hang on and she stops thrashing. I grab an empty cage and crash it against the glass until it shatters. The door behind me buzzes and opens. A guard rushes in and pins me to the wall.
Ava lies unmoving on the table. I scream for the guard to let me go, I scream about the missing halos.
When the guards check Ava’s vitals and pronounce her dead, I scream that the doctor killed her, and then I just scream and cry and shake until Eddie shows up an hour later.
• • •
The doctors and researchers tried to explain to me their theories of how the redesign had affected patients’ brains. Each of the patients suffered varying side effects as Dr. Reg adjusted the treatment, causing different forms of death.
The detectives found bullets in Dr. Reg’s gun that matched the same slug that killed Sera Turner. Evidence recovered from Dr. Reg’s email showed that Sera had been complaining of massive headaches, and threatened to expose Dr. Reg to the medical board when she discovered the treatments had never been approved.
He felt that he needed more time to complete his research. He became desperate for answers, and his unstable mind saw Sera as a threat.
No one could explain the missing halos or the short siphons. Dr. Ennis said that the redesigns left each individual’s consciousness out of sync. Father Solomon said it was a sign that the victims’ spirits were never guided into the light. I like to think that they have found their way now.
• • •
Ava’s siphon has yet to be rendered. At first, I didn’t want to render it, because I’m afraid of what I will see. Will her last memory be of me cowering in a corner while she begs me to help her? But I need to know one thing.
The frames are blurry and I spend hours tweaking and adjusting. Before long, I see myself rendered clearly, looking directly at her before I move away from the wall. I look determined as I fight to get to her. I look like a superhero.
The door behind me buzzes and opens.
Eddie comes into the dim room wearing his badge.
“Hi, Howard.”
“You hate Digital,” I say. “You said you’d never come back.”
“I know what I said.” He pauses, looking at the loopin
g render. “It’s lunch time; you need to take a break. I’m going down to Pierre’s.”
I like Pierre’s; they’re next to the waterfront in a no-advertising zone. The crowd is usually small, lights dim.
“I’m not going to wear the goggles. You said I had to wear them.”
“Yeah, I said that.” He shifts his weight from one foot to the other. “You don’t need them. You did good…” He chokes on the rest of the words and instead holds out his hand.
I think about the millions of germs on a human hand, how a handshake is so strange. I think about the sensation of touching, and Eddie’s sandpaper knuckles. A statistic pops into my head about the percentage of people who no longer shake hands as a custom. Eddie waits for me, his hand suspended in the air.
I suddenly know what to do. I shake his hand, then leave without the goggles. I like being Howard.
I glance back at my desk as the door closes and pause long enough to see Ava’s perfect halo fade to black.
TODAY I AM NOBODY
by Tina Gower
First published in Galaxy’s Edge (May 2013), edited by Mike Resnick
• • • •
IAM AMBER when I see him again. I wake with auburn hair and green eyes, freckles across my skin, and decide to be Amber. The name fits the face in the mirror, and all day I do Amber things. Amber would love picking daisies in the meadow behind the reservation. Amber would wear her hair in two French braids. Amber would have a boyfriend with blond hair and one unruly lock that covers his left eye. When I see him, that perfect boy for Amber, I want him.
He works in the village, on the dusty grimy road that leads from the reservation to the back of the tannery. I am able to watch him scraping a hide for sale because he does not know Amber. He knew Rose. When I was Rose, I had olive skin with black hair. The roses were budding and I put one in my hair.
“How long will you be in town?” he had asked.
“Only until the roses bloom,” I said. Truthfully, I didn’t know then how quickly I would shed and change and become a new girl. The shaman didn’t tell me how the medicine would work.
The corners of the boy’s mouth twitched and his smile fell flat. “That’s too bad. I like dark-skinned brunettes. Everyone in town is blond.”
Amber doesn’t have dark skin, so today I only watch while the young man (who is perfect for Amber) hangs the skins to dry. I hear wagon wheels squeak into the village with supplies from the East. The traders bring tea and preserves, waxes for candles when the long nights come. One trader hands a package of sweets to a girl my age. Her name is Nola. She will always be Nola, poor thing. The other girls do not recognize me anymore, although they knew me once.
• • •
I walk home and cut through the glen. My hand skims along the wild grains and I pick one to chew absently. When I reach my tent by the creek, my pots and pans are scattered, my food supply is shredded and strewn along the bank.
I’m cleaning the mess when I hear the grumble of a bear. He swipes his paw at me before I see him, and I fall to the ground. The gravel smashes into my elbows and knees. The smell of pine and dust brings me to my senses. He swings at me again, and his paw leaves a scrape down my leg.
The injury burns. My breath is frozen in my chest and my palms are damp with sweat. I clutch a cast iron skillet and, with no other weapon, throw it at his head. While he rubs his face with a paw, I scamper and trip my way to the tallest pine and climb. He paces below.
My skin tingles and I feel an itch. The sensation multiplies until it’s like a thousand insects burrowing into me. My skin peels. A wave of nausea crashes into me like the river against the rocks a few feet away. The change is happening too quickly. I hug the trunk, panting. A clump of Amber’s hair falls to the bear. He bats at it and sniffs. Pieces of Amber melt away. When Amber is gone, the bear is gone, too.
I crawl back to the ruined tent and look in my mirror. A crack runs down the middle, but I can still see my new face in the reflection. I’m still pale, but my freckles are gone and I have blond hair.
The shaman’s medicine doesn’t work. I’m only half tribe and half white. Maybe I should never have agreed to the medicine. I don’t fit in either world.
I stay at my campground on the reservation for the next few days. A blond will not do. The tanner sees too many blonds. “Everyone in town is blond,” he told Rose. I spend the time cleaning the mess from the bear.
• • •
Today I am Mia. My skin looks like porcelain and my eyelids look swollen. I have straight black hair. I run to the village to watch the young man in the tannery. Mia should have a boyfriend who works at the tannery, but he doesn’t look at her. I am not Rose.
“Can I help you, Miss?” He asks.
“My name is Mia.”
“Can I help you, Mia?” His eyes never leave the saddle he is brushing.
“No,” I say, because I know now I’m not who he is looking for today.
I leave a rose for him at the table. The last one of the season. I watch him from a safe spot outside the window. He never touches the rose. I go back the next day and the next, but the rose doesn’t move from its spot. It wilts and dries. One day it is gone.
• • •
The bear comes to me in a dream and when he lifts his face I see the shaman. Her grey hair blends into the white patch of hair on the bear’s neck and it is as if she is holding the bear up for me to see.
“I’ve brought you a bear,” she says.
“I don’t need a bear. I need friends, people to talk to. I’m lonely, and your medicine does not work.”
She moves around me to light a fire and the bear flops to the ground like a pile of the tanner’s skins. “Animal medicine takes a long time to work.”
The wood smokes for a minute before the first flames lick the chilly night air. The pines that surround the campsite glow, but the forest beyond remains black.
“I asked for someone to love me and accept me. I didn’t ask for animal medicine,” I say.
My voice sounds muffled. My lips feel smashed against my teeth. I’m confused to find I’m talking into my arm. I rise and blink in the darkness of my tent. Outside the campfire smokes as if a fire was lit and died hours ago.
• • •
Today I am Abigail. My skin is so dark it’s black. My hair is also black, but curly and coarse. The tanner notices Abigail. His eyes follow me around the tannery, but his shoulders are tense, his lips are turned down in a frown. I finger a design on a small leather bag for sale. It is of a rose.
“Put that down.” His hand is gripping a hammer so tight his knuckles are white. “That is not for you. Put that down.”
He stomps towards me and I fumble the bag back to the display and run to the reservation. My heart beats so hard my throat hurts. My fingers feel numb where I held the bag meant for me. No, I remember, now. The tanner is correct; it’s not for me. It’s for Rose.
• • •
Today I am nobody.
I do nothing. I sit and let the sounds of the creek drown out my thoughts. The leaves fall and regrow many times while I am nobody, doing nothing things. Every morning I am not Rose I am nobody. Some days I do not even check my mirror, searching for her.
• • •
The roses are in bloom today, and I gather a few supplies to trade in town. Wild herbs and berries overflow in my baskets. The tanner is selling his hides two booths down from me. He stops for a moment to pick through my selection, and finds a few herbs to his liking. The sun streams through his blond hair, and I see one strand of silver. When he smiles I expect to feel warmth, but there is none. I wonder as he walks away who I am today. I never looked in the mirror.
• • •
Today, I am Amber again. If I can be Amber then I can be Rose. I’m excited to discover this, and I dance around my camp. Maybe the medicine is working. Maybe I can force my body to change like I did with the bear. Maybe I can find a way to stay Rose.
I make plans.
&nb
sp; • • •
“Girl of many faces,” the shaman called me. I walk the line between worlds. I schooled in the village, and the girls complimented me for my hand at mixing herbs to make pleasing scents, but no one bought them. In the reservation the women relied on me to plant the seeds for the next harvest, but criticized me for not planting in rows. Liked by all and loved by none. I was invisible in my efforts and visible only in my failures. So I became whatever people wanted me to be, and still nobody loved me. The shaman promised me the attention I deserved.
“You try to please everyone and you please no one, not even yourself,” she said, and handed me a mirror. “The animal spirits have chosen to heal you and retrieve a lost part of your soul.”
Then the day came when the people of the reservation moved to the South to follow the seasons. The shaman said I should stay behind and wait for my spirit animal’s medicine.
The day after they left, I awoke to see Rose. Her hair shone a rich black-cocoa, not like my dull light brown. Her figure curved like a road that moves with the land, not like my straight narrow lines that short-cut to the ground.
I thought the spirit animals had made me into the woman I was meant to be. I thought the medicine had worked. But then I became sick: my skin peeled, my hair fell, and the part of me I thought of as “Rose”—the part of me I would learn to be—wilted away.
• • •
Today I am finally Rose.
My hands tremble. This makes the basket quiver and the herbs shake. To be Rose, I jumped from a cliff by the river. After a dozen times and a dozen girls, fear of the height no longer changed me. I had to find a new danger. I fought a wolf, a badger, and thieves along the road. In the end, nothing scared me more than never being Rose again. She crept into me in my sleep.
I look in the broken mirror to be sure, but it’s true. I am finally Rose.
I head straight to town, herb basket in hand. I do not stop until I’m at the tannery.
He brushes the skin of an animal and sees Rose.
“Hello,” he says, smiling. “Can I help you?”