The Unincorporated Woman

by Dani Kollin; Eytan Kollin

  “Sir?” he asked, befuddled.

  “If no one is here,” she intoned with the cruel and studied temperance of a spider approaching its trapped prey, “then what’s all this talk about captains and colonels?”

  “I, uh…”

  The corporal had been rendered mute, stunned into terrified silence. Sweat was now pouring down his face and soaking his collar as he handed back the DijAssist. The other checked it briefly, making sure everything was in order. She then looked up at the young man and held him in her gaze, toying. A few seconds passed before the now discombobulated corporal was rewarded with an unfeeling smile immediately after which the other collected her few belongings and marched past the counter with her levitating cargo. She quickly found the designated tube, and such was her expression and the nature of her uniform that hardly anyone saluted, preferring not to have her notice them at all.

  The sergeant handling tube 317 must have had some experience with covert operations, because all he did was look at her orders and wave her aboard. She secured the suspension unit to the floor with magnetic clamps, took her seat in a chair next to it, and then strapped herself in. A short while later, she and her cargo transferred to a fast UHF covert shuttle. By the time she left Mars’s operational space, she’d gone into stealth mode and sped at near full acceleration toward Alliance space and to her prearranged rendezvous with an Alliance frigate.

  Six hours later, the other arrived at her final destination. As her shuttle’s hatch opened in the frigate’s small hangar, she gingerly stepped out, smiled as she took in the new surroundings, and gulped in her first-ever taste of Alliance air. She was surprised to find the head of Intelligence, Kirk Olmstead, waiting for her at the foot of the ramp.

  He had a wide, embracing smile and stepped up to greet her. “Welcome to the Alliance,” he said warmly, “and may I say on behalf of the entire Cabinet and the billions we represent, congratulations on a job well done.” He then held out his hand.

  The other positively beamed as she shook it. The charade was finally over. “It’s good to be home, sir,” answered Agnes Goldstein.

  5 Wake, Watch, and Wonder

  Sandra O’Toole started yawning even before her eyes had fully opened. Her lithe, five-foot-seven-inch body extended out to its full frame, hands high above her head, and then in as purposeful a motion, she pulled her limbs inward for a fetal stretch. She grunted her pleasure, and one giant yawn later, her eyes finally fluttered open. She looked around briefly, wearily closed her lids, and snuggled back up against the overly large feather pillow as a satisfied smile formed at the corners of her lips. She stayed that way for a few more seconds and then abruptly bolted upright from the bed, looking around, clutching the bedsheet in terror.

  It was a terror born of familiarity: with the sheets on the bed, the size of the room, the balcony overlooking the ocean, everything. The problem was she knew that the suite she was now in no longer existed, destroyed long ago.… So how … She looked down and saw that she was wearing silk pajamas, and then her hands … Jesus, she thought, what happened to my hands? They were … were young. She had grown used to seeing the bulging veins and sallow skin clinging to the outlines of her fraying bones. She’d even made peace with the dark horrible liver spots that seemed to multiply on her skin as harbingers of impending mortality. But these hands could not possibly be hers. They were smooth to the touch. She rubbed them up against her face just to feel their suppleness.

  A mischievous grin formed on her face as she undid the top two buttons of her pajama blouse. She looked down. Her eyes lit up with joy at the sight of her firm breasts. Hello, old friends. She remembered the full-length mirror in the bathroom and leaped out of bed, discarding the blouse and pants on the way. She’d taken note of the lighter gravity but had paid it scant attention as she stood naked before the mirror, viewing in awe the body of a woman she hadn’t seen for over forty years. Her tawny eyes were clear and wonderfully inquisitive, and her deep auburn hair was practically buoyant. She could see that she was back to her full five feet seven inches of height, having regained the almost four inches that time and osteoporosis had robbed from her. The young woman in the mirror gave her a huge smile and then had to blink back the sudden swell of tears. She’d forgotten just how much she missed her reflection, and how with the onset of age and sickness, that reflection had become her enemy. In a burst of exuberance, Sandra O’Toole ran to the bed, flopped onto her back, and started slapping and kicking the mattress, giggling in fits of joy and laughter.

  In the midst of her frenzied celebration, a thought of utter horror assaulted her. She stopped midkick and clutched at the sheets as the warm sweat that had been building up during her outburst all of sudden made her feel cold and clammy.

  “Alzheimer’s,” was all she managed to whimper, as if the name itself had the power to materialize into the corporeal and physically assault her. Her face was drawn and pale, and she could feel her heart beating wildly. She grasped at the drawer beneath the lamp stand next to the bed and pulled it open so fast that it and the contents within fell to the floor with a resounding crash. She quickly scanned for and found what she was looking for—a writing pad and an unusually beautiful pen. Must be expensive, she thought as she grabbed for it. Then she realized that it was her pen, the one she took with her into the … the … her mind came up blank. She flipped through the pad—empty. All the pages—empty. How could she know where she was, what she was doing in this place, how she had gotten here? How could she know any of it without her meticulously kept notes to guide her? Was this some sort of cruel joke? Had she somehow retained her youthful beauty and vigor only to have her mind robbed of its memory and acuity?

  It was at that moment of despair, when once again it appeared as though a world that had given her so much could, in the blink of an eye, yank it so cruelly away, that she struck upon an idea. She flipped the pages back until she was at the beginning of the pad. With trepidation she put her pen to the blank sheet. Again her heart quickened. 1 + 1 = 2, she scribbled. 2 + 2 = 4. 4 − 3 = 1. The simple addition and subtraction turned into division and multiplication. Her pen danced along the pages as she moved into fractions and decimals. She’d fill a page up with equations, flip it over, and start a new one. Her curiosity was almost feral. She needed to gauge the extent of her once brilliant mind’s rehabilitation and even the simple act of page flipping seemed a precious waste of time. Soon torn sheets started to fly over her shoulder as she attacked ever more complicated algebraic, calculary and trigonometrical equations. By the time she’d reached the end of the pad, she was into advanced engineering proofs and approaching the particle physics equations she’d dabbled in her freshman year in college. She could’ve gone on but the proof of her vitality was in the crumpled sheets of paper now strewn across the floor. Dr. Sandra O’Toole, once director of the applied sciences division of one of the most innovative corporations on Earth, was back.

  She remembered everything and her thinking was clear. There was no hesitating, no searching for simple concepts, no stumbling and losing her way—her mind was her own. Sandra gathered up all the pages from the floor and the bed and hugged them to herself as real and unabashed tears of joy came streaming down her face. Then she threw them up in the air and laughed again as the pages of her new life fluttered down all around her. It was only when the last of them fell to the floor that she decided to take stock of her surroundings. She rifled through the closets and drawers—nothing much there except clothing and sundries. She slipped into a pair of sweats and T-shirt.

  Satisfied that there was nothing more to be gained from inside the suite, she decided to poke her head outside of it. She walked over to the window and took in the view. The shock of what she saw was quelled by the waves of joy still coursing through her veins. The horizon curves upward and the sky has a roof, thought Sandra. How very odd. Other than those two rather large incongruities, all that was left to view was a pleasant stretch of beach at the edge of a calm sea and a lone inno
cuous figure reading quietly by the water’s edge.

  * * *

  Dr. Thaddeus Gillette sat reviewing the data now streaming in. It had been only a day and a half since he’d awoken deep within the bowels of Ceres, capital city of the Alliance. Part of him was still dealing with the shock of his involuntary internment. More difficult, though, was the disturbing information he’d been made privy to about the UHF’s psyche auditing program. At first he’d refused to believe. It was all so incredible. In simple terms Lisa Herman was Agnes Goldstein, the Alliance was actually good, and the UHF—or at least the government—was actually bad, in fact, reprehensibly so.

  The evidence had been overwhelming. He remembered things that Dr. Wong had questioned him about and the odd requests for Alliance prisoner of war patient transfers. He’d thought nothing of it at the time, but once jogged, his memory of those few patients he did see returned confirmed his suspicions—they’d become, to a person, all unabashed UHF supporters. Of those who hadn’t returned, it was now painfully obvious why. But against all the evidence so far presented, the most damning was that of Neela Harper and Hektor Sambianco caught in flagrante delicto. How a spy-eye had gotten into the Presidential suite was beyond him—especially given Hektor’s famed paranoia. But his analysis of the images’ pixelation proved that the data had not been compromised or tampered with in any way. In short, the images’ DNA was as pure as the day it was recorded. Whoever situated the unit and retrieved the data must have been highly placed, and Gillette could think of only two or three people who fit that bill. Plus the Alliance’s willingness to reveal that placement by the fait accompli of the evidence itself spoke light-years as to their willingness to trust him. And while he would admit to being unsure of many things, of one he was quite certain—the Neela he knew would never, under any circumstance, sleep with Hektor Sambianco, at least not of her own volition.

  His final request was that he be given one-on-one time with each and every member of the Cabinet. The only person to object was Kirk Olmstead, who preferred to have no one delve into his mind even if that plumbing was to be external and purely psychological in nature. Still, Kirk relented, knowing what was at stake and feeling confident that the skeletons in his closet were so well hidden that even a psychologist of Gillette’s renown would have trouble finding them. It turned out that he had nothing to worry about, as Gillette was probing only for evasion, not past indiscretions. And since there was nothing to hide with regards to the machinations of the UHF, Kirk, along with the entire board, passed the doctor’s grilling with flying colors. In the end, Gillette had been forced to conclude that the evidence supported the Cabinet’s accusation against the UHF and that each and every member of the Cabinet believed those accusations to be true. Worse, in his heart, so too did he.

  As long as he was only helping victims of the war, Thaddeus hadn’t really cared which side he was on. But that comforting illusion had now been stripped bare. He’d just spent the last five years of his life supporting the wrong side while being complicit in the psychological murder of Neela Harper, the closest thing to a daughter he’d ever had.

  Thaddeus had yet to internalize even that blow when the reason for his kidnapping was revealed. With a comforting arm around his slightly sagging shoulder, Eleanor McKenzie had led him to the Fontaine Bleue restaurant. The senior staff and technicians cleared a path for him as he entered the large storage locker and stared with wonder at its contents. The large sarcophagus was in many respects an exact duplicate of the one Justin Cord had emerged from years ago, only the color of the enamel used for its inscriptions was different. As Gillette stood in the room, touching the large housing in disbelief, Eleanor handed him a DijAssist with a full medical analysis of the body still suspended within. He quickly scanned the data and saw that both the diseases of aging and dementia were already in the process of being reversed. Further, the patient would need to be awakened in a manner that would preclude any obvious or traumatic screwups like those that had happened to Justin Cord. However, when they told Thaddeus why the patient would need to be awakened, he almost reconsidered the entire endeavor. It was at that point that Eleanor had sat down with him and, in private, brought him up to speed on the cascade of tragedy that had recently befallen the Outer Alliance. She then patiently explained why it was of paramount importance that Sandra O’Toole take her place as the next President of the Outer Alliance. Eleanor’s argument was persuasive, especially the one where she suggested that perhaps this one act could at least, in part, atone for some of the damage the doctor had unwittingly abetted.

  * * *

  And so now Dr. Gillette sat alone on the beach, watching his labor bear fruit. Whoever this O’Toole woman was, her actions indicated an exceptionally smart, well-educated, and more important, fearless individual. Thaddeus also appreciated the intense curiosity exhibited by the woman as she went about examining almost every object in the room. Familiar objects, he noted, were examined for authenticity and accuracy and then discarded. Unfamiliar objects were given a far more exacting analysis—as if her eyes alone could perform functions similar to that of a mass spectrometer.

  He was amused to see Sandra spend two whole minutes on a single piece of toilet paper, going so far as to pull the sheet apart, examining its individual strands. Then, rather amusingly, thought Gillette, the patient tested the paper’s absorbency with a glass of water from the sink. That led to her testing the faucets and the toilet; the former for speed of attaining a desired temperature and the latter for rapidity of flushing. It wasn’t long until she was on her knees examining the plumbing beneath the sink and seconds later futilely attempting to pull the lid off a toilet seat tank that looked for the world like two separate pieces but was in fact one. Gillette rued that the expediency of the mission did not allow time for the creation of true reproductions of Sandra’s actual environment—most of which had been gleaned from data found in her suspension unit. No matter, he thought to himself, the second she looks out the window, the accuracy of a toilet’s tank would prove meaningless.

  But so far, his gamble had paid off. The usual procedure in a long-term awakening was to allow the patient’s brain to reactivate slowly and then for a doctor to be present when that person became fully aware. But like Justin Cord, this patient had been down nearly three hundred years when they found her, and so the typical procedure would have to be dismissed. Unlike other members of present-day society, this patient would not have been trained from birth about what to expect upon reanimation. None of the carefully orchestrated paradigms and cues would or could come into play. To make matters more complicated, the woman had had a particularly virulent form of dementia known as Alzheimer’s disease before suspension. And although the damaged portions of her brain had been replaced with nerve growth factor–incorporated magnetic nanotubes, and her neurological integrity restored in terms of cognitive function, it was not known how much of her personality had remained intact.

  Dr. Gillette had been afraid that if so frail a brain had been allowed to reboot naturally, which is to say experience a sudden flood of information and memories, it might not start up at all. So against the advice of almost all the other specialists on hand, he proposed that they activate the brain in a subconscious state, using artificial stimulation. In this way, the flood of memories normally associated with a typical reanimation would be marginalized by the fact that they’d already be streaming through in the subconscious. The patient’s dreams would naturally be quite intense but with nothing approaching the trauma of one newly awaked from a three-hundred-year sleep begun at the doorstep of dementia! By Gillette’s method, the subconscious was rebooted and the patient placed in a standard sleep pattern, letting her wake naturally, if such a word could be applied to so delicate a procedure. And even that radical change of protocol might not have happened had it not been for the timely intervention of Dr. Ayon Nesor, the Alliance’s most revered reanimation specialist. From a time-delayed message sent from her post at Rhea, a small moon orbiting S
aturn, Dr. Nesor had calmed the frayed nerves of the senior hospital staff. No easy task since they all felt that the Outer Alliance Cabinet had trampled over their area of expertise and to make matters worse had imposed a war criminal on them more infamous for the destruction of human minds than for their actual resurrection.

  * * *

  As Sandra leaned on the windowsill staring out, panic and excitement waged a furious battle for control of her emotions. In short order, the panic abated. She took in the cool mountainous air and once again marveled at the inverse landscape. The gentleman she’d spied from the window would have to suffice as first contact. He was, she could see, wearing slightly mottled board shorts, and had on a light blue faded T-shirt with the words READ, EAT, SLEEP plastered across the back. He appeared to be in his late thirties, and his unkempt sandy brown hair whipped to and fro with the gentle breeze expelled by the dappling waves at the water’s edge. There was a small cooler to the right of him, and on top of the cooler were two bottles with indiscernible markings. Thirst welled up in her parched throat just seeing them.

  It was all Sandra needed to head out. She skipped across the room, then made quick work of the few steps leading down to the soft pliable sand. He looked over his shoulder at the sound of her approaching footsteps and peeled off a short, reassuring smile before returning to the book he’d been reading. When Sandra got close enough, she saw that one of the bottles on the cooler was of her favorite guilty pleasure: Dr Pepper. The bottle’s shape was odd but not too odd, and the lettering was in a font unrecognizable from the one she’d grown used to. Odder still, the bottle did not seem to have an opening. Its appearance was more of a bottle-shaped sculpture.

  “Provided I can figure out how to open it,” she observed, plopping down onto the large blanket that formed a periphery around Thaddeus’s chair, “I sincerely hope that one of those is for me.”