by Grant, Mira
“Yes,” said Dr. Banks, and beamed at me, like I was a slow child who had just managed to catch up to the rest of the class.
It made me itch to punch him, to feel my knuckles sinking into the soft flesh of his cheek or throat. I clenched my hands by my sides instead, and said, “That means you used the D. symbogenesis tapeworm on a human subject to get a chimera of your very own.”
“Yes,” said Dr. Banks again. His smile this time was more strained. He was clearly getting as tired of praising me as I was of being praised. Too bad that had never been enough to make him stop.
“That worm has human DNA in it. Dr. Cale’s DNA. You took her family away from her when you took us away from her.”
“Millions of children,” said Dr. Cale, a wistful note in her voice that I had only heard on a few occasions, usually when she was talking about her friend Simone, who had died of allergies before the development of the SymboGen implant. Simone had been Dr. Cale’s motivation for wanting to solve the hygiene hypothesis. Without that dead friend, Dr. Cale would probably have turned her terrible intellect on destroying the world in some other completely accidental way.
That’s the danger of genius. One way or another, it’s going to destroy the world.
“I don’t understand,” said Dr. Banks.
“I think you do,” said Dr. Cale. “I had millions of children, and you took them away from me. So what can you possibly offer that would make up for that?”
“Data.” He produced an external hard drive from inside his shirt, holding it up for all of us to see. “I have the full record of Anna’s conversion and assimilation here, and I’m willing to give it to you, if you’re willing to help us. There are things on there that you probably haven’t even considered yet, much less advanced to the testing stage. I can help you jump your research forward by a matter of years, and all I’m asking is room, board, and a little supervised access to your lab space. Anna still needs monitoring for signs of rejection, after all.”
Anna herself didn’t say anything. After her interjection about sarcasm she had returned to her previous silence, standing like a wan shadow next to Dr. Banks. I tried to meet her eyes. She looked away. Something about that made my stomach clench, although I couldn’t have said exactly what it was. Something was wrong with Anna.
“I have all that data,” said Dr. Cale dismissively. “I brought three subjects to full integration, and I monitored them every step of the way. You’re going to have to do better if you want me to find a space for you here, and not to just shoot you and dump you out back for the feral cats.”
Dr. Banks smirked. “Ah, but all three of your subjects started in a vegetative coma. Anna didn’t.”
My stomach clenched even harder, becoming a knot of ice in my abdomen. The sound of drums was suddenly deafening, pounding in my ears until it became the entire universe, until there was nothing but the drums and no need for there to be anything else, ever again. “What did you just say?” I whispered. I wanted to shout. I wanted to scream. I couldn’t make my lips or throat obey me.
Luckily, Nathan was close enough to hear what I had said. “What did you just say, Dr. Banks?” he asked, and the sudden chill in his own voice told me that he had looked at the situation and reached the same conclusions that I had.
“I said that Anna—not her original name, you understand—did not begin her transition in a vegetative state. She was alert and aware through the bulk of her crossover. I have the data.” He held up his hard drive again, as if reminding us of its existence. “I can help you, and all I’m asking is that you give me a little help in return.”
“Help is commonly reciprocal between equals, a matter of duty from inferiors, and a matter of obligation from superiors,” said Anna, in the same calm, barely inflected tone that she had used before. Her gaze didn’t waver, continuing to stare off into the middle distance like she was looking at something the rest of us couldn’t see.
All the cold in my body consolidated into a single freezing point. I strode forward, toward Dr. Banks, ignoring the guns that were now pointed at my back. I dimly heard Dr. Cale bark an order, but as it didn’t contain my name, I neither stopped nor slowed. All my attention was fixed on the man in front of me, who smiled that old paternal smile at my approach, seeming pleased to see me walking toward him willingly.
“Sally, my dear, I knew that you would under—” he said, before my fist collided with his jaw and he stopped talking. He staggered backward, eyes wide and wounded, like a feral animal’s. The shell of cold around me shattered with the blow, but I still raised my hand, getting ready to hit him again. He deserved it.
At the last moment, I changed my mind, and snatched the hard drive from his hand instead. He stared at me, too stunned to react, which just made me want to go back to punching him. Anna, who had in her own way been a motivating factor in the chaos, said and did nothing. She just stood there, staring blankly ahead, her hand still curved like she was holding on to Dr. Banks.
“I’m tired of this,” said Dr. Cale wearily, her words audible now that the icy shell was gone. “Take them.”
Instantly, Fishy and Fang began to move, Fishy getting Dr. Banks into a headlock while Fang produced a syringe from inside his jacket and drove it into the side of Dr. Banks’s neck. Daisy stepped forward, reaching for Anna.
A wave of panicked protectiveness swept over me. I grabbed Anna’s slightly curved hand in my free one, relieved when she allowed her fingers to part long enough for me to get a good grip, and tugged her forward. She stumbled a little, but she came willingly enough.
“No,” I said, putting my free arm around Anna’s chest, so that I was holding her against me. She still put up no resistance, moving with me as malleably as a doll. “Don’t touch her. She doesn’t understand—she’s still so—don’t touch her. You need to leave her alone.”
“Sal, sweetheart, you’re going to have to let go of the new girl eventually,” said Dr. Cale. “She needs a full exam.”
“No,” I said again, turning to face her. Anna turned with me. If I hadn’t been able to feel her chest rising and falling with her breath, I would have suspected her of being a large, elaborate decoy—but no, that wasn’t possible, was it? I could feel her, a presence that had suddenly joined my overall map of the universe in an undeniably permanent way. Adam had done the same thing. He’d just taken longer, maybe because he was the first, and those channels in my mind hadn’t been open yet when he and I met.
Well, they were open now.
Dr. Cale looked at me thoughtfully, frowning. Her expression didn’t change when we heard the dull thud of Dr. Banks’s body hitting the elevator floor. Finally, she asked, “What if I let you come with her while we set her up for an examination, so that you can see that she’s safe, and then afterward we can talk about this like adults?”
It was the best that I was likely to get. It meant that I wouldn’t be leaving her alone; I could get her settled, and then go find Adam. I nodded. “Okay,” I said. “Anna? Is that okay with you?”
Anna didn’t say anything at all.
Sell your face to buy your mask,
It will serve you in this task,
And masks can see us better than the mirror ever could.
Closer now, but still so far,
Lose your grip on who you are.
The next time that you see me, you will be with me for good.
The broken doors are kept for those the light has never known.
My darling girl, be careful now, and don’t go out alone.
–FROM DON’T GO OUT ALONE, BY SIMONE KIMBERLEY, PUBLISHED 2006 BY LIGHTHOUSE PRESS. CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT.
That bastard.
I know what he did. I know how he did it. I know why he did it.
The only thing I don’t understand is why he would come here, to me, to flaunt this monstrosity. And until I know why, I can’t take steps to get rid of him.
Oh, my poor girl. I am so sorry.
–FROM THE JOURNAL OF DR. SHANTI C
ALE, NOVEMBER 15, 2027
Chapter 13
NOVEMBER 2027
Dr. Banks was removed to one of the secure holding rooms. Dr. Cale had prepared them knowing that eventually one of her people would go sleepwalker. Everyone who worked for her was supposedly clean, but that didn’t necessarily mean anything—the rules had changed as soon as the tapeworms began migrating through the bodies of their hosts, and we couldn’t count on things like asexuality or built-in obsolescence to keep people safe.
Anyone who wasn’t a chimera like me or free of implants like Nathan was a potential conversion risk. That fact had been driven home a week before Dr. Banks showed up, when one of the techs suddenly started seizing. She’d been infected all along. We just hadn’t known it.
Now she drooled and gnashed her teeth in the room next to the one where they were putting Dr. Banks. I hoped the smell of him kept her snarling the whole time that he was there. He deserved it.
I led Anna through the facility, flanked by two guards who were supposed to make sure she didn’t try anything. If she was plotting against us, it didn’t show. She held my hand, docile and silent, until we reached a small examining theater, two of its four walls made of hanging white linen. When she saw the bed she smiled, the expression lighting up her pale face, and pulled her hand out of mine. She ran to climb up onto the bed with all the joy of a child on Christmas morning. Before any of us could do more than blink, she began shedding clothing, throwing it to the floor until she was stark naked. Then and only then did she lay back on the bed, arms flat at her sides with her wrists turned toward the ceiling, as if she was prepping herself for the inevitable IV.
She didn’t make a sound throughout the entire process. She just stripped and stretched in total silence, somehow managing to even keep the bed linens from rustling.
Nathan, Dr. Cale, Daisy, and I stared at her, equally silent, although our silence was born more of shock than anything else. Then, slowly, the three of them turned to look at me. I put my hands up, as much to ward off the comparisons as to ward off the questions.
“No,” I said. “I remember everything about the period immediately after I woke up, and I was never like that. I was compliant, yes, because I wanted to please the people around me, but I was never… never…” I shuddered, unable to put the wrongness of what I’d just witnessed into words. Finally, unable to think of anything else, I repeated, “No.”
“So we’re either looking at the result of conditioning, or at something that happens naturally in…” Dr. Cale stopped. It was rare to see her silent in the middle of a sentence. Her lips moved for a few seconds, struggling for the next word, before she said, “Involuntary chimera. Oh, God. I never wanted to say those words.”
“I don’t see how you can, Mother,” said Nathan. “This is impossible. He has to be lying.”
“There’s only one way of finding out,” said Dr. Cale. Her gaze went back to Anna, and the rest of us followed it. “She has the answers. They’re locked in her blood, in the protein traces of her spinal column, in a hundred other locations on her body. Getting them out will hurt her. I wish we didn’t have to try.”
“So take him at his word,” I said, the need to protect her looming large once again.
“We can’t, Sal,” said Nathan. I glanced to him, feeling obscurely betrayed. Yes, he frequently sided with his mother in matters of science, but not when it was something like this, not when a woman’s life was on the line. He shook his head. “If she’s a chimera who converted while the original personality was still conscious and aware of her own body, that means there might be a way for sleepwalkers to integrate successfully. You were the first natural chimera, but Sally was already gone when you made the integration. She wasn’t in the body to fight you. Anna…”
“The mind resists that sort of thing, as a general rule; that’s why brainwashing and sleep-learning don’t work,” said Dr. Cale. “We become entirely different people every seven years, and our minds let it happen because it’s slow, it’s graceful, and even then, we cling to childhood pleasures and high school goals like they somehow had more relevance just because they happened earlier in our developmental cycles. Can one of my children rewire a thinking mind completely and successfully without resulting in the sort of traumatic brain damage we see in the sleepwalkers? God help me, but we need to know.”
“Why?” I asked blankly.
“Because if my children can take someone over without unconsciousness or brain damage, they can learn to make the transition almost invisible,” said Dr. Cale. “No real disruption. ‘Bob’s just tired,’ and then the other chimera remove their new brother or sister before anyone notices the change. Oh, all the memory loss will still apply, but it’ll be so much easier to relearn everything when you don’t damage the brain in the process of taking it over.”
“That’s why he brought her here,” I said. “He knew you’d study her. She’s a trap.”
“Yes,” said Dr. Cale. “I’m aware. So let’s set it off, and see what happens.”
“He’ll take everything you learn and run away with it.”
Dr. Cale’s smile was a terrible thing, and filled with teeth. “You’re assuming he’ll still have feet when we get done with him.”
Anna—who had to have heard every word we said, lying there on the bed with her eyes toward the ceiling and her nipples slowly hardening from the chill in the room—didn’t say a word or turn toward us even once. She just held herself perfectly still, a composed expression on her face, like Dr. Banks passed her off to strangers every day.
My fingers itched, and the only cure, I knew, would be grabbing hold of her and never letting go. I rubbed them together, trying to make the feeling stop. “I’m going to go find Adam,” I said. “He needs to know that this is happening, and that there’s another chimera in the building.”
“All right,” said Nathan. He bent to kiss the top of my head. I hugged him quickly, taking what pleasure I could from the contact. “We’ll be here.”
“I know,” I said, and turned to run deeper into the lab.
Adam and I were the yin and yang of Dr. Cale’s chimera research project, in more ways than one. He was created in the “traditional” way, when she introduced an immature D. symbogenesis directly into the brain of a subject in a persistent vegetative coma. The body’s original owner was already long gone, leaving an otherwise healthy habitat for the new tapeworm intelligence that would inhabit it. I was an accident, born of trauma, stress, and lucky chance. My memories began at the moment I fully integrated with Sally Mitchell’s brain, but according to Dr. Cale, the last act of my old life had been a panicked flight through her body, culminating with my burrowing into her skull and beginning the integration process. He was induced, I was natural; he was nurtured as a chimera, I “grew up” believing myself to be a human being. I had spent the last few months stumbling from one dangerous situation to another, while Dr. Cale kept Adam in the lab, as confined and protected as possible. She said that she hadn’t allowed me to spend so long outside of her care after my accident just so she could monitor our development under different types of clinical pressure, and I actually believed that she believed that.
At the end of the day, Dr. Cale loved Adam very much, and wanted him to be safe. I couldn’t blame her for that. She’d been his mother for the entirety of his life, while I was more like the child she’d helped someone else bear through egg donation: genetically connected, socially and emotionally very, very distant.
“Adam?” I slowed as I reached the edge of the lab hydroponics section, which was used mostly to grow herbs and local mushrooms. There was a large artificial bog filled with sundews, which I appreciated—Nathan and I had our collection, but he had “liberated” several more from florists and taxidermy shops when he was helping to collect hydroponic and preservation supplies. Sundews were bog plants, which made our old friend Marya’s admonition not to overwater them even funnier. She’d been trying to keep us from killing them with chlorine, of course
, and the language barrier had simply been complicating her instructions.
Marya was probably dead now. She’d owned and operated a flower shop within the general footprint of San Francisco City Hospital. Even if she hadn’t had an implant of her own—and I didn’t know whether she did or not; I had never asked her, and it was too late now—there had been mobs of sleepwalkers in that area during the collapse. There was very little chance that she had survived.
I sometimes wondered how the rest of the people on Dr. Cale’s team could stand it. I had only had a few years to form connections with other people, and I could still be blindsided by the strength of how much I missed them.
But this wasn’t the time to dwell on what we’d lost. “Adam,” I called again. “It’s Sal. The duty roster says you’re supposed to be here, so where are you? Come on, Adam. I know you’re there.”
“How do you know?” asked a voice from behind me. I turned, but I didn’t see Adam, just the shapes of three large potted avocado trees. “Maybe I’m somewhere else. Maybe I’m nowhere near here at all.”
“Well, since we don’t have intercoms this good, and the cell system went down weeks ago, the part where you’re talking to me means that you’re here,” I said. “Apart from that, I know you’re there because I know you’re there.”
The leaves on the avocado trees rustled and Adam’s face appeared, pale through the gloom. I was paying attention now, brought to high alert by Anna’s presence: I didn’t feel the same drive to protect that I felt for her, but he wasn’t in danger, was he? I already knew that Adam was safe and well, and on the few occasions when I had been afraid he would be hurt, I’d had the same response to him that I had to her. Chimera, standing together. So no, I didn’t need to protect him… but I was aware of him. I always had been. I just hadn’t been able to consciously name that feeling before I had someone else to check it against.