by Stephen King
Girls who knew, before The Lab even worked on them, how to get in and out. How to run. And quick.
Then the doctors took them underneath the city to our compound, put them under anesthesia, and replaced their organs and skin and bones with molecularly restructured, synthetically grown parts. After that they always ran hot, about 110 degrees hot, and their fingers never stopped twitching.
Dr. Enslein, the scientist who discovered human molecular fluidity, once said the vibration of the girls was like music made of human bones, the shift his final composition, his swan song if you will, the apex to a lifetime of scientific achievement.
In his speech at the Science Symphony Gala, he didn’t mention that an ill-timed panic attack could cause the girls’ hearts to burst.
My husband once picked up strays off the street, he bandaged their paws and fed them and found them homes. I remembered playing Annihilation 6, about to take another fortified castle, when a greyhound, her nose mottled and burnt, nudged my arm.
“Get it away from me!” I said. “I don’t want it here.”
All at once I felt nauseated, by the wet smell of the dog, by its fur bristling against my shoulder, by its wagging tail and warm breath. It was a dog like a pustule.
“Don’t you have a heart?” my husband asked me.
I didn’t know. Maybe I did once. All I know is that I couldn’t stand the smell of his dogs and then I couldn’t stand him kissing me at night with a new heaviness, his arms wrapped around my chest with a new tension. And he said I kissed like a mirror, no curves, a barrier where my tongue should’ve been.
In that city of fortresses, I’ve learned to distrust the sun.
When we kissed I thought of the girl. The girl named White, the first one, coming through the compound doors with bandages around her wrists and throat, her feet barely touching the floor. She unraveled her hair from her forehead, in between her fingers like fireglass, disintegrating before she stopped unclenching her fingers.
I thought of her arm, half in and half out of the stone blockade in the armory, and at the sight of her limbs turning into molecular smoke her shock wide enough to break open outer space.
My husband said, “When I was younger, I didn’t think it would be like this”
“Would be like what?”
White bit off chunks of her fingers. She was the first. Couldn’t keep them out of her mouth. She smiled a nervous smile, fingernail in her teeth.
“Leaving,” he said.
“Where do they go when the work is finished?”
The bones of his favorite dog tucked underneath his arm, his favorite bottle of Cognac underneath the other. Someone like him never survived a night outside the walls. He didn’t have to go a day without being fed by the refrigerator drone, or clothed by his closet style sampler program. But it wouldn’t have mattered because Her eyes were piercing sky and when she asked for a glass of water the water burst like shards of glass inside her mouth and “I’ll never drink again. I’ll never drink again what you’ve given me.”
“What did you suppose it would be like?” I asked, my arm dangling off the couch, cigarette lazy piping smoke on the walls like he always complained.
“Like a bomb going off, I suppose,” he said. “Like we’d be throwing furniture at each other, screaming and crying.”
She asked me if we could fix this, put her back, because she could see the frequency behind the frequency. Her eyes were next-level fluids, heavy enough to crack open the space between her pupils and her mouth. She could see the wall beyond the wall beyond the wall and please, would someone put her back? Nobody should be this way.
I raised the cigarette to my lips.
“I can throw something if you’d like,” I said.
“You don’t have to keep being so cruel,” he said. “It’s over.”
I thought of the wet twist pop of her bones when she expired.
It’s over.
Only when he was gone did I think of where it went wrong. I thought of the nights of being newlyweds when I sat playing virtual chess against an opponent I couldn’t beat, and he stood in the kitchen in front of the open refrigerator, screaming into the icebox. I forced my heartbeat to not respond to his voice. I remembered love like being hungry. I remembered love like the backroads behind the city the government paved over to build more compounds for rich people, the roads I could no longer get to.
I said the job, hustling girls who could’ve been me, made me turn cold.
“We hired you because you’ve got the kind of face those girls can trust, but we can tell by your eyes they shouldn’t dare.”
But there’d have to have been a reason I took the job in the first place, knowing that I’d have to sit across the table from those shaking girls and repeat, over and over again, “This is your last job, and then you’re out.”
I know you can handle it.
Several days later, I sat in the break room with one of the surveillance crew, a thin, scratch-mouthed woman named Aiden.
“So what happened to that girl at the site?” I asked. “The one who went to the Edgar Vault?”
“You’re asking questions that certain people would think require a psychological evaluation.”
“You know me,” I said, picking at my Waldorf salad, “I’m as psychologically sound as the flat surface of a shallow pool. I mean, look at me. No emotional damage whatsoever. Top mental condition.”
Aiden glanced at the security camera above the vending machine. A reflex, nothing more, we figured out about a year ago they weren’t hooked up to anything when Jeremiah got drunk at the company Christmas party and decided to climb onto a restroom stall and unhook one after he fucked Ellenore without thinking twice.
Aiden sighed.
“You’re about to tell me something fucked up, aren’t you?” I said.
Her throat tightened, like she was trying to breathe without breathing, as if her lungs might explode with use underneath her overworked, stretched skin. She leaned forward, her wiry hair falling into her eyes.
“So we got her into the vault. She shifted through the ceiling and landed into the dome chamber like we thought she would, it was fine. But when she reached the bridge and it came time to get the codes, she—”
Dr. Brandon walked in, and Aiden’s sentence hung sharp and unfinished.
“You two look guilty,” Dr. Brandon said, heading toward the coffee machine.
“Aiden’s cheating on her husband. It’s all very scandalous. Don’t tell anyone.”
“Uh-huh. Is this the Filipino?”
“He’s from Singapore,” Aiden said, rolling her eyes when Dr. Brandon’s back was turned. “And I don’t love him anymore.”
“Hence the cheating,” Dr. Brandon said, retrieving his cup of coffee before turning back to me. “I heard that was a common reaction when unhappy people are unwilling to do the work required to improve their overall quality of life.”
Before Aiden could respond, Dr. Brandon addressed me:
“Gene, do you even look at your calendar anymore? They want you in Meeting Room B in ten.”
“Yeah, yeah, I’ll be there soon.”
Dr. Brandon left.
When I glanced down at my salad, I thought for a moment I saw pink paper cranes, fingertips bloodied and wrecked.
The flat surface of a shallow pool indeed.
“What happened?” I asked.
“What?” Aiden said.
“To the girl,” I whispered. “What happened to the girl?”
“I mean, you know, sometimes things like this just happen. You can’t always account for when exactly they’re going to—”
“-What happened to her, Aiden?”
A whisper like a fierce stab.
“Aiden?”
“She exploded,” Aiden said, staring at the space behind my head, not meeting my eyes. “She painted the walls. From the inside out.”
“I keep telling myself these stories so I can sleep at night. I keep telling myself that my pain i
s an accumulation of progress, that one day it will all be worth it, that the totality of who I am is being created for a singular moment of gratification. And maybe, just maybe, if I make myself blind in the right way I can construct a narrative that will validate these thoughts.”
But then I see her hands, her bloodied hands, the cranes at her feet, the burning hair. I see the trail of ash she left behind her, dragging her feet across the broken tiles.
And she asks me:
“Where do they go when the work is finished?”
On the way to Meeting Room B, I made a detour to the girls’ living quarters. Maybe the employees weren’t being monitored, but surveillance cameras were positioned in every girls’ room, including the bathrooms.
Some sick fuck decorated their living quarters like a Victorian dollhouse, with pink wallpaper and plush, oversized couches made of flame retardant resin and tea complete with doilies made out of steel. My brain would have shrunk in a place like that. Maybe that was the point.
Two girls sat in the common room, slumped in chairs, barefoot with toes curled hard, watching television and folding cranes. Pink cranes spilled out from their seats.
Another girl slept in the dormitory with the lavender sheets squeezed between her fists, a pool of sweat accumulating in the space next to her pillow and cheek.
“Nightmares increased by 40%,” said Dr. Brandon. “Also, you are supposed to be in the meeting room by now.”
“You measure that?”
“Nightmares? Yeah. It’s a fairly accurate barometer of one’s emotional state. The content of the dream doesn’t matter, but the emotions do.”
I used to know their names.
I used to know their names, and I used to visit them inside their dormitories in between assignment briefing and evaluations and one-on-ones. Learn their dreams.
“Any idea why they’ve increased?” I asked.
I used to wipe away the blood leaking from behind their eyes.
“No idea, really.” Dr. Brandon said. “But you know, their reports you filed last quarter were rather sparse.”
“You know how it is,” I said. “They don’t talk much.”
“Is that so?”
“You don’t believe me.”
“I’ve read your reports from a few years back. The girls seemed more talkative back then.”
The girl in her bed squeezed the sheets until her knuckles turned blue, and I thought the blood might rise into her throat, burst through her sweating cheeks.
“Check the logs, I can guarantee you’re the only person who’s read those reports in the last six months.” I said. “Nobody gives a fuck about those girls.”
“So that’s your excuse, then?” he asked.
His face, placid as ever.
“Excuse? What excuse?” I asked.
“Someone did give a fuck. Of course they did,” he said. “It was you.”
Before my ex-husband took up housing stray dogs, he used to go to the bowling alley, with his shiny red custom-made bowling ball, his name, ANTONY R., emblazoned where the curve of his thumb rested. He sized up his six pairs of bowling shoes in the entryway and refused to store them, insisting the closet didn’t know how to match them correctly.
And before he went bowling, he sat at the kitchen table for hours making macramé belts and braided rope curtains.
“Macramé comes from the Arabic word ‘migramah,’” he said, “It means fringe.”
I can’t think of the memory of him without thinking of the frantic way he said ‘migramah,’ of his hands scrabbling across the table, of the day when he put the macramé in a box and started trying to brew his own beer. I think the dogs came after that.
And I can’t think of him and the dogs without thinking of accepting that job, and how signing the contract felt like cutting my arm off, even though at the time I didn’t know why.
I know it’s a logical fallacy, but sometimes I think if I didn’t take this job then I would’ve loved him more. I could’ve unwound time and pressed my hands against his closed eyelids and the fluttering of his eyelashes against my fingertips would’ve felt like a butterfly waking up, like the maw of the terrible insect relaxing around my heart. And I would have let him in. I would’ve stopped sinking into the couch, a pool of grime at my feet.
In Meeting Room B, my boss, Harris Freeman, sat in the corner of the room with his mantis-like feet propped up on the table, an ice-cube between his teeth, cup of cold espresso balanced on one thigh.
Dr. Brandon entered the room and closed the door, shutting us into dim, windowless light.
“This is the meeting?” I asked.
“The dossier,” Harris said, “On the girl we sent up to the Edgar Vault. Have you read it?”
“The files haven’t been unlocked for me.”
“But you heard what happened to her,” he said.
“No sir.”
He rolled his eyes. The cup, balanced precariously, wobbled, and espresso spilled out onto his jeans.
“Of course you have, Gene. I know you’ve got ears.”
I sighed, and sat down.
“She …” I trailed off.
“Exploded?” Harris asked me.
I nodded.
“Yes,” Harris said. “Gene, let me ask you a question. How long has it been?”
“Four years, two months, and two days, but who’s counting,” I said. “Why?”
“No, I didn’t mean the job.”
Dr. Brandon leaned against the door instead of sitting down. A slice of light cast down from the halogen bulb above his head, making it appear like he was some kind of sick, and pale deliverance angel.
“I mean, how long has it been since you’ve left your … I’m sure sterile and uninviting dark apartment and socialized?”
“I don’t see what my personal life has to do with any of this.”
“You been to the arcade lately? Spun through a halogen storm? Gone to any cocktail parties? Met a gentle, but well-cultured man who’s recently going through a divorce? Called your mother?”
I said nothing.
My boss checked his phone.
“Maybe you’re into the dark stuff. Maybe you got divorced because of your insatiable sadistic impulses. You know there are all sorts of simulators in the V district. Have you tried any of those?”
“I’m not sure—” I said, but he interrupted me.
“—Or maybe you can take a hike to the mountains. Enjoy a new kind of solitude. You know, if there are any mountains left. Have you checked? Are there any mountains left? Have we drained the ocean yet?”
“What is this meeting about again?” I asked. “I’m not sure I’m clear on that.”
He checked his phone again.
“We’ve locked your computer and your code access. Gene, it’s been a pleasure working with you. Security will see you out.”
“This is a joke,” I said.
“No,” he said, and he grabbed the espresso cup, brought it to his lips. “I wish.”
“On what grounds am I being fired?”
“Fired?” my boss asked, looking at me over the rim of his coffee cup. I’d never noticed before, there were little flowers painted on the edge of the cup. It appeared they reached up to brush his eyes.
“It’s an ancient art, Gene. Ceramic pottery was found 18,000 years ago in the Yuchanyan Cave in southern China.”
I’d forgotten, my husband also got into pottery. I’m pretty sure that was before the dogs, but after the macramé. The image of his fingers, encased in clay, spun into my head. Then just as quickly—
“No, Gene. You’re not being fired. Just think of it as an extended mandatory break.”
“Is this because of the girl?” I asked.
“Everything,” Dr. Brandon said, “is about the girls.”
“You think I had something to do with this? With her … accident? I didn’t. I stuck to the script. Like I always do.”
“You’re making this difficult for yourself,” my boss said. “I
t’s just a job. All you’ve got to do is walk out the door. The security guard will escort you out. Turn right. Go get a cup of coffee from the café. Take a fucking break. We’ll call you.”
“They’re all unstable. The molecular structure folds. I’m not a scientist. How can you possibly blame me?”
“Take. A. Fucking. Break,” my boss said.
Dr. Brandon touched the desk beside my hand. I almost felt the pulse in his wrists, throbbing mad, the rest of his body like a sheet of ice, struggling to contain something bubbling underneath the surface.
His mouth twitched, as if he was going to speak.
I stood up and without a word, headed toward the door.
“If you get a chance, go to the south side and eat a vanilla macaroon on the digital sunlight balustrade,” my boss said to me as I left. “They say it’s just a fad and that real sunlight will be in again soon, but I think it’s better than the real thing.”
40% increased nightmares.
That first girl I managed, White, acquired her contract after she was imprisoned for hacking into the mall’s infrastructure and replaced all the advertisement audio with an audio book version of Finnegan’s Wake.
I never knew her real name; it was a protective measure in case I was to be questioned. So she was always White to me, because of those synthetic, glowing braids she wore that hung down to her waist. For weeks I dreamed of her shifting through the walls of banks and estates, those white braids whipping forward with the force of her movement, dripping with acid, spraying the ceiling and floors until they ate away and collapsed the entire building. I dreamed of falling through floors and floors with her, down elevator shafts and through mazes of scaffolding.
I took her to that roadside café, away from the sharp buzz and white perspicacity of the lab. I used to think taking them out to lunch before I told them where they’d be ripping out their spines and bleeding their colors made me seem, somewhat human.
“This is your last job, and then you’re out,” I told her, like I told all the others.
But unlike the others, I remembered her favorite color was pink, just like the cranes she folded, and she used to have a boyfriend named Siph who broke up with her because she put a keylogger on his computer. She had a cat named Geoffrey and her favorite book was, strangely, War and Peace.