Selfless Series Box Set

by S Breaker

  “Oh, yeah, Kevin.” Maia nodded again, in acknowledgment. “He does Math Science—statistics, modeling, projections, those sorts of things. He’s also pretty handy with technology. And…” She paused to consider. “I suppose he’s also pretty cute.”

  Laney grinned. “Thanks.” Then her expression faded slightly as a wave of homesickness hit her from the thought. She frowned. “I miss him. My friends. My world,” she said, her chest feeling heavy as she met Maia’s gaze. “Any idea how long this cure thing is going to take?” she wanted to know.

  Maia gave her a consoling look. “I’m afraid all this is bleeding edge—excuse the pun, but nothing like you has ever happened here before. We’re all just trying to feel our way through all this.” Then she nudged her shoulder, brightening up. “Not to worry though. You can be sure that the best minds in this world are already working to help you. You’re actually pretty lucky,” she told her. “The only other thing maybe that we could probably use right now is—ironically, the real Dr. Laney Carter.” She tilted her head. “I bet she could figure the solution out of this incredibly tactile paper bag in two seconds.”

  “I was hoping it was going to just take two seconds. I seriously can’t wait to get this all over with so I can go home,” Laney commented, looking tired.

  “You know,” Maia began, regarding her with another look. “This world is pretty nice. I don’t know what your world is like, but I’m sure there are worse dimensions than this. So, in case it doesn’t work out, you could always consider staying here,” she suggested.

  Laney looked at her, taken aback. “What? I can’t stay here.”

  Maia shrugged. “Why not? You can’t go home,” she reminded her. “And from what I understand from Berry, you can’t really go anywhere. And at least, in this world, we understand what’s going on with you, and we can help you through it.”

  Laney was already shaking her head. “Thanks for the silver lining, but I want to go home to my world. That’s where I belong.”

  Maia tilted her head slightly. “Belong?” she echoed, almost in ridicule. “I reckon you can belong anywhere you want. Make a home instead of being assigned it. ‘Home’ is just a concept anyway. Home is where you find yourself. You make a home where you are.”

  Laney watched her with a strange look, but she didn’t say anything.

  “Alrighty,” Maia started, rubbing her hands together. “Let’s get this show on the road.” She gestured for Laney to take a seat on an examination chair, before she stretched to reach above a cupboard to switch something on, and instantly, the lab was filled with some heavy metal beats and rock guitar screeching music.

  Laney cracked a small smirk as she watched Maia move around the lab and it hit her. The eyeliner. The tattoo.

  Maia’s eyes lit up. “Oh sorry, do you mind this music? I forget sometimes that not everyone is into alt-rock.”

  Laney shook her head, still looking amused. “At least it’s not Crowded House again.”

  And Maia laughed. “Yeah.”

  Laney watched as Maia stepped to the beat of the music at the same time that she filled test tubes, fiddled with some control panels, peered into microscopes, and Laney smiled to herself.

  Darla—ever the musical one—was also almost always dancing around to some song. Laney recalled what Berry had said the other day, about alternate selves and permutations, and she felt that it was totally conceivable that perhaps Maia was indeed the Darla of this alternate world.

  Laney just felt completely at ease and comfortable around her, as though she was just hanging out with her best friend. Except in this world, her best friend had a Ph.D. in Neurobiology and Genetics.

  “Is that D.J.?” Maia cast what Laney was holding a curious glance.

  “Oh.” Laney dropped her gaze down at P.T., which she had propped onto the lab table, so she could fiddle around with its interface. “No, its name is P.T.”

  “Ah. I can never get their names straight.”

  “What do the letters even stand for?”

  “You’ll have to ask Berry,” she replied. “That guy’s a little bit too eccentric.”

  Laney smirked, resisting the urge to point out the ‘pot calling the kettle black’ situation. “Hey Maia,” she spoke up instead, giving Maia a curious look. “When did you know you wanted to be a scientist?”

  Maia glanced over, looking thoughtful for a second. “I think I’ve always been interested in genetics. My parents were scientists too, and every year for Christmas until I was about six, I always got a chemistry set,” she relayed. “I think my folks wanted to nurture my interest in science, make sure I chose the same specialty as them. Although, I do believe that humans are genetically predisposed to certain things, so I figure I was always going to be a scientist regardless.”

  “I guess I’m still in awe over how accomplished you all are in your work when I know you are all just the same age as me,” she remarked, still looking bewildered.

  She blinked at her. “Well, you already know, right? Everyone in our world carries a mutated genetic enzyme that causes our brain cells to develop more rapidly than they used to, that is, before the global cascade bomb event in 1952. I wrote a paper about it.”

  Laney nodded, with a catch in her smile. “Yes, Berry told me about your paper,” she said. “Makes me wonder though,” she began quickly before Maia decided to go off on a tangent and start quoting passages from her famous paper. “Is everyone on this world a scientist?” she asked. “Even the President is one. But I think Berry mentioned there was a military sector, so maybe the answer is ‘no’?”

  Maia pursed her lips. “Hmm.” She paused. “I do know of several people in the military who still have PhDs themselves—Noah being one of them.”

  “Right.” Laney nodded before she countered, “Well then, who does your plumbing? Who takes out the trash?”

  P.T. chirped as if in response.

  Maia nodded in its direction. “Anything menial has been delegated to robots or machines that have been invented to serve a specific purpose, which are maintained by scientists. Even the underground system for water, gas, waste, and stuff like that is maintained by our Biological Systems Engineers,” she relayed. “The system itself is a biological model based on the human digestive system.”

  “Oh-kay then.” Laney’s eyes widened.

  “Oh, you know who we should ask?” Maia’s eyes lit up.

  “Who?”

  “Kevin,” Maia piped up. “It’s part of his job to analyze the census on the population of The Community. He probably has access to records about what percentage of the population holds what type of educational and employment background.”

  Laney shot her a look. “Seriously?”

  “Absolutely!” She nodded. “These cultures will take a while to develop anyway. In the meantime, why don’t we see about getting you a formal introduction with the infamous Dr. Whitfield, hey?”

  Laney looked wary. “Noah made it seem like it would be a bad idea for me to interact with too many people here, let alone my boyfriend.”

  Maia rolled her eyes dismissively. “He’s just being overly cautious. Come on,” she coaxed, meeting her gaze with a grin. “You know you want to.”

  And the mischievous glint in her eye was Darla Addleton all over, and Laney couldn’t resist.

  Golden Halo

  Noah was walking back toward Dr. Chambers’ lab when he stopped short upon seeing Laney and Maia talking to Dr. Whitfield in the common area, standing around a workstation table piled high with books.

  Berry-AI was walking beside Noah and stopped as well, except Berry was doing his walkie-talkie thing from GNR and was actually transmitting himself. “Is that the Kevin?” he wanted to know.

  Noah cast a discreet glance up to where Laney was leaning close to Kevin, as they were looking over some thick volumes of census books together, in time to see her laugh at something he said, and something in his stomach tightened, but he didn’t say anything.

  Berry-AI na
rrowed his eyes at him. “What the hell is wrong with you?” he asked. “Are you seriously going to let him have her?”

  “Let him?” he repeated. “What do I have to do with it?”

  “Uh, everything?” Berry-AI replied pointedly. “She doesn’t even realize what you are. It’s the inescapable truth, man.”

  Noah grunted. “That’s just a theory.”

  Berry-AI glanced over at him. “Look at your face, even you don’t believe you.”

  Noah gave Berry-AI an even look. “She’s in trouble,” he rationalized. “She’s displaced. This isn’t even her world. The last thing she needs right now is any more pressure from something she doesn’t even understand. Besides,” he added, almost authoritatively. “She knows she can’t be with that one.”

  “Well, she has nowhere else to go,” Berry-AI quipped.

  Noah pursed his lips. He was annoyed with Berry, but he was really more annoyed with himself. “You know I can’t.”

  “Whatever, dude.” Berry-AI just shrugged before Berry signed off.

  Laney noticed Noah and Berry-AI walking back toward them, but actually, she was more focused on what Kevin was saying at the moment.

  As far as scientists went, Kevin was the only one whose field made even the slightest bit of sense to Laney, since it was all about mostly everyday things—the rate of population growth since the 1950’s mass immigration, statistical records on what kinds of species of animals thrived across the country, how often it’s snowed in Wellington for the last six decades.

  “Not often apparently,” Kevin relayed as he skimmed past a page in a big book. “Which I suppose is fortunate, since the infrastructure here is really not built for snow, with everything being on the hills and all that.”

  “This all sounds really interesting,” Laney commented with a smile, even as she extracted P.T. from being buried under a pile of old books.

  Kevin smiled back, glancing up at her. “Really? A lot of people don’t think so.”

  She met his gaze, still smiling.

  It was again, odd. She knew he wasn’t the exact same Kevin from her world. Kevin definitely was no math whiz, but in all other aspects, she felt as though he may as well have been her boyfriend.

  The Kevin who always thought about others before himself, the Kevin who always made sure Laney made it to class on time, the Kevin who always made her feel very well cared for.

  “I’m stoked by these numbers though,” Maia spoke up as she held another census book close to her face. “I always knew we had a lot of sheep and cows and horses and stuff, but knowing definitively that all the snakes in the entire world were wiped out with the cascade bomb? I might suddenly take up hiking.”

  Laney grinned, nodding in approval, and looked over to meet her gaze. “I think I may learn to like this world after all, Maia.” She glanced over at P.T. “What do you think, P.T.? Impromptu camping trip?”

  “Hey, folks!” Berry-AI greeted everyone as he and Noah walked over to the group.

  Kevin straightened up from the table. “Oh. Hey, Donovan,” he greeted.

  Noah looked at him. “Whitfield.” He glanced down at Laney before he met Kevin’s gaze again, but he didn’t say anything.

  Laney looked at everyone in turn as they all seemed to have been stunned into silence. She furrowed her eyebrows in a puzzled prompt. “What?”

  At that, Maia’s eyes lit up. “Hey,” she began, almost too loudly. “I think I heard my centrifuges stop spinning. I guess we’d better get back to work. Hey Kev, thanks for the info,” she bid with a nod, turning to leave.

  “Any time.” Kevin shrugged with a smile. “It was nice to meet you, other Laney.” He raised his hand in a small wave. “If you’re ever keen to examine any other statistics, you know where to find me.”

  Laney smiled back at him. “Thanks, Kevin.”

  “Hey, Berry-bot.” Maia linked arms with Berry-AI, leading the way away from Kevin’s table. “Did you know that only two percent of The Community’s population do not hold any manner of Ph.D.? They’re mostly soldiers and artists. I didn’t even know that.”

  Laney put P.T. back in her pocket, meeting Noah’s gaze tentatively as she walked past him to follow Maia and Berry-AI back to the lab.

  “You can’t tell him,” was all Noah said since he knew she would understand exactly what he meant.

  Laney paused in mid-stride before she kept going. “I didn’t,” she insisted as he fell into step beside her. She was a little irritated that he would assume she would be that careless. “I wouldn’t do that. Why would I? I’m still hedging on the chance that this is all just a dream and that I wake up in my bed tomorrow morning.”

  “We should all be so lucky,” Noah quipped, with a tone that was not in any manner joking.

  Laney started to shake her head, looking mystified again. “It’s just so weird to be around these people. It’s like I know them, but I actually don’t…but I do,” she insisted. “And I don’t know how or why, as they look nothing at all alike, but I feel like Maia is my best friend, Darla,” she added, looking thoughtful.

  Noah met her gaze. “And you thought my name not being Jake was weird.”

  ***

  Laney fidgeted. She was nervous as heck. She had already stepped into the enclosed cylindrical chamber and was watching Maia work on the console right outside, with P.T. sitting on the lab table beside her.

  To a certain degree, Laney was dreading what kinds of memories she might get back because, from the sound of it, whatever had happened the last time that she was there must have been uber intense.

  But Maia gestured a thumbs up and gave her a wink. “Don’t worry, Laney,” she assured. “This shouldn’t hurt one bit.”

  “Shouldn’t?” Laney echoed. She wanted to imagine it was just one of those machines that you have to get into for a security scan at the airports, and not one that messes with your brain, one that might possibly give her a complete lobotomy. Her gaze moved to meet Noah’s.

  His eyes held hers, his eyebrows furrowed as usual, but if Laney didn’t know any better, she would’ve thought he looked worried.

  But Noah wasn’t worried. What he was trying to tamp down was impatience. He wanted Laney’s memories to come back. He wanted her to return to her regular self. He told himself that it was because he was eager to get on with the mission so that she could go back to her own world and out of his life.

  He told himself that because he didn’t want to think about the possibility that it was for an entirely different reason altogether.

  “Ready?” Maia prompted.

  Laney nodded. “Uh, y-yes,” she replied.

  Maia pushed a button and the chamber door slid closed, and as the machine started up, Laney heard another loud hum from within the chamber.

  After a moment, a bright yellow glow began to form at her feet. She looked down and watched as a golden circle of light emerged from underneath her, surrounding her, as it began to slowly move up her body.

  “The chamber is programmed to detect all traces of the memory serum. The way it works is that it scans your biochemistry to locate the serum markers, and tags them for dissolution,” Maia was explaining to Noah as the machine worked. “Fortunately, when Berry and I developed the serum, he had already thought ahead to ensure that the substance could be tagged for a subsequent reversal process.” She went on. “We had planned on developing a ‘serum’-type antidote, one that could be administered with a syringe to easily flush the memory serum out of your system, but with everything going on this past year, we just haven’t had the time to collaborate again to refine the design.”

  “And yet somehow Berry managed to build an AI clone in the meantime?” Noah pointed out, jerking his thumb in the direction of Berry-AI standing in the corner.

  Berry-AI’s eyes lit up before he explained. “Actually, I was built last year. Dr. Vermillion was still perfecting some of my learning skills over the course of the year and I had been kept in storage until he decided that assisting you
and Miss Carter provided a good opportunity for a field test.”

  Meanwhile, inside the chamber, Laney had been breathing heavily in apprehension the entire time—four whole minutes. But once the golden halo moved up past her head, it instantly dissipated, and the loud hum faded away.

  Maia peered up at her from outside the chamber, her voice sounding muted to Laney from the inside. “How you feeling?” she asked.

  Laney blinked a few times, looking around uncertainly. She took one huge deep breath, establishing that nothing indeed hurt, before nodding in reply. “I’m alright.”

  Maia pushed a button that opened the chamber door with a sliding hiss.

  Noah stepped forward to take Laney’s hand as she stepped out of the chamber. He was peering cautiously at her face.

  “Do you remember anything?”

  Special

  Laney looked up at Noah, then after a moment, she replied, “No.”

  Maia stepped up toward Laney to do some basic checks, waving in front of her face, checking her pupil dilation, her temperature. “Nothing…rushing back to you yet?” she prompted, using her wristwatch to check Laney’s pulse.

  Laney frowned in concentration, trying to recall anything more about her time here eight months ago, but nothing was coming to her. She sighed in dejection. “What’s going on?”

  “Why doesn’t it work?” Noah asked Maia.

  Maia looked at a loss. “Unfortunately, as I’ve said, the memory-doohickey reversal chamber is not capable of working as instantaneously as the serum itself,” she began. “Although, I do recall Berry mentioning once that things always worked funny with the Laneys,” she told Noah. “Maybe she just needs a little more time. Or it might simply be that we haven’t gotten it all, and she needs another session inside the chamber. It’s hard to say at this point.” She met Laney’s gaze. “I’m afraid in this case, you’re our guinea pig.”

  She feigned a gag. “Thanks, I feel so special.”