Arrows of Time

by Kim Falconer

  ‘The Jane Doe we brought in last week. I’ve left several messages. You didn’t answer them.’

  He brushed her aside. ‘You can’t see her now.’

  She stopped him again. ‘I must insist.’

  ‘It’s not possible.’

  ‘Make it possible. We need information and she’s been unconscious too long.’

  ‘What do you want me to do?’

  ‘Wake her up.’

  ‘I can’t.’

  ‘Of course you can. We need a head shot for ID as well, and DNA samples. I have a requisition form, signed by…’

  ‘You’ll have to wait for Labs,’ Everett said, starting to push past her again. ‘They’ve first claim now.’

  She grasped his arm, her long fingers circling his wrist like a vice. ‘I need to see your patient, Dr Kelly. I’m not waiting any longer.’

  ‘It’s too late,’ he said, avoiding the intensity of her eyes.

  ‘What do you mean, it’s too late?’

  He focused on her badge, memorising the ten-digit number while he thought of what to say next. He wanted to avoid the word ‘death’ for as long as he could. It would give him time to handle the situation. He’d tell the press just enough to leverage his meeting with the ASSIST coordinators. He’d tell this officer less if he could get away with it. His plan was half formed but growing by the second. He didn’t want to speak too soon, if he could help it. ‘Your hunt has failed,’ he said. That would throw her off track.

  ‘What do you mean? The hunt is only beginning. She has to be from the Borderlands. It’s the most likely explanation.’

  ‘I suspect it is, though you’ve reached a dead end.’ He cringed internally. Dead end? Thank you, Dr Freud.

  She stepped closer, the rise and fall of her chest inches from his. ‘Explain yourself, Dr Kelly, or I’ll find someone who can.’

  The smell of her—a mix of starched fabric, hair dye and gun oil—made his nostrils flare. He shifted his weight, considering his options. There was no walking away from this. Maybe the news would shock her long enough to give him the extra time he needed.

  ‘Jane Doe is dead.’ Everett let the words roll off his tongue like marbles down a drain.

  The officer slackened her grip, her hand falling to her side. ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘She died.’ He looked at the hall clock. ‘Seven and a half minutes ago.’

  The officer wrinkled her brow until it formed a deep gully between her eyes. ‘Are you saying body death?’

  ‘Precisely. At 1.05 p.m.’

  ‘I don’t understand.’

  ‘Nor do I. Not yet. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I must get on with my own investigations. Admin has not been informed.’

  She stopped him. ‘How could it happen?’ she asked.

  ‘I’ve no idea, but I’m going to find out.’

  Her fingers pinched. ‘You’ll need to do better than that, Dr Kelly.’

  Everett hesitated. What he really needed was more time. ‘Give me your card,’ he said, looking again at the clock. He pulled a pen from his scrub shirt pocket.

  The officer handed him a small white contact card with her badge number embedded on one side. He scribbled on the other and handed it back. ‘I’ll know more when the lab reports are in and I’ve had a chance to review my notes.’ He let his eyes roll towards the ceiling. ‘They’ll need to see me first, before there is an official press release. You understand. I’ll contact you immediately after my meeting with Admin.’

  She nodded. Hierarchy was one thing she would acknowledge.

  ‘Call me on that number in twelve hours. We’ll discuss it then,’ he said. He felt her relax.

  ‘It’s a private line?’

  ‘Of course.’

  She released her grip and took the card in both hands, studying the numbers as if she would know by examining them whether they were forged or not. Everett took advantage of her distraction and stepped away, continuing down the hall.

  ‘But how could she die?’ the officer shouted out after him.

  Her voice was like a stab in the back. He flinched and kept moving.

  ‘Dr Kelly! Tell me how this happened!’

  The words were soon absorbed into the chaos of the ward. Everett manoeuvred down the last stretch of hallway, dodging past gurneys and nurses as they rushed by. Some carried packs of swabs, tubing and emeses bowls. Others held stacks of digital charts and trays of medicaments. He avoided eye contact, though none seemed to notice him, intent on their own tasks. They all would be noticing him soon enough, once the word was out.

  The officer didn’t follow. Good.

  He spotted a group of med students clustered around their attending resident. He kept his eyes unfocused, evasive and aloof. Nearly there. He thought he heard the officer call out to him again, but Everett pushed on, impervious to the turmoil, the congestion and the building pressure in his head. Or was that his heart? He couldn’t tell the difference. When he reached his office, he swiped the lock with his ID card and slipped inside. The door closed silently behind him.

  He stood for a moment, his back pressed against the door frame. The room was in darkness. He caught his breath and automatically checked his pulse. His donor heart hadn’t beat this hard for some time. He had to get his stress levels down. Inhaling deeply, he brought up the lights to a low level, willing his pulse to settle.

  At his desk, he switched off his internal com and cell phone. That would shock them. He was always available to everyone, anywhere and any time—but not now. After such a trauma, he needed solitude. If he could disconnect from his reeling emotions and disjointed thoughts, he’d be able to formulate his plan. He needed to focus. There would be many more questions other than the obvious ones the officer had just asked.

  How had this happened, indeed?

  He had to be prepared. He had to have an answer. Admin would come looking for him any minute. He wanted to pre-empt that event. He sat at his desk, carefully took off his glasses and rubbed his eyes. It came to him like fog clearing. He had seen death before, once. There had been another case like this—a woman with no external ID, no microchip, no file on record, nothing to check, nothing to cross-reference, nothing to refer to. That woman had died within minutes of admission.

  He frowned. Had she? His memory seemed to be slipping again. He knew the other woman had died in the same way as his current Jane Doe had finally gone—like dominoes, tipping one event over to the next, rushing through a sluice, following its prescribed course to the inevitable end: tachycardia, ventricular fibrillation, asystole, arrest. No response to de-fib. No response to cardiac stimulants. No response to his plethora of measures and techniques. No response to anything at all. Her heart stopped beating—no known cause. And that was something that didn’t happen—not any more. No one had died of anything, least of all cardiac failure, for over two hundred years.

  Past advances in medicine had achieved what everyone had been desperate for—eternal life. Unfortunately, it hadn’t improved anyone’s disposition in the long run. No one was any more or less content. The fountain of youth, it turned out, was not a fountain of joy. It did not equate with feelings of happiness, exhilaration or inner peace. It certainly didn’t bring about the idyllic life that was anticipated. And now this—a rent in the fabric of their plastic immortality.

  He stiffened. It would hit the news in moments and it was him they would want to interview, again and again, until it made sense. It was him they would turn to for clarification. And if that clarification was not given, it would be him that they would want to hang.

  How much can I tell of your extraordinary tale, my mystery woman? He realised he was hoping for a response. How peculiar. The room remained dim and silent. Not a word in his mind from her lilting voice. Her voice? Had he ever heard it?

  Can’t talk to me any more? Or is it that you won’t? He shook his head. What was he saying? He brought up her chart on the computer screen and began to write. I’ll tell your story myself, without you
, if that’s your plan. But don’t be cross if it doesn’t come out quite the way you wanted.

  He chuckled, patronising his inner voice. Had he thought he could goad her into connecting with him from a place beyond life? It was as if a part of him believed she was there, in the room. He could taste it, just as he could taste a dinner before it was served. But the emptiness prevailed, leaving him chilled, uncertain. She’d been unique.

  His mystery woman had unusual qualities in her physicality, and he was not even sure she was human. Humanoid, of course, but Homo sapiens born and raised on a twenty-fifth century Earth? He didn’t think so. That bit of information would not be on the record though, not without a great deal more research into the plausible alternatives and a deeper study of her DNA. Nor would he mention her extraordinary body art, though how that would remain undisclosed if she went to the donor ward, he wasn’t sure. Could she even go to the donor ward if she were dead? He’d have to look that one up. Perhaps the body art would somehow provide an answer and stand as a warning. He dismissed the thought.

  The tattoos had intrigued him deeply, and it felt like a betrayal to use them as an explanation for her death. Still, he’d have to find a way to account for them as well. It would raise a stir. For one thing, she couldn’t have put that art on herself. There had to be others involved, at least one other, and that would make everyone nervous. It reeked of the Borderlands, as the officer suggested, and no one, not even ASSIST, was comfortable with anything that came from there.

  Who could those others be and where were they hiding? He wasn’t the only one who would be asking that question. The last thing he wanted was to support a global search for her kinfolk. He planned to find them himself. He had to. The eggs depended on it. Whatever happened, he had to protect them from inquiry or discovery. There could be no connection, not between the two women and not between them and the eggs. He would see to that. He brought up another screen and keyed in the access codes, allowing the scan to sweep his eyes and fingertips.

  She’d given him some clues and he intended to follow them, without the full-arsenal SWAT approach of the authorities. In this instance, he would find them on his own. He had to. Where did you come from, my mystery woman? What can your DNA tell me about the children? He ground his teeth. What children? The eggs had been in Cryo for decades.

  He rubbed his temples, pressing his fingers hard against them, before jotting down a few encrypted notes. He looked up the DNA scans and checked for cross-matched blood types in the transplant wards. His search of ten million only came up with a handful. But that was enough. It would be feasible to swap samples with one of them. A superficial decoy at best, but it would buy time. His mind flipped through the screens. What next?

  He toggled to the flight schedules. He had to make it look natural. He frowned. There was already a booking—two fares to the island of Tibet. He checked the encrypted transaction. He’d made it this morning. Chills washed down his spine. He didn’t remember doing that.

  No matter. It was done. As he checked that the booking was untraceable and confirmed, a clear plan began to formulate. Admin would grant him leave, surely. He had the credits and then some. No one would question his need for a break. He would holiday in Tibet and bribe a chopper to fly him to the outskirts of the Borderlands. He’d make contact with the inhabitants and get to the bottom of this. He straightened his shoulders. This would work.

  He’d have to change the samples in the lab tonight, hold a press conference in the morning and assign blame to the one thing they couldn’t challenge—chaos theory. ASSIST would have to give him permission to reintroduce the notion of death. He’d say it had finally caught up but not to worry, it was just a stopover on a long, eternal journey. They were safe. All was well. They would be freed from their cold and fruitless immortality—unlike the deathless gods they had aspired to become.

  My beautiful mystery woman, was this your plan all along? The silence left him numb. Not going to respond? No matter. I’ll find answers, and I’ll find a way for the children to live, with or without your help.

  For a moment it felt like his memory would fill his mind like a giant wave before sucking back out of sight. What was that thought he kept glimpsing? He stared at the display screen. Why had he brought up that page? Tickets? Tibet? Okay. Get away. Good idea. But why two tickets? Who was he travelling with? I always travel alone. He changed the booking to one.

  What was this note about the Borderlands? There was a cryo-bank number and a requisitions form. What was he getting out of embryonic suspension? He closed his eyes and when he opened them again, the screen was blank. He shook his head, frowning at the bouncing screensaver. Why did I turn off my com unit?

  He switched it on and buzzed the front desk. ‘Jass? Get me Admin, will you. I need to speak with them, stat.’

  ‘Stat?’

  ‘Immediately!’

  ‘They’re online now,’ Jass replied. ‘There’s a backlog of waiting calls too. What do I do?’

  ‘Shoot them through. One at a time.’

  Everett slipped on his headset, scrolled down Jane Doe’s case history and pushed line one.

  He was counting on the pathology lab being dark. One good thing about that department was the hours they kept—ten ‘til four. Nobody worked overtime there. That was for emergencies, bottom floor, his floor. The path lab always ran a thirty-hour week, or less. That is, until tonight.

  Everett cursed when he saw the lights. This was going to be tricky. He had to get that body out of there before they ran deep-level DNA tests. He no longer remembered the reason for the urgency that drove him, but he was driven just the same. Feeling for the samples in his coat pocket, he took a breath and pushed through the doors. With any luck, Lucy J would be the one working late. The head pathologist was not an easy woman to deal with, but she didn’t support the Eternal Life Protocol and she didn’t mind breaking rules. At least, not the ones she opposed.

  ‘Everett,’ Lucy J said, calling out as the doors swung shut behind him. ‘I’ve been waiting for you. Come take a look at this.’

  He weaved in and out of the vats, threading his way across the floor. At one point he glimpsed a familiar set of numbers and looked away before he could see the activation date. He didn’t want to know how recently she’d been used. He rubbed his ring finger and carried on.

  ‘You’re working late, Lucy J.’

  ‘With good reason.’

  She stood over the cadaver, her dark curly hair escaping the blue cap. She pulled the sheet back and turned to him. ‘I couldn’t find a mention of this in your report,’ she said, pointing a slender brown finger at the body art. ‘How’d you miss it?’

  He didn’t answer immediately.

  ‘Obviously you couldn’t have missed it,’ she said when he didn’t respond. ‘So, why’d you omit it in the work-up?’

  Everett stared at Jane Doe’s chest. The tattoo was vivid, considering there was no vascular supply. Perhaps the dead woman’s skin, pale now in the absence of blood, provided a better contrast than the tawny hue it had in life. He stared at the contours. No. Not better, he decided. When she was alive, the image rose and fell with each breath, a part of her life force. Now the artwork was immobile, as unresponsive as she, frozen like some painting left to collect dust.

  ‘I’ve had more pressing notes to make,’ he said, avoiding the pathologist’s eyes. ‘It was a baffling case.’ He shrugged. Surely that was an acceptable response, under the circumstances. She knew what kind of pressure he was under just to keep Jane Doe on his ward. Admin wanted her shunted straight to donor status. They had strict rules: no ID, no bed.

  ‘It’s still baffling,’ she said. ‘I’ve run bioassays over and over—all negative. Can I show you?’

  He groaned internally and nodded. No choice.

  She led him back to her lab bench, indicating the chair opposite hers. She switched off her com speaker and wheeled her chair closer until her knees touched his. He swallowed, forcing himself not to back a
way.

  He scanned her results, shaking his head. ‘What do you make of it?’

  Lucy J lowered her voice. ‘If I didn’t know better, Everett, I’d say your patient willed her heart to stop beating.’

  His spine prickled. ‘You’re not putting that in your report, are you?’

  She laughed, but it sounded forced. ‘You think I want to be shipped off to Psych?’

  ‘What, then?’

  She pulled out a paper notebook and scribbled on it before tearing off the top sheet and handing it to him. He wondered at her stealth. They were the only ones in the room.

  ‘Follow those chains,’ she said, tapping the image she’d just drawn.

  There were no chains to follow. She’d drawn him a map that led to the basement incineration unit. It was a massive furnace used for disposing of excess donor materials, limbs, old organs and pathological samples. His eyebrows shot up. ‘Shall I run your next load for you?’ he asked, keeping his voice level.

  ‘If you wouldn’t mind. I’ve so much to do and the transporters aren’t here until morning. Quite a pile-up.’

  She must have thought they were being watched, so he played along, making certain he didn’t cause the slightest alarm. He was curious to know how Lucy J planned to pull this off. As if reading his mind, she smiled.

  ‘The toxins in her blood are highly contagious. As you suspected, she’s from the Borderlands. We have enough samples now.’ She nodded towards his pockets. ‘So the sooner the body is disposed of, the better.’

  How had she known? He had no idea why she had anticipated his actions, his plan to switch samples, or the need to do so. He passed her the labelled vials and slide case, keeping his expression blank. ‘Shall I take care of it now?’

  ‘Thank you. I’ll have a report to you first thing tomorrow.’ She returned to the corpse, replaced the sheet and zipped closed the body bag. ‘I’ll send the data to your reception file?’

  ‘Perfect,’ he said as he wheeled the gurney out the door. ‘I’ll be there.’