Caligatha

by Matt Spire

  “We have to put her back in.” Emma readjusts and folds her arms. “It's inhumane.”

  “That would be worse,” Keene says. “I'll check on her. Go ahead and find us some good news.”

  ***

  Keene hesitates over the girl's body. Sure enough, her eyes are darting back and forth under her eyelids.

  She's dreaming. A real dream. But of what?

  Will she even answer to the name Lydia?

  “Hello,” he whispers. There's no right word for something like this.

  The eyes open, and she mutters, “Where?”

  With this one word, he knows he's made the right decision. That one word–and she's real.

  Her eyes try to open wider, adjusting to the dim light. Keene steps back, but the girl surprises him by sitting all the way up, examining her IV.

  “What happened?” she asks. “What'd I do?”

  There's no method for this. Nothing.

  “Take it easy,” he tells her. “What's the last thing you remember?” But she's looking at the straps around her waist and ankles, furrowing her brow.

  The girl looks at her IV again. “I feel so sick,” she says.

  “Lay back. You'll get used to it.”

  She doesn't, examines his face instead. It's such a confusing, haunting sensation.

  “I left the hospital...in the rain. I fell at the theater.” She's thinking hard. “Who found me? What's in this IV?”

  Damn you, Jericho. This is impossible. Horrible.

  “You're okay now,” he says. “But you should get some rest.”

  “Where am I?” she repeats, starting to undo the straps.

  He watches her, wondering what to say. Somehow, he refused to believe this moment would come, no matter how serious Jericho was. He could wake him now, but it's too late. She's on her own.

  “You were in a hospital?” he asks. Maybe he can keep the illusion going until her body's ready.

  “I need to...” She looks around, puzzled. “This room is so small. I need to finish...I need to–”

  Her face is wrinkled in effort, working through waves of disorientation and nausea.

  “Rest,” he says. “I can give you a sedative, if you'd like. If you don't feel well.”

  “Wait.” She reexamines her thin white shirt, then stares at him. “Who are you?”

  “My name is Keene.” He tries to keep his smile warm and real. “Keene Sull, and Emma Sull is also here.”

  At this, she tears off the IV, all but falling off the edge of the bed. Catching herself, she must realize she's not in a hospital bed, backs into the corner with her legs against her chest.

  Keene motions under the bed. “There's more clothes under there. I'll give you a moment.” He pauses for a deep breath as though to emphasize his patience. This won't be easy. “I recommend rest, but I understand.”

  Moving back with slow steps, hoping to appear as nonthreatening as possible under the circumstances, he closes her door behind him. Emma is already heading down the hall.

  “This is going to be hard,” he tells her. “I can't imagine how it must feel.”

  “She's not the only one in for a surprise,” Emma says. “You're not going to believe this.”

  ***

  Jericho bangs on the door of Eden's Vineyard a fifth time, presses his face to the opaque windows.

  Nothing.

  It must be past midnight by now.

  He sits on the steps, indifferent to the onslaught of rain.

  He shouldn't have left the hospital, shouldn't have sent the photograph–but why end there?

  What was the last thing he did right?

  ***

  “I don't understand,” Keene says.

  Emma shakes her head. “I don't either. But we got a reply pulse about two hours ago. The exact same signal we've been broadcasting.”

  Keene nods. “Which is why it woke us up? This is what we've been waiting for–it wasn't the usual eight month waking period. Right? Scenario B.”

  “Okay. That's what you'd think.” Emma pulls up the log of their vitals, enters an historical view. “But look here. This is the beginning. A whole eight months. And then we awoke, Scenario A, everything onboard was running smoothly, we began our second period. And then–” She continues swiping the screen, revealing month after month, turning into years.

  “We were out more than eight months?”

  “It can't be–but...it keeps going.”

  “How far back does it go?”

  “Just shy of…forty years, but that's impossible, so...” She trails off.

  “Years? So–” Keene says, but doesn't know where to begin. “We couldn't be out that long.”

  “Something went wrong, but I don't know what. Everything is off like that. Every log either reads forty years or is maxed out, looped back around.”

  “What does that mean?”

  “And our energy capacity is higher than it was, which probably means the gauge is malfunctioning.”

  There's a moment of silence.

  “Should we wake Jericho?” He doesn't understand how any of this could be, but it doesn't sound good.

  “Soon. It's not as bad as it sounds. We're just floating in space with a broken wristwatch.”

  Somehow, that's not very comforting. He almost says that's a pretty big bug, but doesn't want her to take it personally.

  “First,” she says, “I want to look at the pulse again, make sure it wasn't just an echo. It's possible it was just an acoustic reflection from a leftover satellite. And see if there's anything else it didn't pick up. We're broadcasting much more than an SOS, you know.”

  A loud thump sounds out from the main hall, and Keene runs down the stairs. Lydia staggers forward, disoriented, then hugs a support column, sliding to her knees.

  17

  Shock

  He doesn't tell her more than she needs to know right now–he's never seen anything like her, doesn't know how she'll react.

  Staring into her glass of water, she doesn't speak.

  “So what you were living in,” he coaxes, “is what we call a Realm. Every bit as real as everything around you.”

  Her eyes don't blink.

  “Everything you felt–everything you thought–it all has meaning. You are still–still you.”

  What a hollow reassurance. It all sounds like bullshit. It all is bullshit. She looks through him, that look of someone facing death. He resists a shiver.

  “It's life, but–like stepping into another room, or another continent, another world. Life from another angle.”

  He lets that sink in, playing uncomfortably with his hands. He sounds like a Leviathan ad campaign.

  “Some of the people that you probably know–not all, and I wouldn’t know who, but some–are with us.”

  “Why?” she asks. Sharp.

  “Why were you–”

  “Where is this? Why was I put in–in, in there? Why don't I remember anything before?”

  He hesitates. “This is very hard,” he says slowly.

  She jerks up, smacks the glass of water with the back of her hand, sending a liquid trail flying across the room, jumps from the table and covers her face. She cries in jagged heaves.

  He looks at his lap. They need to wake Jericho soon.

  “Where am I?” she sobs, backing into a wall.

  She's going to lose it. But what choice does he have? If he denies her the truth, she'll fly around like a moth in a lampshade until she's completely lost whatever sanity she has.

  He retrieves the glass, fills it with water again.

  “Where am I, where am I?” she repeats through gasps for breath. His back turned, in his mind he can still see her chest pumping air like an injured bird flown into glass, a million beats per minute.

  “Okay,” he says, sitting. “There was a little accident a while ago down home.” He thinks. “Do you know Jericho?”

  “Do I?” she tries to scream, but it turns into a drawn out sob.

  “Jericho..
.Well, all of this is to keep us safe. The Realm, this place. We're biding time. This is his, or at least mostly his investment.”

  “What kind of accident? Where is everyone?”

  He can't overwhelm her. Just a little bit at a time. Not too much.

  “Everyone else is still in Realm, or chose to just sleep. Truth is, we don't know why you woke up.”

  “What kind of accident?” she insists, still pressed against the wall. Her eyes are dark red.

  “A...big one. We left to–to be honest, to spare our lives. Now, we're waiting. Hoping. Hoping someone down there survived, put the pieces back together. We send a signal from out here. We–Emma and I–we've been waiting for someone to hear it and respond. We sleep, too, eight months at a time, just not in a Realm. We wake up automatically every eight months to make sure everything is running smoothly, but there's also a mechanism in place to wake us if there's a response to our signal.”

  She's staring into space again. Too much information. He's overdoing it.

  “I don't know why you woke up, but today–today might be the day we've been waiting for.”

  “Caligatha,” she says, staring through him again. “Everyone's dead.”

  “No,” he tells her. “No, Caligatha is fine, because it's not on Earth. Caligatha is just a Realm that Jericho...Well. Many of those people are right here with us.”

  “There's no Caligatha?”

  Keene sighs. “Just a template. California beaches, early European...gothic architecture. Caligatha. Two things you liked.”

  “I...” She wraps her arms around herself. “Why don't I remember?”

  He thinks of how to calm her. He considers the metaphor of her life as a puzzle, a big jig saw, that's been cast into a thousand pieces, but can be put together again. In a new way.

  But that's just more bullshit.

  “Jericho...can explain all of this better than me.”

  “This is crazy. I can’t, I don't believe this. He wouldn't. He didn't.”

  “He–he loves you a lot.”

  ***

  “I never want to do that again,” he says.

  “You shouldn't have to.” As always, he can't tell if she's making a moral judgment or a statement of fact.

  “She's going to need a while. She's...intelligent. I feel bad for her.”

  Emma looks up at this. “I told Jericho. A scientist that plays God dabbles with his own irrelevance.”

  He's not sure what she means, decides to ignore it.

  “I guess he wasn't even playing by the time we met.” That might have been sarcasm.

  “Well, let's get him. I think he's running a little late to the scene.”

  She slides the monitor away. “Oh. Bad news. Are you ready for this?”

  Keene sits. “The signal was just an echo?” He'd wanted to be optimistic.

  “No, it's real. It didn't come from us based on acoustic models. So that's the good news. There's almost no doubt. I was preparing to wake everyone with the news, and–we can't interface with the construct. It won't respond to any requests.”

  “We can't pull him out?”

  “He should have woken up instead of…her, and now…no, we can’t.” Emma takes off her glasses. “I have literally no incoming connection. Zero. We have physiological data from the immune systems, of course, but no construct. No Realm.”

  “That's impossible. She was just telling me about it. Something about a hospital, a theater.”

  “It is still be running. Everyone's log is consistent with being in Realm, brainwave patterns as you'd expect. Even if the log does go on forever. Remember, we interface with the hardware, with Realm, when pulling someone out. That's what's not responding. But that makes it all the more inconceivable. Only Jericho has override capabilities.”

  “It couldn't have been forty years. That's insane.”

  “I agree. For the time being, only one person can clue us in.”

  “We can't pry her for information,” Keene says. “Not yet. She's going to be a mess for a while.”

  “We're not out of options. They're just not very attractive yet.”

  He leans back, looks at the ceiling. “So we've lost track of time, maybe lost everyone on board for now–but we might have a signal from Earth.”

  “Don't forget our energy supply is replenished, or, more likely, the gauge is faulty. It's a mixed bag.”

  “Happy anniversary.”

  “Strange day.” She smiles halfheartedly. “We still have a few options. For one thing, we can return on our own. And as for the construct, there's two things we can do. We could always shut it off manually.”

  “No, doesn't that cause brain damage? It's not worth it.”

  “It's possible. It would all be reversible, but we don't have the immediate means. Or–when she's better, she can go back, figure out what's going on.”

  He thinks of her fragile scream, her body curled in her bunk. Alone.

  “Maybe,” he says.

  “I am curious. When I said brainwave patterns as you'd expect–well, one thing is odd. Mind you, our timeline is already suspect, but given the forty years–the whole damn thing is scrambled every six months. Regularly, every hundred and eighty-some days. But then again”–she puts her glasses back on–“the log is fucked up, so who knows what a few months means.”

  ***

  Lydia lays on her side.

  Beyond, there is nothing. A black colder than Caligatha's ocean at night. No serene waves, no whispering wind.

  Questions come and go, followed by panicked pacing and an implosion of screaming and crying. Then she collapses, defeated, having barely made a sound. She goes through this cycle for what feels like days, but there's nothing to keep track of time.

  In one of her calmer moments, she'd accidentally discovered that the wall above her head was actually something of a screen. Awakened by her touch, it offered temperature and lighting controls, and to dissolve the wall nearest the bed. It was horrifying at first, until she realized it was still there, invisibly separating her from the vacuum outside. She'd opened a window.

  She expects to see something that will make everything she's been told undeniable, but nothing ever passes the huge window–no flaming comets, no floating pieces of rock, no suspended clouds of a rainbow nebula in the distance. Even the ancient maps etched in the stars have been stolen, all dimensions skewed beyond sight–where is north?–when is now? Reality has become a freefall.

  There's a small mirror by the door. She'd studied her face for a long time. Everything was how she remembered it–the couple of small freckles under her left eye, the imperfections in her teeth, the dense fractals in her brown irises. It hadn't seemed possible: no lie–whatever version of herself was a lie–could be so complete, so perfect.

  Then, feeling modest and vulnerable, she'd undressed, examined her body. Her complexion was, maybe, ever so slightly lighter, and she couldn't recount every stray freckle. But the feel of the finest invisible hairs, the elliptical shape of her navel–everything was the same. Then she caught herself in the mirror, noticed her arms, the lack of muscle tone from lifting her father's wheelchair up and down the stairs. Holding back tears, she examined the underside of her foot, where she'd stepped on the whelk's shell on the beach. The skin there was smooth.

  It was one of the few times she could really cry the way she wanted to. The kind of crying that feels like being wrung out.

  Outside, the blackness persists. She wishes she could roll right off the bed, into the emptiness, let all the air in her lungs get sucked out like so many stolen memories.

  So there was no Caligatha. Even the name was nothing but cheap wordplay, California gothic.

  Why couldn't she remember? The word California rolls around in her mind, but gathers nothing. She can't remember loving the beaches, loving the architecture–not outside of herself. Of course she did–she loved it as Caligatha. It was home.

  Every moment in Caligatha remains so vivid. Every scent, every taste, big and
small–the vast and eternal ocean's salty air, the complex flavor of the simple meunier at Aurore. Her father's pained laugh. The cold iron ache in her stomach as she sat by the hospital bed. The stabbing, pulsing pain of the damned shell that's left no scar.

  The warmth of Jericho's embrace.

  And who was he? So all of this–Caligatha, this big floating coffin in space–all of this was his? How could it be? Jericho, the pained little shadow. He seemed no less entwined with the fabric of the town than her. Unarticulated worry and angst bubbling inside him–the flashes of sadness in his eyes when she talked about her father, the half-healed wounds of his past losses still too sore for him to share.

  One of the last things she said to him was that she loved him.

  No, it's impossible. Jericho didn't know. Her father didn't know. So many people–Florence, Reuben, all those crowds on the beach and in restaurants and at the hospital, from as far back as she can remember up until her collapse at the theater.

  There's a pain in her eyes and throat, but no more tears.

  Now everyone's all gone. Only her own face stares back at her in the window.

  ***

  Closing the door behind her, Lydia looks up and down the hall. So many doors just like hers, all the little windows pitch black.

  Her body still trembles. One uneasy step at a time, she makes her way out of the hall, more careful than before, rebalancing herself with the support columns until she's found the bright open room she sat in with Keene.

  Standing in the doorway, she watches him stir what looks like a cup of coffee, stopping to pick out something with a spoon, stirring again.

  He shudders and looks up.

  “Hello,” he says uneasily.

  Lightheaded from her walk, she stares at the cup.

  “How are you feeling?”

  This almost makes her burst into tears again, and she wants to run back to the bed in her tiny hole, where she’s less naked and vulnerable. But she crosses her arms, bites her lip, focuses on all the bad feelings in her body.

  “Tired. Hungry.”

  He draws a chair for her, and she sits, looking around to keep her bearings.