by Ellen Datlow
Alice works her mouth helplessly inside the mask, straining to feel some contact, anything, anything that would make her human again.
But she can’t.
“So beautiful,” Marika whispers.
Inside the mask, Alice feels her face working up into a dry cry. Her lips tremble so hard she can barely type, “I’m not.”
“You have no idea—”
“Then let me see myself.”
“Alice—”
“Let me see what I look like if I’m so damned beautiful.”
“I can’t. You know I can’t.”
A hand snakes down to her seat/body interface, and Alice shudders, collapsing forward onto the bar, her arms straining helplessly to push her back up. “Stop.”
“But we’re finally alone. We don’t have to hide anymore.”
“I said STOP.”
The hand vanishes. All tactile evidence of Marika vanishes, and Alice calls up her tiny picture so she won’t feel so crushingly alone. “I’m . . . I’m sorry,” Marika stammers. “I thought . . .”
“No. Not like this,” Alice types.
“What do you mean? There is no other way.”
“They’re ending the program, aren’t they?”
Alice sits alone, with no input, just a picture and buzzing speakers, waiting for an answer.
“Please say something,” she types. “Please don’t leave me like this. I have a right to know.”
A shaky hand rests on Alice’s shoulder for an instant before pulling away again. “It sounds like it, yes. Selene’s caretaker told the government about the three of you, and the President’s calling for an immediate end to the whole thing.”
“What do you mean, someone told the government? We work for the government. Didn’t they know?”
“They didn’t know the details. We didn’t tell them. They never would have let us do it if they’d known that we were blinding, deafening, and crippling little orphan girls.”
“You couldn’t do it any other way. We were the only ones—”
“—the right age to accept the implants, I know. I helped design them. We should have found a way to make it work with adult brains. Doing this to little girls was—”
“We all volunteered.”
“And Selene’s gone insane and Jayna just unvolunteered.”
“I want to keep working.”
Marika lets out a hard breath. “I don’t think they’ll let you.”
“But the ships—”
“Never came back. And they say they have machines that can search the sky just as well as you can now.”
“The machines didn’t warn us last time.”
“They’re better now. A lot better.”
Alice gropes at her mask, fingering the indentations over where her eyes once were. “What will they do with us?”
“That’s what they’re discussing right now. They think . . . they think they can make you normal again.”
“Normal,” Alice echoes, and struggles to remember what that means. Eyes instead of empty sockets, ears not hooked up to speakers, a mouth she can talk with, breathe with, eat with, legs strong enough to hold her up. And no mask.
She reaches up to touch the metal, and for the first time in ages, she wants it gone.
“Are you positive the machines are as good as we are?”
“I think so. I mean, they don’t have the flexibility of a human mind behind them, but humans will be analyzing their data, so . . .” Another exhale. “We should be safe.”
“And I’ll be normal again.”
In a small voice, Marika says, “Yes.”
Alice struggles to tie the back of her gown closed and says, “When I’m normal, then we’ll finally . . .” She trails off, not actually able to type the words.
Marika wordlessly helps her tie her gown, then sits with her, holding her hand, waiting for the meeting to end.
When Alice comes to in the hospital, there are bandages where the mask once was, and when she flutters her fingers over them, she can feel their gentle touch on her face. She draws in a deep breath, and is startled to feel it going in through her nose. Her fingers explore further, and find breathing tubes piercing the bandages. Her raw skin crinkles in a smile.
A warm, male voice says, “Can you hear me?”
She nods and tries to type a response, but instead of her tongue controls, she finds teeth.
“I’m Dr. Metz,” the voice says. “I’ll be coordinating your recovery. I’m happy to say that the surgery was a complete success. Your new mechanical eardrums work on a similar principle to your old speakers, so they should be easy to adjust to. The eyes, on the other hand—they’ll take more time. We’ll switch them on in stages once the bandages are off. The program surgeons did some serious rewriting of your visual processing centers. It’ll be tricky to get your brain to process normal human visual input again, but I’m confident you’ll manage with sufficient training.”
Alice finds more bandages on her chest and stomach where her tubes used to be. Her hands drift farther down, and find that there are still tubes in place of her old seat/body interface.
“Once you’re mobile, we’ll work on retraining those muscles.”
She nods again, and feels an odd tug on her arm. She reaches out to find out what it is.
“An intravenous drip. It’s replacing your feeding tube for now, but we’ll have you eating soon enough. Your digestive system was in fine shape.”
She points to her mouth.
“Ah, yes. We’ve implanted artificial teeth and a mechanical voice box, but it’s too soon to switch it on yet. Your gums and lips still need time to heal. Don’t worry. We should have you talking again in a few days and eating soon after that.”
How is she supposed to communicate until then? She raises both hands and gropes at the air helplessly before balling them into fists and bringing them down on the bed.
Dr. Metz takes one hand in his and says, “Just spell out what you need on my palm.”
M-A-R-I-K-A.
“Marika.” He gets curiously silent for a moment, then says, “She visited you a few times, but now that you’re awake . . .” He clears his throat. “Well, I’m sure she’ll be back. Is there anything else you need?”
She shakes her head.
“Want me to put on some music for you? Get a nurse to sit down and talk with you?”
She shakes her head.
“All right. I’ll see about getting a message to Dr. DeVeaux . . . er, Marika. If you need anything, just press the call button.”
Dr. Metz takes her hand and guides it over to the bed’s rail. The button is large and unmistakable. She nods in understanding, and he drops her hand. She hears footsteps, then nothing but the precious sound of her own breathing.
And until Marika comes to visit, it will be her only company.
The door opens, there are footsteps, and then a hand is in hers. “I’m here.”
The voice is richer and fuller than she remembers. She has never heard it firsthand before, only filtered through speakers embedded in a chair.
This will take getting used to. But she is desperately looking forward to it.
Alice runs her hand up Marika’s arm, up to her face, and cups her beloved’s cheek. There is so much she wants to say that she is grateful she can’t say anything at all, because the peace of the moment would just be lost in a frantic, jumbled mass of words.
“Oh, Alice.” A hand strokes her bandaged face. “You won’t be my captive girl much longer.”
No. Soon she will be something better. Soon she will be able to see the face of the woman she loves, be able to press her body against hers, unencumbered by her walker, to speak endearments in her own voice instead of with sterile text. She will be able to kiss, to stroke, to embrace, to explore. She will finally be able to be a full partner in the relationship, to fully reciprocate with every cell in her body.
And she will be able to do so secure in the knowledge that the planet is safe, that she
had faithfully done her job as long as they had needed her, and that she had done it well.
“Look at you.”
Soon she would be so much prettier to look at. No matter how battered her face was, it had to be prettier than a solid metal mask.
Marika’s hands glide down Alice’s body and rest on her bandaged chest and stomach. “It’s like you’re a different person already.”
She shakes her head. No, not a different person. A more complete person. Why is Marika saying these things? Doesn’t she understand—
“Alice.”
There is a tone in Marika’s voice that Alice has never heard before. Despair.
“I don’t know if . . .”
Alice grabs Marika’s hands and shakes her head again and again. This cannot be happening. Not now. Not now that they’re so close. All that stands between them is one flimsy layer of bandages. If Marika just waits, if she can just see the naked devotion on Alice’s soon-to-be-revealed face, if—
Marika sniffs wetly and gasps, “I’m sorry,” before pulling her hands away and running out of the room.
Alice shakes so hard that she can barely find the call button.
Footsteps thunder toward her, and Dr. Metz shouts, “She’s seizing!”
Alice thrusts out her hand, her entire arm rigid, and when Dr. Metz touches it, she clasps it tightly and writes, “Put me back.”
“What?”
“Put me back. In the chair. In the mask.”
She hears other people racing into the room, and Dr. Metz says, “No, it’s all right. She’s fine.” As the others walk back out, he says, “Alice, you’ve just barely begun your transformation. I understand that it’s scary, but—”
“Put me back now.”
“I can’t do that. The program’s been shut down.”
“It’s my body. I decide what to do with it.”
“But why—”
“I want my life back.”
But they don’t listen to her. They call in psychiatrists to talk to her, but she refuses to answer their questions. When they take off her bandages and turn on her eyes, she refuses to open them. When they activate her vocal cords, she refuses to speak. The only things in her life that matter are the job and Marika. The job is gone. So that just leaves Marika.
And Marika doesn’t want her. Not like this.
Dr. Qureshi comes by to visit several days later and says, “This just proves why it was a bad idea to get involved with her.”
With her eyes still closed, Alice faces away from her.
“She only loved you because you were broken. She liked taking care of you, having power over you. You had to know that, Alice. You’re not a stupid woman. You can do so much better than that now.”
She feels tears welling up in her new eyes, and chokes back a gasp as she wipes them away. The skin on her face is still extremely sensitive. She’s having trouble adjusting to that.
“Alice, I know you’re terrified. But you have to try. Just open your eyes. Just see what you’re missing. Please, Alice. Please.”
“No,” she murmurs, and claps a hand over her mouth, horrified at how automatically speech has come after ten years of silence.
“Well, that’s a start.”
“I want . . .” Her mouth is sluggish, her words slurred. “I want her back.”
“Forget Dr. DeVeaux.”
“But—”
“I’m here because I need you back on the project. And to do that, I need you to finish your recovery.”
Alice lets her eyelids flutter open, and is hit with a cacophony of shapes and colors that she can barely make sense of. She blinks hard, but it doesn’t help. “What?”
“I’m over here.”
Alice turns toward the sound, and sees a brown blur surrounded by jagged black spikes. There is red somewhere on the blur, and a couple of splotches of white. Light twinkles around its outline like sunlight off a weather satellite. She squeezes her eyes closed, rubs them, then opens them again. The image is the same, only fuzzier.
“The security computers are online and working perfectly,” the blur that is Dr. Qureshi says, “but we need to have people on the team who are specially trained to interpret any anomalous data. I can’t think of anyone better qualified than you and Jayna.”
“What about Selene?”
The blur shimmies, making Alice’s head swim. “She’s got a long road to recovery ahead of her. We need a team in place within the month. I’ve spoken to your doctors, and they feel that’s a highly aggressive schedule, but they say you could meet that deadline if you really work at it.”
“Will . . . will Marika be on the project?”
Another shimmy. “No. Her specialty was the brain/sensor uplink, and of course, caretaking. She had nothing to do with interpreting the data you three collected.” Alice hears a small sigh. “What we did to you girls was inexcusable.”
“No, we volunteered.”
“I don’t think little girls can really give that kind of consent.”
“But the ships—”
“Almost destroyed the entire colony. I know. They killed my family, too.” The white splotches vanish from the brown blur, then reappear. “Look, I know how important this project is to you. I want you back on the team. I owe you that, at the very least. No one has more experience interpreting surveillance data than you. No one.”
Alice closes her eyes. It’s too hard to think when she’s trying to puzzle out what her eyes are sending to her brain.
The project needs her. She needs Marika. The project will not help her get Marika back, but it will help keep the colony safe.
Ten years ago, lying in another hospital bed, she was offered that same job. She sacrificed so much for it then.
This time, no sacrifice is required.
When she looks at it that way, the answer is clear.
She reopens her eyes, looks at the twinkling blur, and says, “I’m in.”
From that point on, she makes good progress, adjusting about as well as the doctors expect. Her vision is jumpy and often confusing, and many of her muscles are severely atrophied, but soon she’s able to use a motorized wheelchair, and go to the bathroom on her own, and use her new eye controls to filter out confusing input so she can focus on a task.
The day they finally let her go out for the first time, she heads straight for the park. There is warmth on her too-pale skin, a riot of color in all directions, the cries of children playing, and scents that threaten to overwhelm her senses after a decade of smelling only metal.
She steers her wheelchair off the path and onto the grass.
“Hey!” her nurse calls, but Alice ignores her and keeps going until she reaches a shady patch under one of the few trees that looks old enough to date from before the bombardment. She eases herself onto the ground, ignoring the protests of her feeble muscles, and lies on the cool, tickly grass, staring up into beautiful, beautiful green.
And laughs.
She hears a motorized whine, and looks up to see Jayna peering down at her. “There’s a bug in your hair.”
She pats the grass next to her. “Come on down. I’m sure there’s plenty to go around.”
Soon, they are released from the hospital and are given their own apartment, where Alice thrills over being able to do little things like prepare her own food, sleep in a bed, bathe herself, walk. And every day, she and Jayna analyze unusual data from the surveillance computers, doing their part to keep the colony safe. It is so much more than she’s ever had. It should be enough.
But she is lonely.
No one touches her anymore. No one whispers endearments in her ear speakers. No one makes her tremble, makes her head heavy with desire, makes her feel flush and warm all the way down and fluttery in the middle.
No one calls her beautiful.
In fact, from the sidelong glances she gets whenever she goes out, she knows she’s lucky that no one bothers to comment on her looks at all.
“Well, that was new,” Jayna say
s as they wheel into their shared apartment. “I don’t think we’ve made a little kid cry before.”
“Maybe the chairs scared him.”