“Nothing.”
“Anything suspicious?”
“Suspicious?”
“You know, out of the ordinary. Anything that might strike you as odd.”
He doodled with the image on the desktop, of her brain lit up. There was a lot more red than the last time, most of it still in the right hemisphere. In fact, the entire right hemisphere was enflamed.
“Alessandra?”
“What?”
“Are you all right?”
“What did you just call me?”
He frowned.
“You called me Alessandra.”
“I think I said Alex. Is there something else you prefer?”
Her knee was bouncing. She kept it hidden beneath the table. Maybe she should let him see it. If she was going to have an episode, this was a good time. She suddenly had her doubts about him, not sure she trusted him.
Then why am I here?
“So anything unusual?”
“I’m sleeping a lot.”
“How much is a lot?”
“Twelve hours.” With naps, it was more like fourteen.
“That’s more than usual?”
“I think it’s more than usual for anyone, don’t you?”
“Not necessarily. Everyone’s different. You said you weren’t writing as much, you’re working in the garden more often. Maybe your body is just catching up.”
She didn’t remember telling him about the garden.
“Listen,” he said, “everything looks fine, Alex. In fact, your numbers are perfect. If I wasn’t in the biomite technology field, I’m not sure I would even suspect you were seeded, that’s just how perfect you are.”
Her phone vibrated. A text arrived.
“How happy are you?” he asked.
“What?”
“On a scale from one to ten, how happy are you?”
“Eight.”
She had no problems, no irritations. She had everything she could ask for. Isn’t that what life was supposed to be? Shouldn’t that be a ten?
Why did I say eight?
“There’s a biomite update available, if you’re interested.” The doctor began washing his hands. “Nothing invasive, just a sync treatment to prevent any potential mutations. Not saying you’re susceptible to a malfunction, it’s just good to stay on top of things, stay preventative. All the trials for this new strain have been excellent. I fully recommend it. It’ll take five minutes and then you’re out of here.”
She nodded. Her life was an eight. She wanted it to be a ten. Doesn’t everyone?
He squeezed her shoulder and left the room with an adios.
Alex checked her phone. Geri?
For a moment, she couldn’t recall the name. Then she remembered and it was clear. How could she forget her free-soul assistant? She hadn’t heard from her all summer. Geri hadn’t returned most of her messages, and when she did, she was too busy.
“Got something for you,” the text said.
Alex texted back, “What?”
A minute later. “You in the city?”
“Yes.” She stopped from texting back, How did you know?
“Meet at Bella’s Deli at 4.”
That was right down the street. She could walk there. In fact, Kada’s apartment wasn’t far from that. She could leave the car in long term.
A nurse arrived.
Alex leaned back and let her insert the seeder into her right nostril.
——————————————
“Mrs. Diosa!” The receptionist held up a handbag.
Alex stopped at the door. That was her bag, the one she left in the waiting room. She was careful to watch her step on the way back, still a bit woozy.
The receptionist smiled. “Thank you.”
Alex wasn’t sure why she was being thanked. Everything had that double-vision feel, like the lenses were still being focused.
On the elevator, she checked her phone. It was past five. She’d been in the back room almost two hours. She thumbed her phone and Kada answered on the second ring.
“Come on over,” she said.
There was something else she was supposed to do, but there were no voicemails or texts. In fact, the only text she’d received that day was from Samuel. She decided to call him.
She really missed him.
——————————————
Alex saw five Broadway shows that week.
She went by herself to see Wicked a second time. It was night when it ended. A drizzle wet the asphalt and beaded on the hoods of taxis. Despite the chill, she decided to walk back to Kada’s, maybe catch a cab on Forty-Eighth.
She enjoyed the lights, especially the way they stretched over the wet pavement, the way they sparkled on the buildings. It was the sound of cars honking, people shouting, the smell of exhaust that tingled her bones. It was all around.
It was the city.
My city.
She felt like she owned it. There was a connection deep in her core, a feeling that everything tugged at her heart, emanated from her soul; a connection that was seamless and unbreakable.
Even when someone coughed from a doorway and began following her, she was unshaken. She felt the gap in his teeth, the wet hair beneath his hood, the withdrawal shaking his hand. He didn’t harm her, didn’t ask for change or a handout. He just stopped following her at some point.
She should’ve found that odd, but she was connected. Didn’t everyone feel this?
This must be a ten.
——————————————
She left Friday morning.
The traffic wasn’t bad and it wasn’t long before she was cruising through the hills. The phone rang.
“Where are you?” Samuel asked.
“Not far.”
“I miss you.”
She smiled. It felt much longer than a week. She foraged in her handbag for chapstick while steering with her knee. A manila package slid out, spilling its contents on the seat and floorboard.
“I’ll leave work early,” he said. “See you for lunch.”
Alex waited for the next stoplight, glancing every so often at the cache spread across the floor mat. There were folders and photos and paper-clipped reports. Mail, too. When she caught a red light, she unbuckled her seatbelt and grabbed a handful.
The reports were from Geri.
There was a vague memory of wanting to meet her in the city. Wasn’t I supposed to be at a deli?
A quick skim revealed loads of inside information, photos of a young Tyler and Patricia Ballard, stuff Alex could only dream of finding. How does she do it?
She’d have to give her a bonus when the book published.
The mail, though, wasn’t addressed to Alex and it didn’t belong to Geri. It wasn’t a letter, it was a flier. One of those small glossy cards. It said, Have you seen this boy?
There was a photo.
A car horn blared. The light was green.
The postcard slipped from her fingers and fell to the floorboard. She drove the rest of the way home, reading random sheets of paper pinned to the steering, whatever she could grab while driving through the countryside, occasionally driving off the road or crossing the center line.
Tyler Ballard was a young neuroscientist. Patricia was a psychologist. Both were tenured professors at an Ivy League university, career-minded people intent upon helping the world.
Then Patricia was diagnosed with early onset Alzheimer’s. The story of the couple was well documented. The public empathized.
Until the holes appeared.
Tyler was researching his controversial technology that involved brains, computers and needles in the brains of rats and mice, but was not given permission for human trials. The couple attempted to cover the evidence, but was quietly placed on leave with pay.
He took his research to the basement.
There were pictures of Patricia in the basement with a needle protruding from her forehead, Tyler in his basement
lab with eyes that hadn’t slept for days.
And a photo of them lying in bed, holding hands.
If she didn’t know how the story ended—Foreverland kidnapping youth—her heart would ache.
——————————————
Alex threw the papers on the kitchen table and shuffled through them like gold coins.
The postcard was on the bottom.
She held it up as if it was hard to see. Even under the light, it felt dim. It was a picture of a twelve-year-old boy. He was Hispanic with short black hair, his eyes large and brown. His smile sly and knowing.
The back door slammed, but no one was there.
The room began turning.
She needed water. Dehydration caused room spins. She stood at the sink, downing a tall glass of water when the music began.
It was upstairs.
“Hello?”
It wasn’t a radio. It was more bells and tones, something more soothing, like a lullaby.
A crib mobile.
“Samuel?”
She put one foot on the bottom step and the room suddenly turned her toward the couch.
There was a box of crayons on the floor, paper on the end table, but not the papers from the car. These were pulled from a coloring book with bright faces and purple lips and yellow eyes.
She threw herself against the wall and followed it through the kitchen, made it to the back door in time to puke over the railing.
The petunias were a mess.
A car pulled up as she heaved round three, this one squeezing her gut like a wrung towel.
Samuel jumped out. He was by her side for a moment, running inside the house. She sat down and closed her eyes, the acrid taste of vomit in her sinuses.
The Tilt-O-Whirl began to slow.
“What happened?” Samuel put a wet rag on her forehead.
She didn’t know, explained the room-spins, the sudden nausea. She thought he was home, that he was upstairs playing...music? What the hell happened?
The biomite sync.
She’d been fine all week. Better than fine, in fact. She’d been perfect.
A ten.
When she was ready, when she trusted her body to stand up, she made it inside the house without assistance. The floor didn’t spin, the walls didn’t turn. She just wanted a warm shower and a nap.
On her way past the dining room table, the papers were neatly stacked. The front room was clean, no coloring book pages scattered on the floor. And no music.
It was later she thought something was missing.
A postcard, or something.
20. Tyler
ADMAX Penitentiary, Colorado
Tyler’s bed didn’t creak, just gently squished under him.
He reached beneath the mattress and stared at the surgical steel needle encased in a tube of gel. He broke the seal—his arthritic hands knobby in the joints, the thin skin spotted—and admired the perfect symmetry of the needle, the silver gleam and dangerous point.
Anticipation wet his mouth.
Pins rolled beneath the mattress, massaging his legs, back and buttocks. He positioned the tip of the needle near the stent. The leathery flesh began to throb. Sometimes, he rammed it into his head and his consciousness would be slung into another dimension.
He kept his eyes open, breathed deep the musty odor of the prison’s painted walls and slid it slowly into his forehead. The cold spike sank its fang.
The ceiling swirled into the sky, the walls fell apart.
There was no sensation of travel, no illusion of space. The needle’s kiss.
His reflection looked back from a ticket kiosk. He was wearing khaki pants and a navy blue blazer. He ran his hand through thick wavy hair the color of honey and straightened his open collar, a gold ring glinting in the theatre’s lights.
The city smelled like a cleansing rain. There was no exhaust, no trash—just the sterilized version of a perfect society. A perfect reality.
The usher opened the door.
A few people milled through the lobby in tuxedos and long gowns. Beyond another set of doors, a tenor bellowed opera.
An escort led him to a grand tier box with two seats. Below, Phantom of the Opera unfolded. He sat next to Patricia, reached into her lap and took her hand. She held him tightly, her other hand holding a tissue to her chest.
She would sob when it was over.
She always did.
——————————————
Patricia slid her hand over the brass rail.
The theatre was empty. The crowd had dispersed, leaving in their cars or calling cabs, heading back to their supposed homes. In Patricia’s Foreverland, they were just illusions of her own mind, but he often wondered if she replicated them from actual people in the city.
The details of the theatre, the opera singers and the custodians sweeping the stage were flawless. Her ability to absorb these details from the space around her physical body, as it lay in the Institute, and project them into her Foreverland was as uncanny as it was unexplainable. Her mind was an ethereal sponge.
Is the physical world any more legitimate than Foreverland? Under what pretense is physicality the gold standard?
That was the question he begged all of humankind to answer.
“Tyler? Are you listening?”
“I’m sorry, lost in thought. You were saying?”
“I’m concerned.”
“And what are your concerns?”
“Your body, for one. I was looking at the results of your latest physical.”
He didn’t want her to worry, frequently hiding the dire conditions he encountered in physical reality, but it was difficult to hide his thoughts or emotions when he came here, where all was on display.
“I want you to consider using the good doctor’s new biomite strain. It will stabilize your health, guarantee longevity.”
“It’s too much risk.”
“Your health is far too fragile to argue. If you lose your body at the wrong time, then where will I be?”
“I fear government intervention is more to be worried about than my health. Abusing biomites will set off alarms. We don’t need the authorities watching us too closely.”
“What about undetectable biomites, the ones Gramm spoke of?”
He shook his head. “You speak of things far more risky. My body is old, yes. There are aches and pains, but it will last as long as we need it to last. And when the time comes, we will cross over into Alessandra’s eternal Foreverland. Don’t worry yourself, please.”
She drummed her fingers on the brass rail, watching men push brooms across the stage. “Perhaps you should stay here, then. We’ll cross over when she’s ready.”
She didn’t look at him when she said it.
He could feel her loneliness when he was gone. Living in this Foreverland, within her own mind, knowing these were merely reflections of people in the physical world and not actual beings was distressing. No matter what shapes and sizes and colors she looked at, no matter how human they seemed, they were all projections of her mind.
She needs me.
“I can’t leave my body,” he said. “Not yet.”
“But she is almost ready.”
“That’s not it. I need to be here, in the prison. There are still matters to attend.”
“And Gramm cannot do them?”
He trusted the former chemist, but he was weak. His mind was too open, his taste for biomites too strong. Tyler feared his assistant could be overwhelmed by the wrong person too easily. And that he could not risk.
“Perhaps it’s time to abandon the prison,” she said. “It’s always been a risk. And now that the Institute is fully functional, there’s no reason for you not to come here.”
He cocked his head. “What’s really bothering you, dear?”
She wiped her eyes and stuffed the tissue in her purse. Perhaps the opera jarred loose long-held emotions she didn’t want to face, or didn’t know were there. There is s
o much in the subconscious that a thousand lifetimes could not uncover the secrets we keep from ourselves.
“I don’t think Alex will sleep,” she said. “There have been too many disruptions.”
“Anomalies.”
“More than anomalies, Tyler. Someone is purposefully enticing her to remember.”
She refused to name him, as if uttering Reed would somehow summon him into being.
“She won’t remember her past. And even if Reed is behind this, he won’t succeed. Her life is perfect, darling. She’ll soon forget everything and sleep.”
He floated a thought into this world. Unlike physical reality, a thought here could become a wish that, falling into the right context, was fulfilled. Tyler envisioned a man dressed in black and called him to the stage.
Moments later, a man dressed in black strode across the stage, his face partially obscured by the white mask. The custodians continued sweeping as he lifted an arm and his voice carried into the empty theatre.
“Think of Me”, he sang all alone.
It tugged at the emotion welling just beneath Patricia’s eyes.
Tyler held out his hand. There was no more talk of biomites and host, no more worry about the future. Everything was going near enough to plan that Tyler pulled her close for the remainder of his stay.
In the grand tier box, they danced.
——————————————
He opened his eyes, a concrete ceiling above him, a dull wall beside him. And all the aches and pains, the stiffness of eighty years surrounded him.
He extracted the needle.
It slithered out and left behind an antiseptic sting. Tears involuntarily welled up. He hated to leave her, to come back to this plane. If hell existed, it was in the physical world, not some distant make-believe. He no longer doubted that.
The opera still echoed in his head.
He wiped his eyes. The throbbing continued.
An infection was setting in. Soon, it would alter the function of his brain and, in turn, the quality of his mind. Even if he avoided the needle and went to wireless brain biomites, the infection was already there.
Have I already failed you, dear?
He blinked away the tears. More had pooled against the bridge of his nose. Patricia trusted him. It was her vision to create Foreverland, to build a new reality. She was the one that conceived of it in the very beginning, not him. She knew, long before biomites were ever conceived, that all the minds in the world could be linked, that human singularity was possible, that the illusion of separateness could be dispelled.
Ashes of Foreverland Page 12