by Ken O'Steen
Chapter 2: It Cannot Exist
CT scans, MRI scans, hypnosis, therapy and textbooks. Unlocking my body was complete. Now it was time to unlock my brain. My days were filled with reading assignments, there was so much to understand and yet to my surprise I learned it easily and quickly. There were some subjects harder than others, human biology for instance. But architecture, chemistry, physics; these things were easy concepts, it felt more as though I had to remember them than truly learn them.
I could speak now, though my vocabulary was lacking I learned new words every day, Angela helped me with that. I didn’t see her as often, busy as I was with the other Doctors. I saw Doctor Warren twice a week for a checkup, blood work and ultrasounds. The other Doctors, Sully and Harper were with me every day now. Doctor Sully ran the MRI and CT scans, questioned me on my learning, giving me tests to write and then handed me off to Doctor Harper, a psychotherapist. I took more pills than I could count, so many I had to split them between the three meals or else my body began to reject them. The days were not bad; I enjoyed the reading; though I did miss the simpler days I spent entirely with Angela. I found that lying in the MRI machine for thirty minutes could be almost peaceful if I focused only on my breathing and just let my thoughts wander.
But by far my favorite time of day was after dinner. When Angela would sit down and discuss the day with me. She looked healthier now that she did not have to spend her days taking care of me. She was able to eat and sleep on a regular basis and it returned a healthy red tinge to her cheeks. She was more beautiful than ever and as the days past I felt my appreciation of her deepening. We would sit in the small kitchen, taking turns preparing the meal and she would show me things, photos of strange objects with symbols on them. She was not allowed to tell me what they were for; it was my job to tell her. I began to recognize some of it, able to read the language. One device was simply to control the temperature of a room. The symbols set the degrees. One stood for hotter, one for colder. When this was passed along to Doctor Warren he was ecstatic, though I could tell the smile on Angela’s face was fake I did not press her as to the reason.
Excluding the doctors and Angela I was alone. I knew nothing of what lay outside the walls of my room. The small kitchen and washroom, and the hallways that led to the offices and medical rooms were my entire world. One day, when Angela returned with a few bags of food and began to organize them into the fridge and cupboards I realized something.
“Angela?”
“Yes Professor?”
“Where does the fruit come from? I have read that it is grown in soil, and fueled by sun and water. I have seen water, it runs from the taps and from the shower head. But soil and sun? Where are those?”
She paused a moment in her organizing, as if unsure of how to respond, “Ou…outside.”
“And how do I get there?”
“You will get there, but only when your learning is done.”
I worked much harder after that, determined to see in reality what I had seen in my textbooks. Though since biology had been a struggle for me they had removed it from my curriculum, now most of the photos in my books were those of graphs and equations. My reading began to speed up the more I did and the more I learned of the basic concepts the faster the more advanced ones came. I could also now fully understand the strange symbols in the photos that Angela and I would look at every night. The technology in them was very similar to the technology around me in function but not in appearance or actual operation. Angela told me my learning was getting very close to completion and I became excited at the prospect of seeing the ‘outside’.
“Angela?”
“Yes Professor?”
“I feel very strange.”
“Are you sick?”
“No.”
“Are you hurt?”
“No.”
She breathed an obvious sigh of relief, “Are you feeling happy or sad?”
“I do not know what sad feels like.”
“Maybe you are sad?”
“No. I don’t think so.”
“Can you describe any part of what you are feeling? Or what is making you feel this way?”
“Yes. You.”
“Me? I am your friend Professor. I would never hurt you.”
“Yes. I know this. But, I dreamt last night... about you.”
She looked concerned. I did not want her to be concerned.
“In this dream, you were hurt. You were dying and I could not save you. I did not like that feeling. I wanted to hurt whatever had made you hurt because I knew I could not exist without you.”
A silence fell then, which I could not begin to understand, my knowledge of such social intricacies still far too inadequate. I noticed a rush of blood to her face and thought back to what I knew of human biology but it was hard to remember it all.
“Love.” She broke the silence with barely a whisper.
“Love?”
“Yes.”
“What does this word mean?”
“It is impossible to define. It is just something you know.”
I furrowed my brows together, “If it cannot be defined than it cannot exist.”
“You’re right. I suppose it cannot exist. It is a mystery of the universe, perhaps one of the few left. Promise me Professor, that you will never repeat this word, or what you have said to me today to anyone. No one else must hear this.”
There was concern in her voice and I was reminded again of the dream. Of the pain that Angela had felt, of how she was hurting and somehow I knew that if I disobeyed this request, she would hurt like she had in my dream.
“I promise.”
Promise was a word Angela had taught me. It means you will do something at some time no matter what the circumstances may be, no matter how inconvenient or hard it is to keep it. Angela also told me that many people are known to break their promises, and such people should not be trusted.
“Come with me Professor.”
I rose from my bed, finishing the chapter of my Plasma Physics textbook, and followed Angela out the door. Her walk was different, her strides were longer, my own body tensed with awareness that something was not right but I knew better than to question her. She promised I would know everything I needed to know in time.
The door she led me through was one I had never been through before. The hallway behind it was the same bright white as every other hallway. At the end there was another door. It swished open before us and I entered a circular room with round grey chairs and a deep red carpet. Strangers sat all around in the same white tunic and pants that I wore. And others, obviously helpers like Angela, dressed in the same dark uniform as her. On the far wall was the most amazing thing I had ever seen: windows that opened up on the wide expanse of a city. My eyes wide I cast a quick glance at Angela. She nodded and I hurried across the center of the room. Hands pressed to the glass I stared out at the grey expanse before me. In the distance a huge lake glittered against the sun, skyscrapers shorter than our own all around. It was almost too much wonder for me to take in at once. My eyes searched quickly, wanting to see everything once, twice, a thousand times. There were so many things I did not know the names of, or maybe I knew the names but not the object.
There was the sound of a door swishing open to my right. I looked to find Doctors Warren, Sully and Harper enter the room along with a man in a strange green uniform with many badges on it.
They stood at a console at the head of the room in front of the others and I sat in a chair beside Angela. She secretly squeezed my forearm in support and a rush of happiness flooded through me. The man in the green uniform, his hair dashed with grey, hit a switch on the console and the lights dimmed.
“Please. Take a seat. Your mission briefing is about to begin.”