by Nadia Afifi
“Ah! You must be M. Valdez.”
“Just letting Dr. Singh know that I ordered the Nirvatrene,” Amira said swiftly. Singh nodded indifferently and then closed the door behind her.
“So, M. Valdez,” Parrish continued. “I hear that our patient is out of immediate danger.” He gestured toward Rozene’s room.
Amira found herself walking in step with the legendary genetics pioneer.
“Yes, she sh-should be,” Amira stammered. “She’s resting now, but I’ll be evaluating her later today.”
“Excellent.” His tone carried no lingering traces of his outburst moments ago.
Through the window into the main ward, Rozene was in deep sleep, her brow tightly furrowed as it often did when she dreamed. Her face was paler than usual and her arms bruised in several places from IVs, but she otherwise appeared the same as she had the day before. One arm lay draped across her ever-increasing belly as her chest rose and fell.
“Very young,” Parrish said sadly. “She looks like a child. Reminds me of Maya, in a way.”
Everyone in Westport knew the story of Alistair Parrish and Valerie Singh’s only child. When she was twenty-two, a car struck Maya Parrish off her bicycle in the Rails, the thoroughfare where Aldwych’s elite lived. The story shocked Westport, a city unaccustomed to many accidents after the adoption of the Auto-Navigated Vehicle Promotion Act. When it emerged that a motorist had disabled the self-driving mechanism in his car, it prompted a citywide ban of all human-operated vehicles.
Maya remained in a coma, living through her twenties as a lifeless vegetable. While undoubtedly a tragedy for both geneticists, Alistair Parrish disappeared from public life for three years before resuming his career as the Carthage station’s head researcher. “I am happiest in the tranquil dark of space,” he famously said at his returning press conference. “Westport carries too many painful memories for me.”
“That was going to be the original name for this project,” Parrish continued. “The Maya project. I wanted to name it after her. Had you heard that?”
“No,” she said carefully.
“But Valerie opposed it, and she had a point. Too sentimental and loaded for an already controversial effort. In addition, Maya in Hindu mythology means illusion, mirrors of deceit. It would play into the public’s anxieties, that we are creating an illusionary human, something artificial. Ridiculous, but there you have it.
“Instead, it became the Pandora project, a nod to the fact that we want to open boxes of knowledge that could never be closed again. A name especially fitting for the cloning effort. A human woman created by the gods out of clay. A clone. Although in hindsight, Amira, was it really the better choice? Do we think ourselves to be gods? We all know how Pandora’s story ended. Ills unleashed on the world, with only a sliver of hope remaining.”
They stood in silence, watching Rozene through the ward’s window. Amira saw a kindness in Parrish that was noticeably lacking in Singh and for a moment, considered opening her own box of secrets – the tampered memories, the mysterious men with blurred faces, the unexplained and ubiquitous presence of Tony Barlow. In the end, Dr. Mercer’s warnings restrained her. Watch yourself.
* * *
Infinity Park was one of the few open spaces in Westport that remained defiantly urban, without the sound-canceling perimeters and dense ceilings of vegetation within the newly designated ‘Green Zones’. Amira would jog through the Green Zones when she wanted to escape the cacophony of the city, but those occasions were rare. Infinity Park, on the other hand, was an open mixture of grass and concrete from which one could watch trains scream overhead against a backdrop of towering buildings that caught the waning sunlight.
It was the start of April, meaning that spring should have arrived, but seasons became less predictable each year. Random blizzards struck into late July and after heat waves during spring, when the park would become overrun by excited residents drawn like shivering plants to the sunlight. Soon enough, many predicted, there would be no seasons at all, only days subject to nature’s whims.
Such warnings meant little, however, when the sun warmed the sidewalk and the scent of newly planted grass permeated the air. Amira sat cross-legged on the mossy turf opposite D’Arcy and Julian, digging her toes into the cool grass. They drank cheap wine out of plastic cups. Like most of the sunbathers in the park, D’Arcy was topless, displaying a new three-dimensional tattoo of dancing flames (temporary, she assured the group) along her left side. Though Amira had moved well beyond the laced veils and long dresses of the compound, she refused to join the casual public nudity that was commonplace on warm days in Westport. Her compromise was a sheer white top draped loosely over her shoulders. Julian’s left eye flashed when his Third Eye took pictures of the cloudless sky.
Julian and D’Arcy were heatedly discussing rumors of a Westport resident who had designed an Eye that could be used not only in Aldwych, where the devices were disabled, but in the space stations as well.
“It’s impossible,” D’Arcy said flatly.
“But the guys on the second floor swear it’s true!” Julian said. “It’s supposed to be quantum-level encryption, which is how it can bypass all of the security the labcoats made.”
“The technology isn’t there yet,” D’Arcy said. “Believe me, this is my area. There are true quantum computers in places like Aldwych and the stations. The Stream is obviously quantum as well, but to design an Eye at the quantum level…no way.”
Amira sat upright, struggling with images spinning past her line of vision.
“How’s that Eye working for you, Amira?” D’Arcy called playfully.
“It’s….” Amira’s voice trailed away as she struggled for the right obscenity. In her left eye, she could see her friends sitting on the grass, while the right eye was a dizzying tornado of images and words – calendars, articles, search results – changing faster than she could process them.
“You have to focus your thoughts into one, single command,” D’Arcy said kindly, with subtle amusement in her voice. “Think the words ‘send message’, for example. Think those words and nothing else.”
Amira followed D’Arcy’s advice, her heart leaping with excitement as the screen simplified into a list of contacts, all familiar names of Academy students. As she tried to scroll down the list, however, the screen changed to display a series of Stream articles about Iceland.
“Why is it showing me pictures of glaciers, D’Arcy?” Amira asked in a low voice as Julian burst out laughing.
“Oh, it must have been your background thoughts again. The trick is not to make them forefront thoughts and—”
“And I’m done.” Amira pulled the lens from her eye with a little more force than necessary and handed it back to D’Arcy, who smiled sheepishly as Julian continued to howl. “I’ll stick to regular computers where I can switch off the mind-reading, thanks.”
“I still think you could master it if you try.”
Julian stood up.
“As much as I’d love to stay, I need to get ready for the radio show,” he said, leaning down to give Amira a hug and kiss D’Arcy. “And I thought you were both going to get some classwork done.”
Amira cast a dark glance at the textbook nestled in the folds of the blanket, beside the hummus plate – Crossing the Void: A Theory of the Psychosocial Effects of Interstellar Space Travel.
“Isn’t that what the Carthage does?” Julian asked. “Study the effects of space on the human body and mind?”
D’Arcy raised a hand, counting off with her fingers.
“The Carthage is Parrish’s station, and that’s what they do using ‘voluntary’ prisoners,” she said, unreadable under her wide sunglasses. “The Volta is Victor Zhang’s, although who knows who’s running it after he disappeared – they research radiation in deep space and energy sources for long-term space travel. The Hypatia – dark ma
tter and energy. The Nineveh – tied to that super-telescope, looking for habitable planets. And Amira, tell him about the Osiris.”
“What’s there to tell? No one knows.”
“Exactly,” D’Arcy said with a gleeful clap. “Well, whoever runs it knows, but we don’t even know who they are. It’s like the Area 51 of space. They might be partying with aliens for all we know.”
Julian laughed. “I get it. And no room for the arts up there – unless that’s the deviant stuff the Osiris is studying. I’ll leave you both to it.”
D’Arcy rounded on Amira the second Julian was out of earshot. “What the hell is going on, Amira? We’re in Aldwych less than a month and I’m Clouding you. Do I even want to know?”
Amira cradled the textbook in her lap, the answer stuck in her throat. Her ears buzzed, as they had in the Soma when she stole the Tiresia. As a fellow Pandora team member, Amira could tell D’Arcy certain things. But explaining that she stole a mystery drug for a rogue space cop who ran an abandoned ship of compound refugees? Even D’Arcy had her limits.
“What I’m about to tell you has to stay between you and me,” Amira said. “No one else on Pandora can know, because I can’t trust anyone except you. That also includes Julian, your data, even that diary you keep in your Eye.”
“As long as you don’t have to Cloud me every time we talk,” D’Arcy said, raising her wine-filled cup with sufficient gravitas.
Amira relaxed. They inched closer together on the picnic blanket.
“I think – I know – that Rozene’s memory has been tampered with,” Amira began. “Probably to hide something she knows. A secret. I don’t know what or why, but let’s just say that I learned of a drug called Tiresia that might be connected to it somehow. That’s what I took from the Soma medical stores. And sure enough, it was on the classified records of the two previous subjects, the ones who died over the summer.”
D’Arcy gasped. “Could it be some kind of miscarriage drug? Something to make them lose the clones?”
“I don’t think so,” Amira said. “Plenty of those exist already. But if you’re trying to stop a clone from being born, that’s an obvious, incriminating way to do it. It’s something else. And Nina and Jessica – the two former subjects – didn’t have any of those medications in their records. Their death records show sudden, unexplained heart failure and cessation of neural activity, which is incredibly strange for two women in their early twenties. When the cause of death can’t be explained through charts and readings, it looks more likely that their conditions were psychologically induced.”
“Or by this Tiresia,” D’Arcy said.
“I don’t think so,” Amira said. “I don’t know, but it must be more than a poison. It’s something classified – it was marked on the women’s medical charts, but isn’t on Rozene’s record. It’s doing something, but maybe indirectly. Causing stress, and that’s what’s actually killing the Pandora subjects.”
“It doesn’t seem right,” D’Arcy said. “Lots of people suffer in all kinds of ways, and they don’t just drop dead. That can’t really happen, can it?”
“Have you heard of the Nocebo effect?” Amira asked.
“Nocebo,” D’Arcy said slowly. “Is that like the placebo effect? Where you think the meds are curing you, when it’s just a dose of sugar or something?”
Amira nodded. “I will harm. One of my first classes with Dr. Mercer, he told us this story. Back in eighteenth century Vienna, these medical students decided to play this prank on a teacher’s assistant they hated. They ambushed him after class, held him down and told him he was going to be decapitated. They pushed his head on a block and blindfolded him. One of them then wrung a wet cloth so that a drop of water fell on his neck. He felt it, thinking it was the cold of a blade, and died. Right there, on the spot.”
D’Arcy raised her eyebrows behind her thick sunglasses. “He believed it enough that it happened.”
“Exactly. The mind-body connection – doctors have known about it to some degree for centuries, and we’re only now really understanding how powerful it can be. There are other examples, too – that Dancing Plague in the sixteenth century, when people in this village literally danced themselves to death for no reason. Even when I grew up in the compound, I remember this one summer, the Elders held a sermon where they accused the entire congregation of violating the natural order – you know, immodest dress, sinful thoughts, the usual. At least ten women had to be carried out of the auditorium for seizures. And it wasn’t for show – these were real seizures. Now that I’ve been at the Academy, I know the difference. The Elders said it was possessed spirits from other dimensions leaving their bodies.”
“Guess I learned something new,” D’Arcy said with a sigh. “Our thoughts can kill us.”
“Not just anyone,” Amira said. “It’s not common, and we have a better idea now of why that is. Certain types of people are more susceptible to the Nocebo effect. The first are those who have strong belief-based cognitive wiring – religious people, in other words, or those who were raised and conditioned to operate heavily on belief over rational judgment. The second type involves people with suppressed or damaged memories. In addition, there is usually an injury or inherent imbalance to the hypothalamus that’s needed to trigger an aggravated stress response – meaning, stress that doesn’t just wear you down over time like it does for most people, but literally attacks your body in the here and now.”
“Compound girls would be the poster candidates,” D’Arcy said. She leaned forward, tearing some blades of grass and rolling them between her fingers. Lines stretched across her forehead as she sat still, lost in thought. “So,” she said in a low voice. “You’re thinking someone used this Tiresia to tamper with the women’s memories to hide something, and maybe kill them with the stress caused by the distorted memory. But why tamper with a memory? Why not just take it out completely, if you want to keep someone quiet?”
Amira drew a deep breath. “It’s very difficult to erase an entire memory,” she said. “Especially a vivid one like Rozene’s. You would have to not only extract the memory itself from a complex neural maze, but also remove anything that could trigger the memory. Think of it like pulling out a tree, along with all the roots deep in the ground. It’s almost always more effective to change the memory or remove certain details.”
“So someone took the easier way—” D’Arcy began, but Amira shook her head.
“Not just anyone can do it,” she said. “You need to really understand neuroscience and holomentics to do it properly. And even then…. It can cause serious trauma for the person whose memory has been removed. Serious emotional trauma, especially if it’s a strong memory or a significant one in their development.”
D’Arcy nodded sadly. “So that could be the problem with this poor girl?”
“It could,” Amira said. “There could also be problems in the cloning process, I don’t know. But this fits with what I’ve seen of Rozene. She became really confused when I pushed her to recall these three men. When your memory is altered the way hers was, you don’t know what’s real and what isn’t, but you know something isn’t right – with your thoughts, your past, your sense of, well, your own being. And that kind of stress corrodes the mind, and then the body.”
“Why would someone go to all of this trouble?” D’Arcy asked. “Especially if they’re a scientist. If they’re caught, that’s attempted murder. Why throw it all away?”
Amira had been considering the same question.
“If Julian were here, I’d know what he’d say,” D’Arcy said with a faint smile. “Money. Maybe a Soma rival in Aldwych who’s not part of Pandora – the Galileo, for example – wants to learn the technology but get credit for the first successful cloning. Maybe they’re hoping to kill Pandora with bad publicity. Or maybe this man – or woman – is just opposed to human cloning and is willing to pay any price to kee
p it from succeeding.”
The sun was beginning to set when they packed to leave, and the world around them embraced the haziness of dusk, the lemon glow of sunlight giving way to long shadows and the rising chorus of invisible crickets. Slightly drowsy from the wine and heat, Amira and D’Arcy walked together along the pathway to the train station, arms linked. D’Arcy had thrown on a shirt for the return home.
Something caught Amira’s eye and she pulled D’Arcy to their left, toward the center of Infinity Park. An outdoor theater had been built at the hill’s base for plays in the summer. On its main stage, a woman in an elegant dress, too formal for a hot day, addressed a large crowd. Although it was too distant for Amira to hear, the crowd appeared to be hanging on to the woman’s every word.
“Have you learned about the teachings of the Cosmics?” An older man materialized next to them, dressed in a poorly made suit but wearing an eager, open smile. He handed Amira a pamphlet and walked away.
“What is this shit?” D’Arcy murmured, as Amira flipped through the pamphlet.
“Sentient Cosmology,” Amira read aloud. “A science-based approach to understanding the universe and our purpose in it. Our understanding of the quantum world and dark matter has confirmed what humans have known for centuries. The world is more than the sum of what we know and see, and our consciousness plays a vital role, the driving role, in the fabric of the cosmos.”
“I’ve heard of them,” D’Arcy said thoughtfully. “I’ve seen them recruiting at the Academy, putting up posters and such.”