by Nadia Afifi
Amira squeezed Rozene’s shoulder, a brief gesture of comfort that surprised them both. After all she had seen Rozene survive, it pained Amira to place her in more danger. But Rozene was right. They had made significant progress that night. The discovery of another memory within Rozene’s subconscious, the mysterious man on the all-terrain vehicle, meant that they were closer to his identity, assuming he was one of the three men in the ceremony.
Rozene buried her face in her hands. “How did I end up here? Why did I let this happen? Maybe this is my punishment for everything I’ve done.”
“I think I may have pushed you too far today,” Amira said, leaning forward and gently removing the pads from Rozene’s head. “Get some rest. We’ll continue tomorrow. Let me know if you remember any unusual dreams when you wake up.”
Rozene removed her hands from her face, her cheeks shining with tears, and nodded. She patted her belly mindlessly and pulled herself back into the bed.
“I noticed your hands,” Rozene called out as Amira walked toward the exit. “The scars on them. Are they from…from back home?”
Amira raised her hands, exposing thin white lines that snaked across her palms. The scars that lasted long past the pain, anger and thick, suffocating fear that accompanied them. Scabs of an old life that Amira had not yet buried entirely. Could it ever be buried? Amira didn’t know.
“I was caught the first time I tried to escape,” she said. “They brought me to the Elders’ offices in the Temple, not unlike what happened to you. They gave me two choices: be chained outside the front of the temple for the rest of the night with an entire vial of Chimyra or take twenty lashes with their cable.” She remembered it well; it was a thin whip comprised of hundreds of even thinner wires, the texture of a silver lock of hair, each strand charged with electricity.
“I was so cold by the time they brought me in,” Amira continued, “that I would have taken anything other than going back outside again. And nothing makes shapes in the dark move like Chimyra. So, I held out my hand and took the twenty lashes.”
“All twenty?”
“It ended up being about ten. The Elder insisted that he carry it out himself, punish his own flock and all of that, but he had terrible arthritis. His wrists gave out halfway through, and he sent me back home.”
“The stronger sex in action,” Rozene said with an arched brow.
And for the first time, they shared a genuine, open smile.
Chapter Eight
Thirst
The road carving through the narrow valley was the same reddish brown as the surrounding rocks, the sand, even the sky. The cool moisture of early morning hung in the air as Amira breathed in deeply, lungs free from Greater Westport’s smog. She did not know where she was, but the desert reminded her of the New Covenant. Her unease entwined with an odd sense of relief, the feeling of coming home after a long journey.
She walked down the dirt road, her boots sliding on the wet ground. Vultures called to one another in the distance but otherwise, she was alone.
The road curved and Amira took the path down the side of a steep hill to find a large house on her right. The structure, comprised of wood and clay, blended into the hill behind it, as though it had grown out of the rock. The open front door revealed nothing but deep, inviting blackness inside.
Terror seized Amira. Though she did not understand it, she knew danger surrounded the house and that she had to get as far from it as possible. She tried to back away, her eyes trained on the entrance, but her legs grew heavy and sluggish. Her arms numbed, her strength deserting her as fear coursed through her body.
In an instant, the house silently burst into flames before her. The fire melted the clay walls at alarming speed and licked furiously against the wooden beams until they collapsed into the flames. Heat surrounded her, despite the distance from the burning structure, and she coughed and struggled for air.
She woke up, chest heaving and slick with sweat. The same dream visited her every night, only with different houses and settings. Sometimes, it would be a cottage in the mountains, other times a glass house by the ocean, but it was always accompanied by that same fear, followed by the fire.
Her bedroom was still dark except for the array of devices charging along her walls, forming angry red eyes staring at her. The window, slick with humidity, brought warm blue light into the room’s center.
Amira crawled out of bed, naked with her long dark hair tied back, and pushed the window open. She could feel the breeze from the Riverfront as the streets near the Canary House came to life in the early morning. Students headed to the first wave of exams at the Academy, joined by joggers along the canals and commuters trekking to the trains.
What did the nightmares mean? Amira did not know which outcome she feared more – that she was going mad, breaking under Pandora’s weight, or that she wasn’t mad at all and the dreams meant something she did not yet understand. The rush of heat felt as real as the plants on her windowsill. She had no memory of a burning house, or anything in her past that might inspire such a dream. Was it symbolic, similar to dreams of flying or losing teeth? Or a warning? Amira knew only that she wanted them to end, to regain the few hours of peace left to her.
She drummed her fingers against the cracked windowsill. In the distance, the lights of Aldwych glowed through the morning fog. The district never went dark, no matter the hour. Rozene probably slept, or perhaps began to stir, on the Soma’s highest floor, awaiting another grueling day of needles, tests and cruel invasions into her thoughts and fears. The first, muted light of dawn appeared as the brick walls of the Riverfront came into focus under the emerging sunlight. In the distance, the first shuttle to NASH departed from the Galileo building, leaving a trail of smoke through the pink sky.
Aldwych. She loved and feared the district in equal measure. The city held the keys to the space stations, the world above the world, and held the power to keep her from it. For the first time since her assignment, however, there was hope.
* * *
“There are several types of dreams,” Amira said, hands twitching in her coat pockets. She faced her small but imposing audience – Alistair Parrish, politely engaged, Tony Barlow, unnaturally still and focused, and Valerie Singh, distracted and impatient. Amira detested formal briefings, and explaining her work to two of the world’s most famous scientists did little to help matters. By the door, D’Arcy gave her an encouraging thumbs-up, having just delivered her own briefing on the successful Stream signal near Mars.
Amira cleared her throat. “Three main types in total. The first type of dream is what we refer to as ‘processing’ dreams. These are the most common type of dreams we have – they help us organize our brain and process new experiences, take in the information that we receive each day. For example, if you watch a documentary about, let’s say, the rainforest, you may dream that you’re in the jungle that night, as your brain takes in the new visuals and sounds you were exposed to.
“The second type is a memory-based dream. They’re similar to the first type but far more significant, because they concern longer-term memories that have had a lasting impact on the person’s psyche. These memories may be traumatic, or simply be related to significant events in a person’s life. It is this type of dream that I’m triggering in Rozene with the Oniria treatment.”
“Only older, lasting memories,” Barlow said thoughtfully. “And why exactly are you focusing on this, M. Valdez?”
Amira paused, choosing her words carefully. “From the holomentic readings, I believe that part of the problems that Rozene— that the subject is experiencing is due to traumatic memories from her past that have been distorted, which can cause severe psychological distress. And that, you know, can translate into physical symptoms.”
While the two men nodded silently, Singh immediately came to attention.
“Distorted?” she asked sharply, raising her dark
brows. “Distorted how? As in suppressed memories?”
Amira clenched her fists in her pockets, struggling to keep her face impassive. Nothing escaped Dr. Singh. Remembering her promise to Rozene, Amira channeled her inner politician, searching for the vaguest response.
“Maybe,” she said. “It’s not yet clear to me what the cause is exactly. But if I can bring these memories to the surface, however painful they are, they can be dealt with more effectively. All memories distort with time and they evolve into something rosier or something worse. What I’m seeing is what Rozene remembers, not a true account of the past. But there are severities in the distortions, pieces that are missing that suggest something extremely painful is behind it.”
“I keep hearing words like ‘stress’, ‘trauma’ and ‘pain’,” Singh said, her shrewd, narrowed eyes betraying the light, casual tone of her voice. “And I question whether this is the best therapeutic approach for a pregnant woman in her third trimester who has experienced multiple trips to the emergency room.”
“Valerie,” Parrish said with exasperation. “We haven’t had another incident since this treatment of M. Valdez’s has started, have we? And what other alternatives have we not exhausted already? You have stated to me many times that you suspect our subjects’ problems are psychological in nature, which is, frankly, not your area of expertise.”
“No, it isn’t,” she agreed icily. “But it is in Barlow’s realm, somewhat. Dr. Barlow, what are your thoughts on this?”
Tony Barlow smiled placidly, as though he and Singh had just shared a private joke.
Amira recalled his seemingly heated conversation with Parrish at Infinity Park and felt a renewed sense of unease.
“Consciousness is an incredible field,” he said. “That is my area of expertise, if you did not know, M. Valdez, one I am leveraging for several Pandora sub-projects. Why don’t you tell our friends here about the last type of dream one may experience?”
Amira stood dumbfounded. Barlow’s responses, while always delivered with the same tranquil monotone, were never predictable.
“Well,” she said. “The last type of dream is what we call a ‘preconjective’ dream. We still don’t fully understand how or why, but studies have shown that some dreams appear to provide insight into events that have…not yet transpired, a warning of things to come.”
“Seeing the future?” Parrish asked with interest.
“Not exactly,” Amira said. “Not quite like that anyway. You’ve probably had one or two. Where you’re in a place or see something familiar…déjà vu is often the byproduct of a preconjective dream. You dream something before it happens, only it may not happen exactly how you dreamed it. Sometimes it’s hard to tell what came first, the dream or the waking experience.”
“The beautiful fog of memory,” Barlow said with a smile. “Some theoretical physicists and cosmologists have latched on to the idea of preconjective dreams, seeing them as evidence that time itself is not real in the true sense, but a way in which we are forced to make sense of reality. We need a sequence to our lives, or else there would be chaos. And the alternative consciousness of the dream world may be where we get to cheat a little, to be sentient beyond our narrow window into life.” His lips curled in a subtle, secretive smile that left Amira squirming slightly under his gaze.
“This is obviously fascinating,” Singh interjected drily. “But I fail to see what this has to do with the unorthodox mental experiment that my subject is now enduring. What about it, Barlow?”
Amira could not help but admire the skill with which Singh could inject contempt into the most benign of phrases.
“I would like to see where Amira’s approach leads,” Barlow said. “The mind is an ever-fascinating thing, and since she’s started this unusual treatment, it makes sense to let it unravel and see the end results.”
So he wasn’t opposing her work, at least not outwardly. Amira had heard nothing from Hadrian about Barlow, but she had researched him further on her own. As Singh had said, Barlow’s specialty area was consciousness. He was ‘detailed’ to Pandora, meaning his work and research findings were not owned by the project – an enviable position for an Aldwych scientist, as most were contracted with specific corporations, sometimes for decades. Aside from those searchable facts, his profile lacked personal details, such as age and family. Either he had no past to speak of, which was strange, or he had a past to conceal, which Amira found more likely. Everything about Tony Barlow was open to interpretation, from his cryptic smiles to his conversations, which were insightful but revealed nothing. The more she crossed paths with Tony Barlow, the more she confirmed her suspicion that he was a man with his own agenda, and likely a dangerous one.
Singh sighed. “That will do for now, M. Valdez. I have some tests to run, and then she is yours for the remainder of the day.”
* * *
Singh kept her word. The battery of tests left Rozene tired and melancholy, so Amira began the reading session without the Oniria.
“Tell me what happened after you encountered the man in the all-terrain vehicle,” Amira began. “The one you can’t identify.”
“I remember I was pulled from school after,” Rozene said, and the hologram displayed the young girl lying on her bed, her tear-stained face fixed on the ceiling. In the next moment, she peered downstairs, where an Elder sat in the kitchen with her parents, deep in conversation. She then walked along the street outside, a beam with two buckets of water balanced precariously on her bony shoulders. Sensing Rozene glance at the hologram, Amira pointed to the corner and the holographic disc floated out of Rozene’s line of vision.
“Did you see your friends much after that?” Amira said, thinking of the earlier memories of Marlee.
Rozene glared at Amira, as though sensing her train of thought. She shook her head.
“My life was nothing but chores and prayer. I barely had time to myself but when I did, I prayed for a better life, one that was mine. After a while, I stopped doing that, because I knew it would make me crazy. I almost looked forward to getting married, just so I’d have other things to do with my time.”
The hologram in the corner began to display one of Rozene’s fantasies. Young, thin and glamorously dressed in modern clothing, she held a baby with one arm and a toddler on her hip. She smiled at someone Amira could not see.
“Is that why you agreed to join the Pandora project as a subject?” Amira asked, watching the laughing Rozene in the hologram.
“I always knew I wanted to be a mother,” Rozene said. “Even if it means having a baby…this way. Do you think it’s true what the Elders said? In the Trinity, they told us that clones are evil because the Conscious Plane won’t recognize them as souls. That they’ll never be able to ascend to the Nearhaven when they die, just stay here and create imbalance in the dimensions.”
“I think they’re more afraid of babies born outside of traditional compound marriages and reproduction,” Amira said, ignoring the theological component of Rozene’s question.
“That’s what I believe too,” Rozene said, relieved. “But anyway, life here didn’t work out the way I expected. It was hard when I first came to the city. All my life, everything was controlled. When I ate, who I spoke to, what I said. The freedom here was more than I could take, I guess. When I signed the contract with Dr. Parrish, I had food and people to watch over me, and part of me wanted that again.”
This self-awareness surprised Amira. Rozene wanted to be loved above all else, to find purpose in others. A goal she chased at a high price.
“But you still don’t remember when you left, or why?” Amira asked.
“No. I know I wasn’t happy, but that’s nothing new.”
“Ok. Let’s try another round of the Oniria. Just relax your arm….”
In the hologram, Rozene cowered in the shed again, only this time, sand poured in through the cracks in the walls
. Panicked, she pounded frantically on the door with small fists. The sand hissed down the wooden planks and formed pools around her bare feet.
“Help!” Rozene cried frantically. “Help, I can’t breathe!”
“Rozene, we’ve been here before,” Amira said in her calmest voice. Next to her, Rozene jerked her head rhythmically, but otherwise remained still in her chair. “You can find a way out. There’s only a wooden door in the way.”
In the hologram, Rozene pressed her forehead against the door, catching her breath as the sand continued to pour in. Suddenly, her hand plunged into the ground and emerged holding a shovel. She swung the shovel at the door with all her strength, throwing the full weight of her body as she struck the lock over and over. With a final, violent swing, the door gave in and swung open.
When she stepped outside into the quiet desert, there was no longer a flood of sand pouring through the cracks. The sharp sliver of the moon, waning in a narrow crescent, hung low in the night sky. Its bright, blue light caused the sand to shimmer and glow, illuminating her surroundings.
Rozene stepped tentatively away from the shed, following the sound of nearby voices. Though it was dark, she could see movement from shadowy figures in front of her. She touched her face, surprised by a trail of blood streaming from her nose.
This is it. Amira’s hands trembled on the machine’s dial as she sharpened the scene. Submerge. The desert scene spread from the platform to engulf the room. Dread accompanied her excitement – the sudden appearance of blood suggested imminent violence.
Rozene’s memory came into sharp focus in the hologram, new details materializing with each step she took. Bruises appeared on her arms and her dress was now torn and stained with dirt and blood.
“What’s happening?” Rozene cried in the hologram, bewildered at the changes to her appearance.
A man appeared behind her and shoved her roughly to her knees. Three other young girls waited on their knees nearby; her school friends from other memories, though Marlee was absent. Two sobbed and trembled in open terror, the third stared mutely ahead in sullen resignation. They were guarded by a group of armed men, all wearing black ski masks.