I sat quiet for some time, feeling Laura’s hand beneath mine. It felt cold, like death. Her body lay like a corpse, unmoving. It had once been a corpse. A pile of dead flesh. The spark of life extinguished. Yet it was somehow reignited. The mechanisms of blood and nerve impulses were thrust back into motion, the pattern of connections representing Laura and preserving her memories and desires once again churning with activity. Like an old engine that has-
“Am I your new Evita?” Laura’s deadpan voice startled me.
I looked up, seeing Laura slowly turn her head to look down at her right shoulder and then to me.
“You’re awake,” I said.
“When am I not?” Laura said, just above a whisper, talking even slower than usual, “I still don’t feel like I’m all here,” she added, glancing back to her missing right arm.
I grinned, eyes welling with tears, “I guess your sense of humor’s still intact.”
“What happened to it?” Laura asked, her drowsy eyes looking down at her left hand clasped between mine.
“A bomb,” I said, “you were hit by the explosion.”
“I feel like that’s happened to me more times than I can count on one hand.”
I smiled, not wanting to ruin her humor, no matter how gloomy it was, with the fact that both Regina and Tanya were killed in the blast.
“How are you feeling?” I asked.
“I’ve been better,” she said, “I’d applaud the doctors for doing such a great job, but…” she glanced back at her right shoulder, “how long have I been out?”
“About two weeks,” I said.
“Sachi’s back?” she asked.
“You remember that?”
“No,” she said, “but you were just talking about her.”
I said nothing for a few moments, looking into her sleepy eyes and then said, “You said before the mission that you understand why I can’t feel the same way about you that you do about me.” I paused a moment, thinking about how to proceed. “That may be true. In fact, it is true.”
“I understand…”
“No,” I said, “just because what we feel is different doesn’t mean it’s…doesn’t mean it’s not still a kind of feeling that is sort of…”
Laura gave a weak smirk, “you’re very bad at this.”
I laughed, “You say that you’re in love with me. And I love you, too. Those might be very different feelings, even though it uses the same word. But that doesn’t make using the same word for both of those feelings wrong.”
“You’re a sappy motherfucker,” Laura said, but she couldn’t help but smile, a tear running down her cheek, squeezing my hands with her remaining one.
“I know,” I said, “but you love it.”
“I do,” she said.
I leaned over and gave her a gentle kiss on the forehead, started pulling away and then leaned over again, giving her a kiss on the lips.
When I sat back down Laura smiled and said, “Who would have thought that waking up to a missing arm could be the happiest moment of both my lives?”
Chapter 35
“I still wonder what people said at my funeral,” Laura whispered, her drooping eyes staring at the altars without focus.
“I wonder what people have said at some of mine,” I whispered back before the whole room became silent, a few people taking their seats. Laura gave a weak smile, keeping her eyes forward.
“Ladies and gentleman,” the preacher said, clearing his throat, “we’re here to mourn the death of these three brave souls. Beloved husband Aaron Reynolds and two brave girls that many have come to know and love, Tanya Waters and Regina Waters. But we are not here just to mourn, but also to celebrate their lives…”
I zoned out for the preacher’s sermon. I was too distracted to pay much attention. The conversations with Sachi and Akira, my confession of love to Laura, and the whole disaster in Wichita weighed heavily on my mind. But more and more the things we learned from the hack and what Landon had told us puzzled me.
When Akira and I had returned to the Denver hospital after meeting Sachi, I had insisted that the doctors take a blood sample from me. Because I had enough money to buy the hospital at least twice over, I got what I wanted, and fast.
“I’ve looked at the chemical from samples I’ve taken from you before,” Akira had said as we stood in my exam room, “What makes you think…it’s because of the hallucination, isn’t it?”
“Something might’ve happened,” I said, still sitting on the bench, poking at the bandage in the crook of my elbow where the blood was drawn, “maybe the magnetic pulses or something.”
“Do you have a theory?” she asked, leaning back against the counter.
“You said that the molecule was spinning in some higher dimensional-”
“I said that the electrons involved in these weird bonds have a zero-spin component,” she said, “which I think can be shown using rotations about a fixed point in four-dimensional Euclidean space putting into a special orthogonal group of order four which would show up as an invariant duality under-”
“My point is,” I said, “maybe the magnetic pulse changed the molecule. Went from the normal kind to this other kind, and that’s why I saw that perpendicular spacetime.”
“Yeah…” Akira said, barely able to contain growing excitement, “yeah, that could be possible.”
“Better,” I said, “is that Benecorp may not know about this missing piece. They weren’t able to access this Asset A.”
“Then why does Asset A always have this modified molecule?”
“I don’t know,” I said, “maybe there’s something different about her.”
“She has to be related to one of you guys,” Akira said, “from a past life or something.”
“That’s the only way I know how it works,” I said, “I know Sachi’s timeline back to the early seventeen hundreds. She was never Arabic since then. I know my own timeline. Which leaves-”
“Jiang Wei,” Akira said, “or, Imelda, rather.”
“Imelda,” I nodded, “she has to be related to one of her past lives. I’m willing to bet that’s how she knew about Asset A in the first place. And that means it’s vital that we get Imelda from the Chinese government before Benecorp does.”
“Aaron Reynold’s colleague Rosaline would like to give a few words,” the preacher said, distracting me from my thoughts.
Rosy walked up to the podium, glancing back to the altars for a moment before looking to the crowd. She wore a suit and tie, her head freshly shaved, the cuts and bruises on her face mostly healed up by now. She stood looking at the crowd for a few moments before speaking.
“I started workin’ for LoC Security only about ten months after the Colonel started,” she said, “this was right around the time the referendum passed. He’d started workin’ for the firm while the government was still bein’ dissolved. I was busy helping to dismantle it.” She paused a moment, glancing back to the altars again, “I worked my first detail with him. A lot of you probably remember the crime wave that hit right after the government dissolved. There were a lot of people that thought without the police, they could just do anything. Robbing. Graffiti. Breaking and entering. Riots.”
“The colonel and I – well, both of us were just lieutenants back then, but for some reason colonel just suited ‘em so well. It’s like my mind just remembers him as bein’ the colonel since I met ‘em.” The crowd chuckled. “Anyway, we were guarding this tech store. It’d been broken into six times since the referendum passed only a few months before. I was still gung-ho about the dissolution of the government. I’d talk the Colonel’s ear off about how great it was that the referendum passed. I’d spout off all the usual lines about the non-aggression principle and everything. And he’d just stand there listening, not sayin’ a word.”
“Finally, one day the store was broken into again. We ended up catchin’ the guy, of course, cuz LoC Security’s good at what it does,” She looked to her colleagues in the crowd, al
l of them chuckling. “The Colonel was never an eloquent man, but I’ll never forget what he said to me after we caught that guy. He said ‘your anarchist philosophy is easy enough to understand. But sometimes it takes a couple’uh uniforms with big guns for folks to hear ya say it.’” Rosy forced a smile, but her eyes were damp with tears, “everyone who knew the Colonel knows that’s just like ‘em to say that – something so un-profound and yet so true.”
She took a deep breath before continuing. “He wasn’t an ideologue. He voted no on the referendum. But the Colonel was a pragmatic man. He rolled with the punches, no matter what came, and always made the best out of every situation.” Now tears were rolling down Rosy’s cheeks, “I followed the Colonel up the ladder at LoC Security. We worked with each other for a long time. Now I’ve been made a Colonel, but it just doesn’t feel right…he should be a deputy chief now, always a position aheada me,”
Rosy started weeping, her wife Marlina walking up to the podium and putting an arm around her, whispering something into her ear. Rosy leaned back down to the microphone and said, “thank you everyone,” and then allowed Marlina to lead her back to her seat.
A few other people from LoC Security I only vaguely recognized gave eulogies. Others focused more on Tanya and Regina, including a eulogy by Masaru, a joint eulogy by Carmen and Tea, a few video eulogies by other rescued children, and a short, tear-filled talk by Deidre, comforted by her husband John and sister Teagan. At the end, Aaron Reynolds’ wife gave a eulogy talking about how they had met working for the Cortez police force. She thanked LoC Security for being good to her late husband and for taking such good care of her after his passing. At the end the preacher announced there would be refreshments served in the community room of the church right afterwards followed by a candlelight vigil for Aaron Reynolds, Regina, and Tanya in the parking lot. He warned that there would be press present for the candlelight vigil.
Afterwards I made my way to the community room, Laura next to me in the electric wheelchair. She seemed bemused by the contraption, accelerating and stopping, swerving back and forth, and one would think having fun if she didn’t maintain her drowsy expression as she did it.
When we arrived there with all the other guests, I found mostly strangers. Old friends and family of Aaron Reynolds, new friends and family of the Masaristas. Amongst them I spotted Masaru leaning on his cane, talking with a couple of the strangers, and Akira holding Yukiko’s hand, the toddler huddling close and scanning the crowd with nervous eyes. I spotted Doctor Taylor there, along with her daughters Deidre and Teagan, and I thought of going to talk with her, but decided it wasn’t really the place to confront her.
I made my way over to where Rosy was with her large family, which had recently grown even larger. Two of the rescued children stood amongst them – a boy named Enrique and a girl named Camille who they had recently adopted. Enrique was seventeen years old, but looked ten, and Camille was fourteen years old but looked to be about eight. Mikasi was amongst them as well, his own left arm augmented with bionics just below the elbow, talking with his cousin Keme. Zachary was chatting with Marlina, who was holding the hand on Camille.
“Hi,” I said to them as I approached.
Her family all greeted me before going back to their conversations.
“That was a beautiful eulogy,” I said to Rosy.
She forced a smile, “Thanks.”
“Would it be inappropriate to congratulate you on your recent promotion and new additions to the family?” I asked.
“Of course not,” she said, her smile looking more genuine now, “I’m…glad you could make it today.”
“He was a good friend and a great officer,” I said.
Rosy nodded slowly, “I have to admit, I was pretty mad at you for a while. But then I remembered that he…that Colonel Reynolds told me that he was glad to be doing what we did with you guys. I think he found it invigorating to do something that felt meaningful.”
“We couldn’t have done it without his help,” I said.
She smiled weakly. “You healin’ up alright?”
“Yeah,” I said, “forty-eights heal fast.”
“I can tell,” she said, studying my right hand.
I held it up. The telltale signs of chemical burns remained, lightening my dark skin, but it all looked like scar tissue now. There was still pain from nerve damage, but the skin was intact.
“I see you came to a compromise on the family situation?” I said, looking over to Enrique and Camille.
Rosy sighed. “It was the best I could do. But it’s fine. Those kids deserve a home. Still…” she lowered her voice, “there’s still a lot of tension over it.”
“You don’t like the children?”
She took a deep breath, looking over her shoulder at the children a moment before looking back to me. “It’s not that I don’t like ‘em. They’re…good kids. I just don’t really…I don’t know, I don’t really feel anything for ‘em.”
I nodded slowly.
“Marlina thinks I’m some kinda monster for feelin’ that way,” she said, now barely above a whisper, “Zachary says it’s a defense mechanism after what I saw in Korea. Says I don’t wanna get attached cuz I’d be afraid to lose ‘em or something. Keme just keeps going with all his upbeat crap – ‘just spend more time with ‘em and you’ll learn to love ‘em’ he says.”
“You disagree?”
“I don’t…I mean, no, I guess I don’t disagree,” Rosy said, “I just don’t have any desire to, you know, take time to do all that. I’m fine havin’ those kids in the family. I’ll do whatever needs to be done to keep ‘em safe and fed and everything. But do they really have to try forcing me to get all motherly with ‘em? Marlina can mother enough for the both of us.”
“Yeah, I don’t know,” I said, glancing over to Laura where she sat in her wheel chair near the refreshments, grabbing a beer out of a cooler, “I guess nobody can choose how they feel about someone.”
“You mean this Sachi chick?” Rosy asked, biting her lip.
“Well, yeah, her,” I said.
“You love her?”
“I think I do on some level,” I said, “but I…I don’t really like her.”
Rosy grunted. “I don’t plan on abandoning you…what you’re doing. But I refuse to work with that woman.”
I nodded, “I understand. I’m hesitant, too.” I paused a moment before continuing, “but maybe we can work something out with her. At least some sort of mutual understanding or jurisdiction.”
“So she can keep tellin’ me that she’s here peacefully?” Rosy said, “while still implying that we shouldn’t mess with her?”
“That’ll most likely happen,” I said, “but you could also wring some concessions out of her, too. To demonstrate her intentions.”
“What kinda concessions?”
“I’m not sure,” I said, “I’m not going to tell you what you should do one way or the other, but it might be worthwhile to at least hear her out.”
Rosy stood quiet for a moment, considering this, and then said, “If she’s willing to meet, I guess I’ll hear her out. Where and when would we do this?”
“I’ll have to get back to you on that,” I said.
“Make sure it’s somewhere neutral,” Rosy said, “not at Sachi’s compound.”
“I’ll make sure to find somewhere myself,” I said.
“Good,” she said, looking over my shoulder, “I suppose I oughta get back to being consoled by friends and family I barely know. Talk to you later?”
“Of course,” I said.
After Rosy wandered off, I walked back over to Laura, who now sat near the doorway, a plate of food on her lap. It looked mostly uneaten as she poked at the Swedish meatballs with the plastic fork. Even her beer looked untouched.
“How you holding up?” I asked.
“How? Not with my legs, that’s for sure,” she said, flicking the joystick with a finger on her bionic arm, causing her wheelchair to lurch for
ward an inch, “and this dress is extremely annoying.”
“So, pretty good then?”
“Most of those people at the sermon,” she said, “think that they went on to a better place…but they’re not. They’re nowhere.”
I shrugged, “the sermon is to make all of them feel better, not the dead.”
“It’s just strange to see people so convinced that a place exists when I know for a fact that it doesn’t,” Laura said, “imagine if everyone thought a city named Fotze Lecken existed in Namibia, and you were the only one that had been there and seen that it doesn’t.”
I grinned, “I don’t imagine everyone here believes in heaven.”
“No,” she said, “but even for them it’s only a belief. I know it doesn’t exist.”
“Or maybe you just know that Hell doesn’t exist,” I said.
Laura smirked, “or maybe I know it does. Maybe it exists as being unable to fall asleep and constantly getting shot, blown up, and otherwise maimed.”
“That’d make the rest of us a figment of your own personal Hell.”
“Maybe it’s a shared Hell,” she said, “and your punishment is being unable to die. Meeting someone with that condition is something I’d expect to find in Hell rather than the real world.”
I smiled, “well, I’m glad I can share this corner of Hell with you.”
Laura smiled briefly before saying, “You’re such a sappy motherfucker.”
“Am I interrupting?” a familiar voice said.
I looked over, seeing Doctor Taylor behind me in the broad doorway, her gray hair combed back and held in place with a black headband that matched her dress.
“No, of course not,” I said, “how’ve you been?”
“I’ve been alright,” she said, looking sheepish, “I’m…sorry I haven’t talked with any of you in a long time. It’s just…”
“I understand,” I said.
She shook her head, “I’ve done some thinking and…the way we parted.”
“No hard feelings,” I said.
“I wanted to apologize for how I acted,” she said, “it was actually quite immature of me.”
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