Child of the Fall

by D Scott Johnson

  “Are we still on for this afternoon?” he asked quietly.

  When Kim made promises she kept them, no matter how badly she wanted not to or how much trouble they caused.

  “Yes. You two won’t leave me alone if I don’t.”

  “It’s not like that. We want to help.”

  She was the one who’d been living with this condition her whole damned life. “I don’t need help. And you’re not looking to provide it either. You want to know how it all ticks. If it leads to anything good—which it won’t—that’ll just be a bonus. I know you, and I know Tonya. You’ll both be just as happy if this fails as you would if it succeeded. It’s all data to you. That’s all it ever is.”

  The truth was bitter, but she had to say it out loud. “If it was only about helping me, you two would walk away from all this. There’s plenty of science on realmspace that you’ve worked out. Nobody knows it as well as you do. Tonya helps regrow limbs, for God’s sake. But no, we can’t have that, can we? You have to put me up on a table and probe me like some godforsaken dope pulled into a UFO.”

  Kim had spent months learning how to rein in her temper. She used meditation, self-help tapes, books, even a couple of group therapy sessions. That all went out the window when it came to this. She didn’t feel like apologizing either. It was her life, and if she didn’t want to examine it, that was the way it should be.

  “We’re not making you do this,” he said in a tone that finally made her think he was taking it seriously. “If you want to cancel, I’ll call Tonya right now.”

  “No. I said I’ll do it, and I will.” She sat down at the kitchen table. “I don’t have to be happy about it.” She drew in a deep breath and let the aroma in the kitchen distract her. “You should know better than to test me before coffee anyway. Where’s my mug?”

  ***

  Kim spent the day restoring more colonial-era locks while Mike managed the customers. Eventually, though, it was closing time. Past closing time. The front of the shop was dark and empty. Mike had left early to work on setup with Tonya. Even the FBI van had gone to wherever those things go at night. Kim got in her car and went home, driving on manual because that helped calm her nerves.

  She didn’t know what the experiment was, but she did know what they would use to perform it. Helen had sent them a pair of the experimental high-definition realmspace rigs that they’d used in China. These connected to the body’s nervous system as a whole instead of the upper cervical segments of the spinal cord that conventional pendant phones used. It solved the problem of nerve exhaustion by spreading the load, but the sensors were very expensive, and the contraption used a lot of them. It took Mike and two delivery guys to unload the pallets—three each—and drag them up to the apartment. They also required a dust-free environment for maximum fidelity.

  She pushed through the clear plastic strips of the temporary clean room Mike installed inside the spare bedroom. It was like those old action TV shows with their clear-walled operating rooms set up in warehouses. Mike and Tonya wore coveralls over their regular clothes. Kim hated them. Six years ago she was surrounded by people dressed like that. Watchtell’s lab. A team of scientists who went over her inside and out. They were cold, clinical— Kim’s first clue that she was never meant to leave that place alive. They’d studied her in minute detail using a room very much like this.

  “You okay, honey?” Tonya asked in her well-practiced nurse’s voice.

  Kim shook off the memory. She wasn’t in an abandoned island prison anymore. She had survived a leap into the ocean and made it home in one piece. Watchtell was in jail. Kim was free. It all happened years ago.

  “I’m fine. Do I need one of those?” she pointed at Tonya’s clean suit.

  “No,” Mike said. “A hospital gown will give us five more points of fidelity, though.”

  Wonderful. “You’re kidding, right?” Kim asked, then she saw the temporary curtain partition in the corner. “You’re not kidding.”

  Tonya smiled from behind her surgical mask. “You can leave your underwear on, though.”

  “Thank God for small favors.” She went behind the partition to change.

  “Does your bra have any metal in it?” Mike asked.

  Kim laughed grimly. “I’m guessing that matters?” she said through the wall.

  “Well…it’ll interfere with the transponders under the thoracic section of your spine.”

  It’s not like he hadn’t seen them before. “Fine, whatever.” At least she picked a new pair of panties this morning.

  Suitably changed, she walked out from behind the partition. The interlocking rubber pads they’d put on top of the carpet stuck a little to the bottoms of her bare feet and made her feel slightly unbalanced.

  This was such a bad idea.

  “Okay,” Mike said as he tapped a few controls on a virtual screen floating in front of him. The rig whirred as it started up. “If you’d have a seat, we’ll get started. Tonya?”

  Kim pushed back the overstuffed chair while Tonya adjusted the lateral antenna array that surrounded it like so many white plastic dandelions. If dandelions were topped with radar antenna, anyway. Kim didn’t want to do this, but she made a promise.

  It wouldn’t work. It never did.

  Mike pushed a virtual slider up. “Full interface in three…two…one.”

  Logging into realmspace with a normal neural phone was a quick bit of vertigo, very similar to the head rush people sometimes experienced when they got up too fast, but nowhere near as long. Since this rig connected to her whole nervous system, it was more like climbing into a washing machine and hitting the spin cycle.

  “Do you think they’ll ever make that easier?” she asked as her vision cleared.

  “Spencer is working on a protocol stack that might make it softer, but he’s having trouble holding the fidelity high at the same time,” Mike replied, his voice as always coming from all around her. But she didn’t hear it with her realspace ears. One of the byproducts of resolution this high was the loss of all outside feeling. She couldn’t open her eyes if she wanted to.

  Kim stood in a summer meadow edged with trees, a pretty contrast to the fall’s browns and tans outside the apartment. This was impressive. Usually it was action and novelty that distracted from minor artifacts and errors. Here there was no need.

  It also put much less strain on her body. A normal connection caused spinal neurons to become hyperactive. At first it was nothing more than a little tension, but as the hours passed, the discomfort would grow until you had to log out or risk a blinding migraine. She knew from her experience in China that this rig would let her stay logged in for at least a week if she had someone outside to maintain her real body.

  Kim smoothed her avatar’s lightweight slacks as she bent down to examine a virtual cricket making its way through the grass. Even close up she had difficulty telling this apart from realspace.

  “What happens next?” she asked.

  “Let me get the gain set right,” Mike replied. “This will be level one. Ready?”

  She nodded at the blue sky as she stood up.

  “Right,” he said. “And here we go.”

  There was a quick tug inside her chest. She gasped for a second but nothing more. It wasn’t painful, but it wasn’t all that great either.

  A screen drew itself into the realm that showed Tonya sitting at a desk across from Mike. “How are you feeling?”

  Kim replied, “That was odd. What happened?”

  “It’s difficult to explain without knowing the math,” Mike replied.

  “You always say that.”

  “Well it is. We’re working on a theory that you’ve got an affinity for extradimensional manipulation not found in a normal human. What I just did should’ve attenuated that a little. What did you feel?”

  Normal human. He was one to talk. She gave them the details and then said, “It wasn’t much, and I don’t feel any different now.”

  “At this level you shouldn
’t. The readings from our end look good. We’re definitely seeing some changes.”

  “Where?”

  “I’ve got several sets of threads running measurements outside your realm, and the telemetry they’re bringing back to me is within what our calculations predicted.”

  Mike was human now, but he was also a fully conscious AI that had emerged in the space between realms. There were no mirrors or cameras in that interstitial space, so she had never gotten a good look at what he called his true self, but he consistently described it as threads. She was in love with a for-real flying spaghetti monster. That part didn’t matter to Kim. Here and now, it was comforting to know he was with her.

  Tonya turned and tapped out a sequence on a virtual screen beside her. “Now we need to rearticulate the splines.”

  “Roger that,” Mike said. “In three…two…one.”

  Kim’s vision fuzzed, and she had the sudden tang of metal in her mouth. For the briefest instant she felt the transformation go over her, her skin hardening and energizing, then it was gone.

  “Okay,” Kim said, “That one I didn’t like at all.” The wind had picked up in the realm, and a dark line of thunderstorms appeared to be rolling in. “Is any of this supposed to change the realm?”

  “Confirmed,” Tonya said in an all-business tone that Kim knew was not good. “Environmental factors are off predictions by at least five percent. No, now seven.”

  That sounded bad. “Should I bounce out of here?” The storm picked up speed, clearly moving her way.

  “Just a second.” Mike said. “This will keep you dry in there.” A small greenhouse built itself around her just as the first drops hit her cheek. “Tonya, change the alpha angle by point six five.”

  “No effect. Environmental variance is now well outside of predicted values. Kim, you need to—”

  The greenhouse collapsed around her as her avatar shrank, both changing form at the same time. Her vision went kaleidoscopic, triggering memories of when she was a child. Terrible memories. And then they weren’t memories at all. They were happening all around her, to her.

  Kim had gone through her share of terror. She’d escaped with her friends from the most vicious drug mafia ever known. It came with the territory. But that was as an adult.

  Nobody had said a thing about this as an outcome.

  Kim tried to speak, but the words wouldn’t form. She’d forgotten how. No, she’d never learned. This was a return to a primal part of her.

  She wanted out.

  Kim pushed with her mind and got a clear sense of separation, of being the child she was then and the adult she was now. This at least let her vision clear. Kim now sat in the back seat of a glider, a child, in a story her mother had told her so often Kim knew it by heart.

  Oh no.

  The canopy was filled with the blue of the sky. A sliver of sunlight blinded her, and she turned away before she could push up against her straps to see the ground. The pilot laughed, a sound she hadn’t heard in twenty years.

  “Don’t worry, pumpkin,” her father said, “I’ll bring us around so we can see Mommy again.”

  Her younger self grew more determined to see over the edge of the clear bubble. It was the straps that were holding her down.

  No, please don’t do that. You can’t do that.

  If she could only reach the buttons Daddy used to tighten the straps. Little Kim put her hand out, but they were too far away.

  Leave it alone. Kim couldn’t say the words, but she was screaming them in her mind. Stop!

  The buttons were in a box that had wires going right past where she sat. Her younger self touched the wires, and things got clearer for a moment. She could see the buttons through the wires.

  This is not happening now. I will not let this happen again. You can’t do this; I can’t see this.

  Her younger self’s vision turned inward, and she concentrated.

  “Hang on, pumpkin, we’re doing the tummy flip-flop.”

  Her younger self’s body pushed upward against the straps as the glider nosed over. At that moment, she triggered the sequence inside the box that would loosen the straps just a little. But the tummy feeling startled her, and her mysterious grip slipped a little.

  The canopy released with an ear-splitting bang, the straps slackened, and her younger self rose up out of her seat toward the empty sky.

  No! Please! Not this!

  Her younger self knew that was not supposed to happen! With all her might, she reversed the sequence as fast as she could, screaming out loud into the wind. Her straps pulled tight until they hurt, holding her fast in the seat. The glider leveled off and changed how it was flying. Warning horns blared over the tearing wind, accompanied by a metallic clinking in front of her.

  Don’t open your eyes, little girl. If you wait, it will land by itself, and this will seem like a dream. Don’t open your eyes, please don’t.

  Her younger self opened her eyes and didn’t understand what she was seeing. The bits of flashing silver in her memory only made sense years later, when her mother told her what had really happened. They were the buckles to her father’s straps, banging together in the wind. She’d been too light to break free, but he wasn’t. The straps were integral to the parachute, which was built into the seat. The redundant safety systems had all failed at once. They never figured out why. According to her mother, it wasn’t long after this that things started to unlock at Kim’s touch. Kim only had memories she didn’t understand and a terrible suspicion.

  Until now.

  Her younger self settled into the trapped neutrality of her syndrome, not exactly uncaring, but incapable of anything more. It was a luxury she didn’t have as an adult. A wound long scarred over was torn open, fresh and raw. Even as a child she was deadly to the people she loved.

  Kim heard voices over the windstorm as the glider made its final turn to land.

  “Invert it then. Whatever is going on in there, I can’t see it.”

  “It’s already pegged. I don’t have any more adjustment.”

  “I’ll have to run it up the hard way.”

  “But we’ve never used that much power before. We don’t know what direction it will take her.”

  “Anywhere else is better than where she is now. Kim, if you can hear me, hold on. Okay Tonya, three…two…one.”

  Kim shattered into a million pieces and saw all at once…

  A gas giant with a ring of metal…

  A realm empty of everything except regret…

  A woman, but not a human, beautiful even with the deformity she hid under flowing robes…

  Clockwork souls too old to know how insane they were…

  A vast malevolence that sat in the distance, brooding, then alert, turning toward her…

  A little girl being hoisted out of a glider, screaming in pain as her mother held her arm…

  It all spun and shattered. A million Kims in a million places shouted for it to stop. She would not stay sane if this went on. But time held no meaning. There were no moments. It happened and didn’t happen in an unbearable tension that would not resolve.

  The pain, though, the pain was real. She concentrated on that until it was a solid thing, an arm on fire, madness she’d fought off all her life. Kim turned her back on the rest and made the pain real. The transformation started, electric lightning bolts drawing across her skin as it changed into obsidian.

  She sat up in realspace in the chair, screaming, staring at a perfect arm that felt like it had a white-hot band of metal wrapped around it. The lightning and blackness of the transformation faded out so fast it might’ve been a hallucination.

  People shouted at her. She should recognize them, but it hurt so much.

  “Are you okay? What’s wrong with your arm?”

  Mike. That was Mike.

  “Do I need to call 911?”

  Tonya.

  These were her friends. The pain had gone from a searing burn to a terrible ache, but when she tried to move her arm
, it flared up.

  She could speak. “I’m okay.” Her stomach lurched. “Oh no, I’m not okay.”

  She rolled out of the chair and hit the floor with a thump. Throwing up wasn’t pleasant, but it brought her clarity back. She rushed to the bathroom. Nobody could help, that would make it too easy.

  Tonya left after five unending minutes. She returned with a syringe filled with a drug that stopped the heaves in their tracks.

  “God, thanks,” Kim said as she sat on the bathroom floor. “And thanks for holding the cotton ball with forceps.”

  “I figured a realm therapy was the last thing you needed right now. Can you stand up?”

  Mike was in the doorway trying to hide his panic and mostly succeeding. “Is there anything else we can do?”

  She felt like she’d beaten with a sock full of wet sand, and her arm burned when she moved it. “If you could clean up out there, I’d appreciate it. I need a shower and some fresh clothes. Tonya, can you rig me up some sort of sling? My arm hurts so much I can barely move it.”

  A hot shower worked its normal wonders, as did a long bout with her toothbrush. Whatever had happened only affected her left arm, which made things awkward, but she managed. She slammed the pair of pills Tonya had left on the bathroom counter without asking what they were. Advil by the look.

  In the moment, she’d been terrified, but now that it was over, she simply felt spent. The truth about her father hurt badly, but it was a long time ago. She wasn’t sure she would tell anyone about it. What good would that do? Like the saying went, let the dead bury the dead.

  The other visions had to be some sort of bleed through from other realms. People had thought up some wacky stuff over the years, and not all of it was public. The experiment had failed, but…

  Something happened.

  Chapter 5

  Tonya

  There was no way she could sleep more than a few hours after what had happened with Kim. Tonya needed to do something, and the chaos of an emergency room fit the bill. She submerged into the now, reacting with skill and anticipating what the doctors needed to save a life. It was never the same.

  Then there were the coincidences to think about, like when three identical cases with nothing to do with each other rolled in the door in less than five minutes. Or when a patient succumbed to a heart attack moments before a woman in emergency labor gave birth. Or sometimes when her regular day job as a limb-regrowth nurse collided with her adrenaline-junkie ER sideline.