Anomaly

by Krista McGee

  “Can you move your fingers?”

  I have to force my face to remain passive. I can’t let her see how unbelievably frustrating such a useless question is. “No. I cannot.”

  “Are you experiencing any pain?”

  “Could you send Dr. Berk here?” I can’t take this anymore. “He is assigned to my case. I’m sure he can help diagnose the problem.”

  The Medical Assistant looks down. She picks up a pad and types in this request. I pray that Berk answers quickly.

  It seems like hours, but I am sure it is just minutes later that the Medical Assistant looks up and announces that Dr. Berk is on his way to Pod C.

  “Thank you for your assistance,” she says, then the screen is black.

  I am still in my sleeping clothes. I return to my cube and pull the shirt over my head, the task taking twice as long because my left arm won’t cooperate and I have to pull my right arm and head out first. Putting my uniform shirt on is difficult, but pants and shoes are almost impossible. I am sweating and out of breath by the time I have finally finished.

  I lie down on my sleeping platform to rest, hoping this is just a dream. I reach up and feel my head, praying that this is a simulation. I feel the tiny hole. This is real.

  The door opens and Berk calls my name. He is trying to sound professional and detached. I hope whoever is with him doesn’t know him as well as I do. The fear in his voice is obvious. I need to sit and remain calm so he doesn’t give us away.

  “I’m here.”

  “What happened?” His hand is on my arm, holding my hand. I don’t feel any of it.

  I tell Berk the same thing I told the Medical Assistant.

  He takes a needle out of his bag and pokes my hand. “Do you feel that?”

  “No.” He just stuck a needle in me and I don’t feel anything. I want to cry but I won’t. I focus on the tiny bubble of blood that is drifting up from where Berk stuck the needle.

  “This?” Berk sticks my forearm, my elbow, my upper arm. When he sticks my shoulder, I wince.

  “I feel that.”

  He sticks the needle an inch lower. “That?”

  “No.”

  Berk lifts my arm, turns it over, raises it above my head. He feels the pulse in my wrist.

  “What is it?” I don’t like the look on Berk’s face.

  “I don’t know.”

  “What do you think?”

  “I don’t have any idea.”

  I force him to look me in the eye. “You have some idea.”

  “You have had invasive brain surgery.” Berk sighs. “You have also had cerebral manipulation. This could be a result of either of those.”

  “So this could be permanent?” I can feel myself beginning to panic. I try to slow my breathing.

  “I don’t know.” Berk takes my other hand, the one with functioning nerve endings. “I really don’t. But we don’t have the equipment here that is necessary to make an accurate diagnosis.”

  Berk walks to the emergency screen and places his palm on it. “We need an emergency hover cart at Pod C.”

  “A hover cart?” I have only seen those three times in my life: when Gen broke her arm, when one of our Monitors fell and passed out, and when Dr. Spires died.

  “It’s all right.” Berk puts sealant on the dots on my arm where the needle has been. “It’s just a precaution. I don’t want you walking all the way back to the Scientists’ pod.”

  “The rest of me is fine.”

  “We don’t know that,” Berk says quietly.

  I close my eyes. I don’t want to think about the possibility that there is more wrong with me. That the neurons in my brain are misfiring. Why is this happening? Yesterday my life was better than it had ever been. Why couldn’t it stay like that, just for a little while?

  I want to pray, but I have no words for the Designer right now. If he is love, like John says, if he is good, why would he do this to me?

  “Time to go.” The door opens and two Medical Assistants carry in what looks like a large cocoon. It is white and thin, and they unroll it on the floor. Berk helps me lie in the center, and the Assistants take one side each and wrap me in it. The cocoon seems to suddenly come to life. I hear beeps and feel heat. Only my head is exposed—the one part of me that needs to be looked at—while the rest of me is bound in this strange contraption.

  “This tells us all the pertinent medical facts,” Berk explains as the Assistants lift me and walk me outside. “It also stabilizes your body so when we get to the medical pod, we can immediately take you to be diagnosed.”

  I am sure this is supposed to comfort me. But lying in a medical blanket while being loaded into a hover cart because my left arm has no feeling leaves me little room for feeling anything but fear.

  CHAPTER FORTY-TWO

  Being on the hover cart is strange enough. But being on a hover cart while wrapped up and being monitored is awful. I am not used to being off the ground. But as soon as I am loaded, the cart lifts straight up, above the pods, then floats off. If I weren’t wrapped up, I might enjoy it. But all I can think about is that if I were to roll off, I would end up with far more damage that just a dead arm.

  But the Assistants are posted at each corner of the cart, standing with one hand on a pole that sticks up from the bottom of the cart. The one at the top right is moving his feet, I suppose to direct the hover. The one behind taps on the screen of his pad every time my cocoon beeps.

  Berk is not here. He promised to meet me back at the medical chamber. I can tell he is worried. He doesn’t want to alarm me. But he was about an hour too late for that.

  My stomach feels like it is going to burst out of me. All the motion, combined with the fear, is making me nauseous. Then I see we are landing. The cart is being lowered, and the Assistant to the right leans forward and places a hand out to his left. We are back on the ground. The Assistants walk me through the hallway and into a white room with screens on two sides. They place me on a sleeping platform and leave the room.

  The screens flicker on, but they are not like the wall screens we have at the pod. They are machines. Diagnostic machines? A red laser darts out from the center of each screen, one coming to my right temple, the other to my left. Out of the corner of my eye, I see an image of my brain on the screen. Parts of it are blue, other parts yellow. I want to look more, but the cocoon tightens around me, crawling up my neck to move my head so I am staring at the ceiling.

  I remain like this for several minutes. There is no sound, even the cocoon has gone silent. Then the door opens.

  “Thalli.” It is Dr. Loudin. I recognize his voice. Clarinet with a broken reed.

  The cocoon loosens its hold on me and the sleeping platform is raised. I don’t look at Dr. Loudin. I look at the screen. At my brain.

  “What is wrong with me?”

  “Let’s not use the word wrong.” Dr. Loudin’s smile looks unnatural. “Your brain is a fascinating organ, my dear. This little challenge is just an opportunity to study it some more.”

  Little challenge? He thinks my being unable to feel my arm is a “little challenge”? He walks to the screen on the right side of the room and touches the image. That portion expands and Dr. Loudin touches it again. He is deep inside my brain. I want to stay angry, but this is too interesting for me to think about that. I am seeing inside my brain.

  “Ah, there.” Dr. Loudin points to a tiny line in the center of the screen. “Some scar tissue built up around the site of your last surgery.”

  “Scar tissue?”

  “Nothing to be concerned about.” Dr. Loudin looks closer, moving the image around. “This is not unusual. We can go back in and clear out the damaged area. We’ll have you better in no time.”

  Go back in my brain? The last time I was supposed to have my memory erased. What if this “corrective” surgery actually accomplishes that? Or what if more scar tissue builds up and I lose feeling somewhere else? Or everywhere else?

  “I’d like to take you back to
my laboratory.” Dr. Loudin is talking to the screen, not to me. “This facility isn’t really equipped for brain surgery.”

  He is turning my brain around on the screen. I want to know what he is seeing and thinking but I am afraid to ask. I don’t know if the new Thalli would have those questions. And I don’t know if the old Thalli really wants the answers anyway.

  Dr. Loudin taps the screen and the image is gone. “My students will benefit from observing as well.”

  Wonderful. I will have an audience present. I close my eyes and sigh.

  “Prepare her for transport,” Dr. Loudin tells one of the Medical Assistants. “And you may remove the diagnostic blanket. She is stable.”

  Dr. Loudin taps on his pad and my cocoon opens. An Assistant removes it, rolling me on my side to get it out from underneath my back. I stretch my right arm, scratch an itch on my nose, and roll my feet. “Thank you.”

  Within minutes, I am back on the hover cart and on my way to Dr. Loudin’s lab. I am allowed to sit up this time. I look down. Even though we are only a few feet in the air, I am amazed at the difference in perspective. I have only seen the world from the ground. I have never seen the roofs of the pods. They are round and white, with panels stretched across them—our source of electricity, soaking in rays from the solar panels above.

  I see the Scientists’ pod and realize just how massive it is compared to all the other buildings. I can’t see its roof, nor can I see the other side. It looms above us and far out to the side. I crane my neck, but all I see is the white exterior. What else is hidden in there? I am sure I have only seen a fraction of this monstrosity.

  My stomach lurches as we are descending. I am allowed to walk out. I am even going to be allowed to return to my room.

  “Your surgery is scheduled for tomorrow at noon,” one of the hover cart drivers says.

  I wave my good arm and walk through the hallway with one of Dr. Loudin’s Assistants. I wish I could be allowed to walk unescorted back to my room, but that is not permitted here. I will never be able to explore this building the way I’d like.

  We walk in silence. I am trying not to think about why I am back here, what could happen. Trying not to think about the arm that still hangs like a weight from my left shoulder. The Assistant opens the door, and I discover I am actually happy to see this room. Having watched Pod C turned into a medical facility, I realize this is the only home I have now. When I see my violin in its case on the couch, all happiness is gone. My heart sinks. My throat tightens. I can’t play it. I don’t even think I could lift it to my shoulder. What if the surgery doesn’t work? What if this condition is permanent? What will I do?

  The Assistant leaves without a word. I am just a patient—and an anomaly at that. I am not even worthy of a parting farewell or a smile. I am just a job. Deliver the brain-injured girl to her room and return to your important duties.

  I stare at the door because I cannot continue to stare at my violin. I didn’t hear the normal click that signals the door has locked. So I step forward and check the door to see if it is unlocked. It is. I close my eyes and sigh. I want to see John. I need his reassurance that everything will be all right. I walk toward his room, hope filling the places deep inside that were beginning to die. But then I stop in the middle of the hallway.

  I can’t go there. The new Thalli doesn’t know John. If I were to be seen talking with John, the Assistants would report it to Dr. Loudin. He would know his surgery failed. That I lied to him. That Berk lied to him. I cannot go.

  My heart is heavy and I turn back, trying to appear disoriented in case someone happens to be monitoring the hallway. For added believability, I pass my room and open the room three doors from mine.

  My intention is to open it, see that it isn’t my room, and then shut the door. But when I open it, I gasp. I cannot stop myself. I can’t believe what I see. Who I see. I turn around and shut the door quickly. But it is too late. She saw me. She is coming to the door, calling my name.

  I have to ignore her voice, get back to my room, not appear at all shocked that there, three doors down, is Rhen.

  CHAPTER FORTY-THREE

  I crawl onto the sleeping platform, making a show of yawning. I act cold and wrap the blankets around my shoulders, shiver, then place them over my head. I feel my skull for the hole. Surely this is another simulation. There is the hole. This is real?

  No. It can’t be real. It is an advanced simulation. The Scientists recreated this level, this room, Rhen, and they programmed me to be able to feel the tiny hole in my head so I will believe this is real. But it can’t be. It’s impossible.

  Rhen is dead. She was annihilated, along with all of Pod C. Unless that isn’t true either. Maybe I have been in the simulation since I came here. Maybe all of it is false. Progress, Stone, the destruction of Pod C, the problem with the oxygen. The surgery to erase my memory. John. Jesus. Berk.

  Did falling in love with Berk happen under simulation? Did knowing Jesus happen under simulation? Tears roll down my cheeks and I hold the blanket closer, trying to keep my breathing steady so those watching the cameras will think I am asleep and not know that I am falling apart.

  I try to think back to when I discovered the simulation wasn’t real. I couldn’t find the thread. But how did I know Progress was a simulation? John and Berk told me. What if Progress is real but the Scientists don’t want me to know, so they simulated those conversations with John and Berk?

  But why would they simulate conversations about the Designer? About love? They are opposed to those ideas. But why would they simulate an entire world above either? None of the scenarios seem to make any sense. Nothing seems to make sense anymore.

  I want to pray. But if none of this happened, if none of this is real, then how do I know there is even a Designer to pray to?

  I close my eyes and sense him there. He is real. Even if the conversations with John and Berk weren’t, I know this is. I know it in a way that is beyond logic. In a way Rhen would never understand.

  Rhen. My body stiffens.

  If she is alive, everything that came before was a simulation. If she is not alive, then this is a simulation.

  I reach for my arm. Still lifeless. Maybe the simulation just started this morning. I try to remember what I ate last night. Something that put me to sleep so I could be transported back here, be made to think my arm is dead, that I am having brain surgery, that I saw Rhen? But why? What would the purpose of that be?

  The door opens. I remain still, hoping I appear asleep so that whoever is there will leave.

  “Thalli?” It is Berk. But the new Thalli doesn’t know him, except as a Scientist. If the new Thalli is real, if she isn’t part of a simulation. Which, of course, I don’t know. Because, apparently, I don’t know anything. I can’t even tell the difference between reality and simulation.

  I hear Berk again. Calling me. The cameras are watching. What do they expect to see? Do I know him or not? “Are you awake?”

  I feel Berk settle on the edge of my sleeping platform. His hand is on my calf. I lower the blanket slightly, my eyes peering out, wondering how to respond.

  “It’s all right,” Berk whispers. “The cameras in this wing are experiencing some technical difficulties.”

  I wrinkle my brow. “What?”

  “We can talk.” Berk pulls the covers off my head. “I shut down the cameras.”

  I scoot away from Berk, my back pressed against the wall, the covers clutched in my right hand.

  “What’s wrong?”

  I bite my lip. He looks so real. I want to tell him everything. But Stone looked real too. So did Rhen. How do I know this isn’t a test, with Dr. Loudin watching from his pad deep inside his laboratory?

  Berk leans forward. He looks just like Berk, even the gold flecks in his eyes are right. He smells like Berk’s soap. I want to reach out to him. But I can’t. My whole body feels as dead as my arm. I feel so frightened. So alone.

  Berk places his hand on my arm. “Rhen is ali
ve.”

  My heart races. I want so much to believe this is true. But if this is a simulation, then neither she nor Berk is real. This is just an experiment. A test.

  “I saw her.” I refuse to look Berk in the eye. “But I don’t believe she is real.”

  “Of course she’s real.” Berk’s hand reaches for mine.

  I pull away. “How do I know?”

  “What?” Berk looks confused, hurt.

  “How do I know Rhen is real?” I am fighting tears, fighting a desire to fall into Berk’s arms. I use my good arm to pull my knees to my chest and make myself as small as possible. “How do I know this isn’t a simulation?”

  “A simulation?” His voice breaks. I am hurting him. I don’t mean to. But I have to know the truth.

  “Yes.” I pull my knees in tighter. “The last time you said I was in a simulation, in Progress, it all felt real. Just as real as this. But it wasn’t. So how do I know this isn’t just another simulation?”

  “You think I am a simulation?” Berk’s face falls. But I can’t give in.

  “I know there is a real Berk. But I don’t know which memories are real and which are fake.”

  “I am real, Thalli.” Berk inches closer, his hands on my face. “We are real. This is real.”

  I don’t want to cry, but I can’t help it. “How do I know?”

  Berk wipes a tear from my eye and then stands, pulling out his pad. “Give me a minute.”

  He is tapping, tapping. His face looks sad, resigned. The wall screen in front of me comes on and I see Progress. The town, the people walking around. The view changes and I see the mountains, the movie theater in the distance. I smell the popcorn. Then I see Stone walking toward me, smiling. His white teeth bright against his dark skin.

  My hand comes to my throat. “How did you do that?”

  “I have access to the Progress simulation.” Berk speaks so quietly I can barely hear him.