by Rayya Deeb
"We don't want that to happen to you, too, Doro."
"I don't want that." I couldn't let that happen. Even though I was experiencing the dark, oppressive side to this society, I still felt in my heart that all of us in Seneca had been given an opportunity to make a difference in the world. If I were removed from Seneca, I would never be able to be a part of that. And I’d never get my mom here. I would be put back into the same old dull school curriculum with the same old herd of sheep. I wouldn't remember Dom. It hit me hard to think that right now, Dom didn't know me. He didn't remember our first time in the closet at S.E.R.C., our day at Difficult Run or our epiphany together in the lab. He was alone out there. Seneca was dead to him. I was dead to him. And I was alone in here.
"Good." Gregory turned his wrist up and pulled his cuff back to reveal a flexer. He tapped at the screen and it lit up blue. FigureFlexing activated and Dr. Ashvind Kulkarni appeared in hologram. "Dr. Kulkarni, please administer the Vigilogstimine on Miss Campbell here."
Dr. Kulkarni's six-inch hologram approached me. He seemed like a kind man who wouldn’t harm me. There was a depth inside his eyes and his walk was smooth, not intimidating at all. He maintained eye contact and a warm smile. A needle emerged from the back of my chair, on a robotic arm. At that point I was willing to try anything to regain body movement.
Gregory patted my shoulder. "Let's get your motion back up and running, what do you say?"
"Please... and thank you."
"Thank you, Dorothy."
Dr. Kulkarni nodded to me, as if to say, "Here I go." Then he engaged with the robotic arm and gave me the shot. I didn't feel it at all. Either FigureFlexing was the ultimate way to get vaccinated, or I was becoming an old pro.
"Thank you, Doctor." Gregory pulled his shirt back down over his wrist and the doctor was zapped out of the office.
The tips of my fingers and toes fired sparks into the rest of my body. I wiggled in my chair and felt my legs and arms loosen up. In seconds, I was completely back to normal. Not an ache in any inch of me.
"How's that?"
"Much better," I said, with the greatest sense of relief. I felt as though I’d just made it to the bathroom after holding a full bladder for hours on a highway with no exit. "Much, much better."
"Now, let me be very blunt. I want to like you, Doro. We all believe you can be a major asset to this society, but we can't tolerate any breech in security– at all. I know that sometimes you teenagers feel curious and become compelled to explore areas that are out of your depth. But I want to make sure you are totally clear on what will happen if you do it again."
I was absolutely not going to question Gregory. Swimming upstream against the rapids would be a foolish decision, and I, Doro Campbell, was no fool.
"I would like to think that you don't want to go the way of Mr. Ambrosia, or the dozens before him that have met the same fate."
"Of course not." I was heartbroken for Dom, but I had to deliver a persona that Gregory would start to trust again, no matter what.
"I know some of these actions taken against you might feel scary or over-the-top, but it is important that you realize, they are designed for the safety of our society as a whole. Understood?"
"Completely."
Lieutenant Otis stood up and spoke for the first time. "Miss Campbell. I hope we don't have to acquaint ourselves with one another again, unless of course it is on much different terms."
"Yes, sir."
Gregory bowed lightly. "Lieutenant." Lieutenant Otis turned and left, not interrupting his confident stride to allow for the door to appear, he made his way through it just as it opened. And then it closed.
"Don't make me look bad, Dorothy. I put myself on the line for you."
"I get it, Gregory. I'm sorry I made a problem for you. It won't happen again."
"That's what we like to hear. Your future here is bright. Don't go and turn out the lights now, you hear?"
"Loud and clear."
"The next few days might be filled with surprises for you. As a beholder of confidential Seneca intel, your lips must remain sealed. What you hear is the word of truth. I'll leave you with that, kiddo."
27
MY PILLOW WAS soaked from balling my eyes out all night long. I hugged it tight. My face was swollen and warm, lips salty from the canal of tears that had streamed down my cheeks for hours. I blew my nose and breathed a deep long sigh that comes at the finale of one seriously marathon cry.
My life as a normal teenager was over. I didn't have parents around to protect me. Of the only friends I had here, one had been banished to the Aboves, and the other had some weirdo psychic thing going on that I hadn't figured out yet. I didn't know who he really was. I didn't really know who anyone was. I felt ill with worry about Ellen Malone. Did she know what I had just been through? Did she see what happened with Gregory? I had no idea how much she knew. How could I trust her, and would she ever trust me again after I had manipulated her interest in me to pull this last stunt?
It was around 4 a.m. on Monday. I contemplated how I was going to go to session and not look like I'd spent the night flipping out. Even looking like I'd been crying would be so embarrassing. I had to remain cool, calm and collected– Ellen Malone style. That would be easier said than done.
Lockdown was over. I understood that much of it was about Dom and me, and what we had been doing in the lab. Now that S.O.I.L. had removed Dom and had me conforming to the system, they’d determined it was safe to lift my lockdown. S.O.I.L. wanted to control the situation before anyone else in Seneca got wind of it. They knew that we’d been meddling in their top-secret procedures, but they mustn’t have realized the scope, or they wouldn’t have let me go. They most likely hadn't measured my computing distance and were unaware that I had placed a block on the quantum entanglement in my own blood, thus creating a virtual immunity to mind monitoring within myself. If they had known, they would have forced me to unblock it. But nobody could detect what I did. They would need me to do it because, as far as I knew, there was nobody else on Earth that could... at least not yet.
With four hours until session, and most people in the residences still asleep, I got up and took an acoustic carrier ride to a twenty-four hour market in the restaurant district to pick up a cucumber for my eyes. I had to make an effort to appear normal. My goal from now on was to fly under the radar with my eyes wide open.
28
MY RIDE IN for my Monday morning session was the same as it had always been– quick and smooth. Not nearly long enough to rehash the longest weekend of my life, but I didn't need to. I was determined to act as though everything was completely normal. It kept getting further away from normal each day I was here. When I stepped off, there was Reba, who was in chipper spirits considering what we had just seen. "Campbella, there you are. Long time, no see."
I was thrown. We had just FigureFlexed less than two days ago and attended the infamous flighter crash party together Friday night. I hoped he wasn't getting so clingy that he needed to keep tabs on me every day. "We just saw each other, dude."
"If you consider last Wednesday as 'just saw,' then okay." He winked and started down the hall. I was completely stumped and frozen in place. Last Wednesday? I didn't get it. He turned back to see why I wasn't walking with him. "Coming?"
I caught up to him. Why would he say that we hadn't seen each other since last Wednesday? Maybe he was trying to purge the party from his memory. This wasn't the aura of a guy who had just witnessed a massive flighter crash on the Key Bridge, but I decided not to pursue the conversation. Maybe I was being overly cautious about saying the wrong things, but I knew I was being watched one way or another. We were being watched.
We reached the entrance point to my first session. He kept walking but turned to face me and smiled, "Lunch?"
"Lunch."
He spun back around and skittered off.
I sat through my sessions in a daze. Not a single person mentioned the flighter crash, which was evidently taboo. By the time lu
nch rolled around, I felt like a caged lioness that hadn't been fed in days. The only thing I'd had to eat all weekend was half a cucumber. The half I hadn't used to relieve my puffy eyes.
I hustled to the meal hall but Reba wasn't at our normal spot yet. I was too starving to wait for him to order. It felt like eons passed before my quesadilla popped up through the meal delivery portal, but when it did, I ravaged it.
"Somebody likes quesadillas, wowza!"
That deep voice was familiar. I stopped mid-chew and looked over my shoulder. It was G.W. Wallingsford, and Brittany Gilroy. I could feel the color in my face disappear and a surge of unease spread through my limbs. I was speechless.
"What's up, girl, don't remember me? G.W. Wallingsford, Jennifer's brother?
"No, no, of course I know who you are." I stared at him like he was a ghost. He was flawless. This was not a guy who had just been involved in an explosive crash.
"Okay, good. I was gonna say..." He palmed my shoulder like we were old pals. "This is my girl, Brittany. Brittany, Doro from LA."
Brittany bent down and kissed both of my cheeks. "Hey. I love LA."
"Me, too," burst from my mouth, exactly as it had when we’d had the same exchange the week before. I barely knew what to say to these two. How was G.W. alive? How did he look like this? His flawless presence defied reality. How could they be acting like the party never happened? Brittany and I had bonded. I knew she liked to watch movies and ride horses. Now she smiled blankly, as if we were two strangers meeting for the first time. This was deja vu of the most distorted variety.
"Cool, well, you look like you're crazy busy with that quesadilla. We'll leave you to it. Just saying what up."
I went with the 'play it cool' approach. Question nothing out loud. No way was I going to stir this pot after what I had been through this weekend. I appreciated having a range of physical motion and the ability to speak. "Good to see you, G.W."
Brittany had a fleeting look, like for a split second she remembered me. "It's really weird, you are so familiar, but you just moved here, right?"
"Yep. I know. It's weird. Happens a lot though. I guess I just have a familiar face."
"Well, nice to meet you, Doro from LA."
"You, too, Brittany from Georgetown."
She gave me another funny look. And then I realized she was probably confused as to how I knew she was from Georgetown; if, according to this new reality we were in, that party at her house never had happened.
"See you around," she said with a flicker of curiosity in her eye.
"See you around." I gave a flicker right back.
"Later, girl."
G.W. and Brittany strolled off in perfect harmony, looking like a billion bucks. I looked back down at my half-eaten quesadilla but had managed to lose my appetite. I was in a daze. Is this what it felt like to be a conspiracy theorist? I so did not want to become like that. I pictured a pale, skinny guy with terrible hygiene in a small, messy room, posting wild speculations online. Never sleeping or eating right, never interacting with people, except for maybe a cat whose litterbox is never cleaned. His only stimulation in life looking out the window at passers-by or watching fetish porn. Oh god, I didn't want my mind to be consumed with conspiracy theory. Just as I was moving into a good anxiety jag, Reba's backpack hit the table and then his butt hit the seat.
"Was that G.W. Wallingsford and Brittany Gilroy just talking to you?" He was reacting like a kid who had just seen Mickey at Disneyland.
Did none of these people remember the party?! Then it hit me. The memories of that night must have been blocked wholesale from their minds. Their brain synapses had been reprogrammed directly from the mainframe to which the nanobots in our blood were entangled. My memory had stayed untouched because I had broken the entanglement in my bloodstream. But of course I couldn't let on. "Yeah, crazy, right?"
Reba wasn't buying my B.S. "Doro, what's going on? Something doesn't feel right here."
"I'm not sure what you mean."
"What you're saying, it doesn't feel genuine."
Reba was about to screw things up royally, maybe beyond the point of repair.
"Of course it is. Everything I ever say is genuine."
"It's not, Doro, come on."
I couldn't let this happen. I knew there was something up with him, that he could sense things, and if I didn't do something to break free of him immediately, S.O.I.L. would figure out exactly what I had done. I was left with no other choice.
"You know what, Reba, it's no wonder the kids where you're from called you "freak"– because you are. So stop freaking me out, stop following me around, just stop, okay? Just leave me alone!" It killed me. His permagrin disappeared. All the muscles in his face dropped. I couldn't bear the sight of him feeling so sad. I stood up and turned away. I had to. There was no other way.
"It's better that we don't talk anymore."
"Doro? Where is this coming from all of the sudden?" He was so confused.
"It's not all of a sudden. You're making me really uncomfortable."
"What your saying isn't consistent with what you're feeling. I can tell."
"Stop! Just stop with all this psychobabble. If I say it, I mean it. So let's just get this out there in the open now, because it's long overdue. I don't want to be your girlfriend."
I didn't have to see his face to know that I had just stabbed him in the heart.
"I don't want you to be my girlfriend either, Doro. Because I have one."
Well now I really felt my foot stuffed into my mouth.
"Yeah, you're surprised I can tell... but you know what, Doro, you never asked. I know you just assumed because I was nice to you that I wanted to be your boyfriend. But that's not what I wanted. I just appreciated that you were real... and I thought we could be real friends."
I wanted to know who his girlfriend was, but I needed to move away from this situation as soon as possible. Somehow he must have read my mind.
"Lindsay."
The way he said her name was just so genuine and filled with pain that it made my heart sink. He might love her, but there was some kind of problem there. I felt his heartache inside my own. I wanted to give him a hug, but I didn't.
"My first and only love. We were both recruited but she chose not to stay. She got sent back to the Aboves. We never broke up. We never even said goodbye, which was fine with me because I know we are meant to be together. She's still my girlfriend, Doro. She's still in my heart and I know I’m still in hers. So I'm sorry if you mistook my friendship for something more, but that's exactly what it is. I felt like we had become real, true friends."
I beat down my emotions. Smothered them. Gave him my best apathetic facade.
"If you want to throw it all away, well then that's your prerogative. It was nice while it lasted."
I could see in his eyes that he wanted me to apologize so things could go back to how they were. But they couldn't now. I didn't respond, because I had to let him think I was a jerk. Clearly I didn't have a hard time playing the part. And before the silence moved past awkward to deadly, he turned his back to me and walked away without looking back.
My heart was broken.
29
I HAD NO one. Not a soul. Only when I closed my eyes could the ones I loved visit me, the ones I had left behind for this. But it wasn't all peaches and cream, these imaginary visits. My mom. Julie. Killer. My mom's sweet patients and the people I knew from Café Firenze who always wanted to hear about my day. I pulled their faces to the forefront of my memory and it stung like a hard shower beating on a fresh sunburn. This wasn't a life worth living if they weren't in it. They wouldn't take me back now. Nobody here cared about Doro Campbell, except for Reba, and I had sabotaged our budding friendship.
Exhausted, I’d fallen into a deep sleep right after I got home from sessions around five and now it was midnight. My schedule was way off. The lack of sunlight totally messed up my biorhythms. The normally dark circles under my eyes were pitch black, as if
colored with chunks of coal. This wasn't a look that cucumbers could fix.
I clutched my flexer like a security blanket. Flipped on B3, only to land on the news, of course. My parasocial relationship with Becky Hudson would grow tonight as all of my real relationships had been squashed. The lower third of the screen read, "Previously Aired." I was surprised that the video of the crash was playing. If nobody seemed to remember this crash, how could it be that it was still being reported?
"Following the fatal flighter crash at the Key Bridge in the Aboves Friday night, officials are cracking down on the escalating Mojo Stick problem. The Seneca Senate has introduced new measures at the recommendation of the advisory committee which, if sanctioned, will mean that a zero-tolerance decree for Mojo sticks will go into effect by the end of the year."
Seneca didn't have jail or prison, which were at odds with the utopian, ‘one world’ system of government the founders had envisioned for this society. Instead, those found guilty by jury for engaging in criminal activity were banished to the Aboves, permanently. Nobody wanted to mess up. There was an extremely low crime rate here. Of almost one and a half million Senecans in Seneca City hubs worldwide, there had only been two dozen banishments to the Aboves. Not even a fraction of a fraction of one percent. Those chosen to be here were in many ways a self-selecting group, and once we had tasted the Senecan life, we simply didn’t want to go back.
My attention had veered away from the B3 News, but snapped back when the screen that contained crash footage was now filled with a photo of Dom.
"Officials have identified the stolen flighter pilot's body as that of Senecan Dominic Ambrosia. B3 News can confirm that Ambrosia was flying recklessly under the influence of a Mojo Stick, and will be held accountable for a total of six deaths. Two more are still critically injured. Congressman Frank Wallingsford had these words: "Our prayers are with the families of the victims. These were utterly senseless deaths that Senecan leaders will tolerate no longer."
I was enraged, full throttle. Sickened. I smashed my flexer down into the bed. Burying my head in the pillow, I screamed my face off, and kicked my legs wildly. When I pulled back from the pillow, I could barely breathe. I stood up on my bed and threw the pillow across the room. I jumped down and crouched with my knees on the floor, to pull out my record player and turn it on. Fingering through a stack of records, I stopped on Nirvana– Smells Like Teen Spirit.
