by Rayya Deeb
My head was locked into place by an unseen source of compression. I didn't resist. I felt something like cold metal lowering onto my eyelids and clamping them open. A liquid washed over my eyes, and then a film meshed onto my eyeballs. A searing heat formed a circle inside each eyeball. It didn't hurt, but my eyes felt dry, even with all the liquid that had just gushed into them. I wasn't thinking about anything now. The whirr slowed, then purred into idleness. All that was left was an empty echo inside the chamber. I identified my own breath. My heartbeat. My surging sense of wonder.
The bench pushed me out. In my rebirth, I entered a new world as a new girl. With my eyes wide open, the beat of my heart marched towards the future, my mind stretched far beyond the confines of my body.
It was go time.
50
WE DROVE AN hour from Anika's ranch to the banks of the James River. Anika and Josie had given us their old Toyota truck. It had been sitting dormant behind the barn for a half decade and they knew we’d put it to good use. Dom promised we'd be back to bring them to Seneca, but they respectfully declined. Anika and Josie loved their home and weren't convinced that Seneca was the answer to a better future for them. Still, they were supportive of our belief that it was for us.
Virginia was entrenched in its metamorphosis from fall to winter. Lush green had been ushered out by the most captivating shades of crimson, orange, and speckles of deep purple. The colors were heightened by their mirror image in the tranquil surface of the water, barely disturbed by wind lifting it into soft peaks. We pulled off the parkway that ran south from the ranch onto a one-lane gravel road snaking its way up to the water's edge. We got out of the truck and posted up to tackle the next phase of our mission.
The James River was such a peaceful place. No unbidden noise from transportation systems, crowds, technology, or even our own conversation. The only sounds were the mild gusts of wind in the trees and the river's light current. Much of the wildlife that called this land of towering woods their home recently had dispersed to deeper, hidden places for the winter. We thought we were alone until we saw an agile doe and her majestic buck tiptoeing along the wood's edge. Dom and I sat still and watched them make their way.
"Can't we just stay right here forever?" Dom asked quietly.
It was an idealistic thought, an impossible dream, but I wanted to live in it, too. Run away from all the bad and just let our love flourish here in the tranquil Virginia wilderness. We could live off the land until the end of our time, whenever that may be. "I'm in."
This was our own personal, sickeningly sweet romance novel. Why did it have to end? This is what life should be, this and nothing but this. Then, in crept reality. I knew that the air we breathed wasn't as pure as it seemed. The quality of the land we’d be living off of wasn’t quite so unblemished. It never had been. And it was partly up to Dom and me to change that.
We had agreed not to toy with the flexer implants- period- until we were far enough away from Anika's ranch because we didn’t want to put her and Josie at any more risk than we already had. Now we knew there was enough distance between them and us. The deer were endearing, and having Dom at my side gave me a permanent buzz. But nothing could get me going like what I was about to do. Even though I hadn't done it yet, I knew. I'd waited my whole life for this. I was born for this. The itch was too intense to wait another second. "I have to do it."
"I know."
I closed my eyes and let my thought process paddle into the technology that was inside me. My flexer chip took power from the energy sources that run through my body and received its commands from the neocortex part of my brain that processes conscious thought. After my conscious thought occurred, an instantaneous response from my flexer arrived in my brain.
I sent the command for my eyes to power up the FlexOculi Implant. This technology normally required outside power, but that was no longer the case. Because in regular life a FlexOculi would connect to a flexer on the outside of a body, but Anika had defied common practice and connected it to my spinal flexer implant. She was hands down the coolest old lady alive.
Although it was physically only on the surface of my eyeballs, the FlexOculi appeared to project a twenty inch monitor one foot in front of my face. Communication was established. Absolutely brilliant.
I could not believe it had taken me almost seventeen years to get one of these but, then again, I could believe it because there is no way my parents would have allowed it until I was eighteen. Part of the gelatinous coating on my eyes conducted wireless signals. Most people used these things for gaming. Well, life was my game.
I wanted to log in to my Veil– and, bam, at the tail end of the very thought, there I was. Inside my Veil. And my Veil was inside me. I sensed it. Every single bit of data.
Nothing– and I mean nothing could rock my world like this. It was beautiful. The future had become my present. An absolute gift. How fortunate I was to be alive and experiencing this. My body charged with euphoria, like a geyser bursting from the earth. I couldn't begin to comprehend the limitless potential within my own little temple of flesh and blood. As I sat on a river's edge in the middle of the wilderness, I realized that I could do anything, no matter where I was.
A tear formed in my eye, clouding the vision of my FlexOculi monitor and Dom just beyond it. He was toying with his own newly found internal form and function. When I blinked, a tear streamed down my flushed cheek. Everything was clear again. I pushed my focus beyond the FlexOculi to Dom. Without him, this wouldn't be. None of it. So many things had aligned for this to be my reality. I was overwhelmed. I had reached the peak of Olympus, but my heart lugged a deep, heavy load of sadness. I couldn't share my accomplishments with my parents. I so badly wanted to see them happy and proud of me. I didn't know when I'd get to see my mom again, but I just had to. I’d left without telling her I loved and appreciated her. I hoped she knew. My emotions took over, jumping spastically all over the place. My mental state was on an unpredictable teeter-totter. I swallowed the pain, pushing it deeper inside, and dredged the happiness up again. If only my dad could see me now. I held in a joy-filled cry. Instead, I reached out and pulled Dom's face in to mine. I had to plant all this emotional chaos somewhere that would ground me. Somewhere I could trust. Dom's tender lips.
As intense as our connection was, and as far away as I felt it take me, I knew that, in his kiss, I could be brought back down to solid ground again.
"Was that for saving your life after that mosquito attack, or have you just fallen for my irresistible charisma?"
"The mosquito bite." I said with a grin. He had to have known it was for everything.
I let out a deep breath the same way you do after a great big cry. I felt the same way, too, minus the sobbing it usually takes to get there.
"Now it's time to get down to business."
"Please. Just let me know what I can do."
"You just sit there and look pretty," I smirked.
Dom lay down, grinning as if he was ready to watch me in a peep show. I didn't blame him. This was some serious tech porn.
"I'm pulling the roster of all the Seneca Senators. I'll access the nanobot mainframe through my Veil where I stored the path, and then it's showtime." I harnessed my Veil to my FlexOculi that had momentarily gone into sleep mode, and I cross-referenced the Seneca Senators with the data bank of entangled Seneca citizens. Two hundred and twelve Senators were right there. And then, as I scrolled down the names, one in particular hit me like a ton of bricks. Ellen Malone. I’d had no clue that Ellen was on the Seneca Senate, nor did I have any idea what other positions she held in Seneca. After being momentarily stunned, I realized that my life had changed so radically following Ellen’s arrival at my Culver City apartment, that nothing could shock me now.
I couldn't let anything hinder the path I was on. I knew I'd figure it all out later, but now my priority was to deliver the truth to the Seneca Senate. The nanobots were in their blood too, and, if they knew it, they would do something
about it. How could they not? All I had to do now was procure the thought and issue the command, and all two hundred and twelve of them would instantaneously receive the message.
The notion of embedding and then controlling information in the minds of the most powerful individuals on the planet was mind-boggling. Even Dom had ditched the chill vibe he'd recently acquired for the early Dom-like serious stance from when I’d first met him. We both knew that what we were doing would change the course of life in Seneca, with impact far beyond. Hard to believe that a nagging feeling he’d had after his Necrolla Carne shot had taken us this far. We were headed into unexplored territory.
I thought of Anika, how she brought a sense of composure to her belief in a universal strength to push her vision through.
It was time.
Three, two, one...
And it was sent. Across a vast ocean of space and a tiny pebble of time, through the vessel of my conscious thought, two hundred and twelve Seneca Senators were receiving this message:
"My name is Dorothy Campbell. I am a Senecan. The information you are receiving is being transmitted to your brain via nanobots that were injected into your blood under the guise of the Necrolla Carne vaccine. The Seneca Observation and Intelligence League has hacked into the brains of every citizen of Seneca this way and is gathering information on each and every one of them, including you. If you don't believe it, you will be receiving the information they have about you right after this message. The data they are collecting is retrieved and stored inside a S.O.I.L. computer mainframe at Claytor Lake in Virginia. Fellow Senecan, Dominic Ambrosia, and I are currently at a location in the Aboves. Moments from now we will release to you our location, and then will comply with your requirement that we return to Seneca immediately."
The flexer chip data for each Seneca Senator was also stored in the mainframe. I transmitted the portal I had in my Veil directly to their flexers for each of them to access the mainframe on their own.
I turned to Dom. "I'm going to unblock our position now."
Any traces of fear inside him had vanished. This was all he had wanted all along — to have the truth about the nasty Necrolla Carne vaccine uncovered. He was a guy who valued truth above all else, and now his forced silence would be over. Now it was just a matter of making the most of our wait. I retracted my FlexOculi.
Just Dom, me and the James River. Dom took his boots off and put his feet in the water. This time his compulsive concern for his shoelaces and the placement of his boots were gone. He looked up at me with renewed hope in his eyes. This was one hundred percent, authentic Dominic Ambrosia. No fear, no control, no paranoia, nothing but pure Dom. How come, every time we were in this kind of live-or-die type situation he’d give me that look and I’d fall so freaking hard for him all over again?
"The water is freeeeeeezing!" he hollered in delight, as his legs submerged to just below his knees. I sat down next to him and squealed as I slowly dipped my toes. After a few seconds they went numb and I inched the rest of my feet in. The cold was nearly unbearable, but it hurt so good to feel so alive. Side by side, our feet dangled in the water. Dom looked over at me, scooted closer. Did I say I was falling hard for him? Scratch that. I was crashing!
"You have no idea how happy I am that you came to New York for me."
"Well, I wasn't just going to let it slide."
Nobody ever gave me the intense looks he did. I had to let my defenses down and just go with it. I felt safe and secure behind my walls but, as they began to crumble and fall, I felt safer in the freedom of not having them there... and of letting Dom in.
"I love you, Doro."
Oh. My. God.
Dom loved me. I couldn't gather myself to say it back, even though I felt the same way, times a trillion. My mouth hung open like a bumbling fool. I couldn't speak. This was so unlike me.
And then, before I had the chance to say a word, funnels of blue light blasted down onto each of us. Without any audible warning, we were ambushed, encased inside two separate spheres of light. I looked toward the sky to find the source– a silenced stealth flighter. I shouted to Dom, and saw that he was shouting to me, too, but we couldn't hear each other. Then the spheres coated over in a blinding light that even penetrated my closed eyelids. I covered my face with my forearm. I tried to initialize flexer communication with him, but there must have been a signal shield in the sphere in which I was encased.
The flighter lifted us quickly. The air became so shallow my breath couldn't grasp it. I choked on the freezing air. The blinding light flashed with blackness, evolving into a slow, dizzying bright blue and black strobe. My eyes struggled to see until stars took over the strobe and I passed out.
51
IN SIX DAYS of solitary confinement, I didn’t see a single soul. Each day, a part of me suffocated just a little bit more. Sufficiently proportioned, health conscious meals were delivered to my living cube via a tube, similar to the meal hall system, only here the ceiling was just ten feet tall. Even though I’d had no physical activity in these past few days, I felt famished, pretty much all the time. I demolished every last crumb that entered my cube. I had an idea that the flexer chip burned calories from energy absorption, because it sure felt that way.
A single shaft of laser light ran across the center of the ceiling, varying in intensity in what I assumed was the same rhythm as the sun. In the dead of night, when the faintest light shined titanium blue like the moon, I lay on a white canvas cot a foot above the ground, with the friendly glow of my FlexOculi monitor to keep me company.
I wondered if Reba knew what had happened to me. Did they just use him for his gift and that was that, or was he privy to the top-secret information detailing my expulsion to the Aboves? Had he sat in on Dom's exit interview, too, without having mentioned it to me? I bet he had. But I couldn't hold anything against him. I couldn't expect him to break his own honor code to the Seneca Society, no matter how close we had become. I wished I could connect with him, but for now it wasn’t safe. Just because my future was in limbo, didn't mean I had any right to put his security at risk.
I concentrated on adjusting to using my flexer implant. S.O.I.L. was unaware that Dom and I had them, so we were still capable of communicating with one another. After two days full of sending messages back and forth, we had become old pros. We chatted the entire time we were both awake, and, when he slept and I couldn't, I used the time to sync my mind with the various Seneca doctrines and legal texts I accessed through the Seneca Public Library Veil.
Every Senecan had access to these texts via their flexer but, not unlike the Aboves, people generally didn't bother with the effort involved with being that informed. And I’d been no different than the rest– until now.
With my flexer implant, I was able to download information directly to my brain. Information surged into me. Mind expansion now occurred at lightning speed. Unfortunately, I found I had to go back fast and dump useless information in droves because the overabundance of information loading in to me was giving me migraines and obstructing the speech center in my frontal lobe. Good thing I had no one to talk to but myself. It was too much, too fast.
Without warning, the wall to my tiny cube opened up and I was overwhelmed with relief to see the first human being in days, even though it was a S.O.I.L. guard. It was time.
Cuffed and escorted by the men in blue, Dom and I emerged from our cubes of confinement into the hallway at the same moment. We both wore the same sullen expressions, but, the instant we saw each other, that changed. Neither of us had known that we’d been just inches away from each other this whole time. Although we shared a flexer connection, being disconnected physically had left a hole inside me. No advancement in human and machine merger could take away that innate need to be with the ones you love. I so badly wanted to take his hand... and never let go.
It was unnervingly quiet as we walked along the endless golden hall. Consumed as I was by doubt, worry and anticipation, it made every minute feel like ten. I
felt prepared, but I still was deeply anxious about the process ahead. We had our bag of tricks, but there was no way we could be certain of theirs. We walked and walked and walked. S.O.I.L. guards, aligned like a bunch of gargoyles, were stationed every fifty yards, their bland faces unreadable.
Dom and I were still barefoot, our boots having been abandoned on the riverside, a million dreams ago. I didn't mind. The cold floor against my hot feet dealt me a great sense of physical relief.
Finally, we stopped. The two men in blue turned us to face the wall. A doorway opened up just as they did in S.E.R.C., only what was beyond this point was far different than anything we ever saw in session.
We were ushered under the golden archway and inside an absolutely awe-inspiring underground temple. It’s towering ceiling was so high, I couldn't see just how far up it went. Luminous, almost heavenly light showered down on us from colossal, ornate salt crystal chandeliers. This light was alive and natural, yet like the carefully placed lamps used by professional photographers, it filled every crevice of our faces, leaving no shadows in its wake.
We were taken to two side-by-side podiums, in a line of twelve total. Dom and I seemed like two tiny black ants, swallowed up in this bright vastness. This wasn't a room. It wasn't even an auditorium. It was a natural salt mine the size of a medieval cathedral. Everything within it was carved out of salt or was a technological piece embedded into the salt. Even the floor was a solid and smooth fossil. The temperature had been carefully adjusted to about sixty-five degrees. Just right.
Elevated before us, carved meticulously along the crescent-shaped wall of pure salt, were two hundred and twelve thirty-foot figures of prestigious men and women. Just as Mount Rushmore depicted four of the United States presidents in granite, these intricate carvings did the same for the original two hundred and twelve members of the Seneca Senate. I would have liked to figure out who each one was but I had too much else to take in. In front of the colossal monuments lay a two-tiered cathedrae in which the actual senate members sat with opaque, flat-screen panels in front of them.
