Biome

by Ryan Galloway

  Chloe turns on the light and I flinch. My eyes immediately begin to water.

  “Come on.” She rolls up her sleeves and folds her arms to show she’s not kidding. It’s the closest she’ll ever get to intimidating. “If you’re contagious, you’re risking a lot more than your own health by hiding in here, and you know it.”

  I mean to answer, but something shiny catches my eye.It’s a thin white line that runs along the inside of Chloe’s wrist. A scar. I’ve never noticed it before. It reminds me of the cut I got from the shears, the one that I remembered in the Sick Bay.

  Only I don’t think that memory was mine.

  “Chloe,” I say faintly. “Where did you get that scar?”

  Her frown is impatient, as if I’m trying to distract her.

  “From… back on Earth, I suppose.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “Yes,” she says brusquely.

  “You didn’t get it from the shears while you were harvesting rhubarb?”

  She opens her mouth, but then she closes it again. Finally, she says, “What… what are you talking about?” I try to cast back, thinking about the accident. As I do, I realize I can recall other things about her. The old code to her sleeping pod. How she’d journal every night before the colony stopped allowing personal tablets. The way she’d secretly go out of her way to talk to Noah Hartmann as much as possible.

  Concentrating like this makes the headache so much worse. The memories threaten to overwhelm me, emotion boiling over as it did in the Sick Bay. But I manage to push through, to shove down the pain and, since I don’t know what else to do, close my eyes as I narrate the memories to her. She listens in stunned silence. When I get to Noah, she abruptly grabs me by the shoulders.

  “Stop it!” She shakes me hard, eyes wide with terror and confusion. “How do you know that? Who told you that?”

  “No one, I just… I remember.”

  And so I tell her what I know about the doctors, even though it sounds crazy. From what I can piece together, they’ve been changing our memories since a few months after we landed. Even as I’m saying it all, I wonder how it feels to know that someone has a window into your personal memories and there’s nothing you can do about it.

  Chloe’s expression is blank, the blood drained from her cheeks. Slowly her arms fall to her sides as if overcome by gravity.

  “I don’t understand,” she says. “That can’t be true. You’re just… you’re delirious. Why would they do that?”

  My only reply is, “I don’t know. But the memories—”

  “It doesn’t make sense.” Her eyes are welling with tears. “There must be a mistake.”

  And again I remember how it felt when they took away her tablet. As if by taking away her journal, they’d taken away a part of her. With the memory comes a wave of sadness and loss swelling inside my ribcage. They erased the experience. She hasn’t had to feel robbed, exposed, cheated. She didn’t even know what was taken. Now, only I do.

  To my surprise, tears fill my eyes as well. It’s the first time I’ve cried in a long time.

  “You believe me, right?” I ask, suddenly desperate to be sure I’m not alone in this. “You believe me, don’t you?”

  Chloe looks startled. She squeezes my arm.

  “Whatever’s happening, we’ll figure it out together,” she assures me. “We’ll talk to Doctor Zonogal and she’ll—”

  Annoyed, I swipe at the tears.

  “You don’t get it, Chloe. The doctors are behind this. We can’t trust them.”

  “None of them?”

  “I don’t think so.”

  She hesitates, and her gaze falls to the floor. It’s just like it was in Group, when she had to choose between being polite to Terra and breaking the rules. If Chloe believes I’m right, then she’ll have to believe that the doctors are wrong. It means picking a side. That’s not exactly one of Chloe’s strong suits. And to be honest, I don’t blame her for doubting me. I’m not even sure I believe myself.

  At length, she sits down on my bed and waits until I do the same, legs crossed beneath us like we’ve done a hundred times. She takes my hands.

  “Okay, how about this,” she says slowly. “Let’s watch the doctors and see what they do. If they really are, um, brainwashing the cadets, there’ll have to be proof of it somewhere, yes? And if they’re not, and these are just hallucinations or something, I’m sure waiting a day won’t infect the entire colony.”

  Though I’ve never had a hallucination before, I feel pretty certain they don’t work like this—thousands of them all at once. But I’m not ready to do this alone, and I can tell there’s some sense in what she’s asking me. If the doctors are as sinister as my memories suggest, there should be some kind of evidence.

  “All right,” I say, but she’s not finished.

  “In the meantime let’s go to the Sick Bay again and see if you’ve got a fever.”

  “No way. I’m not risking it.”

  “Lizzy—”

  “Do you trust me?”

  There’s that hesitation again. Finally, Chloe nods. “Yes, I trust you. But—”

  “Then no doctors. Don’t tell anyone what I told you. Until we know more, we can’t trust anyone else. Got it?”

  “Fine.”

  “No one.”

  “I said fine!” she says in exasperation.

  I take a deep breath and let it out slowly, finally calming a little. It’s such a relief to shift some of the weight off my shoulders by sharing the burden with her. But I can almost see her sag under the pressure.

  Sweet, caring Chloe. How much would it take to crush her gentle spirit? I make a mental note to be careful how much I put on her.

  “So where do we start?” I wonder aloud.

  “The last time-statement I heard was at eleven hundred hours,” Chloe says. “So we’re late for our morning duties.”

  “Oh, yeah. Duties.”

  She’s right, of course. If we hope to keep our secret and investigate the doctors, we’ll need to pretend that everything is normal. That means fulfilling my duties, being on time, and talking to my friends as usual.

  Well, if I had any friends besides Chloe. For now, I’ll just have to be patient. Something I’m not particularly good at.

  Usually, our day begins at eight hundred hours, with basic hygiene and exercise in the Fitness Center. From there we head to the showers, then breakfast prep, the meal itself, and cleanup. Next comes Group with our dome subset. After that are morning duties, which vary daily. Some cadets, such as Noah, have special duties—caring for minor wounds as they arise or running healthcare diagnostics.

  Most cadets are greenskeepers. We’re assigned an area of plant life and a duty to go with it.

  But today we’ve missed our briefing, so Chloe decides we’re better off going straight to lunch hour. Doctor Bauer won’t ask too many questions.

  Which is good, considering that Chloe is also a horrendous liar.

  “I’m really a terrible influence on you,” I say as she leads me down the corridor. The bright ceiling tiles are putting my headache into hyperdrive again. I wonder if this is what a migraine feels like.

  “What do you mean?”

  “I made you late to Group, and now you’ve missed your duties…”

  “Everyone misses duties once in a while,” says Chloe in a superior tone. “Besides, I skipped for a noble reason. A friend in need.”

  “Very charitable of you,” I say. It’s meant to be a joke, but I wonder how true it is. Chloe is my only friend, but she has friends all over the colony. Cadets who aren’t always snapping at her or being evasive like I am. So why does she bother?

  The lights are really doing a number on my head. Even though I squint, my eyes water uncontrollably. By the time we reach the kitchen, tears are running freely down my cheeks. Which is lucky, because when we enter the glistening hallway, Doctor Bauer isn’t alone.

  “Lizzy, are you hurt?”

  At the sound of Shi
ffrin’s voice, I freeze. Chloe tugs me forward as the doctors surround me, talking over each other. It’s just like my reaction when I saw Dosset during Group. Now that I know the role Shiffrin played in erasing my memory, I’m hyperaware of how close she is. As if she’s a predator. My only thought is whether I can reach the exit before she pounces.

  “What happened?” asks Doctor Bauer.

  “Nothing,” I say. My voice is thick and my face feels puffy. I must look like a total wreck.

  “It doesn’t look like nothing,” says Shiffrin gently.

  And that’s when Chloe says something brilliant. Something I would never think to say in a thousand years.

  “Just… boy problems.”

  Both Shiffrin and Bauer take a breath, then sigh with almost theatric sympathy. Stunned at the profound effect these three words have had on the doctors, I wipe my nose on my sleeve and do my best to look like this isn’t a surprise.

  “Whoever he is, I bet he’s a moron,” says Bauer softly. “Why don’t you two have a seat? We’ll manage the kitchen without you today.”

  I can only nod. Shiffrin leans close, patting my arm.

  “We’ll talk about it later, hm?”

  I try not to bristle under her touch. Even if I don’t want to tell her, she’ll just read my mind in a few days anyway, won’t she?

  It occurs to me that if all the doctors are in on this conspiracy, then Bauer must be as well. The idea makes me sad. I’d always felt that, deep down, she at least was on my side.

  I’m ushered into the cafeteria. Above our heads, a hanging trellis is suspended from hooks and wires in the dome ceiling. Tendrils of ivy have wound up, around, and down through its silver holes, hanging playfully over the ranks of tables. Like everything else on Mars, it serves a purpose beyond appearances: the plant naturally cleans allergens and mold spores from the air. Still, on rare pasta nights, when the doctors turn down the lights and play opera music, I swear it feels just a little like Italy.

  After pointing me toward a chair, Bauer squeezes my shoulder and vanishes into the kitchen. Not a minute later, Chloe appears with raspberry popsicles.

  “They said this might make you feel better,” she says, alighting on the edge of the chair beside me. Sometimes the way she moves reminds me of a bird.

  “Boy problems, huh?” I say with a smile. “Let me guess—Martian youths?”

  She blinks at me.

  “What?”

  “Oh.” My heart sinks as I realize she no longer has that memory. “Uh, never mind.”

  Dry, chilly flavors thaw across my tongue. For a minute neither of us speaks, and I can’t help but feel that these memories have somehow created a wall between us. I distract myself by focusing on the simple pleasure of an unexpected treat, biting off chunks as I dare, careful not to give myself a brain freeze. With everything swirling around in there, I don’t want to make it more painful than it already is.

  By the time we’re finished, more Scrubs have begun to enter the room, groups of twos and threes. Those not on cooking duty begin to fill out the tables around us, and with the cadets comes the noise—laughing, shouting, teasing. I bite my lip, trying to ignore the effect it all has on my headache.

  A few of the cadets stop to say hello, but it’s obvious their words are intended more for Chloe than for me. It doesn’t feel as if they’re being exclusive, though. More like they’ve taken some sort of hint. What the hint is, I have no idea. I’m not an unkind person. I just don’t like sharing my personal thoughts. Why is it that someone like Chloe can be so warm by instinct, while I have the social inclinations of a cactus?

  The truth is, I wish I made friends so easily. But it seems like every time someone asks me something personal, I feel a tension in my shoulders—an aversion running icy fingers down my spine. In some way, it’s as if I’m afraid of them. Not that they’ll hurt me but that they could hurt me if I allowed them in. And from the very moment we’re introduced, I know that’s something I’ll never do.

  Picking at my jumpsuit, I let my gaze wander the room. Two tables over, I notice a boy. High forehead, big smile. He’s laughing with his friends. He doesn’t notice me, but something about him holds my attention. I realize that it’s how natural he seems, talking with them. And I can’t help but wonder—does he have problems like mine? Does he fear trusting the people around him?

  It doesn’t seem like it. Actually, it seems like he’s happy. Like everyone else is happy. Each with a place to fit in, to be understood.

  And then, as I stare at him, a name flits across my mind: Derek Allen Jones. But that’s not all. I also remember a birthdate—his birthdate—and a hometown, and a house on the end of a street lined with maple trees, and a bedroom painted sunset orange, a color he liked when he was five, and how many stairs led up to that room, and which ones creaked when he snuck down in the middle of the—

  Pain shoots through my head like lightning. I wince and turn away, biting my lip again. Too hard, this time. Blood begins to blossom in my mouth.

  “You okay?” Chloe whispers.

  “Give me a minute.”

  Deep breaths. Those seem to help. Inhale until my lungs are full, then exhale slowly, counting to ten. I don’t remember learning to do that, but it feels right. So I keep going, sucking my lip until the room isn’t spinning and the pounding has quieted. There’s talk going on around me still, but I try to block it out. Then one voice breaks through. One I recognize.

  Noah Edward Hartmann, born July 17—

  “Shut up,” I whisper, digging my knuckles into my forehead as the room begins to wobble again. What’s he doing in here? He should be on the other side of the colony with his own dome subset.

  Above me, his voice takes on a concerned quality.

  “Just wanted to see how she was feeling,” he says.

  “Um, yes, she’s fine…”

  Their voices grow vague and distant, replaced by another memory. Just as happened before in the Sick Bay, the recollection takes over. As if I’m reliving the moments right now. As if I’ve stepped inside a holographic imager, projections illuminating my mind.

  I’m in the tundra habitat, shivering as I wait for something. Or someone. Gauzy light drapes everything in a gray sheet. I hear the chatter of voices drifting through a stand of evergreens, moving across rows of plants: bearberry, liverwort, reindeer moss.

  Directly ahead of me is the craggy hill at the center of the dome, its slopes patterned with frost. To my left, across a truncated field, the ice cave looks like the frozen knuckles of a giant’s fist. It was built from Martian boulders. Back when we landed on Mars, the doctors used Mechs to haul in the dirt and rocks we would need for growing plants inside the biomes.

  In that way, the soil was a trial run of the landscape. A kind of litmus test for the larger project of terraforming the planet.

  Looking at the boulders now, you’d never guess they belong to an alien world.

  As I’m waiting, I notice how nervous I am, thinking that this is a horrible plan. But what is the plan? She doesn’t want to talk to me. She probably doesn’t even know I exist.

  It’s so strange, having these thoughts bounce around my head and this feeling of shivery terror that squeezes my lungs and makes my knees shake. I can tell these sensations aren’t coming from me, from Lizzy. They belong to someone else.

  So whose memory is it? The cadets who tend this habitat call themselves Polars, which is about as uncreative as it gets. No surprise, Terra is one of them.

  I look down at my hands for a clue and find them pale as bone in the cold. They look so much bigger than my own. The nails have been bitten down to almost nothing. And there are freckles. Lots of freckles.

  I hear the voices, closer. Then I see her.

  Elizabeth.

  “Hello, Noah,” Chloe calls out.

  Belatedly I realize that she’s talking to me. That I’m reliving one of Noah’s memories. But the impact of this revelation is robbed by how strange it feels, watching Chloe and my
self move along the path from his perspective. He straightens, stomach tightening with anxiety.

  “Uh, hey,” he manages in return. Through his eyes, I look at myself—the other Lizzy—and I’m momentarily stunned.

  Noah sees me… differently. I’m captivating. Not at all the cold, awkward person I feel like in my own skin. My unwillingness to meet his gaze is just timidness, not avoidance. My eyebrows scrunched low on my forehead make me look less angry than troubled.

  His eyes follow the angle of my cheek, brushed pink by the cold air. The way my wavy blond hair bounces as I walk toward him, like the sweeping curtains of a willow. He begins to blush as he studies me this way. Or I do. My head is growing cloudy, blurring the lines between which feelings are his and which are mine.

  “Are you waiting for us?” Chloe teases, coming to stand before him. “You must be cold.”

  His lips answer her as the memory continues, but it’s all getting fuzzy, like a camera with the focus thrown off. As if the world has begun to tilt back and forth. I feel nauseous.

  Stop it.

  I shake my head as if to clear it, and a terrible pain shoots through me. It’s like a flare turning my vision white. But I’m still there in the Polar Biome, tongue frozen in my mouth, not from the cold but from fear, for other-Lizzy is looking at me with those bright blue eyes made electric by the surrounding frost, an ionized aurora, mesmerizing and—

  “Stop it!” I shout, trying to regain control, to push the memory away. Again the pain hits me. Knocks me to my knees. My vision clears enough for me to catch another glimpse of white. Only this time it’s carbon tile. When I’m able to gather the strength to sit up, I find an entire cafeteria of cadets staring at me.

  A deathly quiet hangs in the air.

  “Lizzy?” Chloe asks, her voice tight with worry. She’s trying to pull me to my feet. I look over my shoulder and see Bauer and Shiffrin watching me as well. And in Shiffrin’s eyes, I find a glimmer of surprise and understanding.

  She knows.