Altered Reality

by Eliza Green

‘Surprising?’

  ‘Yeah, like when I think she’s going to say “Laura, we know exactly what you’ve been up to”, she smiles and walks on.’

  ‘Hmmmm.’

  While Laura struggled to drink any of her coffee, Bill went back into the kitchen to refill his mug. When he returned, he asked, ‘Do you think Gilchrist was the one watching you through the camera?’

  Laura’s eyes narrowed. ‘The thought had crossed my mind, but why would she bother? Normally she takes pleasure in reprimanding people publicly.’

  Bill shrugged.

  ‘You’ve had dealings with her too, haven’t you?’ Laura went on.

  ‘Well, she was at some debriefings, but only as Deighton’s lackey.’

  ‘Do you think she’d ever go against Deighton?’

  ‘I don’t know. She does whatever he asks. I think she’s afraid not to.’

  ‘I haven’t met him—and I never want to,’ Laura said with conviction.

  ‘I don’t blame you. I met him once and that was quite enough. Is there any talk about him at ESC?’

  ‘Just the usual—that he controls the World Government board members, rather than them controlling him. Some who’ve met him have said his emotional reactions are off. Does that make sense?’

  Bill nodded. ‘He’s more than just plain old creepy.’ He took several gulps of his coffee and idly tapped his fingernail on the side of the mug.

  He noticed Laura nod. ‘That’s what Gilchrist does—taps things with her fingernails.’

  ‘Does she?’

  ‘Yeah, when she’s irritated about something.’

  ‘That’s useful to know.’

  He watched Laura pick up her mug of coffee and try another sip. He smiled when her face contorted, as if she was in pain. Her hair was down, tumbling over her shoulders; he liked it when she wore it down. He was surprised by how much he enjoyed her company.

  ‘You don’t have to finish that, you know,’ he said with a grin.

  ‘Thank God!’ she said, smirking and slammed the cup down.

  Bill started to laugh when suddenly the Light Box sprang into life. The encryption code that he’d given to Jenny flashed up on the screen.

  ‘It’s her—and about time.’ He connected the call. Jenny’s face came into view. ‘Captain, I was giving up on you.’

  ‘I needed some time to prepare things at my end,’ Jenny said. ‘Hello, Laura.’

  Laura smiled and nodded at her.

  ‘Before we get down to discussing details, I have one other question for you. I should have asked you when we had dinner the other day, but it didn’t occur to me at the time.’

  Bill frowned. ‘Look, Jenny, we don’t have time—’

  Laura pinched his leg. ‘Go ahead,’ she butted in.

  ‘How are you going to get off the planet? Won’t somebody miss you?’

  ‘We have it covered,’ Bill said.

  ‘Just tell her about the chips, Bill,’ Laura said, nudging him. ‘We have to trust her.’

  Bill shot her an angry look.

  ‘What chips?’ Jenny said. ‘I’m not doing it unless you tell me. You promised me the truth.’

  ‘We’re using replicated identity chips to get off Earth,’ Bill reluctantly explained. ‘The Indigene you met gave me some blanks to use if we needed them.’

  Jenny rubbed her chin, saying nothing.

  ‘So can we talk about the details now, Cap—’

  ‘Not so fast’—she smiled—‘I want to come with you.’

  ‘I told you already, that’s not possible.’ The last thing he needed was another person to keep an eye on.

  ‘It’s either that or you find a new pilot. Take it or leave it.’

  Laura elbowed Bill. ‘Can’t we give her one of the chips?’ she said quietly. ‘Give her a new identity. We need her.’ Her tone was firm.

  Bill’s eyes narrowed. ‘Tell me why you’re so keen to come with us, Captain.’

  Jenny let out a long sigh. ‘That man who hijacked my craft all those months ago has haunted me ever since. It’s not fear I feel; it’s pity. His isolation, desolation, was palpable in that cockpit. I could sense his desperation. He was begging for my help and all I did was make it difficult. I’d like the chance to put it right … And I’d like to do what I can to scupper the government and their nasty schemes.’

  Bill sighed wearily. ‘You’ll have to come with me to Magadan to get the blank chip uploaded with your new identity, Captain.’

  Laura hadn’t thought of that and gave him a sharp look.

  ‘No problem. When can we leave?’ said Jenny, smiling brightly.

  ‘Give me twenty-four hours to arrange it,’ Bill said. ‘I’ll call you.’

  ‘Fantastic! I look forward to working with you both. Oh, and by the way, please call me Jenny.’

  She disappeared from the screen, while Bill and Laura slumped back in their seats exhausted.

  Chapter 22

  Exilon 5

  Elise had thought of nothing but her own problems for the last few weeks; not even the shame she’d felt for not thinking about Stephen’s well-being could shake her focus. The process of unlocking her buried memories had taken centre stage and pushed her concern for him to the back of her mind. The woman called Elizabeth was far too important for her to ignore. Stephen would have to wait. She was in no fit state to be counselling anyone. Besides, Stephen had Pierre to talk to; she had no one to confide in.

  Elise sat up in bed in her private dwelling. Greta, the woman with the auburn hair, had appeared again, and Elise closed her eyes and watched the interaction between Elizabeth and Greta play out in her mind.

  ‘Elizabeth, dear, it’s me. Where are you going at this hour? It’s so late,’ Greta said coming out of the kitchen.

  Elizabeth ignored her and pulled on her coat.

  ‘Where are you going, Elizabeth?’ A new urgency had crept into Greta’s voice. She stepped forward and grabbed hold of her arm. ‘Elizabeth, Elizabeth, are you listening to me?’

  ‘Don’t worry, Greta, I won’t be long. I’m just heading to the office to pick up some case files.’

  ‘Can’t you download what you need from here?’

  ‘I can’t stay cooped up in this apartment forever. I have to face the world some time.’ Elizabeth studied her reflection in the mirror.

  ‘But why now? Why at night? What if he’s waiting for you?’ Greta said.

  ‘I promise he isn’t. They’ve assured me that he’s in custody.’ Elizabeth tidied her hair as she spoke.

  ‘You can’t be sure of that. Please—let me go with you,’ Greta said.

  ‘No, I want to go alone. I hate feeling so out of control of my own life,’ Elizabeth said angrily. ‘I can’t live like this. I know you’re my aunt and you can’t help worrying, but you’re smothering me. I want my life back the way it was before.’

  Greta was visibly upset by her words.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ Elizabeth said immediately. ‘I don’t mean to sound ungrateful. You’ve really helped me get back on my feet. You’ve given me a home when I couldn’t face living alone in my apartment.’

  Greta touched her face gently. ‘You always have a home here. I just worry—’

  ‘It’s the nature of the work. There’s always a risk that some of my patients might turn on me.’ Elizabeth buttoned her coat and kissed her aunt on the cheek. ‘I’ll be back soon.’

  ‘I’ll keep a light on for you,’ Greta said.

  Elizabeth pulled the door closed behind her without answering.

  She walked quickly to her office block. She carried a knife in her bag now; she had done so ever since the incident. When she arrived at the building where she worked, she scanned her security chip, trying to remain alert to everything going on around her. It was the first time she’d been back since she’d been attacked over a month ago. It was quiet, not as busy and rowdy as it was during the daytime. She couldn’t decide which was worse: crowds or no crowds. Her heart was thumping wildly now as she wait
ed for the door to click and allow her to push it open. Once inside, she quickly secured it behind her.

  She walked through the body scanner that was manned by an autobot, entered the turbo lift just beyond the scanning station and pressed the button for Level Three. Several lights were illuminated on the lift panel, which told her that others were also working at that late hour. She stepped out of the lift and walked along the corridor, past the small glass-fronted room where her research assistant, Anna, normally sat, to the office marked ‘Elizabeth Howe MB, BChir, Senior Psychiatrist’.

  She entered the room and turned on the light. She shuddered violently—they hadn’t tidied up after the police investigation; the room had been preserved just as it was when she’d last been in it. She set the small coffee table—now without its glass top—back on its legs and straightened the seats on each side of it. She’d sweep up the glass later. Then she righted the large ficus tree that lay on its side, the one she’d knocked over when she’d stepped away from Henry Burke.

  She should have seen the signs—she was trained for that kind of thing—but she’d felt sorry for Henry and his tragic circumstances. Each week, Elizabeth had listened to him describe his struggle to stay off the drugs. He often talked to himself when he visited her; his drug habit had made him delusional and psychotic. And each time they met, Henry had asked her to prescribe something to calm his nerves. But she had refused; as a researcher she had been keen to try a new approach with him: to help him overcome his addictions with mind exercises and meditation. Many of her colleagues, who preferred to rely on medication to control their more difficult patients, had laughed at her techniques. Anna, Elizabeth’s assistant, had been the only one to support her attempts at cognitive therapy, and together, they’d worked out a plan for Henry to put into practice. But Elizabeth’s inability—or unwillingness—to see that the alternative therapies weren’t working was the reason Henry had attacked her.

  She’d always loved her abundance of curly hair, but remembering how Henry had grabbed hold of it had made her want to cut it all off. Greta had convinced her not to. In any case, it helped to hide her nasty scar.

  Henry had been muttering to himself that day as he’d slammed her face into the glass coffee table. Flushed with adrenaline, she had felt nothing at the time.

  ‘Who are you talking to?’ she’d asked, trying to bring him back to reality, back to the present.

  ‘Shut up!’ he’d spat out. ‘It’s all your fault.’

  He let go of her momentarily and she’d swivelled round and kicked him in the stomach, sending him reeling backwards. He banged his head on the wall and slumped awkwardly to the floor. Then she’d reached under the upturned coffee table and grabbed a shard of glass. Security found her crouched behind her desk clutching the glass, her face a bloody mess.

  At the hospital, once she’d had her face stitched up, she struggled to tell the police officers what had happened, both because her face ached and because she couldn’t believe she’d allowed things to get so bad. Worst of all, she was disappointed and disgusted with herself that she hadn’t been able to control the situation with Henry in a more professional way.

  Now, back in her office again, Elizabeth turned on her monitor for the first time since the incident and scanned her security chip. She jumped—Henry’s thin, drawn face appeared on the screen. She’d forgotten it was the last file she’d had open that day. She quickly closed it down.

  Even though the police had assured her they’d picked up Henry Burke, there were plenty of other patients like him who lived on the edge of violent behaviour. The incident had made her anxious and scared. But she refused to live her life looking over her shoulder, waiting for someone else to do the same thing. Thank God Anna hadn’t been hurt during the attack. Elizabeth would contact her in the morning for an update.

  There was a message icon flashing on her screen. She opened it.

  Fancy a change? New trials are starting tomorrow at the genetic manipulation clinic. Get here early to avoid disappointment.

  Elizabeth went to the mirror on the wall and studied the angry red scar that slashed her once pretty face, and now contorted the shape of her mouth. Her looks had made her popular in college, but she had been more attracted to studying psychiatry than boys. Now, as she looked at her distorted face, she felt horrible; Henry Burke had destroyed a part of her she had taken for granted. Perhaps what she needed to do was get her face fixed. If she didn’t have the scar—if she wasn’t constantly reminded of what Henry Burke had stolen from her—maybe it would be a small start to gaining some control in her life. She would pay the manipulation clinic a visit tomorrow.

  Elise came round with a start and gasped.

  Suddenly the floodgates opened and yet another memory spilled out. She gasped again, this time at the realisation of what the clinic had done to her, how they had used her.

  While she didn’t remember the actual moment when they transformed her into an Indigene, she was able to piece together what she assumed were the last hours of her life. They had deliberately misled her about the new trials. She had gone to the manipulation clinic to have her appearance changed, to become a different person. It never occurred to her that she would emerge as a different species altogether, with no recollection of her previous life. And the size of the first generation Indigene population suggested that thousands of humans had been similarly duped.

  Elise lay quietly in the dark and allowed the memories of being a human to wash over her: the floral scent of her hair and how soft the curls it had felt when they danced around her face, or when she tucked them behind her ears; her soft warm skin and the way it glowed when she stepped out of a hot bath. She’d looked so different as Elizabeth; her appearance had been important. Elise, the Indigene, rarely gave her looks a second thought.

  Elise plucked some dried moss from a small opening in the side of her mattress and rolled it between her fingers. These recovered memories answered so many questions for her. It all made sense now. The comfort she got from speaking to others and her obsession with how the mind worked clearly stemmed from her human life as a psychiatrist. But the new neural connections the Nexus was helping her to form were too powerful for her to handle. The synapses in her brain were changing, growing, and her ability to predict emotions in others and the way she connected with other Indigenes was evolving beyond her control.

  Pierre had begun to notice the change in her himself, not least in the way she struggled to concentrate at Council meetings.

  ‘It’s the extra workload, the additional counselling sessions,’ she’d told him. She hated lying to Pierre but he wasn’t an empath like her. He didn’t understand how draining it could be.

  ‘Then take a step back, Elise,’ Pierre had suggested.

  Elise nodded. ‘I think that’s a good idea.’

  Elise had taken a step back, but not from the counselling sessions. The new ability to predict emotional responses meant that she could no longer control the influence other Indigene minds had on her. Instead of being able to understand, in an objective way, how an Indigene felt, their emotions completely overwhelmed her and clouded her thinking. She had tried to use the Nexus to control her evolving gift, but it only seemed to accelerate the changes, as well as bring forward a torrent of memories from her past. She had stopped using the Nexus a few days previously.

  She thought about Stephen; she had been so selfish in ignoring him since he got back. She tried honing in on his personality signature and after a few moments, found it. As she attempted to get closer, the emotions of other nearby Indigenes were drawn towards her magnetically. She closed her mind off to them as best as she could, while they grappled and clawed to get around the edges of her defences.

  When the emotions retreated, Elise sat up in bed. A bout of light-headedness hit her. She lay down again, trying to block the wave of new emotions that clamoured for her attention. She could feel the Indigenes as they walked past her door; each day, peace seemed to drift farther from her r
each. She could no longer function around them.

  She turned onto her side and pulled the covers over her, but jolted upright when she heard the sound of footsteps approaching. She listened intently and could sense someone’s apprehension from the other side of her door.

  ‘Elise? Are you there?’ a voice said telepathically. ‘It’s me—Arianna. I need to speak to you about Stephen.’

  The mention of Stephen was enough for Elise.

  ‘Come in. Come in,’ she urged.

  Arianna tentatively opened the door and tried not to show how uncomfortable she felt at being in her elder’s private dwelling.

  She looked at the dishevelled bed covers. ‘I’m sorry, Elise. I didn’t mean to disturb—’ she said telepathically and went to leave again.

  ‘Please’—Elise held out a hand—‘You’re not disturbing me, but I ask that you use your voice here. Now, how can I help?’

  Arianna gave her an odd look as she closed the door behind her.

  ‘I find it draining to speak telepathically, especially if I’m having trouble sleeping,’ Elise explained. As she studied Arianna, she found herself recalling Anna, her assistant from her human past and in that instant, realised who Arianna’s mother had been. The similarities in the way they carried themselves were now obvious.

  Arianna went over to the bed and held out her hand. Elise took it and allowed Arianna to pull her up. Then she held both of Arianna’s hands in her own and tried to focus on her emotional state. Could she use Arianna as a barrier to block the other Indigenes’ emotions? She had to try.

  ‘I’m concerned about Stephen. He’s not acting like himself,’ Arianna said, standing still.

  ‘How so?’ Elise said, leaning in towards her. She could feel Arianna’s presence soaking up the other emotions, allowing her mind to become less cluttered.

  ‘He hasn’t said anything but I can tell he’s struggling,’ Arianna said. ‘He’s been using the Nexus to help alleviate the pain in his head.’

  ‘Has he confided in you?’