by Grant, Mira
“When you entered Sally Mitchell’s skull, you exploited the damage that had been done by her accident,” said Dr. Cale. “It was a lucky break—literally. If her skull had broken in any other place, you probably wouldn’t have been able to get through. But in the process, you compromised some of the blood vessels that feed into the brain. They were partially repaired during the initial surgery. There should have been an additional surgery to suture and reconnect them properly, since those are your only source of nutrition now that you’re anchored in the brain, instead of in the digestive system. Unfortunately, Dr. Banks had taken over your care by that point, and he did not choose to order that operation.”
I stared at her. “But… why not?”
“Sal, I don’t know everything, all right? I can’t say for sure why he would have decided not to operate. Maybe you were too fragile at that time, and he didn’t want to endanger your integration. Maybe he was looking for leverage to hold over you later. There’s no way he missed this damage. I honestly don’t know why he didn’t correct it.”
“But you suspect.” The drums were starting to make a little more sense to me now. Of course they would seem louder than a normal human heartbeat: I wasn’t just hearing them with my ears, but with my entire body, which was wrapped into the pulse of the circulatory system in Sally Mitchell’s brain. There was no way I could have avoided hearing the drums. And at the same time… hadn’t they been seeming just a little too loud lately? Like they were pounding when they didn’t need to be? Like they were being played by someone who didn’t really know what they were doing.
Like my heart was beating too hard.
“I do.” Dr. Cale nodded. “You have to understand that… oh, God, how do I say this? I genuinely think of Adam and Tansy—and yes, you—as my children. You contain my DNA, and while a connection to a living human brain is required for you to achieve full sapience, I cannot question your right to exist once you have that connection. Do you understand? I wouldn’t kill a functional human being to give one of my babies a body, but I wouldn’t take that body away from them if they already had it.”
“Okay,” I said, confused.
“You were a miracle, Sal. For whatever reason, you not only took advantage of Sally’s accident, you found a way to complete integration without help. Sally’s brain is the computer that runs your consciousness, but you, only you, are the medical miracle here. You’re the one who evolved under pressure.” She smiled a little, like she expected this revelation to make me happy. It did not make me happy. “If Dr. Banks wanted to study a natural chimera, you were perfect. Tell me, those contracts that he had you and your parents sign, agreeing to allow SymboGen to handle your medical care. Did they say anything about what would happen to your body if you passed away for any reason?”
“Dr. Banks would get it for research purposes.” Dawning horror was coiling in my stomach. I tried to tamp it down, demanding, “But what good would that do? All he’d get would be a dead worm and a deader girl. There’s not much to learn from that.”
“Tapeworms are hardy, Sal. It’s true that your current body wouldn’t survive the loss of your human host; you’re too deeply integrated to be removed. But all he’d need is a single viable proglottid to grow a new worm with your exact genetic makeup. He could create another you under controlled lab conditions. He’s never had a chimera of his own—I’ve had people sabotaging his research every time it looked like he was getting close. Creating another iteration of you wouldn’t require the same level of research; you’ve made all the modifications necessary for a successful joining already, all by yourself. He could exploit that.”
“What are you talking about?”
“You were built with a DNA profile,” she said. “You found a way, instinctively, to modify it enough to let you take Sally Mitchell’s body as your own. That’s normal. Every baseline worm expresses itself differently. We could hatch a thousand eggs from the same batch that made you and get a thousand slightly different results—but your body is hermaphroditic, and every egg it generates will be a tiny, perfect clone of you, Sal. Banks could use that. He could grow a chimera of his own, and then figure out how to make the process easier… or how to stop it altogether.”
I stared at her, aghast. “Are you saying that Dr. Banks left weak blood vessels in my brain because he wanted me to have an aneurism and die?”
“So that he could take samples and culture eggs from your original body, yes, and possibly move it into a new host,” said Dr. Cale. “Observing you throughout the life cycle of your original host would have been a secondary goal. I admit, I can see the temptation. It would have been a perfect, untouched system, if only it had been a computer model instead of a living person.”
“I don’t think he thinks of me as a person,” I said.
“You may not be a human, Sal, but you’re a person. Anyone who can think and speak and be upset by someone’s plans for them is a person.” Dr. Cale wheeled herself closer. “Which brings us to the next matter at hand. Those blood vessels need to be repaired, or you’re going to keep having incidents like this one.”
“I thought I fainted because I lost too much blood,” I said weakly.
“You didn’t lose that much blood, but what you did lose was enough to strain your system,” she said. “That was really the problem. Once your body begins to worry about circulation, things will go downhill for you very quickly, because you don’t have much in the way of a reserve. We need to operate.”
The thought of being unconscious on a table while someone sliced into my head filled me with terror. I didn’t want them so close to my vulnerable body. I needed my skull to keep people away from it. But that wasn’t going to do me much good if the channels that carried the food I needed to survive were blocked. “Can we do that here?” I asked, inwardly amazed at how calm I sounded. Why, it was almost as if I weren’t asking someone to cut me open.
Dr. Cale shook her head. “No, we can’t,” she said. “I have excellent surgical facilities—I can even perform limited brain surgery, when there’s a need for it—but what you need is too delicate. It’s going to require a specialist, and equipment that’s much more advanced than I have access to here. We’re going to need to take you to a hospital.”
“Nathan has admitting privileges at the hospital where he works,” I said slowly.
“Yes, and that hospital is in San Francisco, and everyone there knows him.” Dr. Cale shook her head for the second time in under a minute. A look of deep regret transfused her features. Somehow, that didn’t make me feel any better. “We’d be arrested before we even managed to get you on the table.”
“So what, then? I can’t just stay here and try not to get upset about anything. The sleepwalkers are getting worse. That sort of makes staying calm impossible.”
“I’m going to need you to trust me.”
I stared at her. “That’s what I’ve been doing since I called you.”
“No, Sal. You’ve been playing at trust, but what I’m about to ask you to do… you need to be absolutely sure that you believe I have your best interests at heart. Otherwise, we can wait. See if the crisis passes. Those blood vessels should hold for a while longer.” Dr. Cale looked at me, regret fading to leave her face a featureless mask. “I can’t say for how long.”
“Then I guess I have to trust you,” I said, trying to sound more sincere than I felt. I didn’t know if I would ever really trust Dr. Cale, but I didn’t have any options left—not unless I wanted to die. Choosing to live meant choosing to trust her, whether I wanted to or not. “Let’s open the broken doors all the way.”
Dr. Cale nodded. “I’ll set things up,” she said, and turned her wheelchair and rolled away, leaving me alone and wondering what I had just agreed to let her do to me.
Take the bread and take the salt,
Know that this is not your fault;
Take the things you need, for you will not be coming back.
Pause before you shut the door,
Look back once, and never more.
Take a breath and take a step, committed to this track.
The broken doors are kept in places ancient and unknown.
My darling ones, be careful now, and don’t go out alone.
–FROM DON’T GO OUT ALONE, BY SIMONE KIMBERLEY, PUBLISHED 2006 BY LIGHTHOUSE PRESS. CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT.
The big question of the hour is pretty obvious: it’s the question we’ve been asking every scientist from Galileo to Oppenheimer, from Frankenstein to Moreau. Do I feel like we at SymboGen are trying to play God?
Well, there’s a reason that two of the scientists I just named don’t really exist. I think that mankind is constantly trying to play God: I would argue that playing God is exactly what God, if He exists, would want us to do. He didn’t create thinking creatures with the intent that we would never think. That would be silly. He didn’t create creatures that were capable of manipulating and remaking our environment with the intent that we would sit idle and never create anything. That would be a waste.
If God exists—and I am reserving my final opinion on the matter until I die and meet Him—then He is a scientist, and by creating man, he was playing at being me for a little while. So I can’t imagine that He would mind if I wanted to try putting the shoe on the other foot, can you?
–FROM KING OF THE WORMS, AN INTERVIEW WITH DR. STEVEN BANKS, CO-FOUNDER OF SYMBOGEN. ORIGINALLY PUBLISHED IN ROLLING STONE, FEBRUARY 2027
Chapter 5
SEPTEMBER 2027
The plan was simple enough on paper. Fang and Daisy—another of Dr. Cale’s employees, a parasitologist by trade, before she had left SymboGen to work with Dr. Cale on the D. symbogenesis issue—both had admitting privileges at the nearby John Muir Medical Center, a vast, sprawling hospital complex where no one could be sure of knowing absolutely everyone else. They would sneak me into an unoccupied operating theater, program the machines that handled microsurgery to deal with the weakened blood vessels connecting to my brain, and keep watch while the surgical tools took care of the job. Fang was a licensed neurosurgeon, and both of them were blazingly loyal to Dr. Cale, for reasons I didn’t yet fully understand.
There were a lot of things that could go wrong with this plan, starting when we left the bowling alley and progressing from there. What if someone at the hospital recognized me? What if someone at the hospital recognized Nathan? He’d given speeches on parasitology at hospitals all over Northern California, and he didn’t usually attend random brain surgeries.
Not that there was any chance of his staying behind at the bowling alley. Even if I’d been comfortable with the idea—which I wasn’t—that wasn’t something he was going to agree to. His discussion with his mother had lasted less than five minutes, escalating in volume until everyone in the lab could probably have heard them. Her part of the conversation had consisted of reasonable arguments and rational cost/benefit assessments. His had consisted almost entirely of variations on the word “no.” I had snuggled down in my narrow cot, listening to the soft thudding of the drums in my ears and smiling a little. It was nice that Dr. Cale didn’t get everything she wanted.
I was still in that cot a little over an hour later when the sheet was pulled aside, allowing Nathan into my tiny, semiprivate room. “How’s your head?” he asked.
“Not too bad,” I said. “Did your mom put sedatives in my IV drip? The drums haven’t been as loud since I’ve been here.”
He nodded. “She did. Don’t worry; I’ve looked over your chart, and they won’t interfere with the surgery. We’ll be able to get you put back together tonight, better than new, since this time you won’t have a hidden time bomb in your skull.”
I smiled slightly. “You’re freaking out, huh?”
“Just a little.” He raised his hand, holding his thumb and forefinger about an inch apart. I raised my eyebrows. He spread his fingers farther apart before giving up and spreading his hand wide. “Okay, a lot. It’s been a long night, you know? First we’re fugitives, and then you’re having your arm ripped open, and then you’re passing out again—and suddenly that’s a good thing, since without all the fainting, we might not have looked at your MRIs closely enough to realize what was going on inside that head of yours before it was too late.”
“ ‘I like it when you lose consciousness’ is just what every girl likes to hear,” I said blandly.
“Hey.” Nathan walked across the room and sat down on the edge of the bed. “Try ‘I like it when you survive’ on for size, okay? We’ve come too far for this to be what ends things. Mom’s people are good. You know Fang from SymboGen, and I know Daisy.”
I blinked. “You do?”
“I do.” He nodded. “She went to grad school with me, believe it or not. I had an enormous crush on her for about a year, before I met her boyfriend, who is basically what you would get if you gave a grizzly bear a shave and a Brooks Brothers suit. But he’s a very nice man, and they got married a few years ago. I sent them a toaster for their wedding. I don’t know why people always put toasters on their registries, but they do, and I just wanted to buy one for a change.” He sounded oddly wistful as he talked about the toaster, like it had somehow become the symbol of a simpler time. We had to survive the tapeworm uprising, because otherwise, who would he buy toasters for?
I was starting to be quietly convinced that the time of toasters was coming to an end. Nathan looked so sad that I didn’t want to come right out and say that, so I tried a less dangerous question: “Does he work here too?”
“Who, Daisy’s husband? No, he’s working overseas. He’s in telecommunications, I think, or maybe software engineering—something to do with computers.” Nathan shrugged. “Once you take the ‘bio’ out, I lose interest in technology pretty quickly. It’s my shameful little secret.”
“It’s not that secret.” I sat up a bit straighter on the cot. “Where are the dogs?”
“Adam has them. They both like him a lot. Beverly’s made friends with half the staff, and Minnie’s been napping on every flat surface she could find. They’re going to be fine while we’re at the hospital.”
I nodded. “Good.” Carefully, I swung my legs around to point toward the floor. My feet dangled about a foot above the polished wood. “How are we getting me there?”
“Fang’s acquiring an ambulance.” Nathan said it with a completely straight face.
“Um, does ‘acquiring’ mean ‘stealing’?”
“I didn’t ask. I was afraid Mom would tell me.”
“You feared correctly,” said Dr. Cale, wheeling herself into the room. “Fang’s back, and Daisy has an ID badge for you, Nathan. I’ve got the admitting paperwork for Sal all prepared, and it links back to one of my less public identities, so if anyone calls to confirm that she’s a legitimate patient, I’ll be able to confirm. Fishy is altering hospital records as we speak. By the time you get to John Muir, you’ll have an insurance trail going all the way back to your first temp job.”
“Who’s Fishy?” I asked blankly. “Is that a person?”
“His name is Matthew, he’s a computer engineer, and he goes by ‘Fishy’ because when he first came to work for me, I had a Matthew and a Matt already in the office. He proposed using his old gaming handle, and I said it was fine, since it’s not profane or otherwise inappropriate. It’s easier to explain who’s been injured in the explosion when you don’t have to keep backing up and clarifying which of the five people with that name you don’t mean.” Dr. Cale’s tone was patient, but her hands locked together in her lap, tension showing in the way her fingers interlaced. “Once you get to the hospital, they’ll transfer you onto a surgical gurney. Now, Sal, it’s important you remember that you shouldn’t need to talk much, and it would be better if you didn’t, given the circumstances. You would normally be expected to answer questions before you could enter a surgical theater, but we’re shortcutting that process as much as possible, and anyone who checks your charts should see that you answered the standard questions
before you had to be sedated to prevent seizure.”
“Do people really try to have conversations with patients who are in the hospital to have their heads cut open?” I asked blankly.
“They’re not going to cut your head open, exactly,” said Dr. Cale. “Most of the work will be done by lasers and by machines no bigger than the head of a pin. It’s not the nanotech that we were promised when I was in school, but I’ll take it.”
“Mom,” said Nathan warningly.
Dr. Cale held up her hand. “Sorry, I’m sorry, I just got distracted for a second there. The actual incision won’t even be as bad as that bite on your arm, Sal—which we flushed with saline and stitched up while you were unconscious, by the way. It should heal much faster and cleaner this way. You didn’t lose that much blood, thankfully. The problem seems to have been mostly related to the impaired blood flow to your brain.”
“Um, thanks,” I said, resisting the urge to rub my wrist. “I guess what I meant was, am I really going to have to answer questions? I’m there for brain surgery. Even if there’s not a lot of cutting going on, you’d think that might mean nobody would ask me things.”
“Actually, it may mean someone stops you on the way to the operating theater to make sure you’ve consented to the operation, and that the operation you say you’re having matches the one on your paperwork,” said Nathan. The grim note in his voice startled me. I turned to frown at him. He met my eyes and sighed. “You remember how there are some aspects of my job that I don’t like to talk about? Well, this is one of them.”
“Organ snatching was the big hospital bogeyman twenty, thirty years ago, before we had implants that could secrete anti-rejection drugs,” said Dr. Cale. She made the sentence sound almost upbeat, like the thought of someone cracking open her chest and scooping out her lungs was too funny to take seriously. “Now, of course, the rejection risk is lower if you have the right kind of implant readied. There are some people who have been using the anti-rejection implants as a form of preventative medicine—when their hearts finally give out from all their abuse, they already have the medication in place. It’s a terrible idea, of course, but I never thought that the implants should have been used for that purpose in the first place. Why—”
