Lightspeed: Year One
Page 42
I’m the articulate one. I’m an observer too, someone who stores information, and can process it faster than the fastest computer. I’m supposed to govern the reflexes, but they gave me a blocker for that the minute I arrived back on ship, then made it permanent when they got me to base.
I can see, Doc; I can hear; I can even tell you what’s going on, and why.
I just can’t stop it, any more than you can.
I know I said three, and yet I didn’t mention the third. I couldn’t think of her, not and think of the Remembered One at the same time.
I’m not supposed to feel, Doc, yet the Remembered One, she makes me sad.
The third. Oh, yeah. The third.
She’s got control of the physical, but you know that. You see her every day. She’s the one who raises the arms, who clenches the bandaged and useless fingers, who kicks at the restraints holding the feet.
She’s the one who growls and makes it impossible for me to talk to you.
You know that, or you wouldn’t have used the chip.
An animal?
She’s not an animal. Animals create small societies. They have customs and instinctual habits. They live in prides or pods or tribes.
She’s a thing. Inarticulate. Violent. Useless.
And by giving her control of the physical, you made the rest of us useless, trapped inside, destined to watch until she works herself free.
If she decides to bash her head against the wall until she crushes her own skull or to rip through the steel, breaking every single bone she has, if she decides to impale herself on the bedframe, I’ll cheer her on.
Not just for me.
But for the Remembered One, the one with hopes and dreams and a future she squandered when she reached for the stars.
The one who got us here, and who can’t ever get us out.
So, you say I’m unusual. How nice for me. The ones who separate usually kill themselves before the MPs ever get into the chamber. The others, the ones who integrate with their thing, get reused.
You think that the women I trained with—the ones not in my unit, the ones who didn’t die when we got back—you think they’re still out there, fighting an enemy we don’t entirely understand.
I think you’re naïve.
But you’re preparing a study, something for the government so that they’ll know this experiment is failing. Not the chip-in-the-brain thing that allows you to communicate with me, but the girl soldiers, the footsoldiers, the grunts on the ground.
And if they listen (ha!) they’ll listen because of people like me.
Okay. I’ll buy into your pipe dreams.
Here’s what everyone on Earth believes:
We don’t even know their names. We can call them The Others, but that’s only for clarity purposes. There are names—Squids, ETs—but none of them seem to stick.
They have ships in much of the solar system, so we’re told, but we’re going to prevent them from getting the Moon. The Moon is the last bastion before they reach Earth.
That’s about it. No one cares, unless they have a kid up there, and even then, they don’t really care unless the kid is a grunt, like I was.
Only they don’t know the kid’s a grunt. Not until the kid comes home from a tour, if the kid comes home.
Here’s what I learned on our ship: Most of the guys never came home. That’s when the commanders started the hormonal/genetic thing, the thing that tapped into the maternal instinct. Apparently the female of the species has a ferocious need to protect her young.
It can be—it is—tapped, and in some of us, it’s powerful, and we become strong.
Mostly, though, no one gets near the ground. The battle is engaged in the blackness of space. It’s like the video games our grandparents used—which some say (and I never believed until now)—were used to train the kids for some kind of future war.
The kind we’re fighting now.
What I learned after a few tours, before I ever had to go to ground, was that ground troops, footsoldiers, rarely returned. They have specific missions, mostly clearing an area, and they do it, and they mostly die.
A lot of us died that day—what I can remember of it.
Mostly I remember the fingers and the eyes and the tentacles (yes, they’re real) and the pull of the face mask against my skin.
What I suspect is this: the troops the Others have on the ground aren’t the enemy. They’re some kind of captured race, footsoldiers just like us, fodder for the war machine. I think, if I concentrate real hard, I remember them working, putting chips places, implanting stuff in the ground—growing things?—I’m not entirely clear.
And I wonder if the talk of an invasion force is just that, talk, and if this isn’t something else, some kind of experiment in case we get into a real situation, something that’ll become bigger.
Because I don’t ever remember the Others fighting back.
If Squids can look surprised, these did.
All of them.
So that’s my theory for what good it’ll do.
There’s still girls dying up there. Women, I guess, creatures, footsoldiers, whatever they want to create.
Then we come back, and we become this: things.
Because we can’t ever be the Remembered Ones. Not again.
But you know that.
You’re studying as many of us as you can. That’s clear too.
I’m not even sure you are a doc. Maybe you’re a machine, getting these thoughts, processing them, using some modulated voice to ask the right questions, the ones that provoke these memories.
Since I’ve never seen you.
I never see anyone.
Except the ghosts of myself.
So what are you going to do with me? Reintegration isn’t possible; that’s been tried. (You think I don’t remember? How do you think the Remembered One and I split off in the first place? Once there was just her and the thing. Now there’s three of us, trapped in here—well, two trapped, and one growling, but you know what I mean.)
Sending us back won’t work. We might turn on our comrades. Or ourself. (Probably ourself.)
Sending us home is out of the question, even if we had a home. The Remembered One does, but she’s so far away, she’ll never reintegrate.
Let me tell you what I think you should do. I think you should remove the chip. Move me to a new location. Pretend you’ve never interviewed me.
Then you’d just be faced with the Thing.
And the Thing should be put out of its misery.
We should be put out of its misery.
Monica and LaTrice weren’t wrong, Doc. They were just crude. They used what methods they had at their disposal.
They were proactive.
I can’t be. You’ve got all three of us bound up here.
Let us go.
Send us back, all by ourselves. No team, no combat formation. Hell, not even any weapons.
Let us die.
It’s the only humane thing to do.
JENNY’S SICK
David Tallerman
It’s a cold day in February, and Jenny’s sick again.
I ask what it is this time and she just looks at me with ghastly eyes, staring out from over swollen, purpling flesh. She’s sitting bolt upright, propped by pillows, and there’s so much sweat everywhere that it’s like condensation in a steam room. I’ve seen her look bad before but never quite this bad. Where did she get this shit? How long is it going to last this time?
I can’t be the one to deal with this. We’ve been living together for maybe two years; we started sleeping together and ended friends, but mainly we just hit it off, and sharing a place seemed a good idea. I thought we had things in common then, that maybe we were going the same places. But I’m looking to finish studying as soon as possible, to carve out a career, and I have no idea what Jenny wants.
Maybe she just wants to die.
I think it was about a year ago she got into this, though you never know, do you? Peopl
e are like oceans, the powerful stuff moves deep down and you almost never see it. So perhaps there was always something there, just waiting for an outlet.
Either way, it’s about a year ago that I find out. There’s a campus bulletin going around over a new drug, the usual about watching for strange behavior in our fellow students: absenteeism, mood swings, that kind of thing. I figure it’s the same old government stuff, rooting for subversives and trouble-makers. There’s always some new drug or faction or threat, and the next week you’ll hear that the campus police have been out, then maybe there’s a face missing in your next lecture. If you keep your nose clean and stay in the right groups it isn’t that big a deal.
So there’s buzz about this drug, without any real details. I don’t think anything of it until I get in one evening and there’s this noise coming from Jenny’s room, like nothing I’ve heard. Though a couple of months later it will be all too familiar, this first time I don’t know what to think. I mean, I’ve heard coughing before. But this isn’t clearing-your-throat coughing; this is a cruel, hacking bout that goes on for two full minutes, while I stand in the hallway, not sure what I’m hearing.
By the time I knock on her door it’s started again. When I open it the cough is shaking right through her, throwing her about like a rag doll. I don’t know what to do, whether I should try and help, so I just stand watching and for a while she doesn’t seem to know I’m there. Then finally there’s a break, and she looks up. “I’m sick,” she tells me. She says it with a weird grin, like she’s challenging me.
“What do you mean? Nobody gets sick. There’s nothing left to get sick with.”
Instead of answering, she holds up a small plastic bottle. Somebody has written the word CHOKE across it in blue permanent marker. I can see one small green and white capsule rattling around inside.
“What the hell is that?” She only grins at me again, then starts on another fit of coughing.
I find out later that this first time, it’s influenza. She spends two days with it, wrapped fetal in bed, skin like wet flour, choking until near the end I can see blood mixed with the filth she’s bringing up.
Then, abruptly, it goes away. It always does. I figure out eventually that the second capsule, the green one, is the cure. She takes it and an hour later she’s well. Except each time she goes a little longer without taking the green pill: One hour, five hours, a day.
After that, we don’t talk about it, and I guess we drift apart pretty quickly. Jenny’s out a lot, she doesn’t bother to make classes or lectures, and I know there’s a crowd she hangs out with but I don’t see them. Mainly I’m worried that she’ll get caught and that somehow they’ll blame me as well. I study harder, as though that will make up for her absences, I will the days away, and I feel scared. As much as I like Jenny, I like the thought of my future more.
Maybe I should try and talk to her about it, but we don’t talk about anything very much. When I do see her, it’s because she’s sick, too sick to go out. I don’t know what she tells the campus authorities each time. I don’t know where the pills come from. All I know is every month there’s a new bottle with a name written on it, like PUKE or BURN, in the same messy blue highlighter.
As much as I try to keep away from it, and from Jenny, it’s more and more a part of my life, a dirty secret I can’t help but hide. After a few months I start downloading old medical texts from the library’s archive. I figure maybe PUKE is gastroenteritis, but I’m majoring in Information Analysis not Science History; a lot of what’s in those books goes way over my head, and it’s not like I can ask anybody.
I wonder if I should try to help, to look after her somehow, but I’m too scared. Deep down, there’s a part of me that’s so damn afraid that one day she’ll decide not to take the green pill. I’ll come in to find her cold and still, and when the police find out what happened, that will be my life over too.
Christmas comes and goes, and I’m glad of the break and to be with my folks for a few weeks, except that Jenny and her weird obsession have got into my head and my parents’ healthiness seems strange somehow: their perfect skin, their smiles, and their peace of mind. Having Jenny in my life is damaging me, but I only recognize it properly in that gap, in the exposure to normality and discovering how alien it seems.
When I get back to the flat I’ve already made my mind up that I have to move out. I don’t know how I didn’t think of it sooner. Almost a year’s gone by and it never crossed my mind that I could just leave.
When I see Jenny I realize why. There’s something so frail about her, even when she’s not sick, a depth in her eyes that breaks my heart. I don’t even know if she likes me anymore—maybe she hates me—yet suddenly all I can think about is the touch of her skin those times we slept together, the smell of her sweat mixed with the scent of her hair.
“I’m going to look for somewhere else to live.”
She looks surprised, if only for a second. “Sure. This place is kind of cramped. I can manage on my own.”
I choose to think that she means financially, but I’m not sure. I don’t mention the sickness. I hope she will, but I know she’s not going to. The way she is now, all of that is something that happens to another person. Right now, she seems so damn normal; except for that look in her eyes, that sense of unfathomable depth. “That’s what I figured,” I say, “I figured you could manage.”
By February, I’ve found a place—a couple of guys with a spare room—and I’m living midway between the two flats while I shift the last of my things. I don’t know why I’m not hurrying more. I could have been moved two weeks ago. Instead I drag my heels, take over a box every couple of days, and tell myself it’s easier this way.
Then I come in and hear the coughing, not like the first time but slow, drawn-out, more of a dry wheeze. I go in and it’s the worst I’ve seen her. She looks hollow, like a discarded shell, and more than anything she reminds me of these old porcelain dolls my grandmother used to keep: skin white, except where age had yellowed it, with black eyes that didn’t look even remotely human.
“What is it this time?”
No answer, just a stare, and a half-smile through flaking lips.
I go out and load up the trolley that I’ve borrowed with my last four boxes. I don’t even say goodbye.
The next time I run into Jenny is two years later. I just happen to take a certain corner on a certain street and there she is.
I can tell right away that she’s dying. I’ve never seen anyone die, not for real, but it’s some kind of instinct in my gut that tells me because suddenly I want to run away, to be anywhere else.
Instead, I make small-talk. It’s very small because there’s so damn much I know we can’t talk about. Jenny was my friend and for a while something more. And I walked away, for two years I’ve kept her out of my mind. “How are you doing?” I ask. It feels like about the stupidest thing I’ve ever said.
But she nods and smiles, and says, “I’m okay, you know? I feel pretty good.”
She doesn’t look good. I think about suggesting we go for a coffee, but I know she always hated those places. She called them “obscenely clean,” and there was only one bar she’d ever drink in, a place that had dropped so far off the map that the Hygiene Inspectorate didn’t know it existed. “What are you doing now? How did uni go?” What I mean is: Did you drop out? Did they catch you?
Jenny dodges the question, with all its implications. “Yeah, I’m getting by. And you, how are you?”
“I finished with a pretty good grade. Serious data dissection work is hard to come by but I’ve got a couple of interviews coming up, it’s looking promising. It’s pretty tight these days, I guess, but I’m hopeful.” Why do I feel guilty saying this? I’m not the screw-up here. I’m not the disease junky.
“Yeah? Well, that’s good.” She tries to sound like she means it. I feel as if we’re on different planets, separated by a million miles. All I can think is how I want to be somewhere else, and maybe that
’s why I say what I do. “Jenny, you look really fucking sick.” It’s out of my mouth before I know it.
But she’s not even fazed. “Yeah?” She smiles. “Oh, yeah: I’m dying.”
This time, I don’t even try and make an excuse. I turn and walk away, and the closest I come to apologizing is that I try not to run.
That night I dream about Jenny, cold and blue and somehow happy, grinning up at me from some deep dark place with a rictus smile cut over her lips. The dream hangs beside me all the next day, like smoke in the air, and I feel like I’m caught in Jenny’s gravity, like I’m plummeting.
But it’s a week on from that chance meeting in the street, just when I’ve almost managed to forget, that my phone rings. I don’t recognize the name or face, except that she looks familiar somehow. For a moment I get that same gut feeling, that urge to run. I pick up anyway. “Hello. Can I help you?”
“My name is Linda Ulek. I’m sorry to intrude on your time, but it’s very important, and there really isn’t anybody else.”
“I’m sorry, I don’t—” Then I remember where I’ve heard the name Ulek before. “You’re Jenny’s mother.”
I met her once. Jenny’s parents came to the flat and looked uncomfortable and left as quickly as they could. Jenny told me once that they were both high up in some obscure branch of the government. That explains how she got hold of my private number.
“As I say, I’m sorry to intrude, but Jenny doesn’t have any friends that we know of and we remembered your name, and that the two of you lived together, and were close at one point. Of course we’d like to go ourselves, of course we would, but we’re in Rome this month and we have commitments. And the doctors are adamant that somebody who knows her should be with her—”
“I’m sorry; I don’t understand what you’re asking.”
“Jenny’s in hospital,” she says. “She’s very sick and the doctors have asked us to visit her, as part of her treatment. As I say, we can’t do that. We thought that perhaps you could.”
I didn’t know there were any hospitals left. In a world with a cure for everything, I figured the common hospital was as extinct as the common cold. Whatever I’m expecting, the Rondelle Panacea Clinic isn’t it. It’s just another nondescript building, a few klicks out of the city, like the office I work in or the flats I live in. I press the buzzer beside the doors, and a few moments later a young woman in a white suit appears. When I tell her who I am she says, “You’re here for Jenny Ulek,” and ushers me inside.