by E. L. Aldryc
“But you might,” Soraya replied. “Accidentally, while you learn at least. And what happens then?”
“I’ll keep it to myself. What did you think I would do?”
“I don’t know. I would like you to leave my past and future alone. And if you stumble upon something, you talk to me before anyone else. Please.”
The plea was odd. Soraya was the one always in control. Now she was frightened about Elodie seeing too much of her. The giftedness was bringing them closer together, not farther apart.
“I promise,” Elodie replied.
They stayed in silence.
“One more time. If you change your mind, I know a guy in Odessa who can hook you up with a new identity. You just need to keep a low profile for a few years. Tempting?” Soraya asked seriously, but she was already smiling with the corners of her lips.
“I’ll be okay here,” Elodie said. Confidently. “And we’ll be okay.”
“Fine,” Soraya concluded, looking for a way to make it less cheesy. “Then let’s do it. I’m excited.”
It looked like it cost her a lot. Elodie wasn’t ready for how much it made her happy.
“Now I have to,” she said in mock annoyance. “You’re basically pushing me into it.”
“Get out of here.” Soraya hugged her, while footsteps approached behind them.
“Whenever you’re ready,” Tammy said, arriving at her perfect moment.
“Now sounds good,” Elodie said and left Soraya sitting on the sofa. She glanced back just before she stepped through the door and saw a face of well-guarded fear.
From Birmingham with Love
The augmentation procedure for Rising Dawn was the only surgical procedure performed outside of their research hospital, MediMundus. The gifted had fought long and hard to get the licenses for it to happen, as well as getting a few trustworthy doctors to perform it on their premises. On their terms. Secrecy was always a hard line, having augmentation classified as one of the most “non-press-friendly” procedures since the very conception of Rising Dawn. Some say even Nada Faraji was concerned how people would regard an initiation procedure that would resemble a lobotomy so closely.
Elodie tried not to think too much about it, sticking to her new mantra. Neither the first, nor the last. This was routine.
Nada Faraji wrote that suppressed abilities steered our life decisions towards circumstances for their release. They always won in the end, either through their release, or through our defeat as human beings. Elodie wasn’t sure what that second part meant when she read it, but she didn’t want to stick around long enough to find out what that it referenced. She underlined it though, and as she walked through the marble-paved corridor, she thought about it again.
“Total defeat as human beings.”
She fixed her lipstick for the final time. This was a backstage situation. She was preparing for a performance in front of the world. Today, Elodie Marchand, junior researcher. Tomorrow, Elodie Marchand. Gifted.
Tammy escorted her to an open door and a man motioned her to come through impatiently.
“See you on the other side,” she said, and Elodie went in.
The doctor barely greeted her. Apart from the protocolled SI lab coat, slightly altered and shiny white, a right carefully reserved only for MediMundus staff, there wasn’t much to it. Elodie got a distinct English vibe. There was something arrogantly awkward about the way he carried himself, as if it were passed on for centuries without rethinking it at all. He sealed the passage, the door disappeared, and she was alone with him in a cavernous room with precise lighting that came from the ceiling and a few unidentified sources.
It was only then that Elodie actually heard the man speak, and the moment he did so, a most disgusting British accent manifested. She didn’t understand a single word of what he said, but she assumed it had something to do with sitting down on the lifted chair. A lot of the light seemed to be focused on it, so she did that. The next time he spoke she prepared herself and tuned in as if she were to listen to a language she was far less competent in.
“You’ll also need to know that while the procedure is done by myself, and me alone, live paragnostic access is encouraged. Of course, only members of the Rising Dawn have access to the knowledge of what we are doing, so your privacy is protected. But knowing that there are actually gifted people sort of in the room with you seems to make a lot of people more comfortable. So there you go.”
He didn’t look at her as he prepped his hands by murmuring a command to some tool that made a thin layer cover his hands. Elodie took a deep breath.
“Are you?” she asked the man. She read a name tag that stated that the surgeon who was about to seriously shake up her life was called Dr Hollbrook.
“Am I what?” he replied, somewhat aggravated that he needed to look away from perfecting some part of his routine.
“Gifted. Are you gifted?”
“No,” he scoffed. He went back to his preparations, but a moment later, he felt obliged to add something. “But you are. And that’s what really matters, doesn’t it?”
“Right. You’re sure this won’t hurt?” Elodie asked instead. Everyone had assured her that the procedure was nothing but painless.
“Well, as far as we know, it could be absolutely excruciating.” He pushed her down on the recliner until he was happy with her position. “But nobody ever remembers it, so it doesn’t matter at all whether it hurts or not, does it?”
Elodie would have liked to disagree, but then she began to wonder if there was something more to the statement and decided against opening philosophical debates on an operating table.
Dr Hollbrook finally seemed pleased with the lack of words, and took a few readings, beginning with directing a few rays into her eyes.
“I’ll take you through this one more time. While I talk, you’ll start getting drowsy. This is normal. And I don’t like counting down from ten, so just feel free to fall asleep as soon as you want to.”
Elodie nodded and thought about all the paragnosts peering in right now, witnessing what they called the true birth of a gifted person. She tried to look excited and calm. If all of this went wrong, at least her loved ones would believe that she went peacefully. She supposed that’s what Nada Faraji would have done.
“The first thing I’ll do is locate and stabilize all the centres that normally perform functions of deciding what is considered sensory perception. As you know, I will be impeding this function in your brain. This procedure will take between three and ten hours. After this you’ll be moved to the intense recovery unit where you will be waking up in approximately sixteen hours. You’ll be placed in sensory deprivation to get as little input from outside as possible to help you adjust. If you’re still awake, you’ll remember this conversation. Your memory won’t be impaired by the procedure, but it’s expected that you’ll be experiencing extreme disorientation. There will be a lot of people specialised in recovery after the augmentation. Remember, this is a routine procedure, and the recovery time depends solely on you. You listening? Miss Marchand?”
Elodie couldn’t move her lips, and in the distance, she heard a “Good.”
2363: Odyssey
The recovery unit for those fortunate souls who could count the augmentation as an experience they had personally experienced was located deep under the Rising Dawn headquarters. The gifted didn’t like giving the impression that they had secret labs or spaces, so they hid them with extra care. Deep below an empty office there was a room that would convince anyone out hunting for secret passages and spaces that there was nothing more to Rising Dawn than vapid slogans of universal human potential and special snowflake complexes.
The person who designed the entry to the recovery chambers must have had a bitterly deep understanding of how most people viewed the organisation. They furnished it with all the things that would be expected to disappoint a truth seeker that refused to believe that Rising Dawn was a completely harmless society that aimed to empower through p
ositive affirmations and flowery wallpapers.
The steps that led to it only revealed themselves once a person smiled at a mirror. The wall opened up to a spiral staircase where a shiny yellow butterfly provided the only light downwards. When a visitor reached it, they found themselves in a room with windows that looked into a forest shedding leaves, all bright and serene. The room also included piles of books, mostly projections of titles that could be added to a personal library upon touching their physical manifestation, but there were paper volumes here and there. All of them, truly all, were self-help books marketed to the gifted, an ever-expanding industry. An inquisitive person would probably suspect this to be a bait of some sort, but nothing they could ever do would uncover the true recovery centre for post-augmentation survivors.
Eventually, the person would give up and admit to themselves that it was likely, if not true, that the Rising Dawn’s secret “augmentation” was but a pep talk or symbolic ritual, and not a surgical procedure of a seriously shady variety. The recovery from it seemed to consist of a nap in a chamber filled with supportive symbols of self-recovery and change. They would leave with serious doubts about their original theory and zero proof.
But if a gifted individual in whom a certain level of trust had been invested went into the room below, they’d stop in front of a peculiar picture of a person behind which there was a ruthless sea, held back by an invisible force.
And if the visitor was telepathic, they’d take a deep breath and connect to the person hiding beyond the wall and let themselves feel the pain this person was going through. The brainwave scanner would match the pattern and let them through. A paragnost or prognost would let themselves feel it for a moment, the terror that the invisible dam represented, and the door would open quickly, so that they wouldn’t have to dive back into the first moments after an augmentation. The Rising Dawn didn’t like its members to suffer more than necessary.
For Elodie, at first, it felt like a failure to sync. They told her she’d be waking up in a sensory deprivation of darkness, but Elodie began to wake up into something else, resembling the sensation of falling asleep on a beach and slowly becoming aware of imminent sunburns. Pain. Pain. Ripping through her, tearing thoughts apart. She had no mouth to scream with. A punch. And then another one. Bursts of new wounds growing inside every part that could feel and think. Time passed slowly, and then incredibly fast, measured only by the speed of new sources of pain that protruded deeper into her.
Before she could collect pieces of a thought, like “I am” or “Here” or “When”, something would come tearing through her consciousness condensing, coming from directions that she couldn’t understand. Slow and helpless, she simply floated. It hurt. She was still for so long, it might have been a lifetime. And then, something of a cry coming from outside perhaps, or from the augmentation training that Elodie had no way or remembering. Recalling information would have taken a strength she couldn’t even afford to imagine. Letters clicked. Meaning happened. Something screamed inside her. The barrier!
“Build the barrier.”
The word unlocked a clarity, which hurt now not as thuds, but blades. Knowing the word, the self, the memory of the instruction, Elodie felt a path forward, but there was no strength to stay alert enough to understand. The barrier dissolved as soon as it appeared.
Something went wrong.
The pain subsided when she stopped trying. It felt like a millennium before she had another moment of clarity that pushed her back into sharp pain. It was brief, and for a moment, she was alert. She saw what was cutting her. Like an open wound, her mind bared completely to a stream of words, images, sounds and smells, textures with no order whatsoever, each with a hundred variations that split into a hundred more, and then on, a violent stream of information poured into her and through her. She was completely powerless, unable to move or call for help. She watched, tired after the first millisecond, helpless against the bombarding flow of millions, billions of images, each demanding the same attention. It hurt as if something ceaselessly pounded on the inside of her eyelids. She didn’t feel the rest of her body, or anything that could help her fight the flow, and in the enduring tiredness that weighed on her mind, she realised that this couldn’t go on forever. There was an end to it, if she just let go of everything that was able to feel, and let herself be carried away, become nothing in the flow. Become nothing. It was the thought that scared her so much that she held strong for another small eternity.
And in a brief strength came the idea. Was there a way to hold the flow at bay? As the multitudes of smells and faces, textures, and songs pounded against her, she tried to imagine a shield, or a force, or just maybe an intention of not wanting to be a junction for all the information stored in the universe. She pushed back, and with will alone, a small distance appeared between herself and the ruthless current.
As the thudding stopped, she felt the exhaustion. Non-essentials shut down to rest pain free. Time passed. Intent broke.
The ceaseless thudding started all over, overwhelming the barrier, and Elodie now knew to gather the strength to overcome the widening river that threatened to drown her again.
And then she did it again.
And it broke.
And again, and again. There was no help. There was only her will to live and exist.
She lived like this without counting. She forgot about the world outside. Information had to be fought off, not invited. It hurt, so freedom from pain became the only thing she celebrated.
This was how she lived. For moments, for years, for centuries.
She made the barrier. She rested. It ripped apart.
The thudding began again.
She was at home in the flow. The barrier held. Sometimes longer.
She got used to the fight, but never the pain. Every time it overwhelmed her, it hurt like the first time.
Emotions other than fear of pain had no place in the endless battle. Not until the periods of freedom from the current lasted longer. But they were never forever.
When a longer stretch of freedom from the pain happened, she didn’t expect to feel anything but relief. But the absence made her aware of how oddly long it had been since the barrier fell. She remembered what time meant outside the current. And she remembered of this state called awake.
And a spark lit up, making her again into mind nested in a body, and she opened her eyes. Just briefly. A million years passed in that current. But as soon as she woke up it was 7:14 p.m. And it was Wednesday again, whatever that meant. But the pain of holding the barrier and the fear of it collapsing were still there. Her eyes were open, this she knew, but this couldn’t be it. This was not what she remembered.
All around her was just darkness and softness, but she wasn’t saved. She didn’t just leave the current behind. It was still there, just behind her eyelids, tucked away. It was still ready to swallow her the moment she grew weak again. And then this. Even in the darkness, there weren’t words to describe it.
A small ray of light shone through a crack that quickly widened. The light was as much a shock to her system as anything else. She covered her face in a reflex a body still remembered, frightened by the feeling of touch. The physical movement felt so slow. A silhouette was appearing in the opening. The sight adjusted to the brightness quickly, but not the rest.
“Elodie, dear, it’s just me. Can you hear me?” She recognized an outline of an individual, and the silky waterfall of dark hair that accompanied it, but the voice wouldn’t click. Tammy was never worried like this.
Something orange flickered right behind her, and a second voice joined in.
“I can read her. Oh, no.”
Oh, no—exactly. The telepath read the pain. It hurt so much. Something had gone wrong in the augmentation, and it went really wrong. This was not the world she’d left when she went under. She was slow, the mind was fast, and the two didn’t sync. And it hurt. Chunks of memory started appearing and sticking together, making the current and the battles
Elodie had fought just moments ago into a dreamy, unimaginable landscape that wanted to slip away.
But there was a miscalculation. There was nowhere to slip. The current was there now, it took space, it took root inside of her. She was a collection of pieces with bolts taken out, the mechanism broken. She could neither sleep, nor rest, nor stay away.
“Seven days,” Elodie said with a groggy voice. “You left me out for seven days?”
The words felt metallic, but she needed to say them. Anger was the only thing she remembered being her own.
The norm, as Augustina explained in their preparation walkthrough, was about ten hours.
“She can talk. Thank the cosmos.” Tammy spoke something into a private line and several hands prompted Elodie to sit up.
“I can’t make it stop. It won’t go away.”
She blinked at the gathered group. She was getting weaker, and the current was pulling again. It was horrid, and they knew. They were gifted. And they threw her into it. And they wouldn’t help; the hands just quietly held her. Liars.
The world was grainy, probably because she’d been sleeping for the past seven days. But blinking didn’t help. It was all off. Like a newly blind person coldly sweating in horror of suspecting they’d never see again, she began to understand that it wasn’t going back to what it was. Before, pristine, stable. The eyes were not the problem. The current was still at bay. But things pushed at her from the outside too. Objects that were distant seemed clear and detailed. And she knew things about them that she shouldn’t. She wasn’t even curious. There was no way to stop the flow of information. It crawled over to her, like she was a drain.
Tammy saw what was happening, and she came closer.
“Ambivalent, you’re ambivalent. Care about nothing. You’re not interested in anything,” she whispered with urgency.
Elodie panicked, and the polymers in Tammy’s shirt spoke terabytes of information about where each strand had been. But she learned one thing fighting the current. She could switch off. Just be. Don’t think. She forced herself to retreat, she forced any interest away. And it stopped.
