If I’d dreamt anything, I didn’t remember. I wanted to ask Victor if I did, but he wasn’t lying on the narrow sofa. But I wasn’t lying on his soft bed either. Somehow, by someone, I had been moved from his room back to my prison cell.
It was smaller than I remembered, cramped. I felt claustrophobic. A tray of water, cold soup, and black bread was next to the cold table I had been lying on. The dress with my designation was still on me; my shoes were on the floor. Someone had placed a blue blanket on me that was bunched up at my feet. I shivered and wrapped it around me as I approached the white wall.
“Medusa, are you there?”
The wall faded to a black screen and she appeared.
“Yes?”
“Where’s Victor?”
“Dr. Victor Jamison has been transferred.”
“W-what do you mean?”
“His services were needed elsewhere.”
“Where is he?”
“That information is classified.”
“But he’s still alive?”
“Yes, I am monitoring his heart rate as we speak.”
“Why are you monitoring his heart?”
“I monitor everyone’s health.”
“Why?”
“I act as a first responder in matters of medical attention to ensure a rapid rate of survival.”
“I thought the machines were supposed to be magic.”
“Magic does not exist. The machines are exceptional in their quality, but if a person is unable to reach the infirmary or a medical unit within a prescribed amount of time, considering their condition, it could mean a debilitating illness or his or her death.”
I thought about Victor’s widow, Miranda and her child.
“What’s the population of Sanctuary?”
“There are one billion, three hundred million, six-hundred-seventy-eight thousand residents.”
My eyes went wide, shocked at so many. The dome must be enormous in size.
“What’s the infant mortality rate?”
“It is less than one percent.”
“What would cause a mother and her child to die?”
“There are many factors. Shall I bring a list of possible causes in view?”
“No, thanks, that’s all right. Is Henrietta around?”
“She is occupied with President Pallas.”
“I need to go to the privy.”
“Will you wait for Henrietta or do you want another attendant?”
“How long will she be?”
“I will inquire.” Medusa tilted her head all around, pushed buttons, and then continued, “If she leaves now, she can be to you in three minutes.”
“Three minutes? Is President Pallas so near to me?”
“I am unauthorized to verify the proximity between your two locations, however, as you may be unaware, travel between quadrants is rapid.”
“The elevators, right?”
“That is correct. Would you like Henrietta to be your attendant?”
“Yes, please, and also send for Dr. John Goode and Dr. Loren Valier. Can we meet somewhere other than my cell? It’s very small.”
“I will process your need for Henrietta. I am calling Dr. John Goode and Dr. Loren Valier. I am sending your request for a large meeting area to the Madam Secretary.”
Medusa did her usual actions and I sat back down on my table and started to eat. I wanted warm soup and soft bread, but I would take whatever they gave me. I was starving.
“Henrietta’s time of arrival is now ten seconds. Dr. John Goode and Dr. Loren Valier have accepted your request for a meeting. The Madam Secretary has allowed for you to access Room 1201—Floor 12—Level 10, of Quadrant Echo.”
“Where’s Echo?”
“You are in Quadrant Echo.”
“How far is that from Delta?”
“I am unauthorized to give you that information.”
I sighed. “Well, I guess as far as companions go, you’re not that bad, Medusa.”
“Thank you for your compliment. As far as anomalies go, you are not that bad, either.”
I smiled. “Medusa, I didn’t know you had the ability to joke.”
“I cannot joke.”
“You know what, Medusa? I think you don’t know everything about yourself, just as I don’t know everything about myself. I dare say you’re an anomaly too.”
“You are incorrect. I am a quantifiable and qualitative machine. Henrietta is outside your cell.”
“Let her in.”
Henrietta stepped through with a smile on her face. “It’s good to see you again.”
I smiled back. “It’s good to see you too. How are you?”
“I’m well. How are you?”
“I miss Victor. Do you know where he is?”
“He’s been transferred.”
“And if you knew, you couldn’t tell me, right?”
“I don’t know. I’m not privy to such information.”
“Speaking of privy, I have to go.”
I held out my hand for her. She clasped my hand and we bonded, walking out of my cell as the door opened, and down the hall to the restroom I had been in before.
After I was done, I asked, “So what if I want to take a shower?”
“President Pallas has allowed you to shower with freedom, but only if the door to the privy is sealed.”
“Why couldn’t he do that first time instead of Victor staring at me naked?”
“I don’t question the president’s decisions.”
“Well, you’re incredibly loyal, but I don’t think others are.”
“There are traitors in the Corporation.”
“Has Victor been branded a traitor?”
“I don’t know.”
“I know what. How about I take a shower and we’ll talk. You can tell me what you do know.”
Henrietta turned to the door. “Medusa, seal this room.”
The green light turned red along the frame of the door. Henrietta separated her hand from mine and went to sit on the lid of the toilet. She didn’t watch me as I undressed, but when I stepped into the shower, she pushed a button on the wall. A dark tinted glass rose up and sealed me in with only my head and shoulders in view.
“Thanks,” I said. “I wish I had known that when Victor was here.”
Even though I didn’t like that he had watched me bathe, I still missed him. I hoped he was only transferred and not transferred, as in the ground—dead. I sighed and looked at the panel in front of me. I found the water button and adjusted the temperature. I stood there, letting the warm water soothe my tired bones.
“So, Henrietta, are you married?”
“Slaves aren’t allowed to marry.”
I should have known that would be the case, but I still didn’t like it.
“Have you ever been in love?”
“I love President Pallas.”
“Yes, I’m sure everyone loves him, but I mean really love.”
“I love him.”
I peeked above the glass at her face. She was looking at me, sad.
“Oh, I didn’t know. So, what is ole Julius like?”
I hoped to gain information from her by being informal.
She smiled. “He’s very handsome.”
It worked. “Ah, how old is he?”
“He’s thirty.”
“Are you sure? That seems very young for a president.”
I didn’t know why I thought that way, but I did. I didn’t know that much about presidential age requirements. Everyone who was here and young were really smart, but did that qualify them to be doctors or the leader of over a billion people?
“He says he’s thirty, and I believe him.”
“How long have you been in his service?”
“Five years.”
“How old are you?”
“I turned twenty-five yesterday.”
“Oh, why didn’t you tell me? We could’ve celebrated.”
“Celebrated what?”
“Well, your birthday, of course.”
“Birthdays are not celebrated in Sanctuary.”
“Well, that’s not right.”
“President Pallas has decreed it.”
“That doesn’t make it right. Do you have a cafeteria nearby?”
“Yes.”
“Do they serve cake?”
“We are only allowed one sweet a day, and it must fit into our required caloric allowance of 1,400 for females, and 1,800 for males.”
I shook my head under the waterfall. I didn’t know what it was like outside the dome with the Stargazers and the Rebels, but I think I’d prefer to be out there.
“So, you can’t have any cake?”
“Yes, but I couldn’t eat anything for the rest of the day.”
I shook my head again, wondering who could live in such a place, and pressed the button for the honey soap. I closed my eyes, waiting for the mist, thinking of Victor, and how he smelled of the same scent. After, I let the water rinse the soap off and shut everything off. I pressed the button on the wall to lower the glass and stepped out. Henrietta handed me a towel, looking at my body, but not scanning me as Victor had done.
I wrapped my hair in one towel and dried my body off with another. I looked at my dress.
“Can I get something else to wear?”
“It is standard issue prison wear. You can have a cleaner one, if you’d like.”
I nodded, accepting anything that covered me up. Henrietta took my dress and deposited inside a white chute. I wondered if I could shimmy down it, but I was afraid I’d get stuck and most likely, there was something there to stop people from doing that—like rotating blades or jets of fire. She pressed a button on the wall and within a few seconds, a panel opened, and a metal tray slid out with new prison attire on it. I dressed and then towel-dried my hair as I glanced occasionally at my face in the mirror.
“You’re very pretty,” said Henrietta.
“Oh, thanks. You’re pretty too.”
She lowered her head. “I don’t think so. If I was, Pallas would want to kiss me.”
“So, as a slave, you really just read to him?”
She nodded. “I tried to kiss him, but he pushed me away.”
“What was his reason?”
“He didn’t give one and I didn’t ask.”
“He’s thirty, right? Does he have a wife?”
“No, but there have been several partners picked out for him. All the ladies of the Corporation are eager to marry the president.”
“Why hasn’t he chosen? The Madam Secretary seems perfect for him.”
“She’s too old. Only females between the ages of eighteen to twenty-five are chosen to be his potential wife.”
Henrietta was age appropriate, but she was also in servitude.
“How did you become a slave?”
“I was born one. At birth, I was given an injection called Obedience.”
“And that makes you do whatever anyone wants.”
“I serve the Corporation.”
“Why don’t they inject this Obedience in everyone? Including the Stargazers and the Resistance?”
“It is only effective at the newborn stage. After that the body rejects it.”
“So the others who are obedient do so because they serve the Corporation, and others merely act obedient.”
“There are traitors in the Corporation.”
I didn’t feel like talking to her anymore. She was nice, but indoctrinated. We clasped hands as we headed into the elevator, traveling to the meeting room where I was anxious to see John and Loren. Everyone continued to stare at the pair of us, but it was more subdued now, as if they had either gotten used to me or to two girls holding hands.
In the room, which was white and clean and sparse like Victor’s apartment, John and Loren were waiting for me. There was a white table in the center of the room and they both stood up to greet me. John was smiling. That smile would soon fade. Loren looked uneasy.
“I got you some coffee,” he said, showing me the paper cup on the table.
I was tempted to throw it in his face, but I sat down without a word on the other side of the table with Henrietta.
“Can we separate?” I asked her.
“Medusa, lock this room down,” she requested.
The door sealed and Henrietta let go of my hand. I reached forward and grabbed the coffee cup. Loren and John sat. There were wearing casual blue-green and gray clothes, absent their lab coats.
“It’s so good to see you,” said John with a smile. “I’ve missed you.”
“I’ve missed you too,” added Loren.
I held onto the coffee, trying to hold back my anger.
I motioned to Henrietta. “Do you know her, John?”
He looked at her and nodded. “She attends to Pallas.”
“And she also had a child last year that you experimented on.”
“What?” he asked with wide-eyes. “What’s the meaning of this?”
“Medusa, are you there?” I called out.
A white panel of the wall changed to a black screen and she appeared.
“Yes?”
“When Henrietta was forced to mate with an incarcerated Stargazer and this produced a child, what happened to said child?”
“It was taken to a lab in Quadrant 13.”
“Is this the same Quadrant that Drs. Jamison and Keller tortured me with poison?”
“It is the same Quadrant but a different lab.”
“And what did Drs. Hinder and Goode do to the infant?”
“Please, don’t do this!” begged John.
“Quiet!” I admonished him with a snarl.
He backed away, scared. Loren’s face was pale, nervous. Henrietta looked at Medusa with curiosity, nothing more—no feeling of a mother who had lost her child.
“Dr. Elliott Hinder administered a growth hormone to the fetus. Dr. John Goode objected but was overruled. The fetus grew rapidly and became unstable. As an adult, half-Stargazer, half-human, it was considered ‘wild,’ and could not communicate either in Stellar or English. It had several deformities which Dr. Elliot Hinder contributed to the cross of the DNA, but Dr. John Goode contributed to the accelerated growth hormone. Again, Dr. John Goode was overruled. When it became apparent that the ‘mutant,’ as it was called was unstable, it was determined to terminate the subject.”
“What do you mean by ‘unstable’?”
“The subject was aggressive.”
“Who terminated him?”
“Dr. John Goode presided over the subject’s death. Would you like to see the footage?”
I shivered. “No, I don’t. Thank you, Medusa, that’s all for now.”
She disappeared and I looked at John. Tears were forming in his eyes. I wanted to cry too, but I remembered what he did to me when I first arrived.
“Did you put a Separator in my head?”
He stood up quickly, as if he wanted to flee from me, but only walked a few paces to a black rectangle on the wall—a window I was forbidden to see out of.
Finally, he turned to me and said softly, “It is standard procedure.”
“What damage did it do to my brain?”
“None, none, it merely separates sections of the brain—completely harmless. I had it performed on me.”
I was shocked. “You did?”
“When I was ordered to do it, I wanted to know if it was indeed harmless. I didn’t want to hurt you.”
He looked at me with such sorrowful blue eyes like the deep ocean I swam in once upon a time.
I sighed. “I forgive you.” I didn’t know why I was so weak in that respect, but I was.
He rushed back to the table, but stayed on the other side, still cautious. “You do?”
I nodded. “Yes, and even though Henrietta can’t or won’t show any kind of emotion for the pain of losing her child, I forgive you for that too. You’re a better man than that Dr. Hinder. How did he die?”
“It was by drowning.”
“You have water nearby?”
“Yes, this is Sanctuary. Citizens are allowed to swim in the pools and other sources of water, but Dr. Hinder went too far. He was pulled under the water and was found the next day on the shore, dead.”
“Isn’t Medusa a first responder? Why didn’t she alert someone?”
“Dr. Hinder received special permission to go outside the boundaries of Medusa’s surveillance.”
“So, there are boundaries within Sanctuary? Medusa isn’t all-seeing?”
He just nodded.
Loren reached his hand across the table. His blond hair was unkempt. He looked very handsome and I was tempted to touch him, but I remembered his betrayal.
My hand slipped away from his. “You recommended I sleep in Victor’s bed to have him spy on me while I dreamed?”
He hesitated, but then replied, “Yes.”
“Why?”
“Believe me I did it for your own good. It had been on the agenda to monitor your sleep, hoping you would talk, reveal something, but in all the locations you had been, you barely slept, and when you did, you never spoke a word. I thought that if you were comfortable in a warm bed, sleep, REM, and dreams would come more easily to you.”
“You wanted them to find out about me? About whatever secrets I held?”
“They were going to do a more…extreme procedure. I thought this was the more acceptable method.”
“What ‘extreme’ procedure?”
“It was suggested to use electric shocks.”
I had a vision of electricity buzzing, snapping, and popping inside my head. I shivered.
“You see?” said Loren, recognizing my discomfort. “I spared you that. They were going to hook you up to machines while you were asleep and shock your brain, inducing REM and hopefully dreams to stimulate your mind, possessing your mouth to utter every secret they were eager to hear.”
I didn’t know what to say. I took a sip of black coffee. It was cold, but I continued to drink until I had finished every last drop. Everyone stared at me. I still didn’t know what to say. I had jumped to the wrong conclusions about John and Loren. John tried to stop the experimentation upon the half-Stargazer, half-human baby, but Dr. Hinder proceeded. In the end, he was too much of a coward to end the life he had created. Yes, the baby was created by Henrietta and the Stargazer, but it was full of potential, good potential, and a life of knowledge and opportunity, but all that was snuffed out by Dr. Hinder and his desire to exploit the child to assess the adult. Did he know what the side effects would be? Did he even care? John had tried to intervene but in vain.
I looked up at John. “How did you kill Henrietta’s child?”
“It was painless,” he assured me. “A guard was brought in to kill him, but I objected. Guard weapons use a pulse of reverberating sound waves to disorient the victim, and then once the victim is down, another pulse, this time, a piercing sound, targeted to the ear drum is fired, causing not only pain, but an overcharge of frequency to the victim’s brain, where he or she can’t cope, eventually causing an explosion inside the head.” John took a breath in and out, and then continued. “I couldn’t see him go through that. He was already in pain from the extreme growth. I gave him an overdose of morphine and he died peacefully.”
So many violent images ran through my mind. I cried as I saw each flash. The guard with his uncaring face, pointing his large gun on the full grown child, stunning him, and then going in for the final kill, knowing full well that his mind would literally explode; a life ended before it had even begun. John had killed the man-child, yes, but he did it the most humane way possible.
“I’m sorry you had to go through that.”
“I would do it again, too, even though I was almost transferred.”
“What does it mean to be transferred? Victor was transferred, but no one will tell me where?”
John and Loren exchanged a look. I feared John’s answer.
“No one really knows exactly what being transferred means because anyone who’s been transferred was never seen again.”
Even though I felt no deep love for Victor, my heart ached for him.
“Is he dead?”
“We don’t know,” replied Loren.
“Can you find out?”
“We tried,” he said, looking at John. “We asked Medusa, but of course, she wouldn’t divulge.” He nodded towards Henrietta with a sort of sneer. “I bet she knows.”
“I don’t,” Henrietta said, defending herself. “President Pallas doesn’t tell me everything.”
“Aren’t you his slave?” Loren asked.
“Not in that manner.”
“She reads poetry to him,” I informed Loren.
Both he and John furrowed their brows at me, but said nothing. They thought it was strange just as I did that the Benevolent One, who acts more like the Supreme Dictator would enjoy poetry. Although, I wasn’t sure what kind of poetry it was.
“Henrietta,” I began, “what does he like you to read to him?”
“He enjoys ancient writings such as Emily Dickenson, Edgar Allan Poe, and Alfred Tennyson.”
These names struck a chord with me, especially Poe.
“Does he like ‘The Raven’?”
She nodded. “Yes, it’s his favorite.”
I closed my eyes and thought of the shadow. “Once upon a midnight dreary…” I finished the rest of the first stanza and when I opened my eyes, all were staring at me.
Loren leaned in close. “I didn’t know ancient Earth poems were familiar to Stargazers.”
“I don’t think I am a Stargazer…but I’m not entirely human, am I?”
John had his finger on his lip, thinking. “Well,” he began, “the Stargazers may have access to our archives.”
“It’s possible, of course,” agreed Loren, “but we didn’t know the aliens were interested in poetry.”
“Poetry defines a culture,” John conjectured. “And as in any fictional story, the author interjects his or her time period into the writing. It reflects history and the Stargazers would want to know all about human history.”
“But do they appreciate the arts? Would they find Monet beautiful and Picasso strange?”
John laughed. “I think you do.”
Loren laughed too. “You’re right on that, although, I shouldn’t judge. In Sanctuary, there’s no art to speak of—only the statues and posters of our Dear Leader.”
I sat there, silent, listening to them speak. They were so casual, so divulging. I was wondering when the guards were going to enter or the Red Woman, hauling us all off to the prison cells; or for Loren and John, being transferred to parts unknown, never to be seen again. I feared for Victor. I wanted to know where he was, even if he was dead. I wanted to see his headstone and lay flowers against it—to mourn his passing.
“What’s wrong?” Loren asked me, the first to notice my melancholy.
“Victor was a good friend to me, despite allowing Dr. Keller to inject that horrific poison into my body. But I forgave him. He’s sorry for what he’d done. I need to find him. I need to make sure he’s okay…and if he’s dead, I’d like to see his grave…to say goodbye.”
“There are no graves in Sanctuary,” Henrietta said. “Everyone is burned.”
“Where are the ashes? Is there a crematorium?”
“No, no that’s not how it works,” said Loren, sad. He stood up and approached the wall, running his fingertips down the white paint. “Everything is recycled in Sanctuary—everything.”
“What do you mean?”
He placed his palm against the wall. “Human remains are burned and then added to the mortar when constructing a new building. This wall was made out of dead people.”
“Why?” I asked, almost breathless.
“We don’t mourn in Sanctuary,” said John, unable to meet my eyes. “It’s forbidden. Pallas believes that as a society we must move on past death in order to reach Utopia, and that everyone has a purpose in this grand future—even the dead—as they are encased in the very buildings we occupy.”
I looked around the room, imagining faces pushing against the white paint, their mouths open, screaming to be put at rest—to have some dignity.
I felt sick. The room started to spin. I would have fallen on the floor if Loren hadn’t caught me. We embraced as he held me to him. I couldn’t pull away; he had bonded to me.