Anomaly (20 page)
I need to know. “How?”
“I don’t know exactly.”
“What do you know?”
“Dr. Loudin informed me your surgery would take place here.” Berk stares at the wall screen. “He said that Pod C was no longer needed for habitation, so it was being transformed into an extra medical facility.”
“A medical facility?” I feel sick, leaning my head against the wall, my hand tracing our names over and over again as Berk goes on.
“Dr. Grenz was quite upset at Dr. Spires’s untimely death, you know.” Berk swallows. “So he is conducting experiments on some of the members of the State—even some of the other Scientists—to try to prevent something like that from happening again.”
“And I am going to be one of his experiments?”
“No, Dr. Loudin wants to use you.” Berk rubs his eyes. “But he needs your memory to be erased first.”
“So why not do it there?” I stand. “Why bring me here? If my memory is going to be erased, why do I have to know what happened to my friends? It is cruel.”
“I agree.” Berk stands beside me. “It is cruel. And I asked him the same thing.”
“What did he say?”
“He said that in order to make sure the surgery is successful, he wants you to be in a place you know well.” Berk walks to the other side of the room. “With someone you know well.”
“You?” For the first time, I think about how difficult all this is for Berk. I have been selfish, thinking only of my own pain.
“When you wake up, he will gauge your reaction to me and to the pod. He will allow you to stand and walk around. If you walk like someone who knows where she is going, he will know the surgery failed.”
“So there is a chance it will fail?” A tiny sliver of hope—translucent like the moon I saw in Progress—breaks through.
Berk hangs his head. “This surgery has never been attempted.”
“Oh.” And the moon disappears.
“The simulations were a kind of pretest.” Berk leans against the far wall. “Dr. Loudin was able to successfully create memories. Using the same technology and the data he gained from that cerebral intervention, he feels that he has a 90 percent chance of success.”
My memories will be erased. I almost hope it does work. I don’t know if I can live with the feelings I have right now. My friends are gone. Eliminated. But I, who was supposed to be eliminated, am alive, walking around the pod where they walked, where they breathed and ate and learned and did everything they were told.
I am angry again. Angry at everything. Angry that Berk has to do this. Angry that there is no escape, no chance to say no. I could kill myself. I have that power over the Scientists.
No, I cannot. Something within me warns me against that.
“Dr. Loudin told you all this?”
Berk rakes a hand through his hair. “This morning.”
“And when will the surgery take place?”
“Tomorrow,” he says, barely above a whisper. “Your memory will be erased tomorrow.”
A
ssistants pour into the pod. They bring machines and sleeping platforms and plastic medical equipment I have never seen before.
The transition from Pod C to medical facility has begun.
I want to push them back out, to throw the machines to the ground and trample them.
Then I hear John’s voice in my mind:
“You have a purpose,
Thalli.”
I want to scream, to cry, to give in to all the raw emotions simmering beneath my skin. But there would be no purpose in that. No benefit. I know from experience that giving in to those
emotions does not bring satisfaction. I cannot fall apart. I need to think of Berk. I need to help him, make this as easy as possible for him. And I need to remember all that John has told me. His words bring me peace. They make me feel stronger.
I have a purpose. I laughed at him the first time he said it. But everything has changed now. I believe him. I do have a purpose. I am a child of God. A child of God! And one day I will drink from deathless springs. But until then, I must follow John’s example. I must pray. I must talk to the Designer. I do not know my purpose, but he does.
I walk out the front door of the pod and around the back. Assistants and Technicians continue to enter the building. Berk remains behind, knowing I need to be alone.
I enter the greenhouse. I was rarely allowed in here during my seventeen years in the pod. I wasn’t the Horticulturalist or the Dietician, so I had no need to enter. Only during the times we were studying botany was I brought in. But never alone. I always wanted to come in here alone.
It is warmer in here, more humid. Rows of all kinds of plants fill every space, with just a slight walkway between each one. It smells of dirt and flowers. I touch the leaf of an apple tree. The Scientists may have developed the technology that allowed this tree to grow here, but they did not create the tree.
It is the same with me. I am not created by the Scientists. I am created by the Designer. The truth of that fills me with joy.
“I don’t want to forget,” I say quietly. “Please, God. I don’t want to forget.” I am talking to the Designer. And though it sounds crazy to me, I feel that he is listening. And I know what I want to ask, what I need to ask. Not to be saved from annihilation or rescued from testing. All I want is to remember what has
happened. Everything that has happened. I want the surgery to fail. I ask the Designer to allow that. I ask without words, my throat too tight to speak, my heart too heavy to form any coherent thoughts other than, “Please, God, I don’t want to forget.”
A calm washes over me. I pluck an apple from this tree and look at it. I have taken so much for granted. I turn it over in my hand. Have I ever really looked at an apple? Have I ever considered its intricacies, its complexity? The one who designed this designed me. He loves me. He has a purpose for me. I am amazed at the thought. I place the apple in my pocket. I will share it with Berk. I will tell him what I know about the Designer.
I continue walking through the greenhouse. The sights and smells bring back memories. Memories of my friends who are gone.
I think of Rhen. When we visited the greenhouse on a research trip, she asked so many questions of the head Horticulturalist. She wasn’t content to know the basic information like I was. She wanted details. I could almost see her processing the information, like a computer, filing it away in its proper place. She loved learning.
And now she is gone. Rhen is gone.
I ask God to help me spare other pods. I don’t know how I could do that, but I can’t stand the thought of any more mass annihilations simply because the rest of us are in need of the oxygen they consume.
The door opens. Berk has come.
“I need to make sure you’re all right.” He stands at the far end. I can tell he is unsure if I want him here.
I walk to him and stand on my toes so my lips can touch his cheek. “Is it possible to be sad and happy at the same time?”
“I suppose so.” Berk turns his head to the side. “If that’s what you’re feeling right now.”
“Such a Scientist.” I smile. I reach into my pocket and pull out the apple. It is time to tell Berk about the Designer.
I tell him everything—I tell him about the music and about John, about the one who created everything. I tell him about Jesus, that he is alive, and I tell him about faith.
I cannot look at his face as I speak. I’m afraid of the doubts I will see, the skepticism. I know John saw all that on my face. But he is older, stronger in the faith than I am. I just look at the apple, turn it over and over in my hands. By the end, I have squeezed it so hard that it is soft under the skin. Finally, I lift my eyes. Berk isn’t looking at me. He is looking up, through the clear roof of the greenhouse.
“I would like to meet this John,” he says after a long silence.
My heart swells with joy. “I would like you to meet him too.”
And that is all. He needs to process the information, to consider what I have said.
He takes the apple from my hand and looks at it, then at the tree from which it came. He lays the apple on the moist soil and takes my hand.
As we exit, I see that Pod C’s transformation is almost complete. I pray again for the calm I experienced while in the greenhouse. I can’t help thinking how different my life is today than it was yesterday. And I can’t help worrying what my life will be like tomorrow.
T
he patient has been prepared for the procedure, Doctor.”
Prepared for the procedure
. I say that in my mind over and over, popping the p’s and laughing at the alliteration.
Prepared for the procedure
. I have the faint impression that I might not be thinking clearly, but I don’t have time to think about that.
Berk is standing over me. He is handsome. I think I might love him. Do I love him? I love his hair and the way it always looks just perfect. I love his eyes. So green. When we are close, I can see little specks of gold in them. I like it when I can see those specks.
“Can you feel this?”
Berk sounds very far away. Like his voice is on the other side of the room but his body is right here. I love his arms too. They are so strong.
“Thalli?” Why is his voice so far away? “Can you feel this?”
I try to shake my head but it won’t move. I am stuck. I suppose I need to speak, but the words don’t want to come out. I can see them in my throat. No. I do not feel anything. Wait, I do feel something. I feel love. I want to tell Berk that. But I can’t.
“Use something with a sharper edge.” That is not Berk’s voice. His voice is smooth and deep, like a cello. That voice sounds like a clarinet with a broken reed. Must be Dr. Loudin. I do
not
love him. Now that I think of it, he looks a bit like a clarinet: tall and dark, with a big head and little body. And his reed is most definitely cracked.
“Nothing,” Berk says. I love his voice.
They start speaking in Scientist language. I don’t love Scientist language. I hear words like
cranium
and
probe
and somewhere in the back of my mind I seem to remember that this is about me. They are doing something to me. And I should remember what it is.
But I can’t. Berk is getting farther away, smaller and smaller. I want to reach out and make him stay, but my arms won’t move. Nothing moves. And then everything gets cloudy and gray. Now I feel like I am getting smaller and smaller. I am going to disappear. I think that is good. Berk is small too. We will find each other. We live hidden away, underneath a couch somewhere, and no one will ever find us.
My head hurts. I cannot open my eyes. My eyelids feel like steel doors. I couldn’t lift them if I wanted to.
Where am I? I move my fingers a little. Even that hurts. It isn’t just my head. Everything aches. Why am I in pain? What happened to me?
“She is waking.”
The voice sounds distant. Vaguely familiar, though I can’t place it exactly. I try to think, but my head hurts too badly.
Someone touches my arm. The hand feels soft. It squeezes my wrist, then it is gone. I wish it would stay. It felt nice.
“Her vitals look good,” the voice says.
Another voice speaks. This one is even farther away than the first. His words sound mumbled. It would take too much energy to try to concentrate on what he is saying. I don’t have any energy. I am so tired.