The Sentient Page 2

  Amira’s pulse rose in a sharp crescendo on the nearby monitor. She turned away from the hologram, gripping the sides of her chair to steady herself.

  In the hologram, the younger Amira ran up a steep hill, panting as her thick floral dress billowed oppressively around her. She stepped over its hem and stumbled forward into the dirt, her nails digging into the hot sand. The sounds of the raid, cries and bursts of smoke canisters, grew distant as she zigzagged through the rising terrain.

  A patch of color caught the corner of her eye and before she could turn, something shoved her forward and she fell on her knees. A boy, the same teenager who stood in silence on the podium, ran past her toward the top of the hill. Spitting out sand, Amira followed.

  Running along the ridge behind the boy, Amira realized that she no longer recognized her surroundings. The cacophony of the raid vanished, leaving only wilderness, a harsh landscape of dead junipers and dust whipped by angry winds.

  “Stop!” she called out to the boy. “Stop, we need to go back!”

  The boy stopped but did not turn. Amira caught up with him, following his gaze.

  Across the valley sat a house unlike any she had seen before. Perched atop a cliff, its sharp angles and sloping sides glinted in the sunlight, but its most striking feature was a beam of light rising directly from its center, clear through the high noon’s haze.

  The boy suddenly fell to his knees, clutching the sides of his head and rocking back and forth.

  “What’s wrong with you?” Amira cried. “What’s happening?”

  Amira’s ears rang, faintly at first but louder with each passing second, her head pulsating as the ringing rose in pitch. She sank to her knees near the boy, who thrashed on the ground. The sound drowned out the wind, her own moans and her senses, as she buried her forehead against the hot earth. She twisted in an agony she’d never known, the sound cutting through to every nerve, down to her bones.

  Then it stopped.

  She lifted her head, leaving a damp patch of sweat on the sand where her forehead had lain. Something shifted within her. Her arms jerked and twitched of their own accord. She held her hand before her eyes and did not recognize it as her own. She willed her fist to close and it did, but the movement felt foreign and unnatural.

  “This is the end,” a thick voice said, and Amira realized she was speaking back in the Academy’s reading room, where the man stared, transfixed, at the hologram. She tried to stand but her legs rebelled, sinking further into the ground. “We can stop now, it—”

  “You’re doing great, Amira, we just need to submerge a little further.”

  The sensors heated up again and Amira returned to the desert. Her heart fluttered in rising panic.

  Don’t let him see, Amira thought desperately. Fight back. For a moment, the hologram flickered, but she couldn’t push aside the girl in the desert.

  The boy went limp next to her.

  The young Amira screamed and without warning, the ground beneath her disappeared. She floated high over the ridge, like a marionette bound to invisible strings, swaying in the air. She hovered over the body, her own, now motionless under a voluminous dress. Her long black hair whipped in every direction under gusts of wind and she instinctively tried to brush it aside, but her hands remained with the rest of her below. Mind and body, detached. A wave of peace washed over her, dissolving her initial sense of panic. The taste of rust filled her mouth, though she had no mouth or tongue to speak of in her detached state. It didn’t bother her. For the first time that day, since the start of the Gathering, nothing aggravated or frightened her.

  Someone, or something, watched her from her high perch. Eyes trained on her, felt more than seen. Neither predatory nor friendly, merely an observer to her own detachment.

  Something else invaded her solitude. Something to her left. Tearing away from the surreal sight of her own body below her, she expanded her range of vision.

  The boy floated beside her, hovering over his own body. He was not a solid object, like the shape on the ground, but she recognized him as the scowling, distant child who ran with her up the hill. A presence who sensed her, as she sensed him.

  Her conscious mind remained in suspense, surveying the landscape and the small figures below her with detached curiosity, a spectator on a theater balcony watching someone else’s story unfold.

  In the distance, the strange beam of light from the house flickered, then vanished.

  New figures came into view, men in black robes running along the ridge, and in an instant, Amira dropped to the ground, retching, her body her own again. The calmness of the moment vanished, but the taste of rust lingered in her mouth.

  The Elders approached, running to the boy first. His face turned the color of curdled milk as they lifted him, but his eyes found Amira’s before the men carried him away. The boy’s head jerked to one side in a subtle gesture that Amira returned with a silent nod.

  Say nothing.

  Hands gripped the sides of her head and Amira gasped. The interviewer removed the sensors. She pressed her head into the back of her chair, light-headed, a common sensation in the immediate aftermath of a reading. The room, with its white walls and monochromatic machinery, felt vivid and real compared to the foggy world of her memories, all sharp lines and edges.

  “What happened there?” the man asked, unable to suppress the curiosity from his voice.

  Something happened beyond her control years ago. At the time, she feared she had accessed the Conscious Plane, a level of transcendence forbidden without an Elder’s guidance, but her years in the Academy had provided another explanation. Dissociation, the separation of mind and body. A known phenomenon, but rarely as extreme or pronounced as Amira’s experience at the Gathering. The panel would declare her unfit to be a reader in response. Someone with a tenable grip on reality, they would pronounce with an appropriate mixture of firmness and empathy, could not delve into the minds of others. Despite her undeniable skill and years of hard work, a single memory would unravel everything. All those years, wasted.

  Amira hesitated. She couldn’t lie, at least not completely. Holomentic machines, though built to heal, also functioned as effective interrogation devices. The map of her neural activity would pick up an outright lie when the brain center for imagination, not memory, highlighted on the nearby monitor. The heat and fear of the Gathering fresh in her mind, she gripped the armrest to hide shaking hands. She could not go back to the compound, or end up on the street, as other compound escapees often did. She would not fail.

  “I don’t know exactly,” she said slowly, a truth in the broadest sense. “But looking back, I think it may have been a panic attack where I disconnected somehow—”

  “I’m sorry, I meant after you were found? After you and the boy got what looks like heatstroke. Were you punished for getting so far away?”

  Amira gaped at him. Did he not see her separate from her own body? She recovered, arranging her face to show the shape of polite introspection.

  “They didn’t question me too much,” she said. “The Feds arrested most of the Elders and their marshals for unlawful assembly. A power play. They have so little influence over the compounds that they couldn’t pass up an opportunity to charge so many Elders at once. Everyone was frightened. The remaining adults took us back that night. The Elders were released by the Feds – by the Alliance forces the next day – on some technicality. The punishment came months later, when I tried to escape. I’m sorry, did you mean to continue the reading?”

  “I did, but the machine’s acting up,” he said with a dismissive nod toward the holographic table. “It went black when you fell down next to that other kid who was freaking out. Not sure what happened, but it came back on when the men found you on the hill. I’ll have to get it looked at, but I certainly have what I need for today.”

  He shook her hand and gestured her toward the door with
a slight smile.

  Amira exhaled audibly, breathing freely for the first time in the room, but her hands trembled as she walked down the hallway. Psychotic breaks, multiple personality cases, even the final brain signals of the dying – all could be captured in some form by the machine. But the holomentic device failed to display the moment on the mountaintop. Only death was undetectable by the machine. So either the examiner misinterpreted Amira’s dissociation as a mechanical malfunction, or the moment itself was…what, exactly? Why had it failed to read that moment on the ridge?

  The house in the middle of nowhere, anchored by the mysterious beam of light, hovered in her racing mind as she approached the panel room.

  * * *

  “Valdez? Amira Valdez? Excellent. Have a seat.”

  The room looked the same as every other in the Academy – spacious, polished, but lacking in charm. Amira liked it regardless, with its geometric furniture and high, echoing ceilings. Here, they would declare her fate.

  The yawning window to her right overlooked the Academy’s pool, an extravagant, costly structure flanked by synthetic palm trees and plastic lounge chairs. She had spent countless hours doing laps there and even more floating on her back, staring out through the clear ceiling as shuttles and helicopters passed silently overhead.

  Amira did her best to ignore the crystalline water and focus on the panel before her. A severe woman and a short, round man sat behind a metallic desk. Both wore the requisite violet lab coats of senior professors. A flat screen on the desk’s surface displayed a string of text alongside Amira’s profile picture. It was taken several years ago, but she looked the same – light brown skin and angular face offset by her eyes, almost as black as her hair. She wore the same expression in her profile that she wore now – thoughtful and stern, except for her mouth, which turned up at the corners in a subtle, almost cryptic smile. The slight frame of her shoulders slouched in the image. She straightened her back and crossed her ankles, compensating for her poor posture. The man on the panel smiled brightly in her direction, but the woman scrutinized her in an unabashed manner.

  “You know this already, but you passed your physical.”

  “Yes,” Amira said. “Fifteen miles.”

  “You’ve also scored consistently high on your academic reviews,” the woman said, running her long fingers across the screen. “Let’s see…aeronautics, physics, some neo-quantum physics, genetic engineering, bioengineering. Excellent across the board.”

  Amira nodded, keeping her gaze on the stern woman’s face. The professor’s eyes were the color of dried olive pits, her hair cut in that fashionable, unevenly chopped style. Little warmth emanated from her person, or even a trace of personality, but then again, this was a meeting that required formality. A District of Aldwych Jury insignia was fastened to her breast pocket, indicating a position on one of the district’s most powerful governing bodies, second only to the elite Aldwych Council. The man, on the other hand, was small and genial, with tufts of dark hair springing from his face and round features that reminded Amira of an affable koala. Her mouth twitched as the comparison set in, followed by a pang of guilt. Unlike the woman, he seemed kind, eager to tell her what she wanted to hear.

  “And outstanding recommendations,” the man added, nodding encouragingly at her. “Including one from Dr. Mercer himself.”

  “But your strong suit,” the woman continued, “seems to be neuroscience, including holomentic interpretation, dream analysis and old-fashioned therapy. Your coursework suggests this is also where your true interests lie, multi-talented as you are. Very interesting, especially for a young woman with your…unusual background.”

  As she feared, the compound reared its ubiquitous head again. The woman paused, waiting for a response, but Amira was well versed in deflecting the topic. After months of planning for this moment, an offhand remark would not unseat her.

  “It’s an exciting line of study, and a rewarding one,” Amira said. “We know the body so well, but the mind is something we’re still just beginning to scratch the surface of.”

  “The community you came from is known for its interest in manipulating the minds of its followers,” the woman said with shrewd eyes, scanning through a file on the desk’s monitor. “Hallucinogenic drugs, forced mental conditioning, ideas of unified thought and action. Has that factored into your decision to specialize in holomentic reading?”

  “Only in showing me the difference between science and manipulation,” Amira said quickly. “The place I came from uses lesser technology to control others. I want to help people suffering from past trauma and study consciousness without bias. I want to help people control their own minds, especially where past trauma has made that challenging.”

  “Hmm. And where would you ultimately like to take those skills?”

  Amira pulled herself upright in her seat. “One of the space stations,” she said. “The Carthage or Volta, perhaps, or maybe even the Osiris station someday.”

  The woman snorted audibly. The man raised his eyebrows.

  “The Osiris station?” he said. “Ambitious!”

  “Quite,” the woman said drily. “Very ambitious, especially for a young woman of twenty-five with only seven years of higher education. You are talented, of course. You’ve been through a lot and have a very compelling history, which never hurts in this atypical climate we find ourselves in. But to do research on one of the stations, especially the Osiris, is reserved for the seasoned and the true elite. Only the best in the world go into space, no matter how they score at Placement.”

  Amira nodded. The words stung, but she suspected the woman was not being purposefully harsh – the Academy had never assigned someone so young to the stations. The Volta station’s chief scientist, Victor Zhang, was producing some of his best research at one hundred and forty-six years, and his advanced age was not an anomaly. And it was foolish to mention the Osiris – its notorious secrecy had inflated its myth in the public consciousness, inspiring wild theories about the station’s purpose. An interest in the Osiris may have suggested a speculative mind, not a serious, inquiring one. Regret gnawed at the corners of her thoughts.

  The man, reading her expression, chimed in. “But an excellent long-term goal. With the right inclinations and a willingness to work, you can do anything, and I truly believe that. If you—”

  “After careful review by the board,” the woman continued, “we have found an assignment for you that we believe will truly benefit all. You will remain here in Westport, so you can continue your classes part time, and avoid the usual break that throws so many of your promising colleagues back.”

  Amira stared at her, making eye contact for the first time in the room. “Here in Greater Westport?”

  “Yes,” the woman said with a wry smile. “You’ll like this as well – it’s with a little project underway at the Mendel-Soma building in the Aldwych district. You want to join the elite and push boundaries. The Pandora initiative has a special effort underway to do just that. A small team of geneticists experimenting with embryonic replication technology. No doubt you’ve heard of it?”

  Amira’s heart sank. She held the woman’s gaze, silent as her heart pounded at the base of her throat. Of course she had heard of it. Everyone had. It was all over the news, debated in coffee shops, the focus of the media from every possible volatile angle. The last thing Amira wanted.

  The woman waited for an answer, brows slightly arched. Amira smothered her disappointment and lifted her chin, plastering cool acceptance over a practiced smile. “Pandora. The Cloning Division.”

  * * *

  “You must be very excited,” the man with the koala hair said, trailing after Amira on short, waddling legs. “I’m Perkins, by the way.”

  She managed a smile. “I am.”

  They crossed the winding stairs that led from the Dunning Academy of New Science’s main complex to the courtyar
d, a spacious quadrangle overtaken by lounging students and exotic plants. Amira moved as though the wind were carrying her, dragging her where it pleased. Under the deceptively bright Westport sky, the Osiris space station felt further from her grasp than ever. Before reaching the world above the world, she would have to survive the political minefield of Aldwych. Her lie during her Placement exam would not be her last. She forced herself to keep smiling.

  “Ah, what a wonderful coincidence!” Perkins waved excitedly at a tall man in a white lab coat. “Dr. Barlow, yes? Do you have a minute? This is M. Amira Valdez, one of our best and brightest, and the newest member of your group. Amira, this is Tony Barlow, one of the doctors on the Pandora project.”

  “Nice to meet you.” Barlow nodded distractedly in her direction.

  “A very talented student,” Perkins continued. “Brilliant at holomentic reading. She will be providing some much-needed psychiatric support that I believe Dr. Singh herself had requested.”

  “I may have heard something to that effect,” Barlow said.

  He paused, and Amira realized that he was staring directly at her right hand. She closed her scarred palm reflexively and returned his gaze. His expression was difficult to read, but she was clearly being viewed with new interest.

  “Which Holy Community did you come to us from?” Barlow asked.

  “Ah, yes,” Perkins said before she could answer. “What a story! To escape from that awful place in the desert and end up here. Barely a possession to her name when she arrived, Dr. Mercer told me.”

  “Children of the New Covenant,” Amira replied, careful to keep her voice neutral.

  “I watched a Stream documentary on them,” Perkins said. “Fascinating. The New Covenants are a more diverse lot than the Trinity and Remnant Faithfuls, are they not?”