The Sentient Read online

  The lights in the train car flashed. A group of tourists let out a stream of curses.

  “All Third Eye devices have been deactivated as we enter the Aldwych District,” a mechanical voice chirped through the speakers over outraged cries of protest. “In accordance with the Station Alliance Ratification, all camera and video functionality is prohibited. Have a nice day.”

  One by one, the lights in the passengers’ eyes flickered out, leaving their pupils dull and unseeing.

  The snow had turned to sleet by the time they reached the Aldwych station. The train car hummed with anticipation, tourists jostling for a view of Aldwych’s main square. On the other side of the car’s windows, commuters in lab coats of various shades streamed silently toward the main complex.

  Upon exiting the station, Amira paused despite the strengthening sleet at Aldwych Square. A hand touched her shoulder and D’Arcy waved goodbye before walking toward the Soma building. Amira lingered, as D’Arcy must have sensed she would, to take in the imposing semi-circle of skyscrapers that marked the heart of Aldwych. Amira allowed herself a moment of reflection amid the throng of tourists. She once milked cows and received beatings when hair escaped from her veil. Had she not managed to board that train years ago, she would be another compound congregant, writhing under the effects of Chimyra in hopes of becoming no one, a cog in a machine of oppression. In less than an hour, she would officially become a scientist of Aldwych.

  The Mendel-Soma Complex, which housed the Pandora project, could be seen all over Westport as part of the Aldwych skyline, but nothing did justice to the scale of the building up close. While most of the surrounding skyscrapers shone despite the overcast skies, encased in effervescent light blue or glassy white, the Soma had grown dull under the abrasion of time, the murky color of black onyx. The Soma’s two separate buildings coiled around one another like strands of DNA, twisting until they eventually broke apart and splayed upward into the sky. As they separated, the two towers remained connected by a series of cylindrical walkways. The diverging towers supported the Soma’s highest level, a rotating, disc-shaped structure topped by an antenna that disappeared into the clouds. The spinning disc reminded Amira of a holomentic machine.

  Angry shouts cut through the wind and rain, through which a crowd of protesters lined both sides of the complex’s entrance. They waved signs with the usual anti-cloning slogans, some accompanied by gruesome drawings of mangled infants, a vivid imagining of botched clones, along with lurid caricatures of a woman who could only be Valerie Singh. The protesters leaned fiercely over the fences meant to contain them, waving fists and shouting at the hunched figures who rushed into the building. Locals, Westport natives who had rejected Aldwych’s official line on the pioneering benefits of human cloning. The compounds, as Julian had noted many times on his radio show, had been noticeably silent about the cloning attempt, despite the use and deaths of their former congregants. No formal statement of condemnation or the usual Stream propaganda. Their silence on the matter left a dark shadow in Amira’s thoughts.

  “A warm welcome on your first day,” a soft voice said to her right. Stunned, she turned to face Tony Barlow.

  “Dr. Barlow!” she gasped. “I didn’t see you—”

  “A bad habit of mine, I’m afraid, Miss Valdez, making myself known at the wrong moment,” he said. He raised an oversized umbrella above them.

  Amira flinched slightly at the gendered title but accepted the shelter from the downpour.

  “Apologies, I meant to say M. Valdez,” he added with a knowing look, exaggerating the ‘em’ sound before her surname. “Bad habit from another time. I personally don’t see the need for this gender-neutral language, but it’s a good habit to have in a research environment, I suppose. Shall we go in?”

  The last person to refer to Amira as ‘Miss’ was a compound Elder, right before administering a beating. Amira cringed when the crack of the cane across her back resonated in her memory, but she followed Barlow toward the Soma building.

  They advanced toward the entrance under a hail of slogans and waving placards. Most of the demonstrators who lined the walkway screamed nonsensically at tourist and scientist alike, but a single figure to her right caught Amira’s eye: a tall, dark-haired man whose eyes sank into his gaunt face. He locked his gaze on her as she passed through the gauntlet. A cold knot formed in the pit of her stomach, accompanied by a strange ringing in her ears. She did not recognize the man, but had experienced the same cold, devouring glare many times over in the compound, the look men cast upon the young, the female, the minds and bodies they could control but never own in entirety.

  “Is it always like this?” she asked Barlow over the roar of the crowd.

  “It’s become worse in the last month,” he said casually, staring ahead. “After the deaths of the previous subjects, it has obviously dominated the news. But it’s neither here nor there. It’s a free country, and these people have the right to their convictions and fears, unfounded as they are. I have some business in the mezzanine to attend to, but I’m sure you can find your way up. It’s floor 235 – top floor. It’s good you’re early, you’ll have to go through quite a bit of security for your first day. No one is allowed in who isn’t meant to be there.”

  * * *

  Under the guidance of Naomi, the project’s animated, pink-haired secretary, Amira stood behind a wide glass window of the 235th floor’s main laboratory, where Subject #42 lay in deep sleep. A collection of monitors near her bed indicated steady vitals. Above a circular platform in the center of the room, a hologram displayed the swirling colors and occasional flashing images of the conscious mind at rest.

  The subject looked very young, barely into adulthood, with straight, deep-red hair that framed a delicate, heart-shaped face. One of only three subjects who successfully conceived during the cloning initiative, and the only one still alive. Though she was beautiful by any standard, her beauty was more interesting than striking, her face a patchwork of sharp angles and softness. Her brows were furrowed slightly, and her small mouth turned downward in stern contemplation. The round heaviness of her abdomen overwhelmed her tiny frame.

  Naomi handed Amira a portable screen. A moving picture of the subject’s face sat at the top of the screen alongside the name: ‘Hull, Rozene. Mendel-Soma Complex Subject No. 42’. The text below her image read:

  Demographics

  Age: 19

  Sex: Female, XX

  Gender: Woman-conforming

  Birthplace: New Mexico, USA

  (Trinity Compound)

  Alternate names: Unknown

  Consents given: Signed. All necessary medical treatment authorized.

  Medical History

  Allergies: Penicillin, Cats

  Prior pregnancies: None

  Pre-birth DNA modifications: None

  Possibility of cancer, Alzheimer’s, heart disease in later years due to lack of preventative care at subject’s place of birth.

  Background and Mental Evaluation

  Subject admitted to occasional alcohol use after moving to Westport but denies experimentation with illicit drugs. Precise sexual history is unknown, but interview responses suggest that Subject is around 75–80 per cent heterosexual. Subject was raised in an isolated religious compound, known as the Trinity Compound, where physical and emotional abuse is known to occur, although subject has refused to provide details on either account. Despite apparent trauma at references to her upbringing, subject occasionally expresses religious views and ideations, including fears of an afterlife in a series of parallel dimensions known as the ‘Otherworlds’ (a prevalent belief in compound life). The affect ranges from blunt to volatile emotional fluctuations, including anger and depression. Possible bipolar personality, category 6, with self-aggrandizing tendencies. Class 3 suicide watch: Constant monitoring and periodic restraints are recommended.

  Amira gra
bbed a pair of goggles hanging near the door.

  “Are you going in already? She’s asleep,” Naomi said.

  “I’d like to start by observing her dream patterns,” Amira said. “If there’s no issue with that.”

  A panel of machinery and monitors flanked the sleeping subject from both sides. The holomentic device stood apart from the other equipment. The machine’s appearance was deceptively simple, a box-like device with a wide, spinning, disc-shaped platform at its top where holographic images were displayed from a subject’s subconscious. Two interactive screens protruded from its sides, like a pair of outstretched hands waiting to be touched. Its reach, however, extended beyond its unassuming exterior. With the newer holomentic models, Amira could change its settings at her mental command, make the holographic disc follow her movements or even use the new submergence command to enlarge the holographic display, filling every corner of a room with the sights, sounds and sensations of a person’s deepest, darkest memories. Amira pictured the shed of her Placement Day exam filling this room with its dusty, lightless oppression, and resisted a shudder.

  Amira ran her fingers lightly across the reader’s many buttons and dials, letting their familiarity bring her a semblance of calm – the first calm she’d felt in days. This was what she knew; within the sterile confines of the ward’s glass walls, she was in control. Exhaling deeply, she pulled up a chair beside the subject.

  She pulled the goggles over her eyes, took another deep breath and extended her hand. Sensor to me, she thought, enunciating each word in her head, and a robotic arm glided across the table and into her open palm. She attached the arm to the reader; red wires ran from the center of the machine to a series of sensory pads placed around the subject’s head. She flipped a switch on the monitor and thought, Read.

  The kaleidoscope of color began to move and rotate at a faster pace above the holographic platform, twisting into a series of blurred, indecipherable shapes. Limbic pre-conscious, Amira thought, and the sensor responded to her command, humming softly as the sensory pads on the subject’s head glowed. A haphazard reel of images materialized on the hologram platform in rapid succession – the moon glowing over a desert landscape, a blurred figure with a stethoscope, a large ship in the dark. There were sounds as well, though they were faint; high-pitched laughter, footsteps, the growl of an all-terrain engine.

  Amira’s throat tightened at the familiar sound and she ran her thumbs across the palms of her hands. The holographic images had taken a reddish tint – the color of fear.

  “Let’s submerge,” she muttered softly. “Limbic pre-conscious, REM dream state.” The sensor obliged, and the hologram spread beyond its platform across the room, covering the floor until Amira stood in the center of a small classroom with paneled walls and uneven floorboards. A dirt-caked window revealed a dry, baked landscape of red sand and a cloudless sky. Though it was an optical illusion, Amira blinked several times to orient herself to the shift in her surroundings.

  A small girl with dark red hair stood at the head of the class before rows of young children, none older than ten. Two adults, a man and a woman, flanked this young version of Rozene Hull. The man swung a strange, glowing baton at his side. The older woman, short with burly arms, spoke in a faint, distant voice, as though she were trapped underwater.

  Raise auditory sensors, Amira thought, and the woman’s voice rang clear.

  “Recite it again, Rozene, without swaying your arms this time,” the older woman said. “Keep them still.”

  “It’s the only way I can remember,” the young girl replied in a small voice.

  “These are Elder Cartwright’s words!” the teacher bellowed. “How they are said matters. They must be spoken with reverence, and you will say them that way, from memory, if we must stay here all day. Again!”

  The girl exhaled and raised her chin. “And from the ashes of the Cataclysm, the Elder of Elders found peace within the Conscious Plane, becoming one with all things good and evil. Through this tr-transcendence, the Plane gifted him with Chimyra, so that others may see Creation’s glory, and a new c-covenant was born in the desert….” Her arms began to sway back and forth as she searched for the next phrase.

  “Arms, again!” the woman shouted, and in a swift motion, the baton struck Rozene on her shoulder with a hideous cracking sound. The girl shrieked at the electric jolt and dropped to her knees, clutching her arm as, to Amira’s horror, a deep crimson stain spread across her shoulder. Rozene gave a terrified wail as the man pulled her back to her feet and pressed her arms tightly to her sides. Amira’s shoulders twitched involuntarily, as though shaking off the sting herself. That weapon was new to her, although similar punishments existed in the New Covenant Compound.

  “Now continue,” the woman said in a cool, threatening voice.

  The young Rozene hiccupped and sobbed, looking around desperately for help that didn’t exist, not within the Trinity Compound or the empty miles around it.

  “And through Chimyra, the people opened doors that only the f-faithful could pass through, and saw the g-glory of the Nearhaven, w-where the virtuous may find life after life.”

  Amira approached the center of the classroom, passing directly through the children in their desks. They sat in frozen silence, adopting the stillness of animals sensing a predator’s gaze. Nearby, the sleeping subject twitched slightly, audibly muttering the words in time with the frightened, younger version of herself, and Amira realized that she too was joining in the prayer out loud, one she learned years ago in a similar classroom, the prayer that united the compounds in the height of the Drought Wars.

  “And to those who turned away from the natural order of the universe, and our destiny among the stars, they w-will find a world, a Neverhaven, more terrible t-than imagining, shadeless under skies where the Cataclysm rages without end. Waveless, where the waters are filled with terrible poison. The ground shall crack b-beneath their feet and their souls torn asunder, a terrible – a-a terrible and righteous r-retribution of rock…and thunder.”

  The classroom scene faded under a haze of blue – the color of relief and tranquility – and the brightly lit laboratory returned to view. The holographic platform turned pitch black. The lab assistant, Naomi, approached from her silent corner of the room.

  “She’s now in the delta stage of sleep,” Amira said softly. “A deeper level. We need to submerge further into her consciousness to see what she sees.”

  She turned the dial and the hologram began to punctuate with crackling flashes of red and blue light. Sounds echoed around the room, distant and indecipherable. Laughter or shouts, mixed with the faint pulse of chanting. Then once again, new sights materialized in the hologram, but unlike the classroom scene that unfolded moments ago, they were blurred around the edges and never spanned the breadth of the room.

  “Record,” Amira whispered, hoping that the scanners at the Soma were sophisticated enough to capture the rapidly shifting images. They flashed into focus and transformed into a whirling dervish of noise and color. Scenes appeared and disappeared in seconds – an old man digging beneath a full moon; a doctor’s office; a disembodied pair of legs strapped into stirrups. Next, a large auditorium ribbed with sensory screens that reached to the high ceiling, packed with men, women and children in white robes, writhing and sobbing under the obvious effects of Chimyra, their fingers crooked and bent at odd, claw-like angles. A tall Elder stood at a podium, his mouth moving without words.

  Amira tried to zoom in on the preaching figure, but the sobs turned to shrieks and the floor collapsed beneath the crowd, sending them tumbling and falling through darkness that gave way to a canvas of stars. The writhing figures floated silently in space.

  “You see,” the Elder’s voice boomed through the void, “how we stand together in the space between our universe and the next one. Our worlds are like beads on a necklace, and through Chimyra, we stand on the thread that bi
nds. Sin and selfishness infect this holy place! It rots us from the inside. Do you faithless wish to see the punishment that the Conscious Plane promises for sinners? Look!”

  The stars swelled until they became bursts of fire. The blackness of space gave way to a landscape stripped of trees, fierce smoke seeping from cracks in the ground. The wreckage of an airplane loomed before the now-screaming crowd, burnt bodies crawling from its sides.

  The sleeping woman jerked her head from side to side and Amira closed her eyes. When the Elders sought to frighten the compound faithful with glimpses of the Neverhaven, they invoked iconic images from the Cataclysm – thousands of planes falling from the sky, into oceans, farms and cities. Though Amira had not been born at the time of the Cataclysm or the years of war that followed, she felt as though she had lived it, many times over, as this sleeping subject had done during the Passage Ceremony.

  The plane wreckage burst into flames, the scattered bodies hissing as they dissolved into the ground. Screams rose into the air.

  Suddenly, pulsing flashes of red light and a loud buzzing filled the room.

  “What’s happening?” Naomi cried.

  “She’s waking up,” Amira said. She pulled off her goggles and turned the machine off. “The red tones indicate a high state of fear, so she’s pulling herself out before the dream escalates.”

  The images on the holomentic machine vanished.

  The subject’s eyes opened and she drew several sharp breaths as though emerging from icy water. She leaned upright, searching wildly around the room before recognition set in. Her dark blue eyes fixed coldly on Amira.

  “Who are you?” she demanded. Her voice was high, almost girlish, but with a harsh, ringing quality.

  “Rozene, calm down, no one’s hurting you,” Naomi said in hushed tones, grabbing Rozene’s wrists with clearly practiced speed. At her touch, Rozene lunged forward, grasping furiously for the wires fixed to her temples.