Anomaly (28 page)
Rhen’s life may be saved. But I have just sacrificed the lives of everyone else I love in order to save her.
I pray I have not made the wrong choice.
I
cannot make my fingers play the notes. I have been sitting at the piano for half an hour. I can’t play scales, can’t play chords, can’t play anything. Berk is silent. Assistants are everywhere, so I know we cannot talk about this, we cannot go into the practice room. His eyes are willing me to play. He is resigned. He is at peace.
I am not.
Berk walks over to me and leans down, his mouth inches from my ear. “John once told me that the Designer said, ‘The truth will set you free.’” He pulls away and arranges the music in front of me. If the Assistants noticed the exchange, they do not say anything.
“The truth will set you free.”
In choosing not to tell the truth, I have certainly experienced the opposite of freedom. But wasn’t it right to conceal the truth of my relationship with Berk? Of the surgery’s failure? So much damage would have occurred if I had revealed those truths.
Damage that will occur anyway now, with consequences that could be even worse than what they might have been had I been honest from the start.
“Are you ready to begin the recording?” Berk looks at me and nods.
I close my eyes. I have not felt the Designer’s presence the last few times I have tried to pray. Is it because I have wanted him to help make my deception a success? Would he answer that prayer? I try again, this time asking him to give me the strength to be free, to be truthful. No matter the cost.
And I feel him. He is here. He is with me, helping me. Despite my lies, despite my trying to manipulate circumstances and come up with my own solutions, he is here.
I nod to Berk, and he attaches the probes to me and to the piano. With each touch, he communicates love and hope and faith. I am not alone. I was designed for a purpose. The Designer works in impossible situations. He has done it before. I choose to believe he will do it again. I ask him to play through my fingers, to bring life and freedom to my friend, to me. To use my gifts to help the State.
And I play. If this is my last time to touch a piano on this earth, I vow to make it my best. I will not hold back. I play a way for Rhen to get out of her simulation. I play my love for the Designer, my love for Berk and for John. I play faith and truth, and I pray that the Scientists will see that and know that in their
desire to maintain peace at all costs, they have removed from the world what the Designer never intended to be removed.
I am crying as I play, but I don’t bother to try to hide the tears. The Scientists will know soon enough that I am not playing from repressed memory. I want them to know. I want them to see how beautiful feeling and loving is.
I know I have never played so well. I have never felt so connected to an instrument. I am not just doing what the Scientists designed me to do. I am doing what the Designer designed me to do. This may very well be the purpose John told me I was made for. And so I play.
And the truth sets me free.
A
n Assistant comes for me. He doesn’t speak as we take the long walk from my room to Dr. Loudin’s laboratory. I recorded my music yesterday. When I finished, as I wiped the tears from my eyes, an Assistant began tapping on his pad. I am sure he was alerting Dr. Loudin and Dr. Williams of my status, my deceit. I am also sure those two Scientists were watching the cameras in the performance pod, seeing my reaction, my emotion. They knew. Their response was immediate. The Assistant looked from his pad to me and frowned.
“Dr. Loudin requests you return the patient to her room,” he said to Berk.
“I have not finished compressing the file.”
The Assistant’s blank stare revealed nothing. “Dr. Loudin says that will not be necessary. This test has been deemed a failure.”
I looked at Berk. The freedom I felt in listening to the Designer, in trusting him, was so much greater than anything I had felt before. I no longer feared the Scientists’ power.
Berk walked me back to my room and held me before I went back inside. We didn’t care that cameras were watching us, that Assistants might come by and see. We didn’t bother going to the stairwell. We held each other in the open, defying the Scientists’ rules. There was no purpose in continuing the pretense.
“I love you, Thalli.” Berk whispered the words in my ear, and I repeated them to him.
I visited John last night before I went to the sleeping platform. I told him everything, and he hugged me and assured me I made the right choice. He shared more of the Designer’s words with me, words about heaven. It is a wonderful place. And there will be no tears there, he said, because there is nothing to cause tears. There is only joy and peace and worship. I found myself longing for this place. Ready to go.
“I have to admit, though,” John said, smiling, “I’ll be disappointed if you get there first.”
I slept better than I have slept in weeks. Even knowing this might be my last day on earth, knowing I have sentenced myself—and possibly my friends—to death. The truth has set me free. I know that whatever will happen is part of the Designer’s plan, and I can trust him to make far better decisions than I ever could.
The Assistant is walking quickly, and we are in Dr. Loudin’s laboratory before I realize we have even reached his floor. The door opens and I see Rhen, still attached to the probes. Berk is in the observation chamber. Dr. Loudin doesn’t look at me. His mouth is set in a tight line. Dr. Williams is working, her head down, fingers flying.
I enter the observation chamber and Berk motions me to him, his hand holding mine even before I am seated. He squeezes my hand and we look ahead.
“Why are we here?”
“Dr. Loudin changed his mind.” Berk speaks quietly. “He realized we were too close to a solution to give up.”
“Even though he knows about me?”
“About
us
.” Berk squeezes my hand again. “He called me back to the performance pod late last night and had me complete the file compression so we could attempt the simulation with the new music.”
I look at Berk closer. There are bags under his eyes.
“And if it works?”
Berk shakes his head. “I don’t think there is any hope that we will be allowed to live. But he will keep us alive until this test is over.”
Berk will be annihilated? My heart constricts. Surely not. Surely they wouldn’t sacrifice him because of me. I refuse to believe that.
“And Rhen?”
“I don’t know.” Berk sighs. “She has done nothing wrong, and she is no longer sick. Hopefully they will find that her logic is too useful to destroy.”
The screen in front of Rhen is still black. Her brain is no
longer lit up. Just a few spots of color. She is sleeping, mercifully unaware that she is stuck inside a dark simulation.
And then the screen lights up. The music from yesterday plays again. Rhen wakes and is caught again in the structure she assembled. It is vibrating, the synthesized notes humming, and then the music changes. It is the music I recorded yesterday in the performance pod. A light comes from the corner of the simulation, brighter than the notes Rhen assembled from the first simulation. The light changes into a door.
Rhen opens the door and the music is only sound. The notes aren’t in this room. I am there. With Berk. We are in Pod C. He is holding my face, looking into my eyes. The scene is so intimate, I am upset that others are watching. These moments are ours. But this is the only way Rhen can return.
The music plays louder and Rhen looks around, assessing the situation. She knows where she is, but she doesn’t know why Berk and I are there, doesn’t understand what we are doing, why we won’t speak to her. She walks from cube to cube and all are empty, except for the one that has been set up for my surgery.
She bends down and touches the bare floor in the living area. When she stands, the couch is there.
Dr. Loudin steps forward. Rhen is adjusting the reality in there, the same way she adjusted the reality in the music. She moves around the living area, tables and chairs coming up from the floor. The image of her brain is once again lit up, all colors, all over. Dr. Williams is frozen, her eyes watching Rhen.
Rhen is calm. Logical. I can see she is trying to understand where she is and what is happening. She looks back toward the music room. She retraces her steps until she is there again. She
knows she must find a way from there, through the pod, back to the laboratory. She understands that she is trapped in this simulation.
She reaches up to grasp the treble clef in both hands. It is light but it is huge. She lifts it above her head, pulls back, and hurls it with all her might toward Pod C. The entire side of the pod crashes in. But we don’t hear the crash. We only hear the music. Notes from the music room drift into Pod C. Yesterday’s music combines with today’s. It should sound horrible. But it doesn’t. Rhen knows something I do not. The music fits. Yesterday’s music is played an octave lower. It is the accompaniment to today’s melody.
Of course. How did I not know that?
My melody plays of love and faith, what I was thinking of when I composed it. But the other piece, even though written to be technically superior, filled with as many differing notes and keys and rhythms as possible, still tells a story.
The music drifts out of the pod toward the Scientists’ pod. Rhen reaches for a half note, stretches its stem, and sits on it like a floating chair. It takes her directly to the pod, the other notes following. She floats up, outside the pod, until she is outside this room. She points the stem of the half note toward the wall, pushes it forward. She breaks the wall from the outside. She is here, in her chair, probes attached to her head.
And then she wakes up.
R
hen is gasping for air, trying to stand, brushing invisible debris from her shirt.
Dr. Williams rushes to remove the probes before Rhen is injured. Dr. Loudin is tapping intently into his pad, trying, no doubt, to make sense of what just happened, to find the code that allowed Rhen to move from subconscious to conscious thought.
Rhen stands and turns around to see Berk and me. She is confused. I want to go out, but Berk holds me tightly to his side. “Wait.”
“All of you may leave.” Dr. Loudin dismisses the Assistants
with a wave. He walks to the observation chamber and opens the door, motioning us out.
Berk never lets go of my hand. We stand and walk into the laboratory.
“Sit there.” Dr. Loudin points to a couch in the corner of the room. Dr. Williams calls to him, pad in hand, and the pair exit. The door slams behind them, the metal echoing in the large room.
“What happened?” Rhen rubs her head, smoothing back her hair from where the probes had been.
“What do you remember?” Berk turns so he can see Rhen, who is seated on my right.
“A room with music.” Rhen’s eyes are far away. “Darkness. Then Pod C. But it was empty. Until I . . .”
Rhen shakes her head. What happened is so illogical, she cannot even bring herself to speak of it.
“You made the furniture appear,” I finish for her.
“But that is impossible.”
“It was a simulation,” Berk says.
“What?”
Berk explains the simulation and the test, the experiment to find a connection between logic and music.
“But how did my being in the simulation help determine that connection?” Rhen asks.
“Dr. Loudin has been studying the brain for years. He applied one of his programs to your simulation.”
“And what did he find?”
“I am sure he is discussing that with Dr. Williams right now.” Berk looks at the closed door.
“And I am sure he won’t bother sharing those results with us.” I lean back.
“We will be annihilated,” Rhen says. She isn’t upset or angry. Just stating facts.
“Unless they need your assistance in the decoding.” Berk rubs my hand with his thumb.
“What are you doing?” Rhen leans over and sees my hand in Berk’s.
I want to explain that we are in love. I want her to know what love is and where it comes from, to break through her logic and help her find emotions. I am sure they are somewhere in her, suppressed, yes, but not gone. Her loyalty is proof enough that she has some feelings. She has just never allowed herself to connect with them.
But I don’t have time to tell her anything because the door is opening and the two Scientists are returning, huge smiles on both their faces.
“While we commend you both on a job well done”—Dr. Loudin replaces his pad on the desk—“we regret to inform you that your assistance is no longer needed.”
“Of course,” Rhen says. “I am pleased to have been of service.”
“You were of great service,” Dr. Williams says, still smiling. “With this data, we are well on our way to being able to access the subconscious brain. There are so many possibilities from there. I am certain we will be able to use this to discover a solution to the oxygen problem.”
Berk steps forward. “Then why not keep them here? Continue to use them?”