The Soul Continuum (2 page)

Most of this I learned from him, the other Salem Ben, who came to find me seconds after my final resurrection. He told me that in the midst of the confusion and the destruction, the malfunctioning genoplants had created several duplicates of me, he being one of them, and that certain personality traits had been impacted by the damage, which was why his personality was somewhat different from mine. He led me here to this other Soul Sphere, a place I did not even know existed, called the Aberration Sphere, where Keitus Vieta was discovered.

Conveniently, he does not have the time to explain further and is evasive about how I am able to live my own dead life, and why Keitus Vieta was already doing that, and how he seems to know so much about it all. He just wants me to
trust him and, swept up in this whirlwind of information, chaos, and delirium, fresh from the paranoia and psychological wreckage that came from Jamelia's life, I find myself agreeing.

“A wise choice, my friend,” he says, then looks up. “Control core, initiate WOOM protocols. Select subject 9.98768E+14 and immerse”—he slaps my back hard—“this man.”

Subject 9.98768E+14: Select.

Subject 9.98768E+14: Aberration detected.

Subject 9.98768E+14: Override authorized—ID Salem Ben.

Subject 9.98768E+14: Activate. Immersion commences in three minutes.

A stream of black fibers weaves its way from the walls of the sphere to scoop me up toward the waiting chrysalis. I look down at the other Salem as I drift upward, see the glare of his red suit clash against the emerald glow of the Aberration Sphere, and panic for the last time about whether I am doing the right thing. He examines the jewel again, apparently uninterested in my frantic questions and fearful pleas, and puckers his lips as if considering carefully what he should do with the gemstone. In the last few seconds before I am fetched into the WOOM, I see him place the jewel back on Vieta's cane. He nods smugly, satisfied with his decision, looks up at me, then smiles his reptile smile again as he waves good-bye.

“Will you be here when I wake?” I call after him as the lips seal.

“Oh,” he says, “you know what they say, Salem. ‘There's one born every minute,' right?”

A tiny spot of light hovers in front of the WOOM, and an uncomfortable mix of fear and curiosity wells up inside me as I consider what it would mean to live one's own life.

The sparkling dot shoots forward.

The lips of the chrysalis close.

Darkness falls.

The greatest evil one may behold

Is not of dictators, killers, or maniacs,

But of freedom from conscience

The loss of one's soul

M
y mother has changed. I feel it when she tucks me in at night, when her soft palm strokes my forehead, and I hear it in her voice when she whispers gently to me in the dark at my bedside. She asks the same question every night, when Nature has silenced the bay and chirp of the day and the only light shining in through the cottage window comes from gentle moonbeams; she asks when she thinks I am sleeping, when she believes I will not reply—because if I answer yes, she will be grief-stricken, and if I answer no, she will still be grief-stricken. She asks if I see bad things in my dreams. The answer is no. Waking or sleeping, I never see bad things—and besides, I don't dream.

Yes, Mother has changed; I see it in the daytime, too. Not in a way that would be noticed by others but in the way she holds herself when she thinks I am not watching, like the laboratory investigator she killed—she has the same stoop, holding her stomach, her eyes closed and her mouth frowning with the pain. But she never falls like the man did. Instead she sees me looking, then straightens up and puts on a smile.

She told me this would be a new beginning for us. She said, with her teeth gritted, that I should forget our old life and that she would never let anyone come near me again. But all I could do at the time was focus on the teardrop trembling on the end of her nose. Twinkling and perfectly round, it was beautiful. Her fingertips dug so hard into my arms that the bruises were there for a week. She didn't mean to hurt me, I know that, but she was desperate for me to understand, as if the harder she squeezed and the more intensely she stared into my eyes, the better chance she had at projecting her feelings into me. But she knows I am incapable of feeling her fear or distress. I have never known what those emotions are like. I have a unique disease, and I am—as she describes it—“burdened by the curse of perpetual happiness.”

She turned her face away after saying that, and although I hugged her, pressing my cheek into her back, I could not stop her crying. She wants me to understand what grief is like, but if I ever do, she will never forgive herself.

It got worse for her after we moved.

We live in an eco-bubble now. A little hideaway world, no bigger than an asteroid, concealing a population of three hundred and twenty refugees. It is indistinguishable amongst a multitude of—as yet—unpopulated eco-bubbles just like it, skimming the chromosphere of a very special brown dwarf, called Saliel. Its real name is THA197191, but Mother wanted to rename it after my great-grandmother, who was supposed to be a healer. And that is why we came here: for me to be healed.

I don't know if this little world will ever really feel like home, but at least there is an imaging grid surrounding it that makes the eco-bubble seem familiar and safe; there is something called an Absorption Tower powering it. It is over a mile high and draws electricity from the atmosphere to channel it into an underground control center. Sometimes, when the atmosphere is at its most violent, we can see the swirling coppery-green sky through huge storm cracks in the imaging grid just above the tower. Mother says it is the charged reaction of titanium oxide and vanadium oxide with the oxygen in our bubble that makes the sky look that way, but I like to imagine we are living on one tiny space pea amongst thousands, swirling around in a thick boiling soup that's being stirred by a giant star spoon. Except we don't feel the movement or the heat.

Most days, when the storms are calmer and we don't see the real sky, the eco-bubble makes this world look just like our old country home. Through the window I can admire the beach and a line of tall white houses skirting the borders of the grassy plains a mile from shore, a scattering of smooth boulders for the sea foam to froth upon. I can even see gulls circling above them, hunting for scraps. Sometimes it's hard to believe it is all an illusion, created especially for me and others like me, so that the trauma of our treatment will be cushioned by a homey setting. Or so my mother hopes.

“Salomi, come away from the window. It's time for your medication.”

Fake though it is, Mother has that wonderful smile I love so much. There are little dimples on either side of her mouth that are so cute, and her nose wrinkles just a tiny bit. I think, every time I see her, I feel a little bit happier than before, and I love her just a little bit more too.

“Come here.” She has her arms open and she wriggles her fingers in eager anticipation of a hug, and I am only too happy to oblige.

We spend a few seconds in a tight embrace, and then she holds me at arm's length to look at me. “I think you're getting taller.”

“Taller?” I say. “Like this?” And I teeter on tiptoe.

“You're almost as tall as Daddy.”

Her teasing always makes me giggle. My father is very tall. Taller than most other men we know. Or used to know. We don't see many other men now. It's mostly the other sick children my parents rescued.

“Is Daddy coming back soon?”

“Not for a few days. He has to make sure that our presence on Saliel stays secret. Otherwise the government will come looking for us.”

“You mean they aren't already looking for us?”

“I hope not, but without the database audit trail, they won't have a clue where to start, so that's what Daddy is doing. He's erasing it.”

“But isn't that difficult?”

“Very difficult, but Daddy is a very clever man.”

“I suppose he did find this place for us, didn't he?”

“Exactly.” Mother is stroking my hair now, and she drops into a crouch so that she can roll up my sleeve, ready for the syringe.

“I have decided,” I tell her, “that I don't want to call him Daddy anymore. And I don't want to call you Mummy, either. If I was a normal eleven-year-old girl, I would be
having my secondary cerebral implants by now and be connecting to the Central Data Core, like every other adult.”

Mother is no longer looking me in the eye. She is concentrating on the black fluid mixing within the saline feed. “You can call us whatever you like, darling.”

Tension is in her voice, and the smile has gone. I think she doesn't like the idea of me calling her Mother. It reminds her that I am growing up, and when that happens, everything will change. When they diagnosed me with the disease on my second birthday, the doctors did not expect
me to live past seven, but they said I would definitely not make it to thirteen. My parents have been trying to find a cure ever since, and this is what eventually led us here, to Saliel.

After I was diagnosed, my parents managed to find work in Genofect Laboratory 22 on a planet in the neighboring star system that's a lot like Earth. It's just one laboratory among many that contribute to the government's
grand project to create a range of genetically perfect bodies.
It seemed like a good way to find my cure, but now my parents think the government is more interested in studying me than healing me, so with the help of a few other sympathizers, they sneaked me—and a lot of the other children—here to Saliel, home to what is supposed to be the next stage in the genofect project in a few decades' time. Mother says we are just starting the project a little earlier than the government planned. In secret.

“Sharp scratch,” Mother warns me, but she hesitates as the needle rests on my vein.

I rest a finger on the back of her hand. “Wait.”

“Is something wrong?” She pauses to look me in the eye, withdrawing the syringe, and I sense something about her as she waits. More of the masked pain. She hates giving me these injections.

“I want to do it.”

She squints and her lips tighten; then she says, “Can you feel . . . ?”

She is hoping for empathy. She is hoping that I want to do this myself because I can imagine her sorrow at having to be the one who does this. It would be evidence that the treatment is working.

“No, Mother, the treatment hasn't started working yet, but I know you don't like to do it, so I think I should do it myself.”

She nods and looks at the syringe. I think she is trying to work out whether handing it to me is a worse thing than doing it herself. “Are you sure? I mean, are you sure you can't feel anything?”

“I feel happy, like I always do, but I can see
you
don't like doing it.”

She's still thinking about it. “How do you know I don't like it? What does that
mean
to you?”

“Well, you don't do as much when you feel unhappy, and I don't think that's right.”

“So you're just . . . working it out?”

“I suppose so.” But I am no longer sure if this is true. For the first time, I think I feel something. A twinge of what might be called anxiety, a sense that something is wrong, but also a sort of duality, as if I am far away from myself, looking through a window into my mind and feelings, and I wonder if this treatment is starting to work.

Of course, Sartixil is no ordinary drug. It is a catalyst to wake up the tiny experimental nanodrones in my bloodstream. The genofect scientists engineered them to respond to a specific type of electromagnetic radiation abundantly provided by brown dwarfs, but they are made inert when we breathe them in and only reactivated when we use the Sartixil. They are very versatile little robots and aren't just used for repairing cells. Before coming to Saliel, Mother reprogrammed some of them to build and configure our eco-bubble. She is even more clever than Father.

Mother breathes hard through her nose, and she still hasn't taken her eyes off the syringe. Finally she says, “No. I should do this. It's my responsibility.”

“I really don't mind.”

She smiles her fake smile again, lifts my arm, and without another word, jabs the needle into my vein. There is a sharp sting followed by a hot rush through the length of my arm, then a sudden dizziness that makes me feel sick. I am told that all the other children start crying when this happens, but the little burst of emotion that fills my head works differently for me, and I do what I usually do. I giggle.

But something else stirs in my mind. Something is not right.

“There!” Mother says, rubbing my arm. “Are you all right?”

“Yes.” I grin at her. “I feel a bit sick.”

She nods and gestures to the bathroom. “I'll get you some milk.”

“I'll be better in a minute or two. It passes quicker every time. Can I go out after? I think the new girls will be in the park this afternoon.”

“Only if you keep your locater patch active and only if you're sure you're feeling steady on your feet.”

She helps me to stand before I go to the bathroom. The room is spinning, and there's a buzzing in my head as though a circuit is shorting out inside my brain. I always imagine that this is the little robots waking up and zapping my neurons, but I probably wouldn't be able to feel that.

“Need me to stay with you?”

I do. Something is happening in me, as if I'm fighting back a rising sense of panic. “No. I'm fine. Honestly.”

Why did I tell her that?

T
he town clock clangs its four-o'clock chime as I run excitedly
past it toward the path that winds into the park, but I skid to a halt before reaching it. I almost missed them because of the bright summer sun in my eyes, but I catch sight of tiny red and black dots splashed upon the leaf of a low-hanging branch. I gasp as I study them. Ladybugs! I think the collective name is
loveliness
. I have always wanted to see real ladybugs. They died out on Earth about seven hundred years ago, but Mother had antique books amongst the memorabilia passed down to her through the generations, and some of them had these pretty little insects painted on their spines. She knows I like them. These are not real, of course, but my mother must have programmed them into the algorithms before we arrived.