Laura turns the small monitor back on. Idir’s body is convulsing on the hospital bed. His heartbeat goes through the roof, then he flatlines. Nurses run to Idir’s side and check his pupils. On the large screen, Idir drops to his knees, his body riddled with bullet holes. He tries to say something. Blood gushes from his mouth. He falls backwards.
The control room is silent, except for the heart monitor alarm. Laura is the first one to react.
—He needs a doctor. Get the doctor in there!
A nurse pushes a cart next to Idir’s bed. A doctor walks in. The nurse cuts Idir’s robe open. The doctor grabs the paddles from the cart and everyone stands clear. No change in pulse. The doctor hits him with another charge and Idir’s body jumps. On the large screen, his bloodied corpse moves in unison.
Deep is squeezing Laura’s arm hard, but she can’t feel a thing.
—Come on! Come on, friend! Live!
One more electric shock. Idir’s chest rises as he takes his first breath. Everyone looks at the heart monitor. They feel their own hearts slowing down to the regular beat of the machine. The doctor checks Idir’s vitals, then gives a thumbs-up to the camera.
Deep looks at his hand on Laura’s arm and lets go. She just now notices the pain. Deep puts his hand on her shoulder to get her attention.
—He’ll live?
—Looks that way.
Deep starts crying like a baby. Laura smiles at him.
—Oh, don’t cry. You know what that means, right?
—What?
—We have ourselves a hero!
—A . . . We do, don’t we? Does that mean he . . . ?
—With flying colours.
—He passed?!
—He passed.
Deep senses the weight of the world lifted off his shoulders. He doesn’t feel the rush of victory—perhaps it’s not his to feel—but a soothing sense of order. Idir’s success strengthens Deep’s faith in the universe, his belief in cosmic justice, his conviction that good always triumphs over evil.
—This is control. You can start the awakening.
Laura isn’t easily moved. She’s seen too much in her years as an operator. Yet she is surprised at how happy she feels—for Idir, yes, but mostly for Deep.
—You should go down there.
—What?
—You should go.
—Can I?
—Yeah! Go! Go!
Deep grabs his backpack and is about to leave the room. His thoughts turn to himself.
—What about me? What’s going to happen to me?
—We’ll see. Either way, I think you should be the one to tell him.
Deep smiles. His future is uncertain. He’s proven himself unfit to be an operator, but this is the first time a subject has died during the BVA. They will want to study what happened, gather as much data as they can from Idir’s simulation. They’ll want to talk to Deep. They’ll want to talk to Deep a lot. That might prove difficult if he’s a disgruntled former trainee with an ironclad nondisclosure agreement. More than anything, they won’t want any of this to get out. In the end, it might be better for everyone if Deep continues working here in some capacity. One thing is certain: he has earned himself a place in BVA history. The one whose hero died. Right now, none of it matters. There is only one thing in Deep’s mind.
Idir is a citizen.
9.
MY NAME IS IDIR Jalil, and I’m a citizen.
I own a small dental practice in Bayswater. My wife, Tidir, is a journalist. She writes a weekly column in an online paper. We have two children, Ramzi and Salma. Both are doing very well in school. We are well liked by our neighbours, I think. My wife and I volunteer at the local charity shop. We are a typical middle-class family.
It was a year ago that I took the test for my family and earned us the right to stay. I remember everything about the test itself, every detail, down to the smells, but I have almost no memory of what came after. I remember dying—at least I thought I was dying. I woke up in a hospital bed. There were nurses, doctors. There was a young man trying to tell me things. I would not listen. All I wanted was to keep dying.
I do remember stepping back into the waiting room, seeing my wife, alive. I sobbed like a baby. I couldn’t stop, didn’t try to. I was . . . so happy to see her. The small wrinkles around her eyes. The pores of her skin. She felt undeniably real, and seeing her erased the lingering doubt I had that this was still happening in my head. For a moment, a second or so, I felt like everything was going to be fine, that the dream was over and that our lives would go on as they had before. “So? How did it go?” she asked. I answered with a smile. Then she looked at me and I saw it. Pride. Her eyes were overflowing with it. I felt my soul turn to dust. She was proud of me.
I could not tell her. If anyone found out, we’d be stripped of our rights and sent back to the very place we ran from. Even in a world without consequence, this was not—is not—something I could ever share with her. She wouldn’t understand. Or she would. That is the problem. She would say she doesn’t blame me, that she’d have made the same choice if she were in my place. She would call me courageous, and she would mean all those things because it was all a simulation and none of it was real. It’s easy to forgive something that didn’t happen. But it did. I was there. I was there, and I told someone to shoot her in the head. Virtual or not, it was my reality. What I did, the choices I made . . . I did what I did and I chose what I chose. I did not pretend. The world around me might have been a fairy tale, but I was . . . me. Always me. They could not simulate that.
Every day I try to get better at living with myself. The pills they give me make the guilt bearable, and I take them religiously. If I am alone and absorbed in a book or a movie, I sometimes forget about it all. Tidir understands. She knows I keep something dark from her, but she did the same for us in Teheran and that makes it my right to return the favour. She wants to help in any way she can, but she doesn’t understand that it is her presence I can’t bear. I can’t stand it. The pain, the guilt, her hand on the glass pane. I resent my wife for still loving me. I think less of her because she forgives what I can’t. I think less of myself for feeling that way.
I do what I can to be pleasant, but there is a distance between us, a chasm I dare not traverse. I find things to do when she talks to me—I pick up after the kids, I do the dishes, anything to justify having my back to her. I have not looked her in the eye since the test. I avoid her gaze as best I can. I am afraid she will see right through me and realize what I am. I could not live with that.
There is a darkness in me, now. A monster awakened from a very long sleep. I suppose it was always there, but now it’s running loose. I get angry at things, insignificant things. I snap at Tidir for being kind to me. I scold my children for being children. I choose my words carefully like I would a weapon. I hurt the people I love. I watch it all happen like I would a movie. I do not trust the man in the mirror anymore.