The following morning, Cynda found a box underneath the pagoda. It was low and black. She sat next to it for a long time, wondering why it wasn’t making any noise. Finally, she touched it. There was a beep and an image flashed into the air above it, causing her to rear back in fright. When nothing else happened, she tapped one of the colorful keys projected onto the wooden platform. Another beep.
If all it did was beep, that wasn’t going to help her. She grew restless. Perhaps she should go back to her room and stare at the line on the machine. It was all blue now. Morrisey had told her that was a good thing.
Instead, she concentrated on her name.
“Jacynda…Lassiter.” She felt proud that she didn’t have to look at the tattered piece of paper in her pocket anymore. Maybe if she said it enough times, it’d feel right.
“Query?” a melodic voice asked. It came from the box.
“What is a query?” she asked.
“A question, inquiry, or quiz,” the box answered.
“Question.” What kind of question should she ask? “Who is Jacynda Lassiter?”
“Jacynda Alice Lassiter, born 9 December 2028, second child and only daughter of Dr. Harvey Lassiter and Alice Lassiter, née Jenkins.” The voice droned on, telling her of illnesses and education, of experiences and lovers she could not remember.
While the box spoke of someone named Christopher Stone, an image appeared on the screen. His face made her throat tighten and her chest ache. She had no idea why. By the time the voice ended, Cynda was in tears, floods of them washing down her face and tumbling onto her lap.
“Miss Lassiter?” She blinked to see the somber man standing near the edge of the sand. He looked worried. “What has upset you?”
She didn’t respond immediately, wiping away the tears with the back of her fist. He stripped off his shoes with more haste than usual and then hurried across the sand. When he sat on the pillow next to her, he offered a comforting smile.
“If you want to talk about what has distressed you, I’d be happy to listen. If you prefer silence, I will respect that.”
She sniffled. “I was asking the…” she pointed at the box, unsure of what to call it, “and it was telling me about Jacynda Lassiter.”
“That’s what made you sad?” he asked.
“Yes. I don’t remember any of it.” Another tear tracked down her cheek.
Her companion’s stiff posture eased. “Right now, the computer remembers it all for you. In time, you won’t need to ask it about Jacynda Lassiter because you’ll know who you are.”
Maybe he was right. The voice had gone on for a long time, telling of cities she’d visited and people she’d met. People she couldn’t remember.
“You’ve been all over the world in so many centuries. I envy you that.”
“What’s envy?” she asked.
“It means I wish I could have had a life as rich as yours.”
She pointed at the box. “Can I ask it another question?”
“Certainly.”
“Who is Theo…” She frowned, the name gone.
“Morrisey,” her companion completed with a chuckle.
The box answered instantly, spewing out information like a volcano. The voice kept going on and on.
“Too much,” she said. The box kept talking. “Stop!” It didn’t.
“End query,” Morrisey ordered. The voice halted. He chuckled. “You were testing me, weren’t you?”
She nodded. “I don’t know who to trust.”
“That is wise. Judge for yourself.”
She gave him a sidelong glance. She’d expected him to say she should trust him.
As if he knew what she was thinking, he explained, “You are rebuilding your mind. It is up to you to form your own opinions. It would be too easy for me to tell you what to believe, but then you wouldn’t be Jacynda Lassiter.”
That seemed right. “Can I have some more of the spicy orange tea?”
“That can be arranged.” He thought for a moment and then added, “I’ll put something on the computer for you. It’ll be like a game. You can look at a picture and match it with a word or a name.”
“Will it be fun?” she asked, unsure.
“I’ll make sure it is.”
“No beeping. I don’t like that.”
“I’ll see to it,” he confirmed with a grin.
Cynda rose and walked out onto the sand. Dropping onto her knees, she began to trace in it with an index finger.
He knelt beside her. “Do you like drawing in the sand?”
She nodded. “It doesn’t move. Maybe I can fix it.”
“The sand doesn’t move,” he murmured to himself, as if that were a revelation. “And it should, at least for you.”
“Why?”
“The sand seems to move for you because you’re a time sensitive, you feel it passing more acutely than the rest of us. Or at least you did.”
“Why?”
Morrisey looked chagrined. “It’s very hard to explain, especially with the way you are right now.”
He fetched the wooden stick. It was part of a pair he’d given her to eat the strange food that he said would help heal her brain.
“Maybe this will work better.”
Holding it in her hand, she began to draw. Nothing special at first, just lines. If something wasn’t right, she smoothed it over with the palm of her hand. Then she jammed the stick into the sand and began to scoop the white particles into big mounds. She could make anything she wanted and if it wasn’t right, she could do it again.
When she looked up, Morrisey was gone. Sitting on the platform was a teapot and a cup. She would stay and drink the tea until the sun went away. Maybe the dragons would crawl down from their perches and write notes to each other in the glowing letters on the box that beeped.
~??~??~??~
Ralph Hamilton glared at him from behind those round glasses of his. Morrisey prepared himself for the barrage: Fulham had already warned him that Miss Lassiter’s closest friend was not dealing well with her diagnosis.
“She refuses to talk to me. Is that your doing?” Hamilton demanded.
“No. It’s her decision.”
The man slumped a bit, as if he’d expected another answer. “She will be okay, won’t she? Like she used to be?”
“She’ll never be the same woman we knew.”
“She has to be,” Hamilton protested.
Morrisey gave him a sharp look. “Don’t assume that different is worse.”
“She was different enough to start with,” the man shot back.
“Yes, and now she’ll be different in a new way. Perhaps it will be to her advantage.”
“I hear you’re ignoring TPB’s psychiatrist and won’t let her take the ARD meds.”
“He is just following standard procedure, and we both know that Miss Lassiter is anything but off-the-rack. He is discounting the strongest element in our favor.”
“Which is?” his employee asked skeptically.
“Her inner fortitude. She’s not going to give in. That’s not her style.”
“What if she doesn’t find her way back from whatever happy place her brain went? What then?”
“I will ensure that she is in a safe environment, free of financial concerns for the remainder of her days.”
Hamilton shook his head. “Spending the rest of her life building sand castles?” he murmured. “That’s just not Cynda.”
Morrisey couldn’t help but smile. “Which is why, Mr. Hamilton, I still have hope.”