“Okay!” Rita surrendered unconditionally. Good cows avoid the electric fence; there’s plenty of juicy grazing in the middle of the meadow without risking any nasty shocks. Not that she was taking the doctor’s denial as anything other than confirmation, but some fictions were best preserved. “What do you want me to do today?”
“That’s better,” Dr. Lane muttered, apparently unaware of her vocalization as she poked at her tablet. Then, louder, she continued: “We’ve got a bunch more basics to go over this morning, then this afternoon we’ll get you weighed, run a bunch of bloods, take your first baseline MRI, and start you fasting this evening. Tomorrow morning we’ll do the lumbar puncture—then in the afternoon, we’ll start the cognitive tests. And the day after tomorrow is your big day, starting with a visit from the judge who’s going to swear you in and sign your court order, and then the second lumbar puncture…”
*
Off-white walls, gray plastic floor, recessed overhead lighting, and no windows.
A hospital bed, with fancy powered adjustable motors. A chirping bedside monitor with a fingertip clip to measure her blood oxygen levels and a display showing her ECG trace, relayed wirelessly from the skin sensors taped to her torso. An IV drip. In a wardrobe in the corner of the windowless room, her suitcase and clothing and personal effects.
There was, Rita thought, an ancient symbolism embedded in the modern pattern. The liminal soul suspended in the antechamber of death. First-dynasty Egyptian princesses would have recognized her situation, but wondered at the absence of canopic jars. Eighteenth-century plantation heiresses might have questioned the lack of leeches and cupping.
Not that Rita was doing too much thinking. The first day had tired her out, with a whiplash segue from Dr. Lane’s high-velocity briefing into uncharted medical guinea pig territory. She’d given blood and urine samples, stool samples, weight and height and then 3-D morphological imaging measurements, and finally been subjected to a noisy, borderline-claustrophobic hour in a full-body MRI machine. For dinner, they gave her clear soup and coffee with no milk.
The second day started with a sedative, and went rapidly downhill from there.
On the third day, she’d awakened dizzy and lethargic, as if with a Valium hangover. They’d then put her in a wheelchair and brought her into an office. She’d haltingly echoed back an oath, with her hand on a book, to a hawk-faced man in a black gown. He asked her the questions Dr. Lane and Colonel Smith had told her to expect, then announced that he could see no reason not to issue the requested order. Then they stuck a cannula in the back of her left hand and her day dissolved into confused kaleidoscope memories of being swallowed by brain scanners and attacked by electrodes.
And on the fourth day she awakened in this white and desolate space, wondering if it had all been a terrible mistake and life was still waiting for her somewhere outside.
The implant in her left arm itched. Flinching slightly, Rita raised her right hand to scratch, then remembered she didn’t have HaptoTech’s motion capture implants anymore—the base clinic at Camp Graceland had removed them on her first day, packaged them up and returned them to her former employer. She rubbed the inside of her left elbow furiously, and the pain shifted to the back of her forearm. Referred pain. There was something there, embedded under the layer of fat beneath the skin, something the size of a long grain of rice. An emergency beacon? A new implant? she wondered as she lifted her arm. There was a yellow-green bruise below her wrist, and a cotton ball held down with micropore tape across the injection site. The familiar itch had fooled her into thinking it was in the usual location, when it was just interfering with the same nerve. Implant. Fuck.
She fumbled around until she could bring the bed’s motor controller into her line of sight, then stabbed random buttons until, with a whir, the backrest began to rise. As she sat up, the vertigo began to subside. Now she felt a moment of nausea, but recognized it for what it was: hunger, gnawing at her guts with the insistent ache of two days’ near-starvation. With that realization, a bunch of other irritating imps began jabbing their metaphorical tridents into her: she had a headache, she felt dizzy, and she was hungry. Her muscles felt as if she’d fought a bout with the flu, and the flu won. Last but not least, she needed the toilet badly—and she had no idea where it was.
There was a call button. Not feeling at all proud, she pushed it.
A minute later, she heard a door open behind her bed. “Oh, you’re awake!” The nurse who bustled in, in green scrubs and gloves, was the friendly but religious one—Marianne—who ran the library in the rec room. “And how are we feeling this morning?”
Rita tried to smile. “I need the bathroom, but I’m dizzy, and—”
“Not to worry, we’ll have you there in a second!” The bathroom turned out to be right behind her. It was a typical hospital unit with grab rails everywhere and a smart toilet primed to snitch on her eating habits every time she pooped. Was everything in this clinic a potential informant? Rita wondered as Marianne helped her out of bed and hovered until she had a solid grip on the rail. Quite possibly: after all, the health industry had been an enthusiastic and early adopter of the Internet of Things that Leak Personal Information, right behind the NSA in the queue.
Morning ablutions completed, Rita returned to her room, towing her IV stand behind her. Marianne had brought in an armchair and a bedside table while she was in the bathroom. “What am I meant to be doing today?” Rita asked.
“Nothing.” Marianne smiled. “Well, apart from eating three square meals and taking it easy! We’ve got a couple of tests for you. But you don’t start the post-op workup until seventy-two hours after the activation shots. You may feel a bit feverish or unwell—that’s expected with this treatment—but Dr. Lane will look in on you later this morning, and if you feel particularly bad, you can call at any time and one of us will come.”
“Oh.” Rita digested this information. “I’ve got a couple of days off?” Marianne nodded. “Can I go and sit outside? Or use the rec room?”
“Ah, well, there’s a problem, you see.” Marianne smiled, presumably with disarming intent: “You’re not supposed to leave this suite. It’s mirrored in another time line, for safety, in case you jaunt by accident or see a trigger symbol.”
“Oh. Is there a TV?” The nurse shook her head. “Internet…?”
“I’m sorry!” Marianne said brightly. “I can bring you some books if you like? But you’re not allowed any visual media at all until Dr. Lane says so. No Internet, no TV, not even magazines or newspapers.”
“Books.” The prospect of spending the next three days cut off from the world did not fill Rita with unalloyed joy. Camping on a hiking trail in the wilderness was one thing; climbing the walls in a soothingly featureless hospital room was something else again. “Yes, please, if you don’t mind?”
“Sure!” Marianne chirped. “I’ll just go and let Catering know you’re ready for breakfast…”