When I was a baby, mum would leave me alone with Marie. What a pretty picture: the baby, happily burbling away to itself in its cot; the little girl, four years old and dressed as a nurse or something equally sweet. Blue eyes, blond hair. Beautiful teeth. The teeth - keep your eyes on them, they"re the point of this tale.
Every time mum left us alone for more than a few seconds, I"d start to scream. Mum would come back at a run, to find nothing wrong. Always. I"d be wailing, (that being the limit of my conversation at the time, except for "googoo", "gaagaa" and the like) and Marie, sweet little nurse, would be bandaging a doll, solicitous of its hurts. And not a sign of damage to yours truly.
Mum couldn"t understand it. Not until the day when she pretended she was going away, but hid herself when she could see what was going on. Sneaky.
"What The Mother Saw": an exclusive from our roving reporter.
Hardly has the dust of mother"s departure settled, and dear sweet Marie walks over to my cot. h.e.l.lo Sarita. Googoo Marie. But what hurt can she be ministering to? Shock! Horror! Our diminutive Florence Nightingale has taken my plump (but cute) arm, and sunk her milk teeth into it. Cue the wailing.
Mum returns. Marie is bandaging a doll. My sleeve, methodically rolled down, hides the Mark of the Vampire. Beware, fiend, Van Helsing is here. Alas, poor Marie, innocent of the approach of the Furies.
And that was the end of that.
Hah!
Okay, so she never bit me again. Gee Wizz. Golly Gosh. She managed. Endlessly inventive, my sister - and when, hardly out of nappies (less podgy, just as cute) I began to share a room with her, she had endless opportunity.
No, that"s not right. We never shared a room. I was only ever a lodger, and an unwelcome one at that. And at night when all good little children are in bed, then she"d come into her own...
But now, at last, I"m going to get away from her. David"s unconscionably long stay is finally over, and I get a room of my own. It"s small. Not very big at all. Almost a cupboard. But it"s mine. I"ll be the one who decides what"s trendy, what"s tasteful, what"s cla.s.sy. And she won"t get a look in.
I can"t wait.
I don"t believe it!
They can"t do this to me: not after all that thinking, and planning, and looking forward. Not when it"s so close, when all that"s left to do is my colour scheme.
Not when all that was left to do was my colour scheme.
I should have known what was coming from the way dad sidled up to it. "Girls," he said, "there"s something I want to discuss with you." After dinner: after a gorgeous dinner, and a sweet that will require me to do a penance (say three minutes of aerobics, don"t want to overdo it).
Mum comes over from where she"s been pottering about with the washing up (normally my job - hold on, what gives?). She sits down, and I notice how drawn she looks. What"s been going on? What have I missed, thinking of nothing but my room?
Please G.o.d, please don"t let it be a divorce. Please don"t let it be that.
It"s not. What made me think that? Obviously not. Dad has mum"s hand in his.
"Girls, you know that your Aunt Edith has been unwell."
She popped her clogs, then? But no...
"Well, she"s had to go into hospital, and she"s likely to be there for a while."
Come on get to the point.
"Now, you know that she"s been looking after your grandmother since she hasn"t been able to look after herself."
Translation: since mum"s mum went Gaga.
"Now, Alfred offered to look after your grandmother, but we do not think that with his job, he can do it properly. And none of us can afford to have her put into a nursing home. And we have a room almost ready which..."
OH MY G.o.d.
It was Marie who stormed off, though. "It"s not on! I will not have her staying in my room any more. I won"t have it. A working woman, and with a little girl there all the time. I"m not having it!"
She didn"t stay to see mum start crying. I did. Dad looked at me. "What about you?" he said. "How do you feel?"
"She"ll come round, knowing you don"t mind," said mum, pleading.
I just looked at them.
"I knew you"d come up trumps, love," said dad, and suddenly it was all decided. I didn"t said a word, not a b.l.o.o.d.y word. I knew there was nothing I could say. h.e.l.lo room, goodbye.
She lives here now.
No, It lives here now. We have a new It in the family.
I remember my grandma. She was a big woman - very bossy; but nice with it. That thing upstairs in the lilac (lilac!) bedroom isn"t my grandmother. It can"t feed itself. It can"t wash itself. It can"t go to the toilet for itself. It can"t walk, can"t think, can"t talk - not even googoo, gaagaa. And it"s not cute. Wrinkled skin. Wispy white hair. Warts. Hairy warts.
The only sign that there"s anything behind that face is that sometimes, you look up, and she"s watching you, but vacantly, vacantly.
The arguments started soon after Granny was installed. Marie refused to help with anything to do with looking after her. "You wanted her," she said to me (to me!) "You look after her." Mum gave in. She doesn"t want Marie leaving home yet. Not while she"s still mourning David"s belated departure.
I didn"t get out of it so easily. I don"t have the freedom Marie has. And history"s been rewritten.
Apparently I was enthusiastic about Granny coming to us, so I ought to play my part. Still at least they don"t make me do the dirty jobs. Yet.
Last night I went into my bedroom, where I was going to have walls that were pink and black, and where I could have listened to my music without big Sis telling me to turn it down. I went in and looked at the overgrown, ugly baby in my bed. One of her arms lay on the coverlet, waiting for me.
h.e.l.lo grandma.
[Oringinally published in Kimota 1, Winter 1994].
DEEP INSIDE.
by Steve Dean.
I am looking up into a sky split into two halves. The left hand side is a dimmed blue, filtered, corrected. The right side is glaring, lit by a huge white sun. Dividing the two, a zig-zag line of sharp edged gla.s.s has leaked a greasy liquid. One side of my face is burning, the other cold. Somewhere in the middle, just a thin strip, it"s about right.
As an experiment, I close my right eye. It isn"t helping much, as all I can see is the sky. As I lie thinking, it occurs to me that I am lying on my back, and can, if I want to, move. Slowly, I rotate my head. A Soft whirring sound accompanies my head movement, but the view has changed and the glaring light lessened. To the side I know as left, a wide plain stretches as far as I can see. It is mostly - no, it is all - flat, brown rock. Nothing else moves. No threats present. The last sentence isn"t me speaking, but something else, more a signal than a voice. I don"t know where it is, but it is close, and for the moment it"s a comfort.
I try again, this time moving right. All is well until my head is about two thirds round, then a grating noise judders my vision and my head stops. Looking as best I can, though the light has returned, I see the same plain, but this time strewn with shapes. Some are long and thin, some round, some like stars. The ground is disturbed in places, cratered and churned up, particularly around the shapes.
The left side of my vision has filled with coloured lines. A scan of some kind. The signal has commanded it, it may be important. The lines pick out each shape in turn, fill it with colour, then a series of letters appears underneath. I read some of them, they sort of make sense.
Wreckage, type 37 Bio-enh-suit:- spent.
Wreckage, type unknown:- spent.
The light is glaring too much now, so I am going to move. Relaxing my thoughts, the signal comes in. It recommends a full system check. I brace myself for whatever that is and the signal continues. There are several beeps, then the screen fills with text. It appears to list all the systems I have, but most of it is meaningless to me. Besides, the results of the check seem to be on the right side of the display, which is not visible to me. I decide to stand up, and if I make it I"ll take it from there.
With a lot of effort and much grinding and complaining on the display, I am now upright. It appears I have the use of two legs, although the right one isn"t perfect, and my left arm, which is "functional". I can"t turn my head all the way right, or do anything with my right arm. There is also a pain, like fire, in my middle region from my right shoulder to my waist. The signal says I am damaged but mobile. The display says I am vulnerable, and should... but the advice is on the right half, again.
The first thing I do is turn my back on the white light. My face is still hot but the relief is instant. I can see properly for the first time, if the display will stop drawing lines around everything.
I walk over to the nearest wreckage. It consists of a large central ma.s.s, with two long attachments at one end. The top half, above chest height, is missing. Two different liquids have ran out onto the bare rock. The dark one has dried, the lighter, oily one has gathered in a pool in a shallow depression. It refracts the sunlight in iridescent patterns of orange and purple. It is quite pretty.
I reach out to examine the melted edge of the ma.s.s. Its construction and materials are like my arm. A certain heaviness settles on me as I realise we are, were, the same.
The voice says there is no threat here, nor useful repair items or weaponry. The visor says "move on to avoid..."
I move on. The signal is silent on the direction I am to take. So, with my back to the sun, I walk off. My gait is light and flowing, I cover a lot of ground. Occasionally, my right leg starts to drag, but a boost of something brings it back to speed.
The right half of my vision begins to dim, although the left side is fine, if a little green. I realise the sun is setting, it will soon be dark. A green matrix fills the left side of my vision, with the odd fuzzy green dot, some bright some dark. There isn"t much to see anyway. The signal recommends I keep moving under cover of darkness. So I do.
Later still, the sun appears in front of me, glowing orange, not at all like the white of before. Again my visor says I am vulnerable and should seek shelter. A full 360 degree scan produces nothing but flat plains. I am deciding what to do when a small movement captures my attention. Before I know it the visor has locked on and zoomed in on a small dust cloud. My body turns in that direction and we set off. I don"t mind, it"s somewhere to go.
Finally I reach the spot I estimate the movement came from. The land is empty as far as I can see, enhanced or otherwise.
Perhaps my sight is working imperfectly, or the heat is blurring everything. Perhaps there had been no movement. Perhaps I only imagined it.
I walk a little further, in case I have under estimated, and am rewarded by the sight of thin tracks in the dust, faint, but unmistakeable. Two parallel trails, possibly of some tracked vehicle, smaller than me, and moving in either one of two directions. Not having any more data, I set off in the direction I am facing, which saves energy, and is therefore more logical, according to the signal.
The sun has moved quite a distance, and is now to my right. In that time my bounding strides have carried me a long way. Just how far, none of my systems can tell me. Before me, only a few metres away, a small tracked robot is scanning the area with a dish it produced from its back. The dish has pointed in my direction several times, but it has shown no reaction.
Scanner nulling circuits, the signal explains. The words almost fall out of my mind, but there is no further explanation. As the little robot moves on I follow. It stops again, this time I move closer before it can get away.
The vehicle opens a small door on its front and a thin tube appears. Automatically, my left arm comes up and the signal calmly advises me it is neutralising the threat. Frantically I think "No, I don"t want to", and my arm slowly drops. Although the signal is advising the former action. With a struggle I am able to control the thought, and the arm. I have no need to kill the little robot. But just as I have myself under control, the vehicle fires on me, causing a warm sensation in my chest and an alarm in my visor.
Moving forward, against the shots of what the signal tells me is a pulsed, low emission laser, I try to open communications and talk to it. There is no response to normal frequencies, (except from the visor which is reporting radio emissions from this unit which are revealing our position. I ignore it), so I switch to voice. But all that comes out is an incomprehensible croak. My voice circuits are too badly damaged after all.
Another alarm sounds and this time I am unable to stop the signal. My arm raises fluidly and a single blast of blue light burns through the small vehicle. It stops moving, its weapon sagging on its mount.
One Kill. So says the signal. But somehow I don"t think the robot was ever alive. Still, I feel a strange feeling inside as I approach the vehicle. I am sad that it no longer works. All I wanted was to talk to it, I"m sure it could have answered.
The half visor fills with tactical data, it recommends an immediate change in position, followed by several hours of... and then a careful re-a.s.sessment of my tactical...
As I don"t know what its talking about, I run on, travelling the direction I estimate the robot was heading.
Just before nightfall, my visor highlights a feature in the distance. From this range it looks like a green lake. As the feature becomes clearer, the matrix outlines a wide crack in the plains, getting wider as it goes. The visor recommends I seek shelter, and, as it is what I want to do too, I follow its advice.
The crack turns out to be a long chasm, one of many that break up the plain as it looses alt.i.tude. I have selected a side channel off a branch channel, which itself runs off from the main one. Three left turns into a dead end. So here I sit, wedged between solid rock walls about ten metres beneath the plain. Now it is dark, there isn"t a light anywhere, except for the millions of stars that form an almost rectangular roof over my world. The signal did a few things when I stopped, and now all the little sounds seem to have halted. The fire in my side has gone, and a certain warmth is spreading over my body.
A feeling descends across my mind, a letting go. Images soon begin to form, long forgotten memories dance around the edges of more recent events. The centre is hard, like metal, whilst the dancers are like feathers. This goes on for sometime, until a loud voice shouts something. A blast of fiery wind slams across the picture. When it clears only the metal remains. Sadness takes me, until a sudden thought arrives, unbidden. Not from the visor, or the signal, but from somewhere inside. Underneath the metal, deep below, something lies concealed, something sheltered from the blast. I try to see under the metal, but I am not strong enough to lift it. I will try again later.
I am woken when the sun has returned and is quite bright. Inside, although my mind is active, I am strangely calm. The pain has almost gone, although my head still won"t turn all the way around. A thought has arisen, as though I am on the verge of remembering something. The image struggling to form is shattered by the signal bursting into life. A warning appears on the visor, something about radar waves being detected, then a recommendation to shut down all none-essential something.
Relaxing, I allow the signal to do as it pleases. Nothing out of the ordinary happens, although my view of ordinary is severely limited at the moment. A few seconds later, I can hear a low sound, getting louder and higher as it nears. Something flashes across the rectangle of light above me, a barely seen glimpse of grey metal. But the visor has seen it, and has soon outlined, filled and cla.s.sified it, then tagged it as a potential threat. Very useful the visor, if only I knew what a low-atmosphere long range Ramdart was.
The signal advises a move to a safer position, one not open to the sky. I like the sky, it gives me a warm feeling inside, but the signal insists, so I stand and begin to walk along the chasm floor.
It"s getting dark now, and I am walking back to a small cave I found a while ago. It is not perfect, as it would require me to lie flat on the ground to enter it, but nothing else has presented itself.
The visor is green again by the time I get back. A threat warning has appeared, and the visor is outlining a large animal with six legs loaded with talons. Fleetingly, a thought forms, we could share the cave, but the visor insists the threat be neutralised, and my inner self tells me the idea is ridiculous. My arm rises suddenly, but I manage to move it to allow the shot to go wide. A blast of rock and dust peppers the animal, which retreats with a high-pitched squeal.
The cave now mine, I wriggle through the narrow entrance and prop myself up inside. It is just big enough, although I can only fit in if I recline rather than lie down. With a little shuffling around I am finally in a tolerable position, and the signal is quiet. There is a strong fruity smell in here, but the signal and visor seem unable to detect it. It appears only the inside part can pick it up. The memory that is on the edge of being remembered returns, a hazy image in my mind. I reach out to grab for it, but my mental hand goes straight through it.
The darkness produces phantom-images on my eyes, inside the visor as well as out. Soon I begin to drift off to sleep, and the hazy memory follows.
Something has woken me. I feel a mixed emotion of exhilaration and fear. The thought has finally revealed itself, and now I know what I am, if not who.
But there is a shadow in front of the cave entrance, and it isn"t the creature, for it only has two legs and stands upright. The signal is telling me it is picking up radio emissions, and that danger is present. The visor advises swift and immediate...
I review my options; for I am me, inside this suit, and the suit isn"t me, although we are closely connected, quite literally it would appear. I ask the suit, because that is its purpose, to advise and protect, whilst I guide it, to seek and destroy, whilst I direct it. The signal says proceed with extreme prejudice. The visor displays a grid and various lines that show trajectories that will allow me to hit the target, if only I move just a few centimetres. I ignore them for the moment, because I can, because ultimately I am in command.
A series of loud noises fills the cave. The visor lights up with warnings; damage taken, avoiding action imperative. The signal comes in; return fire immediately, threat to continued function substantial, tactical re-positioning vital.
I am trapped, there is nowhere to go but to the mythical better place, if I stay here. Moving myself around, I slide to the floor, my left arm below me. As the arm clears the opening it fires several times. There is a shout of pain, and the noises stop.
With my head to the ground, I can see the man. He is rolled up in a ball on his side, his feet are missing from just above his ankles. There is little blood. He isn"t wearing a suit like mine, just light armour. A thin rifle lies close to him, a backpack against the far wall. His eyes meet mine, or rather the one he can see. His face is contorted with pain. The visor says the threat isn"t neutralised. The signal recommends another shot. I am in control, I will decide.
With a struggle I emerge from the cave a few metres away from the man. His face shows only fear now as I look down on him. I realise I don"t even know why we are enemies. From the facts I deduce he is on home ground, and I am the aggressor, but what this is all about I don"t know.
I could walk away, or run and be kilometres away in minutes. The man has a radio, he can call in and be rescued. His feet can be replaced as good as new. With a last glance, I turn and walk away. The signal shouts, the visor lights up. I ignore them both, they are merely tools, as easily put down as picked up.
I am running now. The suit is a marvel when it comes to movement, fast, agile and fluid. The signal cuts in again. Missile lock-on, immediate action required. I relax in that certain way and the suit is allowed momentary control. It leaps into the air and spins around. The visor zooms in to a point some distance back. I have a fleeting glimpse of the man pointing a small tube at me, then the arm fires. There is a large blast which sends rocks and debris flying everywhere.
Threat neutralised. Recommend tactical re-positioning.
I expected the suit to dive for cover, or rush away. But it seemed the most logical way to deal with the threat was to remove it altogether. The killing was unnecessary to my human way of thinking. So will I kill again, (Or allow the suit to kill, it"s the same thing.) if another searcher locates me? Yes I decide, as a last resort. Sometimes it is necessary to take action to preserve oneself.
I move on, heading down hill towards a wide green valley. The smell of trees and the sound of running water reach my senses. I smile, it seems for the first time ever.
One day soon, I will climb out of this sh.e.l.l and be free of its programmed destruction. But for today, and tomorrow, it is keeping me alive, and alive is something I very much want to be.
[Originally published in Kimota 14, Spring 2001].
AGNES IN WONDERLAND.