When the child is asleep, Alyssa makes her husband sit down, then she talks.
They are in his workspace. Across town, he shares larger studio space with some local artists. They both sit on stools, he in front of his adjustable board with natural light coming over his left shoulder. The floor is carpeted with sketches, practice runs of different body parts, of simple shapes, of cubes and spheres, of elementary drawings. He draws these before he goes to the studio every day. The work he appears to be playing with at present is a plant. It does not look like anything Alyssa has seen, so it must be something he sketched from elsewhere.
He is looking at her now, waiting. He really is quite attractive, this husband thing.
“Mark,” says Alyssa, “you’re going to find this hard to accept.”
“What?” he says. Trepidation in the wobble of that single syllable. He knows not to attempt physical contact but before all this he must have been affectionate. Shame. A good mate.
“I am not Alyssa, Mark. No, just wait. I know it sounds crazy, but I’m sure of it. Something has happened, I don’t know what, but Alyssa is gone and I am here.”
Mark slips off his stool, starts to come towards her, then checks himself. He points to a picture. “Alyssa, this is you.”
“No. I know I look like Alyssa and that this is the face in the mirror, but that’s where the resemblance ends. I definitely don’t like children, and I don’t think I’m married.”
“Are you—is this your way of asking for a divorce? Because you are being very dramatic. And hurtful.”
“I’m sorry. I’m not trying to harm you or your daughter.”
“Listen to yourself—”
“No, listen to me. I’m saying I am not the woman you married, and not metaphorically. I’m not saying Alyssa changed or wants new things. I’m saying Alyssa isn’t here. I don’t know what happened to her.”
“Who are you, then?”
“I don’t know that either. I just know who I’m not.”
Mark shakes his head as if trying to dislodge something. “It’s like the doctor said. This is a functional problem. I’ll make an appointment.”
“Don’t bother,” says Alyssa. “I won’t go. The answer isn’t there.” She gets up. “I just wanted to be honest with you.”
“What’s that?”
Her wound must have opened because blood drips on the floor.
“Nothing. I’ll take care of it.” She leaves, shuts the door gently. He does not believe her, but she has been honest. What he does with that information is up to him, and he has to decide whether to tell Pat, but that is not Alyssa’s responsibility.
She opens a first-aid box.
Alyssa dreams or fantasises, she is not sure which. Or is she remembering? She walks down a corridor with only occasional windows, rectangular although with rounded edges. Each window is black. Not painted over, but with complete darkness outside. There are arrows on the wall pointing in the direction she walks in. The number 235 denotes a destination. It is not “235” as she knows the Arabic numerals—this is a translation. Alyssa does not have the language to conceive of what she sees. She used to, but it’s gone. In this interpretation, she arrives at 235 and sits. There is one other person waiting. A small device asks her to confirm details. She does, but falters when there is a choice of five genders. The other person goes in. There is a vibration which Alyssa receives through the bolted-down furniture after which she is invited in by a different device. The room is mostly dark, but the procedure is automated, and machines don’t need light and they are saving energy—ha ha, this is funny. The time to save energy was before they fucked up Home. What happened to the other person? Alyssa doesn’t see her leave.
This will be painless, she has been told. Try to keep your mind blank. The more you think, the longer the process will take. Ghosting. It’s a duplication. You will not be in pain, and you will live for ever as a god because information can never die.
Lies.
Information degrades, gets corrupt, misses its target, and it did hurt.
I did die.
Wait, what?
Slave bots respond to the urbot attending to me. There is no Homian in the mix at all.
Am I dead?
The pain is from when the device grows into my nerve endings and extracts me from me. I feel it stripping my sensations and killing me from the skin inwards. I/Alyssa. I am sucked into a place—here are people around me, but I cannot see them. I am kept separate by a membrane, but whether it is biological or electronic is unknown to me. I have, Alyssa has, no real sense of place. There is a sense of Homians taking destiny into our own hands after fucking shit up.
I cannot feel any part of my body any more. It is not weightlessness, it is nothingness. I am supposed to expect this. I have been prepared for it by education and every single news report since my birth and—Alyssa wakes, and is not alone. She is not surrounded by familiar people.
“What the hell—?”
“Mrs. Sutcliffe, please remain calm.”
There are three of them. They are in uniform, nurses’ uniforms. Baby blue, with ID tags, all male.
“Who are you?” asks Alyssa.
“We are here to take you to a comfortable place,” says the one in front. A deep, gentle voice from a body poised, coiled for violence.
“I am quite comfortable where I am,” says Alyssa. “Where is my husband? How did you get in here? Mark will—”
“Mr. Sutcliffe called us here. He is very worried about you.”
“We all are,” says another.
“Thank you for your concern. Now, fuck off.”
Alyssa is in the studio still. She is on the floor, and judging by the aches, she has been lying here for a long while.
“Where is Mark?”
“He is in the house with your daughter. He does not want her to see this.”
“And what is ‘this’?”
“Mrs. Sutcliffe, relax.”
“I am relaxed. Are you?”
“If you will just come with us to the ambulance—”
“I don’t need an ambulance. Get out of my house. I’m not sick.”
The first one nods and they come for Alyssa, all three moving at the same time, coordinated. They have predetermined who grabs what part of her body. In minutes they carry Alyssa into the ambulance, which is really a modified van with a cheap self-drive and some stale after-smell. The last she sees of her house is the face of Mark at the window.
That and an unfamiliar weed growing under it.