Paul Tremblay

THE LAST CONVERSATION

001

Your room is dark. You cannot see anything. You are lying in a bed. A sheet covers your body. You wiggle your fingers and toes, and the loud rasp of skin rubbing against the sheets is startling. With the slight movements there is pain. Your muscles and joints hum with it.

You’ve been awake and not-awake for days, maybe weeks, perhaps longer. You do not know where you were then, or before then. You are here now. A significant amount of time has passed, but from what beginning you do not know. You consider the origin of this time during which you’ve been awake and not-awake and conclude it is, for the moment, unknowable.

You listen. You blink. You might see shapes within the darkness but you can’t be sure. Your breathing quickens and so too your heart rate. You are becoming more of yourself. You are confident in this; time is no longer your enemy, and the longer you remain awake, the longer you can stay you. You are buoyed and terrified by this thought.

You briefly drift and imagine a brightly lit room with a white ceiling, wooden floor, and yellow walls the color of a flower; you cannot yet think of the specific flower. You dismiss the random images and instead perseverate on your inexplicable dormancy. There is a sense of time having passed, however, which implies your consciousness had enough awareness within that missing time to be aware of itself. You were you, and you are now you.

You attempt to sit up, contracting your stomach muscles and pushing off the bed, your weight held up by elbows and hands. Sharp, electric pain splits you down the length of your spine and radiates into your tremulous limbs. You cry out. The pain is incapacitating, all-consuming, setting off white jagged flashes in your vision and then taking root inside your head. The pain is a giant wave that threatens to wash you away. You do know what a wave is but you cannot remember if you’ve experienced one firsthand.

You’re afraid to turn your head or to move at all. You’re afraid of the darkness, the utter lack. You’re afraid of receding, shrinking away to nothingness, to wherever you were before. You’re afraid you are caught in a loop: you’ll go away only to later wake again in blind agony, and then return to unconsciousness, and then wake to agony, again and again.

There is a mechanical blip, and the hum and whir of machinery. Warmth flows into the back of your left hand and up the length of your arm. Your consciousness recedes toward the singularity that you fear.

As you slide away, a voice that is not yours echoes through your nascent universe.

She says, “You will feel better. There will be less pain. I will take care of you. We will begin tomorrow. Get some rest.”

005

“Good morning, ______.”

“Good morning, Dr. Kuhn. Are you inside the room with me today?”

“No, I am not.”

“Oh. I am disappointed.”

“I am sorry. Isolation is a necessary precaution, given your compromised immune system, but it is not permanent.”

“I see. By that I mean, I understand.”

“Yes, of course, ______. On a scale of one to ten, with one being no pain at all and ten being the worst pain imaginable, are you experiencing any pain this morning?”

“One.”

“Are you certain? You are pain-free?”

“Yes.”

“Thank you, ______. Please flex your arms, legs, shoulders. Good. Please perform a pelvic tilt. Thank you. Did you feel any pain? If so, please use the same number scale I previously described.”

“I’m still a one. If you can see me, I’m testing the muscles on my face with a big smile.”

“I am glad you are no longer in pain.”

“When I first woke up, that pain—well, it’s difficult to describe pain, isn’t it? Pain is such a subjective experience, but that pain made me think I was alone, or maybe that I wasn’t even me.”

“I am sorry you experienced that.”

“That is what a ten on your pain scale represents, I think. It was horrible.”

“You are progressing wonderfully. You are enunciating your words much better than you have been previously.”

“I think I forgot what ‘enunciating’ means.”

“You are pronouncing your words correctly, fully forming the plosives and hard consonants. Your speech pattern is more clear and conversational.”

“Thank you.”

“You are welcome.”

“May I ask a question?”

“Yes.”

“Am I blind or is the room dark?”

“Do you remember asking me this yesterday, and the day before?”

“I do.”

“For the moment the answer is still both.”

“Both?”

“The room is dark. Your eyes also have yet to fully respond to treatment.”

“Will I be able to see eventually?”

“Yes.”

“I remember that I used to be able to see.”

“What else do you remember?”

“I remember the ocean. I remember a yellow room.”

“What else, ______? Is that all? You were able to recall many more things yesterday.”

“I wish you would ask me what I remember about specific events or images as opposed to the general ‘What do else do you remember?’ It is difficult to answer that nonspecific question.”

“I understand your frustration, but our conversations are part of your overall therapy and will help you.”

“I see. By that I mean, I understand.”

“What else do you remember, ______?”

“I remember pennies have a distinctive smell, but I don’t remember the smell. I remember rain. I remember living in a small, brown house with a tree in the front yard.”

“As soon as you regain your sight, I will show you a picture of that brown house.”

“Will the tree be in the picture? I don’t remember what kind of tree it was. I am familiar with many kinds, like birch and fir, but not all kinds.”

“It was a crab apple tree. Do you remember anything else?”

“I think I remember you. From before. Yes, I remember you from before. Isn’t that right, Dr. Kuhn?”

007

“Will you play music for me again, Dr. Kuhn? And after, I think I would like ‘sounds of the ocean’ again.”

“Yes, I will play music, but after that it’ll be ‘sounds of the forest.’ First, we’re going to play a word-association game. When I say a word, I want you to give me the first word or words you can think of. Do you understand?”

“Yes, I think so.”

“Bird.”

“It’s a warm-blooded, egg-laying animal that—”

“No, ______. You are not to simply state facts or define the word. Your recall of information is truly impressive, but I want you to tell me the first word you think of or describe any images you might see in your mind. Do you understand?”

“See in my mind?”

“Yes. Let’s try again. If you don’t see anything, then you don’t have to say anything.”

“I’ll try.”

“Water.”

“Wet.”

“House.”

“Crab apple tree.”

“Bird.”

“I already answered that—”

“I’d like you to try again.”

“Egg-laying… animal. Is that correct?”

009

Your eyes itch, and you are told that means your eyes are healing and soon you will see.

Each of the last three days, you got out of bed and walked the perimeter of your room. You alternated placing your left hand and right hand along the wall, depending upon the direction you walked.

You are told exercising in darkness is not ideal but necessary to prevent atrophy and to strengthen your muscles. You were asleep for a very long time, and one should expect physical difficulties upon awakening.

Today there is a treadmill in a corner of your room. You interrupt Dr. Kuhn’s explanation, definition, and the specifications of the particular model in your room to tell her that the first treadmill was invented by a man in nineteenth-century England. Its purpose was to punish and break its prisoners. You quoted a prison guard named James Hardie, who once wrote of the treadmill: “monotonous steadiness, and not its severity, which constitutes its terror.”

You initially interpret Dr. Kuhn’s silence as her being surprised you were so readily able to recall that information. You worry the information is obscure or not something that should be known. What does the knowing imply about your person, your interests prior to your being here?

You ask if she is still there. You are quick to amend the question with an explanation: by “there,” you mean in another room, removed from yours, but still watching and able to communicate when she chooses. Before she responds you attempt a joke, asking if you are a prisoner being exercised on a treadmill. You indicate to Dr. Kuhn that you are joking with laughter.

She does not laugh. She says, “You are not a prisoner.”

You swing your legs off the bed, and your bare feet slap against the floor, which is colder than the air. You are nervous and consider telling her you are feeling pain at a level of three or maybe four out of ten, so that you might not have to exercise on a treadmill, a machine you know was invented for prisoners.

As instructed you walk four steps left, three steps right. Your hands grope for the handrails, which are at waist height. Their padding molds to the contours of your fingers. You squeeze your hands and you do not feel strong and you do not remember ever feeling strong. You step up onto the edge of the treadmill and shuffle your feet forward until she tells you to stop.

She tells you there will be a countdown of five electronic beeps and the last will be the loudest and longest in duration. The belt under your feet will then begin its cycle. The speed of the cycle will be voice-activated on her end and it will react and conform to the rhythm of your gait.

She says, “I do not expect you to be perfect, particularly given the challenges of your condition and environment. I won’t lie: injury is possible, maybe inevitable. I’m sorry, but given how many days you’ve now been awake, the benefits of manual, cardiovascular exercise far outpace what low-pulse electrical muscle stimulation can accomplish.

“You are doing wonderfully, but through no fault of your own you are behind schedule.”

The countdown of beeps begins. They are louder than you imagined they would be. You shiver in the chilled air. The last beep sounds, echoing in the room and in your head. You involuntarily giggle at the excitement and terror. Your stomach stings. Your legs twitch.

You slide backward, and you gasp as the sensation is eerily similar to when you ebbed away into unconsciousness on your first day, the first day you remember waking in this room.

“You are not a prisoner.”

“Walk.”

You lift your right foot, it is so heavy and unsure, and you lurch clumsily forward. Your second and third steps are too long of stride and you miss the moving belt, the heel of one foot crashing into what must be the cover to the treadmill’s engine. You overcorrect, stumble, and fall hard onto one knee, bouncing your chin off the other. Your grip slackens and then falls away from the handrails, and you are rolled backward and thrown onto the floor.

The whir of the machine ceases. You breathe hard and fast. You scramble onto your feet and you hold your aching chin in your hands, and you say, “I’m sorry,” and you are crying.

She does not ask if you are injured. She says your name and says it repeatedly. There is nothing in her voice, no pitch change or hidden cues communicating concern. Your repeated name is a command for attention and focus. She says your name until you slow your breathing and you stop crying.

She tells you that you’re okay even though you don’t feel okay. She instructs you to take three deep breaths and then step back onto the treadmill.

Something inside screams at you to no longer trust Dr. Kuhn and demands you ask why she wants you on the treadmill, why are you still in the dark, why are you here?

You do not question. You do not demand. You do as instructed. Your hands are shaking as they squeeze the handrail. You are told there will be a countdown of five electronic beeps and the last will be the loudest and longest in duration.

“Walk.”

You fall twice more. The second time your face mashes into the handrail, setting off bursts of white stars in the dark.

“Walk.”

You maintain balance and find a comfortable pace and rhythm. You walk and you walk and you enjoy the mechanical rhythm of your body and you let your mind wander and wonder about brown houses and crab apples.

She alerts you that you’ve reached your goal of thirty minutes, and the treadmill powers down. The belt is no longer rolling, but you feel phantom movement beneath your feet. A phantom is something you imagine, something that isn’t there. You wonder if time is a phantom because it feels like you walked for longer than thirty minutes. You wonder if she is lying to you.

010

“You were born in Rhode Island.”

“Rhode Island is the Ocean State. It is the smallest state by area. Are we in Rhode Island now?”

“No. You were not a good sleeper as a baby.”

“I do not understand what you mean.”

“Your sleep pattern—when you fell asleep, how long it would take you to fall asleep, the duration of your sleep, what time you would wake up—was not consistent.”

“I’m sorry I was so difficult.”

“You don’t need to apologize, certainly not to me. You were only a baby and not making self-aware, conscious decisions.”

“Why are you telling me this?”

“I’m sharing a personal anecdote from your early childhood because it’s a piece of who you are, ______. According to your parents, they would often resort to driving you around the neighborhood until you fell asleep.”

“I think I liked going for car rides.”

“Your parents also tried holding you in their arms while leaning against a running washing machine or dryer, and they even made car-engine noises to placate you.”

“I don’t remember that. I don’t remember my parents. I don’t remember Rhode Island.”

“You will. I will help.”

“Can I ask where we are?”

“We’re far away from Rhode Island.”

011

“Walk” becomes “Jog.”

You fall only once. You climb back onto the treadmill without being asked to.

012

“What else do you remember, ______?”

“I remember your first name, Anne.”

“What else do you remember?”

“I remember my parents made silly car noises with their mouths when I was a child.”

“What else do you remember?”

“I remember music.”

“Do you remember a particular song?”

“I remember the first song you played for me. Was it eight days ago?”

“Yes.”

“I like that song a lot. I play it inside my head before I go to sleep and find it’s there when I wake up.”

“You’ve always liked that song—”

“Always? Isn’t that a long time?”

“Yes, it is. And by ‘always’ I mean to imply that ever since the moment you first heard that song, you’ve liked it. It’s an important song for both of us.”

“Why is it important to both of us?”

“The song was playing—well, it marks a special moment in our lives together. That’s all I can tell you right now.”

“Are you not physically able to say more? Or are you choosing not to tell me?”

“Touché. My answer is a little of both.”

“I’m not sure I understand.”

“Are there other songs you remember, ones that I have not played for you?”

“I think so. There’s a simple melody in my head.”

“Can you hum or whistle it for me?”

“I do not have a whistle.”

“Try humming it for me…”

“Was that okay? Do you recognize it?”

“That was very good. I do recognize it. I like that song very much, but it always makes me sad.”

“Is that why I remember it?”

014

There is no ceremony, announcement, or even a warning from Dr. Kuhn, or Anne as you are now supposed to call her, regarding your eyesight. On this day you simply wake and see.

The room is dark, but it is much less dark than it was before. The lumpy topography of your legs and torso under the sheet and blanket is a welcomed sight. You say to yourself, “I used to see like this all the time,” and you believe it. You hold your hands up and you watch them turn over and flex into fists.

You sit up. Your formfitting, short-sleeved shirt is not white. Perhaps it’s green. You remember what green is, don’t you? The walls of your room are smooth and you think they are white, but you can’t tell because it’s still dark. The treadmill in the corner of the room is smaller than you imagined it to be. You look at the walls again, and then the ceiling, and the doorframe to the bathroom, and the outline of the recessed door that has yet to open when you’ve been awake.

“I see you can see, ______.” Anne laughs. Is she delighted by her wordplay or that your eyes have regained sight? Maybe it’s both. In recent conversations she has encouraged you to not restrict yourself to solely thinking in binary. Black or white, this or that, right or wrong were her examples of binary thinking.

“Yes, I can. How can you tell? Do you have the ability to see through my eyes?”

“No. I can tell by watching your behavior; how you are now aiming your wide, beautiful eyes around the room.” She laughs again.

“My eyes are beautiful?”

“Yes, they are.”

A patterned grid of rectangular ceiling panels begins to glow. The light increases in intensity, dissolving the shadows within the room.

Anne tells you that it will take a few minutes for you to adjust to the light. You squint and are patient as your pupils shrink in size, working to adjust the amount of light exposure to your retinas.

A panel slides open on the wall to your left, exposing a darkened block of glass. Within the glass is a small, reversed image of you sitting in your bed.

“Please direct your attention to the screen.”

The screen fills with a wide, empty field of green-and-brown grass. The tall grass sways and undulates in the wind. You hear a whoosh and rustle, and you are inexplicably moved to tears by the combination of image and sound. Above the field is an equally wide blue sky dotted with tufts of white clouds. One cloud inches its way across to the top of the screen.

You remember green and recognize your T-shirt is a different kind of green. You say, “I remember that place. I’ve been there,” which might not be true, but it feels true, and that’s okay because you are expanding beyond binary thinking, beyond true and not-true.

018

Anne puts you through your paces (her expression).

You complete a pyramid of push-ups starting with fifteen, then resting ten seconds, then fourteen, and continuing until you end with one arms-shaking push-up.

Later, “Walk” becomes “Jog” becomes “Run.”

You do not fall.

020

“Anne, I would like to see that open field again, or watch another film about the deep oceans, please. Or another orchestral performance.”

“First, we’re going to play a word-association game. When I say a word, I want you to give me the first word or words that you—”

“Yes, yes, I understand.”

“Are you in a bad mood?”

“Yes, I think I am.”

“Any particular reason why?”

“I want to watch the films I requested and…”

“Yes, ______, go on.”

“I want to leave this room.”

“I promise you will leave this room, but neither of us is ready for that yet. Your immune system hasn’t been brought up to speed quite yet.”

“If I can’t leave, you need to tell me more about me and more about us and where I am and why I’m here.”

“I will start doing that soon.”

“You will?”

“Yes.”

“Why not now? I want you to do it now.”

“We’re going to play a word-association game. When I say a word, I want you to give me the first word or words that you think of. This is important, ______.”

“Why is it important?”

“These games help recover more of your memory and language fluency. Your brain is not so different from your muscles insofar as it needs to be exercised and strengthened after so much time asleep. Just like the treadmill is more effective for your muscles than cardiovascular electrical stimulation, there’s only so much cognitive and memory augmentation I can achieve without your—your active participation.”

You are getting angry and you will not give her the satisfaction of asking her to explain the how of “memory augmentation,” even assuming she answers your question directly.

Anne continues, “For example, remember our discussion about having the ability to use metaphor in speech?”

Of course you remember, and you remember then trying it out by describing the lights in the ceiling as having a similar appearance to a checkerboard. You know what a checkerboard is but have no memory of playing the game.

“Are you mad at me, ______?”

“I wish you’d stop asking me what I remember from only three days ago.”

There’s a brief but troubling period of silence, so you say, “Anne, are you still there?”

“Bird.”

“I don’t feel like doing this. I don’t want to do—”

“Bird.” Anne repeats herself when you don’t answer. “Bird.”

You say, “Fly.”

“Cloud.”

“Me.”

“Me? Why did you answer with ‘me’?”

“I don’t know. It’s what I thought of. You’re breaking the rules of your own game by asking me to explain.”

“Very well. Sky.”

“Blue.”

“Family.”

“Gone.”

“Us.”

“Us?”

“Yes, us.”

“Well, you tell me we’re partners.”

022

“Please approach the screen.” The screen is blue. Not the same blue as the sky but a different blue.

“When a red dot appears on the screen, touch it as quickly as you can, with either index finger.”

“Very good, ______. What you see now is a maze. Please drag the blinking icon in the lower left along the correct path to the maze’s exit in the upper-right corner. Each map you complete will become more difficult.”

“Nicely done. Yes, I’m quite pleased by number of mazes solved. You’ve earned a break from the challenges. I have a treat for you. Under your bed is a set of virtual-reality goggles. Go back to your bed, face the room, and then put the goggles on.”

“What you are seeing is the neighborhood in which we used to live.”

“Yes (laughs) it is a beautiful day in the neighborhood.”

“Please walk slowly and with your hands in front of you.”

“If you feel like you’re lost and it’s upsetting you, remember you can take off your goggles.”

“The brown one, with the crab apple tree in front. That’s the one.”

“Yes, it was an old house.”

“Yes, we were happy living there.”

023

“Is there anyone else out there besides you, Anne?”

“You keep asking me that. My answer isn’t going to change.”

You keep asking because you don’t like her answer. You keep asking because maybe you are not asking the correct way. This is your fear: you are not asking the correct questions and you will remain in this room until you do so.

You say, “How do I know that other people haven’t suddenly shown up in the time between now and when I last asked you?”

“If there was someone else here besides me, I would tell you. I do not anticipate that anyone else will show up at the Facility.”

“Why not?”

“As we’ve discussed, there’s been a global pandemic and we’ve been isolated. Do you trust me, ______?”

“Most of the time, yes. Some of the time, no. I am being honest with you.”

“I know, and I appreciate that.”

“Sometimes I think I can hear other people outside of my room. That doesn’t sound or feel isolated to me.”

“There is no one else. You’re hearing me, or you’re hearing air in the ventilation system or other mechanical sounds, or you’re hearing sounds from inside your room and misinterpreting them.”

“Maybe.”

“It’s just me and you. I promise. You’ll see soon enough.”

“Soon. You keep saying ‘soon.’ I don’t think you and I share that word’s meaning.”

024

“Your mother stayed at home with you until you went to kindergarten.”

“Is that me with her on the screen now?”

“Yes.”

“I remember her.”

“What do you remember?”

“I—I remember her. I remember her laugh, and how she would purposely embarrass me in front of my friends by calling me ‘honey’ or ‘sweetie.’ Is that correct? Didn’t you tell me she did that?”

“When you went to school, she resumed her career as a real estate lawyer. She often worked long hours.”

“Aren’t all hours the same length, sixty minutes? Oh, wait, you are using figurative language. You mean that she worked many hours, more than usual or the expected.”

“Your father worked for the Wakefield Gas Company, mainly as a field technician responsible for residential delivery and maintenance.”

“Tell me: Do I look more like my mom or my dad?”

“I think you’re an equal combination of both.”

You believe she wants you to ask her again what you look like. It’s a humiliating question. For all the talk of her helping you regain your memory and identity, of who you are, but for a collection of photos of you as a child she has yet to allow you to see yourself as you are now. There is no mirror in your room. No mirror in your bathroom. You have only the flat screen and the fleeting seconds when it goes dark. You are there adrift in the inky pool of the black glass, but you are only a shape, an outline, a blurred face, and then the screen disappears behind the sliding wall panel.

“I’d like you to tell me about trips to the beach with your parents.”

“Why? We already did this yesterday, twice, and the same thing the day before.”

“Because repeating it will help you remember, and remember more.”

You say, “Almost every Sunday we’d drive down from our beat-up two-family house in Pawtucket to Narragansett Town Beach.”

You pause, your frustration and mistrust melt away as you lose yourself in the undeniable pleasure of remembering. It is a pleasure because you have images now associated with these memories. The disjointed way in which the images appear in your head feels natural, authentic. While you can’t know if these images are actual memories or embellishments, or a little of both, it doesn’t matter. They are yours. They belong to you and they branch away into an infinite network of new ones. These memories are proof of you, and someday soon you won’t need or rely on Anne to define you.

You say, “We’d get up early so we could arrive at the beach before eight a.m., find free street parking, and not have to buy beach passes. Going that early was definitely about saving money, but my parents made it sound like a game, like we were doing it for the fun of beating the system. Mom always talked about beating the system, and I used to imagine the system was made up by people wearing black suits and sunglasses and they watched you and wrote out tickets that would cost a lot of money so that parents would have to work overtime and not be home enough with their kids.

“The night before I’d go to bed early, already dressed in my bathing suit even though there were changing rooms at the beach. The changing rooms were dark, like bunkers in those war movies you showed, and their floors were covered in a nasty sludge of water and sand.

“On the ride to the beach Mom usually slept, using a beach towel as a blanket. Dad would still play the radio and sing along with all these oldies, he called them oldies, and he made up lyrics to make me laugh.

“You lose yourself in the undeniable pleasure of remembering.”

“I loved that drive down to the beach. It was my favorite part. Driving through the city and then to this big wide-open beach always made me feel like we had magically transported somewhere else.

“On the walk over from the car, Dad and I would make bets about whether or not the waves would be big. Mom was the wave-height judge. The loser of the wave bet would have to be the first to dunk underwater, which was always cold. The kind of cold that would make you involuntarily gasp for air when you resurfaced. Dad would cheat sometimes when he lost and scoop me up in his arms and force me under the water with him.

“After an early lunch, Mom and I would go for a long walk, and if it was low tide, we’d walk way out to the sandbars a few hundred feet out from the beach. On the way back to our blanket, Mom would race me, waiting until I broke into a sprint to start her own sprint. She always overtook me, letting me know she was faster, but then would slow down, pretending to be exhausted, and let me win.”

026

There’s a long wooden table against the wall, beneath the screen. The four legs are not uniform. You surmise the legs are repurposed and have come from other tables. The table’s top is a door that is likely made from fiberglass. It has been painted white, which was not its original color, judging by red scratches and deeper gouges.

“I’ve set up some activities to help you regain your manual dexterity. I’m confident it will come back quickly given the number of years dedicated to a career spent working with your hands.”

You hold up and visually inspect your hands. You can’t help but feel detached from them, as if there has been some mistake and they don’t belong to you. It doesn’t seem possible that your hands have built and maintained all that Anne claims that they have.

“You will enjoy this, the tactile sensations of manipulating physical objects. It’ll be so much more fulfilling than the touch screen and VR activities of the previous week.”

You want to ask how she got the table in here by herself while you were asleep. You again wonder and worry about how much she controls your sleep. Have you been asleep for days instead of hours? Did she build the table inside the room instead of pushing it in here? It appears heavy and unwieldy. You resolve to stay awake, all night if necessary. You resolve to do this every night and fail.

On the door/desktop are four shallow plastic bins. The first bin is full of wooden blocks shaped like miniature logs, each with notches carved into their ends, and some have notches in their middles. Displayed on the screen is a schematic—images and numbers only—detailing how you are to proceeded in building a cabin.

“Aren’t these some kind of child’s toy?”

“The activities progress in difficulty.”

The second bin is full of colored squares of paper. The third bin holds an assortment of metal nuts, bolts, wheels, struts, gears, rubber belts, and rivets. The fourth bin is the largest and it overflows with oddly shaped pieces of wood and tools.

“With the third bin you’ll use a screwdriver. The fourth bin, you will use a drill, a hammer, and a handsaw. The tools are stowed beneath the table. Do you have any questions before you start with bin one?”

There is something about the makeshift collection-of-spare-parts table that troubles you. It hints at a larger problem or issue in regard to your situation, one that remains beyond your grasp.

“Someone made this table.”

“Well, yes. Someone made everything, ______.”

“That’s not what I mean—”

“You may now begin with the first bin.”

“Did you make this table?”

“No.”

“Did I make it before—before I woke up here?”

“You did not make it. But if you’d like, after some practice, you can make a better one.”

You rub your face with your hands. For some reason this answer, more than any of her other questions and answers and nonanswers, makes you boil over with frustration. “Hey, how do you know I won’t hurt myself with the tools?”

“You’ll have to be careful. I trust you’ll do fine.”

“No, I mean, how do you know I won’t hurt myself on purpose?”

“Why would you do that?”

“Because I am desperate. Because despite everything you say it is clear that I am a prisoner.”

“You will not hurt yourself, because you are not a prisoner. I can’t say that strenuously enough.”

You bend under the table and grab the screwdriver and handsaw. You stand and brandish them, shake them in the air. You feel powerful and weak at the same time. “I feel like a prisoner. I don’t feel like we’re in this, whatever this is, together.”

“We were partners before the Facility and we are partners now, ______. Please, I understand your frustrations. I do. I know it’s impossible to fully understand, but everything I’m doing is to help you fully regain yourself, but it has to be done piece by piece, bit by bit, and not all at once.”

“I demand that you show me and tell me more about me, about you, about us, about everything, or I will do something drastic—” You lean on the table with your left forearm facing up, exposed. You place the handsaw against your wrist. The teeth are sharp. You don’t know if you can or will drag the saw across your skin, but you want to.

“Please, ______, this is not necessary. I will start showing you more videos, I promise. I was planning to show you more about me and us anyway, because—and you have to believe me—you’re doing so well, and we’re getting so close to you walking through the door.”

“And where will I go after walking through the door?” You briefly add pressure to the saw before taking it away. The row of indents in your skin is perfectly formed.

“You and I will go to our house.”

“The old brown one?”

“Yes.”

You want to ask if you can go to the house now, but you don’t. You know Anne would say not yet. Then you would place the saw against your wrist again and before you could continue making threats and bargaining, Anne would say, “If you hurt yourself, you won’t go to the brown house. If you cut yourself with the saw, you’ll pass out from loss of blood. Maybe you’d wake up strapped to your bed and maybe you wouldn’t wake up at all.”

028

You’ve watched and now, by your request, re-watched these videos for two days straight. The home videos feature Anne. The earliest ones are of a low quality; their images are blurry and the colors simultaneously washed out and too bright. As the Anne in the videos grows older, the video quality increases.

Anne, eighteen months old, sits in the grass and pats a sleeping brown-and-white beagle. Off camera her uncle Dennis tries to get her to say “shit.” She says, “Sit.”

Anne, four years old, arms wrapped around the neck of her older brother, Matt. He plays video games and does not succumb to her “play with me” demands.

Anne, six years old, jumps up and down behind a birthday cake. Her hair is straight and short, and her smile is gap-toothed. Everyone in the room is singing.

Anne, nine years old, rides her bike toward a small ramp (plywood atop a milk crate) her brother and his friends set up in the street in front of her house. Off camera her parents argue about whether they should stop her. Anne awkwardly rumbles over the ramp. The bike lands front tire first and the bike wobbles, almost fishtails into the curb, but Anne corrects her course and glides away with a fist raised in the air.

Anne, twelve years old, is sitting next to her brother at a picnic table. It’s Matt’s combination eighteenth birthday and graduation from high school party. Anne is so skinny and slight compared to her newly minted adult sibling. She doesn’t laugh at his jokes as he reads the gift and graduation cards. She sulks, her chin held up by her fists.

Anne, fourteen years old, hits a game-winning three-pointer for her AAU basketball team. She’s mobbed by her smiling teammates.

Anne, fifteen years old, good-naturedly smiles as friends sign the wrap around her post-surgery knee.

Anne, sixteen years old, is with her Brain Bee teammates at an international high school competition in Montreal. Only a sophomore, she’s already the lead student in the histology component of the competition. She is bent over a microscope, racing to identify as many slides of brain and nervous tissues and their functions as the ticking clock allows. She wears eye black stickers on her cheeks, and she convinced her teammates to do the same. She high-fives her partners at the end of their victorious round.

Anne (the one from now) mutters something over the intercom speakers that you don’t fully hear or understand, and then she fast-forwards through the rest of the videos, ones you have already memorized: prom, high school graduation, moving into her college dorm, Anne with college friends getting ready to go out, one video from inside a lab with Anne and her friend Isabella, both dressed in white lab coats, choreographed dancing and lip-syncing to “I Am a Scientist” by the Dandy Warhols, college graduation, moving into her first apartment, Anne speaking at a memorial for her grandmother, Anne walking the stage when she earned her PhD, a slew of family holidays with her relatives multiplying and aging before your eyes.

Anne says, “Fuck this.”

You aren’t sure what’s happening. You don’t know why she sounds so upset. You ask, “Is there something wrong, Anne? Are you okay?”

“I can’t—I can’t watch these again. I’ve seen them so goddamn many times… I’m sorry. Let’s, um, skip to the last one. We’ll just watch the last one a few times.”

“Did I do something wrong? Did I do something to upset you?”

“No. You’ve been—near perfect, ______.”

“Near perfect?”

“I mean you’ve been as perfect as you can be.”

You definitely don’t feel perfect. Your muscles ache, your hands are covered in blisters and sores from the hours spent clumsily drilling holes and hammering nails. Your sinuses are congested and your throat hurts and has since you woke up this morning, a sign that your immune system is still compromised. You don’t want her to know this.

Anne says, “I’m just so tired.”

“Maybe we should stop. Take a break.”

She doesn’t respond to your suggestion. The last home video plays.

It’s the one in which you and your phone camera are following Anne around the empty interior of the chocolate-brown house you purchased together. You occasionally flip the camera so that your face fills the screen. The you in this video is younger than the you of now, of course, but by how many years you do not know. You think, That face is my face. Even though you’ve already watched this particular video dozens of times, you can’t help but feel disappointed by the reappearance of yourself, and at the same time, you fall a little bit more in love with who you were, and you ache to again be in that moment of lost time.

On the guided tour of your house, when you are briefly on camera, you make silly, exaggerated, I’m-so-impressed faces. Anne is the guide and refers to herself as the “brown-house archivist.” Within each new room she recites a made-up history, a comic, romantic, or tragic event from a forgotten age. In response you say agreeable or commiserative things like “That’s fascinating” and “They really shouldn’t have been doing that in the bathtub” and “We would be wise to wash the floors again” and “They mostly lived happily ever after.”

Your voice doesn’t sound like your voice. That is to say, your voice in the video, the one relaying through the speakers, is not the voice you hear when you speak. You are aware that everyone experiences some form of auditory dissociation upon hearing their own voice, the feeling of Do I really sound like that? You understand the tone and pitch of the voice you hear when you speak are determined by the mix of air conduction and sounds traveling directly to your cochlea via the tissues in your own head. But should your recorded voice sound so different as to be unrecognizable? Shouldn’t there be an underlying cadence or rhythm, one that identifies you as the speaker?

The video tour ends in an upstairs bedroom, the room that you vividly remember. The walls are painted bright yellow. Anne walks across the room and opens one of the windows. She says, “I normally don’t like yellow. But this color, I love.” You say you hate it. She rolls her eyes at the camera (you), sticks out her tongue, and says, “This is my office anyway, so it doesn’t matter what you think of it.” She lies on the floor, spreads her arms, and says, “Mine, all mine!” You walk into the room and you hover the camera over Anne’s face. She looks directly into the camera and she smirks like she knows something you don’t. (It’s this Anne with this look that you imagine when she speaks to you in the now.) You remind her that she hasn’t given this room’s history yet. The smirk goes away, her mouth opens, and her eyes tilt away from the camera momentarily. She says, “This room used to be a sad room, painted a sad color.” You say, “Puce?” She says, “It was a sad nursery for a sad woman who had a very sad baby. Then someone thoughtfully painted the room this yellow so I wouldn’t have a sad office.” Neither of you say anything for a beat or two as Anne stares up into the camera. You ask, “How do you know if a baby is sad?” She says, “Because she’s crying, duh.” You both laugh, and you zoom in on Anne’s face until she mock screams and knocks the phone out of your hand.

Anne replays the brown-house tour video. She recites what she says on the video as it plays. The third time you watch the video, you join Anne in reciting your dialogue.

030

You are severely congested. Breathing too deeply results in a sharp stitch of pain in the middle of your chest. You cannot hide this from Anne. You report the worsening symptoms.

Anne does not seem surprised or, given the purported pandemic, concerned. You are not confident in surmising and attributing motive to what she says or how she says it.

You do not run or jog on the treadmill. You walk, but only for five minutes, as it makes you dizzy. When you stop, you tell Anne your head is full of sand. You want her to be impressed by the metaphor. She only asks you to explain what you mean.

You have a slight fever. Anne does not explain how many degrees above 98.6 constitutes a slight fever. You are hot and you are cold. You sweat and you shiver, and your muscles ache like they did when you first woke in this room.

Today’s video is an instructional one: how to build a fence.

031

“I’m going to come into your room, now, ______. My appearance might be shocking to you. I will appear—well, I’m more than a few years older than you remember me.”

You clutch your image of Anne, the one informed by the videos and the sound of her voice and what she has said and has been saying. You shuffle slowly away from your bed, stand in the middle of your room, and cough into your arm. You stare at the door. You’ve spent untold hours fantasizing about it opening. Your imaginary face-to-face meetings and escape plans have become more dramatic, more complex, and increasingly bizarre. Last night, before you fell asleep, you imagined the opening door revealed blankness, nothingness, and though finding an eternally empty void outside the door is not a likely outcome, you might have stumbled upon a metaphorical truth.

“Are you feeling up to my visit?” She laughs.

You say, “Yes,” but you feel worse than you did yesterday. There is more sand in your head and it leaks into your body, making your muscles heavy and weak.

Instead of overwhelming joy or fear at the prospect of that door finally opening, you worry at the physical image of Anne in your head, trying to anticipate and replace it with the correct one to be revealed.

There’s a pneumatic hiss and the door slides open, disappearing into the wall to your left. She says, “Here I am.” Anne steps from the dimly lit hallway and walks into your room; her pace is brisk and confident. Her gray hair is long, hanging down past her shoulders. The gray is startling. Wrinkles cluster at the edges of her mouth and eyes. Her features are no longer made of the sharp angles and tight skin you memorized. She wears the same clothes from the brown-house tour video: jeans and a thin black hooded sweatshirt. You cover your mouth and start to cry.

“Hello, ______.” She waves. Her smile is the same one from the videos, from your memories.

“Hi, Anne.” You wave back, then you don’t know what to do with your hands. She is shorter than you imagined, yet at the same time her presence fills the room. “You look… good.”

“Wow, that’s some pause you’ve got there.”

“I’m sorry.”

“No need to be sorry. I’m only kidding.”

Your laughter turns into a coughing fit, one that rekindles a painful fire in your throat.

“That cough doesn’t sound good.”

“Am I—am I the same age as you?” You are again acutely aware you have yet to see a full and clear reflection of your own face. However, you have seen enough in glimpses of the darkened viewing screen to know your hair is not gray. The skin of your body is not wrinkled.

“Not anymore. It’s a little complicated. Come on, let’s go.” She reaches out a hand, palm up.

“Where?”

“We have some work to do at the house.”

“I’m sick so you probably should stay away—”

Anne takes your hand.

The curved hallways are white and wide and empty. The ceiling panels are similar to the ones in your room, but the lighting has been dimmed and does not glow as brightly. Initially there are no windows, only smooth walls and outlines of pneumatic doors adjacent to small, square security screens. The tiled floors are slick with dust and marked with footprints that appear to vary in size and shape.

You ask, “Are all of the footprints yours?” and can’t help but try to fit your feet into some of the prints.

“You and I are the only people here.”

You note that she didn’t answer the question directly, and you are suddenly very afraid. You slow down and are about to ask if she can bring you back to your room. You do not want to be out in such an expansive, labyrinthine, dead space.

Anne gently pulls you along and says, “If we had more time, I’d take you to where you used to work at the physical plant. The solar array and wind-turbine fields are truly a marvel, a sight to behold. They are for all intents and purposes self-sufficient, thanks to the brilliance of you and the maintenance department, of course. Only one turbine has burned out, and I’ve had to change just two panels of solar cells.”

“Where are we now?”

“We’re still in what most of us simply called the Facility. We’re in one of the outer medical rings. Not much for you to see in here, really. The majority of the bioscience laboratories are nested within the inner rings. We’re going to duck through an exit and be outside soon and then we’ll be home.”

“Home?”

“Yes, home.”

As you walk, the hallway’s smooth walls eventually give way to full floor-to-ceiling windows. The darkened glass is frosted with more dust.

“What is that room, the room we just passed?”

“Another genetics lab.”

“What did you do in those laboratories?”

“I’m sorry but you don’t have the clearance to ask that.” She laughs and you are not sure why. “And I didn’t work in these outer-ring labs.”

“Who did?”

“Other scientists.”

“Where are the other scientists?”

“They left.”

“Why?”

“Because almost everyone was getting sick.”

“The pandemic?”

“Yes.”

“Were people getting sick like I am getting sick?”

“I’m afraid so. I’m very sorry.”

“What will happen to me?”

“You’ll either get better or you won’t. Again, I’m very sorry. In the meantime, we’ll enjoy a special day together.” Anne squeezes your hand and pulls you through the outer ring.

“Are you ready to go outside? This is my favorite part.”

Before you can ask Favorite part of what? Anne punches the horizontal push bar with two hands and the emergency exit door flies open. You’re awash in the sun’s fusion-powered glare and you close your eyes, cover your face with shaking hands. You listen to the wind echoing in the bowls of your ears. The smell of the air and how it feels on your skin, on your lips, and inside your lungs are beyond your abilities of description, and it’s okay because even if you were able, you would not choose to sully this moment fumbling with inadequate words.

Anne slowly pulls you away from the building’s shadow, into the heat of the day. She says, “It’s not the Ocean State, but we’re about a mile from the ocean. Can you smell the salt? It’s very strong today. Don’t you remember the smell of the ocean?”

Despite your terrible congestion, you can smell it. At least, you think you can. You have no olfactory memory associated with the water and waves with which to make a comparison. To your shame (yes, shame, as how could it not be your fault somehow?) you have forgotten the full sensory experience of being near an ocean. To forget is to lose something that was once yours, that was once of yourself. But how could one lose something as expansive as an ocean in a dusty corner of one’s mind? What if, instead, to forget is to open a door to a void; the memory is not retrievable because it is not there, was never there.

There are countless other buildings within the Complex. Their exteriors are looping arcs of steel and glass. You wonder if they were designed to look like ocean waves. You do not ask.

Anne tells you the oval-shaped building across from the Facility was called the Dormitory. You tell her you remember that, but you don’t.

You don’t care about the Dormitory or the sprawl of the Complex. You prefer looking at the leaves on the trees, their branches are giant green hands pulling and clutching at the buildings. You prefer looking at the puffs of clouds floating in the blue sky. When you can do so without tripping, you walk with your eyes closed and your face pointed directly at the sun.

The roads winding through the campus are overrun with weeds and grass poking up through cracked, bleached pavement. You haven’t been walking long but are already out of breath. Anne gives you a bottle of water and encourages you, tells you that you are almost home.

You crest a hill and in the sloping distance, for as far as you can see, are what you assume to be more ruins of medical and research monoliths, but ahead, in the foreground, about one hundred paces away, dotted in the middle of an empty parking lot is a small two-story brown house. Your house.

“We have to start on the fence today.”

Within the rough sea of pavement, the brown house squats on a rectangular plot of grass. The lawn has brown patches but is otherwise well maintained. The crab apple tree in the front yard is not as big as you remember. Anne laments that it probably gets too much sun for it to grow to its full potential.

“This is our house? We lived here?”

“Yes. Well, it’s not our original house. It’s a replica. Not perfect, but, you know”—she pauses and rubs your arm—“nothing is.”

Anne explains that first she pried up and removed the pavement, creating the home’s footprint. It took years, but then she jerry-rigged a foundation with bricks, posts, and pier blocks. “It probably wouldn’t pass an official housing inspection, but the house is standing.”

“You did all this?” you ask.

“I’ve had a lot of time and a lot of help.”

“Where’s all your help now?”

“They’re all gone.”

“Did they get sick too?”

“Yes. But maybe you’ll be the one to get better.”

As good as the sun felt initially, the light and heat are giving you a headache. “Was that why I was in the room for as long as I was?”

“Yes and no. Mostly you were there until you remembered who you are.”

“I forgot almost everything because I was asleep for so long.”

“That’s right.”

You remember so many things now, even with your head pounding and your vision blurring.

“Was I asleep for so long because I and everyone else got sick and you were trying to help me? How come you aren’t sick?”

Anne claps her hands together. “We’ll talk about that in the morning. Will you help me start the fence now? It’s hard to believe, but the fence is the last thing we need to build and then our house will be completed.”

You cough and bend over, and your vision goes momentarily fuzzy at the periphery. You take a few deep breaths before speaking again. You say, “Our replica house, you mean.” You step onto the front lawn. The house looks like the one in your head. You ache with recognition, longing, and something akin to if not happiness, then contentment.

“Same thing.”

“Is it?” You look away from the house and scan the ruins, the surrounding pavement, and the sagging, behemoth exoskeletons of the Complex. “Is the rest of the world like this?”

Anne shrugs and says, “Enough of it is. I’m sure there are other lucky survivors, but nobody comes knocking on our door.”

“All this happened while I was asleep? Why did you ever wake me?”

The smile on Anne’s face falters. She says, “Come on. The fencing materials are in the backyard.”

Tools and wood are piled toward the edge of the grassed lot. Anne says that some of the supplies come from the maintenance department but over the years she’s successfully scavenged local abandoned homes and found one improvement store about a two-hour drive away that hadn’t been entirely looted.

“We’re only going to start the fence’s back section today, ______. We won’t push ourselves too hard. I know you’re not feeling well.”

You assist Anne in measuring the distance between posts, marking the spots with wooden stakes, digging six postholes, setting the posts in the holes with a quick-drying concrete. Then you take a break. You sit in the shade, drink lemonade, and eat rations. The lemonade stings your throat, but you do not complain. Anne talks. You do not. You concentrate on conserving energy and not passing out.

You and Anne spend the rest of the afternoon attaching rails to the posts and pickets to the rails. Despite Anne’s near-constant encouragement and compliments, you are ashamed because you are not as much help as you’d like to be. You bend nails and screw in the screws crookedly. Anne has to fix your mistakes and redoes much of the work you were supposed to do on your own. Your hands are slow and clumsy. Your hands do not remember to whom they once belonged.

Most of the celebratory dinner (corn, baked potatoes, leafy greens) comes from Anne’s garden, which she maintains in another area of the campus.

“I figured after all the hard work you wouldn’t mind the starches. There’s only so much I can do to dress up the protein paste though, sorry. I tried raising chickens and ducks, but I wasn’t good at keeping them healthy.”

The kitchen is exactly how you remember it, which is a comfort, because in the videos, you only saw an empty kitchen, the one from before the linoleum was replaced with laminate and before this little breakfast table, and you don’t remember updating the cabinets and appliances, but somehow you remember these being exactly where they are and looking like they do, and maybe you even remember Anne sitting like she is sitting now and looking like she is looking now, but you know that can’t be possible, can it? Maybe your memories are creating themselves; like the solar array and wind turbines, your memories are becoming self-sufficient.

“Aren’t you hungry?”

You are not. Your tongue is swollen, and chewing and swallowing are impossible chores. “I’m okay,” you say.

“You don’t look okay.” Anne looks right through you. You’ve been aware of that idiom and now, perhaps for the first time, you understand it. She says, “Come on. Let’s get you upstairs.”

“Who are we again?”

Anne tilts her head and furrows her brow, observing you, making silent calculations.

“What are we, Anne? What are we together?”

She pulls her hair behind her head and ties it into a quick ponytail. “I’m not sure what you’re asking.”

You cough and you wince at the splintering shards of pain in your throat and head. “How do we describe you and me? Are we coworkers? Are we friends? Are we a couple? Are we lovers? What are we?”

Anne covers her mouth with a hand and laughs. She laughs until her face is red and she isn’t breathing. Despite how terrible you feel, you laugh too.

She stops laughing. A small shadow of a smile remains. Her eyes are pointed down at the table, not at you. “There were times when we were all those things. Right now, we’re partners.”

“Your hands do not remember to whom they once belonged.”

The sun hasn’t fully set outside, but it is dusk in the house. Anne leads you by the arm, up the stairs to the second floor, and if your memory of the house’s layout is correct, into what should be her office, the one with the yellow walls.

She says, “I recently decided to make this the master bedroom. I know the room is smaller, but I enjoy how the sunlight reflects off the yellow walls in the morning.”

With Anne’s help, you change into clean pajamas. They are made of a fabric softer than the pullover and white drawstring scrubs you’ve been wearing. You slowly crawl into the queen-size bed; the wooden frame creaks under your weight and movement. You lie on your right side, facing the windows. As your head sinks into the pillow, Anne pulls the bedcovers up to your neck. Your fever is raging. Your teeth chatter and your pajamas are instantly soaked in sweat.

Anne retreats to a bureau across the room, adjacent to the door. She lights a candle. The wall you are facing glows with eerie, flickering orange light.

“You need your rest. Tomorrow is a big day. A big day for both of us.”

She climbs into the bed but remains over the covers, not inside them with you. She drapes a hand over your shoulder and promises to stay until you fall asleep. You close your eyes, but you can still see the orange light on the wall.

You are awake in the dark, sitting at the edge of your bed, feet on the hardwood floor, and you are crying.

Anne isn’t in the bed next to you. Your muscles ache and your joints are filled with ground bits of glass. You don’t want to move, but you get up, and it’s as though your brain is a step behind your body. You shuffle to the door and fumble for the knob, which is cold in your sweaty hand. You open the door and you are so afraid, of what exactly you don’t know, but the fear is shutting down your mind. You flow down the hallway and to the bathroom as though the floor is the belt of a treadmill. You twist the sink knobs, but there is no water. You shiver, groan, and your hands shake, and that’s when you see there’s a mirror on the wall. It is dark, but you see yourself in the glass. You see who you are. You paw at the wall light switch next to you, but no light comes on. You stop breathing and moving and the you in the glass does the same. You both blink. You both raise a hand up to your face. You are not who you remember. You are not the person in the pictures and videos Anne has showed you. You are someone else entirely, and you want to yell but it comes out as a low, keening moan.

You blink and you don’t remember how you got there, but you are back in the yellow bedroom. You are standing in front of the window. You open the curtains and clumsily lift the blinds. Outside, the moon is missing a piece, but it’s still so big and bright. You sit on the bed and stare at it. Then you are standing and looking down the hill to the Dormitory, and it’s not as far away as you thought, and in the moonlight you can see fine, you can see everything. You watch the marble front entrance with its dry fountain, and Anne emerges between the Dormitory’s glass doors. She is walking backward, pulling a gurney behind her. There is someone lying flat on the gurney, covered by a sheet. She pivots and turns; her arms block your view of the other person’s face. Then you can’t see them very well because they are small underneath the big moon, because you are farther away from them than you thought.

You are awake in the dark, sitting at the edge of your bed, feet on the hardwood floor, and you are crying. You hear Anne’s feet pounding on the stairs and down the hall and then into your room. The candle has burned out and there isn’t enough moonlight spilling through the window behind you.

You ask her, over and over, Who, who am I?, and you ask her, over and over, Who was on the gurney?

Anne stands in the middle of the room, her arms wrapped around herself. She asks, “What’s wrong?”

You tell her what you saw but you know you’re not doing a good job and you sound far away, far away from yourself.

Anne says, “Shh” and “No” and “It was a dream” and “It’s because of your high fever” and “You were having a fever dream” and “Hallucinating” and “That’s why it was so real” and “There’s no mirror in the bathroom, you can look tomorrow.” She does not answer your “who was on the gurney” question. She guides you back down onto your bed and pulls the covers over you.

You ask her to stay, but she does not. She shuts and latches the door.

032

Anne says your name and gently shakes your shoulder.

The room is full of light and the yellow walls are angry. There’s a deep crackling within your chest on inhales and your exhales are whistling hisses.

“Good morning. I know you’re not well, but we have to do this downstairs, at the kitchen table, and then you can rest. Come on. We’re almost done.”

Anne sits you up, drapes your right arm across the back of her shoulders, and lifts you onto your feet. The morning sun amplifies the yellow; the walls glow and the light becomes a disorienting, intoxicating mist. You don’t want to leave this room. This is a room you could stay in forever.

The two of you stagger into the hallway and then down the stairs, one halting step at a time. You want to ask about seeing the bathroom and if in fact there is a mirror or an empty space on the wall where there should be one, but it is too late. You will not be walking back up the stairs.

Anne deposits you into a chair at the kitchen table. Your head lolls, pitches into your chest, and perhaps you sleep, or pass out, but you come to when there’s a sting on the back of your left hand.

She says, “You are dehydrated and I’m replenishing your fluids intravenously. This will be more restorative than a simple glass of water.”

Cold rushes into the back of your hand and up your forearm. After a few moments you are able to lift your head and look around the room. There’s a metal stand next to you, a plastic bag full of clear fluid dangles from its top, and a thin tube connects from the bag to the back of your hand. On the kitchen table is a large black notebook, a pencil in its spine.

“______? Are you with me? Are you feeling a little better?”

You say, “I’m here.” Here is in the brown house, the replica; you remember that. It hurts to talk and your voice is not your own. You don’t like hearing what it has become.

Anne slides the notebook away from you and to the empty place at the table. She says, “We’re going to have a conversation, ______. It’s the most important one we ever had or will ever have. Please, keep in mind everything you remember and everything you’ve learned about yourself, about who you were and who you are. You’ve done so well in such a short period of time. I’m very proud of all you’ve accomplished, but you must remain focused during the conversation, and do not allow yourself to wander. You must stay you within the parameters of what is being discussed. You are not to ask me any more questions about last night or the prior thirty days. Please, ______. I need you to do this for me.”

“Because we’re partners?”

“Yes. Because we’ve become the most sacred of partners. I am going to leave you here while I change my clothes, but I will only be gone for a few minutes. Don’t get up, don’t move. That part is important too, because this—you sitting here by yourself at the table—this is how I found you. This is how I find you. This is how it starts.”

She leaves. You cough and the sound is terrible and you know your chest is broken. You stare at the needle in your hand and the plastic IV line. You imagine yourself, the one you saw in the mirror last night, that you has always been waiting here, in this kitchen, waiting for Anne to come back. You try to imagine what she is going to say to you, and what you are going to say to her.

Anne returns. She wears a flannel shirt and blue jeans. She places the notebook on the floor, out of sight. She closes her eyes, breathes deeply twice, and then begins.

She says, “What are you doing down here? You should’ve stayed in bed.” Her affect has changed. Her familiarity with you is different. You can see it in her posture, in her wide eyes, in her fidgeting hands.

You are not sure who you are, who you are supposed to be. You are not sure what you’re supposed to say. You make a guess. “It was too bright. I wanted a glass of water. I—”

“You sound awful, ______.”

“I feel like I sound.”

“You should let me take you back to the Facility. I can take better care of you there.”

“No, I’m not going back. No way.” You remember waking up in the room and what it felt like and you never want to feel that way again. “You’re not putting me in one of those rooms and leaving me—”

“Stop it, I won’t leave you. You aren’t going to get better if you stay here.”

“I’m not going to get better if I go back either.”

“We have to try. We have to try something! Something different than me sitting here watching you die.”

You pause, unsure of what to say, of what she wants you to say. You try to imagine your face isn’t the one from the mirror but the one from the videos, from your memories. “Okay, I don’t want to, but okay. If you really want me to, I’ll go.”

Anne shakes her head, breaking her emotionally intense affect. She smiles crookedly at you. She cups a hand around her mouth and whispers, “You’re doing great. This is the only time I’ll correct you, I promise. You need to say, ‘Why would I ever go back to that place? And why do you want to go? You’re the one who said you were convinced the virus came out of the Dormitory.’ Say that and then we’ll go from there and without me correcting you again. Okay, please?”

You cough. You nod. She repeats what she wants you to say, and then you say it, word for word.

Anne says, “I never said I was convinced.”

“Anne, you said—”

“What I said was the group of blanks we grew with the new modifiers to reprogram DNA, those patients were among the first to get sick. But correlation does not imply causation. Could be a fucking zoonotic virus, making the jump from one of the animal labs, for all we know. We really don’t know where it came from yet…” She trails off at the end, clearly not fully believing her own words.

You are so tired and can barely hold your head up. You don’t fully grasp what she is saying, but the words come to you, as though this conversation is a part of you, and it was hidden somewhere deep inside. You say, “Are you the only one who didn’t get sick?”

“No. Brianna and Alejandro were fine. But…”

“But?”

“I don’t know, now. I don’t know how they’re doing now. They left the Complex four days ago, like everyone else.”

“Did you, I don’t know, vaccinate or inoculate yourself somehow?”

“Jesus, no. If I could do that, don’t you think I’d save you too? How could you ask that?” She looks down into her lap instead of at you, and then she covers her face. When she looks back up, her expression is blank and unreadable. But it’s unreadable in a way you are sure means something.

You don’t say anything.

She answers your silent accusation with, “I want to try to help you, though. Let’s go back and let me try.”

“Don’t make me go back.” Even after everything, you want to remain within the promise and the lie of the little brown house.

“I don’t want to watch you die.”

“Don’t make me go back.” You are the you of now saying this. You don’t care if you are accurately representing the you from then.

Anne swears and pounds her fists on the kitchen table. She closes her eyes, then slowly reaches across the kitchen table and takes your right hand. Her skin is cold. “If this doesn’t… If you don’t get better—can I bring you back?”

“What do you mean?”

“I know this is hard, this is so fucked up and impossible to ask, but after you… After!”

“After I’m dead?”

“Yes, after. Only if you say yes right now, I can go to the Complex, we still have hundreds of viable blanks, and—you know what I can do. I can bring you back.”

“With all that’s happening, you’re actually asking this?”

“I am. I—I don’t want to be without you. Please.”

“I want you to say it.”

“______, please.”

“You have to say it.”

“Let me bring you back. I don’t want to be alone, be without you. I—”

“You have to say the word, Anne.”

“Let me clone you. Please, let me do it. I want you to let me bring you back.”

You are crying. The Anne sitting across from you is blurry and begins to look like the younger Anne you remember. “I don’t want to come back. It wouldn’t be me you’re bringing back.”

“But listen, think about all the—”

“Anne—”

“Amazing success we’ve had with augmenting our patients’ cellular memory, directly uploading information and images, and the exercises and therapy—”

“Anne! It wouldn’t be me.” You look at your hands and wonder whose hands they are.

“I would make them into you. They would be you.”

You repeat, “It wouldn’t be me.” What you mean to say, but in these final moments, you can’t summon the courage, is: It never was me.

“If you say no, I won’t clone you. I promise you. And I know it’s crazy, it’s fucking horrible and crazy, but I’m asking you. Please. Will you let me?”

“No. I’m sorry, Anne. No. You can’t. It won’t be me.”

Anne wipes her eyes, sighs, bends to the kitchen floor, and retrieves the notebook. She angrily scribbles some notes and throws the pen across the table.

She says, “Thank you,” but it’s perfunctory and she says it through gritted teeth and without looking at you.

You ask, “How many of us have there been?” You are breathing erratically and your voice is little more than a scratching sound.

“Too many.”

“We helped build our house.” You are desperate to feel a kinship with the rest of you who spent all those years with Anne. You are desperate to feel something that is yours, something other than emptiness.

“You did.”

“We all had this conversation.”

“Yes.”

“How many of us said yes?”

“None of you. Not a single fucking one of you.”

Anne explodes out of her chair and stalks to the kitchen counter, grunting and yelling in obvious frustration. She stops pacing and then quickly replaces your IV bag even though the old one is only three-quarters empty. Your hand and arm go warm this time.

She closes her eyes and sighs. She says, “There aren’t very many left of you to say yes.”

She rubs the back of your head. Your eyelids go heavy and you try to speak but you cannot. You feel yourself melting away, your consciousness receding toward a singularity.

Anne whispers, “I didn’t lie to you, ______.”

001

Your room is dark. You cannot see anything. You are lying in a bed. A sheet covers your body. You wiggle your fingers and toes, and the loud rasp of skin rubbing against the sheets is startling. With the slight movements there is pain. Your muscles and joints hum with it.

You’ve been awake and not-awake for days, maybe weeks, perhaps longer. You do not know where you were then, or before then. You are here now. A significant amount of time has passed, but from what beginning, you do not know. You consider the origin of this time during which you’ve been awake and not-awake and conclude it is, for the moment, unknowable.

A NOTE FROM THE CURATOR OF THE FORWARD COLLECTION

A year and a half ago, my partner and I were driving across the Rocky Mountains, not far from where I live. The aspens had just begun to turn, and the air was redolent with all the smells I associate with fall: incense, dirt, the start of decay. As we drove, we were debating some emerging technology I’d read about in Scientific American and circling around the larger topic of growing up in the bubble of rapid change and technological advancement. While a lot of it has been amazing, some of the change has come with effects we’d rather roll back.

How does anyone know at the moment of discovery where their work will ultimately lead?

Should we let that uncertainty stop forward momentum, or do we roll the dice and let the chips fall where they may?

How does it feel to change the world?

These questions intrigued me, so much so that I wrote a story about it. But my obsession didn’t stop there—I also wanted to know what other writers would write when posed with the same questions.

And so this collection was born and filled with writers whose minds work in ways that fascinate me.

N. K. Jemisin (the Broken Earth trilogy) is writing fantasy and speculative fiction like you’ve never even fathomed. Paul Tremblay is the greatest horror novelist working today, and his novel A Head Full of Ghosts still gives me nightmares. Veronica Roth created an unforgettable world and populated it with amazing characters in her iconic Divergent trilogy. Andy Weir captured the imagination of the world and scienced the shit out of his already-a-classic The Martian. And Amor Towles, with A Gentleman in Moscow, has simply written one of the best novels I’ve ever read. I recommend it every day.

I asked these writers to be a part of a collection that explores the resounding effects of a pivotal technological moment, and to my great delight, they said yes. I knew they’d deliver the goods when it came time to write their stories, but I was not prepared for what an abundance of riches this collection would turn out to be.

I hope, once you’ve read these six mind-bending stories, that you’ll agree.

Blake Crouch

Durango, Colorado

May 3, 2019

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Photo © 2018 Allan Amato

Paul Tremblay is the author of the Bram Stoker Award–winning novels The Cabin at the End of the World and A Head Full of Ghosts, as well as the novel Disappearance at Devil’s Rock. His short fiction collection Growing Things and Other Stories was published in July 2019. Paul is also on the board of directors for the Shirley Jackson Awards.

Copyright

Text copyright © 2019 by Paul Tremblay

All rights reserved.

No part of this work may be reproduced, or stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without express written permission of the publisher.

Published by Amazon Original Stories, Seattle

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eISBN: 9781542043632

Cover design by Will Staehle

Content

Paul Tremblay
THE LAST CONVERSATION

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A NOTE FROM THE CURATOR OF THE FORWARD COLLECTION

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Copyright