Caeli Widger - Mother of Invention

She stepped from his embrace and he helped lower her back into the rocker. He sat on the ground beside her, legs drawn in a V, elbows resting on his knees. His face looked creased and weary, though he was clean-shaven, with a fresh haircut, a short buzz with clean lines over his ears and at the back of his neck.

“What do you mean, you don’t have clearance?” Irene asked him. “And why are you wearing fatigues? I’ve never seen you… isn’t that for… the others?” She trailed off, having never learned the structure of the Colony’s personnel, who did exactly what, or why. She hadn’t wanted to. She knew Henry and Johanna, plus a handful of other Permanents, and the doctors she saw weekly, but that was it.

“Long story,” Henry sighed. “I got demoted. I’m on night watch now. Basically a security guard, over at Base. Not allowed to travel between zones.”

“Then how are you here?”

“Johanna helped.”

“She’s a good egg.”

“She is.” Henry shifted to face her head-on and adjusted his hat. His expression was very serious. “Irene, I brought you something.”

She didn’t have to ask what it was. Inside her body she felt a chemical shift, like tuning forks rubbing together. Instantly, she felt more alive. As if the morning had finally made good on its promise. Possibility. Transformation.

“You did?” she asked softly.

“I did.” Henry reached into the breast pocket of his shirt and pulled out a miniature manila envelope, three inches long. “Are you sure you still want it?”

“Absolutely,” she said. She’d never been surer of anything.

Beside her, she could hear him breathing. When he spoke, she could tell he was fighting to control his voice.

“Okay,” he said. “I’m going to give it to you. But you can’t use it until tomorrow night. I’m going to tell you what to do, and I need you to follow my instructions exactly .”

“Okay. But why tomorrow night?” She didn’t want to wait through another dawn. Today’s had been enough. Now, in fact, it seemed perfect.

“Tomorrow, Johanna will take you to the Quarry for an appointment.”

“I just saw the docs yesterday. There’s nothing scheduled for tomorrow.”

“Now there is. Trust me.”

“I trust you, Henry.”

Slowly, he extended the slip of manila toward her. She lifted her hand, wondering if he noticed how crabbed and knotty it had grown. Probably not, she thought. Henry never seemed to notice her deteriorating exterior. Instead, he seemed to see straight inside her.

For this, she’d always loved him. Even though he’d lied to her. Even though he’d brought her here. One of the reasons she refused to revise and leave the Colony—and she had many reasons—was that revision required her to never see Henry again. That, and never speak the truth. To deny that Juva had ever done her harm, to perpetuate an absurd story of rare cancer, to live lie upon lie, while never seeing Henry’s face again. It wasn’t a life. She’d rather be dead.

She closed her fingers around the envelope.

Tears glazed the surface of Henry’s eyes. He rose to his feet.

“Don’t cry,” said Irene. “You’ve made me so happy.”

He held up his palm. “Please don’t say that. I’ve made no one happy.”

She smiled. “That’s not for you to decide, Henry.”

“It’s Tracy. Tracy Theroux. You know that, don’t you?”

“I do. I just prefer Henry.”

“Speaking of names. One more thing.”

“Yes?” said Irene.

“They named her Vivian.”

“What?”

“The people who found her. They named her Vivian, and they gave her a good life.”

Irene gazed up at him, backlit by the sun, a haggard angel.

“Thank you, Tracy Theroux,” she said, and he was gone.

The dawn fooled her every time.

“Vivian?” Johanna’s voice eased through the cracked door. “Sweetness?”

“What?” said Viv, foggy with sleep. She fumbled for the light on her nightstand. Pinched at the little chain. Dim light seeped from the bulb. She blinked, roving her eyes around the blank walls, disoriented.

“Is it already time to wake up?” It did not feel like morning, but then again, without cues of sunlight, in this windowless room, how could she be sure?

“No, baby doll, you just fell asleep an hour ago,” said Johanna, still outside the door. “You’ve got a visitor. It’ll be quick. Then you can go back to sleep.”

Viv bolted up in bed. “Wayne?” she said.

“No, no,” said Johanna, stepping backward through the door, pushing it open with her body. “But it’s someone Tracy wanted you to meet.”

She was maneuvering a wheelchair. Viv watched her back it fully into the room, then close the door. Slowly, Johanna swiveled the wheelchair around to face Viv.

Seated in the chair was an elderly, shriveled woman, her face a fissured desert surface. She wore her bone-white hair long, in scraggly spirals, past the hunch in her back, which rose up from between her shoulders like a turtle shell. She was ancient, ravaged, yet her face was inexplicably beautiful to Viv, a sacred and familiar ruin.

Johanna pushed the woman closer to Viv until her knees met the edge of Viv’s mattress. The woman extended her arms. Instead of recoiling, Viv instinctively leaned forward. The woman put one palm on either side of Viv’s face and held it between the soft, withered branches of her hands.

Viv closed her eyes. Felt the bird bones of the woman’s thin-skinned hands pressing against the flesh of her cheeks. A gauzy memory returned to Viv, from somewhere deep in her muscles. She could not say what it was, but it was there, distinct as an old wound throbbing with the onset of rain.

“Hello, my baby,” said the woman. “Hello, and goodbye.”

“What?” said Viv.

“I’m sorry,” said the woman, her voice chalky, eyes shining with tears. “I just wanted to tell you. That’s all.”

As if on cue, Johanna spun the wheelchair back toward the door, and pushed. In seconds they were back in the hallway, as if they’d never come at all.

“Who are you?” whispered Viv to the empty room, though somehow, she knew.

2021

Tessa stood before the women of Cohort One, considering the potential disaster of their collectively abandoning the Trial. Their contract with Seahorse could make it difficult, but ultimately, they could leave if they wanted to badly enough. Even if they’d signed away all of Seahorse’s liability, even if they conceded to the medical ethics requirements, even if they’d promised not to speak of the Trial outside the gates of the Seahorse campus. If they were willing to live with the consequences, they could devastate the entire organization in one swift coup.

“No,” said Tessa. “That is absolutely…”

Suddenly, she knew what she needed to do: empower them to want to stay.

“Are you okay, Tessa?” said LaTonya.

“Wait here for just a minute,” she said. “I need to get something from my room.”

Ten minutes later, she returned to the living area, holding a maroon toiletry case and her phone, and set both on the table between the couches. The Cohort stared at her without speaking, their curiosity palpable. Tessa rolled the case’s lock into proper alignment, clicked it open, and removed the wand inside.

“Whoa,” said LaTonya. “Is that an INR-View?”

Tessa flicked it and connected it to her phone.

“Gwen, lift your shirt,” she commanded. Gwen obeyed.

Tessa skimmed the wand slowly over Gwen’s belly, as she’d seen Gupta do dozens of times. The blue light flicked and flicked, and then held steady, indicating it had gathered a full image. Tessa held up her phone so they could all see the corresponding image.