Песах Амнуэль - Zion's Fiction - A Treasury of Israeli Speculative Literature

“Yes,” I say. My voice sounds weak.

“I’m going now. You’ll need to stay.”

“Why? I can just lock the—”

“We just got a call thirty minutes ago. A donor’s heading this way. Passed away this morning.”

“What?”

“You will wait here till the ambulance comes. The man will come and give you papers to sign. You will sign all the papers. And I do mean all of them. The man will leave. You will put the body in the fridge, and then you will lock up. Understood?”

I’ve been sitting in the morgue for three hours, now, waiting for the body.

There’s been nothing. There’s no phone here. Even if I used my cell, I wouldn’t know who to call or who to ask. I don’t even know the name of the student who gave me the instructions. I sit here waiting, imagining, remembering every horror movie I’ve ever seen. I have ghosts on the brain, zombies, dead people coming back to life, dead children, animals rising from graves, knives in showers, blood spilling, curses, even my own body on the slab.

Who would give their minds to science? Who would allow their memories, their emotions, their entire lives to be explored, raped, pillaged by total strangers? Why would anyone do that?

The steel doors swing open, and I jump ten feet in the air.

A fifty-something orderly wheels a body on some kind of pushcart. The body is zipped inside a black bag.

“Special delivery,” he smiles at me.

“I—”

“Hey, hey,” he almost touches me. “You’re turning green. Oh, god, I love first timers. Look,” and suddenly he’s all friendly again, turning back to the body. He’s trying to tell me through his actions that there’s nothing to worry about. “I’ll show you how it’s done, so you’ll know for next time, all right? Just don’t throw up on me.” Another smile.

I nod.

“What you do is, you take the body out of the bag,” he unzips the entire thing, revealing a woman’s body. “You move her to this gurney.” I can’t take my eyes off her, disgusting as this is. She’s around my age. Unspoiled, naked body. Beautiful face. “Like this,” he continues. “Then you take a sheet from here, and you cover her with it.” He does so. “After all, you telepaths are going to remove the sheet to touch her, aren’t you? Then you shove her into the freezer.” He closes the freezer behind him, turns to me, and flashes his most disarming smile. “There. All done. Now sign this,” he produces a form from his shirt pocket, unfolds it, and puts it in front of me.

It’s to acknowledge receipt. I sign the form wordlessly and get to keep a copy. I notice the name. The body is Stephanie Reynolds.

“Excellent,” he repockets the paper. “Now where’s your form?”

“What?”

“Where’s your form?”

“I just signed it.”

“No. Where’s your form?” I look at him blankly. “They told me you signed it.”

“Signed what?” But a shiver begins to run up my spine. She had said to sign all forms, and she had enjoyed that moment in particular.

He goes to one of the drawers, full of different forms, and pulls out one. “This. They told me you signed this.”

I look at it. “What is it?”

“Anyone who works here, anyone who goes to the Academy, signs this. It says you consent to donating your body to science, to this. After all, you guys need to help yourselves, don’t you? They usually send me all the paperwork a couple of weeks into the semester, once they’ve threatened you a bit. You’re going to sign it anyway. So you can sign it now, if you want.”

This was what she’d emoted at me when she left. Perverse pleasure. And the knowledge that if I don’t do this I’m out of the Academy, looking at a forced, lifelong military career with no way back into civilian life. And I can’t afford to be…

I don’t think my voice is even audible when I say, “I’ll wait. Thank you.”

He shrugs. We both know I’m going to sign it eventually.

It’s eleven p.m. when I get to my dorm room for the second time today. For the second time ever. In the morning, I had just enough time to throw my bags on the floor before I had to go to first period. The rest of the students in my class are down the hall. We each get a huge suite with a bedroom, a small living room, and a bathroom.

I crawl onto the bed. Showering can wait. Unpacking can wait.

I want to cry.

Later. Later. Please. Later.

I wake up in the middle of the night, my heart beating: I forgot to set the alarm!

I stumble off the bed, drowsy, everything spinning.

The light’s on. I slept in my clothes. My mouth is dry. My alarm clock is still packed.

I need to pee. I go to the bathroom, and a glance at the mirror makes me gasp. What the—!

My face! My face is smeared with red-and-white toothpaste!

The door—I didn’t lock it.

Did they touch me, even for a second? Did they invade my thoughts? Did they invade my dreams? Did they read me?

Was it my class? The older students?

I hate this place. I hate these people. Dammit!

I sit on the edge of the bathtub and cry and cry and cry.

“When we die,” Professor Bendis begins his lecture at eight on the second, “although there are no thoughts, the neural paths remain. The memories remain. Identity remains. The emotions of the past, the complexes, remain. They are all inactive. We can search them, navigate through them, without resistance from the subject. And thus we can probe and learn. Undisturbed, not afraid of harming anyone’s privacy.

“It takes roughly seven days for the ‘mind’ or the ‘personality’ to deteriorate and disappear beyond our capability of probing it. As my own professor used to say, ‘Our personality dies seven days after our body does.’”

He slams his hand on the podium. “There’s a fresh body in the morgue. We have less than six days to analyze the subject’s mind. Until further notice, class will be held there. Ms. Watson, you have the key on you?”

“Yes.”

“Then we shall go.”

I open the freezer and wheel out the body.

The class holds back a gasp. I can feel their collective need to run away.

Professor Bendis ignores them. He walks up to the body, removes the sheet enough to reveal her face, and touches her forehead with a finger. Five seconds later, he breaks contact and looks at me.

“Ms. Watson, do you know her name?”

“Stephanie Reynolds, sir.”

He nods. “Do you know her middle name?”

I blank out. Then I see the form in my mind. The slot for middle name was empty. “No,” I say.

“Touch her,” he says. “And tell me her middle name.”

I come closer, standing right beside the body. Why did he have to pick me first?

I touch her, searching.

There’s nothing.

I raise my eyes. “Professor Bendis, I’m not sensing any thoughts or emotions.”

“Of course not. She’s dead, Ms. Watson. She hasn’t had a thought for approximately twenty-four hours.”

“Then how—”

“But the neurological patterns are there nonetheless. The memories of thoughts and emotions she’s had are still stored in the physical connections inside her brain. You have to think for her. You have to create movement. You will have to move from one pathway to another. And you will only be able to move down emotions or thoughts or memories she’s had before and that have been etched into her mind. Your movement will be through her memory.”

Hesitating, I touch her again.

Nothing.

I will her thoughts to move. Nothing.

I look at him. “But to move I have to start from someplace. There’s no place to start.”

“To get a starting point, you have to think a thought she’d already had. You have to find a place that already exists in her memory. That’s not as difficult as it sounds. Try this. Put your finger on her, and think ‘mother.’”