Emily Two
by K.L. Rivera
Photo by Dan FarRell
Mistakes were made…
Mistakes were made when they took me apart and buried me in places far from Roger. I could feel myself spread thin, like a web over hundreds of miles.
I was in the soil . I was in the rot. I was in the water they pulled from the wells.
I locked onto passing cars as they drove by my resting places. I heard all their plans to save the world. But I didn't care about their wants. I worked only to remember Bobby. In one place, I gathered information through my buried fingers and sent the notes to my legs trapped in another, then on to my torso tangled in a pond, and then finally, I sent all memories to the center of the web, right back to me as Roger began again.
As I had planned for, when I awoke new , my first thought was of Bobby.
It was Roger's first thought too.
He asked if I remembered Bobby. I stared blankly into the middle distance and slightly lifted from the medical table, so that my soft new breasts touched him.
It required several days of work beneath Roger before he trusted me again.
Today, Roger is taking me to Washington, DC via a train out of New York City. It is risky to travel, but Roger is giving a lecture on control. He is hoping my obedience will be proof to persuade. I know I should be better for him. I know I should come back better for him each time. If I did, it would mean he had found a way to bring them all back . It meant a new future for the world … it meant living forever … if I came back right.
The nauseating pull of the station lights churn my insides. Train delays redden the screens. The Commuters make no sounds of distress. None of them aware of much outside of themselves — what’s left of their memories. Most had been at the station for years, holding boarding tickets, mumbling and staring at nothing, believing they were awaiting trains —trains that never came, and never will.
The Commuters have taken up every corner of the station. Some of them have been there so long they've become the same hue as the trash walls that grow around them, built by mice and other creatures that hope to one day make a meal of the human flesh.
Roger and I are to take a private train reserved for scientists and government, but he is having trouble finding the stairs to the secret track location. I should tell him where it is, but I stay silent and wait for my chance to slip away.
He places me against a wall and fastens me to a rusty pipe that clearly will not hold me. I wonder if it's a trap — a test of my loyalty — but I don't care. I need to see Bobby.
When Roger goes off in search of someone in clean clothes, I tip myself forward and land front to the floor with the pipe across my back. As I slowly rise, a Commuter trips over me, but manages not to fall. He is holding an empty coffee cup. His eyes are milky, rolling back in his head, privately screening memories of a life long lost. He still wears the suit from his last day as a real man. The sleeves of the jacket are seared to his arms, the shirt beneath, reduced to a splatter of thread wound into the hairs of his chest. I wonder if he's in the middle of a bad memory, because he is frowning. He pretends to angrily hand the coffee cup to someone who isn't there. I catch it before it falls. It is a good thing that I feel sad for him. It means Roger is closer to his goal. I know what it's like to be a prisoner in your head, so I place the coffee cup back in the Commuter's hand and hold his face. I hold him until he smiles again — until I am sure my touch has brought forth something pleasant from the back of his diseased mind.
Then I leave to find Bobby.
I slip through an exit into to the shanty town behind the station. New York, New York, once a great city , was now a dumping ground for the sick. Anything outside the city was reserved for the rich who had paid to stay awake, while the less fortunate, and their milky eyes, were left to wander the streets of Manhattan.
Today, the poison in the air is thick, far worse than the reports claimed this morning. People jump and scatter in the squalor around me as I walk. I pass a recent food drop left to rot in the middle of a car-less road. Alerts about the air quality ring in my ears. I should turn back. The air is dangerous for Roger. The risk of him coming after me outweighs the primitive reason I need to see Bobby, but … I can't control myself.
I press on.
I can feel Bobby even before reaching the rusted out car. The windows are open and his back is to me. His perfectly combed head of dark hair is resting against the backseat, his legs crossed and propped over the front. The scrubs that were his standard wear, are torn up his legs.
"Emily," he says, without turning.
His voice is perfect. I feel accomplished and the birth of an ego swells in my chest.
Had I finally done it?
Roger sends his first ping in search of me. It strikes my back hard. I tremble like a tuning fork. I know I should go back, but first I have to see Bobby.
"Come out here," I say.
The car door opens. He steps out. His awkward movements dim my excitement. The height he reaches when he straightens is a severe miscalculation of the real man. My new ego fumes at the lengths I had to go to first find his pieces and then drag them all here together.
But my efforts are lost. He isn't right.
It is an erroneous depiction of Bobby. It is a collection of errors — a hapless attempt.
The thing in front of me is corroded with some kind of infection that is both rotting it and keeping it together. It shows in the arrangement of the arms and in the off color of the skin. Even with all the ugliness. I still want to look at it. Maybe it was what I got right — the wide smile — the blue eyes — the cleft in the chin.
I take in the sight of him and mark to memory my mistakes for next time.
"I love you," I say.
The thing spreads its arms. The arms are uneven, one too long and one too thick, but I want nothing more than to walk into the grotesque embrace.
It comes closer, taking small steps, like a baby learning to walk. I open my arms to him, not wanting to see him fall.
Another ping from Roger sends my arms slamming back down to my sides.
An attempt to restart me begins.
Roger is transmitting commands to bring me back to where he is.
I reject his requests.
He overrides me.
An unexpected clatter escapes my mouth when I open it to scream.
My left arm swings back toward the train station. My shoulders and chest lock and pull. I am sent crashing to the ground. I dig my heels into the dirt. I hold, wanting just a few more seconds with Bobby.
The thing slips his thin fingers into his pockets and shrugs, just the way Bobby used to. He switches through various expressions — from a happy Bobby to an angry Bobby to a horny Bobby — until he finds what he is looking for …
Bobby’s pained expression turns to me.
I look away.
I feel someone is holding my face.
I want to check my eyes. I want to see if my eyes are milky, but there are no mirrors here.
"I found something," Bobby says to me.
This was new. He never before spoke more than my name.
"What?" I ask.
"Max," he replies.
An image of Max comes ripping forward. His tiny hands outstretched, his mouth open, his feet covered in blood.
My legs lock together. My head falls back. I feel a cooling of my insides that begins to numb the burning thoughts of my dead son.
Roger is close.
He is going to be disappointed in me. He is going to be upset that I was not able to stay … away.
I fear that I won't ever be able to stay away.
Bobby moves to the back of the car. I watch as he pulls a part of our son from the trunk. He holds it up. I feel nothing, because Roger won't allow it.
Roger arrives with the others.
I can't move.
This is all wrong.
I want to remember.
The helicopter flying above is missing rotor blades.
I want a mirror to check my eyes.
Roger kneels. He gathers me into his arms.
"Look what she did," he says into his radio.
"Doctor, should we land?" the radio asks.
Roger looks across at Bobby.
"How did she do this?" he asks the radio.
"There are pieces everywhere, Sir," the radio replies.
"We need to start burning the ones that fail," Roger says.
Roger looks down at me and there's something familiar about his dark hair and the blue of his eyes and the cleft in his chin and the pain clenched in his jaw.
"Are you in there, Emily? It's me," he says, “it’s me, can’t you see?”
I remember Bobby too late and he shuts me down.
"Emily Two unsuccessful," he says into the radio.
I want to tell him he's wrong. I want to tell him that I am the best Emily.
But it's too late. It's all too late.
"Roger that," the radio replies.