First of Her Kind part 6

The kitchen buzzed with morning activity. Benjamin stood at the stove preparing breakfast while Lucian impatiently searched the fridge for something to tide him over. Emily and Jessie chatted over cups of coffee at the dining room table and Dr. Sheridan leaned against the counter, lazily sipping on his own mug while reading something on the tablet in his hand.

“Where’d the meat loaf go?” Lucian asked, peering at each shelf of the fridge one at a time.

“Oh,” Adam spoke up from where she sat at the breakfast bar. “I ate that last night. I was hungry and came out for a snack.”

“A snack?” Lucian looked at her.

“I didn’t have dinner,” Adam manufactured an excuse, realizing that she had actually finished quite a bit of food the previous night.

“I’m making pancakes, Lucian,” Benjamin chided, turning away from the stove. “Just wait a few minutes.”

“Do they have blueberries?” Lucian asked eagerly as he limped back around to join Adam at the counter.

“No,” Benjamin said, shaking his head a little.

“Chocolate chips?”

“No, Lucian,” Benjamin sighed. “Just good old fashioned flapjacks.”

Lucian leaned forward on the counter, looking a little defeated.

“You could put jelly and cream cheese on them,” Adam suggested with a shrug.

Dr. Sheridan stopped mid-sip, lowering his tablet and looking intently at her. The conversation at the table behind them came to an abrupt halt.

“Cream cheese and jelly,” Lucian mulled the idea over, seemingly oblivious to the attention Adam’s statement was getting.

To everyone’s surprise, Dr. Sheridan set his mug and device down and crossed to the fridge, taking out a gray tub of cream cheese and a jar of strawberry jam.

“Let me show you,” he said.

He retrieved a plate and held it out in time for Benjamin to drop a hot pancake on it. He skimmed a thin ribbon of cream cheese out of the container and spread it on the pancake, allowing the heat to soften it before he dropped on a spoon full of strawberry jam, swirling the two together to create a tantalizing, aromatic pink paste. He cut a few squares off and handed a fork to both Lucian and Adam. The two eagerly accepted and picked up a piece of the pancake, popping it into their mouths.

“Mmm,” Lucian muttered, going in for his second bite almost as soon as he’d begun chewing the first one.

Adam froze. A feeling almost overwhelmed her. Like, a wave of familiarity. She felt as if something lingered just beyond the reach of her mind, like a mystery just beyond some locked door that she desperately wanted to break through.

“I’ve had this before,” she said without thinking. “I don’t know where or when, but, I must have.”

Dr. Sheridan stood up, drawing Adam’s attention back to the kitchen.

“It reminds me of a berry and cream cheese danish,” Lucian spoke up. “We had those yesterday morning.”

“That could be it,” Adam noted, even though she knew better, and she knew that there was no way the doctor was going to believe that.

There was obviously some significance to this combination of pancake toppings and Dr. Sheridan was very aware of it.

“Adam,” he said, “I’d like to take you down to the lab to run some tests today. First, I need to get some supplies.” He picked up his tablet and dumped his coffee cup into the sink. “Lucian, you take it easy on that leg today. We just reattached it, we don’t need another rejection.”

“Reattached?” Adam leaned back and looked down Lucian’s leg.

Sure enough, instead of a piece of thin metal at the end of his leg, there was a full, healthy looking foot in a sandal.

“Reattached doesn’t do it justice,” Jessie scoffed from the table. “That is a whole new biocompatible prosthetic, programmed to work with the nanites in his body and his own immune system complete with skin created from a combination of skin graft and nanite technology.”

“If that leg were any more intelligent, it would self duplicate and walk away,” Emily commented.

“Why didn’t the original one work?” Adam directed her question at Lucian.

“His body keeps rejecting them,” Dr. Sheridan answered. “Like sometimes happens with organ transplants. The connecting tissue becomes infected, he starts running a fever, loses his appetite. I’m afraid if this one fails, he may be stuck with a conventional style prosthetic.”

Adam couldn’t help but notice how Dr. Sheridan talked about Lucian as if he weren’t sitting right there. As she cast him a sideways glance, she noticed his gaze had become distant.

“This one will work,” Jessie stood up and placed a hand on Lucian’s shoulder momentarily. “Dr. Sheridan, should we go get that stuff you wanted to pick up?”

Dr. Sheridan nodded and followed Jessie out the front door. Adam sat with Lucian, enjoying a stack of pancakes with maple syrup. Emily eventually dismissed herself and Benjamin sat at the table with earphones in, looking at his phone.

Lucian glanced over his shoulder, tapping his fork on the counter obnoxiously. When Benjamin didn’t so much as look up, he began to speak quietly.

“Nostalgia is what you were feeling. A sensation of remembering something affectionately. You may not have the exact memory yet, but, your brain knows that the pancake with cream cheese and jam is linked to something happy.”

“How do you know?”

Lucian again looked over his shoulder before continuing, “for me, it’s gingerbread cookies.” He took a long drink off his coffee cup. “There should be a tablet or laptop in the desk in your room. Look up a list of emotions and their descriptions. It will help you identify what you are feeling and how to predict what you might feel in a specific situation so you can mask better. We have an advantage in their tests I think. If we consciously tell ourselves that we don’t feel anything, it’s like the nanites in our brains stop the neurons that cause feeling to stop firing. If you learn to do that, they won’t be able to see what’s really going on up there during their tests.”

“Why don’t you want them to know?” Adam asked.

“I think it’s better for us prototypes if this experiment drags on as long as possible,” Lucian said. “What do you think happens to the likes of me and Evander if the good doctors figure out how to do it all right?”

“I hadn’t thought about that,” Adam admitted. “Do you think they would just… just end us?”

Lucian looked long and hard at Adam before responding, “I think Dr. Sheridan would. He’s already proven he thinks we’re just property. That’s what Evander’s new ‘curriculum’ is all about. Evander and others like him have been sold already.”

“Sold to who?” Adam asked.

“If I had to guess,” Lucian lowered his voice even more. “There’s a man in a military uniform that pops in every few months or so. It wasn’t long after his last visit that things changed for Evander.”

Benjamin’s chair scraped on the tile and the two turned their attention back on their breakfast as he walked around them and into the kitchen to place his plate and cup in the sink. He pulled out his ear buds and leaned against the counter.

“So, what are you two conspiring?”

“I was just telling Adam about the kind of food that shows up here around Christmas,” Lucian lied. “Jessie makes the best cookies. I told her, she should try her hand at baking if Jessie is willing to show her a thing or two.”

“I’d think I’d like to try it,” Adam said. “I like food. Maybe I like making food.”

“Can’t argue with logic like that,” Benjamin nodded. “I’ll bring it up to Jess.

When breakfast was finished, Adam decided to return to her room to follow Lucian’s advice about researching emotions. To her dismay, she found it difficult to identify feelings by the descriptions provided as they were mostly defined by other feelings. A tap on the door interrupted her increasingly furious searching and she snapped her computer shut.

“Yes?”

“Dr. Sheridan would like to see you in the lab,” Jessie said through the door.

Adam took a deep breath. She had to control herself. She stood up and exited her room, following Jessie back through the locked door and down the sterile hall to the lab.

“We are going to try something new today,” Dr. Sheridan explained as eagerly attached sensors to the side of Adam’s head, a job usually reserved for Jessie. “I’m going to present you with different tastes and smells. I want you to tell us anything you think or feel but we will also be watching the computer to see if anything shows up there that you may not be completely, consciously aware of yet.”

Adam nodded, reminding herself that she must remain in control. No doubt, Dr. Sheridan had an idea of what tastes or scents might trigger a positive response.”

The computer beeped as it started scanning and Dr. Sheridan reached into a bag, extracting a blue glass bottle. He approached Adam, removing the cap from the bottle.

“Smell,” he instructed.

Adam leaned forward and inhaled the sweet flowery scent. “Oh,” she said, immediately recognising it. “Jasmine. Emily and Jessie bought me some bath supplies with the same scent. I like it. Is this soap?”

Dr. Sheridan cast a glance at Jessie, “no, this is, uh, this is an essential oil. It’s distilled from the jasmine flowers and diffused in a machine or put in products like soap and shampoo. If, here, you can have this if you like it. Jessie can order you a diffuser.”

“Thank you,” Adam graciously accepted the bottle, tucking it her pocket.

“Ok,” Dr. Sheridan extracted a small, black, plastic container from the bag, “try this.”

He pulled out a piece of golden brown food that appeared to be some kind of breaded meat still on the bone and handed it to Adam. It was warm and smelled deliciously savory.

“What is it?” Adam

“Fried chicken,” Dr. Sheridan responded.

Adam took a bite out of the chicken and after only a second of tasting the salty and slightly spicy breading over the tender white meat, went in for another bite.

“This is the best thing I’ve eaten yet,” she said through a mouth.

“Anything else?” Dr. Sheridan asked.

Adam shook her head. The doctor returned to the bag with a bottle of golden liquid.

“Try this, it’s honey,” he held the bottle out.

Adam allowed him to drizzle a little of the sticky liquid on to the chicken before she took another bite.

She nodded her approval at the new depth of flavor created by the honey, but she could honestly say, besides being delicious, it brought up no new feelings in her.

Dr. Sheridan was beginning to look a little defeated again as he accepted the bare chicken bone back from Adam.

There were a few more items, a chocolate chip cookie, a bottle of lotion that adam did not like at all, some grass clippings, each scent or taste had no effect.

“I’ll be right back,” Dr. Sheridan said as he replaced the last item in the bag. He buzzed out the door and down the hall.

“I’m disappointing him,” Adam observed. “As his experiment, I mean.”

Jessie sighed, “he is torturing himself, Adam. He keeps setting his own expectations too high.”

“What if… what if I’m never going to be who he thinks I am?”

“What do you mean?” Jessie asked. “You’re Adam. Walking, talking, living breathing Adam.”

“Am I though?” Adam asked pointedly. “Or, am I a machine that looks like Adam?”

Jessie froze, appearing to be grasping for a response when Dr. Sheridan burst back in, an ornate purple bottle in hand.

“Smell this,” he said, taking Adam’s arm and spritzing the sleeve of her jacket.

Adam didn’t need to lean in for a better smell, she knew this scent. Somewhere in the recesses of her mind, she remembered this scent. Don’t feel. Don’t feel. I feel nothing. She leaned in and took a deep breath through her nose. I feel nothing. She breathed the spray in again. I feel nothing.

“Well?” Dr. Sheridan asked.

“I like it,” Adam answered. “It’s different from the jasmine, but I like it.”

Dr. Sheridan’s face dropped. He cast a glance at the computer screen before putting the round, glass cap back on the bottle.

“I was sure…” he began. “I thought you might like it. Uh, here, you can keep this as well, I have another one. Just, uh, use it sparingly, it is kind of special, I mean, expensive you know.”

He handed Adam the bottle and turned and left hurriedly.

Adam pulled the stickers off her temples and began to wind the cords that led to the computer.

“Maybe I should…”

“I warned him this was going to be hard,” Jessie interrupted her. “For both of you. He went into this eyes wide open. You weren’t around to have a choice in the matter. You do what you feel or think or believe you have to do. Take care of you, I’ll take care of John.”

Jessie led her back down the corridor and to the locked door. Immediately, Adam returned to her room. As she sat on her bed, she extracted the two bottles, setting the jasmine oil on her night stand. She held the purple bottle in her hand for a long time. Cautiously, she raised her wrist up to her nose, breathing the scent in again. A heavy feeling swelled in her chest and it felt like fire caught in her throat. For reasons she could not explain, even though the feeling the perfume elicited was terrible, she could not resist another breath of it. Her right eye watered and tears began to stream from the corner and down her cheek. Overcome, she curled up on her bed, breathing in the scent and crying for what seemed like forever. It wasn’t long until a restful sleep settled over her.