A Show of Hands

[CONTENT WARNING: Some scenes may be too graphic for some audiences]

“They say there's a sharp sting in the human psyche just before death and defeat come to call... are you feeling it?” I remember him asking.

I was at my father's house now, tinkering with an old chessboard in the basement when that childhood memory wafted back, (not so long ago it seemed now), of gazing hopefully across the board at my father.

“Are you?” I asked, pushing my piece into play and check-mating him.

My father was, and is, an intense man. Now as I handled the dusty little glass knight in my hand, I thought about Dad's heavy eyebrows furrowing the first time I won a game against him, and he had chuckled. His hair was longer back then, hanging to his butt, and it was as gray and white as a snowy nightscape. His long scruffy beard was like a silvery bush against his black T-shirt as long elegant fingers threaded themselves through the weedy thicket. Hawk-like eyes scanned the board for some desperate hope of salvation.

Placing the knight back on the board, memory's smile tickled my lips before I closed up the box I had been poking through, and rose up to stretch my tired limbs.

Looking around the dark recesses of the cold basement, (which I call “the pit”), I marveled at how, even with all of our current technological means, my father's need to be a pack-rat thrives below the lab. Dad's a paradox, for sure. As hurried as he was to embrace the new way, he remains just as reluctant to give up the past.

The world evolved almost overnight all around him in a Technological Revolution, not wholly unlike the Industrial Revolution of old, and he refused to accept it.

To offer some backstory: in an effort to keep the American people obedient and submissive, the government has been withholding technological information and scientific breakthroughs from us for dozens of years. Imagine that!

If not for the help of a lone rebel in one of the intelligence agencies, we might never have known, but suddenly every house is a smart house, every vehicle (except dad’s) can fly, nothing goes un-sterilized by cryogenics, and diseases are soon to be a thing of the past. I cannot tell you how badly I feel for the agent responsible for what the world calls “The Great Awakening”. While the rest of us are resting on that guy’s laurels, he’s probably in a dark room somewhere, murdered and resurrected with the rising and setting of each sun.

As I pulled the broom from the corner to continue cleaning, I started thinking about how far we’ve come as a people in such a very short amount of time.

It seems to me that the whole thing started with the shipping industry. Elijah Massey invented the STI (Shipment Teleporter Interface) in an effort to save the environment and use less fuel. He has not mastered a way to move a human body, but “faxing” a shipment of goods via STI can be done in minutes where it used to take trucking companies days or even weeks to get things transported…or teleported as the case may be. This was the first of many things to come out of the patent office that had been locked up for years. Mr. Massey went from serving as a lowly shipping clerk with big ideas to a transportation mogul overnight. I remember watching the news from an air station, I forget where, and thinking to myself… “there is no way that guy’s not a trekkie”.

Of course with things shipping in seconds, fossil fuels are on their way out now. Those old battles for good gas prices are no longer worth fighting. Even cars are using engines fueled by Oxygen and perpetual motion devices. If you want to go, fly. If you want to send something, ship it STI. I don’t want to tell you how things are in the Middle East right now. I guess when we stopped needing so much of their oil, they had to scramble for something else to fight over.

For my part, I would like to see people come back to fighting for love, but it seems the more we exist in the presence of technology, the more scientific we become as a people and the less magical life itself actually is.

For all that, dad refuses to get on the bandwagon. Married to his old ways, he keeps this old house in the country. Of course, Government Mandates for the Prevention of Disease dictated a couple of years ago that the old place would have to be upgraded, but dad always does the bare minimum. About the only thing he took an interest in was cryonics. He built a lab that I'm not allowed to go into except to sweep up and write down readings. I have often teased him about planning to freeze dry food for the Tribulation but he didn't think it was funny.

Not long after mom died, I came just to visit. But when I got here the old guy seemed lost in the new technology, doubtful that there was any reason to move into the new age… especially when his heart, his real love had always been in the world of green and growing things. So I stayed on to help him for a bit. Weeks have spread into months and the next thing I know, I’m an employee in the House of Dad in the middle of Nowheretown, USA.

The only trouble with living here comes in small waves of memory that pain me too deeply to express. Since the car wreck there isn’t much I can remember from my prior life, but being at home at this time in my life brings about brief glimpses now and then. I don’t think a day goes by that I can’t just about hear my mother’s sweet voice as she prepared breakfast in our old kitchen.

Dad never talks about it, but I can see in his face that he has the same feelings. Certain things that mom said and did made our house the home it became and being in it without her sometimes hurts, but serves to repair some of the holes in my memory.

As I pushed the broom around in my memories, I came upon a small paste-board box. Curiosity got the better of me and I flipped the lid open. Inside there were small gadget toys, a pair of roller blades, a couple of happy-meal toys and a metal erector set from the 70’s.

As I pulled it out of the box, I couldn’t help but smile. I remember how intense my focus was as I worked with this set. My mom had found it for me while on vacation in Florida when I was ten. We stopped at a yard sale, and even though it seemed dumb to me then, mom bought it anyway and I had made up my mind to win the science fair with it. I don’t remember now if I won that or not, but I can easily visualize every turn of the screwdriver, every working part. In a place inside the box, just beneath the place where the erector set had been, rested my old lunch box.

“Go go power rangers!” I shouted in the basement as I lifted the comic lunchbox out and opened it.

Inside were my keepsakes, photos, my old bike padlock, rusty keys to something and a lock of hair I didn’t recognize. I pulled out the photos and started thumbing through them, hoping to reclaim some memories. Since the accident my head’s so full of Swiss cheese it’s hard to tell sometimes if I’m coming or going.

I found pictures of our trip to the Guggenheim. I had always been especially drawn to the peculiar works of modern art, though I didn’t develop my own artistic bone until I had been here for a few months. Old pictures of the Grand Canyon, Disneyworld and a couple other places surfaced. I gazed blankly at them for the most part, unable to recall anything of value … but my heart stopped when I came upon a picture of me and mom in front of the World Expo Amusement Park in Brisbane. My dad may have been in love with the natural world, but his chosen profession in Information Technologies afforded us a lot more than most. I often muse that maybe his love of the UN-technical is due in part to being surrounded by computers all those years at work.

Oh but my mom and I were two peas in a pod when it came to science and technology. We drove my poor dad crazy. He was always trying to share with us his love of art and the beauty of the natural word, and we were too busy running off to places like the World’s Fair and Dragon Con to appreciate it. I was so busy fiddling that I didn’t hear the stairs creaking behind me. I nearly leapt out of my jumpsuit when dad’s voice broke the silence.

“You gonna bawl all over it, or are you going to start tossing this stuff like I asked you to?”

Laughing, I stood up to face my dad and for a split second, I was ten again, standing in his shadow as he contemplated his next chess move.

“Can I keep the chess board?” I asked.

“Only if you bring it back up to the house with you later. I don’t remember getting a rematch and I think we’re about even.” He replied, smiling.

I nodded.

“Whatcha got there?” He asked.

“Oh…” I hesitated. “Just a box of old junk.”

“Good stuff I hope?” He asked as he hopped off the bottom step into the basement.

“Yeah.” I swallowed a lump in my throat. I really didn’t want to tell him I found a picture of mom. It seemed like every time one surfaced, dad tended to disappear for a while.

“Remember anything good?” He asked, grabbing a box and starting up the steps with it.

“Seems like I remember camping a lot.”

Dad stopped on the stairs and turned to look at me with what I’m sure was a glimmer of hope, something that had become commonplace whenever I was able to remember anything.

“Seems like I recall you were always doing all the work” I told him. “and me and mom laid under the stars a lot, talking about constellations and aliens.”

We both chuckled a little, then a memory did return.

“I do remember mom asking me if I thought there was life out there besides us.” I told him. “And you looked at us with a marshmallow crisped to a stick and still on fire and said… “Of course there’s other life out there. You two monkeys don’t think God would have put this whole thing together and didn’t make anything but us do ya?” Mom whispered to me… ‘there’s hope for your father yet’.”

There was an awkward chuckle between us.

“Well.” He replied with a grin, turning to go up the stairs. “I loved camping the most, because it was one of the few things we could do as a family that we all enjoyed.”

As he reached the top of the steps, I came to the bottom and looked up at him.

“Hey dad?”

“Yeah?” he called down over the top of his box.

“Me too.”

Winking, he made off with the box and a stern reminder to get to the house before supper. It would be on the table in about an hour.

I hadn't gotten finished with more than pushing that last box into a corner when I heard a gunshot. The sound split the air of the basement and ricocheted through the whole building. I scrambled up the steps to see what happened, my adrenaline racing like crazy.

“Dad!” I yelled. “Are you ok? Dad?”

Getting no immediate response, I fell quiet and slipped out the side door of the lab into the afternoon light. I fought the glare to see some sign of my father, but there was nothing. Taking a deep breath, I pressed myself to the side of the building and crept silently toward the back. Just as I peeked around the wall, I breathed a sigh of relief.

He stood with his back to me stuffing a sidearm into his holster.

“Dad?” I called as he spun around to face me. “You ok?”

“Yeah.” He answered, wiping the sweat of his brow on a shop rag hanging out of his back jeans pocket. “Just a snake in the grass.”

“Did you get him?”

“I doubt it.” Dad replied. “But I bet he'll think twice about coming this close to the house again. You done yet?”

“Nah.” I answered. “But I'm working on it.”

“Well let's just call it a night.” He stopped for a moment and looked superstitiously out at the woods. “It's getting’ dark and there’s no need in you walking out here by yourself. Come on.” He said, throwing his hand to me. “You can play with yer toys tomorrow.”

***

When I got up this morning, I showered and got ready for the day’s work load. Dad’s “laboooorrrratory” as he calls it in his best Boris Karloff voice, needs cleaning and he decided I was just the person for that job. How I got drafted into environmental services is beyond me. I guess dad’s worried that if I mess around too much in his cryonics-lab I’ll break something. Occasionally I go in there to clean, take a few readings and water the plants, but afterward, it’s back to the pit.

As I entered the kitchen, I lingered a moment on the threshold, half expecting mom to say “Go on and wash up now. Breakfast is on the table”. When I heard only the sound of dad’s three televisions going, I snapped out of it and managed to walk in.

I stopped behind dad as he sat huddled over a bowl of cereal in his robe, gazing blankly at the television. I looked up at the middle screen. The morning story was about an upgrade to the STI software that might allow us to teleport whole organs. According to the broadcast, this was the first step in teleporting human beings. This would make it possible for people in desperate need for an organ transplant to have a greater chance of receiving it in time. The guy reporting the news struck a broad smile and said that it would also make it possible for people who refused the organs created from stem cells due to religious purposes to receive an actual human organ in time.

“Yeah.” I remarked dryly. “Instead of taking an organ manufactured in a sterile lab, they’d rather settle on one that was analyzed by a computer on one side and put back together by software hundreds of miles away.”

Dad shushed me and turned his head to the political news on a different screen.

Laughing, I made my way to the kitchen. As I opened the pantry to pull out my pop tarts, I could see he’d been shopping again. Everything in there was piled on top of each other.

“Well we don't have to worry about starving if Armageddon comes.” I voiced a mock complaint. “We're ready for world war 3 in here.”

“I heard that!” Dad yelled from his spot at the table. “No harm in being prepared!”

As I waited for the pop tart to come up, I slipped into the white... unaware that I had left the kitchen.

***

Rain pelted down on my helmet. I held a rifle in my hand, gazing down the barrel. My body lay so close to the ground that the soldier walking around in the circle of my scope, seemingly not a great distance away, never saw me.

I tried to breathe... slowly so as not to have them see my breath in the cold air.

The soldier's uniform was German. I had no knowing how I arrived here, but the mission to kill this man etched its way into the very crevices of my mind.

That’s when I felt it, the barrel at the base of my neck.

“Aufstehen Soldat!” the voice growled to me.

I knew he called me soldier and told me to get up. When I looked at him, our eyes locked in a way that words cannot convey. His surprise to see me showed clearly in his eyes and he raised his brows before he spoke.

“Dies unerwartet!” He nearly crooned the words and his gaze softened. Then another voice filtered through.

“Can you hear me?” The voice said. “Are you ok?”

I blinked, and my dad was standing in front of me with a look of total shock on his face.

“I think so.” I replied.

“You were standing here so still with your eyes glazed over that it freaked me out.”

“I'm sorry dad.” I replied, sitting down at the table. A sharp pain darted through the whole of my being that made it necessary to get off my feet for a moment.

One of my drawings from the night before still rested there on the kitchen table. It was a pencil sketch of a small malnourished child. She sat looking up at me off the paper, her little arms wrapped around her bony knees. I had seen this innocent little sad face somewhere in my previous life... but couldn't remember when or where.

“I just had another episode.” I remarked at last, gently dragging the backs of my fingers across the face of the child in the drawing. Her big brown eyes beckoned me to remember her... but I couldn't.

“Must've been a doozy!” Dad remarked.

I didn't answer right away. I scanned the walls of the house looking at my paintings and sketches. Some mystery lurked in them that would one day unlock my memory but apparently it wasn't today. The buildings stood like silent sentinels in the paintings, hiding their secrets just like the strange faces of the people represented there.

“What can I do to help?” Dad asked.

“Nothing.” I answered at last. “I’m fine. It was just an episode like all the others. It’ll pass.”

“Well just to be safe maybe you better take the day off and rest.”

“Nah.” I told him. “It's best if I keep busy. And anyway, I enjoy working in the pit.”

We both chuckled, but there was still an elephant in the room that neither of us could describe.

“All right then.” He said, patting me on the back. “Get on it. You're burning daylight, kid.”

***

The pit seemed darker than usual as I descended the stairs. My work in the lab was lighter than usual. Apparently dad’s been working on plant extracts and has been trying to keep everything sterile so the cleaning presented no difficulty today.

As I began laboring with the mounds of old junk and boxes, no memories intruded to throw me off guard so without interruption; I managed to clear a whole section of the room with veritable ease.

Taking the broom from the closet, I swept some cobwebs down from the corner at the ceiling, and thought about my mother. I shook my head as I swirled the webs around. How was I going to start living if I didn’t stop dying every time I thought about mom?

Deciding to let the past stay where it was, I thought it might be a good time to find dad and get some lunch.

Sighing, I was thinking about the long walk up the stairs when a siren sounded. Loud throbbing screams of sirens resonated in the basement, as pulsating red and gold lights emanated from the corners. The word “Breech” sounded over and over again from the computerized voice of the alarm system.

With my heart in my throat, my feet pounded mercilessly up the old rickety stairs. Emerging into the white of the lab, I noticed there were error messages on all the screens.

Sliding quickly into my protective suit, I dove into my chair and began shouting questions to the system, while redirecting and back-tracking paths to discover what had happened. Dad’s voice broke over the sirens, bouncing off the walls.

“There's a breech in cryo chamber number one!” He screamed. “Seal it if you can... I'm on my way from the big house!”

The dreaded old number one: the oldest of dad's cryo chambers. It was like the childhood boogey man to me. It held something my eyes were never allowed to see. All the markers were printed with the number one and none of the descript fields on the monitoring software had ever been filled in. Yet, here I was, racing faithfully off to the cryo room to seal a breech and save something I had never even been allowed to so much as bat an eyelash at. Hell, I wasn't even allowed to chart the progress of that chamber.

That chamber stood in a sealed room that I had no access to so when I attempted to open the door, new sirens went off.

“Jesus. You'd think the man had the shroud of Turin in there or something.” I mouthed as I struggled with the digital panel. No matter what buttons I pushed, what sequence I tried... nothing responded.

I had to physically override the systems on the wall panel, rewiring the security system to fail. Though the sirens never abated, the seal released, making a whispery-sucking noise so I physically shoved the door to one side. Pressing both hands firmly against the light-weight metal of the doors, I heard the track beneath it bending, the circuits crumbling inside it as it yielded beneath my grasp and I bounded into the room.

Sliding across the white ceramic tile floor, I could see that obviously something had to have cracked it somewhere because cold air sent tendrils of vapor over the top and the sides, where it lilted onto the floor and created a slippery sheen. As I rose carefully to my toes to peer over the top, freezing misty air pushed harshly up my nose and I winced with the burning sensation. The top had gone missing.

“Where the hell is the lid?” I asked aloud in the room.

Gazing down around my feet, I glanced about trying to see if there was any sign of it... but it didn't appear to be there.

“Weird.” I muttered, shuffling to the wall to try to override the sirens. I stood fiddling with the alarm system to no avail. It didn't budge. It was still screaming its alarm, making the necessity to seal the breech so urgent that it consumed me. There was a sign over the cryo chamber, which read...

“In case of breech, remove hose, spray directly into the affected cryo- chamber.”

I had no way of knowing what was in that chamber, but it seemed to me that spraying that hard-chowder looking stuff in it might hurt whatever was in there. Then a thought occurred to me and I nearly gasped.

‘What if part of mom is in there and he's keeping it until they can further the stem cell research to recreate humans?’ They had been talking about it after all.

“Like this is a bad sci-fi movie.” I chastised myself for the thought.

I just needed to think this thing through. Looking at the hose and then the sign, I considered that something other than the lid seemed missing, but what that might be completely escaped me. I had never dealt with the cryo-chambers, as Dad generally tried to keep me out of that room and out of his hair as much as possible, so faced with the dilemma of sealing one, I was at my wits end.

I tapped the monitor screen on the wall.

“Dad”.

“Yes.” His distorted image appeared on screen in front of me. The connection partially scrambled, his head looked like the subject of a fun house mirror and his beard had digital, fuzzy snow in it.

“What do I do?”

“It’s not rocket science.” He fussed, reaching to the monitor in his elevator in an attempt to tweak the audio/visual. “Follow the directions on the wall. As soon as I get this elevator to pay attention, I’ll be right up.”

I felt a little guilty, actually. I'm sure it was my fault the elevator didn't work, but I had no choice but to alter the system if I was going to get in here.

Turning to the cryo-chamber, I glanced back at the sign on the wall and grabbed the hose. Thrusting the tip of the hose into the aperture at the top was about as hard as trying to stand up in a wind tunnel. The chamber was violently hemorrhaging cold air and the only way to accomplish my task was to force my hand down in there to secure the hose.

Carefully avoiding the shards of thick glass that broke around the lid when it came off, I stuck my hand down into the chamber. The icy cold nipped immediately at my fingers as I used my other hand to yank at the crank on the wall to start the emission process. As I did this, the blast kicked my hand back like the push of a freshly fired rifle, making it a struggle to keep it inserted and unscathed by the shards.

Slowly, the feeling drained from my hand and the hose began to rise, the white stuff filling the chamber. With the breech filling fast, the sirens slowed, the screeching of the system silenced and I breathed a sigh of relief.

After I had taken a moment to breathe, I realized that I could not command my fingers to let go of the hose, but before I got a good look at my hand, Dad came running in from the stairwell, having given up on the lift.

“Did you get it sealed alright?” He asked snatching the clipboard from its hook in front of Cryo-chamber #1.

“Yeah.” I started meekly, then… “But I can’t seem to let go of this hose.”

Just as I reached for it with my other hand, Dad looked up and slapped my free hand away.

“Don’t!” he yelled. “Why didn’t you put on the gloves?” he asked.

“What gloves?”

He sighed, reaching to the table beneath the sign, which gave directions about the hose, and picked up a pair of thick, insulated gloves.

“These.” Dad answered as he turned to look at me, tears streaking down his cheeks.

“It’s okay dad.” I consoled him. Naturally, I couldn’t feel anything and I wanted to calm him if I could. “Look!” I said as if I could prove to him that I’d be okay when I thawed out.

I reached to the watch, which was on the damaged hand, and touched it, thinking to show him I was alright. Then, as my good finger touched the frozen time piece, the skin began to crumble and flake away beneath my finger. The watch sunk into my wrist, and everything went white.

*************************************************

I woke in an infirmary with a few doctors milling around and though I couldn’t see Dad, I could hear his voice in the distance. A couple of men that I did not recognize stood talking in a far corner. They were well groomed to say the least, and wearing suits. I shivered in the cold of the white room and could see their breath also as it left phantom smoke before them.

Gazing at the bright light over me, my teeth chattered mercilessly and I pondered if I had passed into heaven and the angel of mercy was discussing my demise with the agents of hell or not. Naturally I figured out it was just my dad talking to the guys in suits about the breech, but it did make me wonder.

Attempting to move my arms to shield my eyes from the light, I soon discovered that I was strapped down, probably to keep me from hurting myself. There was no knowing if I even had an arm left because I couldn’t feel it.

In a moment, it got warmer and Dad’s smiling face appeared, hovering over me.

“There’s my kid.” He said with affection thick in his voice.

Although I couldn’t see it, I could hear the chair scraping the floor as he pulled it up alongside my bed.

“You feelin’ okay?” he asked, genuinely concerned.

“I guess.” I answered, my voice weak and wiggly from cold and the fear. “I can’t really feel anything so I must be alright. Dad…” I felt the need to apologize for wrecking his cryo-chamber. I know how hard he had been working on that stuff.

“I’m really sorry about the breech.” I murmured, tears warming my eyes and then cooling over my cheek as they rolled down my face.

“Well” Dad said in a comforting voice. “Don’t you worry your head about that. We’ve got bigger issues at stake right now.”

There was something I hadn’t expected to hear. I turned my head to the side so I could see him. White had replaced his gray hairs and he looked like a fine old wizard more than an old codger clinging to a long forgotten past.

“What is it?” I asked in a small, weak voice I nearly didn't recognize.

Dad’s eyes watered a little harder as he glanced to the suited figures. The strange men had managed to sneak a little further into the corner, making them just a basic outline in the dark. Dad’s gaze drifted so that he focused his eyes toward his lap.

“Do you remember when your mom died?”

I hadn’t the words to answer so I nodded, the full weight of some unseen, impending doom overtaking my vocal chords.

“Car accident they said.” Dad sniffed. “Nothing they could do.”

Something formed in my throat that might easily be mistaken for a piece of cotton. After mom died, Dad and I had become closer than ever before. He talked me into living with him and he had his entire barn transformed into a huge science lab.

Staring in fear at the breathing darkness in the corner, I truly began to see something maturing in my mind. The government had always taken a keen interest in Dad’s work. Obviously it was because of whatever he had stored in old number one, and they were here because of it. Fear gripped me and my jaw tightened. What if Dad was that rogue agent they had been looking for and the only way to get to him was through me? That would explain a lot.

I turned to look at Dad.

“Untie me.” I whispered. “I won’t let them do anything to you.”

My Dad put his head in his hand and began sobbing.

“Dad?” I said softly, tears beginning to sear my eyes.

“Do you remember anything of your life before you came to live here?” he questioned.

“No. We’ve talked about that before. I don’t remember anything from before the accident that mom and I were in.”

“Of course you don’t.” Dad replied, raising his gaze to meet mine. “I made quite certain of that.”

I begged him with my eyes to stop torturing me and to tell me what the matter actually was.

“The accident you and your mother were in, was no accident. You came to us, running. At first we didn’t know how serious it was, because you told us it wasn’t the law… and it wasn’t… it was the government. The agent who turned and expounded all those secrets… was you.”

The entire universe existed in a vacuum at that moment. My mind reeled with the effort to see backward into time, but I could not conger a memory to save my life. Everything that existed in time prior my awakening in the hospital was gone, including my mother.

“Dad?” He looked up at me. “Did they have mom killed?”

“Your mother was an unfortunate side effect of their attempt to kill you.” He sobbed.

“Oh Daddy.” I began crying, the pain of the cold and the heat of my tears meeting on my face as my heart sunk deep within me.

“I am so sorry.”

My dad placed his hand on my good arm reassuringly and smiled a quirky smile.

“Your mother is the reason you’re here.” He said, his voice quivering with emotion.

“When I arrived at the hospital, she was already at death’s door. She told me what was happening with you. Apparently, the shopping trip you staged was to tell her everything.

“You had a government chip in your head like all agents do. It's a standard-issue defense mechanism for them. It helps you maintain records without keeping a physical copy and at the same time, it keeps you from tattling on the government.

“Your chip,” he sighed, “Was defective. It learned with you.”

Dad could see the obvious cloud of confusion waft over me and he leaned forward with his elbows on his knees to talk. The tears had all but abated and he seemed more focused. Dad was always focused where science was concerned lest he lose sight of his meaning and have to start over.

“Your chip somehow reprogrammed itself to go around the government safeguards. Your mother believed in her heart, that this was only possible using you as a vessel. It made good sense. I mean you always came out at the top of your class. Hell, the government wanted you because your genius level was high so above standard.”

I couldn’t believe my ears. I knew nothing of science anymore aside from minor codes and formulas. How I could be mistaken for someone with a huge brainpan was beyond me.

“Dad. This is me we’re talking about.” I said, as if by saying so the story would change. “There’s nothing genius about me”.

“Not anymore.” He smiled. “All the same... you somehow managed to rewire that panel box under pressure today and disengage the security systems.

“You know, after the accident I was ready to turn you in but your mother pleaded with me to take care of you.” Dad sighed, stroking my cheek with the back of his hand. “There’s so much of her in you that I couldn’t refuse. I made a deal with your friend in the agency. I would put up the cryo-chamber room for their projects, keep your chip under wraps and have your mind re-routed to use predominantly the other side of your brain.

“Mind you… you were never so artistic as a child as you are now. All those paintings you’ve painted, those instruments you’ve automatically been able to understand and all the poetry you’ve written, was something you developed after you came out of the hospital... due largely to the success of the operation they performed on you. You were made to believe the scar in your scalp was caused by the accident, but it wasn’t.”

Incredulity enveloped me as I thought about the scar in my head. I had managed to cut my hair so that it would cover it, but the feeling of it never left me. My heart began pounding madly and my breathing increased. Why were those men here? I wondered. We sealed the breech. The problem was solved, and what the hell did this have to do with my brain and my chip? Turning to my father for answers, he sat looking at me from his chair as though he were suffering with a decision, the consequence of which would mean life or death.

“Untie me.” I whispered once more.

“I can’t.” Dad replied, in a matter of fact way. “The Cryo-chamber that ruptured contained your memory chip. The bargain was, as long as I kept it untouched and locked down you could continue to live and seeing as how you were the only thing I had left of your mother, I would have done anything to make that happen and, in fact, I did. But now…”

He waved to the gentlemen in the corner and they started toward me.

“Daddy no!” I began crying.

“Now there’s nothing anyone can do about it.”

As they prepared the needle, I watched my father turn his back sobbing and leave the room. There was a split second of white...

They say there's a sharp sting in the human psyche just before death and defeat come to call...