Saurian

The mirror showed a reflection that wasn’t my own.

Looking back at me from mirrored fractals scattered over the tiles, their eyes were green and bloodshot, their irises slotted to slits. There were dark shadows along the cheeks.

I inhaled. Exhaled. Deeply. Until my mouth was dry, and I could force myself to look again.

I had stumbled. Punched. Pushed. What had at first been an accident had turned to intention in an instant. To my detriment, it seemed, for what had started as one reflection had splintered to several, glaring back at what couldn't possibly have inspired its shape. It couldn't be real.

It couldn't be me.

The whole point of this was so it couldn't be me. Right?

The blood that would have rushed to my head leaked instead from my knuckles. I heard each drop make contact with the floor. I stood still until the sterile air began to taste like it, copper against my sandpaper tongue.

I looked over my shoulder, away from the sundry echoes blinking back at me. I'd have to clean them up. I wouldn't be able to stand the sight.

“ERA?” I croaked.

Hello, P-2X69.

“How... How long has it been?” The walls, five in total, began to expand and contract around me. Beats of a heart, breaths of a lung, squeezing me stumbling to the center of the room.

It has been eight days, four hours, six minutes, and three. Four. Five. Six. Seven…

The cool voice of the AI faded and distorted to a high-pitched whine, raising the hairs on my neck. The floor simultaneously swam and moved to part below my feet, yawning, breaching below. I wished it would swallow me whole, allow the darkness to digest me.

I waited, closing my eyes against it, clapping my hands over my ears. I forced air in and out of my chest until the movements stopped and the walls shrank back to their corners. The sigh the room breathed felt physically present to me and I breathed one out with it in turn.

I patted my arm. It twinged. "ERA, I tripped over my tube and broke the mirror." I checked over the IV insertion point against my elbow, fluttered my fingers carefully over the surgical tape holding it in place. "I have to clean it up."

That would not have been necessary, had you obeyed directives and remained in your capsule.

Sometimes AI technology is the most fascinating concept. Sometimes it points out the obvious. It can go from extremely intelligent to doltish in a matter of seconds. How very human.

I swept a hand behind my back and felt for the wires and sensors attached to the skin, and looked across to where a machine faintly beeped and monitored. Obviously my episode hadn't warranted so much as a wellness check.

"I need a broom, ERA. Vaccum. Something." I reached out with my other hand as though expecting such items to materalize out of thin air. "If you can turn the light up too I'd appreciate it." I didn't want to step on the glass and bleed out any more than I already had. Staying where I was felt the best thing to do until I could see where the broken glass had fallen.

P-2X69, I am required to maintain current light levels until your next clinical review.

I'd have to make do under the dim neon leaking in through the cracks of the medical equipment, then. "And the first one?" I turned slightly, closed my eyes just enough to be able to catch the glow of the shattered mirror and much less of the reflections lurking within.

There is a vacuum tube located within the depository below your medications and dressings. You may use it to dispose of your messes. It is almost time to renew your bandages.

They didn't smell anymore. That was one small mercy.

My first three days in quarantine had involved learning how to wrap and unwrap the bulky bandages, soaked in foreign medicinal creams and ointments, around each leg. From the heel to just above the knee. What it treated beneath had smelled like food long left out under desert heat.

"Hard to see without much light," I muttered.

Would you like me to contact the on-call clinician? I looked up to wherever ERA's cool voice sounded from and narrowed my eyes.

"No." I didn't want to see them any earlier than was necessary. I had four more days without them, without the hands, the needles, the tubes, the prodding, the questions, the eyes, and the sound.

Very well.

I shuddered. Pulled myself together. Took one carefully measured step toward the depository across from my bed. My capsule, ERA had called it, as though I were something to be enclosed. My heart stuttered in my chest at the thought. No. Nothing to be enclosed.

I felt around on the floor with my toes until I was sure my next step would be clear. I could feel the blood from my hands against the tile, thick and slippery. It was starting to coagulate.

Maybe it wouldn't be so bad to leave things as they were. If I tripped and fell, lost a little more, maybe I could go in some peace.

P-2X69, I am recognizing self-destructive brainwaves in your file. I will need to authorize an emergency alert if such behaviour does not desist.

"ERA, do you know what a father is?" I took my time picking across to the depository and fumbled for the vacuum tube. It was roughly the circumference of my arm, or what my arm had been once.

Father: a man in relation to his child or children.

"What sort of relation?" I fingered over the edge of the tube and found a switch. I tested it against the palm of my hand, enjoyed the light sucking sensation of it against my skin. It felt confusing, in a word, because the pressure might have once felt quite harsh. Brandishing the tube, I knelt onto the floor and flipped the switch with my thumb, moving my arm in sweeping motions. I crawled back towards the mirror. Mirrors. There were more than one now, I reminded myself.

Parental. Legal. Social.

“And what is the role of a father?” The suction sound warped briefly as it sucked up the first shard. Encouraged, I felt around for the next.

Through almost every studied culture, fathers have assumed three primary roles: Protector, Provider, and Disciplinarian.

A succession of loud clunks kept me from hearing the former. Something wriggled deep in my memory. I turned the vacuum off and took in a deep breath.

Eight days, ERA had said. The pain had come and gone. The smell of my flesh under the wraps had gone. I would be itchy, wouldn’t I? Healing? The thought had been nagging at me since mention of the bandages. I’d taken the lack of pain for granted so quickly. The realization of this relief felt more worrying than relieving.

Hesitantly, I reached up to touch my face.

The shadows I’d seen in the cheeks looking back at me from the glass met my fingers. The surfaces were hard.

The vacuum tube clattered to the floor.

P-2X69, I am once again logging self-destructive brainwaves in your file. I will need to authorize--

“DO IT! I want to see the Director.” I couldn’t stop shaking. The warning had been there all along, in the slits of the eyes that had blinked putridly back at me. I gripped the wraps around my legs and began to unwind them, squinting to make anything out under the fluorescent neon glow from the ceiling.

Visits with the Director must be requested three weeks in advance, ERA responded coolly.

“ERA, self-destructive brainwaves are increasing,” I threatened. Dark spots met my searching eyes as I pulled the wraps back and I, determined not to give way, brought them closer to my face.

There was a shine to them. My trembling finger traced over what felt like curved plates. Scales, my mind filled in unhelpfully. My mind raced back to the beginning of my quarantine; being rushed into my room on a stretcher, held down and subdued when I thrashed too much to be injected. The doctors had said it was a cure, that my four classmates and I had been exposed to something too dangerous to be allowed home. They had said they were going to help us.

We had been so excited to have stumbled upon the artifact. Sylvia, our budding archeologist, had opened it with the reverence of one meeting their maker. The fumes it had expelled had sent us choking and reeling away.

I remembered the hard look on the Director’s face as he’d watched us be separated and put away. Into our capsules. I thought he’d been biting back grief and worry. It wasn’t until now that the image of him in my mind’s eye seemed more akin to disappointment. Perhaps condemnation. I bit my lip so hard that blood filled my mouth. I leaned forward and crawled until I found the sharp edges of what I sought.

Slowly, I brought the last shard to my face.

In the dim light I looked into the changing eyes, the changing face, so different from the scared one I’d found in the mirror eight days ago, and finally found something away from fear. I blinked. My reflection did too.

“ERA. I need a word with my Protector,” I hissed, and brought the glass to my throat.

Somewhere outside of my room, a claxon began to sound an alarm.