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I cry out, but as usual they are implacable. I struggle against the restraints, but as usual it does no good. The drugs are too strong. They are too strong. They say something to each other in their language, and one of them speaks to me in her heavily accented attempt at English:
“You must relax, Mister Swanson.” She has trouble with my name. “It is only another test.”
Or maybe two or three this time. Heaven knows they must have taken enough blood and body parts from us by now. What more could they possibly need to know?
I’ve seen what’s left of some of the others in this Facility. It isn’t pretty. What must I look like by now? I don’t know. They don’t trust me with a razor, after that first week, so I don’t see a mirror. I’m hooked up to a bag for my plumbing. I turn away when they wheel me by windows that reflect. I don’t think I could bear to see. I have to keep some hope.
Hope that somewhere out there a Resistance is fighting on. Maybe they’ll get to me in time. I saw a flash of it on the TV last night, for a few minutes before one of the guards rushed in and switched it off. Somehow, the Resistance got a video onto the airwaves!
“Too loud! Time to sleep!”
But we knew why the guard jumped in. Frank and I looked at each other and winked as they wheeled us away. They try to keep us pacified, but we know what they are doing. Controlling us. With drugs and TV. While they run their experiments.
They look so much like us in many ways. But not like us. Even our people who are collaborating are starting to look different, sound different. Not like us anymore. I grasp that thought firmly as the drugs take hold and I drift off, hearing only the muted tick-bump, tick-bump as the gurney rolls over the floor tiles.
I wake in a lighted tube, firmly restrained on my back, lights flashing. The noise is deafening. I am too heavily drugged to fight or even think clearly half the time. But I hang on to who I am. I hold on to that precious kernel of hate that still powers me through the stupefying cloud of confusion. We will never submit! This cannot stand, what they have done to our world! Our heritage is too great, our rich culture and wonderful inventiveness, our destiny to …
*****
Losing track of time frightens me, but it is also a blessing. I might go mad if I were truly conscious of every passing hour in this hellhole. The “tests” are bad enough, with probes and incisions, and instruments pushed into my arteries and bone marrow and organs, down my throat and up into my gut. But they usually knock me out for those, at least partially. I hurt afterward.
In some ways, it’s the silence that is most damaging. And the solitude. The long, lonely hours in my sterile cell with no human company or stimulation. Sometimes I think I might shrivel up and die from sheer boredom. The guards sometimes come in and say a few words, but I won’t give them the satisfaction. And like Frank says, you never know what they are trying to get out of you. I doubt if I still have any useful intelligence for them to suck out at this point; I’ve been in the Facility too long. I’m probably only good for experimentation now. But I can’t take that chance.
I can barely understand them, anyway. They give up after a few minutes of pretending to adjust things in the cell and then leave me to my silence, until the next round of “tests.” They’ve damaged my eyes somehow, but I can see enough to know when they are coming, and when they finally leave me alone again.
*****
I wish I could remember the early days of the invasion, and what went wrong. But the drugs … it’s all a haze. Mostly I remember feelings. The rightness of coming home to Mom and Dad’s house when I was young. The neighbors on the street; people you could talk to. People like us. We watched the same shows and laughed about them the next day. We drove the same kinds of cars, played baseball, watched football games; you walked down the street and smelled burgers grilling in backyards. Sure, we had our differences, but we had no idea what was coming.
And some of our own people welcomed the aliens at first! I do remember that. Stabbed us in the back. So we couldn’t present a united front. “We come in peace.” Yeah, that’s what they always said in the scifi stories!
Blood is thicker than water. I always told the kids that. And then, you have to stick up for your friends, your country, your people. Stand together. Or look what happens. And now it’s too late.
Too late. Getty dozy again. Drugs.
*****
I almost made it out of the Facility once. Back when I could still walk, a long time ago. I don’t know when, exactly. I lose track of time.
I worked it out with Frank, a plan. He must have distracted the guards on our floor by faking a fit, and they came running. I snitched a set of those baggy uniform clothes they wear from the laundry cart, and I put those on in a hurry. I walked right past Frank’s cell and out the emergency door at the end of the corridor. That set off an alarm, of course – I knew it would – but with the excitement around Frank, there was a small window of opportunity.
The Facility is larger than I thought. I got past the quad where they take us sometimes to get some air, but then I got lost around the next set of buildings. They all look alike. Not too sinister from the outside, but then you find out what’s going on inside! I didn’t run, obviously, so as not to attract attention. I just walked purposefully like staff, like maybe one of the collaborators, while desperately trying to see a way out to the streets. I remember how I was sweating, and my heart was pounding, and I needed to pee.
But I forgot that everyone wears a badge. Two of the guards in the same baggy tunics and trousers spotted me right away. They had badges of course; I didn’t. They shared a glance, and one of them said something in their tongue. The other laughed. They didn’t pull out weapons. They didn’t need to. I was already tired and weak by that time. They each took one of my arms, and one of them ran a scanner near my shoulder, where the chip is, and then they steered me back to my cell.
I don’t know what happened to Frank, exactly. He wasn’t back until the next day. “Tests” was all he would say.
I hate being weak like this. I hate not being able to remember things. I hate not thinking clearly anymore. I hate the aliens for what they’ve done. I hate …
*****
“Mister Swanson, you wake now? Someone to see you.”
What trick are they trying to play on me this time? Threats? Rewards? Good cop / bad cop? It won’t work. I see through them, even if my eyes don’t work right.
The guard is familiar; this one tries to play nice. I ignore her. She hasn’t fooled me before, and she won’t fool me this time. An alien is an alien. But she’s brought a collaborator with her, someone who looks vaguely familiar.
“How are you doing, Pop?”
No, this is over the line. This is beyond the usual half-hearted attempts at humiliation and manipulation. This is just cruel, kicking a man when he is down.
“You are not my son, you … you traitor!”
He hangs his head. Good, he is not so far gone that he is past shame.
The man who looks a little like my son would have looked (if he were middle-aged) reaches into his jacket pocket and pulls out something shiny. He forces it into my hand.
“I thought you might like to have this, Pop. It might help you … remember.”
I consider throwing it back at him, but I know I don’t have the energy for that. Finally, curiosity gets the best of me. I slowly bend my arm and bring my hand closer to my poor eyes. I open the hand and see:
A heart-shaped, gold locket. The one I gave her so long ago. The one I gave … why can’t I remember? Marge! My Margie!
How did this man get hold of it? Are they going through my apartment now, taking things to use against me? Again, I want to throw the locket away, but I know I can’t. I need this small, faint pulse of Margie’s heartbeat.
Because I remember all right. I remember in a flash all that we were to each other. I remember there was love in the world, and we shared it together. And then we had children, and there was more love. There was love in our house, and in the garden, and in the sky above us, and in trees and sunshine and people on the streets, and … everywhere! And there is a little germ of love left in this locket, even though Marge is long gone, somewhere else where we all go, eventually. I remember that, too, now.
*****
“Is he asleep again?”
“Yes, I think so. But he is smiling. He does not smile very often. You did a good thing today.”
“Even if he doesn’t know who I am, Mrs. Gomez?”
“Yes. These patients at the Facility, they have many gaps in their memories, but they have feelings. The strong feelings come back, even stronger I think, when they get older and the dementia is more advanced. If they have bad feelings, maybe those haunt them like ghosts. But the good feelings, those can bless them.”
“He must be a challenge for you. I’m sorry he got this way. We tried to have home health care aides. But he always fought it when the aides turned out to be … you know …”
Mrs. Gomez smiles. “Of a less pale persuasion?”
“Sorry, yes. And he has trouble with anyone who doesn’t speak English natively. Well, and half the people who do! In the family we knew better than to get into talk about some topics with him, like politics and how the neighborhood was changing. And that’s back when he still recognized us. Now, whatever old movie he sees, or something on Fox – it just gets mixed up in his mind and off he goes! Illegal aliens, aliens from outer space … it’s crazy.”
“We don’t like the word ‘crazy’, but yes, it is difficult for the family. All of the patients in this Facility are losing memory but also the cognitive abilities,” Mrs. Gomez sighs. “I think maybe the ones who focus more on what they love and not what they fear – for years before they start losing their mental abilities – well, perhaps they are more content when the mind is not so clear? Anyway, the locket, it is a very good idea. We keep him clean and comfortable here in the Facility, and we take care of his physical health. But he also needs ties to his happy memories. It is very good of you, Frank, to pay for a private room for your father, so he is not disturbed by others with more … troubled thoughts.”
The two gaze at the sleeping patient for a moment longer, locket clutched in his wrinkled hand, and then slip quietly out the door of his very private room.
About the Creator
Scott Blackmer
Lawyer, writer, traveler. Launched the Traynor's World young adult series in 2020 (www.traynorsworld.com).
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