Alone Read online

  Being a test subject seemed simple enough, even enticing. I have no family, few friends, no girlfriend. The only women I slept with were the friends of friends or those I picked up in bars. Nobody would miss me. Except maybe my good friend, Heather. And Allison.

  Allison. Sweet and kind, but fierce and opinionated. A casual but generous lover. My face in the mirror turns into hers. Why am I thinking of Allison now? On the morning I flew out to start this life, she left me a drunk voice mail, sent just after two a.m. Though I know there’s no way the Controllers would let me listen to it, even if the message wasn’t long gone, I’m suddenly desperate to hear the voice mail again. Screwing my eyes closed, I travel back through memories until I find it.

  “A text? Celeste, you fucking bitch. Have some balls.” A long, silent pause. “Call me.” Then a sigh, and in her sigh, I hear everything. It’s a weary exhalation as though she is having an epiphany in those few seconds. “Actually…don’t.”

  Years ago, before I surrendered my phone to The Organization, I listened to the message over and over again. I memorized every rise and fall in the rhythm of those thirteen words. Unlucky thirteen. I became addicted to the sound of defeat in Alli’s voice, as if she’d only just then realized that I wasn’t really worth it. She wasn’t the first person to reach that conclusion.

  The face in the mirror becomes my own again.

  I pull my long hair into a messy ponytail, dress and rush outside into the cold air for my morning jog. Three loops around the compound will take just over forty minutes, hopping over fallen logs and bounding across the creek. I keep my eyes on the ground, wary of things that want to trip me. A sprained or broken limb could be disastrous.

  One hundred and eighty-one days ago when I chipped the corner of a tooth on a sneaky olive pit, Controller C instructed me to take a sleeping pill at a specified time. I woke up with a cotton ball taped to the crook of my elbow, a repaired tooth and no idea who fixed it. When I run my tongue over my molar, I feel the slightly rough edge of the filling. Must be hard to get a dentist and all the equipment needed for perfect dental work to wherever the hell I am. I imagine X-ray machines and the like for broken bones would be nearly impossible. I’ve lasted this long, and there’s no way I’m leaving and missing out on that extra money and my bonus payment because of my own carelessness.

  I slow to a walk. The inch of snow crunches underfoot and reminds me of winters when I lived in Wyoming, Illinois, Michigan, Washington, New York, Ohio, Iowa, Colorado, Vermont, and countless other places that have faded from my brain. Wrapping my arms tightly around my midsection, I walk to the far northern edge of my fenceless cage. The compound is unfenced for normality, they told me, because for some reason it’s important that I feel I’m living a regular life. Regular. It’s a laughable description.

  But I don’t laugh.

  I stop and lean back against one of the poles topped by a security camera and can feel the cold hard stripe of the metal against my back, even through my hoodie. The cameras mounted on these poles around the compound face out, not in. I think it’s for my security. Not my surveillance. If they wanted to, I’m sure they could swivel the cameras to watch me. Watch me running, collecting my monthly supply drop, polishing the solar panels or tending my garden in the greenhouse. Watch me losing my sanity a little bit at a time.

  I brace my back and push away from the pole to cool off with one more lap at a walk. The compound is an uneven shape with zones that follow the dips and curves of the landscape rather than being perfect concentric circles. I follow the line of the green zone which starts where the trees grow denser into a real forest. The zone is clearly marked with metal signs every thirty feet or so, and I’m careful to stay a few feet away and in the white zone where it’s safe.

  Despite being told very clearly what would happen if I stepped past the invisible border into the green zone or beyond into the yellow and red, the first week I was here I tried it out. Why wouldn’t I? There was nothing better to do. Whenever I think of crossing that line, my limbs tremble with the memory of the moment I went from white to green.

  The hard pulse from the implant embedded in my left bicep was instantaneous. Sharp current through my muscles made them seize immediately and I fell to my hands and knees. Twitching, trying to crawl back to the white, I was too slow and the implant shocked me again. I lay groaning into the dirt, finally managing to drag myself to safety where I stayed for what felt like hours, unable to make myself move. I thought I’d peed myself but it was only the wet ground seeping through my jeans.

  Since then I keep a respectful distance from the invisible barrier, not wanting to find out what would happen were I to go into the yellow. Green is not overly painful—sort of what I imagine being tasered would feel like—but it’s not a sensation I want to inflict voluntarily on myself again.

  Rubbing gloved hands over my face, I stroll toward Hug Tree and wrap my arms around its trunk. My hands meet my arms midway between wrist and elbow on the other side, and I cling to the smooth bark, pressing myself into it. The tree can’t hug me but it relieves the tension in my muscles. It gives me pressure back against a body that has forgotten how to be held. If I close my eyes and try really hard, I can almost imagine I’m anywhere but here. I can pretend I’m in a nice home, being hugged by someone who really loves me.

  “Nobody loves you, nobody wants to hug you, you’re pathetic,” Mother tells me. Her voice has a familiar biting sneer to it. “You’re too fuckin’ needy. Remember rule number one?”

  I do, and I recite it in my head. Never let you see how much I needed you and never let you see how much you could hurt me.

  Chapter Two

  Freshly showered and with a mug of sweet black tea in hand, I sign in to the computer system and send my logs from yesterday so they’ll be ready for review before my daily session. There are still thirty minutes before one of the Controllers will come online for my check-in, plenty of time to eat before my “human” contact. I make and eat a simple breakfast of frozen hash browns and powdered scrambled eggs in the clean modern kitchen and waste time wandering aimlessly around the clean modern house.

  Everything here is better than what I’ve left behind. The food is good and usually what I ask for. The dwelling is comfortable and well thought out—a hall connects my bedroom to an open plan living space and kitchen, with bathroom, computer room, and stairs down to the basement branching off along the long hallway. The house is full of high-tech appointments and appliances, and when I first arrived it still smelled of new construction and fresh paint.

  I don’t pay rent, I have no bills and my time is mostly my own. Most people would say that I want for nothing. Except the one thing I cannot have. No human contact, at all. No faces or voices, which means no voice or video calls. No movies. No television. No music with vocals. No books with author pictures on the back page.

  A few months into my stay, I used the colored pencils and paper supplied by the Controllers to draw faces. Happy faces, sad faces, angry faces. I stuck them around the habitat and gave each one of them names and exciting backgrounds. We had conversations and shared our hopes and dreams and stories about our lives, until one night getting up to pee after too much beer, I caught sight of my mass of floating heads. In the dim moonlight they looked like the faces from that movie about that village of creepy demon kids. I flicked all the lights on as quickly as I could and threw my friends in the trash.

  Yankee Doodle went to—stop. Day two of this repeat. Not so bad really. The repetitions started early on, like a radio constantly tuned to the most annoying station. My life is a series of uber-persistent earworms. I’ve had song lyrics, lines from books and movies, and things people said to me stuck in my head for hours, days, a week sometimes. Four or five months ago, I was stalled on two lines from a Twilight movie for eighteen days straight and contemplated running into the red zone to knock myself out, just for some reprieve.

  I settle in the computer room with my second mug—coffee this time—an
d navigate to the logging interface to start my daily report by documenting what I’ve done so far this morning. How I feel. What I think. I’ll come back and forth during the day to add things, but I never edit what I’ve already written. I don’t like to look back.

  The Organization’s contact requirements aren’t arduous. Every morning I must engage in an instant messaging “conversation” with a Controller. I have to give them daily text logs, something more than Today I inflated the tires on the ATV and planted potatoes. And once a week I’m obliged to record a video log—minimum and maximum time not specified—they just want to see me talking, probably so they can gauge something from my speech patterns and expressions.

  Within today’s text log, I begin a list of stuff that I miss, something I started early in my stay.

  Things I miss:

  -Lou’s deep-dish pizza.

  -Long flights of stairs, walking up and jogging down.

  -Fresh milk.

  -Walking down the street holding hands with someone.

  The messaging system overrides what I’m working on, sliding down like a window shade, forcing me to interact. Stuck a feather in his—stop.

  Today it’s Controller B. Even after years of messaging with the four people behind the screen, I have no idea of who they are. Male. Female. Super sophisticated AI. They are nothing more than text on a monitor. They know everything about me but I know hardly anything about them except the little I’ve gleaned from those words. In the beginning I was afraid and obsequious. Now I’m casual and indifferent.

  Cont B: Good morning. How are you feeling?

  SE9311: Fine, thanks.

  Cont B: You have a supply drop scheduled for tonight.

  SE9311: Great, thanks. Did you get me new sunglasses?

  Cont B: Three pairs. Try not to lose these.

  I grin. Sometimes I order supplies just for the hell of it, but this time, I really did lose my sunglasses. It’s completely ridiculous, because obviously there are only so many places they could be but despite a week of looking, I still can’t find them.

  SE9311: I’ll try.

  Cont B: Why haven’t you recorded a video log this week?

  SE9311: I have a pimple.

  Cont B: No you don’t. Nice try.

  Of course they know I don’t. There’s a single camera in the corner of the computer room that they probably use to record me while I’m in here, but nowhere else inside, because they think being constantly watched would change my normal behavior. What’s normal? I do yoga and dance and perform elaborate, silent sock-puppet theater. I walk around naked when I feel like it, which is quite frequently. I sing loudly and off-key. Looking up at the camera, I flash them an apologetic smile followed by a facetious salute.

  SE9311: Caught me.

  Cont B: It’s been 6 days since your last video log. Please submit one by the end of tomorrow. Do you have anything else to report?

  It doesn’t seem like six days have passed since I last recorded myself talking about random things.

  SE9311: Nothing to report, but one question - is Venus the planet hot or cold?

  Cont B: Hot. Closer to the sun than Earth. Sun, Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars…

  Derp, of course.

  SE9311: Thanks. Astronomy always confuses me.

  Cont B: No problem. I’ll talk to you on my next shift.

  Talk is a relative term. I haven’t talked to anyone since day zero, unless I count conversations with myself and the false things. And I don’t. I stare at the list I started working on before Controller B arrived, pause and add three letters.

  -Sex.

  The cursor blinks…blinks…blinks, waiting for me to elaborate. After all these months this is the first time I’ve listed sex and I’m not entirely sure why I just typed that word. It’s always surprised me but until this moment, I think I’ve missed the idea of sex rather than the actual act. But right now, I’m aware of a desperate ache, a longing so deep that I wonder if it’ll ever go away. I blame thinking about Allison. Seeing those three letters unleashes something and I type frantically.

  I miss fucking. I miss my mouth on breasts, teeth on nipples, fingers inside me stroking and pushing me over the edge. I miss waking up with a lover beside me. I miss the way women smell. I miss whispered confessions and desperate directives. I miss hair trailing over my skin. I miss the taste as she comes in my mouth, thick and hot.

  Someone’s going to have an interesting time reading over my logs from today. The words stir me further, building to a throb that threatens to grow and smother me. I can’t write anything else because I’m suddenly overwhelmed with need. I leave without saving my log, and rush into my bedroom where I strip off my clothes. I’m already wet.

  My gratification is fast and hard, nipple held tightly between thumb and forefinger for exquisite pain. I think of nothing but a faceless, voiceless woman straddling my face with her sex in my mouth and a hand grasping my hair. Middle finger stroking, stroking, sliding hard and fast until I climax in a sweaty, shivering mess. Coming down, softly playing that bundle of nerves, I feel the burn again and I push another climax through on the back of the first. The second is bigger, harder, yanking the cords of my muscles and lifting me from the bed, back arched, my cry loud and hoarse. I lie sweaty and trembling for a while and wait for my body to solidify.

  “You always love it when I do that,” Allison says in her bedroom voice.

  I ignore her and put tentative fingers in my mouth, tasting what remains of my arousal. It’s bitter, unsatisfying and nothing like the taste of a woman who has just come in my mouth.

  * * *

  Whenever we play games, Celeste One is hard to predict, sometimes good and sometimes bad. Celeste Two is a sneaky, underhanded bitch. Celeste Three just isn’t very smart. I slide the tiles around the holder, rearrange my D and E, and glare at the empty seat opposite me. “I can’t believe you took my spot, Two. I had the best word lined up.” I stare at the board for a minute then align tiles in a subpar spot. DRESS. Double letter on the S. Eight. I add it to Celeste One’s score and update the tally. A quick rummage in the bag for fresh tiles, set them in the holder without looking at them. Stand up, move to my left.

  I talk to the empty seat on my right. “Don’t let her get to you, One. That was still a great move you made.” Three looks at her tiles, arranged in no real order, and sets CAT down on the board. Five points, no bonuses. Poor Three, she’s almost twenty points behind One and fifty behind Two. Replacement tiles. The bag is nearly empty.

  I move again to the seat on my left, staring across the table. “You snooze, you lose, One. And seriously, Three, that’s the best you could do? Hopeless.” Two’s grin is sadistic, she loves to watch the others fail. Her tiles are lined up alphabetically and it takes her a while to form words, but when she does they are laid out for maximum effect.

  The move comes to Two quickly and with perfect clarity. I lay an O next to the S that One set down and run the word OPENING down the board. Triple word on the O. I wrinkle my nose and count Two’s score. Thirty for OPENING and six for SO. Not bad. After Two’s move, One is sulking and doesn’t want to play anymore. Three doesn’t understand why One is upset.

  I stand up and push all three chairs back under the table. Time to do some work. For the rest of the day, in preparation for my supply drop, I clean the fridge and deep freeze, rearrange my pantry stores and start transferring all my waste from the shed. It takes me an hour to line up everything I want taken away, recyclables mostly and stuff that doesn’t burn well.

  The rest of my waste goes to the pit where I throw a bonfire every few weeks, dutifully inviting everyone I know. Nobody ever attends. So rude. While my rubbish burns I sit on a log with a glass of wine or a beer and watch the flames. I pretend I’m at a party talking to girls and try to ignore the noxious fumes from burning the by-products of my sad existence.

  Wind cuts through my jacket, and spits light snow onto me. The snow’s been steady this season, nearly every day. I’ve alw
ays assumed I’m somewhere in the northeast quarter of the USA but I don’t know enough about star-mapping to figure it out. I could be anywhere really. It’s cold and snowy in winter, rains a little during mild springs and the summers are hot and wonderfully stormy. Flakes in my eyelashes blur my vision and with my head down, I push into the heated greenhouse. Yankee Doodle—stop. On my knees, I check what I’ve grown. Snip off unhealthy pieces of plants. Fertilize and water. My chard looks great, the leaves dark green and silky under my fingers. I’ll have some for dinner.

  Growing my own vegetables is part of my routine, along with tending to the as-yet-unproductive fruit trees, getting them established for the next candidates. The thought of another candidate moving in once I’m gone makes me feel strange. I’m the first person to live here, and I have a possessive attachment to this place that takes so much from me and gives nothing in return. It’s very confusing.

  “Celestial Celeste,” Mother slurs in my ear.

  “Go away.”

  “Digging in the dirt. Filthy little bitch. Why you doin’ that?” The words sting as much as if she were actually standing beside me speaking them.

  The muscles in my jaw tighten, making my teeth clench. “I need fresh food. I’m being paid to test their systems.”

  Mother snorts derisively.

  The sound triggers a memory, and I can’t help myself. I have to respond. “Remember when you threw away that box of crackers after you made me steal them and we didn’t get to eat any? And then you slapped me for complaining that I was hungry? Do you remember that? I do.”