The Body Electric

Chapter 2

I wake up with a violent jerk, running a shaky hand over my sleep-crusted eyes.

Ever since last year, the nightmares have been getting worse. More vivid. The line between what’s real and what’s not is so blurry.

Ever since I started working at the Reverie Mental Spa.

I sigh, throwing my blankets back and getting out of bed. By the time I make it to the kitchen, my mother’s already slicing tomatoes for breakfast.

“Sleep well?” she asks cheerily.

“Yeah, no,” I say, slumping into the chair. But when she turns back to look at me, a curious smile on her lips, I just grin at her as if I’d woken up from the best dream ever.

Mom hands me the plate of tomatoes. “Forgot the basil,” she mutters, turning away before the plate’s fully in my hands.

They’re real tomatoes, grown on our roof, not the perfect spheres from the market. Of course, they taste pretty much exactly like the genetically modified food the government stamps approval of sale on, but I like the weirdly discordant shapes of the tomatoes we grow ourselves. They’re lumpier, as if they have only a vague idea of the round shape they’re supposed to be. The rich, red insides glisten with the sprinkle of salt Mom threw over them before she handed them to me.

Then I notice the blood.

“Mom,” I say evenly, trying not to make it sound like a big deal.

“Mmm?” she asks, not turning.

It’s rather a lot of blood, mixed in with the slices. It’s darker than the tomatoes’ juice, smeared across the plate.

“Mom,” I say again.

Mom turns, still holding the knife. I see the cut pulsing blood down her hand, cutting a dark path through the chopped green basil clinging to her skin. She’s shorn off the tip of her second finger.

“Mom!” I say, dropping the plate on the counter and rushing to her. She looks down at her hand and curses, tossing the knife into the sink.

“Damn, damn, damn,” she says. “It’s ruined, isn’t it?” She looks past me at the plate of tomatoes. “All ruined. Damn!”

“I don’t care about the tomatoes,” I say, wrapping a tea towel around her finger as Mom reaches past me, grabbing the plate and sliding the tomato slices into the rubbish bin. “Be still,” I order, but she doesn’t listen. She tries to shake me off.

“Forget about the damn tomatoes!” I shout, snatching her hand again and pressing the towel into the cut. Mom stares down at it dispassionately, watching the red blood soak through the white cloth.

I slowly raise my eyes from Mom’s hand to her face. There’s no emotion on her face. No pain.

“You didn’t feel it, did you?” I whisper.

“Of course I did,” Mom says.

I squeeze the cut finger, just a little, just enough pressure that she should feel a spike of pain. But Mom doesn’t notice.

I drop her hand, and Mom peels away the tea towel. It’s ruined—but Mom’s finger isn’t. As we watch, the raw, bleeding flesh slowly knits back up, and the skin starts to regrow.

Mom snorts. “At least the bots are good for something.”

“You’re getting worse,” I say. It’s not a question.

“Ella—” Mom starts to reach for me, but I wrap my arms around myself. The back of my tongue aches as burning tears fill my eyes. “Ella, it’s not that bad.”

“It is!” I shout, staring at her. Mom’s eyes plead with me to forget what I saw, to pretend that everything is okay. But it’s not. It’s not.

It’s the beginning of the end.

This is the way things are:

Almost two years ago, Mom was diagnosed with Hebb’s Disease. It’s rare, and it’s fatal. Some people think it comes from the universal cancer vaccination since it was developed a short time before the first case of the disease, but no one’s sure. All we know is that, for some reason, the space between neurons starts to grow wider. Your brain is yelling at you to move, but your nervous system can’t hear it.

Most people don’t last more than half a year with Hebb’s, but Mom’s survived two whole years thanks to the research on nanobots Dad did. He was close to finding a cure, I know he was. He used nanobots to help alleviate the symptoms, using the tiny, microscopic robots to communicate the messages between Mom’s brain and nervous system. The bots have the additional advantage to heal other areas where Mom’s been hurt, like the cut on her finger. Medical nanobots are no new thing—everyone has vaccination bots when they’re born—but the way Dad used them on Mom’s illness… it seemed like a miracle.

But then Dad died.

And now Mom’s…

Not being able to feel anything is the first warning sign. If a knife nearly sliced off her finger, and she didn’t even freaking notice, that means Dad’s temporary fix for Mom is failing. The bots aren’t working. The disease is taking over. The disease that eventually kills every single one of its victims is winning.

“Mom,” I say, my voice eerily calm. “How long have you had trouble feeling things?”

“It’s not been long, Ella, please, don’t worry about—”

“How long.” It doesn’t even sound like a question any more, just a demand.

Mom sighs. “A few months. It’s… been getting steadily worse.”

My hands are shaking so violently that I curl them into fists and hold them behind my back so Mom doesn’t see. I can’t be weak, not in front of her, not when she needs my strength.

When Mom was first diagnosed, I practiced saying “My mother is dead,” until I could say it without crying.

And then Mom didn’t die. Dad found a way to stave off the disease, and she lived.

But he didn’t.

Dad’s death was sudden, and violent, and it gutted me like knife guts a fish. An explosion in the lab where he worked, about a year ago, killing him and several other scientists. No one expected it—no one except the terrorists who planned it. I was so angry. He left me with a sick mother and no hope. And when I woke up the next morning, and every morning after, there would be a moment, a brief moment, where I’d forgotten Dad was dead. And every morning, I relived every ounce of pain when I remembered again that he wasn’t here with us. With me.

“Ella.” My mother speaks loudly, drawing me back to the here and now. “I don’t want you to worry about it, really. Jadis is taking me to a new doctor, one of the ones in the lab that gave us the grant money, and well—don’t give up hope on me, okay?”

I jerk my head up, staring at her fiercely. “Never,” I say, and I mean it more than anything else I’ve ever sworn.

I’m not ready to be an orphan.