Pureline

Chapter 6

THE FIRST MEMORY I HAVE of Maman is a smell. Bees wax, linen, and the warm musk of her skin. Her hands were soft on mine and she smiled down at me, her bright face haloed with the dark, rich chocolate of her hair. I had been accustomed to the sanitized air of the lab nursery, its single shrill note of chlorine. She was a warm bath. I was drawn to her, but she had to keep a proper distance, instruct me on decorum and our respective positions. 

I would perch on a stool in her dressing room, watching her groom the few white strands out of her hair with a special comb and smooth a silver wand across her wrinkles to make them disappear. I told her I wanted to comb out the white from my hair, too. She said no, but handed me a plain comb so that I could imitate the gentle strokes she made, a pale copy of her. She smiled at me in the mirror and, forgetting herself, said "Such a pretty girl, Eva."

Selo, the head of our delegation, finally told her to stop taking me out of the lab.

I couldn't say her name, Dr. Mamoru. It came out as Maman. She didn't know that it meant "mother" in a dead language. It would have humiliated her among her colleagues, and even now I am careful to address her as Maman only in private. It was the first of my secrets.

Until I was eleven years old, that was the only secret I ever kept from Maman. Now there are many.

Synths are kept from interacting with one another. Sometimes in the delegation labs we pass each other in the corridor, or we see one another through the glass rooms, taking tests or having a session with our teachers. Our eyes meet only for a moment before we reflexively avoid even looking too long. We are never to speak. 

There are multiple generations of us, multiple series, an assortment of ages. I am 37E, "Eve," the fifth generation of the 37 series.

When I was eleven, one of my teachers became ill during a memorization session. She alerted the technician assigned to me that day that the session would end early, and she quickly shoved me into the waiting area without looking. When I sat down, I saw another synth two chairs down from me in the corner of the room. She was much larger than me, and she sat with graceful posture, her hands folded on her knees, her feet crossed at the ankle, staring straight ahead. Perfectly still. She was older, and from an earlier series. Likely from when transgenic modification was just starting to be implemented. Her head was an usual shape, her eyes widely-set and nearer the sides of her head rather than the front. Some of the alleles used for her code may have been avian. 

She started to speak, and my muscles froze in place. "Don't look at me," she said softly. "And don't react. Just listen. My time is almost up. I'm now eighteen, fully developed. I'll be retired soon. That means I'll be terminated. Killed. Do you understand?" She didn't wait for me to answer. "Perhaps I can give you a bit of knowledge to help you live longer than me. I know you're Dr. Mamoru's favorite. I know you care for her, but she can't protect you. She won't. She has to protect herself." She paused. "You have to learn to lie to them. Mamoru, too. Hold back on the tests. Don't let them see what you're fully capable of. When you need to, suddenly show a new skill. They'll have to investigate whether you're displaying a new trait, whether it's a spontaneous development, and, if so, to isolate it in your alleles. That takes time. When you become older, you'll need to do this to stay alive."

I could hear my breath. See my chest heaving.

My technician finally rushed in the room, irritated. "Where's your teacher? She left already?"

I looked up at him. His pink face was squeezed in a scowl.

"I can't even attend to my own studies. All I do is babysit." He took my arm and yanked me up, never noticing the other synth, who was perfectly still, blended into the gray chairs and gray carpet, her eyes pointing straight ahead.

That night in my bed, I curled up in a ball, awash in fear. I wanted to tell Mamoru. I was afraid to tell Mamoru. I felt the distance between us yawn into a chasm, and it made me feel hollow in the bones. Who was I? What was I? What was this sentience in me bearing witness to these sharp confines of my world? The questions had never nettled me before, but now they kept me awake, floating in my panic. First I reasoned that I was different, that the other synth had done something wrong, was disobedient. That was why she was being terminated. And for days, I clung even more tightly to Maman, told her all the details about my thoughts and what I did during the day. Everything except for this. I gazed at Maman with a hunger, a hunger for what was already gone. I knew the synth was not lying to me. I'd never seen a synth older than twenty. Not in the delegation labs, not in any of the buildings that housed us before the Tower was built. And I hated the synth for what she told me. But it didn't change the truth. Gradually anger replaced the fear. I was alone. And I knew I was alone.

I AM ALREADY 19. My clock is ticking in Pureline.

But I am unfinished. As if I can hear notes from my past but not the linked melody. All these memories should connect to form a person. But they do not.