"Welcome, welcome," the man in the doorway said. They'd made it to the forty-third floor half by elevator shaft, and half by the stairway and so far there was no sign of police droids.
Day leaned against the doorframe, breathless, sweaty and undoubtedly bleeding. Hair stuck to the sides of her face. Her eyes were kind of blurry. Meanwhile Will stood next to her smiling like he'd come up the whole way in the elevator.
"Come in, come in," said the man. He stepped back, put his palms together in a prayer gesture and bent his head. Will mirrored him.
"Shikshak Amada," Will said. "This is Day White."
The man bowed to Day, palms pressed in prayer. She mirrored the gesture.
"Well, well," Shikshak Amada said. "You made it." He wore a beautiful golden long-coat jacket with buttons down to the waist, and soft, golden slippers. His face was even and handsome with a trimmed beard.
He welcomed them into an extraordinary marble hallway. Soft luminance pulsed inside the white marble walls. The hallway resembled a large cocoon, and though it was very faint, Day heard entrancing music that sounded like the sun humming.
"Shoes," the shikshak said. Day pulled off her air-trainers, and the light under a marble bench grew brighter. It was not just a bench but a box, and there was something inside it. As she moved closer, the box popped open and she saw several pairs of golden slippers, just cloth really, no sole to the foot, no inherent structure to the shape. Will reached over and swopped his trainers for slippers. She did likewise.
"Let us have tea!" The shikshak clapped his hands and a droid entered dressed in a sari. "Tea, please, Aditi." The droid nodded and moving with the elegance and poise of a dancer turned to fetch it.
Day glanced at Will. They didn't have time for tea! The police were climbing forty-three floors as they spoke. The suite was probably already surrounded. They'd be bursting in here any moment. But Will didn't seem to have any time constraints. He was standing looking as serene as ever.
"Shikshak means teacher," Will said as the shikshak lead them into a lounge with a giant bonsai tree growing in the middle. "Or master, tutor, and guru." Day gazed up at the leaves arched like a roof overhead and the plants growing in the walls.
"Aditi Rao Hydari," the shikshak. "Aditi was a wonderful actress and dancer. Born of two royal lineages three centuries ago."
Day crossed her arms, pressing them into her chest, trying to suppress the anxiety.
"Shikshak Amada makes his own droids," Will added. "You can have anyone from history serving you."
"Angelina Jolie is very popular from the days of the big screen cinemas," the teacher nodded. "The droid 40B9287 series resembles her, but I have a special technique. I do not use plastic compounds for the skin. I have my own composite. None of this machine made stuff. It's all done by hand. It's the imperfections that elevate the work."
Day chewed on her lip, unable to stay her impatience. "Will says you think you can extract a deep personality implant."
The shikshak smiled and stroked his beard. "I'm looking forward to trying."
"Isn't it a very delicate procedure?"
The shikshak raised his eyebrows at Will.
Will shrugged. "Her personality implant isn't very positive or open minded."
"Ah," Shikshak Amada nodded.
"He's going to be tampering with my brain, and he's never done it before. Oh yeah, sorry about the pessimism."
The shikshak slapped his thighs. "I like her! People never want to be implanted with weak, self-doubting personalities. But there is something very authentic about it."
"Yes, it resembles nearly every human being on earth except for William here," she said, pointing her thumb. Will grinned.
"She is calling you William," the shikshak said, winking at Will. Day abstained from rolling her eyes and pursed her lips.
"Is it a good sign?" Will asked.
"It means the implant extraction will go exceedingly well!"
Will laughed.
"Oh for fuck's sake," Day muttered.
"Ah, here is our tea." The actress droid entered the vast lounge, reminiscent of a square in some quaint ancient village. She lay out a beautiful cup for each of them, an exquisitely designed t-pot and a jar full of leaves.
The shishak clipped open the jar and extracted a tea-leaf with a pair of tweezers. It would take ten minutes just to get the tea leafs into the strainer.
"Look, I'm sorry," Day said, slipping to the edge of her seat. "We really don't have time for this. There's a police droid crashed right in front of this building and a police helicopter was following us and I really think if we want to do this, we should do it now."
"All right, then," the shikshak said. He rose, and Day and Will followed him down a long hall into a concave room. The rounded half of the room had floor to ceiling windows. There were doors at both ends, and three transparent machines. One machine resembled a jellyfish with tentacles made from tubes of light that were sucked up inside its bell-shaped mold.
The shikshak noticed Day staring. "This is Sarah," he said moving to the jellyfish and placing a hand on top of it, which meant reaching up almost as high as his own head. "Sarah, this is Day."
Light pulsed inside the machine. "Hello, Day," an electronic voice said. The opaque fabric of the machine seemed to vibrate and though the voice sounded electronic it also sounded musical.
"Sarah is utterly unique," the shikshak said. "I designed her myself from some research and experiments I have been doing into foreign wave packs of energy altering our atmosphere."
A nurse droid in the corner of the room came to life. She walked to a hidden wall cabinet and took something out. "When you and Will came here six months ago," the shikshak continued, "I began extending Sarah's capacities so that not only could she go out into the atmosphere, identify and dissolve the malign, foreign electromagnetic wavelengths, but so she could delve into your mind and dissolve the foreign magnetic wavelengths of the personality implant."
The complicated science of his explanation was a difficult wall to climb, but where Day's attention really got stuck was on the fact that she and Will, or rather Monday and Will, had been here before.
For some reason it surprised her.
The nurse droid crossed the room and held out a pair of opaque pants and rubber bra-band. "You may come and change over here," she said.
A cylinder rose out of the ground forming a cubicle. One side of it opened. Day took the rubber knickers and bra-band from the droid, and stepped into the half circle, and it swished closed around her. Inside the cubicle, the opaque walls shone with soft light.
Day stared at the rubber knickers and bra-band. She might not have rushed things along if she knew this was what was waiting for her. This might be a tad embarrassing.
"Shikshak Amada?" she called tentatively.
No answer came.
Screw it. Bashful was probably part of her implanted personality. Monday probably wouldn't blink an eye at walking out there with only opaque jelly clinging to her breasts and bum.
Or maybe this was the shikshak's idea of a joke. Perhaps they were going to have a good laugh at her expense. Yeah, don't worry guys about the police droids surrounding the building.
Screw it, Day thought, peeling off her jeans and knickers and pulling on the rubber ones, which was like pulling on wet bikini bottoms. Squeezing into the top would be more problematic with the cuts on her back.
She took off her t-shirt, unwound the gauze and let the bandage fall to the ground. Then she pulled the jelly bra-band over her head and down over her shoulders. She flipped out her arms, and tugged until it held her boobs, pressing them flat to her chest. The good news was it didn't hurt her back.
"Let's get this over with," she muttered. "Doors." The half circle swished open and she stepped out, clutching her clothes to cover her breasts, stomach and a bit of thigh.
Will smiled innocently but she thought she saw a bit of smirk too. The shikshak stood beside Sarah the jellyfish, arms sunk into the fleshy goo of her body.
Day stepped up to Will, still covering herself as best she could with the rest of her clothes. "Tell me this isn't some kind of revenge you guys have on Monday..."
"Revenge?" Will didn't seem to understand. Or perhaps he was playing dumb.
"Whatever." In a few minutes it wouldn't matter because she would be the hard-as-nails, I'm hijacking a prison-ship to go to Mars, Monday they were all waiting for.
"OK, Sarah's ready." The shikshak extracted his arm from the strange substance. "Push yourself inside Sarah's body," he said, taking Day by the elbow, "and once you are fully immersed Sarah will insert some air-noodles into your nose from two of her tentacles. They're really tubes," he added, chuckling.
Day couldn't even pretend to find it amusing.
"I don't understand how this is going to work," she said.
"It is a wise person that knows they don't know," he answered.
"Well I'd like to be less wise please and pretend I understand a little bit."
Will laughed.
"Glad you're having fun Will," she snapped.
He smiled serenely and took a deep breath.
"I'm betting you don't understand quantum physics or nanotechnology yet you've got a quantum chip monitor stuck in your arm monitoring every aspect of your body."
"It's broken," Day muttered.
"If you want I can explain it, but that might take a few hours. Certainly longer than a cup of tea."
"Fine, forget it."
The shikshak held out his hand. Day took it. Her skin crawled as he helped her into Sarah. She thought of the cool blue gel pooling into the cells of her mind when she'd had the implant at Janus. It hadn't been uncomfortable, it had been excruciatingly intrusive, and this would probably be worse.
The machine squished around her body. Day tried to get comfortable. All of a sudden she was locked in place, and the jelly substance was pressing into her face, the tentacles of light reaching up her nose. She opened her mouth to let out a muffled cry and tried to wriggle free, but the jell locked her in like cement.
The tubes probed up her nose and slid down her throat. She was choking, unable to breathe.
Relax, Sarah said into her mind. Relax and it won't hurt at all How the hell am I supposed to relax while I'm suffocating to death?
I'm here. This won't take long. Almost there. Well done, Day.
Sarah and Day were somehow having a conversation in Day's head, and at the same time Day was back in the bedroom she'd shared with Ed, except it all felt different. She could hear the shower. She could see the silky sheets against her calves, and sensed their cool smoothness on her half-covered feet.
"OK, here we go," the Shikshak said. His voice sounded distant. Day tried to observe some shift in her consciousness, she couldn't detect anything. She wondered if the machine was working. Maybe the shikshak was full of shit. Suddenly her mind seemed to darken and swoop forward as though she were accelerating through a tunnel. Then she was sitting on a woman's knee. Her head swung back and she laughed. The woman laughed too and tightened her arms around Day into a squeeze.
"I'll love you forever and ever," the woman whispered in Day's ear.
"I love you forever and ever," Day echoed. Her insides were fuzz soaked in honey sunshine. Her mother's warm palms cupped her cheeks. Her lips kissed the side of Day's lips. Day kissed her mommy back, kissing all around her face like a rainbow.
"I love you more than all the world."
"I love you to the end of the world and back and further than the furthest star," her mother laughed.
Everything went black. Day was whipping through darkness at breakneck speed. The next thing she knew she was on a hard floor, curled up in a ball, trembling. A hand touched her back. A little sting and she remembered the lacerations, the bombing, Ed, Will....
"Monday," Will said. In the distance there was a high-pitched electronic whirring sound. A voice on a loud speaker told them to "come out" with their hands raised.
Day curled in tighter on herself. She wanted to sob and have her mom comfort her. The memory so full, so warm, so complete, that the emptiness she felt now was choking.
"Monday, they're almost through. What's wrong with her? Did it work?"
"Oh yes," the shikshak said. "It worked. I think it worked. Who can tell?"
Day wished she had a stun-gun to shoot the shikshak. It hadn't fucking worked. She was still Day. Still had no memories of the last two years. All she wanted to do was curl up and die miserably somewhere. Fuck Mars and Ed. She wanted her mom.
Day loved her Dad and had grieved him deeply, but it was her mother's death she had never got over. Her mother had been her best friend, her anchor, her other half. Her mother had this way of making her feel like she was the most precious person in the universe. She didn't know if her Dad or Amber had felt the same way. Perhaps. Her mother noticed everything about Day, had been utterly engaged every moment they were together.
That was something she and Monday must share—this feeling of love and loss. Except Day's negative personality implant transformed the loss into heavy, inconsolable grief and obscured the love. Maybe this was why Monday was so courageous. While Day remembered all the funeral stuff as a haze of depression, agony, pain, perhaps the loss had spurred Monday to do something with her life beyond the superficial art charts and self-involved artistic pretenses that absorbed most human lives.
Day remembered immersing herself in her sixth form work, and university applications to drown out the worst of it. But perhaps the real her had interpreted the subsequent years differently.
Or had Monday's attitude started to emerge when Amber told her about the experiments on Mars? Had the hope of finding their parents woken Monday's ambition and spurred her forwards?
A loud crash brought Day back to the room.
"Down on the ground!" A voice ordered. "Hands behind your back."
Still curled up in a fetal position on the floor, still wearing the jelly patches instead of pants and bra, Day looked up and saw Will kneel. Beyond Will a dozen police droids piled into the room. In seconds, her arms were pulled behind her and her wrists cuffed. Two droids snatched Will and yanked his arms behind his back.
Will's face shifted to take her in. For a moment, he looked curious. Then the guards kicked him, and ordered him to his feet. Day was yanked to her feet and escorted out behind Will, surrounded by ten police droids. Shivering like crazy. Wearing only the semi-transparent rubber underwear.
Sorry this is a day late! I plan to update on Thursdays (and it's Friday) but basically lots going on and I forgot. Whoops. Sorry! Comments, responses, how you're feeling at this point in the story all welcome. Have a great week-end :)