But not now. For now, it’s all or nothing. I must jeopardize my identity by allowing an unknown number of strangers—one of whom I know for a fact has experienced unspeakable horror—free reign in my head, or I must silence them all permanently, whoever they are, however many of them there are.
Bearers live one life and then they die. If they can bear that, why can’t I? What gives me the right to impose myself on the next generation?
I know now why I’m writing this. Because I had decided not to go in to the center. Because I couldn’t take the risk of committing murder. Because I had decided to go home, and let nature take its course, and let the neurohumors wash over me and float me away into whatever half-life I am destined for. I wanted to keep some record of my own voice before it merged into the voices of the ages. I’m still me, right now. Just me. Nethon, alone, on the cusp of adulthood, unpolluted by adult hormones or adult memories. I just wanted to be me for a little longer before I gave up and turned for home.
But I’m not willing to give up. I’m not willing to give up my self. Maybe it is murder. But if it is, it’s in self-defense.
I am under siege, and I have a right to protect myself.
I’m going in.
Yes. In the end, I went in. And I saved these tablets—I’m not sure why, but most likely for the same reason that I saved my predecessors: because every echo and reflection of thought and identity is precious, however fragmentary, and in whatever form; and because change comes when and where we least expect it. In a clinic chair. On a trolley platform.
I stepped over the threshold of the suppression center and saw a neurosophist and told my story, much as I told it to these tablets. And, just as at the end of these tablets there was a little room left to write, which I use now, at the end of my interview there was a little room left for the sophist to comment. A little space of time and consciousness as I laid my arm out to be shaved and used my claws to lever the dermal plates apart to admit the injection. Just enough space for the sophist, leaning in to administer the neuro-phage, to say, “Wasn’t Elindela Tollis Noranthora killed by anti-neurosuppression extremists?”
No. But Tollis’ family was. And that memory is worse than my worst fears. But having Tollis’ conviction and courage to draw on is more wondrous than my sweetest dreams. And Tollis is only one of the precious many who share this lifetime with me.
I let the armor plating close on my flesh before the injection could go in. I snatched the arm back and ran. My memory may be degrading after all these years, but as I recall, I ran all the way home.
If I was relieved at the choice I made, I will never know whether it was because there were so very many spirits collected in Tollis and I had avoided by the thinnest wisp of chance becoming a mass murderer, or because my dearest Melen was right, and our fore-spirits have their own survival imperative, just as our forebears did. The survival instinct of consciousness is no less potent than the genetic imperatives of flesh.
Unlike my adolescent self, however, I do know who I am writing this for, and why.
You bear Melen’s genes, not mine. Your body, your reactions, your speed, your physical proclivities will be Melen’s. That is a glorious thing. It would be a poorer world without Melen’s verve, Melen’s keen eyes, Melen’s kind heart. I love Melen deeply. And just as I suspect that the minds stored within a quickener have fundamental urges and requirements and defenses, I suspect that flesh has its own personality. Soul is as much a thing of flesh as of mind. In that, as in so many things, you are the child of us both equally. I cherish that. I celebrate that.
But I must warn you. Melen was ever contrary and rebellious. Risk-taking, stubbornness, hardheaded opinionated determination—these are your genetic legacy. Combine them with what you will get from me, and I have no doubt that you will find yourself on that same threshold one day. Or one very like it.
I am not begging for my life, or the life of those who came before me, those who nest in me as I nest, thus far unfelt, in you as you read this. My life will end when I quicken you. Other philosophies hold differently, but that is my belief, beloved child-to-come: Tollisdela Nethon Arimthora will leave this world the moment I waken the consciousness of Nethondela Tollfs Melenthora. I don’t mind. I don’t resent you for it. Were there no irresistible biological imperative built into my flesh, had I the choice to ignore the sonic and pheromonal triggers Melen will emit when you tear through the pouch, still I would quicken you, even knowing it was my death. You are our future. I grieve only that I will not have the joys of your fleshgiver: the joy of sleeping with you tucked in my arms; the joy of watching you grow into yourself, your unique and precious self.
I do not beg for you to quicken me in turn. I do not beg for you to turn from that entryway or deny that injection. You are blessed to live in a nation grown in freedom. You are blessed to have the choice of that threshold. The decision is entirely yours, and I do not write this to you, my child, in hope of playing upon your sympathy and manipulating you into permitting the thaw of memory should you prefer complete independence.
I write this to free you from the onus of it. I write this that you might know me, and us. Should you choose to allow me, and Tollis, and all our predecessors entre into your mind, should you choose to share your life with ours, you will have made that choice with an understanding of precisely who you are letting into your head. You need not accept us blindly. Squeeze the palm heart before you buy it, to be sure its center is not rotten. Kick the tires of the vehicle, check the teeth of the draftbeast. Squeeze and kick and check and question, question, question.
And if you choose, for whatever reason, to suppress us, to keep us frozen, to pour lime into our nest under the floorboards of your mind, you will still have some sense of who we were.
Of who I am.
Go on now, and be you—not me, not us. Encumbered by neither ignorance nor guilt.
How can I love you so, without knowing you, never having smelled you, touched you, seen you?
And yet, somehow, I do.
Remember us to the future, my child. However you can, however you choose.
Remember me.
NOBODIES
by Adrienne Gormley
I LIMP INTO MY old village of Green Hollow, wincing at the cold as my left rear foot drags through the snow. I duck behind the houses and search for the food pile, the one the Real People are to leave so that we Nobodies may eat. I do not find it, not here, not there, and I fret. How will I survive Testing so I can become a Real Person again if I do not eat? There are too many Nobodies about, and I am merely one of them.
As I slip between the houses, I think back to when I lived here as a child and could run and play among the other Real People. Alas, I am no longer a child. I do not have a name, I do not have a gender, I do not legally exist. Nor will I until I become an adult, if I live long enough to be accepted as one. Then I wince from the hunger that gnaws at me and I return to concentrate on looking for the food.
I catch my bad foot on a snow-covered clod and stumble. I recover, despite my hunger-induced dizziness. I move into a clump of ornamental bushes, where I know my hairless, mottled Nobody hide will blend into the shadows.
As I settle in the shadows, my nose twitches. Mmm, dried fruit. Meat. I lift my head and sniff again, then move toward the scent, grasping at branches to keep myself upright.
I pass several homes before I stop again. I flare my nostrils, questing for the scent of the food, and I find it. Now I know where to find the food. For some reason, it is behind the home of the Chief Family. I do not know why it is in a private area, as such food leavings are supposed to be public. I hunch down, making sure my forefeet are firmly placed, and think. My memories tell me that the Chief Family is not due to leave food for the Nobodies again for some time, so why they have food out now is a puzzle.