A blinding flash of white was the first thing she became aware of, immediately followed by black when she slammed her eyes shut again. She tried again, slower this time, and the room came into crystal clarity.
"Ah, she's awake."
Her head swiveled to the source of the voice, bringing two people into her view. Male and female.
"Don't overdo it now, young lady, you've been through a lot." the man said in a kindly, if slightly condescending, tone. He had a bushy gray beard, and the hair on his head was starting to transform into white.
"Wha...what happened? Where am I? Who are you?"
He chuckled and clucked his tongue in what he surely thought was a funny quirk, but just weirded her out.
"So many questions, so little time, heh. Let's do these in reverse order, hm?"
He turned around and glanced at his...colleague? Associate?...and beckoned her forward. She was almost his polar opposite. Young and attractive, and apparently deeply uncomfortable in her current body position; the way she clutched the clipboard to her chest, tucked her hair behind her right ear every five seconds, couldn't glance at her face for longer than a moment.
"I'm Dr. Steven Cramer, and this is my colleague, Dr. Angela Ziegler. You're in a hospital, and still recovering from a serious accident."
She scrunched up her face, trying to remember the accident, but drew a blank.
"Accident? What accident?"
"You crashed your plane." the woman ('No, Dr. Ziegler') said. "Or rather, the plane crashed you."
The blonde made her first attempt at a smile, but abandoned it almost immediately.
"I don't follow." she merely replied, still trying and failing to recall the accident. Or the events leading up to it.
"Ah, to be expected, yes, yes. This is your area of expertise, Dr. Ziegler, is it not?" the man ('Dr. Cramer') said, and he was starting to get on her nerves.
"Please, just...what's happened to me?"
This time Dr. Ziegler did smile, though it was devoid of any mirth.
"You seem to suffer from retrograde amnesia. We expected that, given the extensive trauma to the head you suffered during the accident. Now, can you tell me your name, age, and occupation?"
"I'm...I..." She trailed off, and a horrible realization dawned on her. "I don't...I don't know...I don't know!"
She jolted up in her bed, but was forced back down by a searing pain in her abdomen.
"Easy now, don't overdo it!" Dr. Cramer remarked, still in his jolly tone that was completely out of place. "You got banged up pretty good, I hope you didn't just tear out your stitches."
He chuckled to himself and went around the bed, to her right side, and lifted the blanket to check. Which was when she saw...
"My...my leg! What..."
There was nothing but a stump just below her right knee, covered in bandages, a strange metal rod sticking out of it.
It was all too much. This wasn't real, this was just a nightmare, a hallucination, a sick joke her mind played on herself. She sat up again, ignoring the pain, and made to get up, pushing against Dr. Cramer who immediately tried to force her back down again.
"And just where do you think you're going with just one leg?" he asked, still with that blithely amused tone that by now made her want to cave his face in. She continued struggling until Dr. Ziegler stuck a syringe into her IV and emptied its contents, and the effects were immediate. All strength left her and she collapsed back onto the bed, trying and failing to even raise her hands, let alone her arms. Her eyelids drooped and eventually fell shut, and only very faintly did she hear Dr. Ziegler berate her colleague before she was gone.
When she woke again, it was to a tray of food sitting on the tilt-top table over her lap, and a person sitting to her right. Thankfully, it was Dr. Ziegler, who hadn't noticed her waking up yet, typing away at something on her tablet.
As soon as she tried to get into a more upright position, however, the tablet was immediately discarded and Dr. Ziegler almost jumped up, rushing to her side to aid her.
"I'm so, so sorry." she said, and it was obvious she meant it. "The way Dr. Cramer behaved earlier was...well, let's just say you won't see him again."
That brought a small smile to her face, the first since she found herself in this hospital bed.
"Thank you." she murmured, hands automatically reaching for the plastic cutlery before they stilled. She looked at them and turned them over and over, as if her memory would suddenly reveal itself if she stared at the caramel skin just long enough.
Dr. Ziegler had sat back down, after she'd brought the chair closer to the bed.
"Aren't you hungry?" she inquired, idly crossing her legs and angling her upper body towards her.
"Not really." she replied, having dropped her hands and eyeing the food on the tray with distrust. No matter what, hospital food was always disgusting.
They were silent for a few moments, before she couldn't contain the question any longer.
"Who am I?"
Dr. Ziegler smiled, but it was...off. Something felt wrong about it, but she couldn't put it into words. The blonde reached into her breast pocket and pulled out a plastic card, handing it over to her.
"Your name is Fareeha Amari, and you're 32 years old."
She looked at the card, her driver's license, and looked at a stranger. The name was there, the age, too. And a lot of other information as well. But that face...she didn't recognize it. She had a tattoo?
"Lexington, MA." she said out loud. "That's where I live?"
Dr. Ziegler nodded. "Yes. That's where you live. Do you know which country that is?"
"The United States, of course." she replied instantly.
"Good, very good." Dr Ziegler said, grabbing her tablet again and noting it down. "Do you know what year it is?"
She thought for a few moments, before answering hesitantly. "2034, I think. If I haven't been in a coma for a while?"
"No, Ms. Amari, you were unconscious for only a week while in intensive care. And yes, 2034 is right."
Another entry in the tablet.
"Do you remember your occupation?"
Fareeha thought, but came up empty. "Something with planes, I assume?"
Dr. Ziegler nodded again, smiling. "Yes, you're a test pilot in the Air Force. Which is related to your accident. Do you remember anything about it?"
Again she wracked her brain, trying and trying and trying to remember the accident, but there was nothing. She closed her eyes, thinking harder, balling her hands into fists, but it didn't help. She only stopped when a hand was laid on her elbow in a comforting gesture.
"It's okay if you don't remember, it's to be expected after your accident. Retrograde amnesia is quite common with the type of injuries you've sustained, and is transient in most patients. You'll get your memories back, don't worry."
Fareeha looked back up at Dr. Ziegler, then down at the hand still resting on her arm. The doctor withdrew it after a few short moments, and she wished she hadn't.
"Now, let's see what you do remember. Can you tell me your latest memory, aside from the hospital?"
Fareeha concentrated again, but it was as if a wall had sprung up in her mind.
"Just...just some...impressions, I guess, from my early childhood. A tree in a back yard. Children laughing. Smelling freshly cut grass..."
The enormity of her situation slowly dawned on her, and she felt tears gathering in her eyes.
"I...I don't remember...I've lost...I can't even remember my parent's faces, let alone their names!"
She roughly dragged her hands over her cheeks, clearing the wetness that had trailed down, and took a deep breath. Breaking down would help no one, least of all herself.
"As I said, it'll come back to you. Once you're well enough we can visit some places from your past, that will jog your memory."
Dr. Ziegler gave her a few moments to compose herself, before continuing.
"Patients with retrograde amnesia usually fare a lot better with general knowledge. Do you know who the current president is?"
"Adkins." Fareeha replied instantly, feeling something akin to relief when Dr. Ziegler's face lit up and she nodded yet again.
"Alright, good! Now, something a little more specific..."
"Isn't she marvelous?" he asked no one in particular as he continued staring at the screen. Angela only hummed noncommittally. She also looked at the screen, but she was sure she perceived something very different.
Fareeha stood in the small bathroom of her hospital room, still a little shaky on her prosthetic leg, and stared into the mirror; hands tracing the lines of the tattoo over and over again. She looked so lost, alone and afraid in a body she didn't recognize, in a life she didn't remember. Unaware of the cameras hidden all over her room.
"So, what do you say, Angela? Did she pass the test?"*
She didn't want to answer the question. Mainly because her answer would determine the fate of this person they were observing; this scared and overwhelmed, and yet so determined and resolute young woman.
She waited for that small, rational voice in the back of her head to pipe up, but it didn't. It hadn't for a few days now, having grown progressively weaker over the weeks. And that's what scared her. She had become attached. Because Fareeha had passed the test.
"Angela?"
"Huh?" she fumbled, startled out of her thoughts.
"Our best model yet, don't you think? One hundred per cent organically grown skin and muscle, completely organic GI tract, heart, liver...really, just those pesky lungs keep eluding us. And the brain, of course."
A shiver ran down her spine at how delighted he sounded.
"And I have to say, you did excellent work on her personality. Really, if I didn't know I'd assume she was just a regular human. All those late nights at the A.I. Department at MIT payed off, eh?"
He jovially clapped her on the back, and she staggered a step forward from the force of it.
"Yes, well," she replied, laughing nervously, "you know how I feel about patting myself on the back. Always room for improvement."
She was sure he'd hear the unusually high pitch in her voice, but he remained completely oblivious. It was a good thing he himself was very fond of patting himself on the back, at how completely absorbed he was in his 'crowning achievement'. Having built a body for a fully sentient A.I.
It should have been her crowning achievement, too. She'd toiled endless hours, typed millions of lines of code, and it had finally come to fruition. But now that she was confronted with her creation, she felt sick to her stomach.
She'd hoped at least some of her colleagues shared her sentiment, but the answers to all her careful questions threw the reality back into her face: they thought she was a thing. A machine. It, and not her. And when they'd present the results to the board tomorrow, she would be shut down. Her biomass recycled, her core mechanic skeleton repurposed, her personality downloaded and modified and picked apart. She couldn't let that happen.
"Well, I could stand here all night and watch her, but we do have a big day tomorrow. You should head home, too, Angela. You need the rest."
She looked at him and faked a tired smile, secretly wishing his stupid beard would spontaneously combust.
"You go on ahead, Steven, I'll look over our presentation one more time. You said it yourself, it's the big day tomorrow. Everything needs to be perfect."
She had gotten pretty good at lying through her teeth.
"Ever the busy working bee." he replied with a chuckle. "Very well, but don't overdo it. We both need to be in top shape tomorrow."
She waited ten more more minutes after he'd left before she went to her office, and booted up her computer. She opened an empty notepad file and wrote a few lines of code, but her hand stilled when she went to save it. This was her life's work. And she was about to destroy it. Then her eyes shifted to the second monitor, to the constant feed from Fareeha's room, and spotted the woman once again reading the files she had provided. The fake documents to a fake history of a fake person.
'No', she thought, 'not a fake person'.
And with perhaps more force than necessary, she pushed the button to save the file and upload it to the cloud. It was a tiny executable, just a few hundred kilobytes of data, but it would tear through anything it had access to, leaving nothing but oblivion in its wake. And it had access to almost the entire server cluster. Every single file of this department would be obliterated, irrevocably gone. She'd given herself an hour. She hoped it would be enough.
The door opened, and Angela strode in. This was highly unusual, this late into the night, but not unwelcome. Sleep eluded her, and she could use the company.
Though, judging from the look on her face, the blonde was not here for idle chatter.
"Get dressed." she stated, nay, ordered, as she threw a duffel bag at her.
"Angela, what..."
"Now, Fareeha!" the doctor cut her off, her tone brooking no argument. "We don't have much time. We've got to go."
She'd been in the process of tugging on the sweatpants but stilled in her motion.
"Go? Go where? And why do we have to hurry?"
Angela kept looking over her shoulder, towards the door, but her piercing blue irises zeroed in on her hazel ones.
"I don't have the time to explain right now, but I promise I will once we're out of here." Her face softened and she stepped closer, bringing a tender hand to her cheek. "Do you trust me, Fareeha?"
"More than anything." she breathed, getting lost in those pools of ocean blue.
"Then get dressed, quickly." Angela said, withdrawing her hand again.
They'd driven for about one and a half miles before Angela had stopped and helped her out of the trunk, another two when her phone had started to positively explode with calls and messages before she'd simply thrown it out of the car.
She'd remained silent when they'd ditched Angela's car and taken a taxi a 24/7 car rental, kept her mouth shut while they drove steadily northwards, through New Hampshire and Vermont.
She'd already sucked in the breath for the 'what the fuck is going on, Angela?' when they'd approached the Canadian border, but kept it down at the imploring look in her eyes.
Now that they'd finally stopped at a cheap motel in the outskirts of Montreal, her patience had run out.
"Will you please finally tell me what all this is about, Angela?!"
The blonde looked at her and sighed, dragging her hands over her tired eyes before sitting down on the creaky bed and patting the space next to her. Fareeha acquiesced to the silent request, grumbling under her breath, but turned to look at Angela regardless.
"I'm about to tell you something you probably won't believe, and I can understand if you do. I'll even understand if you think I'm a nutjob and ditch me right here, right now, but...I have to ask this one, last thing of you: please let me finish before you make any decisions. Please let me explain why I did what I did, and why I had to get you out of there. Can you do that for me?"
Fareeha huffed but nodded, waiting for Angela to start. And the next thirty minutes changed both of their lives forever.
alright, so I finally got around to seeing Ex_Machina, and it kinda blew me away. I didn't expect the movie to be so deep and ambiguous, and it inspired me to write this piece. I think it also works as a late prompt fill for last week's r/Pharmercy fanfiction prompt, which was: Tattoo.
Let me know what you think.
*test: the Turing Test was devised by Alan Turing in 1950, to test the capability of a machine to exhibit intelligent behavior. the test is considered a success when a human interacting with the machine can't tell if it's actually another human or not. due to the limitations of our current technology such tests can only take place in a text-based format, but who knows what the future might bring...also, alan turing had the most fascinating and tragic life. look up his story when you have the time. one of the brightest minds of our age, gone before his time because of prejudice.
Song of the day and namesake of this piece is renew by rosetta, one of my all-time favorite bands. Everything they do is just brilliant.
that's it for today. cheers