I blink a few times. Scrunching my eyes closed and opening them. There’s even a danger in that. Each time they shut I want to keep them that way. They’re so fucking sore. My body’s pleading with me through exhaustion for rest. Fingers gently pressing on my eyelids, taking myself to the shapes place for a moment before blearily I return to staring at the letters on screen. Willing them first into focus, and then optimistically hoping for coherence in the still gray darkness of the room.
Daylight’s creeping around the edge of the drapes, the glow from the screen gradually being washed out by the oncoming day. I’m gonna be so fucking tired. But sleep is for people who haven’t spectacularly fucked up.
I reload the comment again, as though that will provide more information. As though it might provide the necessary divine inspiration for me to understand just what the fuck I meant. “Swap ORF63?” I mutter under my breath. Perhaps repetition is the key? If I say it enough times, like an affirmation, then maybe the details I need will appear in my mind.
They don’t of course.
It doesn’t matter how many times I chant it.
It doesn’t matter many times I scrawl it in a notebook.
It doesn’t matter how much I stare at it.
It’s past-Erika’s secret.
But really, past-Erika? Really?
You couldn’t y’know, put a little more information in there? Help a girl out?
Thanks so much for this helpful insight into your thought process. From it I can gather that, at some point, you thought about switching the sequence that’s currently here for open reading frame sixty three.
That’s great, past Erika.
Really. Fucking. Great.
Nice and specific about what sort of thing the number relates to and which number it is. But there’s just one little problem here, past-Erika. One tiny little entire taxonomy of species-sized problem.
Which specific fucking genome were you planning to draw this specific fucking open reading frame from?
Is it a virus?
Is it bacterial?
Is it from a plant?!
I kid, past Erika, I kid. From the location and a bunch of other clues, I know it’s most likely viral. But it would have been helpful to narrow it down from the ten nonillion viruses that exist to y’know, one or two. Or even ten. Maybe the damn genus. Hell which family would help.
The whole thing is full of edits like this. Little cryptic notes. Changes made — or unmade. It’s slowly dawning on me that I may — just may — not have the sequence for the final version of the virus. That the copy I’ve been poring over might not be the one that I infected myself with. Partly because there are a bunch of reversions from what look like other changes, too. And partly because I have this vague recollection of a late-night-off-the-books weekend round of cloning just before the last round of testing. And this file’s last changes predate any time that could have happened.
It looks likely that to explore all these new changes, at some point I reverted a bunch of stuff, presumably pulled a copy, and started doing edits again from where this file now leaves off. At least, that’s my guess. But I don’t have that file.
I do have a disconcerting flash of memory of me deleting a bunch of stuff. The evidence of my changes? And of me handing over freshly harvested and processed cultures to the team downstairs. Ready to be administered to the subjects.
Surely I wouldn’t…
But then, Neuragene always was lax about testing. We’re bringing the tech mindset to healthcare, Tav. No one changes the world by following dumb regulations. Oaklen would intone this regularly — as he did with every one of his asinine mantras. Pat me on the back. Tell me to get on with revolutionizing medicine.
I wasn’t usually that reckless. It annoyed the fuck out of him. Of all my traits that one bugged him the most. Always said I was holding myself back — well, until I didn’t and that didn’t go so well.
But I guess, when it was a choice between my life or theirs… When it was a choice between being consumed or…
Shit.
Focus, Erika.
I need to understand and this is all I’ve got. This file, with its stupid little comments. It’s a minute before I realize I’m crying again; tears dropping onto the keyboard.
“Aaaah! Pull it together, Erika!”
There’s a thump on the wall. These fucking apartments have no sound insulation. Probably no insulation period. I’ve been listening to my neighbors Love Island marathon so they can put up with the odd exclamation at… five fifty seven A fucking M.
Oh God.
I’ve got to go to work but I need to understand and these stupid quarter-assed notes are all I’ve got to go on.
I stare half at the screen and half at my own reflection. Trying to burrow into my own past consciousness. My memories feel so disjointed. Like I wasn’t even there for half of it. Especially for the half like this, after I really realized what the fuck Oaklen was really doing.
That’s a lie.
I knew what he was doing wasn’t what I tried to claim it was in my head. I can dress it up and put it in a pretty dress but no one gives a shit about trans women and sure he told me what he figured I should hear to get me started. Probably tortured one of those poor bitc—bastards into telling me the right sob story. Or maybe that one was a trans girl. Pulled in from wherever to give me some verisimilitude. Who the fuck knows.
But I knew it was bullshit. I just wanted it to be true.
Oaklen’d spouted enough dogshit neoliberal stuff before then to know he wasn’t going to be funding the research for any good reason.
But I looked the other way.
In that moment. Watching that poor— That poor person dragged away still crying, still screaming. It stripped away all the pretense, all the lies I’d told myself, all the self-deception.
All it left was the truth.
What did I change?
A creeping cold coils around me as I look down at my skin. The skin I’m finally able to love. Watching goosebumps pop up as I gently run my finger down my arm, feeling its softness. Feeling its sensitivity. One of many things they’ve changed that’s brought me delight.
Right now it brings me fear.
Past-fucking-Erika, what the fuck did you do?