The Girl Who Chases the Wind

Chapter 6: The Wind

The girl who chases the wind… I snorted. It might be worth keeping as a clever book title, even though it would never see the light of day. Too bold.

After all, I am Logan Harper so far as anyone could or should be concerned. It feels good to be Logan Harper. It feels relaxing to stride into the men’s with a reporter’s confident step and then find a toilet that hasn’t been demolished or violated by ass ghosts. I’ve had random, silvery little hairs on my face I’ve tried to cultivate. They barely approach peach fuzz. I’d have better luck farming rocks. I don’t hate my face, but I can never look myself in the eye.

I wondered if the girls and Dr. Feldon had secrets like mine. If they did, then I would do my best to find them. Not for my patron, someone at a major publication who seemed to believe the phrase “hot girls” had any place in journalism, but for my own reasons.    

As I read through my notes, I typed a clean cheat sheet onto one of my devices. That took about the last ounce of my energy as I finally put things away and turned off all the lights.

In the dark of the room, I froze for a second. It was too dark and too quiet. Not that I suspected anything, but my place always had something going. Whether it was the convenience of leaving some of my devices running overnight or an air fan or noises from insomniac neighbors or cars in an even pace on the street. All the little things helped me settle.

Even when traveling, the sounds of hotel rooms nudged me into sleep. It felt like there was nothing around me. Even jumping up to look out the window showed a dark patch away from all but the faintest spill of outdoor lighting I assumed came from other parts of the complex.

I considered setting up a camera overnight as one last security measure. I could even aim the smaller one out the window to see if anyone peered in and aim the other at the door. But I wasn’t quite that paranoid. And they would be useless for second day interviews because of hours of wasted memory and batteries. And mine were vintage, from before bacterial chips and carbon nanoballs made it pointless to actually erase anything from storage. And they still paled beside Memetic Crystalline.

I gave the same finger I’d touched the inert sample with a quick rub as I tried to get some rest. Still, my mind flashed with little thoughts and notions. My patron’s comment was “old men into hot girls”. In my head, I considered two possibilities. First, was a literal reading which ignored the fact my patron sounded like an out-of-breath caveman. So perhaps…old men like Dr. Feldon or other old guys at the ranch taking advantage of young women. I could imagine some other reporter looking at Lily and Greenie and imagining creepier secrets than their careful and bitter words suggested.

And the second possibility was that my patron just left out the words “turned/changed/transformed”. A couple generations ago such a statement would’ve been thoroughly absurd. But this was an age of Mantlemay. For the right price, any cosmetic fix was possible with advanced stem cell treatments and surgery. I knew full well that any sort of female cell could be prodded into a male one with enough money. And vice versa. The tabloid services were full of one-quarter actual cases among the rich and famous and three-quarters speculation about them.

So yeah, I could easily believe the second possibility. And I could hope that it wasn’t just science fiction.

My thoughts wound down but not far enough to let me flick the switch between waking and dreams. I parsed the word “Memetic” as a distraction. From Dawkin’s proposal of ideas like genes, it was a poor name for a nearly-universal solvent/preservative of matter. Or was it fitting? It came from Ancient Greek meaning “imitator” or “pretender”. I gave a sympathetic smirk.

It didn’t really matter. If there was one thing universal to language, it was the perversion of words over the centuries of human use. With the image of people throughout history kicking the crap out of words, I finally managed to blink into the abyss of dreams.

My dreams often fall into a few categories. First, those where I’m chasing something or being chased. Typically they’re far less exciting than that description. I’m in pursuit of some inane object and I get somewhere, only to realize I have several steps to get to the object I didn’t even know about and those steps each have their own delay. When being pursued it’s a gradual freefall of falling behind despite the urgency. A lion might be eating me, but I’m still stuck searching for an old file folder.

Second, there are the dreams which would make good stories if I had any interest in writing them. They have the cinematic scope of an Edgar vision and some cleverness of structure. Like a leak from another universe where another me just happens to be watching a movie that never got made on this side.

Thirdly, there are dreams which exist as one-off notions. Usually these are little car accidents of sensation which jar and disturb me from slumber for an evening. Little meteorites streaking through my skull.

Last, there are the dreams I never talk about. Not in any of my articles when there needs to be some element of Logan Harper to convince my readers I’m not an advanced bot. Not anywhere and not to anyone. Not even my therapist, though I should.

As I switched off, I carried a faint feeling it wouldn’t be one of those dreams tonight. Then, I switched back on a bit, back and forth as night settled deeper into the room and little rustles of sound by my window made me hope it was just a deadly critter and not someone trying to spy on me. I came back and went several times more before it seemed bright enough for a fledgling morning.

I busied myself with morning stretches and fiddling with the television for longer than I expected. I did a little early composition of my recordings. I could’ve cropped a few things down but I wondered if there might be clues to things I couldn’t even imagine yet caught at the margins of my footage.

After the morning routine, I slipped on an outfit like the one from yesterday. I watched my presence transform from who I was before to the full Logan Harper. I gave myself a smirk and quickly caught my eyes.

With my bag set for the day, I left with my cheat sheet out in the open and plenty of time for questions. The hallway was as vacant as I’d found it the evening before. I scribbled a note not to clean my room and left a little piece of tape between the door and the frame to make sure my request would be honored.

On the way out, I walked around the building and checked the window. I placed a piece of tape there as well to cover both sides. If there was another entrance then I was probably already being watched by someone at the ranch. Hopefully, all my precautions would be for naught, but I’d done enough stories to know I had to protect myself and my secrets when I was in an unfamiliar place.

As an extra measure, I walked around to the other windows. The dorm rooms were pristine with all the lights off. I didn’t see anyone until I got closer to the ranch and found some people working in the manufacturing lab I’d been shown. A few regular blue coats passed by me as well. Instead of heading for the main building immediately, I took a little detour to the side to investigate the facilities I hadn’t seen. I kept my bleary eyes wide for a sudden spot of green.

Most of it looked like a transplanted park with hard courts, cool waters, and some indoor courts and gyms. I caught the shadows of people milling about but avoided them. I made my way to the clay oval. As I had hoped, she was there.

The wind. And she was already blowing fiercely.

She had on a mellow green, sleeveless singlet which met a snug pair of matching shorts and the same shoes from yesterday. Her hair was up in a ponytail and she was taking the far end of the oval at high speed. I lingered a ways off and considered snapping a few photos. Instead, I watched her as she came closer around the loop. I didn’t call attention to myself, but I also didn’t make an effort to hide. She blasted past where I was standing with a displaced sheet of air cascading over me. I knew she’d seen me.

I stepped closer and tested my shoes on the track. No way I might keep pace with her, so I strolled along the edge of the track and started to make a slow loop. I didn’t acknowledge Greenie either. She slipped to the inside track as she came around me again. This time, I thought I caught a grimace before she was out of sight. I didn’t make much progress for each of her laps, but I did get a better look at her run. It was bold and effortless, like she was sprinting every step of the way. Only she didn’t show the signs of fatigue that any human runner should’ve. Heck, it wasn’t saying much but, even I was breathing a bit from my decent walk.

When I’d gotten about a quarter of the way around the track, she passed me with a relaxed yell, “Hipster!”

That was all I received for that round, but it wasn’t long before she came around again and added, “Moron!” I stopped and brushed at my lip. Pondering, I started to walk again.

When she came into shouting distance, I had several things I could’ve shouted to her. They ranged from some stuff which would’ve made the old ladies at grandmother’s rest home gasp and look up from their sensory-activation visors to stuff that would’ve gotten a groan from a five-year-old. The moment came and it was a toss-up between “old man” and “little twerp”. But, as I opened my mouth, I said one word starkly against the oncoming current of air.

“AFRAID!”

At first, there was no reaction as she pounded her feet against the clay, threading the pale lines of her track. Then, she pulled up with her hands clenched into fists at her hips. She glanced back and I took the moment to ask, “What are you running from?”

But that was all she gave me before she took off again. She seemed to be going even faster this time, so fast I could only marvel in shock as she was around and almost in front of me again. A rush of air seemed to be all she wanted to say. Then, she tripped.

I wasn’t sure what caught her but there seemed to be a moment when her gaze flicked back to me and that was enough. One leg tried to sail ahead too fast and the other overcompensated. Before long, she was tumbling and rolling at high speed past the clay and onto the center cement.

My eyes widened as I saw her legs twist and bend under her and then tear like pieces of fleshy taffy. I put a hand to my mouth and hustled to meet her. She lay there cursing to herself with the wrecked pile of her legs underneath. Her shorts had a narrow rip and her ankle had a deep gouge.

I should’ve been seeing little squirts of blood where she’d been injured, oozing at least. But the inside of her leg looked more like doll plastic than human flesh.

Gritting her teeth, she turned and pressed against the ground with her palms. Her face flexed in a mix of rage and determination, but hands alone couldn’t lift her from the ground with her legs mangled like that.