The Girl Who Chases the Wind

Chapter 15: In the Rain

I cleared my throat and went on, “But...I will sometimes go walking when the fog rolls in after midnight in my area.”

Greenie raised a brilliant eyebrow and inquired, “What’s your area like? It’s not that safe to go out after midnight...anywhere…”

Now she was beginning to sound like a relative. I assured her, “It’s a decent area, lots of little parks and stuff despite being near the sprawl of five counties.”

She still appeared skeptical but didn’t press me, except to say, “Just be safe.”

I smiled and leaned forward, as I changed the subject, “So…why did you want to come with me?”

Greenie had wrapped the belt around her so tightly I was surprised she could move at all, let alone turn to tell me, “I wanted to do something.”

I chimed in, “Running at record speeds not enough?”

She folded herself forward. “That’s more like a hamster wheel. The ranch is nice, but it’s still got nurses and doctors and people who ask me how I’m feeling every day.”

The rain on the windows had shifted to a rough, wind-tossed spittle. I stretched my fingers and asked her simply, “Why not leave then?”

Greenie brushed at her scalp but didn’t rub. I had to wonder if it was made of the same material as her legs. She took a moment before answering.

“It has lots of nurses, doctors, and smart people nearby. Besides…what if I don’t have anywhere else left?”

I curled my lips inward before asking her, “You don’t?”

She shut her eyes. “How old do you think I am?”

I smirked privately and asked, “Do you want me to be honest or kind?”

Greenie gave me a half-hearted shrug. I proposed, “One-hundred and sixty.”

That got her to open her eyes and glare at me. “And I’d heard you were a smart reporter. I’d have to be part of some secret society to be alive at that age…”

I leaned back and noted, “You do look good for someone in your 80s though.”

She raised an eyebrow and commented, “Better. Not exact but better. But you see my problem. My real home was lost…destroyed three decades ago. I’ve just been hanging on since, because of the charity of those left behind.”

I straightened and looked her in the eye. “Are you dying right now?”

Carefully, she looked up at the ceiling. She didn’t meet my eyes. But her tone didn’t give me a sense of deception, as she said, “I’m not dying right now. At least, I don’t know if I am. But then…she didn’t know either.”

The rain above and all around us intensified. Pressing my hands on my knees, I didn't let up either. "Then why do you carry this feeling like you’re resigned to death? Sure, it sounds like you need a body tune-up at the ranch every so often. So, if you aren’t dying right now, are you living right now? Are you?” My words came out a little harsher and more indignant than I wanted.

Still, after what I’d seen in the ranch…After I’d seen people in so many harsh conditions fighting for their next moment while awake and aware and bursting with promise and hope for the moments to come, where a generation ago there wouldn’t have been any…by comparison, Greenie made it seem like she was stuck in a prison sentence.

I was going to hold back, but I couldn’t. I told her about those people. I spilled my words like the rivulets of rain draining off the car. I told her about each of them by name like I sometimes pitched stories via video connection. She braced herself but didn’t waver under my words.

I finished, “And then there’s you. Aura was important to you. She sounded energetic and optimistic and eager for life even up to the moment that life stopped. Now, I don’t know why you have a body like hers or that green hair. But…for Aura…why would you treat a single moment of your life like it’s not worth living?”

Her face steadily began to twitch. Actual tears this time, but they just seemed to pool around her eyes like she was in micro-gravity. She dashed them away to fall against the seat. When she found words, she said, “There’s me… Fuck it all, I know! I KNOW! She was so much better than me. This one time, I made up a t-shirt that said ‘I Wanna Be Like Aura’. She thought I was just cheering her up, but it was for me. I didn’t want to be a broken, bitter old man…I didn’t…”

I slipped out of my chair with a click of my belt and rushed over to hug her. She protested about safety laws and everything, but I had faith enough in my car to take at least this moment.

I whispered to her, “You don’t have to be anything you don’t want to be. I mean…look at you. You’re not even a man anymore…”

Softly, she muttered, “Neither are you…”

Okay, that (though oddly-phrased) was like an arrow through the chest, but she did have a point. Change and choice has its limit. I assured her though, “But I haven’t let that stop me.”

She dipped her head slightly. “You’re right….sorry.”

I waved a hand. “Don’t worry about it. I mean…I don’t know your…biology and all that.”

Greenie turned away and hid a cough.

I leaned forward with an eyebrow raised. “Hmm…I mean, assuming how much of you is synthetic…it wouldn’t really matter biologically but appearance-wise…should I assume you look…”

She grunted and hid her face from growing bright red.

I presented the statement, “So then…if you were naked…”

Jerking her head back towards me, she snapped, “We will not discuss me naked now or ever!”

I couldn’t resist an unrestrained laugh which rose higher and more girlish in sound than I preferred. After stomping her feet on the cushions, Greenie buried herself in an uncomfortable ball of fake flesh and clothes.

Leaning back, my eyes rested on the roof of the car. “It sounds amazing though. Synthetic parts…break a leg, get a new one attached.”

She shot a look my way and murmured, “It’s not so great if you’re the lab rat for it.”

I pressed my legs together and pointed out, “You volunteered.”

With a tense hiss of air through her mouth, she answered, “Stupidly.”

It was lingering in my questions and suppositions. I could guess, but I had to know. So, I asked, “It’s most of your body, isn’t it? All synthetic, probably some derivative of Cellular-D and Memetic Crystalline and stuff like that. Am I right?”

She didn’t have to answer me, and she’d rebuffed me before. She didn’t even need to give me a response aside from silence or a hint to move on to something else. If she’d responded that way, then I would’ve dropped it. But she turned to look at me and curled her lips down as the car hopped a slow bump in the road filled with swollen puddles. The splattering rain had dwindled to streaks on the slow, metronomic wipers.  

“It’s everything. All of me.”

On some level, it’s exactly what I expected. I mean, why else would everyone be so hush-hush about it? Remaking a body into something entirely synthetic. With the durability and mutability of the materials used, it meant big things. Stuff I reeled to even comprehend.

I wasn’t quite ready to swallow it just like that. I pressed, “Everything? Even your brain?”

She rested a hand against her head, touching her jade locks. “That was actually the first thing. I had a degenerative disease. I sat in a wheelchair near Aura’s. It was…terrifying. I could almost feel my mind…my everything…eaten up as they treated me….and then…”

The pause was excruciating. I couldn’t imagine it. A whole brain made of Memetic Crystalline. How could it even work?

Her body relaxed in the bench as she blinked a few times slowly and continued, “I expected shock. I expected to become like a robot. I expected to change. But it was all the same. In fact, the fog lifted. It was easier to remember and react to things. Easier to make connections. Like having a good rest. But that was really all that seemed to change for me.” She conceded a shrug.

I leaned back. Greenie didn’t look different than any normal human. Her skin was perfectly fine. Although, from what I’d seen of her, it seemed she didn’t sweat and her tear ducts had some oddities. And eating was possible but not needed. So, where did she get her energy?

I put this question to her. She didn’t seem bothered by it, so much as wary. After a moment, she told me, “That’s stuff I let Feldon and the others worry about. So long as I can keep moving, it doesn’t concern me.”

That was about as good an answer as I was going to get. Sifting through all the information I had, I eventually came to the next obvious connection, as I noted, “So then, Lily is the same way…she’s fully synthetic too?”

Greenie sighed and bent her head to the window. Rain, a little stronger than before, blurred all but the muddy-brown outline of the desert. “You could say Lily was the trailblazer, but I feel awkward to talk in her place when you should just ask her.”

I made a note to do that as soon as possible. I’d cleared the path of mysteries, but there were so many details to refine, so many things that kindled my inquisitive spirit. I wanted to know about what it was like when Greenie first changed…when she first stopped being Michael and became Greenie, or rather Mari. Was it like being a living doll? Did she still feel human? What about gender identity? What about…

I let my chaotic field of questions relax. While the girl before me was a mystery at the bleeding edge of medical technology, at the same time I knew she was a person as well. She might even be my biological grandfather reborn into a different body.

Leaving the mysteries to their crystalline-preserved status, I shifted my curiosity to ask her, “Tell me more about Aura. Tell me about the happy days….Tell me…would she have liked me?”

That last bit definitely got her attention. She looked amused as she said, “So much to say. There were many happy days, I can’t deny those. And as for Aura…absolutely.”

Gently, slowly, Greenie painted the picture of Aura which Feldon had begun in broad strokes for me, filled in with all her memories. Pistachio ice cream (which I couldn’t stand) was her favorite. Her favorite place to visit was along the northern coast. I’d been there a few times, randomly with family. I wondered if any time when I was there, that she had been there too, just a step and a half ahead of me. No way to tell. But I did admire the same seascape.

I smirked at some of the books she enjoyed and rolled my eyes at others. We weren’t a match but that meant nothing. As we spoke, I could visualize Aura sitting in the driver’s seat beside me, wanting to take charge of the wheel. I could imagine her breaking the rules of the modern road and hacking the controls to force the car over a few of the grander bumps to catch a moment of stomach-sinking free fall. I could imagine her rolling in to take charge of a room. I could see myself beside her observing, quiet but curious. And I could feel her hand dragging me along to some very interesting person I had to meet right then. I’d flash her a look of annoyance, but I’d be soon thankful as the moment was better than just watching.

I imagined her putting a mustache on my face as I dressed up in my manly state. I could see her amusement but also her tenacity to be the best. I could see her rise up from her chair and bolt across the track, even keeping pace with Greenie. What word I came up with long and careful thought to distract Greenie would be off Aura’s tongue with a whip’s flash. Of course, this was all in my head, translated from my own expectations of a sister, with Greenie’s choice moments melded together.

We were just past the first time Aura got a crossbow, when the desert had given way to the city. The worst of the rain faded, not so much ending as sublimating away.

The car alarm noted our destination wouldn’t be far. Greenie cleared her throat, finishing, “She was truly remarkable. And she deserved better. She deserved to be sitting here with you, not me.”

I shook my head. “No need to pick. I’d have both of you.”

Sighing to herself, Greenie conceded a little nod and said, “Yeah…well, in the end, I’m here and she isn’t and nothing’s going to change that.”

I leaned with a slow turn and told her, “She may not be here, but you are and you keep her memory alive. That’s something.”

Greenie’s vast eyes barely seemed a sliver of light and color as she pierced them down at herself. “But is it enough?”

I had no answer there, but we were already at the testing facility.

It was a ways out of town but the first stop on our trip. I knew the people who ran it, so it wasn’t too much trouble to arrange for a spur of the moment test. Even in this modern age, we couldn’t get instantaneous results like in old movies, but the basic resolution would be available in just a few hours, assuming I didn’t hit their backlog too hard. I offered to pay but it was clear they could only work as hard as the chemicals and equipment were able to. The rest was just patience and a few swabs.

I returned to Greenie standing beneath an overhang as a lingering drizzle dripped off the edge of it. She assured me she was fine in the rain. Still, I wanted to hold an umbrella above her, if only as a courtesy.

The next stop was further in town and a bit more nervous for me. Home, what I’d made of it apart from what I’d considered my family before today. My place, the last in a row of bland townhouses with a regular pattern of gray and white, got a few curious looks from Greenie before she made her way out of the car again.

I unlocked the old fashioned way without biometric or the app, a metal key sliding against metal. Greenie lingered in the front hallway, inspecting the small stone place with a couple different shoes set aside. We both set our shoes aside and stepped up onto the dense, tan carpet.

Not quite sure what to do, I gestured a little to the walls where I had framed images of family along with some of my first articles and vistas I’d photographed and enjoyed enough to keep. There weren’t special commendations of merit from any of my schools to show off, nor were there any awards from some journalistic organization. I didn’t even have honorable mentions leftover from grade-school art.

Greenie’s eyes dipped over to inspect them before shifting to the next sight. I tidied up the kitchen as casually as possible without trying to appear nervous. I offered all sorts of refreshments, which Greenie politely declined. I cursed the clothing and crap across the living room furniture, though I was glad I’d recently vacuumed, as I turned on a scented device.

Naturally, Greenie went right for the most dust-caked shelf possible to glance at a precarious reservoir of grey-capped fuzz. I dashed a brush over that with an uncomfortable laugh, as I tried, “Those…yeah, those are more a collection than work books.” I shuddered to think what state my stored record collection was in.

Running the brush over them only propelled more dust into the air. She cast a blinking glance at me and noted, “I like books, but it got easier for me to read off a device later on. Now, I can read anything…”

I inquired about that. She told me to pick up anything, take several steps back, and point to a line. I did so and listened as she recited everything on the small-text page without squinting or even adjusting her gaze. She remarked, “That’s simple. There are physical, optical limits to vision but mine is pretty sharp.”

I glanced down at the book and found I couldn’t even make everything out when holding it at arm’s length. I noted, “You don’t sound excited by this…” I would be. Supersight!

She stuffed her hands in her pockets. “It’s how I see. It’s good but what can I use it for? All I can see are old pictures of those I love who are gone.”

I dipped my shoulders and mentioned to her, “You can take a look at me.”

“I am, but I’m greedy.”

In a way, I was prepared to learn I was this long-lost child. If I wasn’t, I was prepared for that as well. I didn’t want to cut off myself from Greenie. I didn’t really have any older relatives, especially any who were as youthful as Greenie. I had broken, old memories of grandparents but who knew if those were reliable, bolstered by parents.

I was greedy too. I wanted a grandparent like Greenie…like Mari.