The Girl Who Chases the Wind

Chapter 19: Entangled

He gave a shake of his head. “They were your genes. We made a decision…as a family…after much discussion and concern, that it would be better for you that certain genes of yours were expressed while others were not. You were going to be a girl…but you could’ve had so many physical and mental health problems throughout your life along with…malformed anatomy and sexual organs…It was for the best.”

It was my turn to shake my head silently as a wave of nausea washed over me. On the objective side, I could see why May and Arnold…my parents…had done this. What parent doesn't want anything but the best for their child, better than what they could physically give? On some level I understood, but I was still angry. And confused. My genes hadn’t turned out completely like Feldon’s edits showed.

He bowed his head. “Standard genetic therapy had made much progress from its early days. If we went through others, then we could’ve made some progress but not enough. So, I took the matter into my own hands…”

The nausea bubbled up again. “You used me like a lab rat…”

Feldon looked me in the eye with clear disappointment. “Not at all. There really was no other way. Fetal gene therapy is really and still is the best way to prevent life-long health problems. The work was so extensive that May spent most of her pregnancy at a clinic of mine in Odessa. Even then, it wasn’t enough. When you were born, you still had ambiguous genitalia and nascent male gonads. We didn’t take our decisions then lightly either. It’s a choice that many thousands of families need to make every single year for their children…knowing that they will likely get it wrong. But their only sin is wanting their child to have a normal life.”

My fury had nothing to latch onto with Feldon’s calm. All the pain I’d felt growing up was because a gender had been chosen for me for the rest of my life! My body had been reshaped before I was born to be a perfect little girl and even then it had rebelled before they hacked off anything left of my male side. But something had remained. I wasn’t a perfect little girly girl.

Feldon brushed his chin with his hands. “You were still an infant, so you had some genetic therapy left to make sure your body produced the right levels of hormones. But there was nothing more I could do once the tragedy came…”

Words seemed not enough. Yelling seemed pointless. Mari’s analogy of bleeding emptiness inside was what I clung to. I hated Feldon so much in that moment, even though I could analytically understand why he did it all.

I turned away with my hands on my hips and glared into the frosted glass. I breathed heavily through my nose. Thankfully, he didn’t say anything to me. I wanted to keep silent forever, but even I had to say something eventually.

“You had no…right to do that...to make those fucking choices.”

“I know. I learned that. With those I met and those I began to know truthfully for the first time.”

I listened as he continued.

“I can’t say I understand it. I wonder if what is labeled as gender non-conformity or fluidity and so forth, can also be fixed with the right manipulation of Memetic Crystalline. But I’ve found that, like with Edgar, some things of the mind are also part of the self. My brother-in-law…who was so connected to my eldest…wanted to be just like her. He wanted to show her happiest faces. He wanted to love pastries like she did and live the same life…”

He sighed through his nose. “For the longest time, I’d tell him he should find a way to adopt or care for children. There were plenty of orphans out there, even before. For me, the most beautiful moments were standing beside my children as they lived out realities I could never fathom…but which I could still imagine.”

With resignation, he gave a little ‘pop’ of his mouth. “You’re probably thinking I tried to recapture my daughters through my remaining relatives. My brother-in-law become Lily, Dalya’s could’ve-been aunt. My father-in-law become Mari the Wind.”

I bent my head down and admitted, “I don’t know what to think. Except they’re both…wildly adorable…old men into cute girls. Should’ve put that in the article pitch.”    

Feldon nodded quietly and sighed before saying, “There’s more though. There’s always more. More to Mari, more to Lily, and more even to Kala. But you know, for a time, it was like having my three girls again. And May was this place…this beautiful place of possibilities. Why…if the attack had happened today…she would be up and smiling before dinner.”

I looked back a moment. “So, Kala is meant to replace me?”

“Kala is Kala, but she has always felt like she doesn’t fit in one gender or another. At best, she’s like a totem. A reminder. As the others are too. They carry a little memory of those lost.”

It made sense in a way, but at the same time it was absurd and disturbing. Denial of loss in the worst possible way. Trying to undo the inevitable. I just had my own little life to draw from, but I could only imagine it ending in the worst possible way, for Feldon especially. I turned back to watch him.

That mythic figure of science slumped where he sat. I could see the lines again across his hands as I’d seen them yesterday. Where before they’d been impressive, like something far beyond me, experience and knowledge, now I felt like he sat there as something verging on pathetic. A crumpled husk of humanity.

And he was my father. Considering the father I’d long been apart from even in the same house, it wasn’t much of a swap. I did wish I’d known the Before though. The time Feldon only described to me. But all that existed was the Moment and the Future. Everything else was memory in fashioned colors. Without speaking the same resignation of the past out of reach, I sighed and told him, “I still don’t get it. But I’m listening.”

He rubbed his hands. The room was cold and sterile without drawing a shiver. He cleared his throat and admitted, “Thank you. And all I can hope is you won’t hate me by the time I am done telling you the rest.”

I braced myself against the wall. The audio device was still recording in my pocket. I could’ve shut it off then, but I kept rolling as I asked, “What’s the rest?”

Slowly, Feldon pulled himself up from his seat and made his way to another area of the underground complex past a series of frosted doors. I followed. Soon, we came to a room devoted to a single device. It was large and shimmery, like a loom with threads spread out individually. The display cycled through complex processes till Feldon raised a hand and it switched to a new interface. It was a computer, the kind typically used in research labs for visualizing and manipulating genetic samples. The lab I’d just left probably had one like it somewhere.

The ‘threads’ were the same tone as Memetic Crystalline and each led up as a projection in the heart of the user interface. Feldon cycled through them with a quick gesture until he came to a specific entry and a photograph hovering in the air.

He explained, “The current Russian president…he visited us some time ago and had Memetic Crystalline placed in his brain as an augmentation. He came with an entourage of the wealthiest elite of the Russian oligarchy. His best friends. They all received the same augmentation.”

There came that prickle at the back of my neck again. Something in the way Feldon spoke unsettled me. He continued.

“I’ve told you that Memetic Crystalline can be manipulated to repair and improve on the original cells. But unless one is in direct contact with the crystalline, you surely couldn’t make changes…right?”

I raised an eyebrow and held my tongue. Feldon let slip the smallest of smiles as he added, “That would be unimaginable. But not impossible, it turns out.”

With a flourish of gestures, Feldon brought up a closer image of the Russian president, including what looked like a detailed three-dimensional map of a brain. That prickle was becoming a lump in my throat.

“Because Memetic Crystalline can hide things really well. It can hide extra bits, little nano-substrates which act as back doors into the entire mass of crystalline and not even the best examinations can tell it’s not a part of the intended design. Now those extra bits are entangled with what we retain here. We make a change here and, no matter how far away its pair is, the signal is always true.”

I was slowly shaking my head. Words came to me in flashes, but I couldn’t find a way to say them. Feldon continued.

“We store every entangled twin from every procedure…preserved…and linked to this console. Now, if say the Russian president feels that one of the ‘lost’ republics needs to return to the Motherland, then perhaps that’s a feeling which needs to be readjusted.”

I staggered backward and brought my hand up to my mouth. Feldon didn’t notice as his eyes were focused and unblinking on the photograph floating in front of him. Finally, I found my words.

“Mind control…you’re using mind control.”

This time, he glanced towards me. From his expression, he seemed to expect my words. “It’s hardly as precise as that, but we’re working on it. It’s nudging people in a different direction. And it’s for good. Dissuading the ruling elite from violence, encouraging them towards empathy, and building a better future for all humanity.”

I slammed my arms into the wall and pushed off it. “You’re manipulating people. How is that any better than what they do?”

He clenched his hands. “I’m not killing women and little girls. I’m saving lives. I’ve already prevented entire wars by pushing reconciliation from both sides.”

I shook my head. “What about free will? You’re making people do things they don’t want to do.”

Feldon snorted. “I only give them a push. I can’t control them like robots. I just encourage their humanity to win out over their lust for money and power. Would you rather see a future made by them and their base impulses?”

Bending, I stared him down. “How do you know your future will be any better?”

He didn’t waver, even though his hands trembled. “All I know is that I will do everything in my power to make sure no one suffers like I did…that children don’t have to suffer and die so young like Aura and Dalya…and they will have their mothers. My only regret is that the thugs and criminals of the world can’t all go under my knife.”

On the one hand, after all I’d seen for the articles I’d written, I sensed where he was coming from. But the very notion was revolting and horrifying. And another notion slipped into my thoughts as I reached for the back of my neck, where Cellular-D had been placed over a bit of Memetic Crystalline.

I asked simply, “What about me…? Is that why you did what you did to me?”

He batted a hand. “Of course not. It was to show the health benefits, as I’ve said.”

I tensed my lips. “And why should I trust you at that? You’ve deceived me till now. You’ve played around with my life and my genome before my birth…and you want to play even bigger games with the entire world…”

Feldon shook his head dismissively. “I’ve been open with you. I have made mistakes, but I admit to them and I have learned from them.”

I almost drew blood from my lips as I clenched them with my teeth. “Oh? Then why haven’t you stopped experimenting with family?”

He clutched his gray-framed head and told me, “I have done everything I could’ve to help my family, to heal and help them.”

I thought back to the images I’d seen of Aura in the early days of her injury with pain and sad faces before she started to smile more and more. I felt a sickening sensation as I brought her up and guessed, “You experimented on Aura too….didn’t you? You admitted to trying to fix her…How far did you go?”

Feldon rapped the counter and shook his head. “I treated Aura for her physical problems and tried to help her through her psychological issues as well.”

Shaking my head, I stated the sick feeling in words, “You made her happy, despite her pain. You made her into a perky little spark plug because that’s what you thought she should’ve been. All this about how she was bold and joyful in the face of her injury…that was you…pushing her along…wasn’t it?”

With shut eyes, Feldon told me, “I treated Aura. I did nothing more than a psychologist would do medically to ease the worst of her trauma. As much as I wish, I can’t erase what happened to her and those we love.”

I pushed closer to Feldon and said, “Fine. But how do you know for sure you were actually helping? You pushed her pain away like injecting a drug. That’s not how you deal with pain and you should know that….What if one of the side-effects of her treatment led to her death…What if you killed her?”