Boxing Day
by Kevin McAlonan
Drool ran down the young man's chin. It might have sparkled
if any sunlight could have entered the room, but the fluorescent
lighting and windowless white walls gave the same drabness to
spittle and spastic alike.
Sarah Doyle brushed a lock of dark hair from her patient's
forehead. Now that the seizure had ended, his face
was relaxed and pale, but otherwise she saw no change from when
the unconscious boy--he couldn't be more than fifteen--had first
arrived at University Hospital's Emergency Room two months
before. Since then, no one had come forward to identify him or
to explain how he came to be lying by the roadside, covered in
blood that was not his own.
Soon, however, Sarah would try to discover the answers.
Paul Garbus, head of the university's Biomedical Engineering
Department, had proposed a way to look inside the boy's mind, to
experience his thoughts and possibly learn who he was and what
had happened to him. Sarah was surprised that Paul had offered
his aid, and still more surprised that he had convinced a judge
to let them try Paul's untested apparatus on the boy. Maybe a
department head had persuasive powers far beyond those of
ordinary men--or maybe the whispers about the secret government
funding of Paul's research were true.
But every conventional method of discovering the boy's
identity had failed. Sarah had nothing else left to try.
* * *
"Today's the big day, eh, Dr. Doyle?"
Sarah raised her head--the only part of her body not yet
strapped to the padded table--and saw Paul standing in the
doorway. He was smiling, as usual, his white coat and expensive
tie immaculate. He had worn that same smile when she asked him
if the rumors were true, if there really had been a previous test
gone terribly wrong, leaving one of the volunteers a mindless
hulk and the other a homicidal schizophrenic. He had assured her
then that the neural interface was perfectly safe, that the
psychotropic drugs were not dangerous, and that losing herself in
the mind of a catatonic was nothing to worry about.
But Paul wasn't the one with the needle in his vein or the
electrodes on his scalp.
"Yeah," she whispered. She looked at the boy strapped to
the table next to hers, then said strongly: "Let's do it."
A technician opened the IV wide and Sarah's arm chilled as
the drugs flowed into her bloodstream. The faces around her grew
hazy, as if a gauze curtain hung between them, as if she stood on
the shore while fog rolled in. Sarah felt herself falling
backward, though she kept telling herself that she was firmly
strapped to the table.
Sarah heard someone screaming. She hoped it wasn't her.
The gauze curtain ripped and the fog burned away in a flash
of light. Sarah found herself standing in a small hollow of
bare, hard-packed clay. Her eyes traveled up dull yellow
hillsides to a dull gray sky. The breezeless air carried the
scent of pepper and sweat and the mustiness of a room long closed
to fresh air and sunlight. As Sarah climbed out of the hollow,
she noticed the sunless sky cast no shadow about her feet.
The sound of her footsteps was swallowed by the constant scream.
There had been no break in the sound, though the
ragged-voiced alarm-bell cry of anguish and fear and pain had
continued for.... How long had she been here? Two minutes?
Three? Nothing with lungs could sustain that, Sarah thought.
The scream stopped.
"The demons in your head don't need to breathe."
Sarah turned toward the voice, startled. A thin boy sat
cross-legged on the bare ground, dark hair falling across his
forehead in lank bangs, his white shirt and trousers threadbare,
dingy, and stained.
"Sometimes they stop anyway," he added. "It makes it all
the worse when they start again."
"Demons?" Sarah asked.
"Have you a better name for them? The ones who scream, the
ones who laugh, the ones who whisper inside your head when
everyone else is asleep?" The boy looked up at her, his face sad
and serious for a moment before he smiled. "This is your first
time, isn't it?" At her puzzled stare, he said, "Head-hopping.
You've never done it before, have you, Dr. Doyle?"
"How--"
"The body we're in may be comatose, but it's not deaf." The
boy grinned. "If you listen carefully when the demons are quiet,
you can hear conversations of those around us."
Sarah knelt down beside him. "Then you know why I'm here."
"You want to know who I am."
"Yes. And how you came to be in a ditch by the road, if you
can remember."
The boy sighed. "I'm Stevie," he said. "My mom and dad and
I were on vacation." Stevie inhaled shakily and ran his tongue
over dry lips.
"Was there an automobile accident?" Sarah prompted.
"No. We were camping, pretty far into the forest. No one
around for miles. I was out hiking when I heard my mother
scream. As I ran back to camp, I heard gunshots. My mother kept
screaming. She was still screaming when I got back. I saw my
dad lying on the ground, blood all over his chest." Stevie's
voice broke, sobbing. "A man, a strange man grabbed me before I
could do anything. Then he, he...."
Sarah reached out and took the boy's hand. "It will be
okay, Stevie, I'm here to help you."
He continued, haltingly, his voice faint. "When he finished
with my mom, he grabbed my head and squeezed, squeezed hard.
That's when the demons began to scream. I don't know what
happened after that, not until I heard your voice, talking to the
nurses. But I couldn't talk, couldn't move." Stevie slumped
forward, silent.
Sarah looked at him, not sure what to say.
"Do you think she bought it?" something whispered.
"You laid it on pretty thick, Stevie," whispered another.
"She probably doesn't believe you. Better kill her now."
"Kill her now, kill her now!" More and more voices joined
in the soft, insistent chant.
"Stevie, what's going on?" Sarah asked. "Are these the--"
Stevie suddenly sat up straight and said a strong voice, "I
told you there were demons, doctor. Welcome to my world."
A harsh laugh echoed around them.
"Now I have a question for you," Stevie said. "Do you know
how to get back?"
"What do you mean?"
"How do you get back into your own body? You were there,
now you're here, in this body, with me, with my demons. How do
you get back?"
"I'm not really here," Sarah said. "My mind is still in my
body."
"Are you sure?" Stevie insisted. "Can this conversation be
possible if your mind remains locked inside your own skull?"
Stevie leaned closer, until his face was all that Sarah
could see. "Appearances can be deceiving."
Sarah's breath caught in her throat as the boy's thin face
became full-fleshed, dark stubble covering his jowls. The lines
around his eyes and mouth scrawled a warning of the cruelty and
malign brutality within.
"Don't you get it, Sarah? You are here, in this boy's body,
with me and my demons. Out there, in Sarah Doyle's body,
nobody's home."
"Nobody home! Nobody home!" the demons mocked.
"No, no, we're interacting through a computer interface,"
Sarah babbled, "like a mirror of a brain's neural network. The
drugs, the drugs just allow--"
"Believe what you wish," Stevie said. "But who do you think
helped Garbus develop this little device--or why? What
government wouldn't want the power to have an operative move from
body to body, reading the host's memories and thoughts like an
open book? What better disguise for an assassin than the body of
a trusted friend, a wife, an innocent child?"
"Is that who you are? Some C.I.A. assassin?"
Stevie and the demons laughed. "I am no one's lackey. They
picked the wrong guinea pig for their first test, then they tried
to hold me, to lock me up. I escaped. I go where I want, do
what I want. And who I want."
"Tell her about the one in Oregon," something whispered,
"the one who squirmed so much."
"They'll never find all the bodies," another taunted.
"But the boy--" Sarah began.
"Would have been a perfect disguise, if he hadn't been
damaged in the transfer," Stevie interrupted. "Don't struggle,
Sarah, and I'll be gentle."
She did not see the fist until it was inches from her face.
Her hands were rising to ward off the blow even as she fell back
and her head struck hard clay. Rainbow-colored sparks burst into
the blackness shrouding the edges of her vision. It seemed as if
someone else's body rolled down the hill as Stevie claimed hers.
* * *
The world was strangely dark and silent--probably just pads
taped over Sarah's eyes and ears to block out distractions,
Stevie thought. No matter--he was free! (Free! Free! the demons
echoed.) And in a woman's body! Stevie gloated at how harmless
he would look, how surprised his future victims would be. He
wanted to laugh in triumph, but he could not feel Sarah's lips or
tongue. No matter--the demons could laugh for him until the
drugs wore off. He tried to draw his first breath of freedom....
Tried and failed.
* * *
Paul looked at the metal box in his hand. Still warm from
its now-severed connection with the computer, it contained a
detailed copy of the neural connections in Sarah Doyle's brain--
and what was left of an operative once known as Steven Monty.
Paul looked at the technicians reconnecting Sarah's body to
the system and wondered if Sarah might find her way back. It
really didn't matter; Paul's sponsors did not like loose ends.
"Call me if she wakes," Paul said, walking toward the door.
In the corridor he saw a yellow and black container marked
"CAUTION! HAZARDOUS MEDICAL WASTE."
Stevie made a tidy thud.
