Jade's Library

Researchers say that the things you see in dreams always hold a touch of reality to them. The places you visit are places pieced together from things you’ve seen, and faces are always of people you’ve met. This is because the human brain is incapable of truly creating anything without a template for it.

Dreams can also be fucking terrifying. I woke up in a cold sweat a few nights ago, paralyzed with still-embedded fear. I felt my mind struggle between the waking world and the terror-filled landscape I’d just escaped. I don’t usually dream, but the nights I do they’re more vivid than my own memories. This night in particular? It was bad. It was so bad.

I was a mother, with long brown hair and a sweet smile. My little boy sat in my shopping cart, grinning at everyone he saw. He was such a cheerful kid, with big brown eyes and tousled hair- my pride and joy, and at just the right age to think everyone was a potential friend. I pushed him through the small grocery store, picking up odds and ends. He grinned at a man, the warmest smile possible.

“Hi!” His young voice piped, full of enthusiasm. Something shattered. I remember knowing the man he said hi to him wasn’t right, the second he turned his eyes towards my baby boy. It was wrong. Things moved at a dizzying speed, as I acted instinctively without even realizing what I was doing. I remember scooping my kid out of the shopping cart, pressing him close to my chest. I remember my feet pounding across the concrete floor, as I fled into the parking lot. I remember some innate part of my mind knowing that no matter how fast I ran, whatever that man was would catch up to me. And it did. It grabbed my son, ripping him from my arms as I struggled to catch my breath. I opened my mouth, trying to let out a scream, as my voice cut out. My husband began climbing out of the car, and I stood there silently screaming, as I watched it hold up my baby boy’s torso, large gashes of red where his arms were. His smile wiped clean from his face, replaced with a hollowness.

Fade to black. Replace the actors with new faces, the environment with one similar to a drug store. Replace the protagonist. I remember what happened, yet I’m not a mother anymore. I’m a young girl, a teenager, maybe sixteen. I have curly hair, a band t-shirt and jeans, and a profound interest in females. I don’t know how I knew anything about me, but I knew it all in that second. I was her, and yet I remembered the mother. I remembered the story of things that were so convincingly human, and yet the second you acknowledge them…

I followed my guardian through the store, my head rolling backwards slightly. I kept my eyes trained above head level, dragging along the shelves besides me, as if I wasn’t entirely there. I see them, out of the corners of my eyes. Their pupils fixated on me, begging me - Look this way! Come on, look over here! One is walking to the opposite end of the aisle as me. The second he notices me, he stops by my side. I hum, a constant and low tune, as my eyes are glued to cards on my right.

“Hello?” A man’s voice accompanies the presence. I feel my heart pounding. I taste my soul on my tongue, and terror on my lips. Without looking, I can just make out a grown man standing next to me. He has shaggy black hair, pale skin. A button down white shirt. There’s tension in the air, and suddenly my guardian is moving again, and I follow her. I don’t hear the man move, and I know he’s staring at me.

“Bye-bye” says the grown man’s voice, and yet there’s something. In the way it’s broken, in an indescribable way. Like a cracked plate, his voice is so wrong, and it almost makes me cry. Scream. Give up. It was just so wrong. I hear him finally break the spell, turning around to another lady in the store. In a voice filled with pure normalcy and a polite smile, I head “Can I help you find anything?”

This is their breeding ground, the stores. There are so many people, and you can never tell which is human and which is Them. My guardian moves us towards the pharmacy, she’s looking at a shelving wrack. This area is empty asides from a boy sitting behind us on the bench- and when someone is behind me, I can relax. He’s talking aloud, likely to himself. I can’t help but listen.

“You know…You can always tell when they’re tethered to One,” his voice starts. He speaks fluently, knowingly. He sounds more human than any of them so far. I can hear him lick his lips, humming softly. “It’s like… a chain. You know? And without One, the chain is simply stuck on something.”

Flash. The image of a bracelet, the clasp undone, as it’s stuck to a door. Stuck, but ever so in reach if one were to try.

 “And I found someone untethered,” my heart thuds, my breathing stalls, and suddenly everything sounds so loud. I hear the chains around his wrist clatter, as he holds them up, as if to show someone. “and as soon as I untangle myself…I’m coming to get them.”

Bam. I was awake, a cold dose of reality. My sheets stuck to my legs, soaked with sweat. My bangs fell in front of my face, pressed damp against my forehead. My heart, racing, despite me being paralyzed with fear. I opened my eyes, looking around. I was okay. I was safe. Thank God.

Except I’m not. Researchers- they say the things you see in dreams are always based off of reality.  I just needed yogurt from the store. That’s all I needed today. I stood in line, watching people move around me in and out the doors. The sun shone through the plexi-glass of the automatic doors. The cashier rang me up, and I smiled warmly, thanking them. They nodded. As I left the store, my feet carrying me across the concrete floor, I heard a sound that sent shivers down my spine.

Two words. Two horrifically broken words.

“You’re lucky we caught it when we did.”

“It could have gotten so much worse. You both got lucky.”

“She’s recovered from pneumonia once, she can recover again. You’re lucky it’s just pneumonia.”

Lucky. The word tasted like ash on Ivory’s tongue. There was nothing lucky about the situation they were in. In her eyes, there was nothing worse than this.

She watched the woman through the glass, her hands pressed against it. She had felt like even that was too large of a risk, until the nurses assured her it wasn’t. The woman’s chest rose and fell painfully slow, to a rhythm that Ivory had come to realize was produced by the beeping machines forcing air into her lungs, not the lungs themselves.

“Pheobe.” She exhaled the name in disbelief. Her own voice rang unrecognizable to her ears. They’d been friends for so long. They’d met over the internet, on some AOL chatroom that Ivory could never remember the name of. What progressed from awkward introductions was daily chatting, evolving to video chatting once technology allowed it. They’d been young, and had attached to each other almost immediately, despite the eight year age difference. So when Pheobe needed a roommate after moving states, and Ivory was looking for a way out of her house, they both moved in together immediately. The first time they met in person had been to sign the lease papers.

Ivory wasn’t sure what she expected, but the young woman- not a girl, like she still considered herself- was eye-grabbing. It wasn’t that she was beautiful in a picture perfect way (in fact, Ivory would agree that photos never could capture Pheobe correctly). It was that when she laughed, time itself seemed to stutter over its own feet. It was that when she smiled, the entire room exploded into a symphony of light, like a switch being flicked. Everything fell into place.

What took getting used to was the sound of the machine three times a day. Ivory had talked to Pheobe during her breathing treatments before, but the sound over her computer speakers was dulled compared to the sound of the machine at ten pm the night before an exam. It was a loud whirring noise- loud enough that the first month, Pheobe apologized after every single use. Ivory reassured her that she didn’t need to apologize.

What took getting used to was Phoebe’s incessant visits to the college administrator, having to change classes once more just to avoid being within a mile of someone with the same condition as her.

What took getting used to was the medications, and more importantly, the bills for them. Who knew having a chronic illness would be so expensive? In hindsight, she probably should have known. Cystic fibrosis can’t be cheap, experimental treatments and whatnot. And yet, it kept the girl she saw every morning alive.

Yet, the worry she felt when the bills and medications piled up more and more was present. It was present during every hospital visit and visitation, it was present during every cold (getting more and more present- ‘it’s the weather’ Pheobe had told her with a laugh that progressed to a cough)

Ivory didn’t know she was killing her. God, she loved her.

They’d both known, for a very long time, that they cared for each other more than they probably should. But Ivory’s fundamental beliefs, and Pheobe’s constant absence prevented the inevitable- up until the time they finally decided to have a movie night.

Pheobe had just gotten back from hospital, and Ivory was feeling brave after a little too much alcohol. The light of the movie made Pheobe’s eyes glow with excitement, as she her chest heaved from her laughter. Before Ivory knew it, their lips were crashing together. Pheobe tasted like strawberries in the spring. Pheobe tasted like the Beatles, and summer in the 70’s. She tasted like home.

It hadn’t been long after that that they’d both gotten sick- a couple weeks later. Knowing they’d likely caught a cold, Ivory kept an eye on Pheobe. Every night, the two would curl up in one of their beds- while Pheobe would drift off into a fitful sleep, Ivory would lie awake. She would feel the taller female’s body shudder against hers with every cough and wheeze, and she worried.

It was two months later that Ivory got the phone call. Pheobe came down with pneumonia- bad enough that she’d collapsed on her way to class. Ivory didn’t remember much between the phone call and the time she arrived at the hospital- all she remembered were her hands gripping the wheel of her car, knuckles white as a sheet.

“She caught another strand- who does she hang out with?”

“How?”

“We can’t fix this, but we can stop it from progressing- where did she get it from?”

The questions when she’d arrived at the hospital poured over her, an onslaught of demands for answers she didn’t have.

Then they found out Ivory was sick too. Then, they did a blood lab. A genetic mutation of CFTR was found, and suddenly, they had their answers. It was adult diagnosed Cystic Fibrosis. Ivory had been sick as a kid, sure, but never sick enough for worry- not until now. Ivory was making her sick. Ivory was the reason Pheobe had declined so quickly. Ivory was the reason she wasn’t getting better- would never get better.

Ivory was killing her.

It didn’t start quickly, many people would tell Jade as she grew. It never did. Humanity did not simply wake one day and decide to cast out its previous virtues in favor of complete surveillance, and rationing of even the smallest drops of water. Instead, it was catalyst after catalyst that built the world she- and others of her generation - found themselves in.

It started with drought, they learned in school. The rain hadn’t stopped falling, but instead, it had become so polluted that only certain parts of the world had any clean water at all. Children were ushered inside homes, doors locked and barred to keep them in. Crops began dying out by the acres, and before anyone even realized what had happened, grains had become all but extinct. A select few plants, primarily seasonings, stuck around. Without bread or a majority of fruits and vegetables, most resorted to killing livestock and game. No one particularly cared whose- or what- animal they had to get their hands on. They just cared enough to make sure their next meal was safe.

This is what lead to the surveillance, the books said. Livestock began disappearing in multitudes- first chickens, leaving no eggs or poultry. Then onto the cows, as milk and meat vanished all too quickly. It had been only five years since the drought, and already, the government was forced to enact sanctions upon hunting. “Anyone who kills an animal without the proper rights”, the new law declared “will face serious penalties enacted by the court of law.” The warning didn’t stop many. But farmers and shop keeps everywhere discovered that guns did.

This is where the waters of history grew murky, their teachers lectured. Without a stable source of food or water, people began revolting against their government. Workers demanded wages high enough to afford the astronomical prices of an imported vegetables, and upon going on strike, a vast majority of the market began to grind to a halt. Without miners to supply copper wiring and metal pipes, power outages began to occur. The food people could acquire either spoiled, or was eaten raw in desperate cases (as fires had recently been outlawed due to a lack of water.) People grew sick- fast. With decreased immune systems, and the lack of vaccines due to the power outages, diseases previously eradicated swept across the globe. Whooping cough, smallpox, bubonic plague. Children and the old died out in hundreds, while the young who were infected were left scarred. Pandemonium, the press called it. Hospitals were unable to enact life support, or keep cultures long enough to find a different way to fix them.

It was fifteen years until the pollution finally faded enough for water to become drinkable, scientists said. Slowly, life begate life, and plants had begun to grow once more. Though still rare and few between, sources of water and small crops of vegetation were found littered across the countryside. People rejoiced. It was enough for government to begin rationing- though carefully. People had to have a job in order to collect their rations. If they didn’t work, the government reasoned, they didn’t need the food. This included children over the age of ten. With a new foundation of society, generators began churning again, spitting out gigawatts of energy for the first time in years. It took repair after repair, but light bulbs and vaccines were given back to society once more.

This was her world, Jade mused, her eyes catching a poster on the side of the building screaming at them to work as hard as possible. The official handed her the box of rations.

“Remember” The woman drawled, and Jade could almost picture her chewing bubble gum “This has gotta last you the month.”

“Month? I thought it was three weeks?” Jade felt her heart sink. Suddenly, the box of food and water didn’t seem so heavy anymore.

“New law. People are startin to complain about the kids workin, so they raised the age to twelve” the woman rolled her eyes.

Jade felt a small prickle of excitement run through her veins. She found herself mutely nodding in response, and turning to leave. The man behind her was already shouting at the woman at the counter, demanding more rations- that he had a sick wife at home, he needed to feed. Jade knew she should be sorry for him, but there was only one thing she could think about once she climbed into bed that night.

On the way home that night, for the first time in fifteen years- since she had been just a small girl, she had heard the sound of children laughing. She had heard the hooting, and the slapping of footsteps against wet cement roads from a recent rain as they ran, and the hope in their faces.

The Girl Who Waited Decades

There would be many, many times in her life that Amelia Pond would question the small choices she’d made in the past. Choices that, no matter how inconsequential they had seemed at the time, would have changed everything. Maybe if she hadn’t had gone back for her camera phone that day. Maybe if she had pressed the green anchor button, instead of the red waterfall. Maybe if she had left a better sign, found a way to boost her mobile signal, hacked the hand bots, or changed the way she asked the interface a question. Maybe if she hadn’t have trusted the raggedy man from space who showed up at her doorstep in a big blue box all those years ago. Any small shift, and everything would be different. Then again in hindsight, everything seemed a bit more obvious. That didn’t mean it could fix things now.

Year one was the easiest. In year one, Amy had known her raggedy man and centenarian would come back for her. It was an irrefutable fact, the same way the sky was blue, or the hand bot thingies were a little creepy if you really sat down and thought about it. Which she did, many times. She also realized rather quickly that while she wasn’t hungry, cravings were still frustrating things, and the cinema made wonderful popcorn. The salt and butter practically melted on your tongue, and the next thing you knew you realized you hadn’t had food in months, and you were laughing through your tears at a movie and taste you would experience countless more times.

It was also a year of learning. She learned that the engine room, indeed, masked her from the handbots (though occasionally a faulty one would wander in and she would have to disable it)

It was also one of the loneliest places in two-stream facility. The safest, but the loneliest. The Interface wouldn’t work in the engine room- for what reason other than whatever caused the handbots to malfunction, she wasn’t sure. But it meant that her contact with any voice, even a sometimes annoying robotic one with an unsettlingly bright light, was impossible there. Nevertheless, as it was the safest, she felt it was the area she would build her home. It started with a curtain she found in the cinema, looped between two pylons, and framed with a large tarp that had been used in the aquarium to cover a tank (at the expense of a few fish. She ate them. They tasted so good that she almost didn’t feel bad for her recently departed friends.)

She explored. Gallery, Cinema, Garden, Aquarium, Rollarcoasters, Mountain Zone. Her favorite eventually became the Mountain Zone. She would sit there on very lonely nights, watching the sun set over mountains made of glass, casting a breathtaking spectrum of light over everything in view. The first night she’d seen it, after she realized that the sun set at nights in the Garden, Gallery, and Mountain Zone, it was seven months and fourteen days after she’d been stranded there. She’d sat on a pile of red sand, feeling cool air brush over her face- the only sound in that part of the facility that wasn’t made by her- watching the glass plains visibly fracture with colors of light, and cried. No, not just cried- Sobbed. Full blown, anguished screaming, sobs. When she crawled back into her makeshift bed last night, covered in sand, she’d listened to the engines woosh. She thought briefly, about how similar it sounded to the TARDIS engine.

It was the first night that she worried that she may die alone at Two Streams.

The first decade after the first year was still relatively easy. Though she ran out of movies in the sixth year, unable to request more as an actual patient there would have from the hand bots, the reruns didn’t exactly bother her. The popcorn still tasted wonderful, as well. Her clothes were in good shape, the small brush she’d carried with her in her pocket hadn’t broke, and the toothpaste located in the bathroom of the gallery lasted quite a while. She developed a nice routine. Mornings she set out to scavenge- or if she couldn’t find anything that day, she spent them exploring the Mountain Zone or riding a coaster. The gallery was saved for the afternoons, when the heat was too much for her in the outdoor rooms. She mainly spent nights in the Cinema, or the Garden. Twice a month still, she would sit and watch the sun set over the glass mountains. On a particularly bad night, she would stare at the night stars and talk to The Interface. She would ask it questions about the distant constellations and planets she could see, and she would tell it stories about the ones she had visited. It was “Doctor” this, and “Doctor” that. Sometimes, if the night was clear enough, she could see Earth. On these nights, she would tell It about Rory. These were the nights that hurt the most. The nights were she would feel tears stream down her face, and her bottom lip would soundlessly quiver. She’d stopped crying out loud in the eighth year.

Decade one was the easiest. In decade one, Amelia Pond was still Amy. She was filled with hope, and always mused to the Interface where she would go and what she would do as soon as that big blue box showed up, with its old wooden frame and wonderful wooshing sound. In Decade one, Amelia Pond hoped.

Decade two was harder. In Decade two, the popcorn became repulsive. Movies became boring, drawn out, and downright terrible. She mocked them until the thought of sitting down for one made her sick. In Decade Two, the sunsets lost their wonder, and fighting the hand bots became a boring routine. Decade two could be characterized with very many things. But the most important thing that Decade Two can be characterized with, is the fact that, on the first night of Decade Two, something inside of Amelia Pond broke. She found herself sitting on the floor of her makeshift hut, amongst different pieces of scrap and salvage, wondering how she’d held so much hope in decade one. After all, hadn’t The Doctor abandoned her before? Yes, many times. And not just her- other people, too. She’d spent that night, and every night after that one, thinking of every story she had ever heard of The Doctor- Raggedy Man, The Oncoming Storm, The Valeyard, Destroyer of Worlds. The names he held stuck in her head, repeating in a terrible symphony of pain.

In Decade Two, Amelia Pond lost hope. She spoke to the interface much less, but when she did, it was with a venom-filled voice. It was snide, cruel, and everything that she had always told herself was wrong in the world. She hated The Doctor, she said. She hated The Doctor, she hated Rory, and she hated that stupid blue box that abducted her as a child. But that wasn’t quite right. Because what she really hated when she said all of those things was herself. She hated herself, for putting blind hope into a fairy tale raggedy man in a box. She hated herself, for running away on the night of her marriage with a strange man she wasn’t quite convinced was real. And then later snogging him. She hated herself, for throwing herself and those she loved into the face of danger because she saw herself as some invincible woman who’d died before, and figured nothing bad could ever happen to her. She hated herself, for ever believing that The Doctor would always come back for her.

In Decade Three, Amelia Pond resigned herself to spending the rest of her life at Two Streams. She found a robot, cut off his arms, and reprogrammed him. Though at one point she would have viewed this as inhumane, all she wanted was companionship in the last couple decades of her life. She didn’t think that was too much to ask for. She drew a face on him with a marker she discovered in a gallery (which, she almost laughed at due to the irony of it. Why would you put a sharpie near a bunch of expensive artwork? She wondered if this was purposeful, for the small children at the facility. Then she tried not to think of the small children.) She then thought for a very long time about what name to give him. She didn’t mean to name him Rory, originally. The stupid robot had stumbled into a pile of scrap she’d been trying to piece together, and she’d gotten frustrated, yelling out Rory’s name and whirling around, before she realized what she’d done, and broke down crying.

She called the robot Rory from then on.

In Decade Three, Amelia Pond re-watched the movies with a newfound interest. She re-read the books she’d found scattered about the facility back in Decade One, and found herself fascinated with the stories once more. Turns out lost hope is actually rather motivating. She found herself enjoying the sights in the Garden, the smell of the flowers, and the glass mountains once more. She ate popcorn, she cried, and she lived what semblance of a life she realized she would be spending here. In Decade Three, Amelia stopped waiting.

And then, at the end of Decade Three, He came. She heard a voice, and she’d ran into the room, and He was there, ginger and scrawny and with those stupid glasses on the tip of his nose. Her Centenarian. Her Rory. She felt a fire of hope. Love. Sadness. She felt everything, all the while pretending to feel nothing. She felt almost humiliated as she showed him what her life had become, and then had the so-called decency to defend her choices, and tell him that she didn’t want to be saved. Because in Decade One, the Decade of hope, when it had still been early enough for denial, she’d been told by herself she would never be saved. That she might as well buckle in for the ride, because it would be a long one. And she hadn’t listened. But now, standing face to face with her younger self three decades later, she changed her mind. She wasn’t sure why she changed her mind. Maybe she never would be sure. But she changed her mind.

I'm typing this from a hospital bed.

That simple fact itself is so surreal to me that I can't even explain it. What feels like months to me has been days for everyone else. I swear to god, I am not crazy. I know there's more going on than what everyone else thinks. I remember so much more. The doctors said that I need to keep face to face contact with people at a minimum now, as to avoid stress. They did, however, give me my phone so I could make arrangements once I'm released.  While my thoughts are still muddled, I'm going to attempt to piece the events together as much as I can. This is more to my benefit than it is to explain it to someone else, and I'm only putting it here because no one else will believe me. 

It started early January of 2015. I'd just turned nineteen, and was new to college (I finished high school a bit later than I would've liked) the entire experience left me reeling with excitement. I was elated to finally be out of my close-knit town. Not that close-knit is a bad thing, it can just be...suffocating. There was snow on the road, and I was on my way to my roommate-at-the-time's party. Weather conditions were fairly bad at the time and I'd grown frustrated at the lack of music due to the warnings on the radio, so I reached over to put a CD in. I looked away for five seconds at most. Apparently, five seconds was enough time for a mammoth of a car on the opposite side of the road to skid on the ice, and slam head on into my (very) tiny ford. I don't even remember being hit. All I remember is waking up in the ER. I'd suffered pretty bad, but nothing that wasn't survivable. A few broken bones, and some head trauma. 

Turns out, head trauma can lead to epilepsy. 

I'd been staring out the window when my older sister (Alison) and her husband (Theodore) had walked in.

"You know, you stare at the snow any longer and I'll throw you in it myself." Alison joked playfully. She was trying to keep the situation light, despite the worried crease in her brow.

"Yeah, cause hypothermia is exactly what I need right now on top of everything else." I motioned to my right leg, bound up to the knee in white plaster and propped up on a sorry excuse for a pillow.

"I think it would make a great addition to your fifty page medical chart, Don't you Theo?" She grinned, moving to sit on the edge of the bed on my good side.

Theodore grunted in affirmation, fumbling with the remote to the television. He flipped through channels almost absent-mindedly. Theodore was a rather quiet man, and I appreciated that despite my extrovert-ness.

"Yeah, well, the doctors wouldn't. And they already have me in here the next two days at least." I huffed in annoyance.

I saw the flicker of the television in my peripheral vision and felt myself frowning. Alison apparently took this as a sign to launch into a discussion about how her and Theodore were considering names for their first child. My tongue felt strange in my mouth, and my head was throbbing. I smelt smoke. This frustrated me even further. Why would someone be so stupid as to smoke in a hospital wing?

"Do you guys smell that?" I asked. I thought I asked. Later, I was told the words sounded a bit more like I was speaking in tongues. The rest of my memory is....fuzzy. Grainy. I remember feelings, but it's like any logical sense of who I was checked out.

It was my first epileptic seizure, triggered by something as simple as a television screen.

It wasn't my last, though. Months passed. For the most part, I could deal with the seizures well enough. Once or twice I hit my head on surrounding furniture, which made walking through my campus hallways a bit nerve-wracking at times, but for the most part I was okay. However, I had one particularly bad instance a couple years later, this time in March. 

I was home from break, and helping my mom hang up St. Patrick's day decorations. She was worried about me standing on a ladder (she had all the reason to worry) however after a few minutes of reassurance, I was up on the ladder hanging a string of green hats onto the wooden banister of our staircase. The ladder jolted, and my eyes flickered to the perpetrator in question. It was one of the kids, maybe eight, who had ran through laughing. My eyes locked onto the toy in her hand. Despite my mothers letter to all members of our family (To whom it main concern, bla bla bla epilepsy, bla bla bla no flashing lights allowed, bla bla bla thank you very much!) my dear Aunt Suzan decided her tiny runt was excluded from the rules set for this holiday. Who would've known a flashing magic wand would have done me in? Sure enough, within the minute, I had fallen off the ladder and was seizing on the ground in front of my entire family.

This is where then stories between the doctors currently watching me and I differ.

The doctors say I had an instance of Status Epilepticus. Which while sounding like a fucking amazing harry potter spell, is actually a prognosis for a seizure that lasts longer than five minutes. My seizure that day lasted twenty five.  It took the paramedics twenty five damn minutes to get to my house. The frigging pizza man makes it to my house in less time than that!

My story is a bit different.

This is how I remember the events, in order.

I fell off the ladder. I had a minor epileptic seizure, thirty seconds at most. It wasn't bad at all. My mom yelled at my Aunt Suzy, who yelled at her tiny runt, and life continued. Life was good. My life was good.

I want to repeat that last sentence again and again because it's the truth, and honestly it's all I can think about. I've never been a lucky person, but from that moment on I...Was happy with my life for the first time in years. I brought my grades up and started studying. I earned my degree in Botany, and found an apprenticeship with one of the local head guys in charge of the biosiences. I found a boyfriend, his name is Scott Anderson. We bought a dog, her name is Isabella (We call her the queen, despite her being this tiny little pug) And life. Was. Good. I was so happy.

I remember the exact fucking date when I woke up in this godforsaken hospital bed. It was November 27th, 2019. I'd gone to let Isabella out after throwing on my knit sweater my mom had given me for my birthday. It was chilly out despite it being November. I'd stood at the backdoor, watching her bark at birds in the bird bath Scott and I had set up the spring before. That's when the home phone rang. I didn't even know we'd hooked the old thing up. I thought it was just..gathering dust.

"Caller from out of location." The electronic voice chirped happily. I never could figure out how to answer the damn thing, so I let it ring the first few times.

It just wouldn't stop. I could feel my head throbbing, and the light flashing from the base of the phone was a key warning that it could induce a seizure. Finally, I brought Isabella in and walked over to the phone. It took a long moment of button-pressing for me to finally figure out how to answer it.

"Hello?" I pressed the phone between my ear and shoulder, shooing away a very whining and needy Isabella. I heard muffled voices on the other line. "Hello?" I repeated, minor annoyance slipping into my voice. I hated when people pocket-dialed me. After a few moments, I pressed the red button that shut off the call. I hadn't even set it back on the base when it rang again. I answered it again. It took two times of this being repeated before I finally could make out the words.

"....Seizures.....Coma.....Week...." It was my mothers voice. I furrowed my eyebrows.

"Ma?" I called into the phone, confused. "Hello?"

"Medically induced....Not sure....No telling." My moms voice cut through waves of static. 

A shrill loud enough to leave me whirring came through the speakers, and I slammed my hand onto the lever of the base. I was hyperventilating, and I wasn't sure why. My ears were ringing. I thought I was about to have a seizure, so I fumbled with the pager that I had. I would always press the paging button so that Scott would know I was seizing, and send someone to check on me. The pager fell apart in my hands. 

I can't really explain how it fell apart. It just...Disintegrated. The entire room seemed to be falling apart. I opened my mouth, to let out some noise. I couldn't hear it over the ringing in my ears, though. I don't know if I even made a sound.

The next thing I remember is waking up. I woke up to my mothers voice, hovering to my left. The steady thrum of my pulse was the first thing I was actually aware of, though. The third (after my mom) was how dry my mouth was. I moved to lick my lips, only to find myself choking on a tube shoved in my throat. My eyes opened with extreme effort, and my hands moved to pull whatever foreign object was shoved in my throat.

What came next was...Hard. Harder than anything I've ever experienced.

The doctors are saying it's 2017. I'm so much younger than I remember. It's summer, which doesn't make sense by neither my story, nor the doctors (By their accounts, it was March when I passed out.) I don't understand what's going on. I know I need to regain my strength and figure out exactly what happened, but all I can think about are Scott and Isabella. Are they even real? Or was it all some fucked up fantasy? I had a home. A life. A job. I was living my dream. And it's all gone.

I need serious help. If anyone knows anyone else who's experienced something similar, please let me know.

She was broken. Nick had seen a lot of openly broken people in his day. Maybe not his synth days, but in his memories of the real Nick Valentine- he had known a lot of broken people. Sobbing mothers who’s children had been murdered, widowed significant others, or even those who had been cheated on. Looking at Nora now, however, he realized he’d never quite seen someone broken in that way.

She’d stumbled into home plate about a month ago after having gone to the institution. It was supposed to be an infiltration for the railroad. In and out after finding the covert synth leader. She’d taken days. When she finally did stumble back in, she was pale and shaking. She mumbled incoherently at first, but even those stopped after a few hours. No matter what he said, she wouldn’t budge. Wouldn’t admit what had happened that had shaken her up so bad.

Nick watched her silently now. She was leant against the balcony in good neighbor, watching over the city with empty eyes. She held a cigarette between her fingertips, but the amount of ashes piled up around the end said that she wasn’t actively smoking. He wished she would say something. It felt like so long since he’d heard her voice. When she finally did speak, he startled.

“I found Shaun.” Her voice was hoarse from inactivity, and it was quiet. She flicked the ashes off her cigarette, and wiped her nose to keep it from dripping.“

"Well- that’s great, Doll, isn’t it?” Nick felt hesitation permeate his tone, despite him trying his best to keep it steady. He moved to stand next to her, taking her words as an invitation. “Considering that’s the whole reason you went.”

She wasn’t looking at him. The light reflected in her eyes, her gaze focused on something in the distance. Her mouth was set in a firm line, the occasional whips of smoke trailing out of her nostrils whenever she took a drag. From this angle, he could see the scar that ran across her face jaggedly from her first Deathclaw encounter. He wondered what she looked like before the bombs rained down.

He continued talking. “Of course, him being a kid now I can imagine how unsettled-”

“He’s running the institution.” She interrupted.

Silence filled the air for a very long moment. “He what?” Nick finally asked incredulously.

“I wasn’t in the vault for five years. Not even fifteen years. They had me on ice for /sixty years/, Nick.” She let out a hoarse laugh, moving to comb a shaky hand through her hair. “They took Shaun so that he could develop the synths. Something about pre-war DNA. Pure DNA. He…oh Jesus.”

Nick felt cold. He swallowed dryly, his eyes scanning over her. “Look at me.” He finally rumbled.

Nora turned her face even further away from him, unable to meet the old synth’s eyes.

“Nora, look at me.” He repeated. He hadn’t said her name in so long that it felt foreign on his lips. It was always /Doll/.

Finally, after a long moment, she looked over at him. Her lips quivered ever so slightly, and he quickly discovered that the reflection in her eyes were just the tears pooling in them. He felt whatever excuse he had for a heart soften at the sight, but held firm.

“That’s not your fault.”

“Nick, he’s my son!”

“Even so.” His voice didn’t waiver. “This wasn’t your choice. You weren’t given the chance to raise him. If you had been, this never would’ve happened. Do you know how I know that? Because when you first walked into that town of ours, you took one look at me and smiled. You ain’t the type of gal to judge someone just for the parts they’re made of. You’re the type to judge em based on how their parts /work/. You would’ve never helped the institute. If you had had the chance, I promise you, Shaun would’ve been the man that you want him to be.”

Nora was crying, now. He knew he’d said something wrong. Shit, what did he say? Was it the part of him being a synth? Or the fact that she couldn’t raise Shaun? Or maybe it was-

Warm arms encircled his waist, and the sound of sobs muffled by his trench coat filled the air. The sobs were so filled with anguish, that the occasional yell or frustration or pain was audible, and when they were, they bounced off nearby buildings. But not a single person on the streets of goodneihbor stopped to watch the Sole Survivor break down. He sunk down next to her on the cold cement, the chill of the night ruffling them as he pulled her into him, smoothing down her hair.

Nora was broken. Her quest to rescue her son had failed. However, when dawn rose over the crumbling streets, sunlight glinted across the broken windows, and Nora’s screams stopped. She looked up at him, at that old Synth, as broken as they come.