Sophia was startled awake. She’d been having that awful dream again, the one where she was lying in bed, unable to move as she was gutted by a bodiless hand beneath the unfeeling stare of three blurry-faced strangers. Only this time some of the details had been different: one of the faces was Sybill, and the bodiless hand was no longer bodiless but attached to her sister’s wrist. Sybill’s eyes were dead as she gripped and unwound Sophia’s innards with cold, clinical precision.
Sophia put her hands over her eyes and tried to take deep breaths. It was raining outside. The drops fell in a sharp staccato against the windowpanes, and she could hear the wind moaning in the distance like a man in pain. She was shaking, and the sheets beneath her body were soaked with sweat. She could feel the cold traces of tears on her cheeks, and when she pulled her hands away from her face, they came away damp.
“Fuck,” she whispered.
She sat up, kicking the tangled blankets off her legs as she swung them over the side of the bed. She walked the length of her room a few times, growing antsier and more restless by the second. This space was too small. She needed to get out of here, away from the bed drenched in sweat and nightmares. She went over to the door and pulled it, expecting it to be locked but still feeling a rush of disappointment when she discovered it was. She bent down and pressed her eye to the keyhole, trying to surmise what sort of lock she was dealing with. Then she went over to her dresser and rummaged around in one of the drawers, feeling around for the sock that held her bobby pin.
Bobby pins were technically forbidden in this place; they were deemed a safety hazard and were one of the items that the residents weren’t allowed to stash in their rooms (along with pens and paper clips). However, Sophia had had one in her pocket the night she arrived at the Institute. She’d used it to pick the locks of empty motel rooms when she and Sybill needed lodging for the night and she had lacked the energy to manipulate someone into giving them a room.
Ah. There we go. Her fingers touched something hard and metallic. She eagerly pulled the pin out from the sock and hurried back over to the door, where she spent a few minutes concentrating on the lock. When it finally gave a gentle click, she felt a surge of triumph. Fastening the bobby pin firmly behind her ear, Sophia slowly opened her bedroom door and then slipped out into the hallway.
There was a time when she would have certainly become lost in this labyrinth of winding corridors and staircases. But she had been here for two months now, and even though she’d never walked around at night, her feet easily found their way through the dark and silent halls. She walked quickly at first, hastening to leave her room behind. When she had rounded a few corners, she finally slowed down.
This place was oddly peaceful at night. It was like the building let its guard down. The grand, impressive demeanor it put on during the day was dropped, and it was simply asleep like everyone else. She walked until the sweat cooled on her skin and dried on her clothes. Eventually she found herself standing in front of a blue door she had never seen before. In the middle of it was a round, thick pane of frosted glass. As she stood looking at the door curiously, she suddenly realized there was a noise coming from the other side of it. She scooted closer and pricked up her ears.
Someone was sobbing.
It was a ragged, gut-wrenching sound that she immediately recognized as a litany of grief, those wails of agony that tore the throat and made the body feel like it was breaking apart.
She’d had enough nocturnal wandering. Sophia turned and hurried away from the blue door, those awful sobs still echoing in her ears.
***
In what seemed like no time at all, the ripe colors of autumn melted away and winter arrived. Every morning the ground glittered with shards of frost, and the bitter winds tore like shrapnel through winter coats. The fireplaces in every Ward lobby roared all day long, and the staff went around delivering extra blankets to the residents’ rooms. On the first snow of the year, Sophia awoke to a room that felt like the inside of a refrigerator. She sat up, rubbing her arms to get some feeling back in the numb flabs of skin. Her teeth were chattering. The heating at the Institute seemed outdated and inefficient; the baseboards by the door were hot to the touch, but the ones near her bed felt like blocks of ice. She jumped out of her pajamas and into her clothes as quickly as possible, layering socks and underwear for good measure, and putting a long-sleeved shirt on under her usual green scrubs.
The dining hall wasn’t much better, although it had the advantage of having a lot of bodies gathered in one place, making it slightly warmer than the individual bedrooms.
“It’s always been shitty here in the winter,” Val said through a mouthful of bacon. “You won’t feel warm again until mid-April…if you’re lucky.”
“When was this place built?”
“I think the building itself is pretty old. It used to be a convent. Reynolds bought it and turned it into a freak sanctuary in…I wanna say the early 2000s? Maybe? Don’t quote me on that though.’’
“It was in 2002,” Jude said. Sophia jumped. He had appeared behind her with no warning. She watched in speechless confusion as he strolled around the table and sat next to Val. “You gonna be around in the lobby later, Val? I have your blanket.”
“Yeah, I should be. But you can keep that if you want. I have plenty in my room already.”
“No thanks. It was too heavy. Had some major swamp ass going on all night.”
“You’re a first-class act, Fitzpatrick. One day you’re going to make some girl very happy.”
“Aren’t you sweet?”
“I’m sorry, do you two know each other?” Sophia demanded.
They both stared at her like they’d just remembered she was there.
“You know Jude?” Val said, round-eyed with surprise.
“We’ve had a few fateful meetings,” Jude said, giving Sophia a grin that made her feel like she was the butt of some secret joke. “She sat on me once.”
“What?” Val said, laughing.
“Yeah, and it wasn’t in a sexy way either.”
“I didn’t see him because he was invisible,” Sophia snapped, feeling her ears grow hot. “It was his fault for pulling that bullshit wherever he goes.”
“What you call bullshit, I call perfecting an art form,” he said. “Besides, that was---Val, what the actual hell do you think you’re doing?”
“I thought you didn’t want it,” Val said, depositing the fistful of bacon she had taken from his plate onto her own.
“That’s an interesting theory, considering how I literally just sat down.”
“Right, and it was obvious from the beginning that bacon just wasn’t for you.”
“If you don’t give it back in five seconds, I swear to God I will throw a hissy.”
“How’s that different from any other morning?”
“You can have mine if you want,” Sophia said, pushing her breakfast tray towards him. She was eager to break up this oddly intimate exchange; it was making her feel like she was crashing a date.
“But that just allows Val to get away with her horrendous behavior.”
“I’ll take it then,” Val said, grinning and reaching out for Sophia’s plate.
Jude slapped her hand away and snatched the tray for himself. “I didn’t say I wouldn’t. I was just bemoaning that you haven’t learned any lesson. Why are you eating so much, anyway? Seeing lots of dead people these days?”
“It’s not them this time. I think it’s this new treatment. It makes me feel drained and hungry.”
“Wait, you’re on a new treatment?” Jude said sharply. “Since when?”
“A few weeks, I guess? Anyway, I’m taking some different medicine. It’s making me sleep a lot and I end up skipping meals.”
“How do they treat your power anyway, Val?” Sophia asked curiously. “Is it anything like the Mastery Sessions I have with Clara?”
“I’ve never had Mastery Sessions---at least not like you do. My power isn’t something that influences the external world, so it’s not considered dangerous. They classify it as…Jude, do you know what the category is again?”
“Class 4.”
“A what?” Sophia asked, but Val went on as if she hadn’t spoken:
“Mostly they just give me lots of therapy so I can adjust to my inevitable demise at the hands of the ghosts I try to devour. But in the last couple years, they started giving me medicine too. They said it was to increase…shit, I don’t remember the explanation. It makes me calmer when I’m grappling with a soul. That’s the gist of it. But I think it’s just anxiety meds.”
“Are these new drugs anxiety meds too?”
“Must be. But they sure knock me out.”
“I don’t like the sounds of this,” Jude said, scowling. “Drugs are their solution to everything around here. Just pop a pill, kids, says daddy doctor, fucking quacks…they’ll push whatever meds the corporations wanna fund… it’s not to actually help you or anything…”
“If you’re gonna launch into a Libertarian rant, I’m finishing my meal in my room.”
Sophia leaned her cheek on her hand as she watched the two of them. Her initial assumption was that they might be together, but the longer she watched, the more she doubted it. Their intimacy didn’t seem romantic. They spoke with the blunt frankness of siblings. When she excused herself from the table to go to her Mastery Session, they both waved wordlessly at her, not even bothering to pause in their squabbling.
***
“What’s going on?” Clara said coolly as Sophia pulled herself to her feet. “Why didn’t you take one?”
They’d been at it twenty minutes. Sophia had entered the mind of her latest subject three times.
“I don’t know,” she said through clenched teeth. “I can’t get a good grip on one, and I don’t wanna take a whole bunch again.”
“It’s better for you to take a lot than nothing at all.”
“How long do we have to spend on this?” Sophia said peevishly. “When am I going to learn the other stuff?”
“What other stuff?”
“What about the ins and outs of that projection thing I can do?”
“That’s what we’re doing right now, Sophia.”
“No, not entering the consciousness. The other thing, where I can make projections of people. And what about my ability to modify existing memories?”
There was a slight pause. Clara’s face was impassive as she traced her mouth with a long, pale finger.
“I didn’t know you had those skills. They weren’t in your file. Did you disclose them to Hazel or Doctor Reynolds?”
“I dunno. I can’t remember. Why? Is it weird that I can do those things?”
“No.” Clara’s cold, searching eyes traced Sophia face. “Just…unusual.” Her expression was impossible to read. Finally she said: “No matter. The fact remains that both of those techniques are dangerous for a Defective Telepath to even attempt. We certainly won’t be exploring them further.”
“But I thought---”
“Sophia, our mission at this facility is to teach our residents how to function while causing the least amount of harm to themselves and others. In the case of a normal Telepath, those powers might be worth exploring. But since your ability is dysfunctional, aggravating it would only put you at risk.”
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“How do you know that? Shouldn’t I at least try?”
“This isn’t open for debate. Now, if you don’t mind, I have a lot of work to do today. Let’s try this one more time.”
Sophia dropped the subject for the time being. But her curiosity had been re-ignited, and for several nights afterwards, she practiced in her quiet bedroom what she had learned all those months ago in “Mary’s” apartment: summoning transparent duplicates of everyone she could think of ---Hazel, Clara, Val, Larry, Jude. They all marched across her room in silent, shimmering triumph. She experimented with how much she could control them (she made Hazel do squats; Val twirled in place; Larry did some jumping jacks). However, while she had some say over their actions, she quickly realized that she couldn’t make them speak. The most they could manage was a soundless opening and closing of their mouths.
After mastering the hallucination trick (the only side effect was dizzy spells), Sophia began to think about her ability to manipulate memories. She had only ever used it to deceive. But what if she could use it to communicate? The idea excited her. After all, wasn’t communicating telepathically----well, Telepathy 101? Why shouldn’t she be able to do it? Defective my ass, Sophia thought. She’d show everyone what she was truly capable of.
She started playing around with it, sitting quietly in the Meadow Ward lobby during her free periods and selecting residents to “talk” to. She would project into their mind like she’d done with Xavier Coppula, only rather than scattering a false narrative, she just thought the words “look up,” again and again and again. She concentrated until she broke a sweat. But nobody she reached out to ever showed any signs of hearing her. It went on like that for weeks.
Until one day, it suddenly worked.
She had selected a young boy sitting in the window seat. He was reading a book. Sophia took a deep breath and flung herself into his mind, focusing intently, like she’d done countless times before.
Look up.
The boy yawned and lazily flipped a page. Sophia felt a surge of frustration.
LOOK UP, DIPSHIT!
The boy jumped like he’d been stuck with a pin; he looked wildly around the room. Sophia slumped in her seat to hide the grin spreading over her face. Her elation was cut short, however, by the prompt arrival of a dizzy spell. It was a particularly nasty one. She closed her eyes and took several deep breaths. It didn’t help. She felt like she was upside down. The contents of her stomach were climbing up her throat.
“Sophia? Honey?” Her eyes flew open. Hazel was leaning over her. “Are you okay?”
“Yeah,” Sophia said, trying her best not to puke as she wrenched her lips up into a painful smile.
Hazel placed a damp hand on Sophia’s forehead. “Goodness, you’re burning up. You get yourself to the infirmary, young lady. No buts!” she added sternly when Sophia started to protest. “You could be contagious. You don’t want to get any of your little friends sick, hm?”
“I think I’ll be okay if I just lie down here for a minute.”
“Now, honey, don’t make me use force,” Hazel said with a little laugh. “You want to go by yourself like a big girl, or do I need to have someone escort you?”
“Fine,” Sophia said, seething as she stood up. The room pitched; she staggered into the coffee table.
“Goodness! Jude? Jude! Come here, please. Will you help Sophia get to the infirmary?”
“Anything for you, Hazel.”
Sophia heard footsteps and the air stirred with an unfamiliar scent. She felt an arm wrap around her waist, supporting her as she took a few unsteady steps forward. She was resentful of the attention, but she felt too sick to push him away.
“Be careful!” Hazel sang. Her laugh followed them out the door and into the hallway. Sophia wished somebody would stuff a sock in that woman’s mouth and be done with it already.
“Jesus,” Jude said, panting somewhere above her head. “I feel like I’m carrying a wad of dough.”
“Do you charge for your opinions or is this a Monday morning special?” Sophia snarled, wincing as her head gave a painful throb.
“Well you’re clearly not THAT sick…wups. Hang on.”
He let go of her waist. Her vision was still spinning and she couldn’t see where he went; her head hurt so much she gritted her teeth to prevent herself from screaming. Then she felt him scoop her off her feet and, carrying her in his arms as if she weighed no more than a pillow, he continued down the hall. He felt shockingly cold; his chest radiated no heat, and the hands curled around her back were as cool as chilled water. She shivered.
“Yeah, sorry about that,” he said, giving her a gentle squeeze. “I couldn’t find a sun patch today.”
Her brain was struggling to slog through the meaning behind his words. The throbbing in her head made speaking difficult. Her lips seemed to move slowly and painfully.
“What were you doing in the Meadow lobby anyway?”
“Looking for Val. She wanders…what’s wrong?
“Slow down. I feel like I’m gonna puke.”
“I’d rather you didn’t. It took me forever to find scrubs that fit.”
“I’ll try to control the projectile,” she said sourly. “And what do you mean she wanders?”
“She forgets the way back to our floor sometimes. It’s been bad lately.”
They came to a halt. She heard him kick at an unseen door.
“Hubert! A little help!”
There was a scuttle of footsteps and Sophia felt herself being transferred to a cool soft bed that smelled faintly floral. She shut her eyes and took a few more deep breaths. The nausea was receding, but her head still felt like it was being nailed to a wall.
“It’s nice to see you again, Jude,” came a deep, unknown male voice from above her head. “Did you want to visit Simon while you’re here?”
“Aren’t visiting hours over?”
“Yeah, but go in if you feel like it. Nobody’s around. I’ll look after your friend---what did you say her name was?”
“Sophia. And thanks.”
Sophia heard his retreating footsteps. Unseen hands adjusted the pillow behind her head before moving to feel her forehead and then her pulse.
“What happened, Sophia?” said the man; she assumed it was “Hubert.”
“I got dizzy,” she mumbled.
“What’s your last name, hon?”
“Montgomery.”
“Okay. Just lay back and relax. I’ll be back in a jiff.”
She heard him move away, and she focused on breathing deeply until he returned.
“So I see from your file that you’re a Telepath,” he said. “It isn’t uncommon for people like you to experience dizzy spells or migraines when you use too much power. Overdo it in your Mastery Session, eh?”
“Yeah, that must be it,” Sophia said quickly. “My instructor has been driving me pretty hard.”
Hubert chuckled. “I’m not surprised. Doctor Vendra isn’t known for her gentle touch. The good news is that there’s nothing seriously wrong with you. You’ll just have to lie back and take deep breaths until the pain goes away. Usually doesn’t take long. I’ll be around, so call me if you need anything.”
“Okay. Thanks.”
She listened to him walk away. When the ache in her head had receded into a single, throbbing knot, Sophia finally felt well enough to open her eyes and sit up. She was in a spacious dome-shaped room filled with sunshine. Rows of beds fitted snugly with mint-colored sheets lined each side. There were three other occupants in the room: a sleeping girl whose skin was rippling like water; a teenage boy sitting up and staring vacantly at the wall; and a boy who had blue hair that appeared to be wiggling. It was like he had thousands of worms on his head.
Sophia swung her feet over the bed and hurried out of the infirmary, wincing as her temples throbbed. She didn’t bother to let Hubert or Jude know she was leaving.
***
“Ready?” Clara asked, standing with clipboard and pen in hand.
“I don’t know,” Sophia said nervously. It had been decided that she was going to “eat” this evening without Clara acting as the anchor this time. As much as she disliked the doctor, Sophia found herself feeling particularly vulnerable without the guarantee of her assistance.
“I’ll give you exactly two minutes to go in and get what you need,” Clara said. “If you aren’t back by then, I’ll come and find you. And I would be much obliged if you could do it in one go this time.”
“It’s not like I’m trying to fail.”
“You have certain scruples that are getting in the way of you mastering this technique.”
Sophia didn’t respond, but she felt the weight of the doctor’s words in her stomach. She was back in the room of the first person she had practiced on: the burned boy with red hair. She shut her eyes, took a few deep breaths, and plunged into his mind.
She found his signal after only a few seconds. Finding them wasn’t the issue at this point. It was the follow though. She hovered nervously, deliberating on which bubble to select from his thread; she finally settled on a cluster of what looked like early memories. She reached out for one, but the entire cluster instantly swarmed her. She couldn’t move away fast enough and a deluge of images engulfed her:
He was riding a bicycle, Jude jogging alongside with one arm out, making sure he didn’t fall off…
He was watching a classmate win the spelling bee while he sat in the front row, his heart bursting with jealousy and self-hatred...how could he not remember that ‘commitment’ had two m’s…
“Hey there, reprobate,” Jude said as he came out of school late one afternoon, slinking down the front steps in shame. “Wait ‘til Mom hears her baby got detention.”
“Oh God, Jude, please don’t tell her.”
“What happened?”
“Nothing,” he sulked.
“Really? Because I heard you gave the teacher’s lounge a makeover. Where did you even get spray paint, squirt?”
“It was Felix’s idea.”
“Felix? The kid who eats pencil shavings?”
“Look, I know it was dumb, okay? I won’t do it again.”
“I didn’t say THAT. Just do it smarter next time…”
He was in his room, his heart pounding… there was an odd smell of burnt clothing in his nostrils…
He stared at the singed racoon sprawling on the lawn, his anger gone as quickly as it had come. He looked down in speechless horror at the orange flames flickering from his fingertips…
Sophia extracted herself from the images with difficulty; she felt a few of them lodge onto her consciousness as she severed the connection. That would satiate her for a few hours. It was good enough. She couldn’t stay here any longer. She rocketed back over the ocean of signals until she found the opening into her own brain. There was a sharp sting in her knee. She opened her eyes, gasping. She was kneeling on all fours. Clara was gazing down at her with a skeptical expression on her face.
“You weren’t even in there a minute,” she said. “What happened?”
Sophia staggered to her feet, her mind racing for an acceptable answer.
“Nothing, I just—I got scared. I thought I’d been in there too long,” she said finally.
“That’s understandable. But you did very well, considering it was your first time going in alone.”
“Thanks,” Sophia said dully.
Clara dismissed her for the day. As Sophia trudged down the hall, an ominous feeling of guilt bore down on her once more. She had known from the start that she had no right to witness other people’s secret lives. But now she was spying on people she knew. Jude’s brother…
She went to bed that night with newfound determination. She had to figure out how to survive without devouring memories. She wouldn’t be able to live with herself if she continued to do this. Clara had mentioned that Defective Telepaths were rare, but it wasn’t like she was the first person to have this ability. Somebody must’ve tried another way at some point, right?
The next morning, Sophia found Larry in the dining hall and asked him to take her to the library. She knew the Institute had one, but she’d never had any reason to go there before.
“Sure,” he said. “It’s up a few floors. I’ll show you.”
She followed him up two flights of gleaming mahogany stairs and into a small hallway; it was so narrow she almost walked right by it. They stopped in front of a pair of frosted glass doors. Larry pushed them open and led her into an enormous, oval-shaped room. Her eyes were immediately drawn up to the skylight, a mosaic of stained glass which cast sprays of tiny rainbows over the floor. There was a curved front desk to her right, behind which sat an older man with a beard, and an array of desks and cubicles spread out across the floor. The library was at least three stories high; the upper floors were accessible via a series of winding staircases.
“Do you think you could get back by yourself, or did you want me to come and find you later?” Larry whispered.
“I think I’ll be okay,” she said. “Come looking if you don’t see me for 24 hours.”.”
“Sounds like a plan,” he said, smiling. He turned around and left.
Sophia located an empty cubicle with a computer that looked like it hadn’t seen a good day since 1998. As she sat down and fired it up, she wondered how she should go about this. What was she supposed to search for? “How not to suck out people’s brains in three easy steps?” After a few minutes of deliberation, she typed in a hodgepodge of keywords, including “telepathy,” “control,” and “memory selection.” Finally, she came across a promising article available through the library's archives. It was entitled Recollection Reparation: An Informational Pamphlet for Beginner Instructors. Her eyes dropped to the author byline: Evelyn Montgomery.
Her breath caught in her throat. For a moment her body was flattened by waves of grief and longing. After taking a few minutes to collect herself, Sophia clicked on the article. Her fingers trembled as she scrolled down the page. Her mother’s voice came alive, leaping out from the computer screen with a clarity that made Sophia’s heart ache:
Most Telepaths are capable of using their ability without sacrificing personal and communal well-being. However, this is not the case with all of them. In my line of work, these individuals are referred to as Defectives. However, I will not be using that term throughout this essay because I believe it to be stigmatizing. Those who manifest an ability which diverges from “the norm” do not necessarily suffer from behavioral problems, and I do not even believe that they are dangerous. Thus, I will simply refer to them here as “Variants.”
Telepathic Variants have a particularly agonizing struggle. It is not enough that they absorb memories from those whose minds are weakened and susceptible; they MUST commit this violation in order to survive. They have (they believe) no other choice. As they feast upon the countless memories of those around them, they are burdened with guilt and self-hatred.
I would like to propose an alternative path for these individuals. It seems to me that a good solution to this burden would be for the Variant Telepath to perfect the art of recollection reparation--a method that has fallen into obscurity as of late, but which I believe deserves to resurface as a valid form of treatment.
Many Variant Telepaths report seeing “cracks” on the memories they are attempting to absorb, especially when such memories belong to individuals who are either in a comatose state, or else in a state of mental dissociation (see Fishmore et al., 2009, and Markes and Burns, 2000, pg. 49). However, it has been well-documented that during such sessions, the Variant obtained just as much satiation from learning to close this “crack” as he or she might have gained from absorbing the memory in its entirety. The conclusion, at least as I understand it, is that a Variant does not need to steal a memory to survive; they only need to fix ones the ones that are damaged. Recollection reparation can be achieved through the following steps:
1. Selective Digestion: This is the process of targeting specific areas of consciousness. When a Variant begins the process of memory selection, they will be shown how to do this via projection. If they have not yet mastered projection, instructors should refer to Fishmore before proceeding any further (pgs-17-19).
2. Sealing: Once the Variant has mastered the art of Selective Digestion, they will be able to choose a “cracked” memory to repair. They may then proceed with Sealing. This involves intense concentration. It is crucial that they do not attempt this without proper supervision.
3. Recementing: Once they have Sealed the memory, the Variant may place it back within the subject’s consciousness before exiting the Collective Cosmos (for a detailed explanation of this theory, please refer to Thomas and Matthew, 2011). Once they return to the physical plane, they may experience nausea or headaches. Such pain is not uncommon. With time and practice, it should recede.
Recollection reparation will not be easy for Variants, but it is crucial to reinforce their progression with affirmation and constant encouragement. It should be communicated to them that they are blessed; they have been given a gift: the ability to help the mentally distressed. They are special within our community. Mastery of their gift may be a difficult journey---but it is not an impossible one.
Sophia stared at the words on the screen until they blurred. Her heart was racing. She had never heard anyone at this facility mention “recollection reparation.” She thought about the way Clara and Reynolds had described her ability. Defective. Flawed. Something to be hidden away.
Her mother’s narrative had been quite different.