The Girl Who Chases the Wind
Chapter 17: The Line Between the Past and the Future
I tried to beckon her to share her reasons without explicitly asking, but she remained mum. Something to remember for later. In the meanwhile, the server returned with glasses of water and an expectant look with her touchpad in one hand. I ordered some onion appetizers to placate her.
Though Greenie had given me the sort of answers that really meant “leave it at that”, I had the sort of mind which wasn’t satisfied with that. I noted, “Lily seems to like being a….girl…more than you.”
Quickly, Greenie ruffled like a disturbed bird before saying, “I’m not really. I just appear this way, but I’m more of a dummy or a doll in the shape of a girl.” She kept her voice to a whisper despite the fact our booth was a behemoth of wood and leather and no one sat in direct view of us.
I smirked. “Well, you’re more like a fussy, adorable tomboy of an anime girl than any regular girl…which is kind of a doll in some ways. I half envy you that you don’t have biology to worry about. Although I’d choose a different form myself.”
I didn’t profess to be any kind of expert in anime, unlike those I knew for random pop culture articles and leading back to my college years when a relative abundance of free time. free-floating net energy, and the right group of roommates led to my crash course in the genre.
I loved the "reverse traps" but most of it passed by as a different tone of white noise. I didn’t even think of it when I first met Greenie, but anime girls also ran the gamut of strange colors of hair. And Lily and Greenie’s eyes were slightly above average in size. Both anime typical traits. I knew the color of her hair linked back to Aura, but the eyes were there too. That someone at the ranch was a secret fan of anime also crossed my mind. Something else to keep in mind for future questions.
To my statement, I noticed Greenie reeled with each choice word. She frowned at ‘fussy’, virtually blanched at ‘adorable’, and looked simply annoyed with ‘tomboy’. She reacted only a little to the anime part, noting, “Never really into foreign cartoons but, in my past life, I was a head taller than Feldon. I had thick hair, even in my later years, and a prominent nose. And I was happy with it all.”
Which left the inevitable gap of why an old man who was happy with his body would change so much just to resurrect some fragment of his granddaughter. If that was truly the whole reason for why she had the body she did. Perhaps throw in her appreciation of women. Maybe gender curiosity to experience what those she was closest to live through. It made sense in a way that felt like a delicate paper construction that wouldn’t hold up in the wind of any argument.
I had to leave it there as our server returned and this time we couldn’t put off our order any longer. I got a chopped steak and Greenie selected the cayenne pepper and mango salmon. I raised an eyebrow but didn’t say anything. Sounded almost like a Lily order, if she ever ordered anything but cake.
Returning to her last words as we picked at our appetizer and the server scampered off, I asked, “Are you happy now?”
She crunched on a few onions. Her vast eyes flicked across to mine, as she noted, “You should know the answer to that after all you’ve heard and seen.”
I settled back. “Yeah, I could make a reliable guess. But I’ve still only just met you, relatively speaking.”
Greenie sighed as the server returned with a basket of hard toast with melted cheese. We each took a little. She fussed after sipping her water. “I probably tolerate being seen as a girl more than others. But I’m not one. Inside, I’m an old man who lived a long time that way. I did tell myself at first I would see and feel some new things. But happy?…The line of the past has been drawn with shades of gray and no change can bring the color back. Just sharpened shades of gray.”
I frowned and immediately thought of Edgar with his colorful, shifting, and animated vistas. Then I pondered what he’d said to me in both clear and cryptic form. I inquired about whether Greenie ever visited Edgar.
She raised an eyebrow, before shrugging and admitting, “Yeah. We talk. I watch what his brain can come up with…because we both have Memetic inside our heads, I can share things with him and see them visualized.”
I relayed that I’d seen (perhaps) Aura in one of those visuals. Greenie’s eyes narrowed wistfully. She reflected, “I know. Sometimes it’s like old video clips on a screen, seeing them played back. Seeing her live again.”
I raised a finger slightly as I noted, “Aren’t you that as well? You’re much like her.”
Dismissively, she gave a shake of her head. “Just a little bit. The part of her shared with me. The part of her I remember. That doesn’t even need a synthetic body. Really, I fulfilled her dream some time ago. I ran everywhere. I even joined a triathlon, but I had to drop out...for obvious reasons. It was good though….but it was for me. I could look in a reflection and feel like Aura was doing all the things she ever wanted to do. But it’s a lie.” She hunched down against the table and sipped her water.
I folded my arms. “Why not do it for yourself then….without guilt? Aren’t you allowed?”
She glared across at me. “I don’t deserve it. I should’ve died back then. I should’ve died long before…with Liz.”
I didn’t mean to pound the table but my arms hitting it was louder than I expected. I leaned back and told her, “You deserve to live. For decades you’ve been…oppressed by the loss of so many people you love. You got to enjoy Aura’s ambitious joys despite her brief, brilliant life. But you act like you’re the closing of a book. You run a lap for Aura… happy ending. Blah blah. That’s nonsense. That’s selfish. You’re full of possibilities. You’re alive. Heck, you could go to high school as a transfer student and see how things have changed.”
That already sounded like a book concept or something. Greenie’s reaction sat somewhere between skepticism and revulsion, with an emphasis on the latter. I wasn’t so far away from high school that I had any golden notions of it. It sucked, especially with the kind of person I was. I withdrew that idea but pressed onward, “There are so many possibilities open to you. Your life could become anything. You’re special. I don’t get all the particulars, but I know enough to wish I could be in your shoes.”
The narrative has been taken without permission. Report any sightings.
Her gazed sharpened as she refuted, “You don’t want that. Not for a moment. You act like it’s becoming a teen again…it’s just appearances. I’m still that old man, I told you. Just the cover changes. Less pain, no health problems. But I’m a doll sealed away in the same state. I don’t change. I’m set. I’m a bookmark on a page, stuck there. I’d rather finish it. But I have a duty to Feldon’s research and…depending on how things go, I don’t want to leave you sad...and I kinda need to make up for being an ass... these past days.” She looked away with a cough.
I reached across the table to touch her as I said, “If not for all that, then I would never have been so intrigued. Good conflict in an article. A feisty young lady framing the scenes I can write about.”
She looked embarrassed, buckling especially at “young lady”. I could see the article, even though I now had no reason to consider it. I’d try to get a photograph of Greenie. I’d call her by that nickname too. I’d paint her scenes with a lot of little details. I might have to fudge about her sweat and other inhuman aspects. I didn’t like to brush aside the full truth in my writing…which is really why I didn’t even want to write it. But I could make some excuse, perhaps channel the 'me' who was still stuck at the end of day one with so many questions and a grin about tracking down the answers.
It was simpler then. But it’s always simpler before I finish an article. Learning more always has a way of complicating what I might write. I was glad to be sitting across from Greenie though, about to share a meal. What came next could wait.
Our plates arrived soon after with some lovely little condiments on the side. As was always the case, my steak went far too quickly, cooked through only enough that the layer underneath was soft and red. Greenie manipulated her fork a little, making me wonder how often she really ate. I asked, “Bad fork?”
She shook her head and noted, “I knew how to hold a fork in my own hand, for a long time. I took pride that I could still use one by myself, even at my age. But this is no longer my hand. Adapting is a challenge.” I could only imagine.
Before long, Greenie was comfortably holding the fork. She dropped bits of food from time to time but no more than I did myself. We didn’t get a dessert. Greenie asked for the time and I checked my phone. She gave a little expression of concern.
“Need to get back?” I asked.
She rubbed her cheek and explained, “I should be okay. I just don’t usually go out this long without any technicians, nurses, or others around. I tend to take naps after meals…”
I raised an eyebrow and said, “But you’re going to be okay, right?”
She gave me an uncertain look. I took that to mean I should pay as soon as possible. We nearly made it out the door, but I stopped to use the restroom and Greenie was slouching on a waiting area couch and snoozing.
A busboy was willing to carry her back to the car. He asked enough questions about her age and other things that I wondered about his intentions. I gave a snicker when he asked if I was her dad. I deferred to, “Good friend.”
I was able to buckle her in and checked her breath. I didn’t feel any air on my hand even though she had an automatic, regular motion of breathing. Her chest went up slowly and her mouth hung open slightly with a little sound coming out. It was all for appearances, as if she was actually breathing. It was enough to fool the restaurant workers, so they didn’t send for EMS at least. I was a little concerned, but not so much as I might’ve been if Greenie just collapsed on me.
I worried about that, her fainting all of a sudden like she was a machine suddenly shut off. But she was in…sleep-mode, I guess. I was still a little concerned because I didn’t know if this was good or bad for her, but I wasn’t about to hack the car’s computer and break all traffic laws to get back to the ranch. I did set the trip to priority fastest route though.
It was a quiet trip with Greenie not rousing from her sleep. She implied that eating was energy-intensive. What did that leave her ‘battery’ at, if she had one? I also wondered if she dreamed or if it was like an anesthetic sleep where someone is conscious one moment and then in a blank patch of darkness the next. I tried not to dwell on that as evening slipped around us. We left the city and returned to the gas station marked expanse of the desert which had long forgotten the violent rainstorm, as though it had never happened.
I didn’t even remember when it had stopped. Maybe I was too absorbed with Greenie to notice. I felt bad still referring to her as Greenie but switching between Mari and Greenie just felt like something a sloppy article writer would do. Too confusing. Unless I had a good reason, Greenie was good enough for the time being.
It was roughly halfway between the restaurant and the ranch (and I could tell because of the illuminated GPS in the car) that I got a message on my phone. It was from the DNA lab. I stopped the car.
Since we were within the reach of the signal, I could send the file along to the government and get an answer if they weren’t doing server upgrades or anything. At least this part of the government was automated, and I didn’t need to speak to a person. I used the identity key which came from the lab along with my test as confirmation I was the person submitting the request and not just someone who knew my DNA. I still had a little doubt about a massive conspiracy and Feldon creating a fake file and all that other jazz. But there had to be a limit. I sent along my file and all the authorizations with the hope I was reaching out for truth and not more questions.
In the meanwhile, I paged over the DNA file. A lot of it was too complicated for me to understand. Even the summation was written in a language I’d need a specialist to parse. But there was one part, one place in the record which stood out like a glowing red light against a wall of blue. I looked at it and everything clicked.
I looked at that one patch and suddenly I understood what Feldon meant when he said my DNA would be distinctive enough, that it would be quickly evident who I was. It took several minutes to get confirmation of what I could already tell just by looking at the basic structure of my genes.
I was Rachel Feldon and I was intersexed.