Wiped

Stars. I was on my back staring at the stars. A crushing confusion flooded me. The stars winked among the thick overhang of branches like strings of tiny white lights decorating a…decorating a…what? Something. I tried to lift my head but regretted it as a blinding pain forced my eyes to close against the twinkling lights. What had happened to me? I searched for the last thing I could remember and came up blank. I listened for any ambient noise, but the silence was absolute. When I squeezed one eye open, a squint to check the surroundings, I was able to make out some thick forest undergrowth through rising mist, but I dared not risk turning my head to see what else was around me. Trees but no sound of birds? Nothing? It made no sense to me.

I became aware of the cold and knew I needed to move. But go where? A vague recollection of trouble floated into my consciousness. This scrap of memory motivated me to move. As I pushed myself to my feet, an icy sweat and a wave of nausea washed over me. A scrap of paper fluttered off my lap to the ground. “Daughter - go northeast – sunset south fence” was all it said. Daughter. Was that me? No, that was the trouble. She was…what…trapped? No, in prison. I had come here to find my daughter, to get her out of jail. To break her out. Who had written the note? It didn’t look like my handwriting.

A cloying panic gnawed at my gut as I realized I couldn’t remember my daughter’s name. I could visualize her bright auburn curls; I knew her glowing smile, her crystalline blue eyes. I could hear her laugh. I remembered her strong-willed, tough streak; why couldn’t I remember her name? I must’ve experienced a head injury. It was the only explanation that made sense.

My heart pounded, the panic pressing against my chest and into my throat. I felt an inexplicable emptiness in my inner being, as if a faucet within me had been opened wide and everything that was me had poured out onto the ground. All I knew was I had to get to my daughter. I turned toward my best guess for northeast and set the fastest pace I could muster through the dense forest.

The early morning mist was burning off and the sun was inching above the horizon when I saw a towering fence made from metal columns bound with thick wire. I heard an ominous hum as I approached the fence. Beyond the fence were rows of tall, concrete buildings, stacked as far as my eyes could see. Up ahead, I saw what looked like a gate. Did I want to be seen? I couldn’t think of another option for getting through the gate other than trying to talk my way in, maybe as a visitor. But what mother would claim she came to visit her daughter and not know her daughter’s name?   I brushed dirt off my jacket and walked toward the gate, trying to exude confidence I didn’t feel. “Papers,” a disembodied voice growled. Did I have papers? I pawed through my jacket pockets, but I found none.

“I’m sorry, I seem to have misplaced…”

“Stay where you are.” The door of a booth opened, and a guard emerged, holding a pulse gun.

“Sir, I need your help. I have amnesia. I’ve suffered head trauma.”

“We don’t allow individuals without papers into the Zone,” he stated. “You might be an illegal.” I didn’t know what constituted an illegal, so I said nothing. “Come with me. I will bring you to my supervisor for scanning.”  He marched me at gunpoint into a long, squat building, where he took me to a room filled with equipment and sat me on a thick metal table.

Another door opened, and a grim woman in a white lab coat strode into the room. “Hello, I’m Dr. Ross.” Her voice sounded flat, almost mechanical. “I understand you may have a head injury? We will see.” She waved her hand over a set of controls, and the table slid into a cylindrical machine. The machine whirred, spinning around my body. Probes descended out of the cylinder to touch different points on my head. I didn’t have time to realize how terrified I was until the scan was completed.

“Your scan showed you have been treated, so how did you end up outside the Zone?”

“As I told the guard at the gate, I must’ve been in an accident and lost my memory due to head trauma. At least, I think that’s what happened. I woke up not far beyond the fence, but I don’t know where I was before that or what happened to me. I…came here looking for my daughter.”

“You have no evidence of brain injury. I can’t make sense of it. If you escaped from an internment camp, you wouldn’t be treated, and no one who has been treated wants to go into the Wilds and risk running into the remnant. I’ll use your imprint to compare to existing records. When we find your original information, we’ll see what that tells us.”

 “I know I was looking for a prison. Is this a prison?”

“No, this is the Zone. Perhaps you were looking for the internment camp where they put the remnants?”

“Remnants?”

“Holdouts from the Wilds who are waiting to be wiped.”

“Wiped?”

“Treated. You don’t remember the Cleansing? After the Infidel Wars?” I shook my head.  Dr. Ross sighed. “Everyone is mapped and wiped of beliefs contradictory to the knowledge. The insanity of the beliefs that caused the final war almost destroyed all life on this planet. So, the SP was established---”

“SP?”

“Social Protectorate – to stop irrationality from destroying humankind. The SP sets protocols of belief and conduct based on proven truth.”

I frowned, although I didn’t know why. “Everyone is wiped?”

“Of course. A few factions, the most deranged of all humanity, took to the Wilds. The SP has been conducting raids to capture the remnant ever since.”

“So, if my daughter is in the internment camp…?”

“She was captured in the Wilds and is clinically insane.”

I felt my urgency escalate. “I need to speak to her.”

“You cannot!” the doctor exclaimed. “No one is allowed to speak to the remnant until they have been wiped, to prevent recontamination. If she is being held here and has not yet been treated, she will be wiped tonight. You can see her tomorrow.”

“But then it will be too late!”

Her brow creased. “What do you mean?”

I searched my memory for why I believed it would be too late after the procedure. “I don’t even remember her name. Some things – important things – will be lost if I don’t rescue her.”

“Rescue?!”

“Yes, rescue. She won’t be herself after the wipe.”

 Dr. Ross drew back. “Now, you are being irrational. If I didn’t know better, I’d say you have not been wiped. Those kinds of beliefs led to the death of millions. You cannot mean what you’re saying. You would choose for your own daughter to remain criminally insane?” She turned and stalked away. “I am going to find your records.”

“Wait! I’m sorry!” What was wrong with me? I had burned the only bridge I had by revealing too much.

My eyes flitted around the tiny treatment room, my breaths coming in ragged gasps, my heart pounding in my throat. Recognition dawned that she had left me unguarded. I tiptoed from the room, down a darkened hall, and out a heavy metal door on the rear of the building. A tall hedge I thought would make good cover stood across the open field behind the hospital, so I bent down and scampered across the field. Beyond the growth, I could see a second fence encircling an open, dirt yard with a small barracks. Was this the internment camp? I hunkered deep in the hedge and waited.

As the sun sank behind the trees, the barracks door opened and four people emerged, one of them my daughter. A guard marched them toward a fenced walkway that led to a gate.

Without conscious thought, I picked up a large rock and crept through the hedge toward the gate. The four prisoners exited first, followed by the guard. I snuck up behind him and bashed him over the head, grabbed my daughter’s arm, and cried, “Run!”

“Mom! What---”

“Come on!” I screamed, dragging her in the only direction I knew, back toward the hospital. The five of us raced across the field, through the back door, and into a storage closet in the rear. “We have to wait here until sunset,” I whispered.

“What are you doing here?” My daughter enveloped me in a hug.

“Ssshhh. I came for you.”

Lights blazed and sirens screeched. I heard a commotion out front and brisk steps pounding up and down the halls. The prisoners held hands, their eyes closed and lips moving. When the outside noises died away, I asked my daughter, “What were you saying? I couldn’t hear you.”

She held me at arm’s length and studied my eyes. “Mom, what did you do?”

I didn’t understand, so I answered her other question. “I’m breaking you out. We need to get to the south fence.” I cracked the closet door, and, finding the hallway empty, we scurried toward the back exit.

When we rounded the last corner, we ran headlong into Dr. Ross. She started to cry out, so I clamped my hand over her mouth and whispered, “Please.” Her wild eyes darted across the group. “South fence?” She grunted with a vicious shake of her head.

“We only want the opportunity to live the way we choose, just like you,” my daughter said. “Why not leave us in peace?”

I took my hand from her mouth. “Please?”

 “What we do is for your own good.”

“According to whom?”

“Treatment is obviously for your good! How could you believe otherwise?”

“Because losing who you are is horrible.” I heaved a deep sigh as a tear trickled from the corner of my eye.

My daughter gaped at me. “You let yourself be wiped, didn’t you? To get into the Zone.” She glared at Dr. Ross and yanked her arm. “You’ll help us, or you’ll come with us. Then, you’ll know what it’s like to have no choice.”

“I’ll be punished if I help you escape.”

“Your fear of them should tell you something.”

We shoved Dr. Ross down the hallway, and when we reached the exit, Dr. Ross gestured toward a growth of trees. “South fence is beyond those trees.”

We waited for the searchlight to pass then ran in the direction she pointed. For one tense moment, we thought a group of people shuffling out of one of the nearby buildings saw us, but they seemed disinterested and kept going toward the main path. We made it to the woods, pushed our way through the dense underbrush, and plowed forward until we saw the massive electrified fence.

Suddenly, with an sizzling pop, the camp plunged into darkness. A vague memory surfaced of a plan to sabotage the electricity in the Zone. “We can breach the fence!”

We reached the fence to find a group of people cutting the thick wires. “Hurry!” They waved us over, and one by one, the prisoners climbed through the hole to freedom.

A voice called from behind us. “Take me with you!” It was Dr. Ross. “If I stay here now, they’ll…take everything away. All my memories. Everything.”

“Of course.” My daughter smiled and walked back to take her hand. “You’re most welcome.”

A sharp buzzing and whir cut the air, and the glow over the Zone returned and expanded like a billowing cloud. Alarms blared in the distance, shouts echoed off the buildings across the field, sirens whooped. Too late. We’re too late.

I heard a crashing among the trees. At the same time, flashlights blazed, cutting arcs through the branches, heading straight for us. The guards were coming. An icy terror crawled up my spine and froze my feet in place. I would forget my daughter again. I would forget what it was like to be free. I would forget everything.

The loud whomp of a pulse weapon firing shook the trees just to the right of my daughter, and several trunks split and snapped off, tumbling to the ground with a crash. A second whomp pierced the air. The blast struck Dr. Ross in the back, and her arms flew up as she collapsed face down onto the straw-covered ground.

I lifted my arms in surrender, walking toward the guard. “Don’t shoot!” As I hoped, he turned his flashlight beam onto me, so my shadow blocked his view of my daughter and Dr. Ross. I glanced back and hissed, “Run!” As the guard approached, I risked another quick glance, and saw my daughter pulling Dr. Ross from behind and dragging her toward the fence. She was almost there. Just then, a pulse from the woods whizzed over them. She dropped instinctively to the ground. Dr. Ross lay in a crumpled heap, with my daughter lying on top of her.

“Stay where you are!” a deep, male voice called out. He diverted his flashlight momentarily, checking the vicinity for more detainees. Another guard sprinted out of the tree line and headed directly for my daughter and Dr. Ross.

I waved my arms again, trying to command his undivided attention. “I surrender!” The approaching guard trained his light on me, and as he pointed his pulse weapon at me, I risked a final glance over my shoulder. Dr. Ross still lay in a heap where she fell. My daughter stood over Dr. Ross staring at me, her eyes glistening. “Go!” I yelled with all the authority I could muster. Someone from beyond the fence grabbed her and strong-armed her through the hole in the fence and across the grass to the tree line, while she screamed like a tortured prisoner.  

Relief flooded through me. I turned and smiled at my captor as he fired a pulse into my chest. Intense pain seared through me as everything faded to black.

Voices. Florescent lights flickering. Fading. Muffled voices. My chest felt like a grizzly bear was sitting on it, its claws extended.

“Hello.” A woman I had never seen before stood in the door of my hospital room. “I see you are awake. May I come in?”

I shrugged. When she entered, I noticed something odd about her gait. She shuffled more than walked.

“It seems you are recovering well.” I shrugged again. She tapped on the screen of a device she was holding. “Do you recall what happened?”

I realized I didn’t know who I was, where I was, or what had happened to me, so I shook my head.

“That’s fine.” The woman’s voice was as flat and lifeless as her stride. “What is the last thing you remember?”

My brain was engulfed in fog. Surreal images flitted through my brain, but every time I tried to capture one, it skittered away. “I…I don’t know.”

 “Not to worry. Perfectly normal. I am Dr. Ross, and I will be taking care of you during your recovery.”

“Recovery?”

“You have had a procedure. I am sorry to say you exhibited severe instability and aggression and required an intervention. Due to the nature of your – disorder – your brain had to be rewiped. Most unusual. You should be fine now. Nothing to worry about.” Her voice was dreamy, her eyes vacant.

A single word flickered on like a light with a short in its wiring. Daughter. I have a daughter. “Daughter?”

Dr. Ross punched the alarm button beside my bed. I jumped up and shoved the doctor against the wall. She stared blankly ahead and didn’t move to stop me, so I bolted out the door. Which way? Hurry. I raced down hallways, turning left and right until I found a large door I hoped would take me outside. When I pushed through, a whoosh of cool, night air bathed my face. Another phrase skipped through my mind: sunset south fence. Daughter sunset south fence. What did it mean? I crouched and scurried along the side of the building until I found a stand of trees, then made my way through them to a towering electrified fence. What was this place? A prison? Sunrise would tell me which way was south. I decided to hide among the trees until daylight, then I would follow the fence south to see if my daughter was waiting there for me. I looked to the stars as they shimmered in the night sky like a billion of those tiny lights decorating a…a…what? Something.