Stranger

The stranger sat under a gelfim tree, shielded from the patchy rain and harsh sunlight, enjoying a mixed berry shave ice. Outside the gelfim’s shade, rising heat from the baked ground evaporated the rainwater as fast as it hit, turning the park into a giant sauna.

Those brave souls that ventured into the chaotic summer weather didn’t spare more than a glance at the stranger. It was obvious she didn’t belong here, and they didn’t want to catch her attention. For some it was fear, but most simply had no desire to be begged for a few credits by yet another war veteran from another world.

The stranger watched those that ignored her. From a distance, they seemed almost normal. She found it amusing how many of them stopped at the small pushcart for a shave ice. Something that, like her, came from another world. Unlike her, though, it had been readily adopted and assimilated as local.

One of the locals crossed the park, headed straight for where the stranger sat under the gelfim. The local’s antennae twitched nervously on the sides of her face, her ear slits open wide. She kept her head on a swivel as she approached, watching for what the stranger couldn’t guess. With a four-digit hand, she held out a bottle of water for the stranger.

“It’s dangerous out here you know, and with this heat you need to stay hydrated.”

“Thank you,” the stranger said. She took the bottle in her sun-darkened, olive-brown hand, enjoying the cold of it. “You’re too kind.”

“It’s the least I could do,” she said. “I’m Brithelt. I work in the War Veterans’ Assistance Bureau, in the main square off the other side of the park. If there’s anything I can do to help, stop by.”

“Thanks again, Brithelt. I’d tell you my name, but I don’t know what it was, and I hate the name Jane Doe.”

Brithelt waggled her antennae in assent. “I hope to see you again soon, Stranger.” She left the area under the gelfim walking so fast as to almost be running, only slowing down once she had reached the area where the shave ice vendor sat under an umbrella.

The stranger picked up her arm where it lay next to her and reattached it to the stump below her left shoulder. After flexing the robotic hand a couple times, she picked up her leg and attached it to the stump above where her left knee used to be.

She stood and picked up her heavy pack, slinging it over her shoulder. She’d have to find somewhere to sleep, and she hoped she could find something with air conditioning. Despite the technical nature of her arm, her prosthetic leg was basic, resulting in a rolling gait as she was forced to raise that hip to get the foot to clear the ground.

 The main square was busy for how miserable the weather was, but her destination was beyond that. She walked toward the industrial area. Cheaper accommodations could be found in the dirtier, noisier parts of cities. That was the same everywhere.

The stranger finally found a small boarding house behind a factory. She decided the cool, dry air in the room made up for the noise of the non-stop machines a scant fifty meters away that made, in all likelihood, more machines. The boarding house also didn’t require identification, accepted paper credits, and the room included an ensuite washroom.

She looked at herself in the dingy mirror of the washroom. Her close-cropped, light brown hair was sun-bleached to a straw blonde, her dark brown eyes looked black in the dim light of the room, and the scar that crossed from the bridge of her narrow nose across her left cheek, ending at her jaw stood out in sun-burned pink.

She took off her shirt, washed it in the sink, wrung it out, and hung it on the mirror to dry. She followed up by removing her leg and washing the sweat-soaked, padded sock and liner she wore under her prosthetic leg. After that, she did the same for the sock and liner for her arm.

The stranger filled the shallow tub with tepid water and climbed in. She scrubbed with soap and a rag, turning the water brown, then drained and refilled the tub to rinse as much of the residue off as she could.

She patted herself dry with a towel, grabbed her arm and leg, and hopped out to the room. She put the prosthetics where they got plenty of direct air from the vents, then lay on the hard bed to cool herself and drifted off to sleep.

The morning dawned heavily overcast with scattered showers, though the temperature remained high all through the night. The stranger walked out of the boarding house into a wall of damp heat.

She returned to the main square of the city and began searching for an address she had in her obsolete comm device. Spotting the address, she put the comm away and crossed the square to an office building. The doors opened with a blast of cool air and she walked in.

“Dr. Agellia?” she asked the receptionist.

“Take the lift to seven, his office is second to the right.”

The stranger nodded and took the elevator to the designated floor. She stopped just outside the elevator and set her pack on the floor. From her pack, she carefully unwrapped a small device. It was a box connected by wires to a metal halo. She pulled out two cylinders and screwed them into the halo.

Device in hand, she walked into the doctor’s office, under the sign that said, “Memory Treatments.”

She didn’t recognize him from anywhere other than the pictures she’d managed to find, but she saw his shocked recognition. His antennae twitched for a moment until he managed to get himself under control.

“I see you remember me,” she said. “Must be nice, I don’t remember you at all.”

“Where did you get that?” he asked, looking at the device she carried.

“Not your concern.” The stranger set the device on his desk. “This is the same thing you used on me, right?”

She leaned on the desk. “Don’t bother with an answer, I can see I’m right.”

“I didn’t want to do it,” he said, “because I knew it was a risk. You’d just been blown up in a covert op, for all the gods’ sake, but they made me.”

“They made you?” The stranger pulled out her comm device and played an audio recording. In it, Dr. Agellia could be heard saying, “We don’t know. We haven’t tried it on a human. Let’s test it on the Jane Doe. This could be valuable data. It’s not like she’s going to live much longer anyway. I’ll start small and erase just the mission.”

Agellia’s antennae flattened against his face, his ear slits opened wide. “But you’re here, so some memory must’ve come back.”

“No, doctor, it didn’t.” She pointed at the halo. “Put it on.”

“Now—now, this is not—this is a bad idea….”

“I said PUT IT ON!” She slammed her robotic hand on the desk, causing him to jump.

He sat frozen. The stranger picked up the halo and put it on his head. She flipped a switch on the device it was attached to and turned the dial all the way up.

“Can you fix my brain?” she asked.

“Wha—what?”

“My brain,” she said, pointing at her head. “Can you fix it? Can you get my memories back? I don’t even know my own goddamned name!”

“I can’t.”

“Can’t or won’t?” she asked.

“It’s not something I can do,” he said, his entire body trembling.

“It’s your choice. You either fix my brain, or I turn this on and those needles go into your brain, and I see how much of you I can erase.”

“But I—”

“Can it be done?!” She slammed her hand on the desk again for emphasis, making him jump once more.

“Theoretically, but I don’t know—”

“Good enough,” she said. She typed something into the device and turned the dial down. “I won’t erase your education. Just the last — say — six years. Everything that happened since just before you mangled my brain.”

“No, please! You’re being rash. Think this through!” he pleaded.

“I’ve been thinking this through for six years. Ever since I woke from a coma up in a military hospital ship, missing an arm and a leg, and filled with enough shrapnel to give a scrapyard operator a hard-on.”

She sighed. “Between surgeries, I had to learn all over how to talk, read, write, walk — with only one leg, mind you — and even tie my shoes one-handed. You. Took. My. Life.

“The only clues I had were that my DNA and prints were tied to a completely redacted military identity, and this recording on a burner comm. If anything, I’ve been patient.” She flipped the switch that sent the needles deep into his brain and started up the machine.

“I’ll see you when you wake up, stranger.”