The Woman

The woman opened her eyes. She lay across the metal floor, cool against her skin through the thin linen tunic and pants, vaguely soothing against her bruises. Laying on her side where they'd left her after the last interrogation, she couldn't stop staring at her hand: plump, blue flesh that reflected an ever slightly glowing aura against the silvery floor. She turned her fingers over, looking for any sign of the former brown pigment. Earlier today they had stood her in this same cell, put a hand on her chest and shoved the brown color of her skin and hair away like dust blown from an old shelf, something old and in disuse. It was just one of many surprises of the past few days.

"Not even human." She told herself in a whisper. Her voice was hoarse from screaming as much as from disuse. "Not dead. Not a good person... Not even a human being."

She shifted her eyes to the ceiling, just inches above her head. The cell was round with walls that could rotate between solid walls and open views to other rooms through something glass-like. The ceiling varied from transparent to solid and raised and fell from enabling her to stand and peer upward endlessly to barely being able to lift her head. If they were hoping to make her uncomfortable, it wouldn't work. Her world already felt impossibly small. The cramped space felt safe.

Today had been the worst of the week - she guessed at an approximate 7 to 9 days. She'd been pushed out of her skin, denied food for the third day straight, offered no pail for bathroom purposes - and for the first time since being arrested and denied her humanity, she didn't seem to need any of it. The hunger dulled, the urge to piss resolved all on its own. The delusion was falling apart. And it didn’t even make her feel crazy, just very disappointed, mourning her lost self. She felt she had known this was coming one day, even if that thought didn't make complete sense. Half of her mind was scared and lost and the other was, she feared, becoming exactly who they believed her to be.

A monster. They'd been right about her not being human, who could say if they were right about her criminal past. Someone who had done such terrible things that she deserved incarceration in a beautifully crafted tin can in the bottom layer basement of Military Providence Branch, ‘The Mine's’, the research-based penitentiary division of the largest military division of the middle continent.

She raised her hand to a tender place on her ribs - the 'mark'. She couldn’t see it for herself but understood it to be a tattoo made from special, 'psychic-metal' ink that allowed prisoners and employees of these military divisions to be tracked should they escape or defect. Even years after application, the mark sent out a psychic signal that one of the many tele-empaths on staff could detect. This woman should have been caught sooner; really, she'd been lucky. She wasn't sure how many years of freedom she'd stolen away. While she remembered her human life better than her criminal one, she still had a lot of uncertainties. She had, as it happened, been found in her grave.

"Hello," a voice said through the silvery wall. "Are you awake?"

She recognized the voice. It was the unnamed 'doctor' who had visited her twice now and kept her company. 'The good doctor' she secretly named him, for lack of any nice things to say about the other doctors that came in silently and poked and prodded.

"Yes." She answered.

The ceiling lifted; she cowered into a tight ball.

"Well, you've had a rough day".

"I'm not human." She blurted.

"No. You are most decidedly not."

"Is this a normal thing? Prisoners who forget their species?" She asked the voice. She heard the 'whoosh' sound of the cylinder switching sides to the translucent door. She crawled in a circle to face her visitor, who sat on the floor. He was a handsome man in a white doctor's coat with no name tag. She sighed. Her skin had been the same lovely color as his until today. Gods, what must her eyes look like, the ugly dark grey or black where the human whites should be? She didn't ask.

"It's not unheard of. Prisoners forgetting which species they are, I mean." He said from the other side of the glass.

"Really. Monnicks just wake up with human-colored skin all the time?"

"Hmm… I prefer the term 'gaia-leikan' or 'leikan' to refer to the other…your… sentient species. Monnick is a bit of a moniker. That's the point. It's meant to imply that they immorally mimic humans and animals instead of having their own unique form and thus a proper name is lacking and that's a touchy subject." He lectured before grinning kindly. "Sorry to be so serious about technicalities. Call them…call yourself… what you like."

"Okay. So do leikan generally just forget being leikan? Because until earlier today, I was completely sure I was human - I looked human. Then some frighteningly large, green beast of a leikan shoves his hand through my chest and all at once I've gone brown to blue. I'd only been alive… how long had I been alive?"

"Technicalities again… technically, you weren't dead. Though we tracked down the coroner that declared you dead. You died, medically, a year ago. Your body was interned and stayed in a 'resting state' until today. We got a signal from your mark earlier this week, hunted that signal down, and found you in a coffin today. That basically catches you up. You had your human skin on when we…

"I was wearing WHAT?"

”No, it's a figure of speech. That you wouldn't know, I suppose, not having been around gaia-leikan recently. Your 'skin' means your outward appearance. Right now, you're not using one, you're in your 'release' – a natural green or blue resting state. When you have a human…color… you are using, wearing, or ‘are in’ a human 'skin'. And that, oddly enough, is how we found you - just as they buried you. Medically dead, completely unconscious in a human skin. Weird to stay in a skin that long. But so you know, blue is considered much preferable to green among your species! There is a lot of 'blue' envy."

"You know what's even weirder than all that?" The woman said, finally daring the effort to sit up. "No one else has spoken a word to me except to give me directions or to interrogate me before hurting me. I don't even know my own name, I can't get any answers about the few things I do remember before my death - like having a husband and young children. Why are you so eager to give me all this information? And what's the repercussions to you sneaking in here in the middle of the night, hmm?"

"Who said anything about sneaking?", the good doctor chuckled.

"What's your name and rank, soldier? Where's your insignia – or a name tag? I don't mind the company, but I really don't want more trouble…"

"There's a small group of us, people and leikan, on the fringes of this situation that think the higher-ups are being too extreme with you. That maybe you aren't feigning your memory loss and that if the torture continues, you'll just crack. That is the final death for most leikan - a psychological break that the body can't withstand. Insanity will set in and take you and that will be it, your mind will go to pieces, rip you apart. It would be a real shame. Whatever you remember, now or later, you have done some incredible things - we'd really like to know how you did them and what else you can do."

She scoffed, let out a harsh laugh, but when he didn't let up, she took the bait and asked, drawing her knees under her chin to get more comfortable. "Like what?"

"Um… Like everything about your body?? You're not human, but unlike any other leikan any of us have ever encountered, you have fully formed organs that show up on typical medical scans, just like a human."

"What should they be doing?" she asked, a bit self-consciously.

"Most leikans, even ones that have gone so far as to fashion themselves, let’s say, a full digestive system, their organs don't show up under any sort of a medical scan. Their cells register as sort of a blank slate under radiation, ultrasound, etc, and their innards just register as generic mush. Even something as active as the heart. A heartbeat can be detected but no image results… then there's you. Your heart shows up like a person’s, perfect and healthy. But that coroner swears your heart stopped a year ago when they pronounced you dead. Was that intentional?"

The woman shrugged. "Intentional? No! What did I die of? Let me guess. I'm overweight and I'm 55, I remember that much. I had a heart attack didn't I?"

"Yes, you did. And while a leikan can have a heart attack, it should be a low level, temporary death, not a permanent, final one. In a final death your body would have disappeared completely. In a proper, low level death, your body should have dissipated, reformed, and you should have been-

"I understand how final and 'lesser' deaths work, I'd really rather not imagine myself having either if that's alright," she interrupted.

"THAT'S what bothers you? You know they're considering trying a reboot, so to speak? Shooting you in the head for a super quick death, seeing if that doesn't jumpstart your mind with a little more prior knowledge?"

"What's stopping them?" The woman asked.

"It’s a gamble. It could work - or cause you to reform somewhere wildly far away. It could be your final death - what’s the point of that? If you really don't remember anything then you've had what's considered a reincarnation and nothing is going to bring back those memories. It's just going to weaken your psyche. Ever seen a violent psychological final death? It can level cities. We don't want that.".

The woman felt nauseous. The tiny cell felt like her safest option and if she could, she'd have dropped the ceiling again on purpose and kept it low where no one else could get in. Just her and the silver rivets of the floor for company while she thought over the situation in front of her. A sudden observation from earlier that day came to mind.

"Can gaia-leika change gender with these really traumatizing deaths?" She asked.

The doctor laughed. "That's a big old can of worms. Some will tell you leikan technically don't have gender because they rarely have fully formed gametes, even externally but especially internally. They don't need them. Leikan form in natural settings, not through reproductive acts, so…

"Yes, leikan don’t have sex, I know that, but so far as appearances, could I have appeared man-ish in my criminal days, despite being a fat old woman in my…. 'human skin' and now in my release?" She said. "Keep it concise if you would."

"Yes, that's totally possible. What makes you ask?" He crossed his legs.

"Certain leikan officers keep calling me “he” or “him”. I’m not the most attractive, what with this blue gut, but I have ample breasts and a woman’s form and I’m often completely naked so I have a hunch that there’s previous knowledge at work. Some of these soldiers knew me as a criminal or even before… when I appeared more like a male.  Am I right?"

The doctor sat up and chuckled. "I do not know that off hand, it makes sense. But let's say I get that information, since you have asked specifically, I do not think it will cause any spiraling decline of your psyche to get some answers. Can I get you to do something in exchange?"

"What could I possibly do for you from in here?" She asked.

"Oh, from in here, you are in charge! This cell is your fortress! Your castle! In here, everything is about you! And the first thing I need you to do, that WE need you to do, is to stop taking the pills they give you."

"Isn't that just for pain and nausea?" She asked.

"Yes, but they also slow down your natural processes. You’re a leikan. Your body makes its own food, heals its own wounds, and takes care of things like nausea and pain. The longer you take pills, the longer it will take your body to fully recover. The better your body is functioning, the more useful you are for other things…anything other than being tortured for information you clearly aren’t going to remember. In fact, torture will be useless – you’ll heal almost immediately. Then, you’ll start looking like a good candidate for a soldier.”

"Me? A soldier?"

"Before you were a criminal, you were an employee here: a skilled, specialized researcher and soldier. You’ll have to find new strengths, but there is no other way out of this cell. Once you're incarcerated in The Mines, you become a test subject or an employee, that's how it is."

"You're kidding me, right??"

"That's the other thing you'll have to do on your own, which shouldn't be too terrible since you're stuck in here all day. Exercise and meditate. Get strong. It'll make the side effects of coming off the pills more bearable. And I'm serious, lots of us came to work here after serving time here first, myself included. Make yourself useable. You already have an inherently impressive body but since you don't remember how you made your body so unique, it's going to take more than that to be recruited. Start with becoming suitable for manual labor, go from there."

"If I do this, will you get me more information about myself?"

"I'm not going to be responsible for you having a mental break. It's a horrible way to die. But with self improvement may come mental revelations. I can work with those."

"Can I at least have my name??? Would that be so bad?"

"Restrictions for serious amnesia: No mirrors, pictures, names, nothing too identifying. You did this to yourself, whether you remember or not - you buried yourself in psychological layers and convinced yourself you were human. The human psyche is complicated enough but is pretty well understood. Trauma for the leikan mind… it's much more complicated and perilously flexible, a victim of it’s own design. You have to remember information on your own. The best way for that to happen is to get your body and mind healthy, find purpose, and get yourself into a world beyond this cell as soon as it's mentally safe for you to do so."

"How do I know you're even on my side? You could be a bored guard just messing with a prisoner's mind between shift changes." She shrieked.

"You want an assurance, some sort of collateral?" The good doctor posed. He chuckled, looked around. "I'll show you a secret," he leaned in. He blinked, and his eyes went from a normal human blue to the darkly colored grey where a human's would be white, the iris glowing green around the black pupil. He grinned and blinked his leikan eyes away in exchange for the human ones.

"You're not human either!" She said. Then with disgust, “Are you mimicking a real person??”

He nodded. "I know, it's despicable to feign being human, and especially to imitate someone's likeness, but I needed to borrow a particular officer's face to get access to you. Everything I've said is true and there's a lot of us out here on your side.”

"Couldn't you just invent someone to shapeshift into?"

"Yikes… we don't say 'shapeshift'… it's… transforming or 'taking the likeness' or imitating… shapeshifting is what naughty godlings do in myths and legends to trick humans out of their wives. Gross." He laughed.

Footsteps approached.

“Well, looks like someone was watching the cameras tonight. Promise me you’ll start ruling this place like the incredible leikan you are.” He stood up and turned his back towards her cell. “Promise…”

Three guards entered the room adjacent to the woman’s cell, shouted at the good doctor, and slapped him into wrist cuffs. His body lost its human skin color and went to a light green. He glanced over his shoulder.

“I…promise?” She said. A guard hit a panel to one side of the glass. The shell of her cell wheeled around and closed her off from the outside world.

“I promise!” She shouted.

The next morning, she was standing in the middle of her circle, arms folded behind her when the outer shell whirled around.

Outside her cell was a small group of white coated ‘doctors’. The one in front was a variation of her ‘good doctor’. This must have been the human the good doctor mimicked. The likeness was notable but could hardly be considered copying. Maybe the good doctor would be in less trouble than he’d predicted.

“Good morning,” the new doctor had none of the good doctor’s kindness in his voice. He was cold, austere. “I’m Captain Storm. You met my subordinate, Lieutenant White, last night. I apologize for his behavior – anything he discussed-"

“He had very little to say.” The Woman interrupted. Her castle, her command. “What will you be doing here today?”

He stared for a moment. “Blood work and a full-body exam.”

“Can I refuse?” She asked. The captain pressed against a panel that opened the glass-like wall between the two rooms.

“No.”

“Alright. Proceed!” she declared. To her delight, the Captain’s team instinctually inched forward before he glared at them. He watched her carefully as he gave permission for the team to enter.

Starting now, she took charge. This cell was hers – she promised.