To Survive

As long as I’m alive, I won’t ever know true comfort. For as long as I remember, I’ve always felt on alert, always searching for something trying to hurt me. Whether sharpening sticks or sleeping for no more than thirty minutes, I can’t let my guard down. I won’t let nothing get me.

Wait. Shush. I hear something.

With the sound of a mouse, she grabbed her bow and an arrow. She knew closing her eyes helped her hear better, but she wouldn’t dare go blind. With a rustle of leaves, she froze. Her breathing grew shallow, as if she was hiding in a closet when an intruder breaks into the house. Behind her three barricades of logs and net traps and spears, she would never feel safe.

“Hello?” A voice called out.

A dumb one. I can take them down. 

“Hello?” They called out again.

Shit. They’re gonna get us both killed.

She eased to the edge of her camp, ready to pop up and kill the threat. Once the voice said hello for a third time, she knew she had to take them out. While covered, she lined her arrow up with the bow. One could only hear the friction along the wood if they were searching for it. Equipped and weaponized, she breathed in and out and then popped up, but she didn’t see a target. With her arrow drawn, she scanned the forest. Nothing, so she popped back down, her breathing speeding up.

Am I hearing things?

“Please don’t shoot,” The voice stuttered. She listened with an alertness unique to powerful people. She had the upper hand but a lot more to protect. Her fort, her food, her solitude. The last thing she’d do was respond. “I’m not a fighter,” they continued. “I won’t hurt you. I just need help,” they cried.

Help? What’s help? I’ve been still for too long.

She crawled to another corner of her fortress, popped up, and scanned.

“Don’t shoot!” The voice now had a face, open arms, and hands in the air. The easiest target for a straight shot to the heart. But after years of cultivating and defending her livelihood, she couldn’t let the arrow go. She froze with the string taut. “Please don’t shoot,” the small thing cried.

“Sit,” she commanded with a hoarse voice, one that hadn’t been used for days. She cleared her throat. “Sit.”

The small thing sat, keeping their hands up.

“Hands down,” she said.

They followed orders again.

Just kill it already.

“Where are we?”

Even if she knew the answer to that question, she was never going to answer. Giving the enemy information would only hurt her, so she adjusted her grip on the string and stared them down. She hadn’t blinked for ten minutes.

“I’m Rona,” they said.

Rona? What does that mean?

“I don’t know how I got here,” they blabbered on, as she scanned the forest floor around them. How could she have been so reckless, letting this go on for so long?

“What’s your name?”

What are they going on about? What’s a name?

“Stop talking,” she said. Somehow, adding one person made this place so noisy. Aching for a return to peace, she queued into the wind and rustling leaves. What else could be lingering, shaking the timbre of her home?

“No one followed me,” they whispered, so she shot an arrow. It whizzed past, only a centimeter from their face.

“Stop talking,” she hissed through clenched teeth. When they started to cry, she felt something new inside her. An urge to get close. Not to kill. As she let her arms fall -- bow and arrow dismantled -- she checked in with herself. Why didn’t she kill them? What was she feeling? Was she broken?

Too distraught, she didn’t even notice the whirring above them.

“Excuse me. What is that?” They asked and pointed to the sky.

A bit peeved that they still didn’t follow her orders, she snapped out of her funk. “What?”

“What is that?”

She looked up and saw two people dressed in brown jump out of a floating machine with a spinning top, moving too fast to make out. She moved quick enough to shoot an arrow, but without accuracy. Next, she was surrounded by a fog that she would soon forget.

***

As long as I’m alive, I’ll never know true comfort. Wait. Shush. I hear something.

The scientists studied the transcription of her thoughts. Rather than scribble into notebooks, they stood still and observed. Their thoughts saved, available to download just like hers. They placed the target at the same place and time, as the sixty trials before. Despite the social beings’ tendency to assume individuality, they repeated behaviors. The same forest stage. The same subjects. The same reactions. Their director ordered them to collect 100 identical results before they could alter the study.

Although this experiment broke many ethical standards of the old world, the team members believed they were good people. They were sacrificing for science. In their eyes, the woman and child they rewired and subjected to severe stress every hour were not the heroes. Instead, the scientists were Most important. The ones equipped with the necessary knowledge and experience to observe, analyze, and communicate findings with the greater world.

They were out to prove human beings fearless, having programmed a woman to perceive all stimuli as harmful. Each day, they watched her live without relief. They watched from the comfort of their air-conditioned offices, while she was scared by the sound of a falling pine cone.

As they followed the same scene over the past few months, each scientist had ideas for how to alter the experiment. What if the girl arrived with a weapon in hand? What if the girl was a man? What if they wiped all of the women’s memories? Would she be able to function? None of them thought to stop. None of them thought to debrief the subjects and support them in leading productive, healthy lives on their new planet. The subjects were human, so all of the scientists believed they would be treated like so.