RENEE

© 1996 George Jenner (Luxembourg)

Print this one out? Approx 12 pages of A4 text

Dr Mann was staring at her, concentrating, the trace of a smile on his lips. And she in lay in the hospital bed staring at the boring ceiling.

Though her face drooped in lines of an untreated sixty year old, I still recognised it as the face of the girl I had played with when we were both twelve, fifty years ago. A few weeks in a childhood summer flushed my face with their boisterous memories.

"It is an incredible opportunity." The voice of Dr Mann
crashed my reverie, reminding me of the painful circumstances of my reunion with Renee.

"For you or for Renee?" I asked.

"For us both." He detected my cynicism, my disdain of
medicine, and added, "Look, I know I get carried away with technical details sometimes. I find them interesting and I am enthusiastic. Nevertheless I honestly do consider the patient's well being first.

You have to in these litigious times. And I know you brought her here, but legally she is a ward of the state. If no one can find a close relative of Renee, I am allowed - obliged even - to take the decision myself. And my decision is to go ahead with the operation."
"Then will you let me help?"
"Of course. You will be invaluable since you know something of her childhood. That will make building the interface immeasurably easier and more likely to succeed"

"You speak as if there is a chance of failure."
"A small chance, but only of the overall experiment. It should not be detrimental to Renee in any way."
"Detrimental? You have a comforting bedside manner, Doctor."

It could have been me in the hospital bed. It was in 1990 when as children Renee and I played together in a jungle town in Africa; where we both contracted viral encephalitis - sleeping sickness.

I got sick on the plane on the way home, and my western world could diagnose and treat it. When I recovered I told them about Renee.

But even though they tried, if only half-heartedly, to find her or her parents, she had moved on. They were urban nomads, wandering in search of work. But her face, her smile, stayed in my mind: hardwired.

Fifty years later, grown, educated, encumbered, delivered and retired, I went travelling. On a whim I visited that town of my childhood, and there she was, sitting in the grounds of a mental hospital. I would have walked straight past had a nurse not cried, "can you bring Renee in," to a colleague. I recognised her name first, my attention attracted by its call, and heightened now by being in the place of my memories. I went in and they told me she had been there for as long as anyone could remember.

And being years after encephalitis was eradicated they just assumed the initial diagnosis - looney. When I asked if it was possible that she had just been asleep for fifty years they shrugged. It was difficult to feel for a patient who has no personality at all, who just stares and eats, who has to be cleaned up every time she shits.
They were glad to let me take her home.

Dr Mann looked at his watch once more and said, testily, "where is he?"

It was the first meeting of the "design team". There was also a genetic manipulation team, but they were just the technicians who would build what we designed, and they were not needed here. Apart from Dr Mann and myself there was as yet only one other - Dr French.

Introduced, she nodded to me sagely, said nothing. I never knew her as anything but "Dr French". I thought she guarded formality in her work to keep away the nebulising effect of emotions.

But it was another game for her - to watch my reaction to her pretension. Dr Mann tutted. He liked tutting. He looked distracted for a moment, presumably listening to his pearl earring famulus - the intellectuals had found a word for their personal digital assistants.

He tutted again and headed without explanation to the door, opening it to allow a young scruffy man to enter. Stupidly skinny, but somehow twinkling. He looked at us and laughed, then said, "sorry I'm late. Bomb scare on the train."

Public transport - he must be the author. And as quickly as I thought he thrust his hand at me and said, "Hugo Hugo, creative genius at your service."

I raised an eyebrow. "I know the double name doesn't sound creative. I only wanted one pen name - 'Hugo'," he said with a flourish, "- but my agent's software requires two. Computers are a little stupid if you ask me."

"We didn't," said Dr Mann, gruffly, pushing him into a chair without proper introductions, and quickly moving to describe the project. "We have a sixty two year old woman with viral encephalitis. As far as we can tell she has exhibited symptoms for fifty years. That means she has in effect slept through the fifty years in which her body changed from that of a twelve year old girl into that of an old woman."

"Wow that's weird," said Hugo. "Can't you cure her?"
"Of course we can cure her," snapped Dr Mann. "She could be awake and living tomorrow if we wanted. But consider the trauma involved when the patient wakes to discover that she has missed her entire life."

"I've studied many such cases - mostly historical of course," said Dr French. "It's very trying for all concerned. My Epaper on it has been cited - let me see..." she leaned over and pulled a budgerigar out of the pocket of her tweed jacket laid carefully across the back of the chair.
"Put me down," said the parrot.
"Sh. Honey, I want to know how many times my Epaper on encephalitis has been cited."
"Talking to me now are you? Now that you want something."
"Just tell me."
The parrot said, "239 - wait. 240 - another one just came in. Is Hugo Hugo here yet?"
"I'm here," said Hugo. A little surprised.
"We like your books. Frenchy crosses her legs when she reads them. Means she's masturbating."
"Quiet, Honey," said Dr French, unembarrassed, expressionless.
Dr Mann, testy as usual, said "Dr French if you will keep your famulus under control I'd like to continue with the meeting."
Dr French swept up the parrot and placed it in front of her. "I'll leave it recording, shall I?"
"Yes please. It can be our independent record in case of
disputes with the bioethics committee."
"Bioethics?" asked Hugo.

"Yes. They're all in that little box," he said, indicating a
small black box in the centre of the table. "It makes a hard record of everything we say and do, as well as communicating constantly with the bioethics central legislation council. Now what we are going to do for the patient ..."
"Call her Renee, for God's sake," I said.
"... for Renee, then, is give her a life."

"One more time?" asked Hugo.
"You heard me, I think. You, Hugo, in consultation with me and particularly Dr French .."
"And me!" I said.
"... are going to write Renee's life. Then it will be recorded into a computer, and then I will put that computer into Renee's head."

"A computer chip?" asked Hugo, stunned at the suavity.
"Not even remotely chippy," said Dr Mann. "It will be a DNA computer. It is similar in principle to a computer on a chip, but instead of coding in silicon we code in the four bases that make up DNA. We take a cell from the patient, then in the huge areas of junk DNA that aren't used, we write all the information necessary for her to remember her life."
"In one cell?"

"There is plenty of room in one cell. And being her own it
will not be rejected by the body. Moreover, the interface between the computer and the brain will also be grown from the patient's own cells. The whole thing will be about the size of a pea - most of it taken up by the interfacing nerves."

Dr Mann was quivering, almost slavering in excitement.
"The technology is ready, Hugo. Renee has missed most of her life, but her body is healthy and she can be active for at least 30 more years which is about the average lifespan in the society she came from. All we need is the story of her life, her history, the basis of her future."

That afternoon Dr French, Hugo and I sat around the table, wondering how to begin. We were fidgeting. I could see that Dr French would be awkward if she did not have control. I was prepared for that, seeing the formality with which she carried herself.

Perhaps it would introduce some structure into this lunacy. Her face was carefully sculpted, showing a fashionable indeterminate age. So carefully was her appearance and demeanour managed that it reeked of control school techniques - those prosaic palaces that pump out the managers of our times.

I would have dismissed her for that if not for the sense of humour she displayed by carrying that prurient parrot, the sentient budgerigar that Hugo and I were watching as it tried to mount the bioethics monitor. Hugo shook his scruffy head and giggled.

Dr French asked me to begin.

I said, "there's not much I can tell you really. I played with
her for a few weeks one summer. She spoke English with her parents. They were virtually homeless, or living in a shanty town. What can I tell you - we were children."

"That's not really very much to start with," she said. "The
hospital records?"

"Useless." Hugo said, "so we can virtually make her what we want? We could make someone who has had a perfect life. A life of luxury without heart break, without poverty, without rancour or war, without religion or guilt."

"Not even close," said Dr French. "She's going to wake up in a hospital bed. We first have to explain what she's doing there - a minor operation for example. But think what it means to have no history at all - no bank account, no driving licence, no acquaintances. We have to think of everything. And if we make her remember meeting someone that actually exists - like us for example, we have to train them into her history. And it's not just the broad canvas, either.

We forget many things, of course, but there are curious details we remember - the splinters in a particular park bench, the tile pattern of a bathroom floor, the exact position of the holes in father's slippers. A credible memory is one that no one would want."

"Full of rubbish," said Hugo.
"Full of treasures and tragedies," I countered.
Suddenly the bioethics monitor said, "attention! There is
something blocking my microphone aperture." The parrot had managed to climb onto the box and was humping it. Dr French swept it away.

I asked her where she got such a sex-obsessed famulus. "It was a present. A friend programmed it - a kind of experimental model suitable for a behaviourial psychologist."

"Rubbish," said Honey. "She bought me out of a catalogue. Just like she buys her lingerie."

Dr French said, "the bird has a point, even if it doesn't know it. Renee will wake into a sexual body. Sexual memories can be very impressionable in a child. We must research what a child of her time in Africa would know, so that memories we give her of sexual education and enlightenment do not conflict with reality."

We lived in each others pockets for the next six months -
particularly Hugo and Dr French. They found very deep pockets.

Meanwhile Renee waited, ever patient. We found her a place to live - a small cottage on the edge of a nearby village - and we made many hours of video in and around it, recording the look and sound of the smallest details.

Hugo wore the camera constantly while we were there, tracking the view that Renee would have as she walked to the shops or the pub. All the local sounds and smells, even the taste of the local beer, had to be sampled for encoding.
"The simpler we make her life, the simpler it will be for us," said Dr French. It may have seemed obvious to her, but I worried that a simple life might not suit Renee when she awoke.

"Don't be silly. She'll be programmed to be simple. I really don't understand how Dr Mann allowed you to be on the team. You have no training in this field, you have no confidence in our abilities, and you have no respect for the academic and ethical rigour we have been maintaining throughout." She turned away from me, saying to the bird, "Honey, replay the walking path Renee takes from her house to the shops please."

The bird replied, "why don't I show him what you and Hugo were doing last night?"
"We weren't together last night!" cried Hugo, calming quickly under Dr French's upright finger.
"Quiet, Hugo. Don't let her get to you. Just show it Honey."

Suddenly obedient, the bird turned to the white wall where it projected the image Renee would see as she walked from her house to the village shop.

I asked, "are you going to let everyone at the shop know
Renee's history? Everyone at the pub? Everyone in the village? Surely you can't trust the village children to participate in the experiment."

"Good point," said Hugo. "My suggestion is that she just
arrived from somewhere else - somewhere she left because she didn't have any friends and no one would talk to her. That way she won't try and contact any of them."

"Not bad," said Dr French. "I think she ran away from a lover that jilted her."
"And she never wants to see him, the place he lived, or anyone who knew him ever again."
"And he committed suicide after she ran away, so she can never have second thoughts about going back."
"Stop!" I cried. "Renee is a human being, not a soap opera."

"Really?" asked Dr French. "You really should read some
psychology."
"Even some novels," said Hugo.
"The human beings that we study are nothing else."
"The human beings we write about can live nowhere else but soap operas. Life is carnal, and life is miserable. If you were able to step outside it..."
"Like us," said Dr French.
"Yes, like novelists and psychologists. If you could take an objective view of life you might understand suffering a little better."
"The true subject of our study," said Dr French. "Suffering.
Renee has to suffer at some time in her life. Our objectivity will allow us to control Renee's suffering so that she is more or less content with her life, but doesn't feel unnaturally holy."

Suddenly the parrot spoke. "How can you be objective when you're so randy, Frenchy?"
I said, "I think your famulus is reminding you that..."
"I know very well what it is trying to say. But if we admit
fallibility now the experiment has no chance of success at all."
"I wish you wouldn't keep calling Renee's life an experiment."
"Well I wish you'd remember that everyone's bloody life is an experiment."

"And she knows about experiments," said the parrot. "She's tried nearly all of them."
"Shut up, Honey. Where were we?"
"Talking about Renee's lover. Shall I replay the bit before
the argument?"
"Yes please."

Before the parrot could speak the bioethics monitor chimed, a sound incongruously like a doorbell, then said, "I'm sorry but I have to report code violations."
"Which codes?" asked Dr French.
"Two codes. Prometheism and puppeteering."
"Puppeteering? I've never heard of that."
"It's new. A colloquial translation would be 'God like
behaviour'. Would you like to make a mitigating statement before
I send the report."
Dr French paused, allowing the parrot to say, "shove it where it hurts, boxhead."

So we found inventing Renee more difficult and complicated than Dr Mann appreciated. He continually pushed us to finish her story, to give him his future patient.

And after six months we had thousands hours of images and sounds, hundreds of vials of smells and tastes, and a few million words to describe her life, leaving the doctors to find a way to code it, to transform the information into patterns that would slide seamlessly into her memory.

It was of course impossible to do it perfectly, so we decided to hide the seams by giving her the memory of a memory loss - caused by a bout of alcoholism after her husband and child died in a guided motorway accident some years ago - just after they moved to England.

The biggest problem was her parents - what happened to them in the time after I left her and when she entered the hospital? If she remembered them by herself it might drive her crazy if we implanted a false memory of them. If she didn't, it might drive her crazy trying to remember them. We knew all along that we were more likely to fail in the details than in the background.

But we were as committed as the calendar, and so the day came. Renee awoke, or so she was supposed to think, after a routine operation to take a tumour from her brain - one too large for nano surgery, justifying the hole Dr Mann had to cut into her head to implant her memory.

But she awoke trying to scream. Her mouth goggled like a goldfish, her vocal chords and lungs too weak to produce more than a quiet rasp. She swiped at the drip in her arm, and the pad on her arm quickly gave her a sedative transdermally before the doctors arrived.

Dr Mann watched the image file captured in the bed monitor and quietly shook his head, tutting. He made sure her best friend was there when she woke up the second time.
"Is that you Hugo?" Her voice dry, crackly, weak.
"Hi Renee. How are you feeling?"
"Tired."
"That's normal after an operation. Why don't you get some sleep?" asked Hugo, prompting a nurse behind him to have hysterics and usher himself out of the room.
Renee said, "is Katie here?"
"Your daughter?"
"Who else." Warily Hugo said, "but don't you remember, Renee? Katie's dead."
"Katie is dead?" Hugo, and the rest of the team watching on video held their breath. "Yes of course. How could I forget." And relief. "She died .... er... some years ago, didn't she. Nothing seems very clear, Hugo."

"Please get some rest," he said. Hugo rushed out suddenly and found Dr Mann.
"You're crazy. I'm crazy for letting you talk me into this."
He stammered, excited, frightened. "She's a person!" He ran for the bathroom.

"That's what makes it fun," said Dr Mann. Hugo had vomited on the hospital floor.
I asked, "do you think if I went to see her...."
"Absolutely not," said Dr Mann. "Probably never. If you care about her you'll stay out of the way."

Although her muscle growth had been stimulated before the operation, Renee had not walked for fifty years. Dr Mann, having watched her hysterics and confusion, now brought her very slowly out of a deep mental sedation so that she could adjust to her awareness, her reborn physicality. In the blandness of the hospital she recovered enough to let Hugo take her outside.
"It's a lovely day. I want to see the flowers."

Renee was a near obsessive gardener. It was one of the strategies we devised to keep her at home, out of a society that could remind her of her past. They made her wear very dark glasses, earplugs and nose filters, told her that sensory filters were essential after such a brain operation as hers.

"Everything seems a little weird, Hugo," she said.
"Well Dr Mann said your brain will be too active for a while."

"He should have warned me before the operation."

"Maybe he forgot." Or maybe that's another part of the story we forgot to put in, he thought. "The good news is you can come home in a few days."

"Really? I hope you've been taking care of my garden."
"Of course. And our new neighbour has been helping."
"New neighbour?"
"Dr French. She's very nice."

"Hugo! What have you been doing while I was sick. You were supposed to be writing novels so you could may me some of the back rent you owe."
"Just call it research, Renee. I've been doing research."

Dr Mann released her quickly from hospital, anxious to see her reactions away from its cloisters.

But it was important to keep her in the world of which she had most knowledge. They had given her an adult's vocabulary, a basic education and a sketch of recent world history, as well as her own, but how they would gel with her mind was unknown.

After all, the most complicated animal that had received the same treatment was an untrained german shepherd that was turned into a police dog - before it dutifully found explosives on a train and was blown to pieces for the trouble.

So Renee went home to the home she thought she knew, where she was constantly surveyed by Hugo and the specially equipped house - it had microphones, cameras, accelerometers, infra red sensors - the works in every corner.

Renee would not suspect as we had chosen not to teach her much about sentient objects. She walked in hesitantly and, tired from the effort, slumped in a lounge chair.

She rubbed her hand along the cloth of the arm, made a quizzical face, looked at the skin on her fingers as if they had done something wrong, then guiltily put her hand in her lap. She sniffed and looked around, and asked, "when can I take off these glasses and filters, Hugo?"

"Maybe tomorrow. I'll ask Dr Mann," he said. Dr Mann had told him to do it when he got home, but he was scared.

The doctors were confident they could control her memories; but a doctor's confidence is always qualified, if only tacitly, so it was no surprise to learn that when those memories interacted with real time sensory input, conflicts could arise. Hugo was being paid to be there, but he felt responsible nevertheless.

The next day Dr Mann ordered Hugo to let her go outside
unprotected. The rest of us were monitoring, and heard her cry, "my roses! What have you done to my roses? Such a ghastly colour. And they smell funny, Hugo. Have you put something on them?"

"Relax, Renee. It's your sensory system settling down after the operation." He was full of programmed responses, and used them with less originality than Honey.

"That bloody doctor filled your head full of rubbish," Hugo,
she said.

"Look!" he cried, happy to divert her. "There's Dr French.
Come and meet her."

Dr French walked into the garden, Honey on her shoulder and her hand extended. "Hello. You must be Renee. Hugo has told me all about you."

"He knows my life as well as anyone. You're a doctor?"
"A psychologist."

"She's a raving nympho," said Honey.

"And this is my famulus, Honey. Take no notice. It's an
experiment of one of my more Freudian colleagues. I use it as a diary."

"Five gigabytes of male contact information."

"Hello, Honey," said Renee, reaching out to it.

Dr Mann place Honey on Renee's hand and said, "Hugo, will you make me some tea? I want to talk to you."
"She wants to get him alone," said Honey.

"You keep quiet. We'll call you when it's ready, Renee."
Renee, left alone in the garden, except for the now silent but continuously watching Honey on her shoulder, felt a little lost.

Every flower she looked at seemed strange to her in ways indefinable. The colours were wrong owing to imperfect colour matching of her artificial memories to her own senses.

The smells and touches were similarly slightly strange, and even the prick of the rose thorn mixed pain with a blurry memory. "This operation has made me insane," she thought. "As if I have to learn everything again. As if I was just born. A child."

I was with Dr Mann at the time, watching now through Honey's eyes. We saw Renee inspect each plant carefully; stroking, smelling, shaking her head. She bent to look at a snail, smiled and whispered audibly, "but I remember you very well," and crushed it beneath her boot. "I remember we killed all our enemies."

Dr Mann and I looked at each other. Hugo and Dr French were of course watching too, and none of us knew where that memory came from.

There was something, perhaps wicked, violent and horrible in Renee's childhood memory that had surfaced. That it had surfaced so soon meant it was strong. "Divert her Hugo. Quickly." Dr Mann was urgent, and Hugo jumped up to call Renee inside for tea.

"All right. We're coming." She turned to the bird. "Or are
you staying in the garden to catch bugs?"

"Oh very funny. I was hoping to catch Frenchy and Hugo giving each other bugs."
"You're a naughty bird."
"It's just a juvenile program. I don't know what any of it
means."

Inside Renee sat, sighing. She seemed confused, troubled, and Hugo's tea, which she immediately spat out, did not help.
"Come on Hugo. You used to make nice tea. Have you changed brand while I've been in hospital? This is fucking poison."

She sat up abruptly, asking, "did I say that? Please excuse me, I don't know what has happened to me lately. I'm sorry Dr French, to speak that way in front of a visitor." Sobbing she ran out of the room as fast as her spindly legs would carry her.

After a few minutes Hugo found her lying in her bed, the room darkened and silenced.

"It's all seemed so strange since I woke up in that hospital. And you all told me it would get better, but it doesn't, Hugo."

"Is nothing at all clear, Renee?"

"Oh yes, but it's strange. I keep remembering things from long ago. I remember playing with a little English boy when I was a girl in Africa. But he went away just before...."

"Just before what?"

"It's so clear, Hugo. It nearly bursts from my head it's so
strong. I feel I could project it from my eyes. These two men in uniform. Can you see them? Green uniform, like the jungle. They came in and sliced my father into little pieces, then raped my mother and sliced her up, too. I was sick that day, and when I heard them come in I hid under my bed. I fell asleep, and when I woke up..."

"Yes, Renee?"

"....it's so long ago. I don't want to talk about it any more.
I've had a good life since then, haven't I, Hugo."
"I suppose."

"I've had my share of tragedies, but then who hasn't? It's a pity there's no medicine that can make us forget. I mean truly forget, so that we could be happy forever no matter what happened to us. Is that a crazy thing to wish for, Hugo?"
"Why don't you rest a bit."

"You're so solicitous these days Hugo," she said, a little
abstracted. Then she asked, "and what the hell does that mean? I feel like I've just said a word that someone planted in my head. I'm going crazy. Don't leave me alone." She cried. He held her hand and wept with her.

Next door, in Dr French's kitchen, an emergency meeting was convened while Renee slept. Dr French was composed, as always, her formality this time helping to keep the mood scientific under my barrage of worry, at least until Hugo came in, his face drawn, almost haggard.

"You see?" I said. "This can't possibly go on. If Hugo looks like that, imagine how Renee really feels."
"We know how she feels," said Dr Mann. "It's all being
scrupulously monitored."

The bioethics monitor, temporarily placed on top of a toaster, said, "a report has been filed on this afternoon's activity. The president is requesting a meeting with Dr Mann as soon as possible."

"Great," he said. "That's all I need." He sat, fret beads of
sweat forming on his brow. The whole team sat glumly, for once showing the smallest lack of confidence; the first suspicion that lack of prudence had been shown since the beginning.

I said, "I demand that you take that thing out of Renee's head. I want you to wake her up normally. We'll deal with her truthfully."
"Firstly," said Dr Mann, "it is not your position to demand
anything. Secondly, it's probably useless.

All the memories we gave her would have migrated in part to her own brain. We have to deal with her as she is. Dr French, would you ask your famulus to replay that last conversation with Hugo. Maybe we'll find a clue for a new strategy."

Later, still not showing confidence, he outlined the new plan: keep watching Renee until a new memory could be implanted in her head, one that could be tailored to our new knowledge of her past, and that would disguise without worrying her any differences in sensory input and remembered sensation.
I said, "so you keep cutting the legs of the table until it
sits evenly."

Dr Mann ignored me. He said, "it will just take a little
time." He saw Hugo shivering and told him, "you are not obliged to stay, Hugo, though it would be best if you did."

Hugo fidgeted, looked desperate, was about to speak when Honey called for our attention. "Renee is awake."
Hugo jumped up, saying, "great - she's decided to go shopping. I made her promise not to go alone. Come on Dr French." They raced out together, Honey squawking in Dr French's grip.

They quickly caught her as she walked down to the only shop in the village. Of course it was closed, for the day was waning, the summer light stretching its orange blanket over them. To their relief Renee laughed. "I love the colours of sunset," she said.

"The oranges, the yellows. Orange and yellow are the only colours that seem right to me. But these roses next to the store window,"
she said, indicating them with a wave of her hand, "are aberrations.
The red of a rose is nothing like that. And they smell like shit."
She pulled some secateurs from her bag and commenced to cut the flowers off their stems. Hugo tried to stop her, but she turned and viciously stabbed at him.

So he let her finish pruning, then they walked her home, allowing her to cut all the flowers in the street.
From the pain in the back of his neck he knew that the neighbours were watching, that the police had been called. And Dr French did nothing, apparently oblivious to the village punishment of neighbourly opprobrium.

She had planned to give Renee a sedative as soon as they got back home, but Renee announced that she was going straight to bed.

Hugo took a whisky, rolled a giant joint and lay on the lounge, bewildered.
"What the hell are we going to do with her?"
"Relax, Hugo," said Dr French, sitting beside him, removing her tweed jacket and toking the joint. "It will only be a few weeks till they're ready to operate again. It will be all right. Honey, go and watch her."
"The house is watching her. Why can't I watch you two," said Honey.

Dr French, kicked at it, and it ran out of the room.
When the bird was gone, and the whiskey was gone, and the dope was gone, they made love on the lounge. And from the darkness of the hall behind them Renee watched, even while the bird watched her.

She had seen the act of copulation only once before - in actual memory that is. It was not a kind memory, but it was fierce in the passion that had burnt it into the child's brain.

Renee woke Hugo early. He was hungover, still on the lounge but alone.
"We stayed up late talking, Renee."
"I'll make you some tea. Then you can help me in the garden."

She spent the morning cutting the leaves off all the plants in the garden, until it looked like the weeds in an abandoned church graveyard. And she talked, though only the monitors listened; Hugo let it drift by.
"I feel really playful today, Hugo. But I'm irritable, too.
Hardly slept a wink, tossing and turning."

She scratched at the soil, digging out the stems completely, throwing them over the fence into Dr French's yard. She worked tirelessly through until mid-afternoon, and Hugo sat and watched, impassive, uncertain, guilt tangling with his tiredness.

But I was watching through a monitor. I saw a brat. I saw a little girl who could not have her way and could not understand why, so she was destroying the thing we told her gave most happiness to people: her garden.

Drs Mann and French were with me. They showed concern, though not alarm, and were content to watch. Short of tying Renee down with sedatives that was all they could do, anyway.

Dr French said, "I'll go and relieve Hugo. He looks like he could use a rest."
When she arrived she said, "hi Renee. You've been very busy in the garden."

"It's like that whole world has turned to weeds, except that even the weeds are wrong."
"Would you like me to make tea?"
"No thank you." She was curt. "I'm going for a nap. Someone didn't sleep well last night."
Honey said, "no one did, actually. And I haven't been turned off for weeks."

"Just thank your lucky stars that your not a real parrot," said Renee. "You see what has to be done to real flowers?" She stormed inside, and despite being covered in dirt went straight to her room and slammed the door.

"What's she doing, Honey?" asked Dr French.
"She's closed the curtains and lain on the bed."
"Do you think we should monitor her Hugo?"
"You're the Doctor," he said. "I don't know what to do any
more."
"You poor boy. You look so tired." He made a face at her.

She said, "why don't we all have a little nap?"
Renee did not sleep. She listened; heard them go into Hugo's room. Some time later she heard the bathroom door close.

We have analysed the following events carefully, and as yet drawn no conclusion as to whether Renee could have known who it was who had gone to the toilet.

Evidently she had been brooding all day, associating the sex act with security in real memory, and with bed in the implanted version. But from where had she gathered the guilt and loathing to drive her to an act of such passion? Docile Renee.


Putty in our hands.

There were many clues we missed, of course, or carelessly ignored. The last was that she did not ask the room to be sound proof as we had taught her to do. In that way she could listen for the bathroom door. When she heard it she got out of bed as quietly as she could and went to the kitchen - in the high tech world of her brain a kitchen knife was an ideal murder weapon.

And though she had no idea how to wield it, nor where to stab for greatest effect, she charged into Hugo's bedroom without hesitation, the knife held high. Honey squawked a loud warning as soon as it was alerted by the house monitor system, and Dr French sat up, startled from her drowsing.

But the house had turned all the lights on, dazzling her, and in the slowness of her waking she just said, "piss off Hugo" and tried to roll over, a movement that aided the slashing of Renee's knife across her throat. Honey squawked even louder.

Dr French was immobilised by shock so did not respond, but Renee knocked the bird to the floor and tried to squash it beneath the thick sole of her gardening boot. It had of course already called for the police, an ambulance, a bioethics committee investigator and, in a moment of robot sentience, me.

Hugo raced out of the toilet. Renee gave him the knife and said, "she wasn't my real daughter. Katie was much prettier than that."

I arrived first, bursting in the door, finally too angry to
wait for Dr Mann. I found Renee sitting serenely, looking at her photo album.

"Hello," she said. "I've been pruning the roses." I went to
her and held her hand. She showed me pictures of her daughter then turned and looked me in the face, quizzical.

"Do you want to come and play?" she asked.
She struggled when they came to take her away, had to be sedated. I found her again at the hospital. She was staring at the ceiling, vacant eyes glistening.

And, with no trace of a smile, Dr Mann was staring at her, tut, tut, tutting.


FINI

Back to the Short Story Listing

The latest Science Fiction Books