Sleep

“That has to be the damnedest thing I’ve ever seen,” the lieutenant said, as he watched the dialysis machine run. Jammed in between two of the filters was the nanotrap, and it sparked and crackled like a bug-zapper going through a swarm of bees.

“Is it supposed to do that?” the technician asked, wrinkling his nose at the faint smell of ozone drifting from the machinery.

Kailey grinned. It was just like the old days, before Switzerland had sent them the custom-made filtering device. The Wizard had jury rigged a machine much like the one she was piped into, and the Wizard had been just as surprised as the technician was.

“It’s got something to do with opposing polarities in the fields. Live machines slip through, repulsed, and the dead ones get sucked up into the trap.”

“Machines?” the technician asked. “In your blood?”

“Teensy-weensy ones,” Kailey said. “That’s the technical term for them. Oh, Lieutenant, please have him and the nurse both fill out those bundles of paperwork.”

“Joint Forces Official Secrets Act?” the tech read, flipping page after page.

“I could recite it to you, if you like,” Kailey said. “Might be a way to pass the time. How much longer?” she asked the nurse.

The woman glanced at the machine, looked at the readouts. “Two hours or so. There’s a lot of cleaning needs to be run through, based on that lil blood test.”

Kailey leaned her head back against the headrest, closed her eyes. “Maybe I’ll just shut down and take a nap. Be a doll, and make sure the tall man over there doesn’t take advantage of me while I’m asleep?”

The nurse smiled nervously, then glanced over at the lieutenant. He stood in front of the door, blocking it, going over the gist of the paperwork with the technician.

“He’s rather handsome. Maybe I’ll let him do that to me and —”

“Ugh. Please,” Kailey said, her face screwing up in disgust. “He’s a total pig. You could do so much better.”

Kailey sat back, closed her eyes.

Guenevere, standby for sleep mode, standard assignment wake parameters.

** Sleep mode in 3…2…1…

* * * * *

Sleep mode induced a nearly instantaneous delta state in Kailey’s brain, holding her activity to 2 to 3 cycles per second, just below the dream threshold, when the body is in its deepest sleep state.

But while her biological systems dropped into sleep, her synthetic system went into overdrive, running feedback processing, trimming response times, finding alternate routing for input and output. Guenevere ran system diagnostics throughout Kailey’s entire body, but paid particular attention to all the feedback from the fibers and filaments below the two ceramic-and-vanadium-steel lumbar vertebra in her lower back, that had replaced the two pulverized when the ceiling collapsed on her.

Guenevere piped all the triple-encrypted data through the hospital’s network, pushing it out the radar dish atop the medical center, and into the nearest UNJPTF satellite. From there, it fed to the Wizard and his so-called “Lollipop Guild” — the men and women who maintained the vast archive of motion control data.

What the Wizard and the Guild did with it was something that most people at the Institute couldn’t even guess at (those who could were already doing the work). Whatever they did, their magic let Kailey walk, run, and dance.

More importantly, the Wizard thought, as he looked over the preflight logs, what he and his people did let Kailey smile.

The Wizard, on the other hand, was not smiling, as he flipped to the logs of data compiled after the airburst flash.

He dialed up some of the senior Guildsmen, and they started running simulations.

* * * * *

Kailey drifted up, slowly, her ears waking up before the rest of her, her head filled with the buzzing of thousands of bees. But they buzzed inside her head, and outside, as though through a thick curtain, she heard a low murmur — the crowd, row upon row of people at the Le Grande Theatre.

Was it time for the recital already? Her mom and dad would be there, her aunts were supposed to be coming in from out of town to see it, as well, and both Grans and Granpas. She didn’t want to let any of them down, or make a single mistake, so she’d been practicing extra long, the dance instructors letting her stay an extra hour.

It couldn’t be time for the recital yet, could it..?

There were other noises… beeps, clicking. Whirring. The sound of a door, opening and closing.

Were there any doors left in the dance studio? She remembered watching one wall disintegrate in a roar of noise and a flash of white light. And then the ceiling had come down, and she’d rolled back to her feet, but she couldn’t get any purchase on the floor, and she’d fallen flat, chunks of ductwork, plaster raining down around her. She’d struggled to her knees — tearing her tights to ribbons, crying out as she cut herself on shards of glass and rubble.

But then there was a sweeping shadow behind her, she heard too late the groaning shriek of metal folding, and the beam came down across her back as she tried to rise, bearing her down to the floor with it.

She remembered how nice it was, that the pain in her knees had gone away….

The darkness leapt at her then, taking her down away from the heat and white light.

It had let her up on a few occasions, releasing her to drift, as though she’d been under water, and was floating back up to the surface…

She remembered hearing the crunch of booted feet across gravel — no, not gravel, but the debris from the dance studio. Red and blue and orange lights strobed across her closed eyes, but she was too tired to say anything. Maybe one of the people she’d heard crunching around her could tell her mom that she’d need a new pair of tights, that the ones she just got were ruined….

She remembered being jostled, and there was a shuddering under her left shoulder. The jittering was sending pain through her, firing it down her back in white hot bundles of needles, that scattered when they got to her lower back. Her knees… she knew she’d gotten glass in them, but they weren’t bothering her.

“Wouldn’t it just figure the one with the spinal injury gets the bad gurney. This won’t do, get ready to lift her on three….”

There was a jolt, and the blackness leapt back to claim her….

The beeping sound again, and the whirrring. And another sound, like the black-robed villain in that classic sci fi movie. Hisssss, choooooo. Kailey tried to giggle, because that sound had frightened her so badly as a child, the first time she’d seen that movie… But she couldn’t get enough breath, and there was something in her throat....

“Michael,” a voice said, “we may never get another chance at this. This girl is dead, as far as the world knows. And if you pull any of those plugs, then she will be dead. She has a chance. We have a chance, with her. It’s a miracle she pulled through, but she’s going to need a lot more than a miracle to ever wake up. Look at these fracture patterns. Perfect anchor points. Her muscle tone is superb, very little degradation over these past couple days. She’s young, she’ll be able to withstand the strain. Look how she fought back in the O.R. Michael, we have to act fast if we’re going to open her up again….”

Kailey wasn’t sure about being opened up… didn’t want to know what that ‘again’ meant. A second time? Third? Thirtieth? She was tired, very tired, she just wanted to sleep…..

When she next swam up from the Black, the bees were in her head, and there was a steady hammering, from the back of her head, that sent flashes of whiteness through the Black, jagged patterns against the darkness. Each jolt was agony, and she felt herself slipping back into the black. Maybe the bees were trying to get out….

Then the Black didn’t give her up, but was stripped away, like a magician pulls a tablecloth out from under the dishes. But the dishes hit the floor, shattering, splintering, and someone had poured all those shards into Kailey’s head, where they sifted down her back, across her shoulders, prickling and tumbling through her arms, fingers, down her throat, rolling through her stomach. She screamed, her voice as ragged as the torn-away Black, as jagged as the shards of fire that were racing through her body. Everything was bright, hot pain. Bright, flaring white. She screamed, trying to cough up the shards, to get them out of her…..

“Put her back under! Get her sedated, damn it! Get her back under before she starts rupturing more stitches….”

The Black didn’t bring her gently down like it usually did, but descended like dead weight.