Claire, page 6
Lisette ushered Beatrice downstairs and into her study. "Well, Bea? What do you think?"
Beatrice shrugged. "She's not in any immediate danger, if that's what you're asking. Beyond that, I can't say. I've never treated a Drone before."
"She's not a Drone", Lisette said quickly.
"I know, and you know what I mean. Not many people wearing those suits, if 'wearing' is the right word. I didn’t notice a seam or fold anywhere. That material is amazing stuff. From what I’ve read its based on some kind of artificial skin replacement they came up with for burn victims. It’s fused to her, and its not coming off anytime soon. These things are meant to stay on a Drone for a lifetime. We try to remove it and we could cause some serious damage."
"Keeping it on her is causing some serious damage to her psyche."
"That's also out of my scope. Did you even tell her I'm a pediatrician? Of course not. Look, when you're ready to bring her to hospital and have a specialist look at her, we'll know better."
"She's too fragile right now. She thinks she was kidnapped in the park, and for all I know she was. I need to do some more snooping before I can say what's really going on. Then, maybe, I can bring her into the light."
They began walking to the front door. "Your call. I'll keep this under my blouse for now, but don't wait too long. And call me if she shows any turn for the worse."
"Thanks, Bea. You're the best."
Beatrice shook her head. "You sure know how to pick 'em, Lis." And she was off.
Lisette closed the door and leaned against it, looking up the stairs to the guest room. "That I do.”
- Ͼ -
There were more visitors sometime in the early afternoon. The items Lisette had ordered the night before had arrived. She came in and told a half-awake Claire to stay in the bedroom while the movers were in the house. Through the door Claire heard the sounds one expects when a group of burly men are moving something heavy upstairs and unpacking something well-wrapped, followed on by the tink and clank of installation. When Claire finally got out of bed near sunset it was to the sound of the front door closing and voices fading. She groggily shuffled into the hall and walked to an upstairs front window. From her perch she could see Lisette walking back into the house from the sidewalk where three men in green coveralls were getting into a delivery truck bearing the logo of a Capriccio subsidiary. They pulled away as Lis came back inside.
Still tired, Claire went back to her bed. They must have been delivering the poo chair. But, three men? How big is that thing? Her mind flashed with images of a toilet inspired by old Sci-Fi horror movies. What other instruments of torture do the Drones have in their lives? Maybe I’ll get my own iron maiden, or be turned into an insect. Lovely. She lay down again with a groan.
Lisette came up shortly after, knocking gently as she opened the bedroom door. She saw that Claire was awake. “Hey, Sleeping Beauty. Feel like having something to eat?”
Claire yawned in greeting. “Not really, but I suppose I should. Doctor’s orders.”
“Come on, then. I’ll be down in the kitchen when you’re ready.”
She watched her ersatz owner turn and leave, and found herself for a moment in the past, when she had seen that bottom from the same angle on many a perfect morning. But it was not the past, nor morning, and she needed no reminding that things were far from perfect. With effort she dragged herself out of bed and into the bathroom.
It was a bit of a blessing that Lisette owned such an old house, with its large and rather sparsely furnished bathroom, for were it one of the more modern affairs there would have been no room for the new addition that now greeted Claire and filled her with a quiet concern. It was the new Drone toilet, or “poo chair” as Lisette had christened it. No doubt Claire would have remarked wittily something along the lines of, “Technically, all toilets are poo chairs” or some such, were she not to be subject to it in mere moments. She moved closer with a light tread as if fearful she might awaken some sleeping monster. It was a spare affair, a black pylon a bit more than two feet tall with a scalloped seat on top. The seat had a black rubber nib at its center, the coupling for which was currently being crushed between Claire’s butt cheeks in anxiety of its imminent usage.
Seeing no instruction manual – Claire had to wonder if Drones read their own instruction manuals – and not knowing what else to do, she turned and gingerly sat down on the seat of the chair, allowing the nib to nuzzle its way between her cheeks and settle into the matching coupling of her suit. No sooner had it made contact than she felt the nib vibrate and slowly but firmly thrust up a few inches past her anus and into her backside. Claire let out a squeal at this rude intrusion, but was even more surprised by the feeling of the nib inflating slightly, locking itself into the coupling and her to the chair. She soon felt a warm spray of liquid enter and begin cleansing her. Claire’s hands fluttered at the edges of the chair in vain search for anything to grasp while subject to this treatment but found no purchase. The instinct to press her thighs together in a futile attempt to ward off the intruder was itself thwarted by the appearance of a shallow oval cup that nuzzled itself against her crotch in anticipation of urination. Mortified, she had to settle on clutching her knees and staring straight ahead.
On doing so Claire rediscovered the full-length mirror Lisette had hung behind the bathroom door, the one now perched directly opposite her as she sat locked onto this fiendish cleanser. There was no escaping the image of herself that stared back from the chromed frame before her. One might easily mistake it for the idol of some forgotten, shaven-headed Egyptian goddess in repose upon her dais, carved in obsidian and adorned with cryptic silver tattoo upon her right side, on cheek, breast, arm, and leg, with the Capriccio logo, the Lunate Sigma, a final glyph upon her brow, an illuminating Third Eye. She examined its widened eyes, its clenched teeth, the way its chest was rising and falling with the effort of enduring what it knew would now be a daily routine. She saw its discomfort as she felt its insides swell with the cleansing injection, then emptied its contents into the chair through the vibrating nozzle from which it came. Her vision clouded for a moment as her twin reacted to the effort she made to relax and pass her water into the pressing cup’s incessant suction. The doppelganger before her then grasped her knees tighter in tandem with her as the nozzle ceased its ministrations and withdrew.
The entire process had taken only a few minutes, and when Claire stood she saw no evidence on the chair that it had even been used. Such mechanical precision, she grumbled to herself, and felt her guts grumble in reply. The upset she felt had a simple cause: Claire was not a Drone, and did not eat as they did, or rather had not eaten so up to now. She suspected correctly that she would be back for another round in all too short a time.
Turning from this instrument of intimate torture she was again confronted with the image of herself in the mirror. How drastically it had changed from the morning prior! Warily she approached it, studying its few familiar details. There were her eyes, sparkling blue with their little flecks of rust and lingering lines of red. They were rimmed now in ebony, the edges of the mask matched perfectly to the outline of the orbs. Her eyebrows were obscured, or perhaps under the mask they were gone, but her lashes remained. The eyes are the windows of the soul, she remembered. I can see myself, I’m still me. Under all of this, I’m still me.
Below her eyes, her mouth sat pursed in scrutiny, likewise rimmed in black. She opened her mouth to examine her teeth and found they were still where she had left them, unmoved and unmolested. She’d never had many problems with them and an indulgent cosmetic visit to the dentist a few years back (before she had started dating Lisette) took care of the rest. Her smile was dazzling, but she didn’t feel like smiling right then. She wondered instead how long she would be reduced to this facial shorthand. She experimented with a few faces, exaggerated grotesques, finding the mask moved as if it were her own skin. The thought that it might in fact be her skin now set her to a frantic rubbing and pulling at her face as a whine came up from inside it, ending with a bleak sob as her hands covered what remained of her visage, masking her mask. Eventually her hands slid down, fingers covering her mouth as she stared into her own eyes and contemplated her fate. Is this it? Is this who I am from now on? For the rest of my life? I beat back the cancer for this? But her strength welled up from within. No. No, I won’t allow it, I won’t let this beat me. The cancer tried to take me from the inside, and I won. This wants me from the outside, leave me alive but take away my identity. Well, it won’t. It’s just an outfit, a covering. I’m still me in here. I’m still me, and I won’t give in. Claire stood tall and lowered her hands, staring at the face before her, seeing the resolve that gave her eyes a glow that had been absent moments before. With a deep breath she opened the door and stepped out to go join Lisette downstairs.
She found her hostess in the kitchen. Lisette was stirring something over the stove that from its aroma definitely had cheese as an ingredient. For an instant Claire hoped it was a pot of that horrid store-brand macaroni and cheese she used to crave. She stood in the doorway a moment and watched Lisette as she knocked pans on the stove and jiggled bottles on the spice rack. It was a decidedly domestic view that she had not seen since before her illness, and she found it a comfort.
Eventually Lisette noticed her in the doorway. She dropped the wooden spoon in the pot and stood looking at her. “Hey.”
“Hey”, Claire replied.
It was an awkward moment for both of them. Each remembered times past when one had been in there cooking, the other would enter and set the room aglow with smiles, hugs and those cozy words of comfort shared by the intimate. Now there was hesitation, confusion, and a distance far greater than the few metres of kitchen could contain, one both would cross but for the fear of its impassibility.
Lisette broke the silence. “How are you feeling?”
“Okay, I guess. I just tried out the bathroom.”
“Ah.” Another pause. “Everything go all right?”
Claire fidgeted a bit. “You could say that. I’ll give you the details after dinner.”
“Sounds like a plan. Have a seat.” She turned to grab a pot holder, then the pot. Claire left her liminal perch and sat at the place setting nearest to her. To her brief and mild disappointment Lisette filled her plate not with the vulgar delight of a boxed dinner but a four-cheese fettuccini. Her mood improved on first bite, though, and while Lisette filled her own plate Claire seemed to empty hers at a similar rate.
“Well, I’m glad to see your appetite is back”, Lisette said with a smile as she sat down and picked up her fork.
“Mmm, I haven’t eaten since night before last. This is great, by the way.”
“Thanks. I hope that’s not the starvation talking.” They both spent a minute silently enjoying the moment of a kind unshared in nearly a year. Each was pushing their thoughts back into the corners of their mind, thoughts of being together in small moments like this a hundred times, how each missed the other.
Eventually, Claire put her fork down on her empty plate and smiled at Lisette. “That was delicious. Thanks. Oh.” She made a face put a hand to her tummy as Lisette heard a very loud gurgling. Claire grew sheepish. “Sorry. I think I have to, uh, be right back.” She left the room and hopped up the stairs. Lisette sat and listened for a minute as the upstairs bathroom door closed rather loudly. No further sounds could be heard for several minutes, so she busied herself cleaning the table and loading the dishwasher.
She was just about done when Claire came in again, walking slow and a bit gingerly with a distressed look in her eyes. “Sorry. It just, kinda…” She sighed. “I hope this isn’t how it always is.”
“Me too, for your sake. I’ll bet its your diet. Drones don’t eat pasta, or anything else as far as I know.”
“Well, they must eat something.”
Lisette went over to the counter and grabbed one of a pair of containers. “They drink this. It’s some kind of protein powder, liquid meal replacement.” She handed it to Claire. The label bore the Capriccio logo and some rather dense text concerning ingredients and instructions. “They gave me a few of those as a courtesy when they delivered the other stuff. I asked them what flavor it was and they just laughed. One of them had tried it as a dare, he said it tasted like wallpaper paste. Not sure I’d take the opinion of a man who eats paste, but there you go.”
Claire hefted the container and read the label a moment before putting it down on the table with a look of resignation. “I guess I’ll find out soon enough.”
For several hours after dinner they did their best to relax in the lounge, flickering through what turned out to be a very unappealing night of Stream vids and shows. They finally settled on a stylish and surreal old Italian movie about vampires in space. As they watched, Lisette found herself snatching glances at Claire as she reclined on the chaise. She chided herself and hoped Claire hadn’t noticed.
As the night grew late Claire grew tired, and so asked about her new sleeping arrangements. She yawned and turned to Lisette. “So, they brought the bed today, yeah? Where did they put it?”
“Mmm, the new bed for your new room. Its upstairs. Come on, let’s have a look at it.” Lisette got up, grabbed her tabula and walked upstairs with her ersatz Drone in tow. Claire was surprised when they walked past the bedroom to finally stop in front of what Claire knew to be the door for a rather spacious walk-in closet.
“This is your room now”, Lisette said, as she opened the door and ushered Claire inside.
Claire looked around the room in confusion. She had expected to be staying in one of the bedrooms, not this storage closet! The space was bare except for the pod, a sarcophagus-like ebony cylinder with a long, thin platform inside, plus some shelves on the walls above it. Nothing else.
Claire took a long moment to respond. “I don’t mean to seem ungrateful, but…”
“We’ll do it up nicer some other time. But the pod had to go somewhere it would usually go, and this was once a laundry room so it had the right hookups. Besides, Drones don’t have rooms, they’re not people. The installers would have had questions if I’d put it in one of the bedrooms.”
She eyed the new pod warily. Her earlier thoughts of an iron maiden were creeping up her spine. “And this is where I sleep now?”
“Every night. Sorry, Claire, but its standard Drone issue. Officially they call it a ‘regeneration bed’. It will examine you and your protective coating and perform maintenance while you sleep.”
“Lovely. And creepy. And you sound like a brochure”, Claire said sourly.
Lis waved the tabula in her hand. “Just read it. OK, take off your boots before you get in.”
“You want me to get in now?”
“It is getting near bedtime, and you need your rest. Besides, it will be expecting you at a set time every night. Don’t be late, or it will, um, correct you.” Claire turned and looked at Lis wide-eyed. Lis shrugged. “Standard procedure, Claire. Like it or not, you have to play by Drone rules. Now, boots off!” There was a touch of an order in that, and Claire quickly shed her boots. She hesitated before gingerly lying down on the padded board inside.
Claire looked up pleadingly at her friend, who bent down and smiled as she stroked Claire’s arm. “Don’t worry, it’s all perfectly safe. The pod will release you in the morning.” She stood up as the hatch swung down and closed with a loud “clack” of its locks, muffling the whimper from within.
Lis checked the readout on the control panel before giving a long, worried look at the point where Claire’s face was now hidden. She suddenly wanted so badly to talk to her, to tell her why she had pushed her away those many months ago. She wanted to tell her how sorry she was that she wasn’t there enough for her when she was ill, how fear of losing her forever had driven her away. Now she was here in her house, all but trapped here, but she might as well be on the Moon. All she could do was rest her hand against the panel behind which her face now rested. “Good night, Claire”, she whispered before leaving the room.
Inside the pod, Claire was trying her level best to relax. The bed wasn’t as uncomfortable as it first appeared. But the prospect of spending the night in that high-tech coffin, wrapped as she was in her Drone suit, was hardly sitting well. The pod was equipped with sensors that detected muscle tension and trace elements in her breath that indicated a high level of stress. Compensation responses kicked in. Claire noticed the air begin to circulate. It had a surprising freshness to it, as if by the seashore on a mild and breezy day. The bed seemed to come to life and subtly molded itself to her form. Soft evening sounds of the outdoors played at a near-imperceptible level. All this combined to relax her exhausted body to the point that she was asleep in minutes.
The pod interfaced with her suit as she slept and made an assessment of its condition. It searched the standard catalogue but was unable to find a match to its stored templates for the more popular Series. Unable to proceed, it contacted Capriccio over the System and made a query. The corporate database was slow in responding but eventually discovered a match in one of its newer, limited-run Series. It relayed the files to the pod, which determined in turn that the Drone in its care had been seriously ill and still bore traces of medications and toxins. It began composing a regimen of treatment and rehabilitation, then prepared a report for the owner and sent it via email – and made notation in one of its log files.
Once complete, the pod resumed its standard assessment of the Drone’s containment suit. Circuits were queried to ensure the owner had complete control over her Drone. The pod determined that the Drone had not been properly integrated with its suit and reinitiated the process via its repair protocols. It would take longer than the factory process but eventually have the same effect. Sonic emitters began a final dermal conditioning and suit polishing, which Claire in her haze before finally drifting off perceived as a light all-over massage that caused her to hum pleasingly from her slumber.
