it must be my mom. It is her!”
She gently took the picture back. “I need to get this back into your file.” She then ran back to the closet and came out acting normal. “I don’t see a decent blanket in there, honey. Oh, you’re crying, baby. Another bad dream? Here, I’ll sit with you. You can cry on my shoulder.” She glanced back up into the ceiling corner. The red light was back on. Zoe winked and smiled at me.
*****
That night, a small glimmer of my previous life came back to me. Oh god, is that my mother? Yes, it is! Oh, Mom, I miss you so much.
I don’t remember her name or where she lives, or where I lived, but I know it is her. I was twelve years old when Mom gave me that picture. And Wildfire, I loved that horse! We had so much fun back then. He could run like the wind. And he could jump. Man, could he ever jump!
I grew up with horses. I remember that. People who lived in the city called it a ranch. We lived there and called it a farm. We even bred horses. I rode them and played with them and loved them and had a ball playing with them.
I can ride English saddle and Western saddle, but I preferred Western; I remembered that. There isn’t a lot a girl can do riding Western, except barrel races, and I had a blast riding in those races! Riding English saddle is different. It’s genteel! Me, genteel? I rode dressage and jumping. To me, dressage is the most boring thing anybody can do on a horse. I thought it was like watching paint dry. But jumping! Now that’s a kick.
I had the toughest teacher in the world when I learned to jump horses. She was a hell of a teacher, but wow, the things I learned from her. I first learned to jump riding bareback. You believe it? Bareback! But that’s how they did it before they invented stirrups. That’s how the Indians did it and the Cossacks, in Russia too. Riding a horse is all about leg control. Jumping a horse bareback is all about combining leg control with hanging on for dear life. I sometimes thought I was flying as high as I could go!
She taught me something else too. You can do anything you set your mind to. But you have to be smart about it! You can’t just go out and jump. It’s about control, looking ahead, planning your move, and pushing hard and flying as high as and as far as you can.
I can’t remember my name, but I can remember a horse from years ago. I don’t know who I am or what my mother’s name is, but I also know that I’ve been using aliases for a while now. Why is that? My life must be more complicated than what I can dream up. But why all my aliases? Am I a criminal?
Today Dr. Philippe asked me if I know who I am. Maybe he knows but was testing me. What if he doesn’t know who I am and wants to see when it comes back to me? No matter, either way, I’m not giving him the satisfaction. I’m not going to tell him anything. I’m going to keep them guessing. I’ll make them wonder if they overlooked something about me.
They’ll start asking if there is someone who may come forward, a relative, anyone who can speak for me. I’ll keep them asking if there is someone from my past who will recognize me. I’ll give them a couple of clues, but that’s all. I am not going to give them my real name, whatever it is. I will not play Dr. Philippe’s game. But I know I’m going to piss him off like he’s never been pissed before in his life.
I know! I’ll call myself Wildfire! I could be Wild for short. No, not Wild. I’m going to be Wildfire!
Chapter 4
Jane Dietrich
Things settled into a normal work schedule after that. All the doctors did their checking and rechecking. I took my first few steps and must have looked a lot like Frankenstein or the bride of Frankenstein. I put my arms out for balance and took one clunky step; then I tried another. Jane put her hand over her mouth to hide her smile. I moaned “Uuuuughhhh!” I must have looked like a zombie.
Walking actually came easy from then on. Physical therapy didn’t last too long after that, just a few weeks.
The same fast progress worked for my arm. It was amazing how easy it was to control movement. My touch-and-feel ability were astounding. To test my touch, they blindfolded me and handed me things like sandpaper, tissue, cloth, nuts, bolts, anything they had lying around. They even handed me a piece of cloth. It stopped me for a minute—satin, silk, hmmm. Silk, definitely silk, yes, silk. I was right! It was Jane’s red scarf. Damn Jane, how much do you pay for silk imported from the home galaxy in the middle of a war zone? Never mind, I don’t think I want to know.
I was strong too. Well, my techno arm was strong; my real arm, not so much. Everyone told me that most of the success of the medical work was because I was fit and in good shape in the first place. I was going to have to work on my real arm to build it up more, but there was no way it would ever be as strong as my techno arm. After Dr. Philippe was satisfied that all my arm connections were right, he wanted to test my arm strength. He told me to curl my hand to my shoulder. He then tried to pull my arm open to straighten it out. He couldn’t do it. He pulled as hard as he could but couldn’t budge me. What surprised me was that it didn’t take any effort on my part. I was only holding my arm in place. Dr. Philippe even asked Mike to help him. The two of them working together couldn’t budge my arm. It hit me that I didn’t know how strong I might be. But then Dr. Philippe looked at me, and I stared back. I could tell that it was just starting to dawn on him what he had done…what he had made me into.
Back on the physical therapy stuff, Dr. Davis seemed pretty satisfied with my seams. Go ahead and ask me, “What are seams?” That’s where my fake parts meet my natural flesh parts. They did all kinds of scans to make sure the internal stuff was linked right—nerves and tendons connected to whatever else I was now made of. That all seemed to check out. But I could see that when they used the words “alternative technology,” it wasn’t something that humans invented. My fake arm and leg healed…merged…melded…blended with my real flesh. Huh? Yeah! It was hard to tell where my skin stopped and my techy arm and leg started. It was very weird. Some of my parts were adjusting to my own DNA, but the parts that were the alternative technology stuff was changing me. I don’t like that and am not sure what I’ll end up as.
Now don’t get me wrong. Even if you think I have skin, my bikini days are probably over. Unless I’m doing a centerfold spread in Popular Robotics. While my arm and leg coverings are skin and such, it is pretty obvious that I have a hunky, clunky arm and leg. It is not that noticeable with a long-sleeve shirt and pants, but it is obvious that my hand is not real. I think I’m going to wear gloves most of the time.
But then there is my eye. They did do a good job reconstructing my head, but there are four small sensor lenses above my right eye. Two are right above my eye and two lead off and up a bit into my temple. They look like diamond studs around my eye, and they might look cool. Maybe I stick four studs around my other eye to balance it out. Sounds interesting.
But I won’t use the computer display crap. I had it on when Mike was testing it and when he showed me how it worked. The little stud sensor closest to my temple is my on-and-off switch. He showed me my little radar screen that told me who was around me and my GPS stuff. I don’t care about my texting and communicator stuff and the selection screens and menus. I don’t want it and will not turn it on.
After doing tests one day, Jane was pleased that everything was going so well, but she had a worried look on her face. When I asked her what was wrong, she answered, “Unser Leben hat sich verändert.”
I asked what that meant, and she answered, “Verändert means ‘changed’ in German.” Then she went on to explain that her family was German. “We lived in a German community. I said to you, ‘Our lives have changed.’ Yours, of course, but I think mine has too.”
*****
After that, Jane was the one who tested my telekinetic ability. One day, I was standing at the computer table talking to Mike. I was on the opposite side of the room from the door. Jane came in, and without pausing, she yelled “Catch!” At the same time, she threw a ball at me. I glanced over to Jane and saw the ball coming, but then what happened was incredible. The ball stopped in midair about a foot in front of my