The Recall

by Lucy Joyce

“Professor Romano? Can you hear me?”

Crescents of blindingly bright light as my eyelids open a crack. I close them again, taking an inventory of my body. A ringing in my ears. Dry, cottony mouth. Where am I?

That voice, speaking again, “Dominic Romano?”

I open my sluggish eyelids again, and my hand comes up automatically to shield my face from the brightness. The back of the hand before my face is pale with long, thin fingers. Panic sharpens my sluggish mind - I know my own hands to be brown and hairy with thick, stubby fingers. I flex the strange fingers and they move in response.

Alarmed, I try to sit up but a firm hand pushes my chest back into a reclined position. I look around. I am lying down, but not in a hospital bed, in something more like a dental chair made of an unfamiliar, synthetic material. A team of people surround me, attending to a host of unfamiliar monitors.

The owner of the voice, a woman in a strangely cut, long, peach-coloured suit, speaks again, “Hello, Professor Romano. Welcome. I appreciate that you will be feeling overwhelmed and confused; try to relax as much as possible by using long, slow breaths.”

I stare at her. She gives a tight smile, polite but impersonal, before looking down at a tablet, gesturing at it as if in sign language. Odd.

“My hands are wrong,” I blurt, studying them again. Some distant, logical part of myself registers that it’s a strange comment, but I am ruled by sharp panic. I touch my cheeks and nose, and they are wrong as well: strange, sharp angles whereas my features are rounded.

“You have been brought back to consciousness through a scientific procedure called recalling. Your own body failed on the 14th of November, 2046. Your consciousness is being housed in a different body. You are in the Wong-Presado Scientific Research Estate. The year is 2312. We are located in the region that you would know as Poland, but it is now part of a conglomerate called the Euro-Asiatic Sector.”

This incredible speech is delivered in the dispassionate and rehearsed manner of a bored flight attendant explaining the location of emergency exits.

I say nothing and she continues, “the world’s livable spaces and diplomatic boundaries have changed significantly due to a series of Earthquakes and Tsunamis. I appreciate that this information is inconceivable, and that you may need some time to reflect on it. You have been administered with medication to suppress the possibility of mental and physiological panic, but I urge you to continue to breathe deeply and calmly to assist you in coming to terms with this information.”

I begin to slowly sit up, and this time I am allowed to. Long pale feet stick out from the end of a gown.

“This is incredible,” I mutter. “Science fiction.”

“Although it may seem fantastical, it is science, rather than fiction,” the woman says, her face creasing slightly, obviously not understanding my reference. I stare at her. The fact that she doesn’t know “science fiction” seems to confirm, more than anything, her assertion that we are in a completely different place and age.

“Is my wife here?”

“Her work didn’t justify her recall.”

I bristle on her behalf; Marie is sensitive to the societal privileging of my own scientific field over her work. I frown, starting to form a response about the importance of Humanities, but the woman seems to notice my indignation.

“That is,” she clarifies, “there is not a pressing need for her personal or professional expertise at this stage.”

“Oh,” I say, lamely, after a moment.

I feel a further wave of panic at being adrift in this strange place without her. Marie. As eternal through my adult life as the rising and setting of the sun. I think of her soft body and her face; in the later years of our life it had often been creased in worry and sadness.

“I died,” I say abruptly, remembering hospital wards, the chemotherapy: my hair falling out, the view of our toilet bowl as I vomited, an emaciated frame - mine. Tears - Marie’s.

“Cancer,” I add, marveling at the flood of memories.

“That’s true,” the woman agrees. “Although the state of your original physical body has no effect on you in this recalled state.”

“How,” I ask, struggling to phrase my question, “how is one’s consciousness recalled?”

That smile again, impersonal and fleeting, not meeting her eyes, “we aren’t going to discuss the details of the procedure at this stage.”

I am about to protest, but she finishes what she is attending to on the tablet and turns her attention to me more completely, interrupting my train of thought, “Professor Romano, we have invested significant resources in your recall in the hopes that we might discuss your research with you.”

“My research?” I ask, surprised. “My research into degenerative disease?”

“That’s correct,” she says. “Do you feel able to stand up?”

I consider this, flexing the long feet. One of the technicians hands me a pair of soft, slipper-like boots. Every item of clothing is familiar but oddly rendered; the effect is disorientating.

I walk in the strange, willowy body into an adjacent room, following the woman, who introduces herself as Dr. Chavez. We sit at the end of a long, bare table - white and sterile - and she presents me with the questions, the questions which I have been recalled for. They are unexpectedly simple:

1. Were there any promising leads on the prevention or reversal of muscular dystrophy revealed through your research which you did not record in your published works?

2. Were there any theoretical ideas which you did not have a chance to pursue in your research before your death?

I go to answer, but she cuts me off, explaining that I am going to be given a few days to reflect: “we find that it’s best to allow recalled patients some time to acclimate,” she tells me.

Looking impatient to be finished with me, Dr. Chavez stands up, so I do as well. A panel at the side of the room slides aside and a man in a motorized wheelchair arrives. I note with interest how he gestures at a panel below his hand to indicate his desired direction.

He smiles at me with only slightly more warmth than Dr. Chavez. “Hello, Professor Romano. I’m to take you to your living space,” he says.

I turn back to talk to Dr. Chavez again, to protest that I haven’t been told a single thing about the incredible process of recalling, but she has vanished, presumably through another sliding panel door.

With no other option, I follow the man, whose chair moves smoothly down branching hallways and long corridors.

My living space, which he opens with a fingertip scan, is small, clean, and endlessly strange. My escort watches patiently as I enthuse about the bed, which immediately molds around my backside when I sit on it, the softness of the sheets - recycled bamboo, he tells me, and the view from the ground floor apartment. I open a sliding, glass door and step onto short, soft grass. Looking back, I realize that I am housed in a building identical to the ones I can see receding into the distance over the rolling grounds: squat, white buildings.

I walk back into the apartment as another attendant arrives. She sets a bowl on the small, white table, and leaves. I assess the liquid in the bowl.

“Soup,” I say, and I’m relieved when my escort agrees. At least soup is still soup in 2312.

I am left alone and I sip the soup of blended vegetables.

Beans and bits of vegetables salvaged from the crisper in a tomato broth. “It’s minestrone,” Marie insisted at first, until it was dubbed with its real name: “Everything Soup,” a Sunday night special. Torn chunks of bread with butter. Television in the background.

I am meeting with Dr. Chavez again in three days. While I wait, I am let loose to wander around the Estate’s grounds. Manicured green grass borders miles of cement footpaths connecting those low, white buildings. At one stage, I see a wheelchair rolling towards me on the smooth path, and I am about to wave to my escort, but I catch myself at the last moment when I notice that it is a young woman.

I have been asked to specifically reflect on my research; however, I do not need these days of pondering to answer their simple questions, so instead, I luxuriate in the incredible opportunity to simply reflect on my life. I’ve been told that most recalled patients feel like they have woken up immediately after the moment after their death, but I don’t feel like that. I feel like time has elapsed, even though I had no cognitive ability to sense that time passing. My whole life feels laid out for me, like a rolling landscape which I am standing far above, observing and considering from a distance.

The years of IVF took things from us: the money set aside for renovations of the old kitchen.

It gave us other things, things we didn’t want: the grays in Marie’s dark hair, as if she needed another reminder of her advancing age (“try to avoid stress as much as possible,” the young doctor had said blithely as we embarked on the third round).

It gave us fights. Some days, it was like we had always secretly loathed each other, and just needed this opportunity to give voice to our vitriol. “The embryo is implanted, not inserted,” I had corrected her one day, elbows resting on the kitchen bench, looking at something on my phone as we spoke about our appointments that week. Suddenly, she had thrown the casserole dish she had been holding across the room; I looked up, appalled, as it smashed into pieces. “Stop being such a fucking SCIENTIST,” she had screamed.

I am intrigued when I reach a grove of trees, amazing to me after all that featureless grass. Reoxygenation and Wellbeing Grove, a sign declares, with some tips on walking mindfully along the winding path which enters the trees, like Dorothy’s yellow brick road. I wear a purple lanyard which the vast staff seem to recognize: I am a person from the past in their midst, liable to being lost or confused. A man approaches me. He explains about the recognized importance of wild spaces for the staff’s wellbeing.

What era am I from, he wonders. Were there still wild spaces near where I lived?

I think of adventures through the woods, following the tiny yellow rain suit. Chubby starfish hands presenting me with a yellow leaf, a rock, a clover. Small gumboots stomping in muddy puddles.

“It was different to this,” I venture.

There is something too precise about the edge of the miniature forest; it does not peter out in brush, but instead, immediately gives way to neat grass.

“It was less ...” I want to say less sterile - that word which has been on the tip of my tongue since my confusing reawakening days earlier, but it sounds rude.

“It was less organized,” I say, finally.

The man nods, looking over the trees with a wistful expression.

“That’s what I’ve been told,” he agrees, thoughtfully.

My three surreal days of wandering the Estate pass. I shower and dress in one of the monotone suits so ubiquitous here. I am careful to avoid the mirror as I do so; I have not become accustomed to my new physical self, and I flinch every time I am accidentally confronted with my own reflection.

My escort in his wheelchair arrives and we retrace the branching hallways we had taken three days earlier. Chavez is waiting for me, and gestures for me to sit.

“I have nothing to offer you,” I say as soon as I sit down. “As you may or may not have known, I was especially... personally motivated in my research in the final part of my life. The disease is degenerative and there is no known cure. As you will have read, if you’re familiar with my work, we made a major breakthrough with...”

“Prednisone,” she interrupts me, “yes, prednisone slows the progression of the disease. We are interested to know how it can be ceased entirely. Or prevented from occurring.”

I am surprised by her interruption as well as by her intensity.

“There is no known cure,” I repeat.

A simple and factual phrase, one which is deeply familiar to me. How many times had I delivered that line to lecture halls filled with medical students?

“There were no leads through your decades of research?” she presses. “We knew that you died before you intended to retire.” I bristle slightly at this casual reference to my death and think about objecting, but I am distracted by the desperation in her usually business-like tone.

I spread my arms in a gesture of hopelessness, “I appreciate that you hoped for a different outcome in investing in my... my recall, but I tried everything I could think of while I was living.” I hold her gaze and let the silence stretch into a pause, needing her to understand, “I tried everything.”

They took my lab keys from me eventually. Tom Bishop, my colleague and friend, put his hand on my shoulder and told me with gentle concern, “Dom, buddy, they’ve put you on stress leave. They don’t want you coming into the lab anymore. It’s become a bit too... a bit too personal for you.” I saw sympathy in his eyes, maybe even a touch of revulsion.

The next morning, Marie stood mutely at the door of the guest room, observing my home-made laboratory. Mice I had secreted out of the university lab scurried over the mess of hand-written notes. Syringes littered the floor. Her knowing eyes traveled to my rumpled clothes, my unbrushed hair, my exhausted and frantic face.

“I can figure this out,” I told her, but my voice - which I had intended to be resolute and strong - sounded broken and tired. Her chin trembled and a tear rolled down her face. She came to me and we held each other. There were no more words.

Chaves’s voice rises a pitch further towards frustration, as if I am a recalcitrant child, “Look, if you could just write down any pharmaceuticals which you think have even some slight possibility of being associated with the disease.”

She reaches for her tablet, but her fingers fumble imprecisely and the tablet falls back to the polished surface of the table with a clatter. I look into her face, and am taken aback to see fear as she looks at her own hand.

Another hand, a beloved hand, one which I had held in infancy, reaching for the teaspoon in the sugar-pot on the kitchen table. I had just been thinking how beautiful she looked, how grown up. The three of us were laughing together; she was telling us a story about an eccentric lecturer who taught one of her classes, when suddenly her fingers faltered, unable to perform the simple action. Our three sets of eyes met over the mess of spilled sugar in identical fear.

“How long have you known?” I ask Chavez quietly.

Her eyes fill with tears and she looks down at the table top rather than meeting my gaze. “A year,” she says, quietly.

I think about saying something encouraging, about the ability to slow the course of the disease, but it seems condescending in light of her obvious knowledge of the process.

The gentle, paternal voice, the one I used for scraped knees and stories of playground bullies, comes back to me then. “Are you feeling scared?” I ask, gently.

She meets my eyes then, terror on her face. “We’re all scared,” she whispers, a tear sliding down her cheek.

I am taken aback by this response. But then, pieces start to fall into place. I reflect on the exclusively youthful staff. The futuristic wheelchairs. The gestural technology which doesn’t depend on fine motor skills. The low buildings.

“It’s become endemic, muscular dystrophy,” I say, with dawning comprehension.

“No one knows why,” she says quietly. “We knew that you had lost your position before you had finished your projects, so we had hoped that...” she trails off, wiping quickly at the tears on her face.

“Do you think that I would have let her suffer, if I had known how to stop it?” I hear the hollow desolation in my quiet voice, and feel that familiar and awful helplessness grip me.

The mice had moved around the guest room with increased slowness. Each became her - a miniature, satirical, rodent parody of her demise.

She had moved back in, and medical paraphernalia filled the home: mine and hers, chemotherapy drugs and walking frames, basins for vomiting and bottles of prednisone. Marie in the midst of it, attempting to be cheerful and resilient, but betrayed by her silent tears as she nursed her family.

Chavez sighs and nods. “We appreciate your effort, Professor Romano,” she finally says, her earlier intensity replaced with despondent acceptance. “You have a choice now;” she continues, “you can either bring this consciousness to a close, and cease to exist here - which is a quick and completely painless procedure - or you can apply for an extension to continue your life here at the Estate.”

But I am already shaking my head, “I don’t belong here and there’s nothing that I can help you with.”

“I understand,” she says, and gestures to the adjacent room.

I lie down in the futuristic chair which I had arrived in three days earlier.

“One more thing before I go,” I say, looking at Chavez, whose face is still written with disappointment, “I want to know when she died. I want to know when my daughter died.”

She doesn’t need to consult her tablet.

When she looks at me, all trace of her professional mask has vanished; her tear-filled eyes are sympathetic and her voice is heavy with sadness, “Isla died in 2047. Five months after you did.”

She was twenty-three years old. I close my eyes in misery. For her. For myself. For Marie, left alone.

Tears run down the sides of this strange, borrowed face.

“I’m ready to go,” I whisper.

Dr. Chavez attends to the monitors beside me and the world begins to go blessedly blank.