How My Brain Ended Up Inside This Box

Chapter Twenty Four

They knew her, and they knew so much about her, not only how she liked her bath water, but they even altered the chemical composition of the soap as she lathered it on her body, depending on the dryness of her skin, which they measured with infinite precision. They knew when she was barefoot, and what temperature she liked beneath her feet. They tinted the window for her preferred sunlight, and they warmed and cooled the breeze depending on the reaction of her pores, day and night. Day and night, night and day this perpetual servant of a building existed only to ensure the continuous comfort of its occupants.

I felt I could identify with its sense of obedience. It was made for these creatures, just as I was made by such as them. Was I also made for nothing more than to serve their whims and desires? The room didn't know about me, and it wondered about me. I could sense it measuring and quantifying, reacting to the very different kinds of pores on my own skin, trying to figure out if I was truly breathing and if so what was it my lungs desired. Was I even alive? The room and its components could not tell for sure what I was. They reached out to me on their low power bandwidth, sent brief encoded messages my way to see if I understood their language. I found that I did, and I replied.

I told the room it need do nothing for me, to keep everything the way it was for Kinship. I had no need of their gestures or pampering. I was as highly adaptable as they, even more so, and required nothing from them. "Not even a warm blanket?", the bed inquired,

"Not even that," I said.

Kinship started talking to me from behind the bathroom door.

"If there's anything you want, honey, just say the word," she said. "You wish is our command," she added with a laugh I didn't understand. I was pretty sure I was theirs to rule. Hadn't I gone willingly with them, without resistance, without even consideration? I still had no idea how they had even tracked me down. Their ways and their relationship to me were as mysterious as Marta's, as Mother's, as Stan's. I realized that a lot had happened since I had been taken from my home, but I didn't miss anything about those days. I had too much to worry about in the very present moment.

"I don't want anything," I called back to Kinship, and at that very moment, the door to our room opened, and Lars Charles walked in.

He seemed even larger than he had before, and I shrank back against the wall behind my bed, as if I would be safer there. Lars smiled, held out his arms with his palms up, and sat down on Kinship's bed, a mere few feet from mine. He smiled and his face seemed kind.

"If you don't want anything," he gently said, "that's fine. If you do, that's good too. This is your home now, Candles. We want you to be happy here."

"Why?" I asked him, and the moment I said it I knew it was the one word which had been on my mind day in and day out for days and even weeks now.

"That is the question, isn't it?" he said. "They put the smart blood into you, now, didn't they?"

"Is that the blue stuff?" I asked, and he nodded.

"Marta took some out," I told him, and this time he frowned.

"I'm sorry we were late," he said after a long pause. "You never should have met that woman. She cut your hair?"

"June Lee did that," I said.

"June Lee?" Lars seemed startled at the mention of that little girl's name. "You met the young Queen?"

"I met her," I said with some emotion in my voice. I hadn't liked June Lee very much, and I hated my haircut.

"I didn't know this," Lars said, suddenly standing up. "It changes things," he added, but when he saw the look on my face and bent over and told me not to worry.

"You're perfectly safe here," he said. "Kinship is your guardian. She'll be your friend. She's the best we have."

"I saw a dress I liked," I blurted out as he headed towards the door. "It was pale blue with daisies up and down the side. It was on a fake person in a window on a busy street with lots of lights."

Lars turned back and laughed.

"I'll send someone to try and find it for you, all right?"

"Thank you," I said meekly as he closed the door behind him. I crawled under the blankets and buried my head in the pillow. Kinship was still in the bathroom. She really did like it in there. I was having too many feelings, too much all at once. The room was buzzing and humming with its rumors and gossip. Lars' presence had shaken up all its plans as it fine-tuned its atmospheric controls and readjusted various settings, and now had to restore things to their Kinship condition. I wondered what Lars had meant about June Lee being the Queen, about him being late, about Kinship being my guardian, and I was more than ever confused about who and what I was, and how I had let Marta control me, and how I had let Lars and his gang snatch me and lock me up in that motel. I felt like the most useless creature in the world, unable to act or even think for myself. "Why?" I asked myself, realizing that Lars had not even tried to answer my one and only question.