Ghost in the machine

Awake again.

- Can you hear me?

She's tumbling. Helpless in the dark. Unable to move or see.

- What's your name?

Dreaming.

She's hearing a voice. Feeling light, almost like a balloon, floating. She still can't move, only her eyes, which she opens onto an empty white room. Four metres by five, three high. There's a door to her left, almost in the far corner, and a mirrored window on the same wall level with her bed. All she can see is a reflection of the ceiling and wall to her right. White floor, white walls, white ceiling. There's nothing else. The bed, or cot, in which she's lying is the only object in the room. She's naked. And she's hungry.

The voice was female. Firm and authoritative with a hint of indifference, as though the speaker already knew the reply, or it didn't matter.

The voice belonged to a slim woman, dressed in tight white trousers and long-sleeved shirt. She approached the foot of the bed. The skin of her hands and face was almost as pale as her clothing. Translucent, even. From her complexion and the levity of her movements she was twenty at most, though her eyes said otherwise. Her eyes were deep, with a worried look that said she had seen far more than all the things twenty years could hold. Dark brown, almost black, they were intelligent and cold.

One metre seventy-three and fifty-two kilos. How she knew she didn't know. Just a lucky guess, maybe. And yet she felt so sure. She just looked at her and knew. She was carrying a grey suitcase that she placed at the foot of the cot.

She was transfixed by the woman's hair. Jet black and perfectly straight it was cut short, like a helmet, just above her eyebrows and below her ears. It hung so free and seemed so soft and fine it could have been made of silk, and was so clean and new that each tiny movement of the woman's head sent waves of reflected silver cascading over the strands. She wanted to touch it with her fingers but her arms were unresponsive. There was nothing wrong with them, she knew that, rather something external on her neck between C7 and T1 prevented any movement of her limbs.

- What's your name?
- I...

It was a simple question and yet she came up blank. A white space as empty as her room. She could remember falling, remember the fear, the sensation of helplessness, but nothing else. Nothing before the dream and the woman asking for her name. Strange. She was working properly. She knew the temperature of the air, the pressure, the respective proportions of nitrogen, oxygen, argon and that the carbon dioxide had increased since the woman's arrival and was now decreasing as the rooms filters compensated. She knew that gravity was nine point eight one metres per second per second. Compatible with Earth, third planet in the solar system. She could even pinpoint her position on a globe of Earth from the information she was receiving. Half a second north of the equator, eighty-five degrees, forty-one minutes and thirty-two seconds west. She knew all this and more, but couldn't remember her name.

- I don't know.
- What do you remember?

Falling. Disorientated. Dark and silent. Violent shaking. Liquid filling her nose and mouth. Terror.

She shuddered as she relived the memory.

- Falling. I was falling.

The woman closed her eyes and hissed under her breath.

- Damn it!

She remembered something else. Something important. Someone she had to find.

- Leporinho! Where's Leporinho?

The woman turned to look into the the mirror.

- Wipe it! Last chance. Do it right this time!