Jane Doe #7
a science fiction by Drema Deòraich (2 of 3)
In the first part of Jane Doe #7, we meet Aki Kimura and Kyle, who Aki tells her daring scientific idea to in the hopes of securing funding. The idea? Tap into the minds of comatose but anonymous individuals in an attempt to identify them and maybe bring them back, thus doing some good in the world.
That was 7 years ago. Now, Kyle is in charge of the technology, and they are are taking it in a bold new direction.
In part 2… Well, take a look for yourself, after the jump.
Content warning: coarse language, some sensuality
Two Months Ago
“Bays two and three.” Kyle pointed. Techs wheeled the newly-arrived, unresponsive Does to the indicated stations. Kyle went to bay one and set up for a standard, level-one tour to check for identity. If that didn’t work, he’d kick it up a notch.
He’d never tested a Doe before. Prior immersions had all come with known histories, files thick with information garnered from medical records or family members. He’d known, more or less, what to expect before going in.
But a Doe came with “locked” files—no way to know what he was about to step into.
For some reason, most Does were Johns. This one was a Jane, age unknown. She’d been a Doe for three years. The only records were from her admission to a local hospital’s intensive care when she was brought in off the street. Evidence of some traumatic accident, most likely a hit-and-run. Bleeding into the brain that the ER docs had stopped. No one knew who she was or what had happened. She was just… gone.
After that day, with no known relatives to notify or pay the bills, the hospital had removed her from life support. But the patient refused to die. Instead, she’d been transferred to a state-run facility, where she’d remained until two weeks ago, when the courts granted her guardianship to the Chandler Foundation.
She’d been the first. Since then, the courts had granted half a dozen new petitions filed by the Foundation, sparking a flurry of activity at the facility while they settled the new patients. Now, the team was ready to begin initial tests.
Kyle drew a shaky breath. No one knew what this would be like. Even Aki hadn’t a clue whether a Doe would have an exit ramp, so to speak. She’d put off trying to access them for that very reason.
He sighed. Aki was gone. It was his program now.
He settled into the bedside station next to Jane Doe number one, pulled the headgear on, attached the leads, and checked the safeties. All showed green. Kyle started the program and sank into the test.
The ride always felt, at first, like he’d stepped onto a sheet of ice. That sideways slide, arms pinwheeling, reaching for balance that hovered just outside his grasp. Then the sudden solid footing on a patch of dry ground. The lurch, and the running steps that kept him upright until he could halt his forward momentum. It always shot his heart into his throat, made his stomach reel until he got control.
This entry’s sudden stop landed him in a dark room. Beyond the open door, light came from the left. Still breathing hard, Kyle stared at it and worked to slow his autonomic responses. The goal was to make sense of what this Doe had to show him. Right. Okay. He could do this. He walked through the doorway and turned toward the light.
Before him stretched a naked hall. Doors to either side stood closed. The light came from around a bend, and he walked toward it, his ears buzzing. Nervous sweat greased his palms. He rubbed them against his jeans.
At the corner, Kyle turned. Another room lay just ahead, its door ajar. Dread dragged his feet to a stop. Someone awaited him in there.
“Hello?” he called.
No response.
He inched toward the opening until he could peer inside.
Across the room, on a four-poster bed piled high with feather pillows, sat a woman whose appearance brought him to his knees. Wearing his shirt—Doe’s shirt—she hugged a framed photo to her chest and wept.
Even after all this time, she mourned.
A hand fell on Kyle’s shoulder, and he almost screamed. The Doe stood beside him, staring at the woman on the bed.
“She never knew what happened,” Doe murmured. “I went out for a walk, like I did almost every night, but that time we’d had a fight. I went a different direction, walked farther. I was distracted. I—”
Kyle pushed himself to his feet and studied Doe’s face. Same shape to its structure, but the Doe in Kyle’s lab appeared decades older than this woman with thick brown hair curling past her ears. Blue eyes blinked, sending tears down her full cheeks. Kyle grasped her arm with gentle pressure. “What did you do?”
Doe glanced at him before looking back to the bed with a sob. “I’d had a few beers, must have stumbled into traffic. The last thing I remember is the blast of a horn, and then standing in this room. I’ve been here so long. I can’t seem to find my way out.” She wiped her cheeks. “She must think I abandoned her.”
Kyle observed Doe. “What’s her name?” His voice, gentle as a warm breeze, roused a rustle of memory in his own mind.
Doe sighed, the ghost of a smile on her lips. “Sarah Torrence. She’s my wife.”
Kyle turned Doe toward him. “What’s your name?”
Doe frowned. “Why?”
“Because,” Kyle said, “if you tell me who you are, and where I can find Sarah, I can tell her you didn’t just leave.”
The Doe’s eyes lit up.
Aki would have been proud.
#
Six years ago
Aki fell back onto the bed, breathing hard. Sweat trickled down her temples and into her hair. Above, the stars she’d hung with fishing line dangled, their glow faint in the dawn light. Heat rising from the bed sent them moving in a slow-motion dance.
Beside her, Kyle’s eyes gleamed in the shadows. Aki touched his brow, then rolled toward him. She threw one leg over his hips and wriggled close enough to feel his breath.
“I have news.”
His eyes widened. “The project?”
Aki nodded against the pillow.
His gaze searched her face.
“Five families have signed up for trials.”
“Wow.” Kyle blinked. “When?”
“I sent out the letters last week. The latest response came in while we were on shift.” Aki held no illusions of immediate success. Theoretical equations and chemical formulae on a computer screen were a far cry from live tests on actual patients. But now she would finally get hard clinical evidence to guide her next moves. She grinned at Kyle’s silhouette backlit by the dawn light coming through the window. “I waited to tell you until we got home and could celebrate.”
He rolled onto his back and pushed a hand through his hair.
She waited for a reaction.
He stared at the ceiling. “What happens now?”
“Aren’t you happy?” He knew how hard she’d worked for this, how many hours the whole team had put in at the lab. She’d thought he wanted this as badly as she did. “Aren’t you excited for the project?”
“Of course!” He turned toward her, his eyes wide, apologetic. “I am! Sorry, I was thinking ahead. Congratulations, Aki.” He leaned in for a long, slow kiss. One hand stroked her breast before sliding around to pull her closer. He touched his forehead to hers. “This is going to put your name in every medical textbook in the country, every science journal around the world. I’m really proud of you.”
Excitement tickled her insides like bubbles in a fizzy drink. She scrunched her shoulders and tightened her grip on his arms. “Just think how those families will react when we succeed. I can’t wait to see their smiles the day they talk to their loved ones.”
Kyle laughed, a low chuckle that warmed her to the core.
Aki was no prude. Despite her traditional upbringing in Japan, life in the U.S. after her parents’ deaths had changed her, made her less concerned with old-fashioned morals. A string of lovers had danced through her life over the years, most as uninterested in a long-term commitment as she had been. Her career meant more to her than any relationship.
But Kyle…
She liked him enough to hope for more.
His laughter faded, leaving a remnant smile. “Have you told the others? The project liaisons? Reuben?”
“No. I wanted to tell you first.”
His smile disappeared. “You know what they’re gonna say.”
Aki sighed. Not this again. She rolled away from him, dropped her feet over the edge of the bed, and sat up. “Can’t we just drop it?”
Kyle rose, came around the bed, and sat beside her. She looked away.
“Ak, these people have granted funding to your project for the last ten months. Their grant will last another four years. They’ve been supportive of your failures as well as your successes. Don’t you think they deserve some consideration in return?”
She shook her head. Half a dozen times, she’d explained how commercialization of the project would be degrading to these patients, intrusive on their personal lives, a crime against their honor. She’d thought he finally understood.
His hand came to her thigh, a gentle touch devoid of sexuality but laden with passion. “Think of it this way. If these patients were awake and aware, able to make their own choices, don’t you think they would be willing to work to help offset their own medical expenses? Think of this as a job. Paying clients hook up to patients in order to experience vicarious thrills. The income helps the project and the families. Everyone wins.”
“Everyone except the patients.” Aki regarded him. “Your analogy is flawed. If we opened that door, it would bare their most personal thoughts, their deepest fantasies, their every embarrassing moment for complete strangers. That’s not the same as working a job where those intimate details of their lives would be secure in their own heads.”
“If they had a choice, given their current circumstances, do you think they would approve my plan?” He brushed a strand of hair back from her face. “Couldn’t you at least ask their families what they think?”
She got up and began to dress.
“C’mon, Ak. Don’t be like this. Can’t we disagree without you running away?”
“This isn’t about a disagreement.” She pulled on a pair of shorts, tugged a tank top over her shoulders, and whirled to stab a finger in his direction. “You’re asking me to compromise my ethics. I can’t go there, Kyle. I won’t.” She shoved her feet into ankle socks, then sneakers.
Kyle shook his head. “It’s not unethical if the families give their consent.”
She glared at him. “I owe Reuben Chandler a total of five years. Five. After that, I’m a free agent again, and can do what I want with my project. If my methods are as successful as I believe they will be, on the day the grant is ended, I intend to make this project open source.”
Kyle’s face paled. “Aki, no.”
“This kind of science should be available to everyone,” she said, “not hoarded like so many corporate CEOs do. It’s wrong, Kyle. Sick people shouldn’t have to choose between health care and feeding their kids. Goddamned pharma misers only care about profits.” She stopped for a breath. Why’d he have to start this today of all times? They should be celebrating the project’s success, the start of a new phase in their work.
“I care about these patients,” she said. “Them and their families. No one should have to live like that. I intend to change their lives for the better.”
Kyle stammered over his words, pushed himself upright, and took two steps toward her.
Aki pulled her hair into a rough ponytail and snapped a band around it, pulling it tight. “I’m going for a run.” Without a backward glance, she left the bedroom and slammed the apartment door on her way out.
#
One month ago
Kyle stood surrounded by busyness as this team prepared for another client’s trip. In the low light of the observation station, his eyes drank in the new setup. Beyond the one-way glass on his right was a small, intimate room with just enough space for the passenger and a tech. Soft color on the walls and comfortable accommodations made travelers feel as if they were in for a spa treatment. On one wall hung a gorgeous seascape painting, its calm colors soothing for nervous clients. Across the room sat a soft, curved chaise, its head near a console, where a thin neurocap lay connected and ready for the next patron. Ceiling and floor tiles absorbed sound to help reduce distractions.
Kyle shifted his gaze to the left, past the wall that bisected the one-way window’s view, to the chamber behind the passenger’s cubicle.
Pristine white walls, floor, and ceiling made other details stand out. Every bit as small as the traveler’s room, this cubicle held a patient turned on his side in his gurney’s padding. Another Doe, this one. After a while, they started to look the same. Most had that blank expression, that same head tilt that required bracing for comfort, that same shrunken body shape. Their hands had drawn up into claws from disuse, though sometimes physical therapy helped with that. This one had his fingers curled around ball grips to help stretch the tight muscles in his hands. Staff had found his first name, Harvey, in their initial test. So far, no other information to identify his family or other contacts had shown up in his memories.
Kyle frowned at Harvey’s stained gown. Staff should have made him more presentable, even though no one except staff ever saw a Doe. Management had determined this was better for the traveler’s peace of mind. It wouldn’t do to have a paying client develop compassion for the patient. Bad for business.
One of the program’s neurologists sat amid the techs, perfectly centered at the dividing wall, her own lead cap already in place as she set up parameters for the excursion. She would observe all that happened inside the connected minds, the ever-present face in the crowd, hardly noticed and never identified by patient or passenger. She’d scan for signs of agitation, ready to disconnect the traveler. She would also record her observations and had served twice already as an expert witness in frivolous legal cases brought by clients.
In front of the neurologist and techs positioned along the workstation, this side of the window projected holographic readings over the patient’s body. Techs manipulated the size and position of graphs and charts as they worked, while staff brought in the next client—a man in his forties, maybe fifties, balding on top, a slight limp to his gait—whose readings appeared on the glass. He’d bought the top package, not just observation, but full immersion. Wherever the patient took him, the passenger would feel, smell, taste, hear everything the patient did in his experiences. He could talk to the patient, get limited responses to direct the experience, but he could not take control. Only staff were allowed to do that.
In the patient room, the tech connected leads from the console to the cap, adjusted Harvey’s pillow and blanket, then gave a thumbs up. The neurologist nodded in agreement. In the adjacent cubicle, the guest liaison tech pulled the cap onto the client’s head. Another round of checks and confirmations before the techs both left the cubicles and the experience began.
In addition to the neurologist, other observers watched every twitch of both client and patient. Medical intervention stood close at hand, just in case. In the fifteen months since the program went commercial, only a handful of trips had turned sour. They’d had no fatalities so far, thank whatever gods might exist.
Kyle still remembered Aki’s first night shift, their walk to the bridge where she’d given him a glimpse of what she hoped to accomplish. Now, after all her long years of research, trials under the grant, political maneuvering, and waiting for the whole thing to take flight, all her efforts had paid off in ways she would never have imagined. They’d reunited half a dozen Does with their families since Kyle whispered this plan into Ellis’s ear. The rest were declared wards of the Foundation until such time as familial contacts could be determined. Part of Kyle hoped that would happen. But the part of him that loved the dog tracks, the poker table, and the casinos feared losing control of these meal tickets.
He tracked the activity of the holoprojections on the window while he chewed the inside of his cheek. When Aki had disappeared, Reuben handed Kyle the project director’s position along with a corresponding leap in salary. He had to credit Aki, though. Without her genius, he would never have made it to this point in his career, in his life. Before, he’d rented a small flat in the lower end of town. Now, he lived large in a West Beach condo, rode a Harley, and invested in artwork. If the program continued in this same profitable vein, he could soon pay off his bookie. Given a few more years, Kyle could retire in style.
If only Aki could have seen how far the program would go, not just for the program management but for the patients and their families as well. Most of them earned a respectable stipend from their loved ones’ participation in the project. Reuben’s generosity had even advanced the program’s capabilities by at least three levels.
Didn’t matter, though. He knew Aki wouldn’t have approved. He could imagine her reaction to the commercial course the Foundation had taken with her work after she’d disappeared. Her jaw would clench. Her eyes would narrow. Her whole demeanor would tighten as if she were about to do battle.
He sighed and dragged a hand down his face. Aki was gone, and all the wonderings and second-guessings, all the what-ifs and whys in the world wouldn’t change that. Kyle hauled himself out of his reminiscences and went back to work.
#
Five years ago
The sun peeked over the horizon as they stepped out onto the bridge span. Ever since that first night when Kyle walked her here, they had come back again and again when she needed to clear her head.
This morning, they stood without speaking while the light grew around them. Birds darted between trees on the banks and a breeze redolent with moist peat and a hint of burning trash rose to tickle Aki’s nose. She stared down at the river far below, its current swift, its surface rippled, its waters wide and deep.
A car passed behind them, the vibrations on the roadbed transferred to the pathway under their feet. Others followed, shift workers headed home.
“You’re more quiet than usual this morning.”
His voice frayed her last nerve. “I should still be there. You shouldn’t have made me leave.”
He laughed, low and warm. “Aki, no one could make you do something you don’t want to do. Look at you. You’ve been at it for ten hours straight. You’re exhausted. You need a break.” He touched her shoulder, rubbed the tight muscles there.
She twitched away from his hand. “We’re so close. I feel like if I could keep going—”
He leaned forward on the railing, pushed into her peripheral view. “If you keep going when you’re this tired, you’ll make a mistake. Maybe even harm yourself or one of your patients.”
She peeked sideways at him, an argument ready on her lips, but something in his expression, some measure of compassion for her plight and a silent appeal to her more reasoned self, made her swallow her words.
She was almost there. Such a delicate balance! To reach into a patient’s mind—not brain; there was a huge difference—and tie into their thoughts rivaled a ballet performed on broken glass. If she pushed any one trial too hard, either the patient or the passenger could be damaged beyond repair. Over the last couple of weeks, she and other techs had managed to connect with patients for a few seconds of confusion before the connections dropped out of sync and they had to stop. Several times, the rider had come away with an enormous migraine. She’d experienced that herself twice now.
It had been her idea to set the safety parameters inside the boundaries other team members thought sufficient, an extra measure of caution that now she wished she could ignore. But Kyle was right, and she knew it. If she violated her own restrictions in a moment of frustration and someone got hurt, she would never forgive herself.
“You’ve made tremendous strides in the last year, Ak. You’ll reach your goals. In another month, maybe less, you’ll work out that last glitch. A week after that, you’ll notify all the contacts for your test subjects and reach out to families of the other patients in the facility. What’s one more month when you’ve been working toward this for so long?” He nudged her shoulder with his own. “You’d hate me if I allowed you to risk your success when you’re this close to a breakthrough.”
“Yeah.” Her voice barely registered over the sound of the water. She looked down at the river and calmed herself with mental calculations to gauge cubic feet of water per second passing beneath them from a guesstimate of its speed.
He leaned in close. “What’s really going on in there?”
What indeed. The closer she got to success, the more she feared failure. Even when her parents died and she’d left Japan to go to university here, even when she was settling into a new culture and knew so little about how to get by in this strange place, she’d never felt this vulnerable. She took a deep breath. “This is my life’s work.”
He nodded. “I know.”
“I’ve buried myself in its development, hung my self-respect on its outcome.”
Kyle’s eyes peered into hers.
Aki swallowed hard and pushed the words out past a lump in her throat. “What if it never succeeds? Or what if it does, but no one wants what we can offer? What if it was all for nothing?”
“Oh, Ak.” Kyle shook his head and took her hands in his own. “I can’t guarantee it will ever work. But I promise you, if it does, you’ll have more people signing up than you can ever accommodate.”
She wanted to believe him. She gripped his fingers and stepped closer. “How do you know, though?”
His smile took on a confidence she wished she could feel. “Because if nothing else, their families want closure. I’d bet everything I have on that.” He winked at her, then threw an arm around her shoulders and hugged her tight.
She stood in his embrace and willed herself to be that sure of her success.
Meet the author:
Drema Deòraich’s short fiction has appeared in Electric Spec, Asymmetry, Backchannels, and Mithila Review. Entheóphage, her debut novel, was self-published in October of 2022 and was nominated for the 2023 Ursula K. Le Guin Prize for Fiction. Fallen, the first book in her Founder’s Seed trilogy, was self-published in May of this year. Book 2, Broken, will be released this Fall.
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