Paying the Piper

My head spun. Then: Everything collapsed, inside and outside, all at once.

Out of sheer disbelief, I started pleading for it not to be so. Memories, overwhelming memories came flooding back to my consciousness in that instant – broken, utterly confusing, like I was walking in a shattered Hall of Mirrors. I was howling. Shouting for my sister – father – mother. Yet I couldn’t really see – anyone. Couldn’t visualise anyone’s faces. Just: Ma, Da, Sis. Painful feelings of absences. Absolute pain.

Then it hit me fully: I’d never see them again. Never ever again. Were they still in capsules like the one I had been trapped in? Surely not, or I would have been told. Anger, disbelief and utter loneliness hit home. What sort of game was really being played?

“Cruel! You’re all too cruel! Why make me live – for THIS?!? Am I your lab rat? AM I?” I was writhing violently in my chair, launching the Anno Domini colouring pencils to all parts, along with anything else within my reach. The console was flashing red, alarms were approaching crescendo – a microcosm of my insides at that moment. I barely registered the rushing of footsteps and voices swirling around me, the feel of a needle in my neck. Everything quickly starting to numb.

I focused on Daniel again – he had backed away, acting like he had accidentally shot someone. I thought I heard the distinctive voice of Fisher, directing operations like he probably had been born to do. Blue suddenly came into my vision, taking my hands – saying things I couldn’t really hear. I thought she said, “Give us a chance, Adem, please give us a chance.” I could have been saying her name repeatedly, I don’t know, but I felt her familiar warming embrace and her scent, and I think – no, I know I embraced her back. Please don’t let me go. I’m totally lost without you. Totally alone.

I passed out.

Many days must have gone by after that, blurred incoherently into each other, as I was doped up to the eyeballs on sedatives they injected into me and whatever else they put in my nutrition pouch. I was now confined to bed with far too many tubes and wires stuck in me for my liking – but thankfully no frosted Perspex cover entombing me. Sometimes I coughed up more of that greeny-blue gunk. I saw nothing of anyone I had met up to that point in time – only guards in navy uniforms who entered and sat in the far corner, providing me with no interactions beyond basic cordialities. As for questions – I really didn’t have the mental bandwidth to ask anyone any, let alone process what I might have been told. I had lost trust in nearly everyone, anyway. I kept hoping to see Blue, even Daniel, but that didn’t happen.

Music became my constant companion. I know they played my favourites – however, what they didn’t know was why particular songs or albums were important to me, and what they triggered in me. Or did they? Maybe regaining my memories was going to be a more gradual process than just always being triggered by something. It was like the real me was water meandering under a frozen stream, seemingly trapped by the death of winter on the surface.

However, the music was how I suddenly came to recall more about my sister. There were some particularly lively K-pop tracks playing which I knew weren’t really my bag. I remembered her…bopping around her bedroom with a hairbrush, putting it to her smiling lips, her golden blond fronds swinging, overacting the part of a diva. I could see her face…

CeCe…Cecilia. Sister.

A little beeping started; a tear slowly wound down my cheek. That was as much emotion as the chemicals allowed me to express.

So, I definitely had a sister. I couldn’t remember much about her yet. But I knew I missed her, so very much.

I tried hard to remember more about her over the next few hours, as I fell in and out of sleep. The music was from – 2024 or 2025. From my visual memory, my sister was fourteen, fifteen? I knew I was a fair bit older. I knew it because – and that’s as far as that train of thought went. However, I felt pleased. I can remember things, and they can’t stop me!

The other music they played though was usually relaxing songs. Sometimes nature sounds came on, and even there were occasional hours of white noise, which I didn’t mind. I always felt I was on a long-haul flight when I heard that – to America? And sometimes I thought I heard other sounds mixed into the white noise: voices of people who mattered to me, who maybe I’d met casually and couldn’t put a face to.

Voices of people who were now surely dead.

I had a lot of time to slowly do the painful math, with the efficiency of a chimp with an abacus. Assuming I was 17 or 18 in 2025 and it was now 2118, I added 100 to jump to 2125, and took off seven to get back to the correct new age. 110 or 111? I was 111 years old. That was insane. I must be owed many years of pension credits.

Did I remember any more capsules in that room I woke up in? No. I didn’t see much of that room, I was so defocused – I remembered the three people more than anything else – Dr Fisher, Bobbi and – yeah, of course Blue.

When I could think, apart from attempting to glacially unravel my past, that was what I thought of: Her. Hers was the only face I could picture in vivid detail – so, try as I might, I couldn’t help but return to it. It made me feel comfort, and many other things, faintly beneath my zombie-like state. I needed something to hold on to that wasn't dead.

As time went on, I remember the guards trying to interact with me a bit more, probably just to see how aware I was. They would make occasional notes on nanotablets. Oh, they’re maybe checking if I’m ready for something. I used all the energy I could muster when they started talking to me. They often asked me if I could remember their names, but every time it seemed like each one was brand new to me. Soon I’d go back into my daze, thinking about nothing or just going in circles with my previous ruminations – or having Blue on my mind – that was the totality of what occupied my slug-paced thoughts around then.

There was one time I was staring at the door, out of no particular reason at all. I would play a game out of sheer boredom. I wondered if I could guess who was going to come in next – well, the next familiar person who would enter, whenever that would be. Who did I have? Blue. Dr Fisher. Daniel. Bobbi.

A thought came to me: scratch the silly game. Yeah, this could work. I turned to the guard, whoever it was that day. “I want to see Bobbi.”

The guard jumped in surprise. “Bobbi? Bobbi McSorley, I presume. Why?”

“She’s got my lunch money,” I babbled. “She’s got my lunch money, and I need to pay the piper.”

The guard tried hard to suppress a laugh.

“I’ll bite. Who’s the piper?”

“I can’t see his face, but I bet he smells of haggis.”

And now he did roar out laughing, with deep belly laughs.

“They’ve got you on some hard stuff, haven’t they kid.”

“Yeah, neeps and tatties. When I want Tay-toh crisps and tatty bread.”

“I wish I could talk to you kid, but –”

“– I know, I know; you want me to get better, blah blah blah!”

“We all do. Everyone everywhere’s rooting for you. I’ve got a son, about your age. I’m proud of him. I wish you could meet him. He reminds me a bit of you…”

I was famous or something? If this was the celebrity lifestyle of the 22nd Century, you can keep it! But that was it from him, and from me. I was fading back into trance-mode.

A camera had been installed in the corner of the room, making it very obvious to me that I was always being monitored. I stared into it dramatically – aware I was, as usual, high as a kite. “Send me Bobbi with my lunch money. As you won’t send me Belinda Blue.”

One way or another, the piper was going to get paid.

I slid back down into the darkest sleep. Maybe three or four hours passed, I don’t know, but a familiar face did come in.

“You asked for me, and here I am.”

It was...