SOCK DUTY - PART VIII

“Hey there...” When Meganie finally starts to show signs of rousing, I do my best to encourage it calmly.

My ass and back and arm are all aching from being stuck in one position so long. I did not have the heart to wake her before now, accidentally or otherwise.

She blinks languidly, eyelashes so close I can see the slight clag of sleep between them, “...you sleep OK?”

I smile and keep my tone even, even though I want to pull her to my chest and be all emotional from not seeing her for so long, for being so worried, but this isn’t about what I want. I need to gauge how she is doing and react accordingly.

Why do I care so much?

At first, she smiles, nuzzling into my shoulder more, almost affectionately. Then, as her senses return, Meganie’s dark pink eyes lock with mine, her face reddening to match.

She separates herself from me – a string of drool clinging to my sleeve – and sits up in front of her bedroom door. Which, in turn, reacts to the motion by automatically opening, causing her to jump with fright, and latch straight back onto my arm. 

I could get used to this.

I chuckle as the sleepy scientist’s consciousness is sharply brought back into focus. 

“H-how long…” her sentence trailing off in embarrassment. 

“You were in your room for about a day, and I’d guess you’ve been napping here with me for a couple of hours, but I was asleep myself when you came out, so can’t be sure.” Meganie squeezes my arm again, involuntarily, for as soon as she realises what she’s doing to seek comfort, she lets go again and turns away a little. 

I need to stretch and move to loosen up my muscles, so take the opportunity to stand. I tussle her cloud of hair once I’m upright, and she looks up at me with a mix of confusion and… is that disappointment? 

“Let’s get some coffee.” Not a question. Not a choice. Just as I’ve come to do with Meganie, a soft command helps prompt her to do things, rather than getting paralysed with decision making.

I offer her my hand and she takes it to stand as well.

Our fingers linger for a moment, but this time I break the contact, and wrap the blanket about her to stay warm. Also, she’s not wearing much… I don’t want to get distracted.

After venturing to the kitchenette area of the office, sorting out a filter pot and some toast in case we need a snack, I’d hoped the mood would lighten a little, but “Whenever you’re ready, I’m happy to talk about whatever, however long it takes...” the silence continues.

I’ve put cases on hold and outsourced as much work as possible to other Returners.

As much as Sock Duty is a dead end, there are always tasks that need completing, and it’s not just a dumping ground for failed recruits. There are plenty of heroes – spies, assassins, diplomats, etc. - that all excel in retrieving items and maintaining the Agency’s cover out in the field. Plenty rotate back from other departments for lower stakes as a bit of respite.

Eventually, most of a coffee deep, Meganie speaks, “D-do you like being here?” 

Taken aback by the question, I need a moment to recover, to consider my answer, but she carries on her train of thought regardless, “I don’t… I just stay because I don’t know anything else.”

She recounts how it’s been a long time since she was recruited. Almost to the point that her memories of being alive, of how she became a hero, and especially before that, are fading.

“I don’t remember faces, they’re all a blur. We looked so alike anyway, but their names, their voices, mannerisms…” Meganie lists off her colleagues from when she was alive, clones cut from the same cloth, all one near genetically identical family. “…I m-miss them so much!”

As she sobs to herself, I stoke her back, and recall the brief history contained in the envelope Chris gave me.

Her world had been a technocratic utopia by my standards. Different classes existed for different purposes, and so scientists were specifically grown in vats from a set batch of DNA to be the most average representative of society possible. Effectively human lab mice.

The principle being that with greater uniformity amongst researchers, there would be less individual bias and more objectivity in their results. For her home world, it was a master stroke. For Meganie and her kin... although started with the best of intentions, any system on a long enough timeline becomes corrupt.

“W-we lived happily, I guess… we wanted for nothing. When we weren’t working on a new p-piece of technology or calculating an update to some scientific principle, we sort of just existed…” Her tone belying just how boring heaven can be.

All they did all day was pursue their curiosities, moving to and from projects as needed, “…we weren’t a-allowed to go out and mingle with the general populace in case we were swayed to one ideology or another. Scientists were s-separated from all business, politics, and social events. No culture or history to draw from other than what we made o-ourselves.” 

A uniform microcosm of a uniform people.

Nothing to do other than entertain themselves.

Nowhere to go for fear of mental and emotional contamination.

Any cliques were quashed, as loyalty to anything but empiricism was considered a risk to the purity of results.

An allegiance to something other than truth.

It’s unimaginable… almost as much as Meganie having so many words inside her after being a closed book for so long.

“E-even in a family of thousands, it was…” again she sniffles and struggles to get her words out. She was lonely in a crowd. Even one where everyone was in the same boat as her, for fear of losing those shallowly permissible connections, “…b-but it’s worse here.”

“How so?” I bump her with my shoulder, she looks up at me, sadness etched into her features, and I give her an encouraging smile. A small gesture, but hopefully enough to show her it’s not all bad, and to help her carry on her story. Let it all out. 

Meganie looks back down at her coffee. Staring at the infinite wasteland of atoms between her and the few wisps of steam still coming off it. Her tiny hands glued to those equally porcelain walls, “Except for you...” 

I feel the tips of my ears warm, the rouged reflection blushing in my own cup.

Before I can thank her or pick up the conversation, my colleague continues her confession, “Everyone who comes here is a h-hero, correct? They save their world, then d-die a martyr…” she begins to blubber a bit, gets frustrated with herself for being emotional while trying to open up, and rejects my attempt to comfort her with contact.

“S-sorry…” she takes some deep breaths, calms herself down, and stifles any remaining convulsions – sobs or hiccups or sniffling – then, after a long slug of melange, “…I just don’t belong here.” 

She slowly picks her way through the knots of her past. Details only she could know filling in blanks the personnel report I got from HR couldn’t possibly have contained. 

“Meganie…” my heart aches as she finishes. No longer actively crying, just so drained the tears fall silently, as she stares into nothing. Nothing more to give, “…you’re still a hero.” She doesn’t contest, but I explain myself before she can retake control of dialogue, “You wouldn’t be here if you’d ran away or failed.” 

Her planet had created a perpetual energy machine.

I don’t get the theory, let alone fact behind it. It’s not even science fiction in my time yet, but somehow through harnessing a quantum singularity, they could just draw energy out of it to meet their exponentially growing needs.

Though mostly stable, and with backup safety measures beyond reproach, during the transition from prototype to production model, a meltdown occurred. 

“And…” first calm and cold, then angry and hot, “…AND?!. So what? There’s nothing noble or heroic about drawing straws! Everyone was terrified. No one wanted to do it. No one volunteered…” then back to frigid and forlorn, “…least of all me.” 

I lean away, raise my hands to show I’m not a threat, but push my point before she can wind herself up further, “So what if you didn’t volunteer to save your world? What did you do when faced with being the one person responsible for stopping an entire solar system from turning into a back-hole that would eventually absorb galaxies? Did you kill yourself and leave it up to someone else? No, you took on that singularly massive, crushing burden, and-”

“A-and I died in agony!” Meganie’s fury turns on me, “Being stripped away atom by atom. Ever heard of spaghettification? I think it was a theory even as far back as your era. Well it was real for me!”

Alarmed at her own outburst, she shuts down, receding into herself for a moment. Then, conflicted by her turbulent emotions, she pushes herself to say more, “I never want to face that again.” 

That’s why she won’t go in the field!

It’s not a fear of living up to responsibility…

She’s proven countless times she has what it takes. Her scientific skills are basically unmatched even at the Returns Agency. That’s why she’s in Sock Duty and not head of the Crisis Team. The trauma of her sacrifice has stripped her of any courage she had and left her an anxiety ridden shade of her former self.

…it’s a rightful fear of uncertainty and danger, sorely gained.

Before I try to console her again, Meganie finds more words, ones she never knew she had, “Then you come along! After a century of not being able to make any connections in this place, every hero some arrogant courageous meathead, bellowing about the place, all full of testosterone and ambition… you listen to me!” She wipes her face with the edge of the blanket. 

“You don’t get mad that I’m scared to go out. You’ll go for me. I do all the prep, all the calculations, all the admin and logistics and analysis. All I’d ever asked for, for a hundred years, was that someone take that one burden for me, but no one would…” she starts to get irate again, irate at being left alone and unsupported, unbearably so, “then, in just a few months, you convince me to go on missions with you. You’re not mad about being in Sock Duty. It’s not beneath you. You handle everything with the same consideration and professionalism and it makes me so…” my ex-supervisor, my now trainee, my only friend here, stumbles over herself. Stopped dead at the realisation of why she’s upset, “…jealous.”

Previous heroes during their Returns Agency training arc thought all of this below them. They bulldozed through the department and got out as fast as possible.

She’s been stuck here for what feels an eternity, unable to move past her fears, still feeling like an imposter after more than quadruple her original lifetime. 

She exhales. Long, slow, and ragged. Like a death rattle emptying her lungs. 

“I never felt like I was meant to be here, but you fit right in…” she sips her coffee to press on through the proclamation, “…but when we were in that school, I felt at home.”

Meganie hadn’t been under the influence of the Mind Control Memo.

Like me, that isn’t her real name.

The serial number on all those references is all she was ever known by.

Meganie is just a nickname from the Agency… because she wears glasses.

I’m stunned at the revelation.

Her glaring at me during class was real, her excited girly behaviour was genuine.

She gave her name willingly in the hopes of staying somewhere innocent, where she could be happy and belong. Even if it was a lie. “I know Bob was treating people like dolls, and eventually the notebook would end up in evil hands, but before all that…” she trails off, knowing that I know where she’s going. 

Just like the janitor, she never got to experience a normal school life.

When her classmates had shown an interest in her and started conversations, it was exhilarating. She got to sit in lessons, they had lunch in the cafeteria, they laughed, joked, and bonded over the spectacle I was making downstairs.

Meganie felt welcome and comfortable and safe.

At the Returns Agency she’s at risk of being sent on dangerous missions, of being put in harms way, and of losing the life she got back that was torn away the first time.

I’d heard the joy in her voice over the nano-machines as she giggled and gossiped her way about school, like any other teenaged girl. Shy, reclusive, sure... but the positive attention of others pulled her out of that shell in just a few hours.

Even though, practically, we both know her staying would have caused as much of a threat to that world, that entire dimension, as had we left the magical notepad behind.

“It feel like I’ve had paradise ripped away from me.”

Our operation windows are finite to ensure minimal imprint on those we meet. A transient life full of a billion goodbyes. If you’re ever noticed at all.

“You’re past probation. You’ll not stay. They’ll put you in a more important department and I’ll be left here on my own…” the ‘again’ goes unsaid, as does her still being unable to do missions by herself. 

Maybe I should speak to Chris?

I get up to leave, making excuses for the bathroom, but Meganie’s pale thin fingers dart out and ensnare my sleeve.

Even cracking a joke about her wanting to watch me pee doesn’t defuse her desperation, despite the fact I’d be in and out of Human Resources in a millisecond to her perception of time… she’s just too vulnerable to be on her own at all right now. 

I’m not a manager. I can’t make decisions. I’ve only been here a few months, maybe a year... However time works in this nexus between all things? Hell, I'm not even meant to be here! I don’t even know how the Returns Agency works to be able to suggest solutions within their organizational guidelines. We need someone else’s input...

My companion overcomes her clinginess, lets go of me, and stands wrapped in her blanket. Just waiting. Confident in me, whatever I decide. 

I didn’t intend to say it, “Let’s go talk to Chris...” I just don’t have any answers myself, “...together!” but it’s enough for now... for us.

“O-OK…” she gives me a smile of relief that simply melts my heart “…together.”

I'm just as lost as she is.