By Matthew D. Howes

10/05/99 

When he awakened, Asberry Qualls had no idea where he was. He didn’t even know he was Asberry Qualls. His eyes slid open. It was dark, probably night. He looked about the room, rubbing his head. The place looked sanitary, like a hospital. He lay on a bed, his back in a recumbent position. He was wearing a blue gown feeling his bare posterior on the rough sheets. Had he been in an accident? When he heard a tinkling sound, he discovered a tube trailing down a metal pole from a sack filled with clear liquid dripping into his arm.

The door clacked as the U-shaped handle pivoted down. The heavy bolt of the wooden door slid from the frame and someone stepped through. A young woman came into view. It seemed she had not considered that she might have disturbed anyone as she stared down at the metal clipboard in her hands whistling an old swing tune softly.

Asberry looked the young woman over. She was wearing a familiar white uniform. It had soft pink vertical stripes, a white hat, with a laminated plastic badge on her lapel. Her white canvas sneakers didn't make a sound on the linoleum-tiled floor as she approached the bed. Watching her, Asberry considered pretending to be asleep. He had never been in trouble with the police, he didn't know why she was here now, but he wasn't sure he should be dealing with an authority figure in his current mental state. She looked up at him. His time for evasion had expired. With a start, she dropped not only her jaw but her clipboard as well.

"Why, Mr. Qualls. Your awake." she said.

"Where am I?"

"Sir, you're at Mission Bay Hospital, in San Diego. You've been—in a coma for quite some time."

"What happened to me officer—," he looked at her badge reading aloud: " Abigale Roberts."

"Officer?" she asked, cocking her eyebrow and giving him a long questioning look.

"You're a cop aren't you?"

"Sir, I'm just a nurse. Been one for three years now. I think you should talk to your doctor. I don't know how much I'm allowed to tell you." With that she grabbed her clipboard from where it had fallen making haste out the door. Asberry didn't want her to go.

"Miss.— Miss.— Please!" The door slammed shut on his pleading gaze, then she was gone.

He felt alone. Like the last mouse in a maze with no cheese. What was happening? Why was he so confused? He sat back in his bed feeling an invisible Atlean weight pressing down on him, making him wish he could just pass out. He turned his head to the right looking for something, anything, to distract him. Nothing to see, white walls and medical equipment seemed only to compound his deep feeling of utter alienation.

He turned to the right. At first glance all he could see was the bright white light coming from the outside corridor. The light shining in under the door, the crumpled white curtain with powder blue stripes that separated patients when they wanted privacy, but he also noticed that on the far wall. Only just visible behind the curtain, was the corner of a square or rectangular object contrasting to the white wall. He pulled the curtain aside staring at the dark object. It was a framed poster. It was cheap, a token attempt to dull the hard edge of the hospital room brightening the patient's stay, the sort of thing they sell in bulk to offices like this. And yet, he felt tears welling within him. He recognized it. It was a print of one of Monet's Nymphéas. He had taken art appreciation in collage but it had been years, he never really liked Monet's work, nonetheless in a flood every detail he had ever learned washed over him. He stared at the tranquil scene of flowering lily-pads set in a calm pond at dusk. The last rays of sunlight reflecting the tops of tall pine trees on the still water of the pond. The mock painting was a refuge to Asberry. A place he found shelter from the blurred world that he had resurfaced from the black sea of the coma into, he stared at it for hours.

The door clacked again and a short man with dark hair in a white doctor’s coat entered. He flicked on the overhead lights. The harsh florescent rays exploded into the room sending Asberry reeling back covering his eyes groaning as though he was in pain.

"Oh my, I’m terribly sorry," he commented as he reached over flicking the lights off again then approached Asberry. "Hello Mr. Qualls. My name is Dr. David Cole," he said offering his hand in greeting.

"Dr. Cole," Asberry said taking his hand and shaking it.

"Firm grip you have," he said smiling, "I’m here to council and inform you as to your situation. Tell me, what can you remember?"

"Not much sir. My thoughts seem to come out in a jumble. This bit clear, that bit blurred. How did I get here?"

The doctor cleared his throat sitting on the edge of Asberry’s bed. "Mr. Qualls, this may sound odd, but you have always been here. In fact, since you were one year old."

"What the hell are you talking about? I came from Los Angeles—"

"Chicago."

"What about my wife Dorthy and our—"

"Actually, our records show her name was Beth. I can see your statements about memory problems were not exaggerated. Sir, what you think of as your family have been dead for quiet some time, except your daughter I believe she is in an adult care institution in Chicago. Sir, this may be hard for you to believe or understand but it has been over seventy years since the last thing you recall."

"How can that be?" Asberry said in cold disbelief.

"You are not the man you think are. You are the first attempt at the transfer of a human synaptic system from one host to another—"

"I’m a brain donor?" Asberry shouted in contempt.

"No sir, it’s complicated. You see, doctors of the time devised a way to make a three-dimensional map of the human brain by scanning individual sections cut paper-thin with a laser into a computer data-matrix. You might remember something similar done on the Internet about that time."

Asberry shook his head scowling.

"Well, once we had a schematic of the makeup and lay out of your brain we could reproduce it. All we needed was a vessel for this proposed ‘reconstructed’ you. That’s when the cloning team stepped in—"

"Cloning team?"

"Yes sir, the team delegated to genetically copying and regrowing a duplicate of your body to a useable age. They conceived then grew your body in a tube to the age of one year, then transferred you to us. At that point we introduced the nano-tech robots, which would do the reconstruction work to your blood stream. Their jobs were to guide your brain’s development and chemical composition to replicate your memory and instinctual subliminal functions. After all the work was completed you should have been ready to wake about the time of your new body’s twentieth birthday."

"You’re full of shit."

"Please sir, there is no need for profanity."

"If your ‘nano’ things were so great why do I feel like a block of Swiss cheese, and I hate to tell ya this doc, but I looked much better at twenty."

"There was damage done by the laser that couldn’t have been avoided. They had to make—some creative approximations."

"They guessed!"

"If you want to call it that."

"So, why am I not young?" Asberry motioning for the doctor to continue.

"Well, you see, they couldn’t get it right. Too much was missing for our machines at the time to handle. So while you could survive off life support, we couldn’t wake you. No one knew what else to do with you, so we put you here where you have lain for thirty years. Of course the project has moved on under my personal supervision," he said not even trying to hide his pride.

"What?"

"Well after your failure, we tried again. We updated our systems and this time it worked out perfectly," he said. He sounded so smug that Asberry wanted to rip his smirking face off.

"So now what? Do I get to go into counseling or something? When do I get to go home?"

"I’m sorry sir, you were long ago deemed a ward of the hospital, not to mention there is already a new Mr. Asberry Qualls. You are a failed project, nothing more than a footnote in a medical journal I wrote. I’m afraid you will have to stay here till we can discuss this in committee when the hospital board meets next."

"You can’t do this to me."

"I’m sorry sir, but I can. You are not a citizen, no records outside the hospital, technically your not even a person, therefore you have no rights," and with that he turned to go.

Asberry sat for a moment stunned by the doctor’s proclamation. Then he felt an emotional surge welling deep within him as the frustration, annoyance, and disbelief reached a crescendo within him. He reached over to the metal pole beside him, sliding his bare feet across the bed onto the cold floor. Asberry stood up. "Dr. Cole," he said, not about to let him walk out of the place like the nurse had done. Without thinking he lifted the steel pole that he held in his right hand and hurled it like a javelin. The base struck the wall but three inches in front of dr. Cole, crashing through the drywall almost piercing into the next room.

Looking down the doctor stammered in shock, "What the—How in God’s name—That’s impossible! Your muscles should be totally atrophied!"

Asberry stared at the doctor, a scowl on his face. Crossing his arms Asberry said, "Maybe your little toys made some more ‘creative approximations’ about how to fix me." With that Asberry uncrossed his arms and strolled out of the small room shielding his highly sensitive eyes leaving the doctor staring in wonder. As the door closed behind him the doctor heard him say, "Failed project, right. Whatever you say doc."