Chapter Text
Carol kept a journal. A leather one, simple, brown, that she used to use to write notes about Wycaro. For if she was on the train with Helen, watching out the window, and she saw a bird. She jotted down the note and drew the stupidest little figure drawing of what a pigeon equivalent would be in the world of purple slipsand and Mandovian spicefruit. What color silk Lucasia would wear to the Mandova ball, inspired off of a mannequin in the Nordstrom.
A few weeks ago it changed uses. Carol dug it up from the box at the bottom of her closet, the remnants of Wycaro and her life before the joining. She brought it with her when she got into that car and followed Zosia. To Vietnam. To Montana, Shanghai, Spain. That beach, that lodge, the pool, the skyline…Carol’s seen one thing as pleasing and fulfilling like the places they went. A hotel made of ice in Norway. The journal came along to every country they visited. Every chance Carol got she’d ask a question to Zosia. Not too many at one time. Despite that, the pages started filling with scattered notes. She doesn’t know why she wanted to learn about Zosia, individual Zosia. Maybe in the desperate hope that if Zosia was displaced or removed from the hive mind, Carol would know her, or at least she could try to.
Sitting on the beach, looking out at the rocks protruding from the ocean. Watching the water lapping up the cliff edges, the sun slowly setting in the distance. Oranges and reds turn to purple, the sun falling asleep. The moon peeks over the horizon. Carol turns her head, staring at Zosia’s side profile. The orange disappears, slipping down her face. She’s bathed in darkness. Carol digs her toes into the wet sand, the water licking at her feet before retreating like a cowardly dog. She exhales, then inhales the salty air.
“What was her favorite animal?” Carol murmurs softly. Zosia glances at her, a brow furrowed in confusion. “Zosia’s. Before…all of this.” Zosia stares out at the water for a long moment before replying.
“The Eurasian lynx.” Zosia hums, finally answering. Her face stretches into a soft, familiar smile. “I saw it for the first time when I was ten. At the Oliwa Zoo in Gdańsk. It crawled up onto a large rock in the enclosure and yowled. My family around me – my brother especially – reared back. It was loud. But I was…mesmerized. A creature so regal, so poised.”
Carol repeats it aggressively in her head the entire way back. She almost forgets to talk with how hard she’s aiming to remember. When she grabs the journal, she quickly writes it down. Next to her other notes. Zosia’s favorite color is blue. Cerulean. She grew up in Gdańsk, then learned English when she moved to Morocco at twenty-one. She barely had scraped together enough money to move, and her brother came along. Carol learns she was in Tangier just before the joining, and had been teaching an English class, when it happened. Besides mango ice cream, Zosia loves szarlotka, apple cake, and harira, a Moroccan soup. Carol teased her about her sweet tooth and learned she had three cavities when she was fifteen.
There was one question she was terrified to ask. Was Zosia, real Zosia, gay? Did they send her to Carol because she solely looked like Raban and could mimic Helen to a tee, or did they know Carol needed someone familiar? Like her? She skirted around the question when she asked Zosia if she had a partner in the past. Then Zosia tells her something she’s been dreading.
Carol rocks up to her neighborhood after learning Zosia isn’t really Zosia. The helicopter lands, and drops down a box. With an atom bomb inside of it. The helicopter rotors fade away. Carol turns. Manousous follows her, his steps quick, as she walks into her house. Carol makes her way straight to the alcohol cabinet, ignoring his frantic Spanish behind her. She lazily looks around for a phone and finds the translation app, setting it down on the counter as she pours herself a glass of vodka. Aqua vitae. The phone pings when Manousous stops panting.
“Unknown word or name. Why are you back here? Why do you have a bomb, more importantly, why is it here?”
Carol shrugs. Manousous throws his arms up, exasperated. “Learned that I’ve got a month or so before they take me and turn me into one of their loonies. I guess it made me feel a bit violent.” The phone pings. Manousous listens to the translation, a hand held to his forehead. He starts talking again.
“This is not how you plan to save the world, right, Unknown word or name? This can’t possibly be the best plan you could think of.” It rattles robotically.
“I thought you’d probably have an idea, one that’s better than mine. But I figure it can’t hurt to have a backup.” Carol downs the last of her vodka and slams the cup back down. She starts walking away.
“Carol Sturka!” Manousous shouts, pushing the words together into one, like he always does. “I wish to save the world. Do you?”
“Yep.” Carol doesn’t look over her shoulder. “You’d better get researching.”
Over the next few days, Carol helps Manousous furiously translate the words in the books he’s gathered. She learns that he’s smarter than he seems, even though he’s a little bit crazy. He explains why he sent the hive mind into a seizure.
“It was so I could try and disconnect them. I believe that they use a frequency associated with alpha brain waves to join together. I made them seize so I could try and isolate the frequency. I learned a lot, that first trial. I need a better connection to try and bring them back to their individual self.”
“So, what?” Carol asks, taking a break from translating. “You want to make them seize all at once and shout at them their real names and family and birthplace, trying to hope they come back? You do know how many people that would kill, right?” Manousous waits for it to translate before looking at Carol like she’s stupid. He taps a book before starting to talk. Carol looks at it. Faraday, Maxwell, and the Electromagnetic Field.
“No. That was just a preliminary trial. I believe we could make a large scale Faraday cage to exclude the frequency they operate on, and hopefully, cure them. And save the world.”
“That would take centuries to slowly bring back billions of people.” Carol mutters, leaning back in her chair. She tamps down the flicker, the traitorous flicker, of hope.
“Yes, Carol Sturka. Which is why I am glad you brought me an atom bomb.”
—
Carol dials zero on the phone, and when it clicks, she thanks anybody and everybody above that the god forsaken message doesn’t play again. If she had to listen to that thing again, she might start painting her cul de sac again.
“Hi, Carol.” A male voice. Not Zosia. Carol can’t even begin to feel conflicted, not when they have so much work to do.
“I need enough 3.5 millimeter copper mesh to cover a wooden room that is six by six feet. And enough wood to create the room, plus wood to create a functioning door. With no gaps in the wood of the door. I need drills, hammers, and nails. Oh, and a staple gun. Bring a fuck ton of staples.” Carol hangs up, then looks at Manousous. “Todo?”
He nods. Carol grins, for the first time in a little while. Two hours later, a truck pulls up to the cul de sac. A few of the members of the hive mind get out of the truck, and They start carrying the materials into Carol’s house. Sheets upon sheets of copper mesh, wood in two foot planks, a staple gun. An entire guy is needed for the amount of staples They bring, and another guy for the hardware. Once They get to her porch, she stops Them.
“Leave, please.”
And They do. Carol doesn’t have time to think about why They might’ve delivered the materials by hand, and not with drones like last time. She and Manousous bring everything inside, and to her basement. It takes a few hours. She would’ve appreciated help, but Manousous would rather die than let Them catch onto their plan. The two start building. Carol would hand Manousous a plank, he’d hammer it down and connect it. At the end of the first day, they’ve got a wooden box. A room about the size of a closet. With a working door. (Carol was very proud she figured out how to attach the door.) She gets adorned with a colorful array of Disney themed bandaids from being cut by the copper mesh over the next few days.
Manousous wraps each layer tight, overlapping the corners, and stapling the mesh down. It looks like a jail for a few dozen very unruly chickens by the time they’ve finished. Not like something that could potentially save humanity. They’re sitting on the carpet, staring at their creation. Carol has a bowl of tikka masala on her lap. Manousous learned he really, really likes Indian food. He’s learned a bit of English in the past week, and Carol’s learned some Spanish. Enough to communicate.
“We need–” Manousous pauses, sipping his water. “A subject. Someone who we can cure by reminding them of their former self.”
“Wait. Wait – you wait right here.” Carol stands, scrambling upstairs. She comes back with the journal, panting. Manousous looks at her, confused.
“What?”
“It’s – un libro. Es un libro, about…” she almost cringes. “Zosia.” Manousous blinks. Carol groans, sitting down. “I wrote answers she gave me about her life when she was an individual.” The phone pings. Manousous brightens and grabs the journal. He flips through the pages, almost seeming…impressed?
“You want to use Zosia? As our first person we cure?” Manousous murmurs. Carol nods.
“Yeah. I do. But, I do have one last question. Won’t they feel the loss of her from their…togetherness?”
“They will. But we will tell them they do not have our permission to enter, and they can’t enter. We have to test the cage first.” Manousous grabs his radio.
“How?”
Manousous tunes the portable radio to 8.6130 KHz. He beckons Carol into the cage and seals the door. It does nothing for a little while. Carol feels the weight of impending failure ripening in her stomach. Then a fizzle. The four beats turn to static, and the radio cuts out intermittently. Carol cheers, whooping excitedly. Manousous startles, and Carol riles him up.
“This – oh my god, we did it!”
Manousous doesn’t understand her words. But he does understand her emotions. He feels them, himself. He grins, whooping simultaneously.
—
“Yes, Carol?” The same male voice from a week and a half ago.
“Bring Zosia here.” Carol hears the hesitation. “I miss her.” She adds weakly.
“Right away, Carol.”
The little blue Toyota Corolla E30 pulls up to the curb thirty minutes later. Zosia gets out. No smile on her face. But hesitation? Yeah. lots of it. Carol opens the door and ushers Zosia inside with a hand. Manousous greets her at the stairs down to the basement. Once she’s walked far enough down the stairs, Carol pulls the key from her back pocket and locks the door. She meets Manousous’ gaze. Zosia’s staring at the big wooden, mesh-covered box in the middle of the room.
“You see, we…” Zosia starts, pausing to translate and change her hesitation to an awkward smile. “We hoped this visit was to cheer you up, Carol. You too, Manousous.”
“It’d cheer both of us up, infinitely, if you’d come in here with us.” Carol opens the door to the cage. Inside, they’d tried to spruce it up a bit. Painted the walls inside with a cerulean blue, infused with small copper shavings to up the exclusion of the frequency. There’s a little painting, a Eurasian lynx, and a small armchair. Manousous points to the chair.
“Sit, please,” he says politely in English. Zosia, looking between the two, puts a hand on the doorframe. She steps inside. Quickly, her face screws up. The smile drops. Carol recognizes her expression, if only slightly. A similar reaction to the heroin that almost killed her. Carol doesn’t like the confusion on her face. She wants to take it all back, this batshit crazy idea, but then Manousous follows Carol inside, and he closes the door.
Zosia collapses, catching herself on the armchair. Carol kneels in front of her. Manousous starts tuning the radio. It turns to static quicker this time. He gently lays it on her lap. He looks towards Carol. “Empiezas.” Carol gently grasps one of Zosia’s hands. Warm, tan skin.
“Your name is Zosia. You are thirty-five years old. Your favorite color–” Carol points to the walls, “–is a cerulean blue. Your favorite animal is a Eurasian lynx,” she grabs the painting. Zosia’s cloudy, confused eyes lock onto the painting. She opens her mouth as if to speak, but no words come. Carol continues. “You grew up in Gdańsk. Your favorite food is mango ice cream because of a man in your neighborhood who sold it out of his cart. You’d watch ships leaving Gdańsk from the port, amazed by the ships, and why they were there. The man would give you and your brother mango ice cream bars. Your mom would make szarlotka when she was lucky enough to get fresh apples, and you loved it.”
“I – we…I don’t understand–” Zosia stammers, her body trembling. Carol squeezes her hand tighter. Please. Tell me this is working, please.
“Carol Sturka,” Manousous puts a hand on her shoulder. “They’re here. They can do nothing. Cálmate, even if you hear Them.” He reassures her. Carol breathes.
“You didn’t grow up very privileged. You got enough money, just barely, to bring you and your brother to Tangier when your mother passed. She was very sick. You were twenty-one. You started learning English, and then you started teaching it to the children there. Every Monday a fellow teacher would bring you harira she’d made at home, and she always made extra for your brother to eat.” Carol rambles, not even glancing at the journal. She’d gone over every single detail, paranoid, in the case that she may lose it. Carol flips Zosia’s hand over.
She points to a small, thin scar on her inner upper arm. “The first cat you tried to pet in Tangier did this to you. Your brother was terrified that you were going to get sick, but you didn’t. And you still never stopped petting the cats, no matter his terror. You even adopted one. Słonko. Little sun. Your brother named it. You know your brother’s name, Zosia. Please. I know you’re in there.”
“Oskar,” Zosia chokes out, a tear forming in the corner of her eye. A drop of water tugging away from the brown, down her cheek, dripping onto Carol’s hand.
“Yes,” Carol breathes, laughing in relief. “Yes, Oskar.” Pounding footsteps. No yelling. No banging. They don’t even try to pick the lock, but Carol knows They’re there. Zosia suddenly grasps her head, crying.
“They’re – They’re trying to get to me, please, Carol,” she shakes harder. Her body stills, and she glances up, smiling. They want her back.
“No. No, no no, Zosia, please,” Carol begs, grasping her face. “You told me how Oskar died. That he was on his way, in the car, to you. When the joining happened, he seized, and swerved off the hill. You can’t be happy, knowing he’s gone. Knowing that he’ll never be back, because of what They did. Change has never been a good thing in your life. Not when your father left you and your family, walking out the door into the arms of another woman. Not when Oskar got his first girlfriend and stopped eating the mango ice cream with you. Stop letting them change you, Zosia. Please.”
And then Carol watches in horror as Zosia passes out.