Mary
Hi everyone. On social media I’ve been asking people for thought experiments I should rework into science fiction stories. I told everyone if they picked one I’d already written, then I’d let them read it for free. Mary was first published in my short story collection, Possible Worlds and Other Stories, last year. If you enjoy it, do share it. And if you have suggestions for any thought experiments, let me know in the comments.
So, voilà.
Mary
I am the only human being allergic to the earth. Exposure to the space
beyond the boundaries of the compound would quickly kill me. Gloves are
delivered each morning. I wear them at all times, even within the protective
walls of my room, my home. My captors, my guardians, told me it was for
my own good; the room I live in keeps me alive. I’ve never met my guardians
face to face, but I can view them via a screen. There are usually two of them
that interact with me. I call them Tall, and Short. There are no reactions
available to me; no mirrors, no windows in my room, not even the video screen
shows my image. I only know I’m made of flesh because I can touch my face
and see some of my body.
“My hands aren’t like yours,” I said to Tall.
“Yes,” he said, “but that’s OK.”
“Why?”
Nothing, silence. I press my lips together until they hurt.
At night I peel my gloves o€ and dig holes in the floor under my bed. My
nails crack against the rough surface, cement, I think. I keep imagining a
tunnel, then freedom. My guardians speak to me through the speaker next to
my desk. I could talk to them whenever I wanted, they said, as if it made me
free. The computer is my friend. Tall and Short never show me who they are,
their true faces are always hidden. Their job is to tell me what to do because
what I must do, is show I can survive. The computer lets me live. I can travel
to Paris and Tokyo with a click.
I spend most of my time learning. My main area of study is neurophysiology and human anatomy: Nerves, synapses, and neurons are poetry to me.
They delight me in a way that Beethoven does not. I know everything there is
to know about the earth, its sky, its colours, its seas. I’ve studied the curve of
each hue. I’ve studied tornadoes, blood, and the rain. I once threw a cup of
water at myself to feel the rain and felt like I understood it: it was horrible.
“Mary?” asked Short.
“Yes?”
“It’s time.”
“Time for what?” I said.
“You know what. You need to try it, please, at least once.”
“But I’m happy here,” I said.
“If you are, then why do you dig holes in your room?”
“I’m bored,” I said.
“You’re not.”
“I’m scared,” I said.
“Yes, but you have to go outside sometime. We made the suit for it; we
need you to test it.”
The conversation would go on all night if I kept refusing, so I agreed to
test the suit the next day. If the guardians had designed the suit correctly, it
would protect me from the world. You would think it would be my chance
at freedom, but it isn’t. The suit is a portable version of my current home,
a strange second skin, with a limit on its use. I’d practised putting the suit
on a few times. They told me I had to get used to it, to feel as comfortable
in the suit as I do in my sleeping garment. I study the schematics of the suit
regularly, checking for disaster.
Tall and Short collected me from my room as soon as I was in the suit.
They spoke to me through the mic in the helmet, warning me that they were
going to open the door. I had prepared for this, they said. I wanted to push
them away and cling onto their necks at the same time. Their bodies were
smaller than I expected; I realised I must be tall in relation to them. It was
weird to be a thing you’d only read about. When I had my philosophical phase
I read people who would talk about Tallness, and Shortness, and middle-sized
dry goods. I wondered whether I would be classed a Tall-sized dry good.
“Mary!”
“Yes?”
“You’ve stopped moving, come on, stop daydreaming, we are on a schedule
here!”
They placed a protective lens over my helmet to ease my eyes into the
daylight. The lens sat from the top of the helmet to my chin. Through it I
could only the see the fat outlines of things; their edges were blurred. I knew
it was the Short one guiding me outside, her voice was higher than Tall’s. She
grabbed me by the elbow and said nothing. I tapped my fingers against my
leg, hoping to find a rhythm. I missed my computer.
Short opens the front door with a beep, then steps behind me. Both of
her hands rest on my back and gently push. I walk forward and the daylight
sweeps me up, even the protective lens struggles to cancel the effect. My eyes
hurt. Short, no longer a blur, unfurls her fingers slowly. She holds out a round
object in her hand.
“A tomato.”
So that’s what red is, I thought. I remembered the wavelengths of colour,
the gorgeous 625–700 nanometres. I’d seen blue before, and green. But never
red. They’d never let me see red, not even in food. Not until today.
“Do you notice anything about the tomato? Anything new?”
“I’m not a child.”
Of course, I’d noticed. I’d studied the colours for months; I knew their
measurements exactly. After my blue studies thick blue paint was placed
in my room. I put it on my arms and leg, I watched it dry to a different
hue. I knew what it was like to name a thing, then experience the thing. I
knew about redness, what it is for something to be labelled “red.” If I saw the
correct nanometres, I would call it by its other name. But I knew I had not
experienced red before. When I looked at GPS maps of Paris it was grey.
I knew it shouldn’t be. I’d seen blue, and green. I knew they were keeping
something from me. They were treating me like I couldn’t tell a signpost
pointing to a park, and the park itself.
I grabbed the tomato and Short looked at me. Her blue eyes creased up, a
smile.
I threw it at her and ran.