Zero-Nine

Dr. Lucien Marek stood in front of a console and stared through the large glassed wall into a room of darkness. He said, “The time is zero six hundred. Beginning case zero-nine of project Mira Sorell.” After he said this, Marek pressed a button on the console, and the dark room he was staring into was flooded with light from the ceiling, revealing a woman in her bed.

Inside the room, the woman began to toss herself out of sleep. She sat up and looked at herself in the large mirrored wall facing her bed, while rubbing her eyes into focus. In the room, there were no windows, but there was a desk with two chairs facing each other and a storage crate next to it. Also in the room was a keyboard on a stand. There was one door, and Marek walked through it.

“Good morning,” said Marek, not bothering with a smile.

“What’s up, doc?” said the woman with a smile, continuing to rub her eyes. “What’s for breakfast?”

“Let’s begin our tests and think about breakfast later,” said Marek. “Now hold on before getting out of bed.”

The woman threw off her sheet and hopped out of bed. She wobbled on her feet for a second and fell to the floor. Marek rushed over to her and helped her off the floor. She said, “I thought I’d be able to do it today. Sorry.”

“You must give your muscles time to wake up,” said Marek.

“I know. I know,” said the woman. “But I don’t know why. I’m telling you, one of these days before the drug trial is over, I’m going to hop out of that bed and land on my feet.”

“I believe staying on them is your real problem,” replied Marek, helping the woman to sit on the bed.

She pointed at Marek and said with a grin, “Was that a joke, Lucien?”

“It was an observation,” said Marek. “And don’t call me that.”

“Oh, I’m sorry – Doctor Marek,” said the woman. “I don’t want to embarrass you again in front of whoever’s on the other side of that glass. You want to know what I think? I’m starting to think there’s no one over there at all.”

“You’re welcome to think what you like,” said Marek. “Try to wiggle your toes.”

“Okay, you don’t have to tell me,” said the woman. She started to wiggle her toes and said, “Does that satisfy your fetish for the day, doctor?”

“It satisfies the first test for today,” replied Marek. “Now, try to stand. Slowly. Grab hold of my arm if you need to.”

Marek took a step back and held out his arm. The woman pushed herself up from the bed and wobbled like a fawn taking its first steps. Marek began to move towards her, but she held out a hand to stop him and said, “No, I can do this.” The woman put one foot after the other and walked a circle around Marek, becoming steadier with each step. She stopped in front of Marek, smiling with her hands on her hips.

“Excellent,” said Marek. He held a hand out towards the table with the chairs and said, “Let’s proceed.”

The woman threw up her hands and rolled her eyes. She walked over to the table and sat down in the chair facing the mirrored wall. Marek joined her at the table, sitting in the chair on the opposing side. “State your name,” said Marek.

“Mira Ann Sorell,” said the woman. “Did I get it right?”

“How old are you?” said Marek.

“Feedback helps,” replied the woman. Marek continued to stare at her without moving a muscle, and she eventually said, “I’m 25 years old. Would it help if I added the months and –”

“Where were you born?” said Marek.

“Cut Bank, Montana,” said the woman. “It’s where the Rockies meet the plains.”

Marek gave her another one of his frozen stares. The woman said nothing back. She crossed her arms on the table and stared back at Marek. After some moments passing in their stare-off, Marek said, “You’re not from Montana. You know you’re not.”

“Oh, I think you might be right,” said the woman, feigning ignorance and not trying in the slightest to hide it. “Where am I from? Can you give me a hint?”

“We don’t have time for this,” said Marek, his annoyance breaking through his stoicism.

“Temple. Temple, Texas,” said the woman, humor no longer in her voice. “Then, when I was eighteen, I moved to Denver for six months, then Sequim, Washington for two years, and then I wound up here in Boston. Happy?”

“I would have been happy if you had answered correctly the first time,” said Marek.

“Oh, really?” said the woman. “You don’t know what it’s like to go through these trials every day.”

“They’re tests,” said Marek.

“Trials, tests, whatever,” said the woman. “They’re monotonous as hell and boring me to death. Is that what this is, an endurance… test? And when am I going to get some food? I can’t remember the last time I ate something.”

Marek leaned over to the side of the table and pulled from the storage crate a stack of cards with abstract images on them. He put them on the table and said, “We’ve wasted enough time. We need to continue with the tests.”

The woman swiped the cards off the table and said, “I want to ask you some questions.”

Marek, looking flustered, said, “We don’t have time for this.”

The woman leaned back in her chair, stared at the mirrored wall, and said, “Why’s that? The person behind the glass is going to get mad at you? Or is it people behind the glass? Is Lucien going to get in trouble?”

Marek slammed his fist on the table and said, “I told you…” He stopped and glanced over his shoulder.

The woman began to laugh and said to Marek, “You are going to get in trouble, aren’t you? And here I thought you were the big dick around here. Guess I was wrong.”

Marek gripped his hands tightly together and said, “Proceed to the keyboard test. Will you at least do that? Please.”

The woman put her feet up on the table and tipped her chair back. She relaxed her hands behind her head and said, “This is what? The eighth, ninth time we’ve done this. I think that’s the first time I’ve ever heard you say the word ‘please.’ You must be really desperate. I’ll tell you what, you let me outside for a little bit, feed me something, and when I come back…”

The woman went limp in an instant and fell out of her chair and onto the floor. Marek stood up and stared at her, shaking his head in frustration. The door to the room opened, and in walked three men in lab coats.

“She was progressing. I swear,” said Marek. “After nine sessions, the pressure must have gotten to her. This is data we can use. I promise, one-zero will be a more promising model.”

One of the men in lab coats walked over to Marek and put a hand on his shoulder. This man was Dr. Ken Wexler, and he said, “You look tired. You’ve put in a lot of work with this Mira Sorell project.” Wexler turned and looked at two men in jumpsuits who walked into the room with a stretcher and a body bag with a biohazard symbol on it. The two men put the woman into the bag and wheeled her out of the room on the stretcher. Wexler turned back to Marek and said, “Before you start on one-zero, why don’t you go to your quarters and have a rest, huh?”

“I promise, one-zero will be better,” replied Marek.

Wexler patted his shoulder. He started to lead Marek out of the room and said, “Yes, after your rest.”

In Marek’s quarters, Marek sat on the end of his bed, wrestling with his thoughts from the failure of the day and staring at himself in the mirrored wall that faced his bed. In an instant, he went limp, fell to the floor, and everything went dark.

Marek woke up lying in his bed, with light from the ceiling flooding his room. He sat up in bed and stared at himself in the mirrored wall, while rubbing his eyes into focus. He shifted himself, so he was sitting on the side of his bed, and he placed his feet on the cool floor. Marek pushed himself off the bed to stand, and after a brief moment of stability, he tumbled forward, landing on his hands and knees.

On the other side of the glass, Wexler stood, staring into the room, and said to his staff, “I have a good feeling about zero-three.”