The List:
-OPHELIA
-Occulus, ocean, orchard, oasis
-One o'clock, once, October
-orange, ominous, optimal, obligation, occupational therapy, octagram, octagon, occipital lobe, operation
The Result:
"The Octagram of Obligation"
Tricia had just found a quiet corner
of the main floor to sit, when the silver-suited female android, Nerissa,
approached her from some hidden door in the oddly-shaped walls.
“Please follow me to the Occulus,” she said. “It is time for your first
Occupational Therapy session with OPHELIA.”
OPHELIA—Tricia felt the pit of her
stomach tighten and twist just a little. All she had ever known of the woman
was the interactive talking face on a screen from her orientation tutorial. How
different would she actually be in real life? Was OPHELIA an android like
Nerissa? Or some new tech that Tricia hadn't encountered yet?
Nerissa waited a full minute before
prompting, "You have not started walking. Do you wish to override the
prescription?"
The young woman sighed.
"No," she replied, pushing herself up to stand, "I'm
coming."
She nearly fell over several times as
the tall, stilted heels slipped and wobbled over the sleek obelisque floors.
Nerissa immediately slackened her pace and matched Tricia's wobbling stride,
sticking close to her in case of overbalance. The android's reaction speed was
such that Tricia would barely falter before she felt the warm, artificial touch
pressing on key points around her sides, keeping her upright with a controlled
frenzy of precise movements. It occurred to the young woman that this could
very well be the case for the women she saw drifting around the oasis with
ostentatious grace—the reason they had the silver-suited entourage wherever
they went. Even their sense of balance, like so many other aspects of the Peres
life that she had secretly envied for so long, was a carefully-orchestrated
farce.
Nerissa led her into a large
foyer-type room, oblong with a long white couch in the middle. The walls
swirled with digital displays of swirling abstract colors. The android waited
until Tricia seated herself on the couch, and then departed.
Tricia waited, forcing herself not to
pick at that one random orange spot on the side of her skirt. When would
OPHELIA appear?
At precisely one o’clock, the swirling
colors abruptly halted, and a soothing chime resounded through the room.
“Welcome, Tricia Carson.”
Tricia felt a small thrill run through
her at the sound of such a gentle voice saying her name.
The voice continued, “I am OPHELIA.
Thank you for joining me.”
Tricia looked around her as the colors
shifted into another pattern; walls began to form around her. “Where are you?”
she asked.
“One moment, please.”
The image in front of her solidified,
and Tricia gasped when a gigantic eyeball covered the space directly in front
of her, spanning the screen from top to bottom.
“This is my original form; does it
trouble you?”
Tricia could feel her heart ready to
pound right out of her chest at the horrifying sight. “Yes,” she huffed. “I
think it does.”
“One moment please,” OPHELIA said again, and after a brief screen jump,
the “eyeball” slowly rotated, as if it had only been a decoration on the back
of a round chair. Seated in the orange-cushioned interior was a
familiar-looking woman who stood and walked toward her. Tricia immediately
kicked off her painful shoes and rose to greet OPHELIA barefooted. She made it
all the way to the point just before reaching out to take her hand—when her
sense of reality clashed with the optical illusion and her fingers collided
with the smooth screen.
“This form is more conducive to the
intended relaxed atmosphere of our sessions,”
OPHELIA intoned. She smiled, her ombre hair framing her multicolored eyes. "What
assistance can I offer you today, Tricia?" OPHELIA asked from an untraceable distance.
"Offer me?" Tricia snorted.
"These sessions are scheduled. You sent for me."
"It is true, these are
mandatory training sessions, but I am here to tell you that there are many
aspects of our sessions that are completely in your control. The environment,
for example; this room is equipped to mimic the airflow and barometric pressure
of all sorts of outdoor experiences. Care to join me in an orange
orchard?" OPHELIA calmly took a step
back, and immediately the blank walls melted and Tricia stood on a grassy strip
between rows of trees, each blooming with fragrant blossoms and fairly-large
fruits. Tricia inhaled through her nose and found the rich orange scent
stimulating her olfactory nerves. Even the floor itself seemed to change
texture, and Tricia could watch in awe as her toes curled around blades of
grass projected over the once-smooth floor. She glanced around.
"What is this place?" She
asked.
"The Oculus is where you will
come for all your official sessions with me. It is where we can both be candid
with one another, and harbor no fear of offense, no matter what we say." She paused to allow Tricia to absorb this
information. "What would you like to talk about first?"
A million questions crowded into
Tricia's mind: what if she didn't want this life? (What if she did?) Would she
ever be able to see her family again? What about the ones who returned to St.
Louis? What were the chances of checking in with them at all?
"Here is a topic of conversation that might help stimulate conversation: Eliminations begin in
October; are you nervous?"
"Yes!" Tricia seized on the
opportunity to fit in among the other recruits by responding the way they
would. "What if I do it all wrong? There's just so much to remember! I
don't think I have what it takes to succeed as Personal Assistant to President
Peres."
Ophelia turned and fixed her opaline
gaze on Tricia. "Has any of the medical staff approached you about the
operation?"
Tricia frowned and leaned away from
OPHELIA involuntarily. "What operation? I told Marcia I didn't want any
body alterations."
OPHELIA smiled, and the forest melted
away to a clean, white beach beside the ocean. Tricia wanted so badly to jump
and splash in the waves beyond the... virtual therapist; but she knew they were
just an illusion. It did remind her of the last day of freedom she and her Dad
had taken, before answering the summons and leaving Paristown for Peres.
"It is not a body alteration
procedure," OPHELIA was saying. "It
is a small implant at the base of your occipital lobe—"
"My brain?"
"To aid in computation,
comprehension, and retention of visual data, to help you become your optimal
self."
"My optimal self?" Tricia
hugged her shoulders. She hated the crawling feeling of inadequacy that
overwhelmed her when someone started talking about optimizing—or a new, better
kind of "self" than the one she was.
OPHELIA stopped at the edge of the
surf, and Tricia imagined she could almost feel it crawl over her feet when it
exceeded the limit of the screen.
"You have not yet heard about
the Octagram of the Obligate Identities?"
Tricia immediately recalled the design
of eight interlocking rings she had seen before, but the design had seemed so
ominous that she had tried to ignore it. "I saw the pamphlet in my room,
but I didn't read it."
"You should; it is more of a
handbook to help you understand the eight identities and their proper order, to
be more conducive to optimal performance."
The room darkened, and Tricia saw
eight rotating rings projected on a dark background all around the room.
OPHELIA appeared next to the one at the right of the front of the room. The
word "Personal" appeared in the center of the ring.
"Optimizing starts with
compartmentalizing your personal identity, recognizing its connections to the
identities beside it, and how they support your sense of personhood, or
self."
The words "Mental" and
"Physical" appeared in the rings on either side of
"Personal."
"As you can see," OPHELIA continued, "your Personal
identity is linked to your Mental identity—your abstract, creative thoughts and
your memories—and your Physical identity—your body's health, strength, and
stamina. If one of these supporting links is weak or overlooked, the outcome
will affect the strength of your Personal identity."
Tricia listened to the soothing voice
for the rest of the tutorial, at first wondering where her father's constant
iteration that she was a child of God fit into all the sequence, regardless of
whether she actually understood what he meant by it. According to OPHELIA, her
Mental identity was linked to her Personal and Emotional states—her feelings
and instincts; Emotional identity, in turn, was connected to the Mental and
Sexual identities—her thoughts, memories and instincts guided her in forming
relationships and adjusting the way she related to others.
"Particularly," the therapist
advised, "the clients you will be called on to assist."
Tricia couldn’t restrain a small
shudder at the ideas arising in her mind, but OPHELIA just kept on talking,
distracting her from the ominous ideas.
“Your sexual identity is linked
closely with your emotional security and your spiritual flexibility.”
Spiritual! Tricia felt a sense of
relief; perhaps now she could figure out a way to sneak in a bit of her old
beliefs into this new set of principles she would need to observe.
“Your spiritual identity, is of
course, linked to your sexual identity—those you would form relationships
with—and the beliefs that guide the core of your philosophical identity, or the
basis for your logic and decision-making.”
Logic? Tricia frowned. If her
spirituality was tied into the people she interacted with and her decisions,
then she couldn’t necessarily justify clinging to an identity no one else had.
She worried about this while OPHELIA explained the remaining three identities,
and OPHELIA brought the session to a close, though Tricia was now in worse
state over the nature of her obligation than ever before, and the overpowering
murk of obfuscation clouded her worse than ever. She followed Nerissa back to
the oasis without even noticing. The question hammered in her head, along with
everything else:
Who was Tricia Carson?
>>>>>>>>>
Did you enjoy this excerpt? Today's story comes from a future project stuck in several layers of rewriting, potentially due for yet another overhaul--Focal Point, the story of Esther told in a dystopian cyberpunk setting. Click on the link for the ReBible series to find excerpts from this and other planned adaptations of Bible stories, to be finished sometime in the future.
Also in the A-to-Z Challenge Series: ( * Continuations of previous Suggestion Box installments)
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