Accessing the Future: A Disability-Themed Anthology of Speculative Fiction by Joyce Chng, Nicolette Barischoff, A.C. Buchanan, Sarah Pinsker
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your surroundings, he had said, when he was still taking care of me instead of the other way around. I tried to be aware, but I was still surprised by a whistle from one of the corner boys. I glanced over to see if it was somebody I knew, Arin or Jay or one of the others who used to be in my class, but I didn’t recognize this guy. I ignored him and picked up my pace, glancing out of the corner of my eye to make sure he didn’t follow.
Granddad was already in the dining room.
“This food is why I married you,” he told me, waving a spoonful of mashed potatoes.
“I’m not your wife. I’m Acacia. Your granddaughter.”
“Oh! Is Acacia here? What restaurant is this?” He looked around. He had gotten way worse in the year he’d been here.
“Let’s start again, Granddad. I’m going to let some scientists put something in my head. It’s a good idea, right?”
“A good idea. Right, right. Where did Teenie go? Did she leave without me?” He stuck his tongue out in frustration.
I signed. I let them test me and poke me and snake the implant into my left temporoparietal junction and test me some more. Count backwards from one hundred while putting together a puzzle. Listen to a chem lecture while watching a movie, then answer questions about it. They were right that it didn’t make me any smarter, but it improved my focus. The dysgraphia was still bad, but I was allowed to do most exams orally anyway, and my teachers were mostly patient with my speech. I got a C in chemistry, graduated with an actual diploma before I aged out, not a certificate. Granddad couldn’t go to graduation, so I didn’t bother going either.
----
My new home is a furnished apartment near Fort Meade. Everything I own is in storage in San Antonio, but there’s a couch and a bed and some random kitchenware. I could fall asleep now, after the long flight, but I’m antsy and wired. My stitches hurt. I can hear the neighbors talking through the wall.
I eat takeout chicken and read a medical journal, trying not to contemplate being jobless. My memories from before the Army are like my pre-Pilot memories: hazy. A feeling like things are just out of my grasp. Some people would argue the pre-Pilot me is the real me, original flavor. But me with my Pilot is me awake and alive. Not cured, just helped. Enhanced, maybe, but enhancement only brings out what’s already there. The bettered me is the real me. Like that amnesia case. “Today I am truly awake for the first time.” I know how he felt, only I’m in a better position to appreciate it.
I have no memories of the bombs that hit me, so instead my dreams piece together other incidents. Adopt other traumas as my own. There’s one in which I’m both the medic and the soldier on the ground, my own bloody hands in my own bloody wound. There’s one in which I’m painstakingly putting adhesive bandages over the neck of a soldier whose head has been severed. Bandage after bandage, with cartoon characters on them. “You’re going to be fine,” I tell him. “Lie still.”
I know I should tell somebody, but the VA says it’ll be weeks or months until I can get an appointment, so I keep the dreams to myself. I read a study that says dreams are our attempts to apply lessons we have learned from previous experience to new experiences. That makes a certain amount of sense.
----
Balkenhol reaches out to me before I can get a VA appointment. They send a car the day after my flight. I’m ushered into a cramped conference room with three BNL technicians. The air conditioning is pushed up too high, and it’s rattling the vents near the ceiling. I walk halfway around the room rather than taking the closest seat, so I can have my back to the wall instead of the door. I wait for introductions, but none come.
“Describe how you feel the Pilot helps you as a combat medic,” one of them says, as if we were already mid-conversation. She has an air of seniority. I have the urge to call her sir.
“I
Granddad was already in the dining room.
“This food is why I married you,” he told me, waving a spoonful of mashed potatoes.
“I’m not your wife. I’m Acacia. Your granddaughter.”
“Oh! Is Acacia here? What restaurant is this?” He looked around. He had gotten way worse in the year he’d been here.
“Let’s start again, Granddad. I’m going to let some scientists put something in my head. It’s a good idea, right?”
“A good idea. Right, right. Where did Teenie go? Did she leave without me?” He stuck his tongue out in frustration.
I signed. I let them test me and poke me and snake the implant into my left temporoparietal junction and test me some more. Count backwards from one hundred while putting together a puzzle. Listen to a chem lecture while watching a movie, then answer questions about it. They were right that it didn’t make me any smarter, but it improved my focus. The dysgraphia was still bad, but I was allowed to do most exams orally anyway, and my teachers were mostly patient with my speech. I got a C in chemistry, graduated with an actual diploma before I aged out, not a certificate. Granddad couldn’t go to graduation, so I didn’t bother going either.
----
My new home is a furnished apartment near Fort Meade. Everything I own is in storage in San Antonio, but there’s a couch and a bed and some random kitchenware. I could fall asleep now, after the long flight, but I’m antsy and wired. My stitches hurt. I can hear the neighbors talking through the wall.
I eat takeout chicken and read a medical journal, trying not to contemplate being jobless. My memories from before the Army are like my pre-Pilot memories: hazy. A feeling like things are just out of my grasp. Some people would argue the pre-Pilot me is the real me, original flavor. But me with my Pilot is me awake and alive. Not cured, just helped. Enhanced, maybe, but enhancement only brings out what’s already there. The bettered me is the real me. Like that amnesia case. “Today I am truly awake for the first time.” I know how he felt, only I’m in a better position to appreciate it.
I have no memories of the bombs that hit me, so instead my dreams piece together other incidents. Adopt other traumas as my own. There’s one in which I’m both the medic and the soldier on the ground, my own bloody hands in my own bloody wound. There’s one in which I’m painstakingly putting adhesive bandages over the neck of a soldier whose head has been severed. Bandage after bandage, with cartoon characters on them. “You’re going to be fine,” I tell him. “Lie still.”
I know I should tell somebody, but the VA says it’ll be weeks or months until I can get an appointment, so I keep the dreams to myself. I read a study that says dreams are our attempts to apply lessons we have learned from previous experience to new experiences. That makes a certain amount of sense.
----
Balkenhol reaches out to me before I can get a VA appointment. They send a car the day after my flight. I’m ushered into a cramped conference room with three BNL technicians. The air conditioning is pushed up too high, and it’s rattling the vents near the ceiling. I walk halfway around the room rather than taking the closest seat, so I can have my back to the wall instead of the door. I wait for introductions, but none come.
“Describe how you feel the Pilot helps you as a combat medic,” one of them says, as if we were already mid-conversation. She has an air of seniority. I have the urge to call her sir.
“I
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