“It’s terrible that we won’t remember any of this. Some of it, like the fight with your mother,
I’d gladly forget, but if there was one moment that I could take and keep,
it would be this one with you, here and now.”

---

 
When Your Tabula Is Not Rasa
 
Chapter 19
 

---

"A lawyer will do anything to win a case. Sometimes he will even tell the truth." — Patrick Murray

---

 

Dan, looking a little shaken, left the room to confer with his counterpart, the alien lawyer. Carla stood up and went to pick at the buffet. Kristy and I sat looking at each other. I realized I ought to apologize for not having called, but as I opened my mouth to say it, Kristy spoke first.

“I’m sorry I haven’t called you,” she said. “I hope you’ve been okay.” Her tone was kind of flat, almost as if she was reading the words off a cue card.

“Oh, yes,” I said. “I’ve been pretty busy, trying to figure out Dexie’s life.”

She looked skeptical. “How hard can it be? Dexie’s life wasn’t complicated at all.”

“You’d be surprised,” I assured her. “I can hardly believe it myself, but trying to understand who she was, even when she was only a baby, is mind-blowing. I thought her life was a blank slate, but it isn’t at all. At first I fought it. I didn’t want to know. But gradually… well, today really — yes, today! — I realized I have to pick up her life where she left off: figuring out where she came from and who she is. Dexie already had a place in the world and all sorts of connections and relations. There was a lot that she was just about to do. I need to learn all of it, and step in and make it mine. Well, not really mine. It’s Dexie’s life. It’s the strangest thing, and hard to explain, but it’s almost as if I’m borrowing her life, or living it for her, or something like that.”

“Not any more,” Kristy remarked drily. “Now she’ll come back and live it for herself.”

“Yeah, no,” I agreed, fumbling, “I mean… yeah.” Then I fell silent.

Kristy picked the thread up again. “I was going to say that I hadn’t call because I was busy settling all Fred’s business, but that wasn’t the reason at all.”

“No? What was the reason?”

I heard Carla sigh behind me. She knew what was coming. I should have seen it myself: Kristy had been building up energy, like a gathering electrical storm, and her lightning bolts were nearly fully charged.

Her eyes narrowed, and she began breathing a little faster. “Well… the thing is… that you—” She paused. I could see she was exasperated, fed up with something. That something had to be me, but (as was often the case) I had no idea what I’d done or hadn’t done to set her off. Kristy continued to search for a way to start. “I don’t know why I even need to explain this. You—” and she stopped again.

What on Earth was Kristy getting at? “What?” I asked her. “What about me?”

Carla, in a burst of impatience, cut in. To Kristy, she said, “Just say it, Ma!” and to me, “She’s upset because you like being a girl!”

“Really?” I was dumbfounded.

Kristy pressed a tissue to her face and cried angry tears. “Yes, really! What do you think? Look at you! You’re so happy! Out of the blue, poof! you’re a girl, and you just take to it, like a duck to water!”

“What’s wrong with that?” I asked. “In any case, it’s not as though I had any choice.”

“What’s wrong with it? Choice? How do you know you didn’t have a choice? You didn’t even bother to ask! You didn’t object. You didn’t even say Wait a minute! You didn’t tell them that you’re a MAN and that you needed a man’s body!”

“This isn’t fair,” I objected. “You know they gave me something to make me calm and… uh… accepting.”

Kristy growled. “Accepting? You accepted in spades!”

I could feel myself beginning to shake. “Would you rather I simply died in that accident?”

She glared at me, tight-lipped for a few beats, then said, “Yes. Yes, since you ask me, sometimes I do wish that you’d died in that crash. Then I would never have known.”

I felt my face go white. “Known what?”

“That you wanted to be a girl!” Kristy exploded. “The big secret that you’ve been hiding from me all our life together. Our whole marriage was a lie! Who are you? Who are you really? Look at you! I never knew you! You have betrayed me in the deepest way possible!”

“I haven’t,” I stammered. “I love you. I always loved you. I never—”

She scoffed. “Tell me the truth now: Did you have a secret life? Did you wear my clothes when I wasn’t around? Were you in love with a man? I always knew there was something funny about you.”

“No,” I told her. “None of this ever entered my mind. As far as I know. I never thought about it. And you’re really going overboard with this.”

Kristy let out an exasperated growl. “And now, to cap it all,” she said, nearly shouting, “NOW, we’re going back to the way it was, to be together again, as if none of this ever happened!”

All the blood drained from my face. If I’d been standing, I would have fallen. Although I hadn’t done anything wrong, I felt guilty and… to tell the truth, very frightened. I didn’t know what to do.

“I don’t want to go back to being Fred,” I told her in a quiet voice.

“It doesn’t look like you have a choice,” she countered, her eyes flashing fire. “But then again, you like it when you don’t have a choice. And damn it, I don’t have a choice either!”

“Mom,” Carla put in, “When we go back, you won’t remember any of this. None of us will.”

“That makes it even worse! I’ll be living a lie once again! You’ll be making a fool of me, and I’ll won’t have the slightest idea!” She stood as she was shouting, and stormed off. Her exit was not as dramatic as she probably hoped: it took her three tries to find the door to the bathroom.

As soon as Kristy shut herself in, Carla asked me, “Can you give me a hand?” Startled, still weak from Kristy’s attack, but glad of something to do, I joined Carla at the buffet, where she had loaded two plates with fruit, cheese, and chocolate truffles. She’d also poured two steaming cups of tea as well.

“Those are yours and these are mine,” she said, smiling at me and gesturing at the plates. We carried the food back to the conference table and munched on fresh strawberries. The tea was perfectly hot, aromatic, and tasty. “These aliens put on a nice spread,” Carla joked.

“Yes, they do,” I agreed. “They must come to Earth a lot.”

“I guess so. I mean, look, they have their own lawyer.”

“Yeah, what is that about?”

“Supposedly, he’s representing us.”

“Really?”

“That’s what he said. I guess he’s done this before.”

“I wonder whether this is all he does.”

“No, he said he only works occasionally for the aliens. Most of the time he’s somewhere in Texas, doing real-estate law.”

“Hmmph,” I said. I appreciated Carla’s small talk. My whole body was still having tremors and aftershocks. My hands vibrated. I couldn’t stop the shaking or even slow it down, and that made me realize that it was adrenaline. I’d just have to wait until the effects wore off. The fear — if fear was what I was feeling — would pass in time.

Carla went on to talk about what she’d been doing. She told me news about her friends. Preparations for college, and so on. We ate and sipped tea, and it was lovely. I mostly listened, and her voice became my lifeline. If you’re a parent, you know how wonderful and rare are the moments when you can simply spend time with your child and enjoy each other’s company. This was one of those moments, and I didn’t want to ruin it by speaking, except to squeeze her hand and thank her.

“Hey!” she said, remembering something. “Do you want to see where we are?”

“What do you mean?” I asked.

“We’re in space somewhere,” she replied. “Probably in orbit. I guess that’s where everybody goes when they’re in space, right? In orbit?”

“I guess I thought we were still sitting near Granite Lake,” I said.

“Naw!” she laughed. “Didn’t you feel the takeoff, right after you drove in?”

I shook my head no. She jumped to her feet, grabbed one last chocolate truffle, and stuffed it whole into her mouth. Then she grabbed my hand and dragged me behind her into the hallway. We followed a long curve until the hallway ended in a little lounge decorated with ferns and armchairs. “This is very… Earth-like,” I commented. “I mean, this is like some waiting rooms I’ve been in.”

“Yeah, I think that’s the idea,” Carla agreed. “I’m pretty sure this floor was made for Earth people, so we could feel comfortable and at home.”

And yet, the view outside the window was nothing like home. It actually was home: the big blue ball called Earth. Majestic was the word that came to mind: the colors were so intense and real. There’s nothing I can compare it to. Space itself, the background, was the blackest black imaginable. The blues of our oceans were ultramarine; the swirls of clouds intensely white. This sounds idiotic to say, but it looked just like a picture. Except that it was immense. It was literally as big as the world.

“Is that Africa?” I ventured.

“No, it’s South America,” Carla laughed. “Sorry! It’s funny, but Dexie wasn’t any good at Geography, either.”

I sighed. Carla smiled.

“You know,” I told her, “It’s terrible that we won’t remember any of this. Some of it, like the fight with your mother, I’d gladly forget, but if there was one moment that I could take and keep, it would be this one, here and now.”

My eyes teared up, and so did Carla’s. Then laughing, she cried, “You’re such a girl!” and hugged me tight. I closed my eyes, wishing I could pack away this moment as well.

Ben politely interrupted with a quiet cough. He was smiling, and he was squeezing his left hand in his right. I got the impression that he was excited, but trying to appear calm.

“It is unfortunately that you won’t remember this,” he said. “But there’s nothing we can do about it.”

“Could we take a picture?” I asked.

“It would be physically possible,” Dan said. “Yes, but it’s illegal. And if you could give it to your past selves, you’d be giving them an enormous puzzle. It wouldn’t remind them of anything. And you’d probably think it was a picture of Carla and her friend.”

“I’d like to try, though,” I whispered.

“You’re not going to have any contact with your past selves,” he told me. “We — the rest of us in the ship — will go back, fix your car, and disappear. You’ll have to stay here in the future.”

“What will happen to us?”

“You’ll just not ever have happened,” he said.

“But you’ll remember?”

“I'll know it happened,” Dan said. “I know it’s not fair, but that’s the law. I have to witness on your behalf.”

“It doesn’t make sense,” I objected.

“Don’t bust your brain over it,” Dan suggested.

“We’re going to forget everything anyway,” Carla laughed.

“You seem awfully happy about this,” I observed.

“Well, I’m getting my Dad and my best friend back!” she explained.

I processed that in silence.

Dan took a breath and in a tentative tone asked, “Can I make a suggestion? I overheard you say that you’d fought with Kristy. Maybe we can clear things up more quickly if we divide and conquer. I’ve gotten them to agree that the four of you will have all the medical fixes and improvements that you need or received, and we’ll list them out before we go.” He looked at Carla. “It sounds like you’re on board to go help your friend.”

“Yes!” Carla responded with enthusiasm.

“And it seemed clear that Kristy was on board, too, as long as the medical upgrades were part of the deal.”

“I think so,” Carla agreed.

“Great! Then, Carla, why don’t you go back with your mother, or stay here, whatever you like, while you, Dexie or Fred or whoever you are, come along with me. Between the two of us and my alien counterpart, I’m sure we can find a way to make this work for you.”
 

---

 

The three of us walked back the way we came, leaving Carla at the conference room. Dan and I continued another thirty yards or so, until we door with a key-card lock, like in a hotel. He opened it with a card and held the door for me. The two of us entered a place that looked like a suite in a residence hotel.

“This is my home away from home when I’m working for the aliens,” he told me. “I like hotels, and they obliged me. I have to say, I’m much obliged.” It was pretty big for a faux hotel room. There was a sitting area with two small sofas and chairs, a low coffee table, and a large TV hanging on the wall. The last item intrigued me, but I wasn’t going to waste time asking about it. We were standing in a kitchenette, with a full sized fridge, a two-burner stove top, and plenty of cabinets. In the middle, between the two areas was a medium-sized, round table with four chairs. Dan gestured to two closed doors on the left. “First one’s the bathroom, second one’s the bedroom,” he explained. “And that’s the grand tour. Would you like a drink?”

“No, thanks. I already had a glass of wine and I’m already a little light-headed.”

“Mind if I have one?” he asked, smiling, and without waiting for an answer he opened a liquor cabinet in the seating area and poured himself two inches of bourbon. “Blanton’s,” he said, holding up the glass toward my face. “Give it a sniff.”

I gave a few experimental sniffs. “That does smell nice,” I admitted. “Like, uh, caramel or toffee.”

“Umm,” he agreed, sipping. “Sure you don’t want one?”

“No,” I said. “I really want to settle this question.”

“Okay,” he said. “We will.” Then he took a small tablet from his pocket and looked at it. He chuckled and turned the screen towards me. “Do you see this?” he asked.

“Of course I do,” I replied. “It’s a little iPad.”

“No,” he said, shaking his head. “What do you see on the screen?” He began tilting it to different angles, smiling the whole time as if it were some great joke.

“It’s blank,” I said, getting a little irritated, “you can quit shaking it. There’s nothing there.”

“Ha!” he laughed. “I can’t believe it. See, the thing is — they told me only *I* could see the writing, but how can I know if that’s true? You see the problem?”

I opened my hands and shrugged. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

Dan laughed and gave my shoulder a playful push.

“Did you have a drink while you were away?” I asked him. That made him laugh all the more.

“No, no,” he said. “I’m as sober as a Parmer County Judge!” He smiled and explained, “Parmer’s a dry county.”

“Oh, come on!” I cried, exasperated. “We have a problem to solve, and we’re running out of time! I don’t understand what’s come over you. Until now, you were pushing us to hurry, telling us there was no time, and now you’re acting all goofy and silly.”

“Goofy and silly?” he repeated. “Yes, I guess I am. But I’ve got some new information, and the situation is very different from before.”

“In what way?”

“First of all, I asked about the time limit. I think I mentioned that when they go back in time, they sort of unwind things. It’s not really what happens, it’s just a way to visualize it.”

“So?”

“And so, they can actually test how soft time is, how much energy it would take to start unwinding, and how far back they can go. Right now, it’s ideal. It’s about as soft as time gets, so to speak. They’re constantly sampling, and if it starts to harden, even infinitesimally, we’ll go.”

“What about us?”

“Us? You mean you and me?”

“No!” I was getting quite irritated. “I mean me, Kristy, and Carla!”

“Oh, we’ll put you in a lifeboat heading for Earth. You’ll never get there, because we’ll start unwinding as soon as you’re out of range, but just in case, you know… if something goes wrong with us, you’ll end up back home in the present.”

I silently took that in.

“Anyway, given the current conditions, they estimate we’ve got at least four hours.”

“Okay, good,” I said, relaxing a bit.

“See? I didn’t know that,” he said, grinning. “Pays to ask questions, see?”

“I see,” I said. “And did you ask my questions? About cloning and my other ideas?”

“Yes, yes,” he said, sitting down. I didn’t like the twinkle in his eye. Something was definitely up with this Texas attorney. I sat down facing him. He glanced at the iPad and set it on the table. “Now, I ran your various ideas past my counterpart. Your first idea was clones. Now, they can make clones. It’s easy. Unfortunately, having a clone wouldn’t solve your problem at all. If they made a clone of you today, that clone would only be an embryo. But even if it was a newborn baby, it wouldn’t be developed enough to receive someone else's self, their consciousness. Do you follow me?”

“Yes,” I said. “You explain it very well.”

“Thank you. Now — oh, I forgot to say: that clone would not be you. Do you understand? That clone would be a separate and independent person in her own right. Except for her age, she’d be your twin. Did you know that twins are naturally occurring clones? I didn’t know that. Just found out today. Learned something new.”

“Oh,” I said, disappointed. My shoulders began to droop.

“Don’t lose heart, now! Don’t lose hope!" He gave my hand a squeeze. "Just one last point on the clone question: even if she was your age, they wouldn’t be able to put you or Dexie into her, because SHE would already be there. Do you know what I mean? They can only transfer a soul into someone who’s recently dead. You have to have an empty vessel to pour into. No mixing allowed. It would be a kind of murder.”

“Wow.”

“Yeah, heady stuff!” He took a big sip of bourbon. “That was idea one. Now, your second idea was that we rescue young Dexie and let you remain as a second Dexie. We — the alien lawyer and I — discussed this question at great length.” He stopped and glanced at the iPad, and stared at it in silence for a few seconds. Then he set it down and resumed. “That idea has some merit, because even if it’s not quite to the letter of the law, it does have the advantage of being physically possible—”

“It is?” I squeaked, jumping a little in my chair.

Dan chuckled, patting my shoulder. “Aren’t you the cutest thing? But hold on, I’m not through explaining. What we’d do, if we followed your idea, is to bring you back in time with us. We fix the car, and let you loose two weeks back in time. There’d be two Dexies: the real one, and you. We couldn’t change your hair color, though. You’d be alike as two peas in a pod.

“Unfortunately, there are several problems with this approach. The first one is that we’d have to let Fred die.”

“Oh,” I said. “I hadn’t thought about that.”

“Yes, and the aliens don’t like that part. Also, we’d have two versions of the same person running around.”

“Would that create a paradox?”

“Naw. Nobody cares about paradoxes. That’s just science fiction.”

“I could stay out of her way. I could go live with Arrow.”

“Oh yes,” Dan’s left eyebrow rose. "The man in Seattle."

"How do you know about him?"

"Before you got here, I spoke with Kristy and Carla. I needed to get a timeline. They mentioned his name. Are you sure he'd let you live with him? How well do you know him?"

“He’s an old friend, and um… uh—” I wasn't sure how much I wanted to say. I touched the engagement ring, which was still in my pocket. Dan's eyes followed my hand, although he couldn't know what I'd touched. Still, a knowing smile came across this face.

“I get the picture, I get the picture. Arrow's your old friend. And you know he's an old dog, isn't he. You went up there and said How do you like me now? And he liked it, am I right? Not two weeks a woman, and you’re already breaking hearts. It must be that amazing red hair. I’ve been distracted by it myself.

"But you know, just because it worked once, doesn't mean it would work again. Things would be different, and he might not react the same way. You could give your little smile and say Hey, baby, like last time, but this time he might not roll over and let you scratch his belly."

"Hey!" I objected, reddening a little.

"Then again, when you go there and shake your feminine assets..." He smiled and shrugged. "Problem is, there's no guarantee."

I paused, pulled back a little, and gave him a serious look. “I don't think you’re concentrating on the problem at hand.”

“Oh, I am! Believe me, I am!” he exclaimed, patting my knee for emphasis. “Unfortunately — or perhaps, fortunately — the aliens nixed your idea. They didn't like the idea of two Dexies. It’s not strictly legal, it leaves Fred dead, but most of all they didn't want to leave you all alone in the big, wide world, with not one to help you or care for you. No one would know who you were, and you wouldn’t have a penny to your name.”

“Couldn’t I—”

“No, you couldn’t,” he said. “You've got nothing to take with you.”

“Oh,” I said, crumbling into myself. “That was my last idea.”

“It’s just a matter of being safe,” he explained, spreading his hands open in a gesture of apology.

He was about to continue, but then, just in that moment, another idea struck me. “Hey! What if I stay here? What if I stay on the ship, and go off with the aliens to… to wherever it is they’re going?”

“Huh!” Dan grunted. His silly smile fell away, and he seemed quite put out. He stared into my face in surprise and consternation. He made a strange, disappointed huff. His face took on a pout, like a little boy who expected candy but didn’t get it.

“Do you think that could happen?” I asked.

“Well,” he said slowly, looking down at the table. “I don't rightly know. I suppose we could ask.”

“It doesn’t sound like you want to ask,” I observed.

“Well, let’s say I had an idea of my own about what you could do,” he grumbled. “I’m surprised you didn’t think of it yourself. I mean…”

“What?” I asked. “If you’ve got an idea, I’d like to hear it.”

“Okay,” he said, sitting up straight again. “Okay,” he repeated. He picked up his glass and drained the rest of the bourbon, tilting his head all the way back. He set the glass down with a smack! on the table and took a deep breath.

“Let me start off by saying that earlier, when we first met, I misunderstood your situation.” Once again, he gave me a knowing look, as though much was implied in what he'd said. But I didn't get it.

“Okay,” I said slowly.

“See, I thought you were — ha! — as they say, a man trapped in a woman’s body. I thought you’d jump at the chance to be a rooster again. I had no idea that you enjoyed… that you wanted, to be a woman.”

“Okay,” I said again. “I don’t see what you’re driving at.”

He looked at me, baffled. He seemed a little indignant. “You’re going to make me spell it out, aren’t you?” he said. “You want me to say it.”

“If you don’t say it, I won’t know what you're getting at.”

"You don't know what I'm thinking right here, right now?" he demanded.

"I have no idea," I protested.

“You know what I’m thinking,” he countered. He pointed his index finger at me and said, "You know."

“Just say it,” I told him. I was getting pretty exasperated. "Would you please just say it?"

“All right,” he said, “All right. All right, I’ll say it. Here it is: When I heard you say that you wanted to be a girl, I realized that you were into it.”

“Into it?” I echoed. "Into what?"

“Oh, come on!” he said, as if he were belaboring an obvious point. “You wanted to have fun!”

I looked at him in disbelief.

“You know what fun is, don’t you?” he asked me. "Don't tell me that's not why you want this so bad. You got a taste, and you found you like it. This is why you want to carrying on being a girl. Girls just wanna have fun, am I right? You're a girl; you want to have fun. And don't pretend you don't know what fun is. You KNOW what I'm talking about."

“I know what YOU think fun is,” I replied. “I don’t see how having 'fun' is going to solve my problem.”

"Why are you making me work so hard?" he muttered. He balled his fists and shouted, “All right! All right! All right, now! I’ll come right out and say it: Why don’t you come to Texas with me?”

© 2014 by Kaleigh Way