The Blue That Lasts

| By Filio Chasioti |

The room smelled of rubbing alcohol and lavender, silent and still, disrupted only by

rhythmic breathing. Kira watched the dust dance in a beam of light. In the corner, Sam

worked on the machine. He was checking the wires, as he usually did, in passing,

making sure everything was plugged in.

“She thinks I’m the captain,” Sam said. He pointed to the monitor screen. “She told me

the crew was ready. She said the weather was bad.”

Kira did not answer. She watched their mother. “The doctors sent a new patch, and two

more wires” Sam said. He tapped a small square on the table. “The Lyrical-Symphony

v.4. They said the old ones were too dry. They want the reports to have more feeling,

so now instead of lines and numbers, we see words! That is something, isn’t it?”

Kira looked at the patch. “They want stories, Sam. They want poems about strokes, and

lyrics to toothache. They don’t want to fix her. They want to describe her.”

Sam adjusted their mother’s pillows. He was patient and didn't get angry at the doctors,

nor at her. He didn't get angry at the machine either. He just kept the room bright.

“She’s in there,” Sam said. “She just speaks in single words now.”

“This is not speech, this is a catalogue” Kira thought while their mother looked at the

ceiling. Her eyes were open. She did not speak. The Drift had taken her voice. The mind

was a deep place, and she was at the bottom of it.

“Go to sleep, Sam,” Kira said. “I’ll watch the machine.”

“The rate is just fine,” Sam said. “If you let it slip, you’ll hear it make a clicking sound.”

“I know. Go.”

Sam kissed their mother’s head. He fell on the sofa on the other end of the room. Kira

waited till he was fast asleep and pulled a blanket over him. The familiar scent of fabric

softener soothed something within her, and as she looked down at her brother turned

on his side, she noticed how his ear resembled a perfect seashell and how the little

cowlick at the back of his head remained exactly the same ever since they were children.

Kira sat by her mother’s bed.

... the sea ... the blue ...

The monitor murmured on.

“I wish I could understand you”, Kira thought. She looked at the words on the screen,

which meant something, but also nothing at all. Where are you?, she whispered, where

have you gone?

2

... mother ... mother ...

Kira touched the patch on her mother’s head. The machine started to hum.

...cold... heavy...

Their mother had the Drift, whatever that meant. It was a disease of the brain. It made

you forget. It made you stop moving. The government brochures said it was

manageable. They called it a "quasi-familiar" condition. That meant it was at the bottom

of the list: not a fire, but a slow leak. But if one displayed symptoms of the condition

long enough, and if they were patient, they could get attached to a machine, The

Symmetry Link, they called it. It was grey and heavy, as if built to share the weight. It

took the static from the sick brain and transferred it to the machine. In exchange, words

appeared on the monitor: “this is their language, trying to break through – sort of like

them talking”, said one nurse, a few months ago, and patted Kira warmly on the

shoulder. The manual said five percent. That was the limit. Five percent of the static

was enough to help the patient think. It was enough to help the caregiver understand

they wrote in the brochure.

The Drift was not a virus. It was a surge. It was an electrical tide that had no place to

go, so it stayed in the brain and burned the connections. Kira realized the Symmetry

Link wasn't just a monitor. It was a conduit. It was a drain. If the static was a cloud, her

mother’s mind was a thunderstorm. The five percent limit was just a tiny hole in the

wall, and Kira wanted to the tear the entire house down.

It didn’t cure the disease (that was not possible, “degenerative” they had said, and

“irreversible”) but it could take away some of the noise to allow for some thinking.

“Trying to empty out a flooded gymnasium with a cup”, that’s what she had said to

Sam, on their way back from the hospital one morning. “Better than nothing”, he had

replied; “at least we have a cup. And it is words, not just some line beeping.” Kira

wondered whether the words were random, just programmed to appear on screen, at

arbitrary intervals, to console the inconsolable; but she had said nothing instead, and

drove on.

She looked at the screen again. A symmetry in what? Of what?, she asked herself. A

symmetry of the void, probably.

The words were beautiful and hollow: ... face ... red curtain ... She was watching her

mother drown while a machine compiled a lexicon of emptiness, and wondered whether

she was merely watching the shadows of language as it was walking out of the room

forever.

She looked at Sam again. He was asleep on the sofa, a hero, in her eyes so perfect he

seemed imagined, designed. He had spent three years being the son their mother

needed, and before that, being the person for whom they had all silently wished. He

went to the pharmacy. He sang songs. He refused to let the house go dark. He had given

up his life to stay functional, but he was exhausted. He deserved a mother who knew

his name and could speak it. He deserved to see her walk to the window and look at the

trees.

3

The Symmetry Link had a maintenance panel on the back. Kira had unscrewed the plate

days ago. Inside was a toggle for "Load Balance." It was a simple slider, from left to

right. It went from zero to one hundred. The brochure said that the static could be

transferred to the Symmetry Link, but 5% was the limit – it wrote so in bold, red letters.

Kira questioned the number and wondered what would happen if it were set to 10%,

15%, even 100%. Why have the range be from 0 to 100 when the limit was 5? And

what would happen if a circuit was created, not just a link.

She took the second patch from the tray. She pressed it to her own wrist. The sensor

stung as it broke the skin to reach the nerves. She pulled a wire from her mother’s patch,

one from the Link, and she attached both to her own.

“Syncing,” the machine said. Its voice was flat and digital.

Kira reached for the maintenance panel. She pushed the slider all the way to the right.

It was like standing in a river. The water was rising. This was the Drift after all: a

displacement of the self. Your thoughts were like sand and they were being pulled away

by the tide.

The room tilted. Kira felt a snap in her neck.

The Symmetry changed. The machine was no longer a bridge. It was a drain.

Kira felt the water enter her. It was cold. It was the weight of her mother’s three years

of silence poured over and through her at the same time. It moved up her arm and into

the base of her skull: she could feel the words deserting her as if they were a flock of

birds migrating. Kira’s vision blurred. The edges of the room began to fray. She saw

the lavender on the nightstand, but she couldn't remember what it was called. She saw

the light, but she forgot where it came from.

She looked at her mother on the bed, her eyes now changing. The dull, flat look was

gone. The pupils contracted. The chest began to rise and fall with a new strength. The

static was leaving her. The water was draining out of her mind and into Kira’s.

Kira tried to move her legs. She couldn't: they were heavy, like they were made of wet

sand. Her hands grew stiff, her fingers rigid. She felt the shiver in her jaw: a rhythmic,

poetic pulse of a body that was no longer hers to control.

“Kira?”

It was clear. It was her mother. Tears surged to her eyes.

Kira tried to say "Mom," but her tongue was a stone. She couldn't form the sounds. She

couldn't even form the intent. She was a deserter now: she had dropped out of the race.

Sam woke up at the sound of the voice. He scrambled to his feet. He saw their mother

sitting up. He saw her reaching out for him. He saw the color in her face.

“Mom? Oh my god. Mom!”

He didn't see Kira. He didn't see the grey wires nor the blood on her wrist. He was

laughing and crying.

4

Kira tried to make their figures out through the static. Her vision was a narrow tunnel

now. The room was becoming a small, bright point. She could not move her head. She

could not move her eyes.

She was recumbent, almost falling off the chair. She was staring straight up at the

ceiling. For the first time, she understood what her mother had been looking at, how

her mother had been looking at the small universe of her room, for three years. The

white plaster was not empty. It was full of light and shadow. It was a gigantic cinema

of shapes that didn't need words to exist. They flew and people started speaking,

familiar voices all of them – was it her grandmother? Her aunt? Was it both of them,

together somewhere; it was like listening in behind a closed door, and they were

laughing.

She felt the last of the memories go, deserting her, snuffed out like a wick in the cold.

The sound of the kitchen. The taste of coffee. The smell of the house. Her mother’s

hands. She was in the forest now. It was a snowfield where no one could find her. She

was alone, but she was not afraid. The shiver in her nerves was a rhythm she could

finally hear. It was the only poetry she had left.

She closed her eyes.

She wanted to tell Sam she was sorry. She wanted to tell him she was glad. But the

language was gone. She was alone in the forest. The trees were tall and dark. There

were no paths and no words for them either.

The hum of the machine was the last thing she heard. It was a steady, rhythmic pulse,

alive in its rigidness. It was the only lyric that mattered. On the screen, words buzzed:

"The birds' eyes are bright in the tunnels between the leaves."