Chương 106: 7.08 No Return without Receipt or Label

2104: 04: 07: 11: 28: 15 To many, the day they'd been dreading for weeks had finally come. But to me, it was just another Monday morning Geography class.

"-Himalayan Slip and the Sinking of Europe had already changed the magma flows underneath the crust-" Despite standing in front of the class and occasionally changing the slide on my presentation, I had only a dim awareness of what I was saying; my mouth moved on autopilot. Not that I didn't understand what I was saying – I'd written the essay after all – but what I was doing only resembled me explaining what I'd found during my research. No, I was reciting what I found.

"-the impact of the meteor combined with the eruption of surrounding volcanoes broke off parts of the North American and Pacific plates, later mending-" After all, what use were my memcordings if I couldn't use it in situations like these? And no, it wasn't cheating; I'd written everything I wanted to say of it out the night before, read it slowly and carefully enough to allow me to search through my memcords easily. All it did was save me the effort of memorizing it all the hard way.

So really, I'd still put more effort into it than most of my class. Certainly more than Millie, that much I knew for certain.

"-which is how we ended up with the Cascadian plate. The old Cascadian subduction zone was already relatively calm, but would occasionally result in a megathrust earthquake. Something scientists suspect will never happen with our current plate configuration – excluding any external factors inducing one, of course. But either way, the Cascadian plate is certainly much more stable when compared to the, ah… the….?" The what? Sam suddenly couldn't remember what the old plate was called.

It wasn't just the North American plate, was it? Her head felt too fogged up to properly think, and trying to retrieve her memories resulted in it being… stuck, or something. For some reason, it seemed her DOOR wasn't working properly anymore. Wait. DOOR? That word rang oddly foul to Sam's mind. It reminded her a bit of the taste when licking a battery – which, yes, she'd done once and only once before when she was little. Bitter, metallic, acidic; the word DOOR tasted of resentment, but she didn't know why.

She repeated it a few times in the privacy of her own mind. The DOOR, the DOOR, the DOOR; something about it was- Oh, right. The DOOR, Sam thought. Memories of stunted conversations, memories twisted into data and into meaning that had all the clarity of a feverish half-dream, half-nightmare came trickling in, trying to convey a meaning that Sam barely, just barely managed to comprehend. And boy was she pissed. Damn that Machine! she thought.

Did it really have to test the machine right when her alter-ego in the real world was giving a presentation?! Sam could've sworn she heard the thing laughing in the back of her head – or rather, somewhere in the Achronality. She knew it wasn't – the Machine didn't have that kind of complexity, or force of personality, or character, or soul required to feel anything of the sort – but by God did it feel like it.

She looked up at the ceiling spitefully, hoping to cast her judgement back into that timeless void and right in the face of that cold, cold Machine. It might work too; stuck as the DOOR might be, it could still-"Are you alright, Sam?" The voice of the teacher, a familiar-unfamiliar sound that made her feel oddly ill at ease when hearing it, broke her out of her funk. She looked down again at all the- the faces staring at her in confusion and concern.

Through no fault of her own, she felt her face flush bright red in mortification. She didn't like doing presentations on the best of days, let alone when she was making a fool of herself by forgetting 'her' presentation halfway through, and then acting all strange in front of the class to boot! Sam turned to the teacher when, in the midst of her turn, she saw from the corner of her eye the worried faces of best friends she'd never met.

Again memories she'd never lived came flooding back to the forefront in a tidal wave of emotion. It was awful. All of the sudden, her skin felt tight; her clothes itched; her scalp tingled and sent out beads of cold sweat. Her stomach did a triple flip in one-too-many dimensions and her knees began to buckle, her leg muscles suddenly feeling too weak to support her. Her vision grew grainy, and darkness began to creep in at the edges.

"Yeah," Sam breathed more than said.

"Yeah. Just ah… I don't feel so good." She really needed to sit down for a moment. She took a step forward, attempting to make her way back to her seat, but the second she did she stumbled, and would've fallen to the floor if she hadn't managed to catch herself on another student's desk on time. Said student – Sam didn't remember the name; why didn't she know his name? – hurried to catch her, but stopped as he saw Sam right herself.

The teacher – Mister Korlitz, she suddenly recalled – hurried out of his seat and rolled it out for Sam to sit on, which she gratefully did.

"Just catch your breath for a moment, okay? Do you need me to call someone? Your mother?" Oh God, anything but that! Sam rapidly shook her head, but in doing so the vertigo that'd just left returned in full force. She felt seconds away from throwing up.

"Amber," Mister Korlitz called out to the class.

"Can you take her to the school infirmary? You can roll her on the chair if you need to." Sam vaguely heard someone answer affirmatively and attempted to rise out of her seat.

"I- I can walk," she said. But as she stood up and took a step, it was again more of a stumble – although she didn't fall this, so that was an improvement. A pair of hands caught her despite that, an arm wrapping around her waist as another grabbed Sam's and put it around their neck. Briefly, Sam attempted to dislodge the other party, but they responded, "Stop struggling. I swear I'll carry you there if I have to." It was, naturally, Amber that spoke.

Amber-friend, Amber-mentor, Amber-Crowsong; memories of another life- but no, despite this Sam not having lived it, it was her life too. That realization helped her stabilize somewhat, the dizziness fading inch by inch. She stopped attempting to break free and let herself be dragged off, Amber guiding her out of the door and into the hallway. So much for that 'test' the Machine had wanted. Or was it Sam herself that wanted it?

She remembered desperately wanting to escape that place so much, but she had hardly been in her right mind when she agreed to whatever proposition she and the Machine had agreed upon. Either way, regardless of what they'd wanted to test, this couldn't have been the result either of them had hoped for.

She felt only half-real here, the memories of her childhood still all but entirely locked away and even the memories of her alter ego, the 'android' Sam that'd blossomed in the fertile void of memory and personality her body had left behind when they were being separated by the Machine; even that Sam was only barely present. Motor skills were also worse than they should be.

Even if her supplementary superstrength was stripped away by conjoining her two halves – why it would do so she didn't know, but she could vaguely recall the Machine instructing her on the possibility – she still should've been more than able to carry herself. Even her eyesight seemed worse somehow, unable to truly focus on anything in particular. It was the worst of both worlds, neither Samanthas existing wholly and fully in the present.

Two parts of a whole creating a version less than the sum of their parts, all the while still separated by a boundary brought forth by cruel experimentation. One upheld by an equally, albeit not deliberately, cruel Machine. The author's content has been appropriated; report any instances of this story on Amazon.

"What happened there, Sam?" Amber asked.

"Does it have anything to do with your… you know?" Sam did not know, her memories still blurry on the details of all that had happened in this new life of hers. So, she shook her head.

"No?" Amber asked, clearly skeptical.

"What else could it be?" Again, Sam shook her head, desperately trying to avoid conversation in the fear she'd betray what was happening. God, couldn't the Machine just- I found myself tripping over my feet, an unexpected set of arms suddenly wrapping around me to prevent my fall. The classroom I'd just stood in was suddenly replaced by one of the many random, indistinguishable hallways in the school. What? Where was I? Where had the teacher, the class gone? What happened to my presentation?

"Sam?" I jumped at the voice, heart leaping in my throat at seeing Amber right beside me. Where the hell had she come from?

"What? How-?" I cut myself off and rapidly sorting through my memcordings, only to be locked out of it by, I presumed, either the Heroic Impulse or pseudo-Sam. It was exactly the same feeling as the night after Millie's birthday party, except this time in the middle of the day.

"You alright?"

"God, no," I said.

"It happened again!""'It'?" I surreptitiously looked around, seeing no one but ourselves in the hallway.

"Mad Android Syndrome," I said by way of answer, voice kept low just in case.

"Sometimes- well, this is only the second time, but it causes me to black out and leave a strange hole in my memories, and- you remember the day after I went out masking alone? Where I acted… odd?" Amber nodded.

"It's basically a more extreme version of that."

"Ah. I see." Again, Amber nodded.

"You were acting a bit… off, back there." I nodded too.

"Yep. Now, where- you can let go now, by the way." I stomped my foot.

"Got my strength back. Now, where were we going?"

"The school nurse." X As I should've expected, my visit to the school nurse didn't just stay with the school nurse. They were obligated to contact parents in certain cases, and since my medical record told of three trips to the hospital – achronal displacement, broken nose, the 'brain damage' from the Motorgang fight – and also included the report from the doctor of the Renton Suites by the Crater Lake, this was definitely one of those cases.

And of course I was unlucky enough that Mom hadn't been called in to the Motorgang-Magistry fight happening downtown, meaning she was free to pick me up. As I waited for her on a bench right outside the school, I contemplated what I should tell her. I had of course yet to tell her about my whole possibly-an-android-and-not-her-real-daughter situation, and would now really be the right time? Then again, I doubted she would let the situation go this time.

Unlike with the Motorgang fight, Crater Lake and Michael, I had no good excuse for my sudden bout of illness here. Maybe she'd even be able to connect the dots with the episode I had after Millie's birthday, and if she did that, I was as good as done. Before I could summon up so much as the outline of a plan, however, Mom arrived, her car driving right up to the school parking lot at near-legal levels of speed and stopping about a three meters away from where I sat.

She exited the car at similarly blazing speeds, head on a swivel as she turned to look at me.

"Sam!" she shouted, voice tinged with relief. She jogged her way over and before I could so much as rise, she'd already enveloped me in her trademarked bear-crushing hug.

"Thank God, you're alright." She pushed me away some so as to look at my face, my head being turned left and right as she examined me from all angles.

"You are alright, right?""'m fin," I mumbled through squished cheeks.

"Good, good." She released me.

"Come, let's go." I obeyed. We made our way to the car and soon enough, we were off. To my surprise, Mom didn't say much of anything whilst driving, her attention wholly focused on the road – a bit too much so, even. She was leaning forwards farther than usual, and her hands gripped the steering wheel tighter than necessary. Figuring it to be the aftershock of a worry-induced maybe-panic attack, and with me myself not that eager to discuss what had happened, I accepted the silence.

We could talk at home, and it gave me some time to figure out a good excuse… or a good way to tell her what I needed to. Except, I realized, we weren't going home. She'd missed a turn, and while that alone wouldn't alarm me considering the stress she was under, but now she was driving in almost the exact opposite direction of where we needed to go. And even at the next fork in the road, she still did not take the turn to head back.

"Mom?" She didn't respond, so I asked again.

"Mom?" The second time broke her out of whatever funk she was in.

"Hm?" Her eye flicked toward me for a moment before focusing on the road again.

"Where're we going?"

"Our physician," she said. I blinked, said "What?" and slowly sat myself upright.

"I've called ahead for an appointment," she continued.

"Said he got a spot open for us right now, so I took it."

"But- but I'm fine! See?" I demonstrated as best I could by moving my head and arms; no nausea or headache to be seen here.

"I don't need to go to the doctor."

"Did you forget what the doctor said back at the lake? If the same thing happens again, we should go to a doctor. I might've let the Christmas one slide, and that fight with Motorgang as well because the reasons were obvious – but not today's one. This one is one too many."

"But I don't even have a headache!" Half-true; I didn't have a headache anymore.

"And I didn't even get a migraine this time." That one was completely true.

"Sam, you nearly passed out in the middle of class," Mom said, clearly trying her best to restrain her anger.

"And you know just as well as I this is not only about the headaches; it's about the whole of it! Not just the winter break or Crater Lake, but the Motorgang fight – both what happened after and toward the end of the fight itself." Who told her about that?

"And then that episode in the bathroom – don't even think for a second I forgot about that one! – and these- these mood swings the past few weeks, and now today? By God, Sam! Can't you understand how worried this all makes me?!"

"You said you wanted to stay out of it!" I accused – unfairly, yes, but the words had left my mouth already.

"I said I wanted you to have options, not that you shouldn't talk to me," she argued back, showing no quarter. For just a second, she turned to look me straight in the eye.

"I know you know that, Sam. You aren't stupid; you knew exactly what I meant." As she turned her eyes back on the road, I felt the heat flush my face. Embarrassment and anger; my childish reaction making it red as an apple. After a moment she continued.

"You really don't feel worried about it yourself?" She all but pleaded, voice soft and failing to disguise her anguish. That last question killed all the justifications I had to keep silent, splaying them out before me for the hollow things they were. I could still stall – a visit to the physician wasn't the end of the world – but the threshold was reached. Not telling her now would be beyond cowardly and wrong, and would only hurt me in the future.

The conversations about my androidhood I'd had with my friends and everything I learned from them flitted through my head. Each step I took, each word I said, every result that came from it – Millie's anger, Jolie's pity, Saga and Amber's lack of care, companionship and efforts to cheer me up – all combined subconsciously into a vague idea of 'the best approach'.

"I… already know what's behind it," I finally admitted. Silence filled the car, only the steady buzz of the engine and the sound of wind passing by to be heard. Mom turned her head, eyes wide with confusion and, unfortunately hurt.

"…What?" she said softly.

"Why didn't you tell-?" A loud beeping suddenly came from the dashboard, the car coming to a stop instantly and launching the both of us forward ever so slightly before the seatbelts caught us. Mom had nearly driven into the car ahead of us, activating the automatic brake.

Cursing underneath her breath, Mom rapidly turned the car into the right lane and took the first turn she could, parking it in an open parking spot she saw on the side of the road – one meant for the local residents, but she clearly was past caring about things like that. Both of us took a few shaky breaths, waiting for the rush of adrenaline from the near crash to wind down.

"When I first woke up," I began slowly, still breathing heavily. Mom turned her eyes to me. I swallowed nervously, but pushed through.

"When I first woke up, it wasn't… exactly inside the forest, but below it." She swallowed something away, her breath stabilizing.

"…Below?" I nodded.

"And I wasn't alone. A… a maker was there with me, when I woke up. A guy named Trajan Baker." Mom's eyes widened.

"What're you trying to tell me?" I took in a deep breath, and released it.

"I think I'm an android." She didn't say anything, so I continued.

"I woke up in an underground laboratory after most of it'd collapsed by an earthquake three days ago – one I- one we think was caused by Trajan Baker returning from achronal displacement. I managed to dig my way out thanks to my shifter powers, and once above ground I got picked up by Mark and Evelyn's helicopter – the geographic survey one, remember?" She didn't acknowledge the question. I swallowed thickly.

"I… all I had at the time was my name – a name given to me by my creator, I thought." It was through sheer force of will that I managed to keep going.

"I swear that I- I didn't know that- that the name, that my body and- and everything else was a match with Samantha Pearsson." I swallowed the painful lump in my throat, body trembling as I continued, voice hoarse, "With y-your real daughter." I watched an infinitely worse version of my own feelings play out on my mother's face. With every word she'd grown paler, blood draining as she realized what I was trying to say. Now tears pooled in her eyes, and a trembling hand went to cover her half-open mouth in shock.

"No…" A high-pitched whine escaped her involuntarily. A sob broke free and she looked just about ready to collapse. But then, right as I was about to avert my eyes from the scene, "No." Her voice turned hard as concrete. Her spine straightened and though the clammy paleness didn't leave her cheeks, her jaw set and there was steel in her eyes. The same eyes boring a hole into mine, looking at me as if boring into my soul.

"No. I don't believe it." Shakily, I nodded.

"Marianne doesn't either. The GAC-""Who cares what the GAC says?" Mom interrupted with a determination bordering on anger.

"You think I- I wouldn't recognize my own daughter." Okay, maybe not just bordering on anger.

"I know you, Sam – I raised you, gave birth to you. Do you really think that- that a little bit of achronal displacement or some scummy maker could just- just create you like-" she snapped her fingers, "-that?" She shook her head before I could answer. With that same zeal, that rock-solid conviction, she told me, "You're my daughter, Sam. I know it. Know it like I know I'm me." This time her words left me teary eyed. I didn't bother holding back, letting the tears flow freely.

Fed by delusion though they might be, her words, her conviction, her love was so much more soothing than a balm could that words failed to describe it. I went to wipe my tears.

"I-" But before I could say a single word more, Mom wrapped me in as tight a hug as she could, sitting in the car as we were. I hugged her back just as tightly, and bawled my eyes out. From the wetness forming on my shoulder, I figured Mom to be doing the same. X Seconds, minutes, hours – I hadn't the wherewithal to consult my internal clock – passed, Mom whispering barely-audible words of comfort all but straight into my ear. Right after, I explained to her all the rest, holding nothing back.

About the Heroic Impulse and pseudo-Sam, about what exactly happened at Crater Lake and with Michael; after Millie's birthday party and in the bathroom; Marianne's suspicions, what she thought of the GAC and the plan to take the RAT; even what happened that one time I acted strangely with Amber – calling her Crowsong, of course – and that last, Heroic Impulse-led chase during the Motorgang fight. The last of which she'd apparently gotten to hear about through Darius, who in turn got it from Darion.

I could visibly see the chill going up her spine as she asked, "You have a self-termination button?" I shrugged somewhat embarrassedly for some reason.

"Me and the Heroic Impulse, but yes. It's pretty useful for getting out in a pinch." It really was. Being capable of terminating my form after capture was, ironically, a lifesaver. Mom opened her mouth, then closed it with a click. Then she said, "And Marianne…?"

"She thinks the GAC can't really be spoofed and that something else might be going on – especially when I mentioned Trajan Baker and the underground laboratory. What that is though, I have no idea." From the look in Mom's eyes I figured she might, but if she did, she didn't say.

"And the RAT on the 18 th is supposed to, what, help give us the truth somehow?" Again, I shrugged.

"Can't say, but it would eliminate-" or confirm, "-the possibility of me being an android. A more thorough genetics test; blood, body and brain screening; and apparently some specific devices that can detect whether I've been shifted against my will, am a maker construct in the process of degrading, or whether I'm hypnotized, magicked, called or summoned, brainwarped or mind-melded or any of a dozen other superpowers are influencing me in some way."

"I can be there when you take it?"

"I… don't know. Maybe not the tests themselves, but probably the results?" I shrugged.

"Marianne wasn't clear on that, but she did say I could send her a message if I'm taking you along – and that it would save on a lot of paperwork if I did." I wasn't joking about that part, but Mom laughed anyway.

"You could also come with me on Tuesday to discuss things?" Mom agreed.

"I think I'd like that." She sighed and wiped the corners of her eyes with her fingers.

"We'll get through this; I know we will." To which of us she was saying this to, I didn't know.