The Nobody People by Bob Proehl (manga ereader TXT) 📕

hurries into the bedroom, and Fahima opens the door. The room is stark, walls hospital white, floors harsh tile. It looks like an apartment someone’s moved out of. Kimani stands behind Avi, who holds Emmeline cradled in his arms, a pietà in reverse.

“She won’t wake up,” he says. “She’s breathing, but she won’t wake up.”

Emmeline looks peaceful except for the way her head, arms, and legs dangle like those of an unstrung marionette. Fahima takes the back of the girl’s head in one hand and jabs at her neck with two fingers, looking for a pulse.

“Let me,” says Alyssa, shouldering Fahima aside. She’s in her scrubs, her face set in the way she gets at work or doing the crossword. She has things under control, and the best thing to do is to stay out of her way. Fahima steps aside, taking a moment to marvel at this woman who may very well be out of her life by tomorrow.

“Pulse rate and temp feel normal,” Alyssa says. She peels the girl’s eyelid back. “She’s in REM sleep.”

“She’s resonating,” Fahima says to Kimani.

“What does that mean?” Alyssa asks.

“How is this her fucking ability?” Avi shouts. His eyes are full of tears, and Fahima thinks it’s possible they’ve broken him before he could finish his job. “Is she…doing something in her sleep? Is it safe? Why won’t she wake up?” Alyssa looks at Fahima, wondering the same thing.

“Someone’s holding her in the Hive,” Fahima says, speaking to Kimani, using code words and jargon that leave Avi and Alyssa in the dark. “Someone’s got her trapped.”

—

Kimani collects Patrick and Sarah, closing the door and then opening into each of their apartments in turn. Patrick is wearing his teaching clothes: a pair of pleated khaki pants and a pale blue polo shirt. Sarah is in a thick flannel nightgown, Cortex at her heel. The dog positions himself between Sarah and Patrick the way he always does when the three of them are together.

Alyssa focuses on Emmeline and on keeping Avi calm. She’s a better person than I am, Fahima thinks. She’s having trouble keeping her mind from straying away from the girl and into the implications of Emmeline’s current condition. What it means about the Hive.

The Hive bothers the shit out of Fahima. If she’d never been there herself, she’d say it couldn’t exist. She never properly found her way to the Hive on her own, although it was later explained to her that the dreams of the crowded room she had as a kid were early fumblings at its edges. She had to be guided to it once she was at Bishop. She doesn’t have the sense of wonder about it that other Resonants do. They call it things like the Shiny Place and the Shimmering Room, like it’s something from a fairy tale. For Fahima, it’s one more odd-shaped piece in the ongoing puzzle of what she is. What they all are.

Avi grabs her wrist. “Tell me what’s going on.” He and Fahima both look at his hand clamped around her arm, and the anger goes out of him. He lets her go, leaving pale ghosts of his fingers behind. “Please, tell me anything.”

“Someone attacked Emmeline through the Hive,” she says. “It shouldn’t be possible, but I think they’re holding her hostage.”

“She’s not a hostage; she’s right here,” he shouts.

“That’s just her body,” Fahima says. “I think Emmeline is somewhere else.”

“Why would anyone—”

“I don’t know,” Fahima says, cutting him off. It’s because we dragged you into this shit, she thinks.

“Let me check her,” says Sarah.

“Are you a doctor?” Alyssa asks, holding her ground in front of the girl.

“No.” She puts her hand on Alyssa’s arm, and Alyssa steps aside. Sarah kneels and places her palm on the girl’s forehead. A beat passes, two. “She’s not in her head,” she says. “You’re right; her consciousness must be in the Hive.” Fahima turns away, concealing a smile. Impossible things are happening. You can always learn something new when impossible things start happening.

“We’ll have to go in and get her,” says Kimani.

“What do we do?” Avi asks.

“We should all go in,” says Kimani.

“We should call Bishop,” Fahima says. “You should have gone to him first.”

“He doesn’t like it when I show up unannounced,” Kimani says.

“Yeah, and I fucking love it,” Fahima says, glancing at Alyssa, who’s taken back her spot at Emmeline’s side.

“We can call him from in the Hive,” Patrick says.

“We need to drop them off first,” Kimani says. She looks at Avi. “You need to go home.”

“I can’t go home.”

“Take us to my apartment,” Alyssa says. Kimani nods and opens the door back into their bathroom, steam lingering in the corners, fog on the mirror. As Avi wedges himself and Emmeline through, Sarah touches him on the shoulder. “Take care of her,” she says. Fahima sees him relax a little, as if there is no one here but him and his daughter, clutched in his arms. Sarah must have pushed into his mind enough to calm him. The ethics are questionable, but Fahima can’t fault the result.

—

So much of the Hive has to do with attention. The things you’re not looking at fuzz out of focus and into nonexistence. The things you’re attending to become clear and crisp, regardless of distance. You can hide yourself, create a bubble of privacy. It’s not difficult; most people aren’t singling you out anyway. Fahima went through a phase of wild sexual experimentation in the Hive when she first got to Bishop. The Hive offered the freedom and anonymity that Internet chat rooms once promised, but with sensation rather than words. Hivebodies made of pure consciousness pressed up against one another without the mediation of language. Psychic ghosts fucking psychic ghosts. You didn’t have to be yourself, which, for a girl still in the closet, was like salvation. Fahima could be with women in the Hive without admitting to herself that she liked women. Selves were not necessarily involved. Hivebodies were ideas about selves, fiction