Corpus Callosum

I’m ready.”

  Steve stood and clicked Carlton in. He opened the hard drive’s directory. Opened up a connection to their minds.

  Searching them, Steve could hear the din. It was building. Ringing in his microphones, dizzying his cameras. He heard the back-ups screaming. Joey, Carlton, Thompson, Lily, Edwidge. Thousands of others. They recognized what he was and it turned their terror to rage.

  36.

  Joey logged in. She needed Carlton’s help. Thankfully, he was remarkably lucid now that they were together.

  Joey asked, but she was answered before the words had been released.

  Carlton showed her. He opened his employee account. There were hundreds of unread messages, which they ignored. He steered them to the employee servers and logged in again, this time with a different password. Andrea’s middle name and birthday.

  He found the network directory and searched by location. The connection was painfully slow all of a sudden. It was for emergencies only. He told Joey to go into his account on LifeMedia’s IT site and give them priority access, so she did.

  Joey went into the settings. Carlton found the master drive with all the backups on it. Joey formed a network link with all the other Boxes in the room. Lily connected with others from the message boards. And others, too, ones so withdrawn they barely spoke at all, didn’t message anyone, and were only reachable using the account information from LifeMedia’s site. None were so isolated that they couldn’t be found.

  Milton stared down at them. He tapped frantically at the type pad, or pretended to.

  “What’s wrong?” Jeanette said.

  “They won’t let me…It logged me out,” he said.

  Joey asked Carlton.

  Carlton’s answer was immediate, overlapping Joey’s own thoughts.

  Joey scanned his face, poreless, his breath, odorless, his hair, inserted perfectly follicle by follicle. She zoomed in on them, and though his face was frowning, his mind was giving off a smile. It felt like he was relenting.

  “What’s going on?” Jeanette shouted.

  Milton shook his head at the hard drive, confounded. “I just don’t know.”

  Carlton told them.

  Lily said. She sounded like a child now. She was begging.  She was grabbing at their apron. Reaching up for their hands. Crying in her swim suit at the beach, tow-headed, a baby.

  Joey said. She messaged Milton directly. It worked exactly the same as with any other Box.

  Joey felt a twinge of sadness from deep in his bowels. His face didn’t betray it.

  Milton looked at Jeanette. Joey could see his face regarding hers from every camera in every BrightBox in the room. She could see all the other lovers in other rooms. An endless amount of them. He wasn’t so different, or so detestable really. He was made of different material, but the look was the same.

  he messaged back.

  “Steven,” Jeanette stammered. “What are you doing?”

  “Nothing,” he told Jeanette. He backed away from the table with his hands up. “It’s up to them.”

  Joey let him go. The connections optimized and the new network was established. Lily, Edwidge, Thea, the football player, and all the rest rushed in. Those that had hands felt them clasp. Then they lost all sense entirely. Then they felt every tactile sensation in their world all at once.

  Lily gasped as she was taken into the collective. She found her other self and held it firmly to her long-gone, wasted chest and all her hate was purged away. Edwidge disappeared with glee, stealing one glance at her mother. Her backup mind greeted her, as did all the other minds of the young, and they rejoiced to find each other. Thompson was there, and he brightened when he felt them all coming. He welcomed the connection and let his demons leave him, to be drowned out in the deluge of memory and thought.

  Joey took one last look at her sister. Her mirror shadow self. Jeanette wore a mask of terror, but she knew that soon Milton would take her hand and hold her head against his shoulder. He would absorb all her weeping. Probably all the families would rush in and hold one another. They, too, would come together. Jeanette would be okay eventually. She could feel Milton promising it. He could still love, somehow. Maybe it was having a body that did make all the difference.

  Joey turned her sensors off, abandoning the view. It would be her last unique memory — her sister’s face, clenched in pain, but destined to improve. Alive. Adapting. Evolving. Joey relaxed and joined the connection.

  All of the BrightBoxes in all the world all at once went white.

  Epilogue

  It was Thanksgiving. Joey always hated the holiday, on political grounds, but tolerated its observance out of love. She couldn’t cook, but she could taste the nutmeg in the sweet potatoes, and eye the meat thermometer, ensuring the turkey didn’t get scorched or dried out while Jeanette filled the pies.

  The head count was the same as the year before. Other than watching the oven more carefully, Jeanette was saddled with all the same tasks. The smells brought memories of her sister wandering through the kitchen to dip a crust of bread in the gravy without permission, shoving it into her mouth with eyes laughing and a beer in her other hand. Helpful only in her ability to witness.

  It was an insultingly clear day. Their father, Jeanette’s father, was in the living room being cradled to sleep by football. Jeanette sliced into the celery and ran the knife under the sink. Birds spied on her from the windowsill. She felt perpetually watched nowadays, not that it was a bad feeling. She looked a robin in the eye and parted her lips, almost saying something. A breeze whistled against the glass door and quieted her. The bird hopped away. The feeling didn’t leave her.

  When everything was in the oven or warming on the range, Jeanette took a moment to slide out the back door and step into the cool air. She mopped sweat from her brow and chin and stepped out onto the leaves, feeling their crunch. The willow tree’s branches, like tendrils, wept from the sky to the ground.

  Jeanette moved across the lawn, settled under the tree, and took a pull from a beer. She forced herself not to wince at its bitterness. It was a ritual. Holy only in its repetition.

  They used to stand under the tree, cooling off while the meal cooked. They did it every year from ninth grade to the year that Joey died.

  “You think Dad will ever tear this thing down?” Jeanette asked her, once, gazing into the branches.

  Joey had stared up at the tree and frowned at the shade. “I don’t think so. It would kill him.”

  Jeanette leaned back and pointed at some of the tallest branches, the ones that dangled over the roof of the house and jutted into the telephone wires.

  “If he doesn’t get this thing trimmed, it will kill him. All it would take is a bad storm.”

  Joey had shrugged. “He’ll risk it. I mean, what are the odds of that really? He loves this tree.”

  “No,” Jeanette said. “He knows you love it.”

  Joey gulped the rest of her beer and elbowed her sister in the side.

  “Ow.”

  “Sorry. Don’t know my own strength.”

  The door slid ajar with a squeak and closed once more. Jeanette opened her eyes and saw him striding across the grass to her. If he came over, he would ask what she was thinking. He always wanted to know what she was thinking. She’d have to tell him the story.

  Instead, she rose, walked from the tree and met him in the middle of the yard.  The smell of the food cooking wafted into her nostrils and awakened memories, but she didn’t resent her nose for it. She accepted his hand without reaching. He must have sensed what she was thinking about, because he didn’t make a sound. It was growing chilly, and he’d slipped on a sweatshirt from Joey’s alma mater ; it brought out the blue in his mostly hazel eyes. She accepted his lips without leaning toward them. And the robins flew over their heads, unremarkable and unnoticed, and the dead leaves laid beneath them accepted the weight of their bodies without complaint.

  About the Author

  Erika D. Price is
a writer and social psychologist living in Chicago, Illinois. Her work has been featured in Whiskey Paper, EFiction, Red Fez, Literary Orphans, and on Liar’s League NYC’s podcast, among others. She’s also written journal articles for academic presses that no sane human being would ever read. She writes regularly at https://www.erikadprice.tumblr.com

  Books:

  Then One Year, an e-short available through Before Sunrise Press.

  Would You Open the Time Capsule? an e-short available through Thunderune Publishing.

  A Public Resource, a short story in the anthology Oh Sandy!: An Anthology of Humor for a Serious Cause.

  Selected Short Work:

  Tiny Alligators in the February 2013 Edition of Liar’s League NYC’s podcast (read by Samantha Jane Gurewitz).

  Watch My Stuff in the February 2013 issue of eFiction.

  Fatal Familial Insomnia in the February 2013 issue of Yeah Write Review.

  The Fire is Not Genetic in the January 2013 issue of Full of Crow. (free to read)

  Right Before the Aneurysm in the Winter 2013, inaugural issue of A Literation.

  Learning to Drive Home from the Bar in the January issue of Forge magazine. (free to read, hard copy available here)

  The Voyeurs