What Doc had come to see for the thousandth time was too large for jars. The remains floated in a yellowed aquarium set into the wall, twice her height all around. Outside the glass, a plaque read off the serial number given by R&D’s data and cataloging.
Doc knew this better as the last known remains of the Kentucky Incident.
No one ever spoke to her about the frequent visits. Surely they whispered, much as gas masks allowed, but she hoped they presumed scientific fascination.
She’d certainly believed that was her reason at first, and only time and tenderness had made her quit lying to herself. Truth was, she kept coming back for the same reason people left flowers at graves.
Across fourteen years and five state assignments, since leaving her university lab assistant position to work for ABP, she had never seen anything
like the Kentucky Incident. Looking at the remains now, knowing they had been part of a living creature, she wasn’t sure human eyes were meant to look upon anything like it.
To this day, no one knew for certain just what that Kentucky Sibs station had pumped into that chimera girl. Theories ran the gamut from poor prior testing of that particular brew, to a genetic abnormality, to an unfortunate reaction with local pollution. If anyone in the analysis lab had found answers, they didn’t share. The remains were meat to them, a biological hard drive of information, nothing more.
They had never met the person inside. Only Doc had spoken to her. No one else present that night at the school had felt a pang of regret in their stone hearts for having to destroy her.
She was beautiful, even writhing beneath a shining moon while fires raged in all directions. And beneath that monstrous beauty, larger than life, she’d wanted what Doc had. Freedom to leave, where she had freedom to love.
In 1999, Kentucky and three other like-minded states couldn’t secede from the union without disturbing a federal beast. Instead, their elected officials declared martial law and ushered in the age of statesmen. Their connections to companies like ABP kept Congress off their backs while they shut state borders and rooted out perceived deviancies in the name of liberty.
ABP had assigned Doc there for reasons only Human Resources could know, maybe some diversity quota. They might as well have dropped her into a desert, not a drop of affection to be found. No girlfriend, no dating, no lovers.
Plenty of men eyed her, their attention unwanted as ever. Some women carried on secret affairs, but Doc didn’t fight the grain with them. Life among the roving statesmen was temporary for her.
As the old saying went: When in Rome, send a transfer request to the ABP
Board ASAP.
But she saw them—the women who would never get out. They were familiar with the boot and knew better than to show themselves. Doc made eye contact with the queer ones often, people hiding in closets or passing stealth or taking on the wrong gender assumptions just to stay alive. She passed them knowing nods and glances but kept her distance. She couldn’t afford to have a heart in that place.