Mlina, Meet Your New Brainmate

An excerpt from "Warped and Wired" by Joshua Caleb

Mlina sat up in her bed. She couldn’t rest. The strange feeling that she’d seen the people from her hallucination before still bothered her. Where could she have seen them? She had never even been off the island. What they said also didn’t make sense. Uncle Albert? Her eighteenth birthday?

“What is going on?” she asked aloud.

Perhaps I can be of assistance? an unfamiliar voice asked.

Mlina whirled around. Her room was empty. “Who’s there?”

I am not there, I am here.The voice had a mechanical, but slightly feminine monotone.

“Where?” Mlina turned round in the opposite direction.

Would you please stop spinning? the voice asked. You are making me dizzy.

Mlina grabbed at her head, feeling around for…anything. Then she stopped herself. She must be hallucinating again. The voice, the voice sounded so real. But so had her hallucination. “Look, I know this isn’t real. So would you please just be quiet so I can get some sleep?”

There was no response. All Mlina could hear was the soothing chorus of jungle noise. Relaxing, Mlina sank onto her pillow and immediately fell asleep.

*****

Images. Words. Incoherent phrases and pictures danced and swirled around Mlina’s unconscious mind, making her head spin in dizzying circles.

Her eyes flew open. She jerked upright. Everything looked like it always did. She glanced at her solar powered alarm clock. She had slept for…two minutes? How could she have fallen asleep for just two minutes? It wasn’t the next day was it?

“One new message,” a familiar, but still startlingly electronic voice announced. Mlina looked over at her desk. Her laptop’s screen was on and flashing the “new email” message. Mlina got up and walked over to her computer. She tapped on the inbox to retrieve the message. The subject line stopped her cold: “You are not Mlina Cruis.” Mlina slowly reached her hand out and tapped on the message. A news headline instantly appeared in the view window. “Famous Scientist Lost in Hurricane.” Mlina scrolled down until she came to a photo. It was the man and woman from her hallucination. She read the story underneath the picture:

“World famous cyberneticist, Daven Kihd, and his wife, Beth, an accomplished brain surgeon, were officially declared lost today. The cargo ship they had boarded from the West Coast sank somewhere in the Pacific during hurricane Allonia. Rescue teams have searched extensively for weeks, but to no avail. Their seven year-old daughter, Mitchellina, has also been reported missing and is feared lost as well.”

Another photo was imbedded within the text. Mlina collapsed into her chair and stared at the screen.

The photo was of her.

Younger and paler yes, but it was her. Same blonde hair, same face, same…eyes. The eyes clinched it. How many people could claim to have dual-colored eyes? But there they were: ocean-blue left eye, lavender-colored right eye.

Anger and confusion began to surge through Mlina. Why? Why had they hidden this from her? To not tell her about her hallucinations was one thing, but to lie outright to her about who she was and where she’d come from. Was anything else they told her a lie? How could she know? How could she ever trust her parents again? They obviously weren’t in the habit of being honest with her.

Mlina suddenly felt cold despite the fact she was in a tropical jungle. They weren’t her parents. She was alone. Her parents were dead. She was supposed to be dead. She didn’t belong anywhere, to anyone.

Mlina stopped herself, reining in her wild imagination. She was jumping to way too many conclusions. She had no idea where this email had come from. The address line just said ‘NICI’. Maybe it was someone’s idea of a practical joke. If so, it was downright creepy that it fit her so well.

She needed more info. She wasn’t going to let some cracker with a twisted sense of humor ruin her life without sufficient evidence.

She jabbed the link to go to the actual news site. A box popped up informing her that access was denied. Mlina frowned. Denied? She had never been denied access to a website before. She opened up a different window and typed the web link into the search bar manually. The virtual roadblock appeared again. She tapped over to a search engine and typed out the keywords. Again her access was restricted.

“Why am I being denied?” Mlina pounded her palms against her forehead.

Allow me. It was the mechanical female voice from earlier.

Mlina jumped. Her vision was suddenly overlaid with a translucent computer interface. Windows flipped back and forth, characters randomly appeared and disappeared in front of her. Mlina closed her eyes but the images wouldn’t leave. She tried plastering her hands against her eyes. Still the images flashed. “What’s going on?” she asked aloud to no one in particular.

Finally the images fled, leaving Mlina to stare at her computer screen. It now showed the news article in full, with related headlines and unrelated advertisements in the sidebars. Mlina lightly tapped a sidebar that caught her attention: “Renowned Scientist Accused of Child Experimentation.” The article went on to say that Daven Kihd had been suspected of conducting harmful experiments on his daughter and that Social Services was conducting a thorough investigation.

Mlina sat back, her head boiling with fresh anger and confusion. Why didn’t her…parents…tell her about any of this? She guessed it was possible they didn’t know about this Daven Kihd; but that shouldn’t stop them from telling her they weren’t her real parents. She deserved to know the truth, didn’t she?

Her bedroom door swung open, knocking against her chair.

“Mlina?”

Mlina whirled on her mother, knocking the metal chair under the desk in the process. “Why?” she asked, barely able to control her tone.

Her mother looked at her in confusion. Then she saw the computer. Her eyes went wider than sand dollars. “Oh, honey. I’m so sorry.”

They did know.

Mlina’s anger boiled over. Without a word, she swept past her mother and stormed out the door.